Dragon (Dirk Pitt 10)

They're spread all over the world."

"It gets worse," said Percy. "If the bombs have indeed been smuggled into major international cities, the Japanese possess total assured destruction. It's an efficient setup. Once the bombs are in place, the chance of accidental or unauthorized launch of a missile is voided. There is no defense against them, no time to react, no star wars system to stop incoming warheads, no alert, no second strike. When they push the button, the strike is instantaneous."

"Good God

, what can we do?"

"Find them," said Pitt. "The idea is the bombs are brought in by auto ship carriers. I'm guessing hidden inside the imported cars. With your computer smarts, we're going to try and figure out how."

"If they're coming in by ship," Yaeger said decisively, "customs inspectors searching for drugs would pick them out."

Pitt shook his head. "This is a sophisticated operation, run by hightech professionals. They know their business. They'll design the bomb to be an integral part of the car to throw off an elaborate search.

Customs inspectors are wary of tires, gas tanks, upholstery, anyplace where there's an air space. So it has to be secreted in such a way that even the wiliest inspector would miss it."

"Totally foolproof to known discovery techniques," Yaeger agreed.

Percy thoughtfully stared at the floor. "All right, now let's talk about size."

"That's your department." Pitt smiled.

"Give me a break, nephew. I at least have to know the model of the car, and I'm not a follower of Japanese machinery."

"If it's a Murmoto, it's probably a sport sedan."

The jovial look on Percy's face went dead serious. "To sum up, we're looking at a compact nuclear device in the neighborhood of ten kilograms that's undetectable inside a medium-sized sedan."

"That can be primed and detonated from a great distance," Pitt added.

"Unless the driver is suicidal, that goes without saying."

"What size bomb are we thinking about?" asked Yaeger innocently.

"They can vary in shape and size from an oil barrel to a baseball," answered Percy.

"A baseball," Yaeger murmured incredulously. "But can one that small cause substantial destruction?"

Percy stared up at the ceiling as if seeing the devastation. "If the warhead was high yield, say around three kilotons, it could probably level the heart of Denver, Colorado, with huge conflagrations ignited by the explosion spreading far out into the suburbs."

"The ultimate in car bombings," said Yaeger. "Not a pretty thought."

"A sickening possibility, but one that has to be faced as more third-world nations possess atomic weapons." Percy gestured toward the empty display screen. "What do we use as a model to dissect?"

"My family's eighty-nine Ford Taurus," replied Yaeger. "As an experiment I inserted its entire parts manual into the computer's intelligence. I can give you blown-up images of specific parts or the completed solid form."

"A Taurus will make a good match-up," Pitt agreed.

Yaeger's fingers flew over the keyboard for several seconds, and then he sat back with his arms folded. An image appeared on the screen, a three-D rendering in vivid color. Another command by Yaeger and a metallic burgundy red Ford Taurus four-door sedan revolved on different angles as if on a turntable that went from horizontal to vertical.

"Can you take us inside?" asked Pitt.

"Entering," Yaeger acknowledged. A touch of a button and they seemed to flow through solid metal into sectioned views of the interior chassis and body. Like ghosts floating through walls, they clearly viewed every welded seam, every nut and bolt. Yaeger took them inside the differential and up the driveshaft through the gears of the transmission into the heart of the engine.

"Astonishing," Percy muttered admiringly. "Like flying through a generating plant. If only we'd had this contrivance back in forty-two. We could have ended both the European and Pacific theaters of war two years early."

"Lucky for the Germans you didn't have the bomb by nineteen forty-four," Yaeger goaded Percy.

Percy gave him a stern stare for a moment and then turned his attention back to the image on the screen.