you get a lot of real sticky weather conditions in the northern Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea.
“There’s often rain, and a dense, warm sea mist being carried along on a strange kind of wind, always feels too hot, but plays hell with the visibility, and pulls up a heavy sea.
“Now if I was going to take out an American warship I’d definitely do it in July or August. If I was a real fundamentalist who hated the U.S.A., I’d probably go for the Fourth of July. In my view they were four days late.
“But their timing was otherwise perfect. Dark falls quickly in the Middle East — by around six-thirty in the evening. The submarine would have come in close then, checking on the carrier every twenty minutes, at periscope depth, for maybe two hours. At around eight-thirty they were in position, waiting off her starboard bow.
“At nine o’clock local, we know they struck. At this time they were aware that there were still eight or nine hours of pitch-black darkness to come, making pursuit out of the question, ’specially with the predictable fog. Perfection makes me nervous. And these guys, whoever the hell they are, got a lot of things dead right.”
The President was thoughtful. “I would like someone to fill me in on exactly why the accident theory is so hard for an expert to accept. Admiral Morgan…?”
“We’re back to Commander Baldridge on that. Bill, run the technology past the President, would you?”
“Sir, let me start by assuming you have only limited knowledge of how a nuclear warhead works. Basically we are dealing with two hunks of radioactive material, probably uranium 235. Like all metals this is made up of atoms — this is a very little guy, about one four-hundredth of a millionth of an inch in diameter, which operates like a tiny solar system. Its core is the nucleus, made up of neutrons and protons. It is this nucleus which concerns us.
“The trick is to upset the basic balance of the atom’s nucleus, and somehow split it. We do it by helping extra neutrons to hit the nucleus which causes the whole thing to become unstable, and start to split apart. In turn, this generates energy, releasing more neutrons to bombard all the other nuclei, starting off a lethal chain reaction, with the bombardment process occurring 400 million million times in a split second.
“While all this is happening, the whole thing is being held together by the mechanism of the trigger, just long enough for a massive buildup of energy, and then a gigantic explosion.
“We achieve this in a warhead by placing two hunks of highly radioactive uranium 235 a safe distance apart on the edges of the warhead. The idea is merely to slam them together with sufficient force to hold the material together in one super critical piece, while the chain reaction goes completely and explosively out of control.
“To do this we have two explosive charges which must be detonated at precisely the same time, accurate to within one-thousandth of a second, in order to slam both hunks of uranium into head-on collision with each other, with precise force. If even one of the charges does not explode on time, or fails to explode correctly, the warhead will simply not function. The electronic impulse must activate the explosive on both sides, at the exact same moment. One half hitting the other is not sufficient for full force. They must be blasted into each other precisely as designed.
“There is a lot of room for error here, and the trigger device is very delicate. It must be set and activated with absolute precision. The radioactive material must be fabricated and assembled with immense care.
“You guys really think all this happens by some kind of a fluke…an accident…? Forget it. It could not, and did not, happen.”
“Thank you, Commander,” said the President. “I’m grateful for the explanation. Nonetheless, I know that everyone here understands the gravity of the implications. We will not be deviating in any way from the accident theory. Neither, of course, would any other nation in our position.”
For a moment, the great man hesitated, then he looked up and half-smiled. “It’s a funny thing, but from the moment Bill here mentioned he thought we’d been hit, I’d had it in my mind that there was some kind of an enemy submarine stalking our giant carrier and finally getting to the right range for the torpedo shot. But it’s not like that at all, is it?”
“Nossir,” said Admiral Morgan. “He did not do it like that. That submarine commander
“Yeah, I guess you would,” replied the President. “And right now there is only one thing that really matters. We must make someone pay…someone, somewhere, is going to pay a terrible price. The people of this nation did not elect me to preside over the destruction of the Navy — at the hand of some fanatic.
“If it should come down to two, or even three, suspects…I’ll hit the whole lot of them before I’ll let anyone get away with it.”
He glanced up at Admiral Dunsmore, who seemed to be shaking his head. “Scott? You have some kind of a moral problem with that?” the President said.
“Absolutely not, sir. I was just thinking about the irony of the situation — Admiral Chester Nimitz was the master of the trap. At Midway, he ordered the American fleet to wait and wait for Yamamoto’s carriers to come to us — and then we struck, hard and fast, sank four of them with dive bombers from right off the decks of the
“Hmmm,” murmured the President. “We lost a carrier, too, didn’t we, at Midway?”
“Well, sir, the
“Oh, I thought she sank.”
“She did, sir, but that was three days later.”
“More bombs?”
“No, sir. They got her with a submarine.”
5
The presidential party entered the private elevator used by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and descended to the Pentagon garage accompanied by two U.S. Marine guards and two Secret Service agents. The other Navy brass remained in conference, except for Bill Baldridge, who arrived in the garage four minutes later. He reached the Mustang just as the three-car White House motorcade moved off through the lines of parked vehicles toward the bright light of the entrance.
As the big limousines swept past, Lieutenant Commander Baldridge stood back and saluted his Commander- in-Chief. The President, sitting alone in the rear seat, involuntarily returned the salute. And he glanced back at the Kansas officer, who was still standing quite still, a lonely, defiant figure among a thousand cars. “So long, Bill,” he muttered. “God go with you…and me.”
It was a little after seven-thirty in the evening when Bill finally left Washington and set off for Virginia, recrossing the Potomac and heading south along the west bank of the river. The traffic was still heavy and it took him thirty minutes to cover the sixteen miles to the Mount Vernon turnoff.
In another dozen miles he ducked left off the parkway onto a small country road, and in the glow of the July sunset he sped through a woodland drive into the precincts of a majestic, white-columned colonial house, built on a bluff overlooking the upper reaches of the Potomac estuary, with views across to the heights on the Maryland shore. By any standard, it was a spectacular piece of property, and it had taken the entire proceeds from the sale of one of the grandest houses on Boston’s Beacon Hill to buy it. The pity was, its owner now had a job of such magnitude, his time here was very limited. These days he lived almost exclusively in the official residence in the Washington Navy Yard, with its electronic security, and staff. But never a day passed without the great man thinking wistfully of this place.
A U.S. Navy guard, on duty in the foyer, opened the huge front door for Bill, took his bag, and led him into a high, bright summery room full of joyous, rose-patterned English chintz. But the slim, blond fifty-fiveish lady who advanced toward him wore a plain dark green silk sheath dress, with a single strand of pearls. Her smile seemed tired, and she held out her arms to him as if welcoming a little boy. Suddenly, the iron-clad discipline he had
