The Hammer of God (26 page)

Seaman First Class Orville Hayes was weary and bleary-eyed. He had stayed up all night studying for his petty officer exam. Still, he reported for duty as starboard fantail lookout at dawn. As he scanned the horizon for anything that wasn't wet or blue, he swore that as soon as his watch was over he'd hit the bunk and catch some heavy ‘z' instead of attending the steel beach picnic the crew had planned for tonight.

At first, he panned right over it…then he swept back. He rolled through the focus of his Nikon binocs and, when the image was sharp, he saw that there was something out there. He flipped down his polarizing sunglasses and saw the bouncing bow of a zodiac type boat. No, wait, two zodiac boats heading right at the “Big Stick” right out of the wash of the rising sun reflecting off the inky blue waters of the Persian Gulf. He pressed his chest-mounted, sound-powered microphone and reported to the captain of the watch.

“Sir, this is starboard fantail. I have two bogeys, surface craft, incoming direct vector. I make them to be zodiac type, sir.”

“Roger that, starboard.”

A claxon horn sounded, and the P.A. system called for “Force Protection.” This was a call to stations just shy of battle stations, in which the known threat was not a heavy displacement surface or submerged ship or an airborne intruder like a plane or missile.

Immediately, the radio shack started hailing a warning on all frequencies and in many Gulf languages. “
Craft approaching U.S. warship. Turn away or you will be fired upon. Repeat: turn away or you will be fired upon.
” Ten guns up and down the side of the “Big Stick” took a bead on the incoming boats. The mostly-rubber crafts were essentially impervious to sonar or surface radar scan. So Orville used the low-tech triangulator and read the distance as 700 yards out. He started broadcasting the distance in 50-yard intervals.

Out of the corner of his eye the U.S.S.
Donald Cook,
a guided missile destroyer, was making full-steam to intercept and shield the “Big Stick” in a potentially self-sacrificial gesture, but Orville's time/distance calculations told him they'd never beat the fast, low-slung zodiacs. At 600 yards out, the order was given to fire one across their bow. The auto-loading five-inch gun on the Cook punched out a round that flew like a line drive and exploded in the water 100 yards ahead of the two on-rushing craft. It did not deter them or cause them pause.

“Sir, bogeys are not veering away.”

“All starboard guns: train on incoming boats and await my order to fire.”

The Officer of the Watch turned to the captain of the ship, Commander Wes Halbrook, who had just made it to the bridge. “No response to hailing; they have not changed course and are heading straight in.”

“Weapons loose, Captain. Boatswain, make sure we are running tape.”

“Roger that, Commander.”

“All guns, weapons are free. Fire at 500 yards.”

All there was to do now was watch and hope that maybe these guys would turn away. But they didn't.

Orville winced as Cook's five-inch gun and the 20 mm PHALANX Gatling gun auto-cannon, amidships, opened up as the ocean 496 yards away went up into a wall of blue water, white steam, and orange flame. Then something happened that scared the crap out of him and the better part of the 5,500 men and women who were the crew of “the Big Stick,” U.S.S.
Theodore Roosevelt
. A siren and an automated P.A. announcement tore across the ship and flight deck.

“Nuclear Radiation Detected. Take appropriate measures. Nuclear Radiation Detected. Take appropriate measures.”

Instantly, sprinkler heads started washing down the flight deck and superstructure of the ship. Everyone scrambled to get inside. Orville slid down the railings outside the ladder rungs like a trapeze artist and scurried onto the deck, closing and sealing the hatch behind him.

∞§∞

Bill's government phone went off as he was leaving his office.

It was Li. “I just got another spike.”

Bill grabbed a pencil as he swung back around his desk. “What's the location?”

“Persian Gulf.”

“What country?”

“No, in the Gulf. In the middle.”

“Do you know what it was?”

“No, just a radiation event. Not small, but not mega-tonnage either.”

“Like a suitcase nuke?”

“Possibly.”

“Thanks. Keep me updated.”

Bill ran out of the office and barged into a meeting of Ray's. “Li called with another spike” was all he had to say to get Ray's full attention.

“My God, where?”

∞§∞

Six minutes later, Hiccock, Reynolds, and the President were being briefed by the Secretary of the Navy.

“The Nimitz Class carrier,
Theodore Roosevelt
, CVN 71, went to Force Protection level at 0600 zulu and hailed two zodiac-type craft from nearing. After a warning shot was fired and the boats failed to alter course, the main batteries opened up. Both boats were immediately sunk. At that instant, the nuclear alarms tripped and the boat went into nuclear-safe lockdown.”

“Are the men all right?” the President asked.

“All who were on the deck are going through standard de-con, right now. Time will tell.”

“Mr. Secretary, was there a secondary explosion?” Hiccock asked.

“I don't have that detail yet.”

“Bill, what are you thinking?”

“Sir, our intercept said,
Roosevelt
. I certainly never thought of the aircraft carrier,
Teddy Roosevelt
.”

“Intercept?” the SECNAV asked.

“NSA found two words in a message. One was the name of the safe house where the suitcase nukes were stored and the other was Roosevelt. I am sorry I didn't think of the ship, Mr. Secretary.”

“Doesn't matter, Mr. Hiccock. The ‘Big Stick' was already on war watch. They couldn't have been more prepared if you had a telegram with the exact date and time. But I see now why you asked about the secondary detonation.” The Secretary turned to the President as he gestured to the phone. “May I?”

“Of course.”

As the SECNAV got the commander of the
TR
on the phone, Hiccock thought about the fact that everything could be over. The loose suitcase nuke could now be at the bottom of the sea. It had to be or the commander of the ship wouldn't answer the phone because he, his 97,000-ton warship, and its whole Carrier Strike Group, would be vaporized.

“Go ahead, Commander Halbrook, I have you on speaker with the President, the COS and Sci Ad.”

“As far as we can tell there was no nuclear detonation. There was, however, a nuclear event.”

“This is Hiccock. The boats went down to direct hits, commander?”

“Yes. In all, 10 shells were fired along with two ‘sea whiz' systems on manual.”

“This is the President. Any idea who attacked you?”

“No sir. They disappeared in a blue-white flash, sir.”

“Good shooting, commander.” The president actually pumped his fist as the ex-combat fighter pilot in him responded to the neutralized threat.

“Sir, we train hard for this type of thing. I've got a cool, effective crew here, sir.”

“Commander, it's Hiccock again. You did say CWIS, didn't you?”

“Yes, two of our Phalanx systems open up in addition to the five-inchers.”

“Is that important, Bill?”

“Could be, sir. Those systems fire depleted uranium bullets. Commander, could the sea whiz have accounted for tripping the nuclear alarms?”

“Highly doubtful, Mr. Hiccock. One, they are truly depleted and two, our sensors are calibrated to take our own reactor and weapons like that out of the equation.”

“Commander, do you think you sunk a boat with a suitcase nuke on board?” Ray asked, summing up the whole reason for this call.

“Indeterminate, sir. Something set off the sensors and I guess a breached or destroyed suitcase nuke would let out a spike like that. I
can
tell you that the area remains hot and we are tracking a line of radiation down to the ocean floor.”

“How deep is the water there, Commander?”

“Pretty deep, sir. At least three miles.”

“So we couldn't recover it even if we could get close enough to the radiation,” the President guessed.

“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.”