Pinnacle Event

45

Despite what armchair generals on Capitol Hill might think, even the U.S. military cannot appear magically anywhere in the world at any time. Indeed, no U.S. military unit wants to conduct an operation without weeks of preparation and rehearsal, but there are a handful of units on alert for immediate mobilization. Most of them are Army, and most of them are in the sprawling campus that is Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

In the hour after midnight, those units were alerted. The 82nd Airborne Division always has one brigade assigned to an unspecified global mission. This time it was the 3rd Brigade. Its ready battalion was the 505th. They had equipment and uniforms for almost every climate, but that did not include the white overalls used by the units designated to fight in the snow.

Across the base, in the fenced-in command run by Special Operations Command, the 1st Special Force Group’s Operational Detachment Delta had a ready group that included operators who had been trained on nuclear weapons seizure and disablement. They were activated just after midnight.

At Hunter Airfield, outside of Savannah, Georgia, a ready company of the 1st Battalion of the Army’s Ranger Regiment was called up, at 0200.

Throughout the country at Air Force bases, C-17 pilots and crews were also getting calls. So were the KC-10 and KC-135 aerial refueling tanker crews, many of them members of the Air National Guard.

At Dam Neck in Virginia, a SEAL unit trained in ship seizure was notified to be ready to fly. It would be a long flight.

There were no aircraft carriers, no submarines, no drones, or bombers anywhere near Antarctica, but off the coast of the southern continent was a ship of the U.S. Coast Guard. The captain of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, the largest U.S. ice breaker, was woken to receive a highly unusual message for that ship. It was top secret and flash precedence. The thrust of the message from the Commandant of the Coast Guard was that there would be a U.S. Navy SEAL unit coming on board and then Healy would be ordered to intercept two nearby research ships flying the flag of Iceland. He was instructed to tell no one on board until further authorized, which he thought was a good thing, since no one on board would believe him if he had told them.

Antarctica did not fall into the Area of Operations of any of the U.S. Combatant commanders, who divided up the world into exclusive zones for their forces. So the Joint Chiefs of Staff Organization in the Pentagon took control, supported by Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. Every operation needed a name and there was a list available to choose from, meaningless code words. This one was designated Operation Ready Anvil. Ignoring that, the team in the Pentagon started calling it Ice Station Zebra.

The President signed the “execute” order for the operation at 0500 Washington time. The Global Hawk surveillance aircraft were the first to take off from California and head south. They would soon be followed by a wave of other southbound aircraft.

Ray and Mbali left USUN a little after midnight. They had spent the night sharing a pizza and fielding questions over the secure video from a variety of agencies in Washington. It had taken a while to convince the bureaucracy that they were not mad, but had actually succeeded in finding the missing South African bombs in the most unlikely place on earth.

Dugout had continued working all day documenting the leads, the evidence, the connections, the timeline. And working with the now-cooperative and friendly Professor McFarland, he had demonstrated to the Washington team that the effects of the almost immeasurable heat of tritium boosted nuclear explosions would melt vast amounts of centuries’ old ice, sending a sea of fresh water into the world’s oceans. In the Atlantic, the Gulf Stream would cease its circulation and the climate everywhere would change, some places becoming arid, others frozen, some very, very wet.

There was no disputing that if all five bombs detonated, the likely global sea rise would be nineteen meters from the East Antarctic ice alone. The only differences the experts had was over how quickly the flood would occur. The longest period anyone projected was thirty months.

Some island nations like the Maldives and others in the Pacific and Caribbean would cease to exist. Others, like Bangladesh, would see land now occupied by eighty million people washed away. In the United States, fourteen major metropolitan areas would see their urban centers destroyed in ways worse than Hurricane Katrina had done in New Orleans, and that was just on the East and Gulf Coasts. Florida would disappear as far north as Jacksonville.

Some nations might be better off comparatively to the rest of the world when it was all over, among them perhaps Canada and Russia, both of whom would have new, year-round ports and vast stretches of newly arable land, but the world’s economy would be devastated.

At the end of a long day filled with such depressing images, Mbali and Ray walked out of the U.S. Mission on to First Avenue. She had booked them rooms at the Harvard Club on West 44th Street, using some reciprocal privilege. The FBI office had left a team of two agents and a Suburban waiting for them. They hopped in.

Traffic was light for Manhattan. Even the city that never sleeps thins out in the early morning hours on a weekday. As they passed Grand Central Terminal and pulled into 44th Street, a motorbike passed them, almost brushing up against the Suburban. The agent riding in the front passenger seat saw the sticky bomb being attached to his door and yelled the warning, “Get out — bomb!” The agent also opened the door, so the blast went down to the side of the vehicle, rather than directly into it. Nonetheless, the agent died seconds later.

Those seconds seemed like minutes to Ray, who was seated behind the agent on the right of the vehicle. In those long seconds, he leaped across the vehicle, opened the driver’s side passenger door, and pushed himself and Mbali out of the moving vehicle onto the street. He was halfway out when the sticky bomb went off.

He later learned that it was what the bomb technicians considered a small charge. It had been lethal to both the driver and to the other agent. Had the agent on the right not opened his door in time, it would have been lethal to Ray and likely to Mbali.

Afterward, Ray did not remember how he got out of the vehicle. His first memory was of the fire to his left. He was laying on the street and there were flames and an intense overpowering heat to his left. He forced himself to crawl away from it. That’s when he realized he was bleeding, blood running from his scalp down the back of his neck. He could not hear and he was having trouble focusing his eyes. Mbali was dragging him farther away from the fire in the street. There were people around. And then there was a paramedic. He remembered being in an ambulance and he could recall the doctor and the nurses in the ER. He woke in a private hospital room. He had bandages on his left arm and leg. There was a large bandage on the back of his head and it felt like he had been given a haircut back there. His whole body ached and his ears were ringing. He saw his suit and shirt on a hanger. He found the bathroom, looked in the mirror at the back of his head, and washed up. Then he got dressed and walked out of the room to find Mbali. The FBI agents on the door went with him.

McKenna was a professional in Ray’s mind. The FBI man had come to the hospital in the middle of the night to check up on Bowman and bumped into him, sneaking out through the Emergency Room. Rather than telling Ray to go back upstairs and recover in a bed from the sticky bomb attack on the car, McKenna had taken him to an all-night diner and briefed him on the latest intelligence they had learned from monitoring Olympus Security. One team of Olympus men would be escorting Vicki Kinder in midmorning from the UN to a nearby heliport. From there, they would chopper her to Teterboro airfield where a second team would be taking her father, then the Kinders would get out of New York for points west.

Bowman did not want to see the Kinders leave town quite yet and McKenna had agreed, then made a few calls. Then they both had the fried eggs and grits, which were not bad for a greasy spoon in a northern city at three in the morning.

At ten thirty, a Chevrolet Suburban had turned into 34th Street, sped under the Roosevelt Highway, and pulled up to the heliport dock on the East River. Vicky Kinder jumped down from the Suburban, stylish in a mauve business suit, and moved quickly across the dock to the Kinder Industries helicopter. Her two Olympus bodyguards scurried to catch up with her, while a third went for her bags in the back of the vehicle. She did not notice behind her as the Olympus men were quietly and quickly detained by armed men, McKenna’s men, who had been posing as the heliport crew.

Bowman slid open the passenger door to the helicopter from inside and hopped out onto the dock. In his right hand was a Glock that he had insisted McKenna provide him, just in case. The look on Victoria Kinder’s face said she knew who he was. She looked behind her and saw her men being hauled off. Rather than running, she simply stopped and smiled. “I see you’re not dead yet, Mr. Bowman. Do you plan on using that thing on me?”

“I always liked that Monty Python routine. ‘I’m not dead yet.’ But a lot of people are, Professor Kinder, and a hell of a lot more will be if your plans go ahead,” Ray replied. “How do you live with that?”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to, of course, but after all, death is a part of the cycle of life,” she said. “The question is not if we will die. We will. The question is what one will do while alive that will make a difference, changes the future.”

“And you think the future will be better if this city and a lot like it are under water?” Ray asked as two FBI agents moved in on either side of her. “You had better tell me now how to stop it.”

“That is the future. I can’t stop it. Neither can anyone else. It’s just a question of when it happens and how fast. If it takes a long time, if it is a slow death, then those death throes will take civilization down, too. By trying in vain to hold back the waters we will deplete the treasury, destroy government, wreck the economy, everything will collapse into a new Dark Age. If it happens quickly, we can adjust, survive, some of us will even flourish. Trust me, I know. I have run all the models.”

“Maybe you will get to watch the waters rise from your prison window,” Bill McKenna said as he signaled for his men to take her. He turned to Bowman. “Are you sure you are in shape for a helicopter ride with an FBI pilot?”

“I may not see you for a long time. At least, not in person,” Jonathan Kinder said, as he stood with Sergey Rogozin in front of the Russian’s Boeing Business Jet. “I can’t tell you how much I am in your debt, how we all are, the entire board. From the day Konny proposed this idea right up to this week, we could not have done it without you. You know that.”

“It was, it is, a bold idea. Historic. It will change history, change the world,” Rogozin said. “It has been my honor to be part of it, to watch you and the others decide on where to move billions of dollars to be ready for the new world. Amazing. We, I, would never have figured it out.”

“Well, most of that work was Vicki,” he said like any proud father. “She’s the one who is amazing. Her models about what land would be newly valuable, what industries would survive and be needed afterward, buying the foodstuffs, the gold, the diamonds, the other commodities and storing them in safe places.

“She should be here in a few minutes,” Kinder added. “She had more meetings this morning at the UN. She is flying in by helicopter from the landing area on the East River near the UN. Otherwise, the traffic here, it’s becoming like São Paulo, where you have to own a helicopter to get anywhere.”

“Are you sure you still want to go to Montana? My professional advice is that you would be safer with us, with Kuznetzov and me,” Rogozin urged. “I am sure they will never connect you to the explosions, especially after the last problem for us was eliminated last night, but, it’s always safer to be in a country where the security services are friends.”

Kinder shook his head. “No, you get on your flight and head to wherever the hell Kuznetzov is in the middle of frozen nowhere Russia and I will get on mine and head for the middle of God’s country in Montana. There the security guys for miles in all directions are my guys.”

They both looked up at the S-76 helicopter that was flaring up for a landing between their two jets. Rogozin could see the logo of Olympus Security on the side of the aircraft. “Well, here is Vicki now. I guess we have a daring pilot this morning.”

The door to the Sikorsky slid open even before the helicopter had touched down. Ray Bowman and Special Agent Bill McKenna jumped out, followed by two other FBI agents in black tactical gear. Simultaneously, sirens began to wail and black vehicles began speeding down the tarmac toward them. McKenna yelled, “FBI, hands behind your heads, you’re under…”

Rogozin had pulled his gun and fired, striking McKenna in the torso, knocking him down. Bowman was glad he had insisted on being issued a weapon. He aimed the Glock at Rogozin’s head and fired twice, before the volley that the two agents let loose from their M4s, ripping up Rogozin and bouncing his body in the air before it fell onto the pavement. Kinder dropped to his knees with his hands over his head. The agents cuffed him and then, joined by the team arriving in the vehicles, moved on to the two awaiting aircraft as FBI Suburbans blocked both from moving. Ray turned to help Bill McKenna up. The new model bullet-resistant vest had done its job. “I’m gonna have one hell of a black and blue from that impact,” McKenna said, rubbing his chest. Mbali had arrived in the cars with the other agents and she joined Bowman and McKenna. Bowman was still holding the Glock.

“Did you use that thing?” she asked.

“He did, thank god,” McKenna answered for him.

Together the three of them walked over to where the agents were holding Jonathan Kinder.

“You need to tell us how to stop the bombs from going off and you need to tell us now,” Bowman said to him.

Kinder’s mouth had gone dry and he struggled to get out his reply. “I don’t know anything about any bombs. That man you killed, maybe he did, but you killed him, you idiot.” McKenna signaled for the agents to take Kinder away.

“So that will be his defense? I knew nothing about bombs, I was just doing hedged investments against global warming,” Mbali asked.

“That won’t fly,” Ray answered. “We can tie him to the whole thing, but he may be right that he doesn’t know how to stop the bombs. Maybe Rogozin did, but we didn’t have much of a choice after he opened up.”

“Are you afraid that whoever has their finger on the trigger will set it off now?” Bill McKenna asked.

“They might. Can we keep this incident here under wraps for a few hours?” Ray asked, although he knew better.

“We’re telling the Jersey State Police it was a drug bust. Cocaine coming in on an executive jet. That won’t stand up for long, but it may buy you some time,” the FBI agent replied. “Now that we have this helicopter, can I offer you a ride somewhere. Where do you go next?”

Ray Bowman stood on the tarmac in New Jersey, surrounded by private jets and federal agents. His hand went to the bandage on the back of his head, where the nurses had shaved his hair off in the ER. He looked confused, almost lost. “I don’t really know.”

“Seriously?” Bill McKenna asked.

“Well, maybe to the shuttle at LaGuardia. I guess I should go to DC and wait to see what happens down south.” He looked at Mbali. “Have you ever been to Washington?”