SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

“Fiddling with the dials, or whatever’s on the damn thing,” Pappas said. “At least that’s what it looks like on the photos I’ve seen.”

President Forrest massaged his forehead. “Okay, Nick, now give us the good news.”

The DCI didn’t miss a beat. “That was the good news, Mr. President.”

The president peered down toward the end of the table. “Roger,” he said, “you’re my well-paid secretary of energy. You do nuclear. What’s your department’s take on this mess?”

“I’ve brought Tracy Wei-Liu with me to shed some light on that, Mr. President.”

Pete Forrest said, “Welcome, Miss Wei-Liu. What do you do for a living?”

The young woman stammered, “I’m deputy assistant secretary of energy for national security policy, Mr. President.”

“That’s a hundred-dollar title, young lady. What does it mean in buck-and-a-half words?”

“I keep track of nuclear weapons, Mr. President.”

“Ours or theirs?”

“Everybody’s, sir.”

“Okay,” Pete Forrest said. “What can you tell us about this alleged fifteen-kiloton medium atomic demolition device Nick just told us about?”

“I’d like to see a picture of the device, if I could.”

Pete Forrest shot an angry glance at the DCI. “Didn’t you messenger the photos to Energy?”

“I couldn’t verify that Miss Wei-Liu had the appropriate clearances,” Pappas said. “Goddammit, Nick—”

The DCI passed the folder to the Joint Chiefs chairman, who slid it below the salt to where Wei-Liu sat. The young woman took a magnifying glass out of a briefcase at her feet and examined the photos. “This device is a J-12—the largest of the Chinese MADM series, with an explosive power of fifteen kilotons. The J-12 was developed in the late 1970s. It was known as the Icebox, because it looked like one of those old-fashioned refrigerators with the compressors on the top.” Wei-Liu paused long enough to draw a deep breath. “The J-12 was intended as a tactical weapon to be used against India and Taiwan. It is based on an early Soviet design.”

Rockman waved a hand at the young woman. “When I was secretary back in 1974, I decommissioned all of our MADMs because they were obsolete. You mean the Chinese only began to use them after that?”

“Mr. Secretary, you have to understand that until the Chinese intensified their technical espionage programs in the 1980s and 90s, they’d always been fifteen to twenty years behind both the U.S. and the Soviet Union in nuclear weapons development. Both we and the Soviets discarded the MADM by the mid-1970s because we’d moved on to smaller, lighter, and more precise tactical devices. The Chinese kept their MADMs operational until 1988. That year, one of the smaller J-series weapons detonated as it was being taken from a bunker on the Indian border during a military exercise. Shortly after that, all thirty MADMs were abruptly removed from China’s tactical inventory.”

The president asked, “What caused the 1988 incident?”

“Our best guess,” Wei-Liu said, “was the weapon’s primitive detonation system.”

The president said, “How primitive are we talking here?”

“Somewhere between Cretaceous and Jurassic, Mr. President,” Wei-Liu said. “Today, sir, we achieve detonation through highly precise electronic means. In the 1970s, the Chinese were still technically unable to accomplish this. And so they made do — until relatively recently — with what might be called an IED, or improvised explosive device. The Chinese inserted a series of thin wires into an eighty-five-pound core of an explosive that’s similar to our military Pentolite, which is a fifty-fifty mixture of pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN plastic explosive, and TNT. The Chinese use a slightly different formula, which makes theirs more volatile. The Pentolite we use has an explosive power of one and a quarter times TNT. The Chinese version is two and a half times more powerful than TNT, which was what they needed to achieve an explosion generating critical mass. They initiated the Pentolite by vaporizing the wires in a precise sequence, using a huge surge of electrical current generated by a series of powerful capacitors.”

“What’s the problem with that?” Monica Wirth asked.

“First,” Wei-Liu said, “it was technically efficient but unwieldy — similar in many ways to the detonation system on the atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project. If you look at the photograph—” She slid the magnifying glass and one of the prints down the table to the chairman, who slid it to Monica Wirth, who passed it to the president. “See, sir, that boxlike attachment bolted onto the top of the device — it’s roughly two feet by three feet.”

Pete Forrest moved the glass back and forth across the photo. “Yes,” he said. “I see it. Cumbersome.”

“That’s the electrical component for the detonation package, sir.”

“Uh-huh,” the president said.