“What if there are several weapons?” Captain Spiers asked.
“Even if we find one, we’re going to keep looking,” McKiernan replied.
“A nuclear weapon,” Captain Spiers said. His face looked a little pasty. “Sir, we should be evacuating this base right now. Hell, we should be evacuating this whole area.”
“That’s been discussed. The decision has been made to tightly hold this secret. It is entirely possible that there are one or more watchers who will detonate the weapon if they realize we suspect it’s here and we’re looking for it. Trying to move a million and a half people a hundred miles from here can’t be kept a secret. We’ll just have to find the weapon.”
Spiers licked his lips. “But if we don’t?” he asked.
“Then we’ll do what we can do, and hope for the best.”
“Admiral, I have leave scheduled on the seventeenth,” Spiers said. “My eldest daughter is due to deliver—”
“Cancel it. That’s an order. Your duty is here.”
“—our first grandchild,” Spiers finished belligerently.
“I want an acknowledgment that I have just given you a direct order, Captain.”
Spiers’ Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. Finally he said, “Aye aye, sir.”
“Moving on, the SEAL teams will arrive tomorrow on transports. They have been told they are deploying to the Middle East. We’ll need barracks for them, with no one else in them. The day after tomorrow, you will announce a security exercise, close the base and search it. Every square inch. Your people will not be told about nuclear weapons, but will be told to look for anything — and I mean anything—that isn’t supposed to be there. All leave and liberty is canceled. No one, and I mean no one, goes on or off the base. The exercise will last until the twenty-second.”
“We don’t have berthing for all these people who can’t go home,” Spiers pointed out.
“Get cots and sleeping bags and porta-potties and berth your people in hangars. Set up chow lines. The ships’ crews will be staying aboard their ships. Figure out the details and get at it, Spiers. Get enough food on the station to last two weeks, for your people and the crews of the ships in port.”
“Yes, sir, but we don’t have enough refrigeration—”
McKiernan’s fist smashed on the table. “Then you’d better get a shitload of MREs anywhere you can find them,” he roared. “Do I have to can you and find someone who can figure this out?”
“No, sir.”
In the silence that followed that exchange, Captain Child pointed out, “Everyone these days has cell phones.”
“The cell towers are going out of service even as we speak. We are sealing this base and searching every square inch of it. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The story is the base is holding a security exercise. Get it in the newspapers and on television today. A routine security exercise. If there is a watcher, he or she will expect us to take extra precautions since we are going to have all these ships in port. We would be idiots if we didn’t, and whoever planted this weapon knows that.”
“Yes, sir.”
Spiers had one last question. “How sure are we that there is indeed an armed nuclear weapon somewhere close?”
Jake Grafton spoke for the first time, his voice hard and flat. “Bet your ass it’s here and you may not lose it.”
“Who put it here?”
“You don’t need to know that,” Grafton said, staring Spiers straight in the eyes, almost as if he dared the captain to ask another question. Spiers lowered his gaze and rose from his chair.
Jake Grafton said, “Captain Child, one more word.”
Spiers left, and Child sat down again.
“I want you to bring your EOD people in and have a long talk with them,” Jake Grafton said. “As I analyze this problem, there are two ways this weapon, if it is here, can be triggered. First, it might be wired up to a clock mechanism and be merely ticking down to a certain date and time, perhaps Christmas Day. If so, it could be anywhere in the estuary or river or on the west side of the river in that Corps of Engineers storage depot. Wherever the thing is, it might have a triggering device that is waiting for a radio signal. This is the most likely prospect, I suspect, because it keeps all the bomber’s options open until the last possible second, when the button is pushed triggering the thing. We can also assume that the triggering device is on or beside the weapon. Almost has to be to keep the wire runs short.
“Be that as it may, if the triggering mechanism is waiting for a radio signal, it won’t be in ten or twenty or thirty feet of water. Or if it is, there will be a wire leading from it to some kind of metal structure that will act as an antenna and receive the transmission when sent and pass it on to the triggering device. If I were you, my first efforts would be to find an insulated wire attached to something metal. I’m no expert, but I suspect it could be darn near anything.”
Captain Child nodded.
“That’s it,” Jake Grafton said. “Talk to the EOD guys and get their opinion. Most radio waves can’t go through twenty or thirty feet of water. Perhaps the Chinese could use very low frequency waves that go through the water, but how will they know just when to trigger it, given that we can shut down the Internet or telephone networks at any time? I suspect it’s more likely that there is someone close, and at precisely the right time to do maximum damage he or she will use a higher-frequency, short-range encrypted radio signal that will not penetrate water. That gives them maximum flexibility regardless of what we do to thwart them.”
“The Ford is scheduled to be towed from Newport News to the carrier piers tomorrow,” Child said. “She’s been in dry dock for a year. The crew has been ashore. The media people want to film the arrival. Still, it’s a good excuse for us to search the waters around the carrier piers and inspect the bottoms of every hull there.”
The Chinese would know that, of course, Jake thought.
McKiernan didn’t bat an eye. “Do it.”
“Yes, sir,” Captain Child said. He walked out and closed the door behind him.
The four-star admiral in command of the Fleet Forces Command, Sherman Fitch, was waiting when the CNO and Jake Grafton arrived at Base Ops to board the little executive jet to Washington. The CO of the base, Captain Spiers, was also there. McKiernan told him to dismiss the honor guard, which he did.
As Jake stood watching, Cart McKiernan took the man who owned the Atlantic Fleet aside for a private conversation on the ramp. It took ten minutes. Jake used the break to hit the head. When he got back, the admirals were shaking hands and saluting. Spiers saluted them both.
On the flight to Washington, McKiernan told Jake, “I told Sherm I wanted the orders drafted and ready for signature if and when I told him to send the ships elsewhere over the holidays. Didn’t give him a reason, but demanded Top Secret security. Had to give him a heads-up. You can’t turn a fleet on a dime. Without some prior planning, sending the ships elsewhere or keeping them at sea will be a fucked-up mess. Everyone will be talking, and it will be big news everywhere.”
Jake Grafton said nothing. The decision was McKiernan’s whenever he wished to make it.
The CNO changed subjects instantly. “Could the bomb be triggered from a satellite?” he asked.
“Not without an antenna, the experts tell me.”
“An underwater acoustic receiver,” the admiral mused, “waiting for a sound, like a sonar. Or a fish or depth finder.”
“Perhaps,” Jake agreed. “But those devices all have limited range and will require the triggerman to get relatively close, which would be difficult or impossible if we limit access to the anchorage, as you intend to do. Simple is usually better; less chance for a technical breakdown or unanticipated events blowing your preparations.”