Long Road to Mercy (Atlee Pine, #1)(101)

“I was the one who gave them to him, along with the coordinates of this cave.”

Pine stiffened. “So, the North Koreans are trying to nuke the Canyon? The peace talks were just a sham on their part?”

“No, of course they’re not trying to nuke the Grand Canyon,” was Roth’s surprising reply.

Pine looked gobsmacked by his reply. Then she said stubbornly, “But there was a man named Sung Nam Chung looking for you. He worked for the North Koreans.”

“That may well be, but the North Koreans didn’t put this here.” Roth paused. “We did.”

The blood slowly drained from Pine’s face. “‘We’?”

“Well, certain very powerful elements within the U.S. government did so.”

“How the hell do you know that!” snapped Kettler. “Our people putting a nuke here? That’s nuts!”

“I agree, it is madness. But nevertheless, that’s what happened.”

“How can you be so sure?” asked Pine.

“Because I recognize the materials from which it was created. It’s Russian made.”

“But that’s Korean writing on the side there.”

“Russia supplied North Korea for years with material for making nuclear devices. Some of those materials were used to make this bomb.”

“Again, how can you be sure?” persisted Pine.

In answer Roth took a battery-powered screwdriver from a bag set next to the device and unscrewed the top panel of the device. He lifted it off, and held it up.

“The engraved writing on the inside of this panel, what language does that look like to you?”

“It’s the Cyrillic alphabet,” said Pine, examining it closely. “Russian.”

Roth put the panel aside. “That’s right. It states the place of origin and the serial number of the part. It’s just recycled.”

Pine said, “But if Russia supplied North Korea with nuclear material, it would make sense that it would have a Russian imprint. So how can you be sure that North Korea didn’t place it here?”

“Because this weapon was going to be the excuse to destroy North Korea. And I doubt very much that they would want to be a party to their own annihilation.”





Chapter

56



PINE AND KETTLER looked at each other and then stared at the nuke.

Pine finally settled her gaze back on Roth. “You’re going to have to explain that.”

“It’s fairly simple. The Russians supplied us with this tactical nuclear weapon, and our country placed it here.”

“Why in the hell would our country want to blow up the Grand Canyon?” said Pine.

“This bomb can’t detonate. Which is the definitive reason I know that the North Koreans did not place it here.”

“But how do you know it can’t go off?” asked Pine.

“Because it’s lacking vital components.”

“What components?” asked Kettler.

“I can give you the layman’s thumbnail.” He pointed to the device. “This is what is termed a fusion bomb, or a thermonuclear weapon. It actually creates its destructive force in much the same way the sun creates energy. A conventional detonation is called the primary stage. That sends the fissionable uranium into a chain reaction, which results in an explosion producing heat at several million degrees. This heat and power is reflected back into the uranium core, which commences the second stage. This phase initiates fusion, and the explosion resulting from this secondary stage destroys the uranium container. The released neutrons then result in the fusion that makes for the thermonuclear event. Do you follow?”

Kettler scratched his cheek. “Damn, if that’s the dumbed-down version, I don’t want to hear the complicated one.”

Roth added, “The parts that were left out include the lithium-six deuteride, a functional reflector, and an appropriate tamper. Without that, you’ve basically got a pile of uranium and hydrogen atoms with nowhere to go.”

“Then what the hell was the purpose of placing it here?” asked Kettler.

Pine answered. “So we could use it as the reason to attack North Korea. That’s what Sung Nam Chung meant when he said he agreed with me that if the nuke went off, North Korea would be destroyed. He was trying to find the bomb and stop the plan.”

“Only he couldn’t know the real plan,” said Roth. “The bomb was never going to go off, but it nonetheless would be used against North Korea as though it had.”

“But if it lacked the vital components, wouldn’t that raise suspicions of it being bogus?”

“Who would know that?” countered Roth. “Journalists weren’t going to open it up and check the guts. And when they did get around to having ‘experts’ examine it, they would just tell them that those parts had been taken out afterward, just to make sure no accident happened. I can only imagine the media frenzy when the government announced that they’d found this in a cave in the Canyon. They would have choppered this out of the Canyon for all to see on live TV.”

“What would they have done after the device was made public?” asked Kettler.

“I think there would have been a presentation at the UN with graphs and slides, and documentation of exactly how the North Koreans had managed to put a nuke in the Canyon. All fabricated, of course, but seemingly all aboveboard and plausible.”