believe you, any of you. You all look too well fed, too pleased with yourselves. You were burning the records too eagerly.' The way their posture slumped showed she was right. 'You're all guilty of war crimes.' None of the Boers spoke.
'What do we do with them now?' Clayton said.
There was a gurgling scream from the monitor. The child had chewed through his tongue. Blood spurted from his mouth — he was drowning in it, and his skin was gray, not brown. His eyebrows and jaw worked violently and his lips and nostrils flared and spasmed, a caricature of someone making silly faces. He couldn't be more than ten.
'Commander Fuller,' Ilse said. 'These notes clearly document systematic efforts to genetically engineer a lethal strain of archaea. Successful efforts. Are you satisfied by what you see? Have the rules of engagement been met?'
'Yes,' Jeffrey said quietly.
An electronic tone sounded. Ilse looked at the monitor. The child lay totally still. Ilse glanced at the life signs equipment. His electrocardiogram was flat. Ilse turned to the enemy scientists. 'This is for him and my brother.' She opened fire at the Boers, shooting each of them twice in the head.
INSIDE THE MISSILE BUNKER
Jeffrey watched as Clayton studied the South African nuclear physics package. Clayton used a handheld fluoroscope and an ultrasound probe, leaning over the access hatch near the front end of the missile. SEAL Eight took pictures with a digital camera and took notes for Clayton. Clayton's instruments were hooked up to a laptop they'd brought with them, kept a safe distance from the fluoroscope emitter. Imagery flickered on the laptop screen.
'This the first enemy warhead you've ever seen?' Jeffrey said. He had to bend his head down while he stood, because of the low bare concrete overhead in the bunker.
'This is the first one anybody's seen,' Clayton said, 'so far as I know. Okay, here we go.
…One sophisticated design. Compact, lightweight, uses very little fissile material. Eight, write this down in case the laptop's damaged later.'
Jeffrey saw Clayton glance again at SEAL One, being ministered to by SEAL Two and Ilse at the other end of the bunker. 'Commander,' Clayton said, 'you pay close attention also. In case I don't make it back.'
'Understood,' Jeffrey said.
Clayton cleared his throat. 'The active ingredient, the fissile material, is a seven-centimeter hollow sphere of uranium 235.' He ran some calculations. 'That would weigh five kilograms.'
'That's all?' Jeffrey said.
'This design achieves critical mass by density compression.'
'What's the fuel enrichment?' Jeffrey said.
Clayton eyed a special radiac. 'Ninety-three percent.' 'That's high,' Jeffrey said.
'Higher's more efficient.'
'Did we guess right, three KT?'
'I'll tell you in a minute,' Clayton said.
Jeffrey glanced at the laptop screen. He saw the different warhead layers: initiator at the very core, tamper, shock buffers, neutron reflector. 'What's this shading here, around the edges of the image?'
'The next layer out,' Clayton said, 'a coating of boron. That's to stop stray neutrons on the atomic battlefield, prevent a fizzle from predetonation.'
'Okay,' Jeffrey said, 'which is one problem you don't have underwater. H20 blocks neutrons.' Jeffrey eyed the sonogram. 'Now comes the firing system, outside the boron.'
'Yup…Again, ultrasophisticated. The inner portion's a fast-detonating high explosive, surrounded by slower- detonating hollow cones, with foil slappers at the apex of each cone, wired to the krytrons.'
'The krytrons are what give perfect simultaneous ignition at all the apexes,' Jeffrey said.
'Correct. The firing current vaporizes the metal foil, like when a house fuse blows. Each slapper functions as a tiny rifle.'
'The explosion wave moves down the cones,' Jeffrey said, 'the wave fronts turn convex, and you have a broad base of ignition for the secondary charge.'
'You got it, Commander,' Clayton said. 'That gives you a nice implosion wave… This baby should yield four kilotons.'
'That'll do the job quite well,' Jeffrey said. It occurred to him it would also really do the job on an Allied amphibious ready group and its thousands of marines. Ilse came over and looked at the bomb. She had blood on her gloves.
'The whole thing sounds too elegant,' Jeffrey said.
'It is,' Clayton said. 'This is how our own new A-bombs work. From what we can tell here the Axis isn't lagging any. And remember, a fission weapon can yield up to a megaton, using multiple critical masses.'
'You're kidding,' Ilse said.
'Our boomer fleet's own H-bombs only yield some three hundred kilotons,' Jeffrey said.
'Okay, folks,' Clayton said, 'intel briefing's over. Time to cut the wires into the krytrons.'
'How many krytrons are there?' Ilse said. 'Ninety-two.' SEAL Two glanced up from tending his mortally wounded comrade. 'Commander, hand me another plasma pack. This one's empty and we need to get his BP higher.' Jeffrey fiddled in his bag and pulled out the blood extender.
He handed it to Two, then crouched next to SEAL One. 'How you feeling?' Jeffrey said. SEAL One took the oxygen mask from his face. 'Hurts like hell at the base of my spine, can't feel a damn thing lower down.' He was pale and sweaty.
'You still cold? Want another jacket?'
'No. Thanks. This gillie suit's good for treating shock…But it's awful stuffy in here, and I'm choking from the stink.'
Jeffrey turned up the bunker's ventilation.
'And get this bald asshole away from me,' SEAL One said. 'Sleeping Beauty here.' He made a face at Otto, still out cold. Jeffrey dragged the prisoner to the far corner, none too gently, and left him by the two dead Boer soldiers. Otto started snoring. Jeffrey went back to SEAL One, then made eye contact with Two, saying quietly, 'You're sure there's no way we can take One back with us?'
Two shook his head. 'Moving him's out of the question. The dolphin ride would flex his pelvis constantly. You saw the fluoroscope: he's got secondary projectiles all through his lower GI tract. He'd bleed out in no time.'
'What if we just towed his SDV?' Jeffrey said.
'We still have four klicks on foot through the rough to get back to the river…if we don't hit more patrols and helos.'
'Then how about this?' Jeffrey said. 'New egress plan.' Clayton turned to listen, a wiring crimper and dental mirror in his hands. 'We change to Boer uniforms and use that truck out front,' Jeffrey said. 'We go right down the main drag through Umhlanga Rocks like we own the place. We ditch the truck inside the nature reserve.' SEAL Two shook his head again. 'The surf and wave action would be fatal, not to mention going on a Draeger in his condition. Commander, the underwater pressure would send blood clots to his lungs, his heart, his brain…'
'Leaving the truck in the reserve would give them a clue,' Clayton said. 'And if we were stopped along the way, it would all be over.'
'They'll have roadblocks,' Ilse said. 'And they invented paranoia.'
'You're right,' Jeffrey said. 'It's not about any of us escaping safely. The key is the enemy can't know we were ever here, so they'll believe this thing was internal sabotage.'
'Guys,' One said. 'Cut it out. I'm dying, okay? I can deal with that. It comes with the job sometimes.'
'We never leave a man behind,' Jeffrey said. 'Never.' 'It'll be a cremation,' SEAL One said. 'Yeah, a cremation in place, a nuclear cremation.'
Jeffrey looked at One, so young to die and yet so chipper. Tears came to Jeffrey's eyes. This static phase of
