“The bad news is, sir, that would also be the good news. Unless the refinery was really a hospital with an overactive nuclear medicine lab which somehow exploded.”
“What are you thinking it could be, Bill?”
“Well sir, I don’t think it was a deliberate nuclear placement, because there are no targets of any value whatsoever 150 or so miles from Cairo. So it must have been a storage facility as well as a safe house to hold the ambassador. Whether what was exposed was an actual bomb or stockpile for future weapons, like dirty bombs, or possibly even an atom-bomb-making lab, we’ll find out if the Foxtrots get through. And just to rule it out, I checked over my SCIAD net. Geologically, there would be no natural source of radiation in that part of the world.”
“So it’s all in the hands of the Foxtrots now.”
“Yes sir, it is.”
“Foxtrot Bravo will hold off and set up perimeter from the west since that’s the only road in. After we jump, Alpha will set up a CAP. Hopefully none of this is on Al Jazeera yet so the numbers of yahoos coming at us should be manageable. Right now, under FE, anything that moves is dead. We have one goal, one mission: find out whatever the nuclear material is, secure it, and, if we can, evacuate it to Desert Tango 1. That’s a secure site being set up right now to handle whatever we find. If what we find is leaking, we contain it. If it’s moveable, we move it. If it’s ticking, we evacuate.”
The commander looked around at the faces illuminated by the red lights of the cabin. “So far, before it turned into this cluster fuck, this mission was textbook hostage recovery. Each one of you performed and served in the best traditions of the cavalry. Brinks, that leg good enough for you to handle the mini gun?”
“It’s a scratch, sir. I got your back,” said the man with a huge bloody bandage running from his knee to his calf.
“Got three bogeys on the road heading towards target alpha,” the co-pilot reported.
“Cleared, hot,” the pilot said back over the interphone. The gunship shuttered as the mini gun, connected to the co-pilot’s central nervous system, burped as it fired several bursts.
“Instant junk yard,” was the battle damage assessment from the gunner on the door.
“Got five infrared targets on foot coming in from the east two miles off.”
“Not worth detouring for. We’ll handle them once we switch to Combat Air Patrol.”
“Let the Egyptian ambassador in on this, Charles,” the President said. “There is a nightmare happening in his country and he should know it.”
“Sir, should we tie in Cairo?”
“Let that be the ambassador’s call. Either way, I’ll speak to the Egyptian president as soon as possible.”
“Ray, shouldn’t we let the Russians and the Chinese know,” Bill whispered to the Chief of Staff. “If something goes wrong, we need them on the cool side of the equation.”
“No whispering in here,” the President said. “I need all the opinions I can get.”
“Sir, Hiccock was just bringing it up, and I think I agree…”
“Thirty seconds,” the pilot announced. The lights were off in the cabin now. The guys in the N-suits were in the middle between the men ready to jump and secure the LZ. The Longbow flared and hovered at two feet. The men stepped off and in an instant set up a defensive perimeter to cover the guys in the plastic suits as they exited. Then, as one, they retraced their original steps back into the building, peeling off one or two of their number as guards as the main body advanced. The chopper was up and doing CAP while Foxtrot Bravo unloaded the same way. Then it went off to cover the only road into the compound.
Kicking dead bodies, and being ready to fire if you hear a grunt, is a lifesaving practice at a time like this. This place was so hot that the Geiger counters had to be put on the highest scale in order to get a reading that was mid-scale and not pinned on overload. To determine which direction the source was in, a mid-scale was needed so that when the unit was swept in a circle, the direction straightest towards the radiation would give the highest reading. It was called a hyper-cardioid search pattern. These instruments were now pointing the suits toward the spot where Jonesy tripped the booby trap. A quick inspection showed it was something similar to a Claymore mine, probably taped to the now-blown-away doorway. On the other side of that door, the needles pinned and the Geigers were overloaded even at the highest setting, a .5 RAD scale or about 10,000 times stronger than a chest x-ray. When the trooper flipped up his night vision and turned on his flashlight illuminating the room, a muffled “Holy Mother of God!” came through his plastic facemask.
One of the operators was video capable and his signal was microwaved to the chopper. Then the chopper up-linked it to a defense satellite, which sent it to the Defense Intelligence Agency. They patched in the ops room at the White House as well as the guys in the Pentagon.
As the single light source on top of the camera illuminated the room, the lead trooper narrated, “Sir, we got a shitload of what looks like suitcase nukes. Eight, nine — they’re all over. The blast has definitely breached one or two. I can’t believe some idiot raghead placed a Claymore on the wall behind these suckers.”
In the chopper, the commander, upon hearing that two nukes were breached, took out his knife and slashed the thick canvas straps that secured the N case to the lightening holes in the frame of the chopper. He dumped the contents on the floor and told the pilot to go back in. Then he keyed his mic to the guys in the refinery. “Sergeant, send two guys out to the LZ and have them bring the N locker to you.”
Back in the room, the count was concluded. Twenty-three suitcase nukes, two damaged by blast. When the N trunk arrived, the first damaged bomb was gingerly laid into the case. The N case had minimal nuclear shielding to protect the instruments and monitor within from ambient or slightly elevated radiation. That same shielding would temporarily contain the brunt of the radiation until help arrived. They were about to lower the second damaged case into the locker alongside the first when the one of them had a thought.
“Sir, lets get the other N case in here. These two bad boys may interact if we keep them in a tight shielded case.”
“Good thinking, Marks. You may have just saved this godforsaken patch of desert for future generations.”
The two helicopters traded positions and the second ship’s N case found its way into what the men were now calling the “nursery.” Once Foxtrot Alpha was up and back in CAP, the pilot decided to deal with the human targets now a half-mile off to the east. He pointed the 9 tons of death and destruction at the five unwise men traveling in the dessert. Then he had a moment of conscience. “I am going to do a magnetometer pass first.”
“Jack, we are under FE engagement!” the co-pilot said.
“I know; but what if those are just some camel jockeys down there?”
“And what if they put a shoulder-fired up our exhaust?”
“These guys are walking, not running. I don’t want to kill some poor bastard just for taking a walk.”
“Okay. How about, we lay down a line of red lead in the sand and see if they change their direction. I’ll stay locked on them and if they so much as hiccup, I’ll cream ‘em.” The co-pilot lined up the life forms on his reticule.
“Mini-gun, kick up some sand and let them know we want them to turn around.”
“Roger” preceded the shuttering as the chain gun let go.
Through his infrared display, the pilot saw the people run in the other direction. “Okay, good. Let’s get our guys out of here.”