Goliath

“All through Nature, you will find the same law: First the need, then the means.”

—Robert Collier

“The atomic bomb will never go off, and I will speak as an expert in explosives.”

—Admiral William Leahy to President Truman, 1945

“Science will conquer famine, eliminate psychological suffering, and make everybody healthy and happy … yeah, sure.”

—Theodore Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber, who sent bombs through the mail, causing three deaths and numerous injuries

“We only killed our own.”

—Mickey Featherstone, Irish mobster, to future New York mayor Rudy Giuliani

CHAPTER 3

Convention Center

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The tall woman with the pale complexion and shoulder-length brown hair fidgets as she waits her turn at the dais. She scans the crowd, then glances at the television crews. One-third capacity, and none of the major news networks are even here. What the hell’s wrong with our species? Are we that infatuated by the stock market and pro football? Don’t we realize that our very lives are in danger?

“Our next speaker is Dr. Elizabeth Goode, the foremost authority on nanocomputers and the author of ‘The End of the World and Other Selffulfilling Prophecies.’ Dr. Goode?”

A smattering of applause from the late-morning crowd.

“Before I begin, I suppose I should thank you for even bothering to show up. Frankly, it seems more and more of our population is caring less and less about the world’s quest to annihilate itself using thermonuclear means. I don’t know … maybe we scientists are simply not explaining ourselves properly, or the public just doesn’t believe us. Hell, maybe this entire convention would have been better served if the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research had invited some Hollywood bimbo with big tits to speak to you about nuclear proliferation instead of an overworked, single mother with a 170 IQ and dark circles under her eyes.”

A rustling of chairs as the crowd reenergizes.

Give ’em hell, Goode. Remember, it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.

“You just heard Dr. Robert Schwager warn us about how the former Soviet Union’s stockpiles of weapons’ grade plutonium have turned into the equivalent of a third world yard sale, and yet most of you are probably daydreaming about your Philadelphia Eagles winning streak or thinking about what you’ll order for lunch. For God’s sake, people, wake up! Apathy is the world’s greatest killer, so you’d better snap out of it now and smell the sarin, before we wipe ourselves off the face of this goddamn planet.”

Dr. Goode registers the local television cameraman’s lens zooming in from stage right.

“I’ve been invited here this morning to give you a brief overview of the latest doomsday technology, a little something we scientists refer to as ‘pure-fusion weapons.’ You’d think we humans would already be satisfied with our ability to annihilate the world’s population a healthy five thousand times … but no. Now scientists at the United States National Ignition Facility at Livermore, California, and our French counterparts at the Laser Megajoule Facility in Bordeaux are on the brink of testing a new weapon, a real doomsday bomb—one that our politicians in Washington may actually be persuaded to use.

“To understand the power of pure fusion you must first understand the difference between fission and fusion. In the fusion trigger of a conventional hydrogen bomb, uranium 235 absorbs a neutron. Fission occurs when the nucleus energetically breaks apart to produce two smaller nuclei and several neutrons, which go on to split more uranium nuclei. The resultant chain reaction proceeds rapidly, producing an explosion. This fission explosion is what produces the temperature and density necessary to trigger the fusion of deuterium and tritium, the two heavy isotopes of hydrogen.

“Fusion is considerably different than fission. Fusion is a reaction that occurs when two atoms of hydrogen combine or fuse together to form an atom of helium, and a ‘leftover’ neutron, a cousin of what powers the sun. Fusion releases much greater quantities of energy than fission, causing an even larger explosion.”

Dr. Goode scans the crowd, its energy waning. Keep it simple, you’re losing them …

“The key difference in a conventional and a pure-fusion H-bomb is how the explosion is triggered. A pure-fusion bomb doesn’t need fission to engage the explosion. This means plutonium or enriched uranium is not required in the design. The good news, if you can call it that, is that no plutonium means little to no radioactive fallout. The bad news is that the nuclear threshold is greatly lowered, so that a 20-mm bullet could explode like many tons of TNT. The explosive power of many relatively small, pure-fusion devices would be much greater than the same weight of a single conventional hydrogen bomb, and far less expensive.”

A female reporter in the front row stands. “Can you tell us how much greater?”

Dr. Goode frowns. “I’ll give you an example. The atomic bomb our country dropped on Hiroshima generated an amount of energy equivalent to nineteen kilotons or nineteen thousand tons of TNT. Temperatures at the hypocenter, or ground zero, reached seven thousand degrees, with a wind velocity estimated at 980 miles per hour. That blast wave killed most of the people within a half mile radius instantly. That was a mere fifteen-kiloton explosion. The biggest version of the H-bomb generates twenty to fifty megatons, or 50 million tons of TNT, the equivalent of two to three thousand Hiroshima-size bombs. A pure-fusion bomb generates a far greater damage volume per unit weight. It would only take a cluster of half-kiloton pure-fusion bombs to equal the military impact of a thirty-megaton H-bomb. That’s a tenth of a ton of pure-fusion TNT to equal a megaton of the conventional nuke. Let me quantify that for you in another way. If you wanted to wipe out a whole continent’s population … say, that of Europe, the job could feasibly be accomplished using only six to twelve well-placed Trident II (D5) nuclear missiles whose warheads had been converted to a swarm of pure-fusion weapons.”

Gasps from the crowd.

A reporter from the Trenton Times raises his hand. “Dr. Goode, are you saying these pure-fusion bombs already exist?”

“We have the bomb, the key to the technology is in its triggering mechanism. Both the United States and France have been working illegally on the problem for decades. Los Alamos is rumored to be only months away from testing a magnetized target fusion driver. In magnetized target fusion, an initial plasma is created by electromagnetic means. Conventional high explosives then compress the plasma, creating the conditions necessary for pure-fusion ignition.”

Another hand is raised. “Exactly what do you mean by illegally?”

“Actually, I meant that subjectively. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996 bans all nuclear explosions. Unfortunately, the CTBT never formally defined the term ‘explosion,’ since it assumed only fission triggers, and so testing goes on. It’s a loophole our government refuses to close.”

A heavyset man in the fourth row stands, pausing to allow the television cameras to focus. Dr. Goode recognizes the Republican lobbyist from her visits on Capitol Hill. “Come now, Ms. Goode, aren’t you overplaying the part of antinuke alarmist just a bit? No country has ever announced the goal of building these pure-fusion weapons. And even if they were conceived, no country would ever use them.”

Goode stares at the man with a look to kill. “First off, Mr. Johnston, no country would be stupid enough to announce pure fusion as a goal. Second and most importantly, what you’re failing to mention is the real danger of these weapons. When it comes to acquiring thermonuclear devices, the biggest obstacle to rogue nations and terrorists up to now has been their inability to obtain sufficient quantities of enriched uranium or plutonium. By contrast, deuterium is abundant in seawater and tritium is easily made in a college physics lab.”

“Come on, Ms. Goode—”

“It’s DOCTOR Goode, Mr. Johnston, now sit your Republican-leased fat ass down.”

A smattering of applause as she grabs the microphone and turns to face the cameras. “If you listen to nothing else I say, listen to this. The most frightening thing about pure-fusion weapons is what attracted the military to them in the first place—and that is their much smaller yields and relative lack of radioactive fallout. By eliminating the harmful aftereffects of the bomb, you reduce the political unacceptability of using the weapon while increasing its relative lethality.

“In other words, humanity is on the brink of eliminating its own nuclear stalemate.”

Dr. Goode inches her way through the crowded lobby to a waiting elevator. The doors shut, sealing off the mob. She presses the button for Parking Level Three.

Three-thirty. With any luck, I’ll miss rush-hour traffic and be back in Wilmington before Duncan and Ian get home from school.

The elevator doors open. She hurries to her car, a two-year-old Lincoln Town Car she has converted to fuel cells. Using her key chain, she deactivates the security device—

—as the two FBI agents approach from behind, flashing their badges.