James Barrington - Overkill

‘What reason do we give for the flight?’ Hicks asked.

‘Nothing at all. If we tell them a story, they’ll crack it sooner or later and know that we’re up to something. If we tell them nothing, just give them the pictures and let them get on with it, I believe there’s a good chance that they’ll analyse the films, find nothing of interest, and let the matter drop in a few weeks.’

‘Anyone got any better ideas?’ Hicks asked. Nobody spoke. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Do it.’

Turabah, Saudi Arabia

Sadoun Khamil stared intently at the screen of his laptop computer and read the decrypted text from the email message sent by Hassan Abbas three times, then leaned back in his chair to consider it. Like his despised infidel counterpart, Dmitri Trushenko, he had expected one of the Western intelligence organizations to stumble upon the operation sooner or later, as the number of people involved in it grew.

They had, he acknowledged, been lucky so far, but obviously the Americans had suspected or had been told something, hence the flight by the spy-plane. Since the triumph of September 11th, which had worked even better than Hassan Abbas had promised, their security systems had remained on high alert, and they were even more sensitive than before to the possibility of any further attacks. Well, Khamil smiled to himself, it was too late now for them to do anything.

Almost all the preparations were complete, and it only remained for the Russians to conclude their phase of the operation, the delivery of the last two weapons. Then Trushenko would implement the agreed procedure and issue the ultimatum that would permanently humiliate the United States and eliminate the countries of Western Europe as nuclear powers.

Then he and Hassan Abbas would implement their own procedure, agreed to and approved by the al-Qaeda leadership, and about which the Russians knew nothing. And then the world would change, instantly and for ever.

Sunday

Office of the Director of Science and Technology, Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

Muldoon passed the signal from Mildenhall across the table to John Westwood. ‘This isn’t really your field, John, but you’ve been involved from the start. You see what it says?’

Westwood read through the text of the signal, then nodded and slid it over to Ron Hughes. ‘The RAVEN message is beginning to make a bit more sense. This is presumably based upon an analysis of the Blackbird product – by Mildenhall staff?’

‘Yes, with back-up from the recce guys at Beale, who flew across to England a couple of days ago. The ’bird, by the way, was released by the Brits yesterday afternoon, and landed at Mildenhall about nine, local time. The films were developed at Lossiemouth and copies were supplied to the British there. There were no requests to see the radiation detector records, and now we’ve got the ’bird back we can keep that data to ourselves.’

‘Any chance that the Beale people have got it wrong?’ Westwood asked.

‘Unlikely,’ Muldoon said, ‘but the films and detector records should be on their way right now from the airport by courier. I’ve got a couple of our in-house specialist analysts here waiting to look at them. We should have confirmation no later than this evening, but unless they say something different, this is pretty much what we expected, and as RAVEN hinted. The device on the tundra had a calculated yield of about five megatons. That’s around two hundred and fifty times more powerful than the twenty-kiloton Hiroshima device, but only about one quarter the yield of the weapons that the old Bear bombers used to carry.

‘The yield calculation was based upon the estimated volume of matter in the hill and the degree of destruction shown by the Blackbird photographs. They had to make certain assumptions, including the soil type, the depth at which the device was placed and other factors to do with the method of detonation, and the five megaton figure may have to be modified when they’ve had time to do a full analysis, but they think it’s about right.

‘More important,’ he went on, ‘is the radiation detector result, which was nil. Or, rather, nil significant – there’s always some background radiation. The Beale experts calculated the theoretical fallout from a conventional nuclear device of that power, made allowances for the weather patterns over the Asian landmass since the detonation, and for the Blackbird’s altitude, but what they expected the detectors to register simply wasn’t there. What they expected were traces of radio-isotopes strontium 90, caesium 137 and iodine 131, which are released in all nuclear explosions, but they didn’t find any of them in statistically significant quantities. So it rather looks,’ he added, ‘as if the Russians have managed to develop some kind of high-yield, but very low-radiation, nuclear weapon. What amounts, in fact, to a strategic-power neutron bomb.’

‘What I don’t understand,’ Westwood said slowly, ‘is why they’d want to do that.’

Muldoon looked at him. ‘Funnily enough, I’ve been wondering about that too.’

‘I’m not with you,’ Hughes interrupted.

Westwood leaned forward. ‘Think it through,’ he said. ‘The balance of terror – Mutual Assured Destruction – was based on the premise that if the Soviets attacked us, they would suffer unacceptable losses through our retaliatory strikes, and vice versa. Both sides will lose and nobody will win, so there’s no point in launching an attack in the first place.’ He pointed at the signal sheet that Hughes was still holding. ‘That just doesn’t make sense. The yield from that weapon is certainly significantly higher than from our neutron bombs, but they were always intended to be tactical or battlefield weapons, not strategic arms. The fear of nuclear weapons is based on the destructive force of the explosion, but also on the effects of the fallout, the radiation. Take away the radiation, and you take away half the destructive effect of the weapon. And that,’ he added, warming to the theme, ‘would actually favour the enemy – us.’

‘You’d better explain that,’ Hughes said.

‘Right. Let’s suppose that this weapon test was just a demonstration – in fact, the last RAVEN message talked about a demonstration, so this may have been what he meant – and that they had developed high-yield but very low-radiation weapons. Now, if the Russians rearmed with weapons like this, and then attacked the States, we would suffer enormous damage from the detonations. We’d lose whole cities, and the majority of our citizens would be killed, but only – and this is the point – only as a result of the initial detonations and the massive, but short-term, burst of neutron radiation. Nobody would die from the long-term effects of fallout, because there wouldn’t be any. Within a few days we could begin to rebuild our cities, without having to wear NBCD suits, and without worrying about contamination.’

‘You don’t paint a very attractive picture, John,’ Muldoon said.

Westwood smiled thinly. ‘I know, I know. It’s a nightmare scenario, but the Russians must have thought it through. Now,’ he continued, ‘we don’t have any of these fancy new nukes, so if the Russians attacked us we would just have to rely on the good old high-radiation stuff in our subs and ICBMs. And that means that our nuclear response would turn the Confederation of Independent States into an uninhabitable nuclear wasteland. OK, again, nobody really wins and both sides actually lose, but on points we’d be ahead. The CIS might never be able to recover. I mean, just look at them now. Even with all the help the West can give them, they’re still trying to sort out the damage caused by the reactor accident at Chernobyl, and that was over twenty years ago.’