Tom Avitabile - The Hammer of God

“Yes sir. I am afraid whatever it is, is going to be down there for good.”

The President looked around the room. “Anything else?” When no one answered, he said, “Again, job well done, commander. My commendation and gratitude to you and your crew.”

“Thank you, sir. I know the crew will be honored.”

The SECNAV ended the call and said, “Wes is a rock-steady commander, sir. It’s no surprise the TR has numerous battle E’s for….

Then the intercom interrupted. “Mr. President, the National Security Advisor would like to join you.”

“Send him in, Doris.”

The NSA walked in and grabbed the remote to one of the five TVs in the Oval Office. He was getting numbers from his cell phone. “564. Got it!”

He punched 5-6-4 into the remote and on channel 564 was a feed from Al Jazeera. A ski-masked man sat reading a statement. Just then, another man from the State Department entered the office as interpreter and started translating immediately, “… praise unto him. The good and righteous forces of the brotherhood have on this day cut off the head of the great serpent in our holy waters. We have, in one act of justice, vaporized the mighty fleet of the Infidels. We have melted their ships and sent their sailors to an agonizing death. This is the power of the true, the righteous, the believers. And this is the fate of the Infidel. Allah be praised.”

On the screen, the whole thing started again. First, there was music then some hokey graphics of an old A-bomb test, scratches and all, superimposed over a picture of an American aircraft carrier. Then to the spokesperson in the mask who said, “Brothers of the great battle, we come to you tonight with joyous hearts and the goodness of praise onto him… The good and righteous….”

“That’s enough; we get the gist,” the President said.

“Obviously, they pre-recorded that and don’t know their mission failed yet,” Bill observed.

“Thank God,” the NSA said.

“It certainly supports the fact that the attack was with the loose nuke,” Ray said. “Melting ships, vaporized fleet.”

“It makes sense to me,” the SECNAV said. “The TR all by herself is one of the most powerful entities on earth. She is definitely a crown jewel of America’s foreign policy and, as such, a big prize to bag. Taking out an entire American Carrier Strike Group with the nuke would have been a grand play and one the world wouldn’t soon forget.”

“Also, she is purely a military target,” Reynolds added, “so world recrimination would be less than if they nuked, lets say, New York or L.A. where millions of civilians would die. It kind of makes sense politically.”

“When did these guys ever start making sense?” Hiccock wondered aloud. He started coming to the realization that he had been wrong about a detonation on U.S. soil. It bothered him; it shouldn’t, but it did nonetheless.

The looped message played one more time then it was abruptly cut off mid-sentence and a slide in Arabic went up.

“I think they just found out they celebrated a bit prematurely.”

The story on the attempted nuclear attack on the TR broke and broke big. The Defense Department’s immediate release of the video from the carrier that showed the attempts to hail and warn the approaching boats, the warning shot, and the inevitable explosions made for great TV. The sound of the nuke alert siren was clipped off the official release version. Also priceless was the almost pitiful way the terrorist spokesperson was bragging about the success of the attack and its abrupt removal from the airwaves.

Along with a giant sigh of national relief, blustering political posers invaded the cable and on-air news channels rewriting recent history. Most of them now clearly pointed out their skepticism over a terrorist actually detonating the suitcase nuke in a major city, declaring that they had an inkling that all these guys really wanted to do was attack a military target.

Then, in a wave of nationwide Alzheimer’s, everyone chastened President Mitchell for allowing America to think that its cities were ever in peril, when surely his experts and daily security briefings must have been telling him about the intended attack on the carrier.

Two final cultural nails were put into the coffin of the loose nuke nightmare. The first was that the website, MyCEP.com, went from four million hits a day, down to forty-four. Then came a “Saturday Night Live” parody of the Al Jazeera “Melted Ships” video. In this version, the masked terrorist spokesperson kept having premature orgasms as he tried to follow the script. It ended with a shot of 72 virgins, some bored, some sleeping, and some playing solitaire up in Heaven.

The audience response was the convulsive laughter born out of the deep terror shared just a few days earlier.

“I think it’s a great idea. You and my mom can plan my kid’s life. All I’ll have to do is show up and pay for everything.” Bill was being sarcastic — big mistake with a pregnant woman.

“Hey, I pay for just as much around here as you. And she’s your mother! God knows how she survived you.”

“Cool your jets, lady. I was kidding. Although I do think you and my mom getting some time together is a good idea. Besides, my dad loves you.”

“He’s so sweet to me. So it’s set then for next Thursday.”

“Yes, only we’ll stay in a hotel. Somewhere midtown.”

“They’re not going to like that.”

“Their apartment in Commack is too small for us and the Secret Service detail and it’s too much work for all of us to go upstate to the cabin. Besides, you’ll lose Dad to the fish up there.”

“They’d never let you splurge for a hotel room for them.”

“First off, we’ll fib a little and tell them Uncle Sam is paying for it. And second, since we have tickets to take them to the play Wednesday, then dinner after, where we will tell them we are going to get remarried, it makes sense for them not to go all the way back to Long Island late at night. I’ll call her after we eat.”

“What do you want for dinner?” Janice asked glad for a change of subject.

“Whatever. Don’t go to any trouble.”

“No trouble. Do you want pasta, meat, chicken, what?”

“Well, maybe if you could make that chicken dish with the sun dried tomatoes and the wine sauce… and maybe a little ziti with pesto on the side. Oh, and those cheesy croutons in a Caesar salad. Or with the blue cheese dressing if it’s too much trouble to make Caesar. Oh, and maybe you could steam some asparagus with that hollandaise sauce from the pouch?”

“From the pouch?”

“Hey, I don’t want you to go to too much trouble.”

“You don’t want me to go to too much trouble… but a little is okay?”

“Hey, you asked!”

“Go sit down, dreamboat, and the kitchen staff will have dinner ready in about an hour.”

“You sure it’s no trouble?”

“Ahhh, shut up, already.”

Bill went into his study. Now that the nuke was absent and accounted for, much of America got back to living a normal life. For the Hiccocks, that meant making plans to go up to New York. Bill had a speaking engagement up there and he needed to decommission Bridgestone and Ross, officially, face to face.

When word came of the death of the Palestinian truck driver, it matched an account from B amp; R that their truck driver, Jamal, had dropped off what he thought were plumbing supplies at another truck in the desert driven by a Palestinian. Pictures of the dead man were confirmed as the driver to whom the “hot load” was transferred, by Jamal, who was now very grateful and talkative in return for American radiation therapy. Joey placed the report in the normal pile with a note reading “Possible route of Roosevelt Bomb” (which is what they were calling the exploded suitcase nuke now).