“I spent three hours with him last night. Trying to explain about the black hole. Left him numb. I’ll have to see him now and report on Krone and the message from Korolev. I guess we’ll see what kind of stuff he’s really made of.”
“Is he going to want to go to the President? Or expect us to draw up a national intelligence estimate to circulate? The black hole is one thing, and perhaps an emergency in itself, but potential Russian reaction is a key issue now.”
“We’re in a bind. We’ve been waiting to get all our facts straight before dumping something like a black hole in the President’s lap. Of course, until this morning we didn’t know that it was made here, nor that the Russians were on to us.
“There’s no time now for a formality like an NIE,” Isaacs continued. “We’ve got a real crisis. We must get the story from that lab and then pass it to the President directly. I think the DCI will see it that way, but that’s why I want you to get on that reaction estimate. We’ll want that as part of the package.”
Isaacs looked at his watch. “It’s 10:45 now, 8:45 in New Mexico. I should be able to catch something at Andrews that will get us out there by mid-afternoon, local time. It’ll take a few hours to check out the lab. I might make it back here by midnight.
“I’ll suggest to the DCI that he lay the groundwork for an emergency meeting of the National Security Council about then. And just hope the Russians don’t push the button for twelve hours.”
“All right,” said Baris, rising to leave. “I’ll get on it.” He strode quickly across the room and out the door.
“Kate?” Isaacs called, and she appeared in the doorway, attuned to the emergency atmosphere.
“Tell the DCI I’m on my way to see him. Top priority. Order a helicopter to Andrews Air Force Base. Forty-five minutes from now, maximum. Half hour better. Arrange for a flight out of Andrews for me and two agents. Call Boswank and get him to assign me two of his people. Call Danielson and Runyan in Arizona and arrange for a flight for them. Destination for all of us is Holloman Air Force Base near White Sands, New Mexico. Arrange ground transportation there. We’re headed for a laboratory about forty miles away, up in the mountains. Better yet, see if you can get another chopper to take us from Holloman to the lab. Here’s the name of the lab and of the guy in charge.” He scribbled on a memo pad and handed it to her. “I’ll want to talk to him when I get back from seeing the DCI. And call Phillips in La Jolla and talk to Gantt while you’re on the line to Arizona. I want Phillips here this evening prepared for an NSC meeting. They may want to get together in Pasadena to assemble the relevant information.”
“Yes, sir.” Kathleen finished making notations on her pad and bustled back into her office.
Isaacs steeled himself and then headed off to hand his boss the second shocking revelation in less than twelve hours.
Danielson awoke in her tent in the waxing Arizona heat with the smell of Runyan about her. Over breakfast she felt as if she were two people. One of her talked business with Gantt as if nothing had happened. Her other self was full of Runyan and jolted every time he seemed to give her a special knowing glance. Gantt displayed no reaction, just smiled discretely to himself.
The call from headquarters came as they were finishing breakfast and galvanized them into action. They barely had time to throw their things together before the whupping of the Marine helicopter from Yuma broke the desert stillness. At the Yuma Air Station Danielson chatted casually with Runyan for the benefit of the strangers around them and continued to shout her secret messages until the transport was warmed up, ready to ferry them east to New Mexico.
Back in the desert, the camp settled into busy routine. Late that morning, one of the Marines relaxed in front of his tent, waiting for lunch. He didn’t understand the technical functions of the camp and didn’t expect to. He was assigned his job and did it. Nevertheless, he thought it strange that the chief of the operation would take time out to squat, motionless, at the edge of the camp with his index finger thrust past the second knuckle into a small hole in the ground.
Chapter 16
A faint rush of electromagnetic waves carried the orders from a Soviet ground station on the Kamchatka Peninsula. On the hunter-killer satellite a switch popped shut, releasing the latent energy in a battery and generating a healthy blue spark elsewhere in the circuit. The spark jostled and heated the fragile molecules of a volatile material. The heated matter expanded violently, its force focused by a tough surrounding casing. A detonation wave raced outward in a fury that shot in a narrow arc into space.
A few hundred yards away, a sleek white cylinder decorated with a small red, white, and blue emblem floated with deadly grace. It was directly in the path of the onrushing explosion. Then the onslaught was full upon it, the pressure soaring ferociously, the outer wall crumpling, the shock wave engulfing everything within. With the shock came heat, heat that triggered circuits in the cylinder.
In a repeat of the pattern played out only instants before, switches tripped, power surged, tiny sparks crackled and carefully designed chemical explosives imploded upon a finely machined, slightly warm sphere of metal, violently squeezing it.
The shock from the first explosion arrived at the same instant. The sphere was warped; the focus of its compression altered. It existed for a brief moment, teetering on the edge of consummation. Each part of it fed neutrons into the others. Deep in the dense nuclei of its atoms, reactions were triggered splitting the nuclei apart, releasing vastly more energy than the penetrating neutrons possessed and more of the catalyzing neutrons as well.
Then the moment passed. The wracking shock and the partial release of nuclear energy amplified the distortions of the sphere. The chain reaction damped, and the sphere of radioactive metal dissolved into harmless shards. In a heartbeat, the cylinder was gone.
Nearby, another cylinder, larger, ungainly, stirred into menacing wakefulness. Ports slid open in its sides. It rotated and slurred. Taking aim. Awaiting instructions.
By shading his eyes from the midday Sun, Isaacs could make out the town of Alamagordo as the military transport continued its descent toward Holloman Air Force Base. He glanced around at his companions, Pat Danielson and Alex Runyan whom they had picked up on a quick stop at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, and the two Agency men. Although the need was remote, they could provide security backup. The hollow feeling in his gut reflected his anticipation of the significance of this venture. They were headed for the source, the key to the myriad tangled events. He thought back to the simple anomalous seismic signal he had toyed with while on leave last March, over four months ago. His thoughts strayed to Runyan’s voracious beast rifling through the Earth and to the paranoiac escalation threatened by the note from Korolev.
Maybe not so paranoid. He played a game of role reversal he had often found useful. How would the President of the United States and his military and civilian advisors react to being informed that the Russians, deliberately or otherwise, had created a menace so hideous that it would eat away the substance of the Earth? Even with the damage done, the urge to retaliate, fed by hatred and fear, would be strong, visceral. An image of a battered child who finally takes an ax to his tormentor slipped into his mind. He knew there were Americans who would argue that if the Russians had been the perpetrators, the time would have come to rid the world of them, before going on to face the ultimate menace. Could this development be the final straw for the Soviets, the one that pushed them over the brink in an attempt to eliminate their prime antagonist, despite the consequences? And role reversal, hell, he thought. How will the President react when he’s informed this evening that his own team has committed this inconceivable atrocity?