Still, with the move behind them, Emily feeling better and teaching again, and the soon-to-be grandparents waiting with bated breath, happiness and serenity had returned to the Mitchell household.
Jerry sighed, refilled his coffee cup, and got back to work. He’d only made it through the first set of engine room logs when the Dialex phone rang. Grabbing the handset, he answered, “Captain.”
“Skipper, this is the XO, sir. Please come to radio immediately. We just received an OPREP-3 Pinnacle Nucflash message.”
Jerry shook his head in confusion; he must be more tired than he thought. “Ah, Bernie, would you repeat that, please? Did you say ‘Nucflash’?”
“Yes, sir. We just received a no-shit OPREP-3 Pinnacle Nucflash message. It looks like the Indians popped a nuke in Pakistan.”
“I’ll be right there,” Jerry said, barely pausing to hang up the phone. Racing to radio, he wondered why the Indians would do something so stupid. The current Indo-Pakistani War was the last remnant of the larger Sino — Littoral Alliance conflict, but up to this point, the cease-fire was holding. Even with the talks stalled, and despite some verbal saber rattling from senior military officers on both sides, nothing suggested that either nation was ready to start shooting again. And a single nuclear weapon? This just didn’t make any sense. It had to be some sort of mistake.
As Jerry reached the radio room, Lieutenant Commander Bernie Thigpen handed him a hard copy of the message. “The nuke went off over the Pakistani-controlled portion of Kashmir,” he reported. “It was a big one, too. Initial estimates put the yield at one hundred — plus kilotons.”
Jerry remained silent as he read the message. The contents failed to answer any of the truly important questions. It was just a basic report announcing the time and place of the event. There was nothing to explain the “why” behind it. He went over the text again, just to be sure, then handed the paper back to his XO, a look of sheer amazement on his face.
“I’m just as flummoxed as you are, Skipper,” Thigpen empathized. “Why in the world India would do something so irrational is beyond me. Trying to kickstart peace negotiations with a nuke isn’t exactly a winning tactic. Kind of defeats the purpose, don’t you think?”
Jerry was still analyzing the news when a dreadful thought jumped into his mind. Alarmed, he turned toward Thigpen and said, “The wind! Which way…”
“It’s coming from the west-northwest, sir,” Thigpen interrupted. “It’s a problem for India, Nepal, and parts of China; Emily and the rest of the crew’s family members won’t be affected by the fallout. At least not this time.”
“Always the pessimist,” quipped Jerry, his tone betraying his relief.
Thigpen smiled slightly. “No, sir, a realist. We both know this is really bad news, and it’s very likely to get worse. Nothing good could possibly come from this.”
1
SHOCK WAVE
They’d changed the studio’s backdrop to a map of the Kashmir region that slowly morphed into a Google Earth landscape that then zoomed in on the specific area where the detonation had been reported. The network was still waiting for satellite images of the actual explosion site, so the graphics team had marked the spot with a small animated mushroom cloud. Occasionally the background would go to split screen, with one half devoted to the map, and the other showing photos of the Kashmiri countryside, some taken prewar, others since India’s invasion of Pakistan six months ago.
CNN had its best national-security correspondent, Jane Bergen, anchoring the desk. She was a known commodity, with dark hair framing a square face and black-rimmed glasses.
“Good morning and welcome to CNN’s continuing coverage of the nuclear explosion in Kashmir. It’s been just over twenty-four hours since the detonation of what is now agreed was a nuclear weapon of over one hundred kilotons in Kashmir, a disputed territory and the object of so much recent fighting between India and Pakistan. India is at the center of a public firestorm of accusations, but denies any knowledge of or responsibility for the blast.
“Our entire CNN team is covering different aspects of the developing crisis, which is complicating the already difficult and tense peace negotiations between the two warring countries in Geneva, Switzerland.
“Sources in the U.S. intelligence community have confirmed to CNN that the apparent location of the blast is a major base and training camp for Lashkar-e-Taiba, a large Islamic terrorist organization operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan. LeT is responsible for dozens of attacks in India, including the infamous Mumbai hotel siege in 2008 that killed a hundred and sixty-four people and wounded hundreds more. During India’s recent participation in the Littoral Alliance war with China, the terrorist group attacked the Indian naval bases at Visakhapatnam and Rambilli, damaging the Indian Navy’s nuclear ballistic missile submarine Arihant.
“One of India’s publicly stated goals in this fourth war with Pakistan is to, quoting India’s defense minister, ‘remove, once and for all, the threat of Islamic terrorist attacks against India launched from inside Pakistan’s borders.’
“Our first guest this hour is Dr. Mark Ulrich, from the Council on Nuclear Weapons. He is an expert on the design and construction of atomic bombs, and has an update for us.”
Ulrich was a heavyset man, with an untidy appearance. His hair was mussed, and he needed to straighten his tie. “We’ve concluded, based on seismographic readings from several different sources, that the weapon was larger than we originally estimated, approximately one hundred and fifty kilotons, about ten times the size of the Hiroshima blast.”
“Does this increased size of the blast change the casualty estimate your group published last night?”
Ulrich riffled through the notes in front of him. “Of course, those were early estimates, but the biggest driver is still the lucky fact that the area is sparsely populated, and isolated by high valley walls, which run southeast to northwest.”
He zoomed in on the satellite image. “This small village of Nullaa is closest to the camp’s location, and has probably been annihilated, since it’s just a few kilometers from ground zero, and lies near the floor of the valley, in line with the blast effects. The uneven terrain complicates calculating the effects at any given place, but any structure within, say, three miles will be virtually destroyed, light damage and injuries could happen as far away as ten miles.”
The landscape background stopped moving, and two circles appeared on the map three and ten miles from ground zero. Ulrich pointed out almost a dozen villages and hamlets within the affected area. “There will be a lot of broken windows and minor injuries, even in the local capital, Muzaffarabad.”
He sighed. “It’s a remote area, which is good, because it means few people live there, but because it’s so remote, it will be hard to get help in to them.”
“And of course, the whole region is a war zone,” Bergen added. “Although there’s been a cease-fire since October. What about the fallout?” she asked.
The scientist sighed again. “It’s obvious from the seismic readings that it was a ground burst, so hundreds of tons of material have been vaporized, irradiated, and lifted to high altitudes. There will be a lot of fallout. The north-northwesterly prevailing winds will carry it across the parts of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan and India, then into western China. Although Xinjiang Province in China is thinly settled, many parts of Kashmir in the path of the fallout are populated and farmed. The Himalayas will prevent the cloud from spreading south into the densely populated parts of India.