Barracuda: Final Bearing

He almost smiled as he saw the missiles in the dim light of the dusty overhead lamps. He stepped over the bodies of four guards for a better look, glancing up to see if he was being followed. So far all was quiet. He only needed another minute.

Namuru had spent years studying nuclear weapons. He could recognize and identify any production nuclear missile made by any nuclear power, past or present. And the missiles on the dollies in front of him were definitely old Russian SS-34’s — medium-range ballistic missiles.

Theater nuclear weapons able to reach any major city within 1500 kilometers. Most of the missile bulk was devoted to warhead rather than rocket fuel, which was why their range was so short. But Tokyo was only 850 kilometers away. It was not enough for him to identify the missile model, however Namuru’s mission was to determine beyond any doubt that they were truly nukes, not just dusty hulks of the old SS-34s, or some unknown conventional model of the warhead with conventional high explosive mated to the SS-34’s rocket stage.

All nuclear warheads, he knew, emitted neutron radiation.

Especially an older Russian model. The neutron flux from the plutonium warhead would be enough to cloud a special filmstrip. Namuru stepped over to the weapon body, going through a yellow rope with the three-bladed circular radiation warning sign on it, and attached one of the filmstrips to the nearest warhead, then a strip on the next, and one on the furthest. There were at least twenty missiles in this end of the bunker and there would be no way to have time to test them all. Namuru counted to ten, then pulled the films away, crouching below the weapons. He put each film through a developer and waited another ten seconds, then held the processed film to the light. All three were clouded.

All three had been exposed to high dosages of neutron flux.

All three weapons had nuclear warheads.

Which meant Manchuria could attack Japan and bring her to her knees.

Which meant that the war would begin in days when the high command attacked this facility.

Namuru thought he heard a voice. He pocketed the films and ran out the blast door and into the open, amazed that his body could function after the electrical jolt, but then realizing he was operating on pure adrenaline. He ran past the outbuildings to the trees, and beyond to the burnt-out hole in the fence. There was noise now, a rising siren just starting off on the other side of the bunker, gathering pitch and volume until it howled, an old-fashioned air-raid alarm. He heard the roar of truck engines as he dived through the fence opening and made it back to the trees, where he had stashed his vest and leggings.

He was almost finished.

“So it is true,” General Gotoh said.

“The weapons?”

“They are nuclear,” Gotoh said to Kurita as both men watched the screen, Namuru’s view of the missiles clear in his helmet-mounted camera. Namuru had apparently just gotten rid of the film and begun his escape. “Did you see the film? It clouded. Only neutron radiation can do that so quickly. And only nuclear fuel or nuclear warheads would do that. The SS-34s are live, sir.”

“What happens to Namuru now?”

“We give him a medal. And we keep watching.”

Namuru got the vest and leggings on and pulled the helmet camera out of the helmet by a coiled thread-thin wire, attaching the tiny camera eye to a limb on a tree, then backing away two meters so that the camera was looking at his face.

“Phase nine,” Namuru said to the camera. “The weapons are SS-34s, at least two dozen of them. I have confirmed that they are nuclear. My extraction was successful but I am being pursued. This mission is now complete.”

Namuru listened for a moment, the sirens wailing behind him. He thought he heard footsteps in the underbrush.

It was time.

“To the victory of Japan,” he said, and reached to the back of his helmet to pull the T-handle cord, down to his shoulder blade.

Kurita stared at the screen. Namuru’s face was clearly visible, almost like a news reporter at a scene giving a description. The weapons were nuclear, he had said.

“To the victory of Japan,” Namuru was saying as he pulled something down behind his back.

On the screen the explosion took Kurita by surprise.

The detonation was severe enough to cause the transmission to freeze-frame several times as the satellite lost lock over the next second, the frames freezing the specter of Namuru’s head being blown apart by his helmet lined with explosives. The screen shook as the vest apparently detonated, blowing the camera backward until the screen view looked up at the sky, then rolled over to look back toward the damaged fence. In a blur men could be made out running toward the fence, when the screen suddenly became snow and static, the static noise loud.

The officer at the control screen turned off the display.

“What happened?” Kurita heard himself say.