Zero Option

10

Brig. Gen. Lee Carrothers, deputy commander of the Army Chemical Corps, waited for the satellite conference call to be patched through. He had been awakened in his home in Mount Vernon, Virginia, by the duty officer at the Army Command Center and asked to come down to the Pentagon right away, with subject to be revealed upon arrival. Now the Command Center was setting up a conference call with Maj. Gen. Myer Waddell, commander of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, who was presently in Stuttgart, Germany, on official travel. It would be 7:15 in Germany.

The third party in the conference call was going to be the Army deputy chief of staff for Operations, Plans, and Policy, It. Gen. Peter Roman.

The three-star was currently airborne in an Army Learjet over the Pacific between San Francisco and Hawaii. Brigadier General Carrothers had a headache, which he knew was going to get worse before it got better.

“All stations, this is the Command Center. I am confirming a secure satellite link with three stations. I will go offline when the third principal confirms. General Carrothers, sir?”

“Present.”

“General Waddell, sir?”

“Present.”

“And General Roman, sir?”

“I’m here. What’s this all about, Myer?”

“Yes, sir, General,” Waddell said. “We have a potentially major flap in the making. I’m going to let my deputy, Lee Carrothers, brief you, but basically, we may have some chemical weapons material missing.”

“Sweet Jesus!” Carrothers jumped in at that juncture and told the three star what they knew so far, that they were not positive the material was missing but that the audit system had detected a possible problem and that the Tooele destruction facility was checking their end of it.

“So we don’t actually know that some stuff is missing? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Yes, sir,” Carrothers replied. “We’re trying to be proactive here, General.”

“When will we know?”

“Tooele will have to reinventory its receipt assets at the large-scale destruction facility. That will take at least twenty-four hours, because it will require a sight inventory of every cylinder, by serial number.

And since the cylinders are no longer in their coffins, it will all have to be done MOPPed up. Full suits.”

” ‘Coffins’?”

General Waddell broke in. “That’s Chemical Corps slang for the environmental containment systems. These cylinders aren’t warheads.

They’re the containers used to fill warheads. And unlike our modern warheads, they’re not binary-safe.”

“Refresh me, Myer. CW is something I try to forget about.”

“Yes, sir. American chemical weapons are designed to be safe. We use a binary design — that is, the warheads do not contain chemical weapons.

They contain the two main ingredients for the weapon hi question in two physically separated containers within the warhead. The warhead has to be fired, or subjected to the forces of being launched, or detonated, to rupture the internal containers. Once the projectile is spinning in flight, the two ingredients mix. From that mixing action comes the chemical weapon itself. That’s what binary-safe means.”

“And what you’re telling me is that these cylinders are i not binary-safe?” i

“That’s correct, sir. There was one weapon, which we retired a long time ago precisely because it was not safe, which used a high-speed aerosol-dispenser system slung under the belly of a jet aircraft.

These cylinders were in-f serted in the dispenser pod, and then the dispersal mechanism was armed in flight. They contained the real stuff, not just constituents.”

“And what hellish brew is in these missing cylinders?”

“Only one cylinder, General,” Carrothers reminded him. “It’s a substance called Wet Eye.”

“With a name like that, I think that’s all I want to know, General Carrothers,” Roman said. “Okay, I assume the Chemical Corps is going balls-to-the-wall to find out if there really is a problem. I will inform the chief of staff. You two make sure that you get a lid clamped down hard at both Anniston and Tooele until Army headquarters can get a spin package put together. First indication that this stuff really is missing, you need to get back to Fort Fumble, Myer. You’re going to be on the hook to brief the Secdef and maybe even the White House. I say again, that’s if indeed a cylinder of this Wet Eye is really missing.

And we all better hope and pray that it isn’t. Keep me advised on developments. Roman off net.”

There was long silence on the net, which Carrothers did not interrupt.

General Waddell liked time to think before he made decisions.

“Lee, there’s one more call I want you to make,” Wad dell said finally.

“Yes, sir?”

“First, let’s make sure we really do have a problem. Those rail shipments are long and involved logistical processes, and it’s entirely possible we’ll all get to stand down shortly when they find a clerical error. But I want you to touch base with Fort Dietrick. Just to be safe.

I just wish — it wasn’t Wet Eye. Anything but damned Wet Eye.”

“Fort Dietrick, General? USAMRIID?”

“That’s right. You’re looking for a Col. Ambrose Fuller. He’s an Army veterinarian, of all things, but he’s my guy at Dietrick. He’s smart and he’s very discreet. Tell him what’s happened, or what may have happened.

He’s not to do anything, and above all, he’s not to say anything to anybody. I just want him aware of the problem.”

“Got it, General.”

“Okay, and remember, this little bombshell stays in house, Chemical Corps eyes only, uritil we’ve figured out how to handle it. A mistake like this could finish the Chemical Corps forever. Make sure Anniston rolls up everyone who’s been involved to date. Enlisted restricted to barracks. Officers restricted to quarters. No one running his yap.

Understand, Lee? That’s important.”

“Yes, sir. Got it.”

“Okay. Keep me advised by secure means. Waddell off net.” Carroqiers a key to alert the link operator they were finished, then hung up the handset. He looked at his watch. One twenty-five in die morning. No point in getting this Fuller guy up at this hour just to put his thinking cap on. He’d call him first thing tomorrow. Today, he realized.

He called the Command Center duty officer and asked him for the number of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, Fort Dietrick, Maryland. As he waited, he wondered why in the hell General Waddell would want a USAMRTID guy notified. Those people dealt in biologic toxins, not chemicals.