“What?”
“One of my communications people says the satellites are all out,” Murray explained. “Didn't you know that?”
“No.” Jack pointed for Goodley to get back into the Ops Center and find out. “If that's true, it could scratch the terrorism idea. Jesus, that's scary!”
“It's true, Jack. We've checked.”
“They think ten commercial commosats are nonfunctional,” Goodley said. “All the defense birds are on line, though. Our commlinks are okay.”
“Find the most senior S&T guy you can find — or one of our commo people — and ask him what could snuff out satellites. Move!” Jack ordered. “Where's Shaw?”
“On his way in. Going to be a while the way the roads are.”
“Dan, I'll give you everything I get here.”
“It'll be a two-way street.” The line went dead.
The most horrible thing was that Ryan didn't know what to do next. It was his job to gather data and forward it to the President, but he had no data. What information there was would come in through military circuits. CIA had failed again, Ryan told himself. Someone had done something to his country, and he hadn't warned anyone. People were dead because his agency had failed in its mission. Ryan was Deputy Director, the man who really ran the shop for the political drone placed over his head. The failure was personal. A million people dead, maybe, and there he was, all alone in an elegant little conference room staring at a wall with nothing on it. He hunted a line to NORAD and punched it.
“NORAD,” a disembodied voice answered.
“This is the CIA Operations Center, Deputy Director Ryan speaking. I need information.”
“We do not have much, sir. We think the bomb exploded in the immediate vicinity of the Skydome. We are trying to estimate yield, but nothing yet. A helicopter has been dispatched from Lowery Air Force Base.”
“Will you keep us posted?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you.” That was a big help, Ryan thought. Now he knew that someone else didn't know anything.
There was nothing magical about a mushroom cloud, Battalion Chief Mike Callaghan of the Denver City Fire Department knew. He'd seen one before, as a rookie fireflghter. It had been a fire in the Burlington yards just outside the city, in 1968. A propane tank-car had let go, right next to another trainload of bombs en route to the Navy's munitions terminal at Oakland, California. The chief back then had had the good sense to pull his men back when the tank ruptured, and from a quarter mile away they'd watched a hundred tons of bombs go off in a hellish firecracker series. There had been a mushroom then also. A large mass of hot air rose, roiling as it went into an annular shape. It created an updraft, drawing air upward into its donut-shaped center, making the stem of the mushroom…
But this one was much larger.
He was behind the wheel of his red-painted command car, following the first alarm, three Seagrave pumper units, an aerial ladder truck, and two ambulances. It was a pitiful first response. Callaghan lifted his radio and ordered a general alarm. Next he ordered his men to approach from up-wind.
Christ, what had happened here?
It couldn't be that…. most of the city was still intact.
Chief Callaghan didn't know much, but he knew there was a fire to fight and people to rescue. As the car turned off the last side-street onto the boulevard leading to the stadium he saw the main smoke mass. The parking lot, of course. It had to be. The mushroom cloud was blowing rapidly southwest towards the mountains. The parking lot was a mass of fire and flame from burning gasoline and oil and auto parts. A powerful gust of wind cleared the smoke briefly, just enough that he could see that there had been a stadium here… a few sections were still… not intact, but you could tell what they were — had been only a few minutes before. Callaghan shut that out. He had a fire to fight. He had people to rescue. The first pump unit pulled up at a hydrant. They had good water here. The stadium was fully sprinklered, and that system fed off two 36-inch high-pressure mains that gridded around the complex.
He left his car next to the first big Seagrave and climbed on top of the fire engine. Some heavy structural material — the stadium roof, he supposed — was in the parking lot to his right. More had landed a quarter mile away in the mercifully empty parking lot of a shopping center. Callaghan used his portable radio to order the next wave of rescue units to check both the shopping center and the residential area that lay beyond it. The smaller fires would have to wait. There were people in the stadium who needed help, but his firefighters would have to fight through two hundred yards of burning cars to get to them…
Just then he looked up to see a blue Air Force rescue helicopter. The UH-1N landed thirty yards away. Callaghan ran over towards it. The officer inside the back, he saw, was an Army major.
“Callaghan,” he said. “Battalion chief.”
“Griggs,” the Major replied. “You need a look-around?”
“Right.”
“'Kay.” The Major spoke into his headset, and the helicopter lifted off. Callaghan grabbed a seatbelt, but didn't strap in.
It didn't take long. What appeared to be a wall of smoke from street level became discrete pillars of black and gray smoke from overhead. Perhaps half of the cars had ignited. He could use one of the driving lanes to get closer in, but some of the way was blocked by wrecked and burning cars. The chopper made a single circuit, bouncing through the roiled, hot air. Looking down, Callaghan could see a mass of melted asphalt, some of it still glowing red. The only spot not giving off smoke was the south end of the stadium itself, which seemed to glisten, though he didn't know why. What they could see appeared to be a crater whose dimensions were hard to judge, since they could only catch bits and pieces of it at a time. It took a long look to determine that parts of the stadium structure remained standing, perhaps four or five sections, Callaghan thought. There had to be people in there.
“Okay, I've seen enough,” Callaghan told Griggs. The officer handed him a headset so that they could speak coherently.
“What is this?”
“Just what it looks like, far as I can tell,” Griggs replied. “What do you need?”
“Heavy-lift and rigging equipment. There are probably people in what's left of the stadium. We gotta get in to them. But what about the — what about radiation?”
The Major shrugged. “I don't know. When I leave here, I'm picking up a team from Rocky Flats. I work at the Arsenal, and I know a little about this, but the specialists are at Rocky Flats. There's a NEST team there. I need to get them down here ASAP. Okay, I'll call the guard people at the Arsenal, we can get the heavy equipment down here fast. Keep your people to windward. Keep your people at this end. Do not attempt to approach from any other direction, okay?”
“Right.”
“Set up a decontamination station right there where your engines are. When people come out, hose them down — strip them and hose them down. Understand?” the Major asked as the chopper touched down. “Then get them to the nearest hospital. Upwind — remember that everything has to go northeast into the wind so you know you're safe.”
“What about fallout?”
“I'm no expert, but I'll give you the best I got. Looks like it was a small one. Not much fallout. The suction from the fireball and the surface wind should have driven most of the radioactive shit away from here. Not all, but most. It should be okay for an hour or so — exposure, I mean. By that time, I'll have the NEST guys here and they can tell you for sure. Best I can do for now, Chief. Good luck.”
Callaghan jumped out and ran clear. The chopper lifted right off, heading northwest for Rocky Flats.
“Well?” Kuropatkin asked.
“General, we measure yield by the initial and residual heat emissions. There is something odd about this, but my best figure is between one hundred fifty and two hundred kilotons.” The major showed his commander the calculations.
