Kealey took advantage of the moment to call Allison. She had called four times since last night; he felt guilty about not having checked in before this.
“Where are you?” were the first words out of her mouth.
“In a New York taxicab,” he replied.
He gave her a moment to process that, to not ask what she knew he couldn’t answer, and then say, “Oh.”
“Where are you?” he asked.
“At the office,” she said. “No reason to be, though. My morning slate was wiped clean. People are busy trying to figure this out.”
“How is Colin?” Kealey inquired.
“He seems fine,” Allison said. “I’ve been waiting for a shoe to drop, and it hasn’t. And don’t tell me that kids are resilient. He was taken hostage and saw people murdered. If that’s not a recipe for post-traumatic stress, I don’t know what is.”
“No, you’re probably right,” Kealey said, though the first killings he saw in his early twenties were pretty brutal, as well, and he was still waiting for some kind of emotional blowback, as well. It hadn’t happened. Maybe it just manifested itself differently in some people, perhaps driving them to stay in the crosshairs because they liked the all-or-nothing scenarios. “How are you?” he asked. “You were also in the belly of the beast.”
“My memory is blissfully hazy,” she said. “Or maybe it’s just a lack of sleep, or both. As long as I don’t let myself slip back there, I’m fine.”
“Eyes front,” he said. “That’s true about everything.”
“And you?” Allison asked. “Is your being there related to the shootings?”
“It wasn’t when I left, but it is now,” he replied.
“Are they finished? Do you know?”
“I hope so, but I don’t think so,” he said.
She was silent for a moment. “Did you get any sleep last night?”
“I did,” he said. That wasn’t a lie. Over the years, on missions, Kealey had to sleep whenever he had the time, wherever he was.
“Would it be a complete waste of breath to tell you to be careful?” she asked.
“Probably. But it’s good to hear.”
“Do you have any idea when you’re coming back?”
“I’m guessing it’ll be soon,” he said. He didn’t have to add, “Or not at all.”
This was beginning to feel like more than doctor-client concern to him. Or maybe he was wishing it was. A crisis produced strange bonds. It also brushed away the posturing and forced real feelings to the forefront.
The cab had just reached Park Avenue and Seventeenth Street when they heard sirens screaming to the west. They were headed uptown.
“Now what?” the driver muttered.
“Ryan,” Allison began, then stopped.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“ says there’s been another shooting in New York.”
“Where?”
“Port Authority Bus Terminal.”
Kealey leaned toward the open partition. “I need to get to Fortieth and Eighth,” he said.
“Something happening there?”
“I think there is,” Kealey said.
“I’ll take you as far as Times Square. Then I’m goin’ home to Queens,” the driver said. “Sorry.”
“That’s fine,” Kealey said. “Allison? I’ll call you later.”
“Make sure you do-”
“Okay. Bye.”
He clicked off. His head was no longer in the conversation.
As far away as Thirty-Fourth Street, Kealey could already see traffic starting to back up ahead.
“Mister, I’m thinkin’ this is as far as-”
Kealey thrust the fifty and another twenty through the window. “Cut over to Sixth, go up to Fortieth, you can leave me there. Deal?”
The driver took the money and headed up Sixth Avenue. He made it as far as Thirty Fourth Street before police-still on duty at Penn Station-directed them to turn east.
“Sorry,” the driver said, passing back the twenty.
“Keep it,” Kealey said as he opened the door.
“Thanks! Take care of yourself, G-man.”
Kealey grinned. The driver winked back.
HUMINT, Kealey thought. Nothing like it.
Kealey went up to Thirty-Seventh and ran west. The street was the least crowded of all those he’d looked down. He paused only long enough to eavesdrop on something that was coming over a policeman’s shoulder radio.
“Reports the shooter is down, according to Port Authority dispatch.”
Kealey wasn’t convinced. Breathing hard, he hurried ahead, showing his expired credentials quickly to gain access to Eighth Avenue, then again to get by the cordon of blue surrounding the bus terminal.
He knew at once this was far from over.
CHAPTER 28
WHITE SANDS, NEW MEXICO
White Sands Missile Range was America’s largest military facility, covering nearly 3,200 square miles carved from terrain as harsh as its history. On April 6 and 7, 1880, it was the site of the fiercest battle of the Victorio War, between the U.S. cavalry and the Apaches. Even before that it was the site of countless mining operations, ambitious individuals and large corporations staking claims in the rough-hewn mountains adjoining the salt-white sands.
The navy came to the blistering range in June 1946 to join the army in testing V-2 rockets captured from the Germans during World War II. At the time, the navy was interested in expanding the power of its Viking rocket with V-2 technology, the first supersonic rocket to run off of liquid fuel, which resulted in the development of the sleeker, more powerful Aerobee, a small rocket originally introduced in the fifties that was designed for high atmospheric research. Today the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division, White Sands Detachment, was an independent group at the army-operated range. One of its charges was to develop weapons for America’s Strategic Defense Initiative. This sprawling blanket of technology included the Terrier and Tartar missiles and the Aegis weapons system, Rolling Airframe surface-to-air missiles, Vertical Launch Anti-Submarine Rockets, Tomahawk and Sea Sparrow missiles, high energy laser devices, and the Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser and the Sealite Beam Director.
One of its key projects was the Sea Burst, a six-inch guided projectile designed to be fired from the shoulder-mounted Windjammer rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Unlike previous antisubmarine and anti-shipping RPGs, the Sea Burst was a thermonuclear device. At 35 pounds, it was the lightest such device ever designed, packing. 009 kilotons of destructive power. By contrast, the “Little Boy” gravity bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima had the destructive force of approximately 13 KT of TNT. But “Little Boy” was not a focused explosion. It destroyed buildings across a two-mile diameter. The unleashed shock wave, moving faster than the speed of sound, turned structural debris created by the blast into shrapnel, which extended the field of destruction even farther.
It was an extremely effective weapon. However, if used in combat against a nearby boat or fleet, the blowback and fallout would not do the parent battleship any good. Even fired from a safe distance at a port city, it would destroy the port and the city both. Such results were not in the navy’s best interests.
The Sea Burst was designed to surgically obliterate a target with a minimum of collateral radioactive contamination. The delivery system itself had been tested at White Sands with conventional explosions. There were jokes in the bunkers about the comical little “pops” they produced, even though those blasts would be sufficient to punch a hole in 12 inches of alloy steel.
Brigadier General Arthur Gilbert was United States Army, not navy. But daily top secret briefing memos told him everything that was going on at the installation. He had been following the Sea Burst with particular interest because the applications for portable nuclear grenades impacted all branches of the military. It would enable special ops forces deployed in mountainous regions to employ bunker-busting force, rather than having to call in air raids, during which time their targets could relocate. It could enable a single paratrooper, dropped into a city at night, to take out the entire electrical grid of that city.