End of Enemies

47

The room was completely silent. Though Briggs had heard the story twice already, he again felt a chill on his neck. God help us if we’re right about this…. Tsumago could be anywhere, headed anywhere.

Finally Talbot said, “Henry, let me get this straight: Are you telling me you think an atomic bomb was loaded aboard Stonefish and that bomb has been salvaged and may now be in the hands of a terrorist group?”

“I don’t know about the latter, but as for the former, yes I am. I’m not suggesting the device was usable as it was found. And compared to today’s standards, it would be crude — probably of the gun-type variety — something designed to be ejected through the sub’s torpedo tubes.”

“Explain that — a gun-type bomb.”

“Physics is not my strong suit. Perhaps Walter can explain it better.”

Oaken said, “A gun-type bomb involves ramming a uranium bullet down a barrel into what’s called a pit… a lump of uranium. Separated from one another, the bullet and the pit are stable, but when combined with enough force, they form the critical mass required for an explosion.

“The engineering is pretty straightforward. Anyone with the right kind of machining equipment and a rudimentary understanding of physics and explosives could make one. It’s the uranium that’s hard to get hold of.”

“Unless you happen to find it sitting at the bottom of the ocean,” Talbot muttered. “God almighty, an untraceable, deniable source of uranium.”

Tanner saw Talbot glance at Mason and knew what they were thinking: Could this have been the real purpose behind Parece Kito? The compartmentalized clean rooms, the machinery… Could it have all been for the disassembly of Stonefish’s bomb, the extraction of the uranium, and the construction of another device?

“How big would something like this be?” Talbot asked.

“Little Boy was a gun-type. It was ten feet long and weighed almost 10,000 pounds. But a lot of that weight was necessary to make it droppable from a plane; not only did it have to be aerodynamic, but it had to detonate just like a conventional bomb.”

“So it’s conceivable something similar could have fit aboard the Stonefish.”

Henry answered. “Easily. Her Mark 14 torpedoes were twenty feet long and weighed 5,000 pounds.”

“Okay, that was then,” said Mason “How about now?”

“With current technology,” replied Oaken, “the sphere enclosing the pit could be the size of a beach ball, and the attached barrel would be about the size of three soda cans stacked on top of one another.”

Talbot said to Dutcher, “Leland, I haven’t heard your take on this.”

“Assuming we’re right about Stonefish, I think it’s a very real possibility there’s a workable nuclear weapon out there somewhere.”

“Holy Christ.”

“How about yield?” asked Mason.

“We know Stonefish’s device couldn’t have been a Fat Man type… an implosion bomb,” said Oaken. “It would’ve been too big; it had to be similar to Little Boy. Say, twenty kilotons. With today’s technology, it could go as high as thirty.”

“Casualties?” Talbot asked.

“It would depend on the target, but on a population center the blast alone would probably kill 150,000.”

Once again, silence settled over the room.

“Let’s not hit the panic button quite yet,” Mason finally said. “We don’t know anything yet First of all, how can we be sure we’re talking about the same John Staples?”

“We can’t,” said Henry. “But I did do some digging into his activities during that time.”

“Is he still alive?”

“No. He died in 1953.”

“You said he was in charge of delivering the damn things,” said Talbot. “When Myers claims to have seen him, wasn’t he supposed to be on Tinian with the Hiroshima bomb?”

“No. In fact, his deputy, Howard Tudor, handled Little Boy. From the time Tudor left for Tinian — while the bomb was en route there aboard Indianapolis—until just before Fat Man was dropped, there is no account of Staples’s whereabouts.”

“Could he have been aboard Indianapolis?”

“It’s possible, but I don’t think so,” said Henry. “My guess is we had three to five bombs at our disposal in August of ’45. Truth is, back then, no one knew how powerful they were going to be. In fact, there was a pool going at Los Alamos to guess the yield. The planning committee felt it might take as many as fifty bombs to bring Japan to its knees.”

“Fifty!” said Talbot.

“Or more. The military had instructed them to be ready to deliver six to seven a month until it was over. Of course, they ran tests at Trinity, but until one was dropped on a real target, there was no telling what it would do.”

“All right,” Talbot said. “First things first: How do we prove or disprove it?”

“First, we take a photo of Staples to Captain Myers. Next, we round up all the surviving top-level people from Los Alamos and start asking questions. And lastly, we press the Navy to open its classified archives on Stonefish.”

Talbot nodded. “Dick, put it together. Leland, we’ll need you and your people as well… including you, Henry.”

Henry looked up, startled. “Pardon? I’m not qualified—”

“I think you are. We need your help. Will you give it?”

“Well, uh, of course.”

“Good. As far as Tsumago goes, nothing’s changed. We’ve got to find her before she reaches her destination. Dick, where do were stand?”

“I’ve got four satellites looking for her and a team of analysts working on the feed round the clock.”

Talbot pushed his intercom button. “Betty, I need to see the president immediately; have the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs meet me there.” He clicked off and said, “Gentlemen, once we find Tsumago, we’d better have options for stopping her. Mr. Tanner, Mr. Cahil, you two know her firsthand. Is a boarding feasible?”

“It’s feasible,” Tanner replied. “But given her cargo and construction, it would take the right kind of team and careful planning. We’d only get one shot.”

“Understood. Okay, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.” He stood and smiled grimly. “As this is by no means a finished race, I’ll save my thank-yous for when it’s over. Yes, Dick?”

“One more thing: Yesterday, Latham interviewed Vorsalov and Fayyad. The man they met in Khartoum is second-in-command of the group that contracted them. His name is Mustafa al-Baz. We know very little about him, even less about the leader, who wore a mask during his meeting with Vorsalov.”

Talbot asked. “And this al-Baz is the one piloting Tsumago?”

“Right Here’s the interesting part: Vorsalov claims al-Baz is a deep-cover operative for the Syrian Mucharabat and that he works directly for General Issam al-Khatib.”

“Khatib… Where’d that name come up recently?”

“General al-Khatib is in charge of the exercises the Syrian Army is conducting.”

Talbot sat back down. “You think Syria is—”

“We don’t have enough to draw that conclusion yet,” Mason said. “But at first glance, it appears so.”

“So, if in fact there’s a bomb out there, it could be in the hands of a Syrian intelligence operative.”

“That’s correct.”

Everything had just changed, Tanner knew. Having a rogue terrorist group holding a nuke was terrifying enough, but for Syria to have one was a nightmare come true. Syria was the wild card in any Mideast peace initiative. If in fact they had the bomb, the scales of power in the region had just collapsed.

Walking into the Op Center, Tanner saw DORSAL’s staff of analysts had doubled in the space of hours. The murmur of voices and ringing of phones filled the room; the walls were covered with photos, maps, and flowcharts.

“The party’s gotten bigger,” said Cahil. “You think any of them know?”

“Doubtful. They know something’s changed, but not what. Hell, I’m not sure I’d want to know, myself.”

Cahil nodded across the room to where Art Stucky stood. “There’s your buddy. You ever gonna tell me the story?”

Tanner nodded. “How about lunch? Give me an hour; I want to check something.” He left Cahil and walked to the audio room. “Have you got a minute?” he asked the technician.

“Sure. What’s up?”

“I’d like to listen to our mystery man again… the one talking to Fayyad.”

“No problem. Use the first booth. I’ll cue it up for you.”

Tanner found the booth, sat down, and donned the headphones. The tech’s voice came through. “You’re all set. Just use the buttons in front of you to control it.”

“Thanks.”

For the next hour, Briggs played and replayed the minute-long conversation. The nagging feeling in the back of his head continued to grow until it became a conviction: He knew the man on the tape. Tanner couldn’t tell from where, or when, or how, but there was no doubt.

“Who are you?” he muttered aloud.

The rational side of his brain balked at the connection: The chances were astronomical, but the intuitive side of his brain — the same one that hadn’t let him quit on Stonefish—was saying something different.

There was a knock on the glass. It was Cahil. “Lunch-time,” he mouthed.

It was Chinese buffet day in the cafeteria. They went through the line and then found a table. Bear’s tray was a pyramid of egg rolls, sweet and sour pork, and crab Rangoon. “A little hungry?” Tanner said.

“I’m a growing boy.”

“I’ve noticed. Did Maggie know that when she married you?”

Cahil nodded, his mouth full. “It was why she married me. She loves to cook.”

Tanner smiled and shook his head. Good ol’ Bear. Looking back at their years together, he knew he couldn’t have asked for a better friend. How many scrapes wouldn’t he have survived without Bear? In Japan alone the tally was at least four. But that went both ways, didn’t it? It was part of the cement of their friendship: Both knew the other would be there when it counted.

“So,” Cahil said. “Stucky.”

“It was back when we were still on the teams. He and I met on an op in Peru—”

“Where was I?”

“As I recall, in the hospital with a bullet in your right ass cheek.”

“Oh, yeah. Go on.”

Stucky had been a Sergeant in the Green Berets, Tanner explained. Though never having met the man, he knew Stucky by reputation. “Junkyard-dog mean” was the phrase he most often heard.

Stucky had been in charge of a team training Peruvian guerillas to fight Shining Path terrorists, a Marxist group whose recruiting methods involved the torture and murder of reluctant peasants. Consistent with Reagan’s vow to keep South America from falling to communists (or Marxists, both of which fell from the same ideological tree) the U.S. Army had been supporting Peruvian anti-insurgency for years.

Stucky and his team had been in-country six weeks when the CIA’s Operations Directorate — who was jointly running the op with Army Intelligence — discovered their informant had been exposed and killed. The likelihood of his talking before he died was considered high, so Stucky and his team were ordered out by then DDI Leland Dutcher. A communication glitch cut them off, however, leaving the team stranded. Ground intelligence reported three local Shining Path cells heading in their direction, so a rescue mission was ordered. As the Green Beret camp was only four miles inland, Tanner and his team of three SEALs were sent in.

After eight hours of searching the countryside, they found the Green Berets holed up in a small village called Tantara.

Stucky had already realized they’d been burned and, for reasons he never explained, was convinced the villagers at Tantara were responsible. By the time Tanner arrived, Stucky’s interrogations had killed four people. He was working on his fifth — a seven-year-old girl — when Tanner walked into the hut.

By the flickering glow of a lantern, Briggs could see the girl was almost dead. She sat tied to a chair, her face pasty white. Stucky had cut off all the fingers from her left hand and was working on the right when Tanner interrupted.

“Stop right there, Stucky.”

Cigarette dangling from his mouth, Stucky turned, saw Tanner, and grinned. His fingers were bloody. “Lookee here, its the cavalry.”

“Move away from her.”

“I’m not done yet.”

“I said move away!”

“Fuck you.”

Tanner shot him in the thigh. Stucky collapsed and rolled onto his side.

“You son of a bitch!” he roared. “You shot me!”

Tanner walked over and kicked the knife away. He checked the girl’s pulse; it was there, but barely. “Taylor!”

His corpsman rushed inside and knelt beside her. “God almighty…”

“Can you move her?” Tanner asked.

“I think so.”

“Do it. Get her out of here.”

“What about him?”

“Forget him. Go.”

Once they were alone, Stucky said, “What’s your name, dickhead?”

Tanner told him.

“Well, ain’t you a pussy. Can’t even stomach a little wet work.”

Tanner pressed the barrel of his MP5 to Stucky’s forehead.

“You gonna shoot me?” Stucky said, grinning. “Go ahead, if you’ve got the balls. I’m betting you don’t.”

“Bad gamble,” Tanner said, and clicked the MP5’s selector to single shot

Tanner’s exec appeared in the doorway. “Briggs, don’t. He’s not worth it”

“Leave, Nock.”

“Don’t, Briggs. Let the Army have him.”

“I said get out.”

“If you do this, you’ll be just like him. I’m telling you, he ain’t worth it”

Cahil had stopped eating. “Obviously you didn’t kill him.”

“No.” Tanner stared into his coffee cup. I should have,he thought I should have put a bullet in his head and been done with it.

“So what happened? What did the Army do to him?”

“They discharged him short of his twenty.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“How’d he get here?”

“I don’t know. Lousy interviewer, maybe.” Or maybe they needed somebody like him, Tanner thought. Someone, somewhere, would always need a Stucky.

“And the girl?”

“She spent almost a month in the hospital, but she made it. She and her older sister still live together at a mission outside Barranca.”

“Still? How do you know?”

For the first time since retelling the story, Tanner smiled. “We’re pen pals. She just graduated from high school.”