Neutron Force

“The natural assumption is that whomever did this got the itinerary wrong, and thought I was on board,” the President said, shifting in his chair.

“But you suspect otherwise?” the big Fed asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ll assume the Secret Service and Homeland Security have ruled out food poisoning and nerve gas—no, skip that.” Brognola massaged a temple. Not even the best neurological agent could sweep an entire plane of people dead at the same time, along with the dogs in the hold. A massive electrical shock might do it, but there would have been visible arcing and sparks, plus small fires and a lot of charred flesh. The new air cameras hidden on commercial flights weren’t very good, but the ones on Air Force One were top-notch, absolutely the best available, and the digital video had been crystal-clear. He could even hear the engines in the background. Everything alive on VC-25 had been killed without any mark of violence. And that could only be accomplished by a neutron bomb.

All too clearly, Brognola remembered reading about the weapons when he’d first taken the job with the Justice Department. A Dr. Cohen down at Oak Ridge had modified a nuclear bomb so that it would throw off a halo, a corona really, of neutrinos, ultrafast, subatomic particles. The blast of the bomb would destroy only six city blocks, it was pretty small. But the halo of neutrinos would radiate for a mile, killing every living thing it touched. Right down to the ants in the ground. Even microscopic dust mites died. Only plants weren’t affected. With a neutron bomb, an enemy could kill all of the people in a city, but leave the skyscrapers, factories and farms intact for their invading forces to seize.

Brognola shook his head. A bomb that killed people, but not property. That was a thousand times worse than the dirtiest thermonuclear bomb ever made, because the neutron bomb had no downside. It let you capture the cities afterward. There was very little fallout from the quarter-kiloton ignition blast, and thus no downside to restrain the indiscriminate use of the weapon. There were countless international treaties banning the development of the doomsday weapon, and not one neutron bomb had ever been used in actual combat. Until today.

Thoughtfully, Brognola tapped a button on the keyboard and played the video once again. He had seen death before many times, but somehow this felt unclean. The people were slain in their seats, without even knowing that they died. There was no flash of heat, no tingle, no…nothing. Everybody just keeled over in perfect unison.

“Anything from the Watchdogs?” Brognola asked hopefully, playing the video again.

“NORAD reports no thermonuclear explosions over the northern hemisphere, if that is what you mean.” The President sounded annoyed. “Or anywhere else, for that matter. And the halo effect of a neutron bomb has a limited range. Even without the uranium jacket. To reach a plane so low to the ground, the bomb would have had to be detonated within the atmosphere.”

“Rather hard to disguise that.”

“Absolutely.”

“Yet these people must have been killed by a neutrino bombardment,” Brognola stated.

“Yes.”

“Only there was no explosion.”

“Exactly.”

Grudgingly, the big Fed was forced to agree with the President that the conclusion was horrifyingly clear. This was what the President had previously inferred about neutron weapons. For the first time in many years, Brognola felt his blood run cold. There would be no heat flash, noise, radiation, or anything else detectable. Just silent, invisible death. The ultimate stealth weapon.

“So somebody has finally done it,” the Justice man muttered, crumpling the report in a fist, “found a way to build a neutron cannon.”

“Unfortunately, that’s also my conclusion.” The President sighed, rubbing a hand across his face. “Some sort of a cannon, or gun, that can fire a focused beam of neutrinos, but without a nuclear explosion as a primer. How that can be accomplished is beyond anybody’s guess. My scientific advisers don’t even have a theory how the weapon could possibly work.”

“So we check with other experts. Who is the top scientist in the field?”

“Dr. Sayar Himar,” the President replied. “But he can’t help us with the matter, because he’s dead.”

“And when did that happen?” Brognola asked, feeling that he already knew the answer.

“Yesterday. Dr. Himar was on VC-25 riding as the guest of the director.”

Brognola bit back a curse. “This must have been what the director was going to talk to you about, sir.”

“Obviously. He had mentioned something called Prometheus. He had wanted to discuss it.”

“Hmm. Any other crashes reported?”

“None so far.”

“Good.” Brognola grunted. So this was why the President had sent the message to meet him down here in the bunker. If some terrorist organization had a working neutron cannon, all they would have to do was to aim the weapon at the White House and pull the trigger. Again and again, over and over, spraying the entire D.C. area, killing every senator and member of Congress, until America didn’t have an organized government anymore, and the nation started to fall apart.

“Can a neutron beam penetrate this far down?” Brognola asked pointedly. “Are you safe?”

The President shrugged. “Unknown. There are no figures for a focused beam, and Himar isn’t around anymore to take an educated guess. However, we’re safe from a conventional neutron bomb strike. We’re surrounded by massive tanks holding tens of thousands of gallons of water, the only thing that effectively stops a neutron halo. Whether this will work for a focused beam…” He left the sentence unfinished.

“Water stops neutrinos?” Brognola asked skeptically.

“Hydrogen, actually. Anything with lots of hydrogen atoms. Gasoline is excellent. All those big hydrocarbons.”

“What about lead?” Brognola queried.

“Useless. And depleted uranium armor is even worse. In a neutrino halo, the DU plates in an Abrams tank begins to visibly glow as it throws off deadly gamma radiation. Anybody inside is fried in seconds. Anybody standing within fifty feet dies in two days, coughing out their major organs.”

Yeah, radiation poisoning was a particularly bad way to die. “Is there anything, anything at all, totally resistant to focused neutrons?”

“Sadly, no.” The President continued, “There is some experimental boronated plastic armor that might do the trick, but nowhere near enough to coat even a single plane, much less entire buildings. I’ve already put production into high gear, but it will be months before the first plates are available.”

And we could all drop dead at any second, the big Fed thought.

“Hopefully the vice-president is in the Yukon,” Brognola declared. “Or better yet, the other side of the world.”

“He’s in a Navy submarine at the bottom of the ocean,” the President said with some satisfaction. “And the Speaker of the House is in Looking Glass, the flying headquarters of SAC. Only four people knew the exact location of the plane, and none of them would ever talk, even under torture.” He paused uncomfortably. “The Secret Service has my double in Florida at the Miami Beach Open Tournament playing golf.”

Laying aside the laptop, the big Fed understood the distaste in the man’s voice. Having somebody else walk around in public to take a bullet for you seemed cowardly, but it made good sense from a security viewpoint. So far, the Man was on the ball, spreading out the targets so the enemy couldn’t remove the entire echelon of the nation in a single shot…volley—whatever. Brognola glanced at the ceiling. If there was a satellite in orbit armed with a neutrino cannon, any city in America could be wiped clean of all life.

“What’s our defense condition?” the big Fed asked, sitting straighter in the chair.

“As a precaution, I have moved the nation to DefCon Two.”

“Targets?”

“Everybody and nobody. But the missiles are ready to fly at a moment’s notice.”

Great, Brognola thought. A couple of hundred thermonuclear ICBMs armed and ready to go, but without targets. How could things have gotten this bad so fast?

“Now it is the belief of CIA that one of the nuclear powers must have created the weapon,” the President noted, running stiff fingers through his hair. “Possibly China, maybe Iran. But in my opinion that’s nonsense. If another government had such a weapon, they could never dare use it, because every nation in the world would instantly attack them out of sheer self-preservation. And if terrorists had such a weapon, the death toll would already be in the millions.”

“Unless this was a field test,” Brognola told him. Most weapons would be tested in the lab, or at a range. But with a neutron cannon, the only possible test would be a mass execution. Or taking down Air Force One, smack in the middle of a wing of jet fighter escorts.

“What can my people do to help?” the Justice man asked, getting to point of the meeting.

“Find the people responsible and gain control of the weapon. Now, I have every resource of the United States probing the sky for the satellite.” The President paused. “If we can find them, then we’ll blow the damned thing out of existence. Our F-22 Raptors can attack a military satellite even in a high orbit with their new missiles. However, if you remember the Sky Killer incident…”

“The weapon was in space, but the operators were on the ground,” Brognola stated.

“Naturally, if we invented it, I would like the machine intact. Or at least a copy of the schematics. But stopping these people is more important than getting hold of the cannon. Kill these sons of bitches. No mercy.”