“But that keeps the families waiting.”
“And that’s on me,” Sanders admitted sadly. “I’ll take the karmic hit. Hopefully it won’t be for very long, just until we figure out what the Russians are up to.” He shook his head. “Nope. We can’t say anything, because as soon as the Navy announces Toledo’s been found, we’ll have to tell them how and where. No half measures.”
Sanders held up one finger. “First, we’d have to announce that Toledo’s loss was caused by an external event, otherwise we would be required to investigate a material fault or personnel error that doesn’t exist. That would be a major waste of time and effort, and disrespectful to the crew.” Another finger went up. “Second, the only external cause that anyone will accept is a weapon of some type hitting her. There are no sea monsters or other navigational hazards in that area.”
As he put up the third finger, he continued, “And we can’t tell an obvious falsehood and say the weapon was somehow left over from World War II, because it will take about five minutes for someone to check the records and announce there were never any mines laid up there during the war.
“And that’s just the ‘how,’” Sanders explained. “The ‘where’ will really put the wind up the Russians’ skirts. They’ll flood the area with patrols, maybe even more minefields, and we’ll never get a good look at that Russian whatchamacallit.”
Chatham grimaced at Sanders’s last point; he’d been worried about that particular issue. “Admiral, I’m not certain the Russians don’t feel a breeze up their rears already. Carter’s arrival at Groton has to have been noticed.”
“I know, Russ, I’ve been thinking about that too. We’ll have to come up with a convincing story to explain her presence, but just saying she’s here to help look for Toledo is pretty damn flimsy. We’ll have to be more convincing.”
“Is this the best the intelligence community can come up with?” President Hardy demanded. “‘It’s larger, and may have a different payload’ is not good enough.”
“He’s still digging, Mr. President,” Raymond Peakes replied. A thin man, with equally thin hair combed straight back, the director of national intelligence sounded defensive, and he added, “Dr. Perry is very good at this. He’s methodical, but even more, he’s good at filling in the gaps.”
“But is he quick?” the president asked. “The Russians are building something and we don’t know what it is, or when it will be finished. The public and the families are waiting for us to release more information about Toledo’s loss. Time is passing, Ray, and the problem is, I won’t know when it’s too late.”
Joanna Patterson, sitting next to Hardy, asked, “Do we know anything about the Russians’ timeline, Lowell?”
Peakes was still getting used to the first lady being present at Oval Office briefings. Anybody who knew Dr. Patterson knew she wasn’t going to settle for just tea parties and civic causes, but the Tensor material was more than sensitive. Still, she was here, she had retained her clearances, and it was a good question.
Hardy nodded to Peakes, who answered, “They’ll have to stop work by the end of September. After that, the weather gets a lot worse and the ice starts closing in again.”
Evangeline McDowell, Hardy’s secretary, knocked and opened the door. “Mr. President, everyone, Director Jacobson and Dr. Perry are on their way over right now. They say they have ‘new information.’ They should be here in about thirty minutes.”
“Thank you, Evangeline,” replied Hardy with a look of encouragement. “Maybe now we can get to the bottom of this mess.”
Half an hour later, McDowell led Perry and Jacobson, the director of central intelligence, into the Oval Office. The two walked quickly over to the assembly, recently joined by National Security Advisor Hyland and White House Chief of Staff Sellers. Dressed sharply, Jacobson was calm and collected; his long slow gait rapidly chewed up the distance.
Perry, by contrast, was his complete opposite. Almost at a jog to keep up because of his short stature, he was clearly excited and looked more like a stereotypical hermit scholar. He entered clutching a locked briefcase and his sport coat with both hands. Customary dress at the White House was, at the very least, coat and tie. And while Perry remembered to bring his sport coat, he hadn’t remembered to put it on. It was obvious his mind was elsewhere.
“Good evening, George, Dr. Perry,” Hardy welcomed. “What do you have for us?”
“And to you, Mr. President,” replied Jacobson as he nodded to the other attendees. “My apologies for this brash entrance, but after Dr. Perry burst into my office an hour ago with his latest findings, I figured time was of greater concern than protocol. Dr. Perry, please explain.”
The analyst faced the group, but looking directly at Hardy, Perry announced, “It is a different payload, Mr. President. Very different.”
Peakes looked at him quietly for a moment before ordering him calmly, “All right, James. Please sit down and tell us what you’ve found.”
Perry realized he was still holding his sport coat, and slipped it on before sitting down on a small couch next to Peakes. Hardy, Patterson, and Secretary Richfield sat on the opposite couch, with a small table between them. Hyland and Sellers stood behind them.
“I asked myself, ‘How do you improve the Status-6?’ It’s virtually invulnerable once it’s launched. It’s got more range than it needs, and to make it faster, you’d be fighting the cube law. If anything, it should be smaller. I did some rough calculations, and the new version’s larger size actually isn’t big enough to hold a nuclear power plant with enough moxie to give an appreciable increase in speed. At the very best, we’re talking about a three-knot increase.”
Perry paused for just a moment, but nobody interrupted him. “That left the warhead, but an even bigger nuclear warhead doesn’t give you much either. The cube law again.”
He opened his briefcase and passed out sheets of paper to the president, SecDef, and the DNI. He’d only brought three, and Joanna looked on with Hardy. The others hovered over Peakes.
The single page showed a drawing of a needle-like missile, with a similar shape, much smaller, circled in a satellite photo. Provisional statistics were listed below.
“This is the Tsitrin missile. It means ‘citrine’ in Russian. They’ve been naming their missiles after minerals,” he added. “We’ve seen tests at the Nyonoska Test Range on the Kola Peninsula for some time. It’s a hypersonic weapon. We’ve watched it fly at Mach six, and it’s big enough to carry a one-hundred-and-fifty-kiloton nuclear device with an estimated range of over four hundred miles.”
Hardy nodded. “I remember being briefed on it. Scary. But what makes you think this is the new warhead — I mean, payload — for the torpedo?”
“The Tsitrin missile is very large — too large for either a submarine torpedo tube or the UKSK vertical launcher on Russian warships and submarines. The accepted wisdom was that the Russians were going to develop a new launch platform for it, probably a submarine, but the scramjet propulsion system is risky technology. We judged they wouldn’t start the design until the missile’s hypersonic engine had been thoroughly tested.
“Well, it’s pretty late in the missile’s test program, which it is passing, and we’re not seeing anything being fitted out as a test bed. Typically, you take an existing platform, ship, plane, or sub, and modify it so you can proceed to launch trials. This time? Nothing.”