Castle Bravo

by Karna Small Bodman

  Tripp jerked his head up when he saw what looked like a blinding fireball miles up in the sky. An explosion of some sort. A big one. But why is it way up there. Seems almost like a space shuttle is exploding, but that didn’t make any sense. He hadn’t heard of any space activities around here. Sure, the Russians still had a rocket company in Baikanor, but that’s nowhere near here. What could it be? He raced to the wellhead where a dozen crew members were shouting and pointing toward the horizon.

  “What’s that?”

  “Something exploded.”

  “Helluva fire.”

  “Did you feel it?”

  “Damnation!”

  Just as Tripp got to the cluster of men, he saw Jake grab his chest and collapse on the ground. He raced over and kneeled down. “Jake, what is it? Your heart? What?” He shouted to the others, “Help me. Jake’s hurt or something. Anybody see anything? Did something hit him? Kick back or something?” They gathered around as Tripp leaned down and shouted, “Jake! Jake! What is it? Can you hear me?”

  Jake’s eyes were open but they had a dull stare. They weren’t moving. Tripp was frantic. “Heart attack? Could it be a heart attack? But he’s got a pacemaker. Wonder if it’s screwed up or something. Maybe he needs CPR.” Tripp stretched Jake out on his back, tore open the man’s shirt and began to put pressure on his chest. Continuous chest compression. That’s what they called it. He pushed down, over and over and over again. Had to get the blood flowing to the brain. Had to force it. If he let up, the blood flow would stop. If he could just get it going, keep it going, maybe he could revive the man. He kept up the pressure, up, down, up, down. After several minutes, he called out to the Supervisor, “See what I’m doing here? Can you spell me for just a minute? Watch. Like this. We can’t stop. Can’t break the cycle.”

  The supervisor knelt down and repeated the routine while Tripp shouted to the other men who had gathered around. “Need help. Any medical help around here? Anyone? Anything?” He reached into his pocket for his cell and saw several other men doing the same thing. But they were all shaking their heads.

  “No bars.”

  “No signal.”

  “Mine’s cut off.”

  “I know I charged this sucker.”

  “What’s the matter anyway?”

  “Don’t know. Must be a power failure or something.”

  “Yeah. Wait a minute. Listen. Motors are off. Look at the equipment. Everything’s stopped. What the hell?”

  Tripp looked over at rigs. They had all quit. He stared down at his cell phone. Nothing. Then he knelt beside Jake again. “Okay, I’ll take over again. Gotta keep up the pressure. It might take a while, but we can do this. We’ve got to do this.” Tripp kept up the CPR routine. His own breath was now coming in ragged gulps. How in hell could this have happened? Jake was fine yesterday. He was fine this morning. Ate a good breakfast. Jumped in the Jeep. Anxious to get out here with the men. Happy that they wanted his help. Said he couldn’t wait to be involved. And now this.

  He leaned closer. No breath. He tried again. Several more agonizing minutes ticked by as he kept up the motion. Again. Again. More time, more tries. It wasn’t working Nothing was working. He’d been trained in the Navy. He could do this. He had seen some of his buddies shot up, in bad shape, they had pulled through. Jake would pull through too. He had to. “Breathe, Jake. Breathe.” He commanded. The other men were mumbling, shaking their heads. Tripp leaned down again, checked for a breath, a reaction, something. But there was … nothing!

  Now a few of the men were shouting orders as the driver raced over to the Jeep. He tore open the door and jumped inside. He inserted the key but he couldn’t get it started. Then as Tripp briefly looked up, the driver cried out, “Car won’t start? What the hell is going on here?”

  The supervisor leaned down and said, “Never seen anything like this.” He tried to take over the CPR routine again, but Jake pushed him aside and felt for a pulse in Jake’s neck. He waited, counted, and screamed, “Jake is dead!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ATYRAU, KAZAKHSTAN

  “They’re falling overboard. My God! They can’t hold on!” Pete shouted to the captain as he tried to regain control of the boat. It was listing badly and the wheel wasn’t responding. The engine had sputtered and stopped. Wind whipped waves crashed against the side, shifting the trajectory once more.

  Pete grabbed a guard rail and raced to a box holding the life preservers. He shouted to a handful of men trying to crawl to the starboard side. “Come help me! Have to throw these out. People overboard. Maybe some can’t swim. Hurry. Now. Here, take these.” They grabbed and shoved and tossed the jackets overboard. Pete saw that two of the men were trying to put on the life vests themselves rather than throwing them to the tourists screaming in the water. “Help them for God’s sake.”

  Others rushed up, grabbing the side of the box, pushing, shoving. It was chaos. Complete chaos with the captain trying in vain to restart the engine and failing once again. Pete saw dozens of people bobbing in the water, one woman was desperately clinging to a life vest while propping up a small child’s head above the water. Pete tore off his sneakers and dove over the side. He used powerful strokes to reach the hysterical woman. He treaded water while trying to get the vest on her. But the little one was crying and clinging to his mother’s neck. She went under, and Pete reached out, pulled her to the surface, snatched the child and finally managed to get her arms through the vest. He shouted to her to hold on. She grabbed frantically at his shirt. “My baby. My baby,” she screamed.

  Pete had a grip on the child and shouted to her to hold onto his belt. Now, with the mother grasping and coughing, he frog-kicked while he held the baby’s head above the churning water. He glanced back and saw more people slide into the water amid more shouts and screams. He kept up his pace. Only another couple hundred yards to the dock, he thought. He took a deep breath and pushed on. The woman was breathing heavily, but she was holding on. The baby was still shrieking when he reached the planks at the boarding area. He pushed the woman toward a set of stairs that extended down into the water. She let go of his belt and grabbed the stair. She looked back, “My baby.”

  “I’ve got him. He’s okay,” Pete said. “I’ll hand him to you.”

  “Aren’t you coming up too?” she called.

  “Can’t. Gotta go back for others.” He pushed the baby up and into the grateful arms of the young woman. She was crying again. But this time, they were tears of relief. She tore off the jacket and tossed it down to him.

  “You take it. For you. Or for somebody else. Thank you. Thank God for you.” She twisted some water out of her sodden skirt, held the baby close and ran toward the street.

  Pete put on the jacket, and with its buoyancy he was able to race back to the startling scene. He scanned the area where now a small convoy of row boats had gathered to try and pull some of the tourists out of the churning water. The main boat was now leaning at a perilous angle. Nobody could hang on. It was going down. Any minute now. He swam closer and saw a young girl thrashing in the water near the bow of the boat. My God! It’s Zhanar. Maybe she can’t swim. Gotta get her outta there. Away from the boat. It’ll go down and take her with it. He called her name, but in the din and cacophony, he knew she couldn’t hear him. He swam faster. He had to get to her. Had to save her. He saw her go down. He did a surface dive and grabbed her hair. Then he got hold of her arm and quickly pulled her to surface. She was coughing and sputtering. Good. Coughing is good. She’s alive. He pulled her to him and cried out, “I’ve got you. It’s going to be okay. Stay with me now. I’ll get you out of here.”

  She opened her eyes, shook the water off her face and stared at him. She still couldn’t talk. But her eyes said it all. They said she was terrified. He held her tight while beginning his frog kick once again. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be all right. Try to relax. I’ve got a good hold on you.”

  She coughed some more and gasped. “I can’t sw
im very well. Just a little. People are drowning. Have to help.”

  “Let me get you away from here first. More boats are coming. People are helping. But you’re the one I want to help now. Try to float on your back. I’ll hold you up and get you to the shore.”

  She tried to float but her legs kept sinking. “Can’t do it,” she cried out.

  He turned her around, got a good hold under her shoulder and used a sidestroke to propel them both away from the sinking ship. He saw dozens of others swimming in front of them and more off to the side. They were sharing life preservers and vests and clawing their way to the armada of small boats. Some were clinging to oars as fishermen hauled them on board. Pete kept a tight grip on Zhanar and kicked hard toward the dock.

  When they finally were able to crawl up a ramp, she coughed a few more times and blurted out, “You saved my life.”

  Pete took her in his arms and held her. She was still shaking but she started to calm down when he stroked her hair. “You’re okay now. And look, others are coming in on the little boats. It’s going to be all right.”

  “But what happened?” she asked. “All I know is that all of a sudden, the boat seemed to lean over or something, and the captain was shouting and people were scrambling, and when I tried to help some of them, I fell overboard. It was awful. I was so scared. I tried to stay near the boat. Tried to find something to hang onto.”

  “You don’t stay near a sinking ship, Zhanar. It’ll go down and take you with it.”

  “I didn’t know that,” she whimpered.

  “I have no idea what happened. The engine failed and the wind picked up and …wait, look over there, all the lights in those buildings are out. Must be a big black-out or something. Does that happen a lot here?”

  “No. Not really,” she said looking perplexed. “And look. There are people running over on that road.”

  He glanced out to the street again and said, “Wait. The buses aren’t moving. The cars look like they’re stalled. How could that be?”

  Zhanar stared in astonishment at the scene playing out in front of them. It was as if a video of a car chase had been put on PAUSE. “What’s happening?” She said with growing panic in her voice.

  Pete squinted into the sun, then turned toward her again and shook his head. “I have absolutely no idea, but this has to be the strangest thing I have ever seen.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  Ken Cosgrove dropped his Blackberry into the lead-lined cabinet at the entrance to the Situation Room, walked back to the conference room and took his seat at the long polished table as Hunt Daniels, Samantha Reid and Mike Benson rushed in. The room, with its cream colored fabric walls and cherry cabinetry always reminded Samantha of a law office rather than a unique underground facility carved out of the space underneath the old White House swimming pool. Down in this environment, they couldn’t hear the driving rain that had enveloped the District for the last two days.

  Samantha didn’t know why she’d been summoned to this meeting in the Sit Room. She hadn’t heard about any new threat to America’s national security. In any event, she was always happy to comply when her boss included her in high-level meetings. After all around this White House, everyone knew that knowledge is power.

  “Staff is getting the SecDef, DNI, and JCS on teleconference. Secretary of State is traveling today.” Ken swiveled his chair to check out the six screens positioned around the room and saw that the other officers were coming online on a screen on the far wall. They all turned to watch as first the director of National Intelligence and then both the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff announced their presence. Members of the Sit Room staff were assembled in the Surge Room just beyond, analyzing a continuous flow of data coming in from satellite images, internet updates, and other sources. One of them came in and handed the most recent satellite image to the quartet at the table.

  “Here’s the latest photo from our AF XSS-11 satellite,” Ken announced. “It’s obviously a nuclear explosion in southwestern Kazakhstan. Not a large blast by any means, but definitely nuclear. You’ve got the same pictures. What do you make of this, Will?” He asked the SecDef.

  “A test of some sort, of course. It was conducted out in a very remote area just east of the Caspian. Nothing there, Nearest activity might be in some oil fields, as far as we can tell. No cities or towns. But that weapon was not detonated on the ground. It was up in the atmosphere. Looks like it could be fifty miles up or more.”

  Samantha almost cried out. The oil fiends. Tripp. Dad. Were they anywhere near this blast? They said they would be somewhere near the Caspian. She grabbed the photo and tried to study the image, but she couldn’t focus. She was holding her breath. Could they have been affected? Would there be radiation? No, not if it was 50 miles up. But could they be hurt in some way? How close were they? Oh my God! If it was 50 miles up, there could have been an EMP effect. What if there really has been an EMP? All of my nightmares could be playing out right there!! Is that why Ken invited me to this meeting?

  She had to know. “Ken, do you think … I mean could it have created an EMP? Just like we’ve discussed? There may be people in that area. My family. My Father.”

  The NSC advisor turned his head in her direction. “Your father? What are you talking about?” The other men stared at Samantha as her voice quivered, and she took a moment to try and control herself. “My dad is doing consulting work for GeoGlobal. They’ve got contracts with the government of Kazakhstan. He’s over there helping out in a test area along with …” Her voice faltered.

  “Go on,” Ken said.

  She took a deep breath and tried again. “Along with Tripp Adams. He’s a vice president of GeoGlobal and a good friend of mine. They left last week and said they were going to southwestern Kazakhstan to check on some wells, and I’m afraid they may be out there.” She pointed to the satellite photo. “Right out there!”

  “But I can’t imagine the government staging a test in any area where crews would be working,” Hunt said. “That’s insane.”

  “Is it?” the secretary of defense asked. “Soviets did that all the time. Then again, maybe in Almaty or Astana, they didn’t know exactly what was going on way west by the Caspian, although that’s kind of hard to believe.”

  Samantha was valiantly trying to concentrate. She asked, “I wonder where their control room was? Who was in charge? Has their government made any statement yet?” The questions were blurted out in quick succession. After thinking and fretting and planning what to do in the event of a macro attack involving an electro-magnetic pulse, which she realized was a bit far-fetched, but still presented a definite national security threat, now the whole concept had morphed from theoretical to reality.

  The JCS Chairman answered, “We’re just getting word that President Surleimenov made a brief statement about a small test of their new nuclear capabilities, but he said there had been a mistake. Something about human error. We don’t know yet what he means by that, but I see that State has already sent over a formal protest. Got that a minute ago. You must have copies there.”

  Ken shuffled some papers and pulled out a sheet. “Yes, we have that one. But still, this atmospheric test doesn’t make any sense. How could they do this? Do your people have any intel on a nuclear facility producing weapons like this anywhere in Kazakhstan?”

  “Not yet, we don’t,” the DNI replied. “They must have been working in secret for quite some time to pull this off. We had agreements with the Kazaks beginning back in the 90’s, to dismantle their nuclear weapons and facilities. You remember ‘Project Saffire’ all negotiated by Jim Baker and the Nunn-Lugar boys back then. We paid the Kazaks a ton of money, took out the material and reprocessed it here for our own use. At the time our people thought we got it all. That was the deal.”

  “The trouble with these nuclear proliferation agreements is that we can negotiate to remove the stuff, pay them for the stuff and even destroy
the stuff,” Hunt Daniels said. “But you can’t destroy the intelligence that was used to developed the weapons in the first place.”

  “And … it sure looks like they kept some uranium anyway,” Ken replied. “Could be an insurance policy against the Russians.”

  “But Kazakhstan was just about the last of the republics to break away,” Mike Benson interjected. “They’ve been trying to get along with Moscow. At least that’s been my understanding.”

  “After Georgia, who can blame them for being worried?” Hunt Daniels said, studying the photo in front of him. “But the real question is, why was this bomb detonated so many miles up? If it was just a test, just a show of strength, why not explode it over water or even unde ground?”

  “That’s what we have to find out,” Ken said. “We’re not getting any information from the region, and we all know why. Samantha is absolutely right. This damned explosion must have set off an EMP and ruined all of the communications for miles around. It looks like a fairly small device, so it’ll be hard to tell how far its line of sight extended. Or how large an area was affected. But if there are any people within range, it’s got to be causing havoc, that’s for sure.”

  Samantha broke in, “How can we find out? Can our ambassador do anything? Do we have any people anywhere near that area? We have to figure this out.”

  “I have to admit, Samantha, that you were the canary in the coal mine on this issue,” Ken said, pointing his remark more at Benson than at Samantha. “You all know that Samantha has been talking about making an effort to protect ourselves from an EMP attack, and it’s absolutely ironic that we’re now looking at one.”

  Samantha felt the chief of staff’s eyes on her. Though she felt some measure of vindication for waving the EMP flag, she was too upset with her own worries to even meet his gaze.

  “But there’s no reason to believe that Kazakhstan, of all places, would be planning to attack us, or anybody else for that matter, even if they did have an effective EMP weapon,” Benson said. “I’ll admit that this is the first time we’ve seen an actual atmospheric test that has caused such a thing. Well, for 60 years anyway. But it doesn’t mean that the United States is in any danger.”