Nucflash

12

The Rosa was typical of the small independent trawlers that made their living off the shoals and fishing banks that ringed the North Sea, from the Frisian Banks off the Netherlands to the Viking Banks between Norway and the Shetland Islands. Originally part of the Norwegian trawler fleet, she’d been appropriated by the Germans early in World War II, ended up in Poland as part of the reshuffling of the German border at the end of the war, and finally been sold to a fishing cooperative back in East Germany. Thirty years later, aging, so rusty in spots that her owners insisted that only the rust was holding her together, the Rosa was ready for the breakers’ yard.

Before she could be transformed into 210 tons of scrap, however, money quietly changed hands, a certificate was forged, and the Rosa was quietly moved from her port at Warnemünde through the Kiel Canal to an out-of-the-way pier on the Hamburg waterfront.

There, she was repainted and her engines refurbished. There was still some question about her seaworthiness, but after all, it was only necessary that she make one final voyage. One week after departing Hamburg, she could sink forever beneath the waves of the North Sea, and it would no longer matter.

She’d already been at sea for three days, having departed the German port early on Sunday. That was a day earlier than originally planned, but a certain amount of flexibility had been built into the operation, just in case there were last-moment complications. On Tuesday morning the Rosa was loitering at an otherwise undefined spot in the North Sea fifty miles east of Flamborough Head when a thirty-foot cabin cruiser out of the English port of Great Yarmouth approached. Signs and countersigns were exchanged, first by carefully worded radio exchanges until they were within visual range, then by flashing lights. After some preliminary maneuvers to bring the cabin cruiser in under the lee of the larger vessel, three men — Major Pak and two RAF gunmen — clambered up a cargo net and onto the ancient trawler.

Pak’s first question as soon as he stepped onto the Rosa’s main deck and faced the vessel’s captain was sharp and to the point. “Where is it?”

“Main hold forward,” the captain replied. “Under our nets, for camouflage.”

“Take me there.”

The forward hold stank of fish, but Pak ignored the stench as a couple of Rosa’s crewmen pulled the nets off the massive wooden crate, which rested on wooden supports and was still fitted with the straps and snap-swivels used to hoist it aboard. “Compressor, Air” and the name of a well-known industrial manufacturer were stenciled on the crate’s side, along with the usual shipping information and serial numbers.

Actually, there were two large crates in the Rosa’s hold, the second much larger than the one Pak was examining now, but that other piece of cargo had been Hyon Hee’s special charge, and Pak doubted that it would serve any purpose now. He ignored it, concentrating instead on the “air compressor.” Using a pry bar, he popped open the top and looked inside at the dull, lead-gray cylinder a meter and a half long and nearly a meter thick resting inside. Then, with the crewmen and Rosa’s captain standing nearby, Pak unlocked a hinged access plate on one end of the cylinder and swung it open, revealing a clotted tangle of wires, cables, and electrical connections inside. The rough handling the device had endured so far didn’t seem to have harmed it. A thorough manual check of its power supply, arming circuits, and antitamper mechanisms suggested that everything was in working order.

There was, in fact, little that could go wrong with the thing, for its design was almost idiot-proof. Pak couldn’t even see the real guts of the bomb, for those were sealed away in the front half of the device, behind massive lead shielding. Inside that shielding, however, a hollow sphere shaped from roughly two kilograms of plutonium was surrounded by nearly fifty kilos of plastic explosives, in which were embedded scores of electrically fired detonators. Most of the rest of the bomb consisted of the battery, a complex arming device that Pak himself had had a hand in designing, and the outer casing, which was little more than a shell two meters long. Dozens of wires penetrated the inner shielding, passing through rubber-plugged openings. The entire device weighed just under a ton, most of that from the lead shielding.

Those openings in that shielding for the detonator wires were a serious weak point in the bomb’s design, Pak knew, and one that had been responsible for unfortunate levels of radioactive contamination already both in North Korea and in Germany. If the Rosa’s captain knew just how hot the exterior of the device and the crate carrying it were, he would never have volunteered himself and his crew for this operation; certainly, he never would have come this close to the thing while Pak had it open!

Pak knew the risks since he’d worked with the assembly team back in Yongbyon in the first place. He suspected that he was dead already, though it might take a few more years for that death to manifest itself. He’d been exposed to the low levels of radioactivity trickling through the rubber-sealed holes drilled in the shielding for hundreds of hours. Exposure was insidiously cumulative.

But that, of course, was of no importance, since Pak didn’t expect to survive long enough to develop cancer or radiation sickness. Even if the mission succeeded perfectly in every detail, even if he was able to make good his escape afterward, he knew well that an unknown but large number of the world’s governments would never permit him to live, not when the degree of his participation in this operation became clear. It was distinctly possible that even Pyongyang would join in the hunt, if only to convince the rest of a very angry world that North Korea’s government had not actively participated in Operation Saebyok, that Pak and a number of others had done what they’d done independently.

Pak was more than willing to accept that. He preferred a quick and sudden death at the hands of comrades to the lingering agonies of leukemia. Besides, the prize to be won in this game was so much vaster than any one man’s life.

“Is it safe to be this close?” the captain asked, peering a little nervously over Pak’s shoulder.

“Of course,” Pak lied. He patted the dull surface of the shielding. “This is lead, five centimeters thick. It is perfectly safe.”

“That thing’s not armed, is it?” one of the crewmen said.

“Of course not. That will be taken care of tomorrow, once we’re at the objective.”

Following a carefully memorized routine, Pak began an electronic check of the device, examining each of twenty-four electrical circuits and the battery itself using a small voltmeter with silver probes that he touched to various connections, one after the other. The Rosa’s crewmen watched him with a morbid fascination, and so intently that Pak could practically hear the sweat dripping from their faces.

The materials used in the construction of the device had come from widely different sources. Most important, of course, had been the plutonium, part of a much larger cache purchased from an ex-Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces colonel who’d needed enough gold to set up himself and his harem in comfort somewhere in Argentina. The story of how the plutonium had been smuggled from Chelyabinsk to Vladivostok to Yongbyon, despite the efforts of the Russian government, the Chinese, and the Russian mafia, was a small epic in itself.

The electronics had come from Japan — specifically from one of Japan’s larger industrial corporations, one that had been in trouble more than once selling restricted materials to the Soviets. The plastic explosives, on the other hand, were of American manufacture; there was a company that did a lot of ordnance work for the U.S. government but was more than willing to deal with anyone who offered their CEO enough money. It was incredible, Pak thought, just how eagerly individuals from the various Western nations would participate in their own cultures’ destruction. The West will hang itself, Lenin had once prophesied, and we will sell them the rope to do it.

Just as it was incredible how easy it was to manufacture such power as this. A surge of electric current, and the detonators would set off the plastic explosives. The resulting explosion, expanding in all directions but tamped by the lead shielding, would crush the plutonium sphere, initiating critical mass. The nuclear scientists who’d worked on the device estimated a potential yield of somewhere between fifty and one hundred kilotons.

More than enough for what had to be done.

Pak checked the final set of connections, watching the swing of the needle on his voltmeter. Everything was working, ready for him to throw the switches in the proper order. Another series of checks proved the pressure sensor and timer were operating as well. Carefully then, he closed up the trunk and locked it, then replaced the lid on the transport crate.

“It is ready,” he said.

And this time he told the truth.

The Royal Air Force base at Lakenheath is located in East Anglia, the thumb-shaped extrusion of low hills and quaint villages, of farms and cattle-raising country extending into the North Sea between the Thames River and the gulf known locally as the Wash. The first thing a visitor sees as he enters the base’s main gate is a replica of the Statue of Liberty, dedicated in 1981 to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the base and of the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing, known — after its insignia — as the “Statue of Liberty Wing.” The replica is impressive, though not so big as the one overlooking Upper New York Bay; it was cast in bronze from one of F. A. Bartholdi’s first-step models for the original Statue of Liberty.

When Mineman Second Class Greg Johnson had first seen the statue it had made him homesick, and he hadn’t even been out of the United States for twenty-four hours yet. Well… perhaps homesick was the wrong word. But he did wonder what he was doing here… wondered if he’d made a mistake in becoming a Navy SEAL.

The C-130 had rumbled in to Lakenheath’s Number One runway half an hour earlier and was standing now in an out-of-the-way corner of the base while an Air Force working party emptied the transport’s capacious hold. The SEALs were on hand to take charge of their gear as soon as it had been off-loaded, but for the moment they were standing at ease in formation, watching the airedales unload their gear.

Johnson stood a little apart from the other SEALs of the First Platoon, still uncertain of his standing with them. Twenty-six weeks of grueling BUD/S training had failed to completely erase the awe he’d felt for the Navy SEALs ever since he’d first heard about the unit. But in fact he’d never given more than a passing thought to actually becoming one, not until he’d already signed up and reported for duty with BUD/S Class 23.

By then, of course, it was too late to back out without looking like a wimp—pussy was the vulgarity used by the other men — and that was something Johnson refused to accept from anyone.

“So what do you think, Skeeter?” Jaybird Sterling asked him, jolting his thoughts.

“Huh? About what?”

Fernandez, standing next to Jaybird, nodded toward the C-130. “About the bus, man. We were just wondering if she was gonna be of any use over here.”

“You said you just got out of bus driver’s school,” Sterling added. “We were just wondering if you’d logged any hours on that thing.”

“Not many,” Johnson admitted.

“Hell, I still don’t know why they shipped the thing over here,” Brown said. “Without a mother sub, we can’t go very far in that thing.” SDVs were generally carried on the deck of specially modified Navy subs. Without a big sub to piggyback a ride with, the SDV would be sharply limited in range and usefulness.

“You know the Navy.” Fernandez laughed. “Always prepared.”

“That’s the Boy Scouts.”

“A bunch of amateurs. I bet they don’t pack Mark VIII SDVs with them when they go on a hike.”

“I wish it was one of the new babies,” Johnson said. “One of the real hot deep-divers.”

Gregory Lawrence Johnson had long been fascinated by the sea and by the various means that man had employed to explore it. He’d first heard about Navy frogmen as a boy of ten or eleven when he’d read an account of the Navy Underwater Demolition Teams of World War II… and of how they’d pioneered SCUBA and cold-water dry-suit research in the late forties and into the fifties.

Born and raised in southern California, not far from Malibu, he’d already been an experienced swimmer and an expert with SCUBA gear when he’d joined the Navy at the age of eighteen. More than anything else, Johnson had seen the SEALs as a chance to continue his love affair with diving. It had sounded like a real adventure, for the Navy was doing things with deep-diving submersibles and underwater breathing gear still totally unknown in the civilian world.

Skeeter Johnson possessed a determined singlemindedness of purpose that his buddies often laughed about. He’d enlisted in the Navy wanting to be a diver, and his recruiter had suggested that he choose one of two possible routes… through EOD school — that was Explosive Ordnance Disposal — or as a SEAL. In fact, he’d originally put down EOD school as his first choice, and SEALs second. EOD divers, he’d been told, spent a lot of time practicing their trade in and under the water, and they had to learn to use some pretty exotic gear while they were about it. His interest in the SEALs stemmed mostly from the fact that his recruiter had told him that the men who drove the Navy’s small submersibles were SEALs first. After Navy boot camp, he’d gone to Mineman School simply because that rating would open a direct route to advanced EOD training.

Unfortunately, the continuing military cutbacks that had begun with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War had cut sharply into the Explosive Ordnance Disposal program. Not even the problems the Navy had faced from enemy mines in both the Tanker War in the eighties and the brief but spectacular Gulf War with Iraq in 1991 had convinced a shortsighted budget oversight committee that EOD needed more ships, equipment, and personnel. Minesweeping and disposal, after all, had always been the tediously boring part of modern warfare; Harpoons and Tomahawks, Sea Wolf submarines and Stealth aircraft were all a lot more sexy, and even some of those programs were all in serious trouble. There’d been no openings at all for new EOD personnel when Johnson completed his basic mineman training.

SEAL recruits, however, were still much in demand… not so much because the Navy felt it needed them for war, but because there was such a high attrition rate among the SEAL candidates. The dropout rate for would-be SEALs averaged something like sixty percent; only five percent of all recruits actually finished with the class they started with, and the SEAL program aggressively sought volunteers for BUD/S training… fresh meat for the grinder. Though the demand rose and fell according to the vagaries of politics and the world situation, it had happened that SEAL recruits were needed when Johnson was in Mineman School, and his application had been granted.

Johnson had been disappointed but game. He knew enough about the SEALs to know they didn’t like quitters, and there was always the possibility of learning those new SCUBA techniques, maybe even of becoming an SDV driver.

But he wasn’t a SEAL yet, wouldn’t be until he’d completed his probationary training and received the coveted Budweiser. To tell the truth, Johnson wasn’t sure he wanted that gaudy, heavy gold pin since his request for additional, more advanced training with the SDVs had been turned down and he’d been assigned instead to SEAL Seven.

BUD/S training had been everything that Johnson had ever heard it was, and far, far more. It had been a grueling, muddy, exhausting nightmare that had challenged him physically and mentally like he’d never been challenged before. He’d learned just how far he could push his endurance in the water, in repeated two-mile swims across open ocean, in fifty-foot-deep tanks with hands and feet bound, in buddy exercises with a shared SCUBA tank. Hell Week had been just that, a solid week of hell when he’d been allowed just three hours of sleep total, spread out in fitful catnaps and dozes while lying neck-deep in cold ooze or stretched out on the sand or even while standing in formation.

Somehow, somewhy, he’d stuck it out.

He still wasn’t sure why. SEAL trainees were no longer followed about on their evolutions by a brass bell that could be rung three times to announce a DOR — a Drop On Request — from the program, but they could still give up after a couple of counseling sessions and be transferred back to the Fleet. He’d come that close to bagging it all and giving up.

It had been during the fourth day of Hell Week. He’d staggered out of the mud pit where he and twenty-eight other men had been wallowing for the past several hours, declared through chattering teeth that he’d had enough, and stumbled off toward the trailer where an officer waited to hear his request.

But he’d gone back to the mud and the cold. Why? He still wasn’t entirely certain. During his first counseling session, he’d been asked if he really wanted to quit, told to consider what he’d already invested in becoming a SEAL… but his final decision had more to do with the fear that the others would think that he was a quitter than anything else. The shame that attended that failure of nerve and strength and soul had seemed a worse fate than dying in the program, worse even than the humiliation of being assigned to a Navy minesweeper as just another ordnance man, screwing fuses in and out of mines.

He’d stuck… somehow he’d stuck out of sheer, stubborn pride, and now he was seriously wondering if he’d made a very bad mistake. More interested by far in the technical end of Navy diving, Johnson had never actually thought much about one decidedly non-technical aspect of his new career specialty, the fact that the Navy SEALs were looking for warriors, for men who could kill instantly, without hesitation, without remorse.

And that was what he thought separated him from the others.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t kill. He wouldn’t have completed the program had he not satisfied his instructors that he could, if necessary, take an enemy’s life. The issue had more to do with his inward focus as a SEAL; he didn’t think of himself as a warrior, didn’t feel that warrior’s bond shared by his comrades, had trouble imagining himself ever fitting in. His greatest love was still diving, exploring the ocean depths, losing himself in the weightless joy, so like skydiving, of a free-dive descent into an alien, emerald world.

“C’mon, Skeeter!” Brown’s voice snapped. “Wake up!”

The other SEALs were filing toward the C-130 Hercules—“Herky Bird” in military parlance — leaving Johnson behind. He jogged to catch up.

The airedales were just unloading the last piece of SEAL special equipment off the Herky Bird. It was big, a very special package, vaguely torpedo-shaped despite the bulky wrappings and tarps that enfolded it like a blanket swaddling a baby. Twenty-one feet long and four wide, it was gentled out of the C-130’s cargo bay on a tractor-towed cart and wheeled off toward the hangar used to stow the SEAL Team’s equipment.

The bus had arrived.