CONUS
Army Intelligence Detachment A
LTC Spence’s Mission, Over-Eye
Outside Alpine, Brewster County, Texas
0800 hours Sierra
Comment of the Moment: “Cruz said, “Thirty seconds before critical mass.”
Spence spoke hurriedly and briefly. He gave the password to call off the drone strikes. The voice on the other end verified his code. Affirmation was given for the stand down.
Spence motioned the two to come near to him. He said, “Men, we have very little time to do anything. We have time to do one thing only. We can get in the truck and run. Or we can stay here and try to disarm the bomb.
Cruz counted, “six minutes.”
Spence said, “If we get in the truck and drive like hell is after us, we could probably reach Alpine. We could probably be relatively safe there. We could also chase the terrorists, too.
“Or we can stay here. We can possibly defeat the terrorist’s intent of screwing up a large part of Texas. If the bomb goes off, this area will be unusable for thousands of years. The radioactive fallout will spread on the prevailing winds and an even greater area of Texas will be uninhabitable.
“Lots of people will die!
“So, do you want to run, or do you want to try to save a small part of America and a bunch of people?”
He looked at Cruz. He raised an eyebrow.
Cruz exclaimed, “¡Hijola! I’ve never been much good at running away from trouble. I’ve always run toward it.” He paused, “Shit…I’ll stay with you, if you’re staying.”
Spence turned to Harvey.
Harvey looked away. He looked at their truck. He looked at his watch.
Finally, he looked at Spence and blurted, “Fuck the downy duck. If you two are staying, I’m staying.”
Spence turned and walked to the crate holding the device. He walked around it, looking for information on it. Then he saw the markings.
He said, “Look here. Those look like Korean glyphs.” He asked the other two, “What do you think?”
Harvey said, “Probably....”
Cruz said, “Yeah. I’ve seen one of them in Seoul outside of Rosie’s bar.”
Spence asked, “What does it mean?”
Cruz shrugged and said, “I dunno. It had a picture of an atomic cloud beside it.”
Spence complained, “Aw shit. Some help you are,”
Cruz grunted, “Sorry!”
Then he said, “five minutes.
Spence speed dialed Aleumdaun’s number. It was 0930 in Texas, and it was 2230 in the evening in Korea. He listened: one ring, two rings, three rings, four rings, and on the fifth ring, he heard a recording in Korean, and finally one in English.
The recording said she was unable to come to the phone.
He hung up. He squawked, “Ah God. What to do?” He walked over to the nuclear device.
Cruz counted, “Four minutes.”
Harvey stood from where he squatted beside the crate. He pointed at his watch and their pickup.
Spence looked at him and said, “Men, we either have to run like hell, or get this thing unarmed. What do you two want to do?”
His phone rang.
He said, “Spence!”
Aleumdaun said, “Colonel Spence. I see you called my number.”
Voice quivering with desperation and excitement, he wailed, “Oh, God. Aleumdaun, it’s you!”
With uncertainty in her voice, she said, “Yes? What is going on there?”
He said, “We have a crate with Korean markings on it. Inside is what appears to be ah…an egg. We don’t know how to stop the timer on it, or disarm the device.”
She replied, “Oh, no!”
He asked, “Can you help us?”
She remembered, “Team Under-Eye had a similar problem in the worm hole.”
Spence repeated himself, “Can you help us.”
She asked, “What do you want to do?”
Spence was almost shouting now, “We want to turn it off, or disarm it!”
Cruz griped, “Let’s just shoot the damned timer with our 9 millimeters.”
Harvey said, “Shush!”
She commiserated, “Oh, my! If I were there and could see what you have, I might be able to help, but I don’t know what you have.”
Spence quickly asked, “What problem did you have in the tunnel?”
She said, “Oh, we found an egg in a crate in a worm hole under South Korea.”
Spence said, “Yes!” He remembered Mungo’s report.
She continued, “It contained an explosive device.”
Cruz counted, “three minutes.”
Spence said, “Ah, hell. We’re committed now. We’ve got to stop this timer. Aleumdaun, what can you tell us?”
She stammered, “Oh, dear. Ah...oh...Okay, okay. You probably have a plutonium device which requires circular conventional explosives to explode and compress the plutonium core to a critical mass, as opposed to the gun type method.”
Spence shouted, “We don’t have time for theory.” Forcefully he asked, “How do we stop the fucking timer?”
Cruz interjected “I vote we take our pistols and shoot the sumbitch.”
Aleumdaun paused, and then took a breath, “No! You’ve got to take the hatch off. If you have a power drill, you can have it off within a minute. Without a drill, it will take you two minutes.”
Spence said, “We don’t have a drill. Let’s get started with our pocket tools. Either of you have a knife with a screw driver blade?”
Harvey offered, "I have a knife with a flat screw driver blade.”
Cruz looked at the device, “It takes a Phillips head, a small one.”
Spence said, “Mine is flat head.”
Cruz said, “Mine is a Phillips head.”
Aleumdaun explained, “Only one of you should be in front of the hatch opening. The radio activity...may be...may be damaging to the person working there.”
Spence repeated her message.
He looked at the other two. He said, “Here, give it to me. I’ll do it. You men get in the truck and drive like hell out of here.”
Harvey said, “No, sir, I’ll do it. Give the blade to me.”
Cruz said, “Hell, no! I’ll do it. This is a job for a technician, not a fucking officer.” Using both hands, as if he were warming his hands by rubbing them together, he began unscrewing the latch plate.
He called out, “Two minutes.”
He had the plate off in about a minute and called out, “One minute left!”
Aleumdaun asked Spence, “What do you see?”
Spence asked Cruz what he saw.
Cruz said, “I see about a bazillian wires. A bunch are connected to some oddly shaped metal.”
Spence repeated the message to Aleumdaun, and then he stuck his phone up to Cruz’s ear.
She asked, “What is on the other side of the metal?”
Spence and Harvey were close enough to Cruz that they too could hear Aleumdaun.
Cruz complained, “I don’t know. It’s so tight in there I can’t see clearly.”
Then he said, “Thirty seconds to critical mass.”
Spence and Harvey looked at each other. They shrugged their shoulders and bent down behind Cruz to look inside the case.
Over their shoulders, Spence softly said, “Gentlemen, it has been an honor to serve with you.”
Both agreed, “Likewise, sir.”
Aleumdaun explained, “If there is a nuclear core, it will be a gray ball surrounded by conventional explosives. It will look like a solid mass. If that is true, you should try to pull the wires loose from the ends of the explosives.”
Cruz told her, “I can see the explosives, but I don’t see any gray balls.”
He said, “fifteen seconds.”
She exclaimed, “Oh. That sounds familiar...but wait ...not enough time. Get away from the bomb. Get behind something large and solid, and face away from the device.”
All three said, “What?”
Cruz said, “Ten seconds to critical mass
She ordered, “Do it now. Don’t question me.”
Cruz stood, and began backing.
Spence and Harvey, in order not to be run over by Cruz, backed up. They all turned and ran toward a boulder. They rounded the boulder crouched down and watched the device counter until two seconds were left. Then they ducked and turned away from the device.
An enormous explosion shook the ground. Their legs jerked with the earth and they fell to the ground.
Harvey looked around and gasped, “What? Are we still alive?”
He pinched himself. He let out a yelp! “That hurt.”
Spence asked, “What happened to the nuclear explosion?”
Cruz, who still had the phone to his ear explained, “She says the nuclear core was missing, the same as it was for the device they found in the tunnel. The explosion was how you set off a nuclear device.”
Harvey asked, “What? We’re not dead? Is that it?”
Spence was smiling and dancing around. He beat his chest as if he had just sacked the quarterback, and said, “Holy shit. Shit, shit, shit. Chesty Puller, you got nothing on me!”
Realizing the danger was over, Harvey said, “Damn straight. Who’s your daddy now, downy duck?!”
Cruz grinned, “Yeah! You know what that bumper sticker says?”
Spence said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Cruz said, “You know, the one that says, ‘Shit happens.’”
Spence said, “Jesus, Cruz! What is that? Some kind of enlisted humor?”
Cruz grinned and shrugged. “Nah, it’s just me, I’m kind of weird sometimes. I mean, Hell, I was surrounded by terrorists and then I faced a nuclear bomb, and I just barely survived a nuclear explosion.”
From the phone Aleumdaun said, “There was no core. It was not a nuclear explosion. It was a dynamite explosion.”
Cruz cursed, “Shit! Don’t spoil this,” and he passed the phone to Spence.
Harvey was wearing a large smile.
Spence looked at him.
Harvey said, “Well, I didn’t run like a rabbit.”
“For a minute there, I wondered if you would.”
“It did cross my mind, but the shame would have killed me.”
Spence added, “Not to mention your military career!”
Harvey yelped, “Hey, I did volunteer to unscrew the hatch.”
Spence nodded, “Yes, and you restored my faith in you. I’m just standing here happy to be alive and jacking you up to see how much you can take.”
Sarcastically, Harvey said, “Thank you, sir.”
Spence asked, “I wonder if the other eight locations had the same effect?”
Harvey explained, “If they were supposed to detonate at about the same time, and if they had cores in them, I think we would have seen bright flashes on the horizon by now. We probably would be seeing atomic clouds on the horizon.
“You know what I mean?”
He paused, “I mean when the scientists set off the first atomic bomb in New Mexico at Trinity Site, people in El Paso, two hundred miles away saw the fireball.”
Aleumdaun asked, “Is everyone okay?”
Spence spoke into the phone. He said, “Yes, we are fine. I have to report to our General. We’ve got some follow-up to do here, but we will see you in about a day or so.”
She said, “Very good. I should have some good news for you by then.” She hung up.
Spence said, “I’ll call the Alpine Sheriff’s office, fill him in on what has happened, and ask him to check with the Texas DPS and see what happened at the other sites. Then I’ll call the General.”
A few minutes later Spence reported, “The scenario at the other barricades was pretty much the same. The terrorists warned the DPS that they were about to detonate a nuclear device. The DPS hurriedly warned the civilian drivers, got them out of the way, and after the devices self-destructed, they returned to find that the terrorists had disappeared.
“I think we know where our terrorists went, but that’s going to have to be solved diplomatically. We can’t do it.
“We’re going to have to find a way to put a stop to this before they do it again. But I’m not sure I know how. The territory is too large to cover.
“If they switch to our northern border, our diplomats will have to be on top of that. If they go to either coast the government will have to come up with a plan to stop them,”
Cruz offered, “Maybe the General will know what to do.”
Harvey replied, “Yeah, we have to hope so. They might have some real bombs the next time.”
Spence grimaced, “Speaking of our General; now I have to write up an AAR and get it to him in a confidential pouch.”