Zero Day (John Puller 1)

“If this thing goes off it’s my fault, Bobby.”

“Two points, John. If that thing goes off, you won’t be around to care. Second point, the person or persons who built that thing are the responsible parties, not you! Now how much time left?”

“Fifty-seven and a half till doomsday.”

Puller looked up at Cole and pointed to the way they’d come in. He mouthed two words: Go. Now.

She shook her head and gave him a stubborn expression when he pointed to the way out again. When he did it a third time she flipped him off.

“John, you there? What’s going on?” asked his brother.

“Nothing. Just a tactical issue that has been resolved. Now when you say fizzle, what exactly are we talking about?”

“Maybe half a kiloton yield, but that’s just an educated guess on my part. The concrete dome should help contain most of the blast.”

“Half a kiloton?” said Puller. “That’s equal to five hundred tons of TNT. You call that a fizzle?”

“Hiroshima got hit with a thirteen-kiloton yield and they only used sixty kilograms of uranium and of that only six hundred milligrams actually reacted; that’s about the weight of a dime. I have no idea how much plutonium they’ve got in this sucker, but we have to plan for the worst-case scenario. There’s no way it’s as small a yield as with Hiroshima. We’re talking gun versus implosion method, uranium versus plutonium. To be safe let’s assume it’s millions of tons of TNT equivalent. That’ll send that concrete dome into orbit and spread radiation over six states or more. And you can pretty much kiss West Virginia goodbye.”

Fresh sweat sprouted on Puller’s face. “Okay, half a kiloton doesn’t sound so bad now. So tell me how to make a fizzle.”

“We have to make a premature detonation happen.”

“Yeah, that I get. How?”

“Did you bring the stuff I told you to?”

Cole looked at Puller as she dug in his knapsack and pulled out one stick of dynamite, wire, blasting cap, and a timer. She had gotten these for him. She handed them to him while he cradled the phone against his shoulder.

“I thought I was going to use this to blow a hole in something. But if you’d told me then that I’d have to use this to detonate the nuke I might not be here.”

“Yes you would,” said Robert. “I know my brother.” This was said in a joking manner, but Puller knew the man wasn’t smiling. He was in fact probably trying hard to keep his little brother calm. Trying, if it was possible, to take his mind off the fact that he might be sitting on the equivalent of millions of tons of TNT with a radiation kicker.

“Where do I put it?”

“If you’re looking at the bomb head-on, place the stick five degrees to the left.”

“Why five degrees?”

“I like the number five, John, always have.”

Puller placed the stick in that spot and confirmed that with his brother.

Robert said, “Good. Now you obviously have to set the timer for the stick to go off before the bomb timer. With a nuclear weapon even a millisecond difference in the timing of the explosions is sufficient. Stick detonates, punches a hole in the lenses, causing a series of staggered explosions. The sequential detonations will destroy the sphere along with the compression phase. The pit will squeeze through the created holes and critical and supercritical stages will never be reached. With no pit the plutonium can’t be compressed and the entire thing collapses.”

“And that’s real good?” asked Puller.

“Let me give you the three scenarios as I see them. If we’re real lucky we go low-end. That means you just have a dirty bomb with nothing nuclear in the detonation. The most we have is a small boom with some radiation exposure, which three feet of concrete should be able to contain. That would be as good as it gets. The second or medium outcome is the half-kiloton fizzle. It obviously helps that you’re in the middle of nowhere covered by three feet of concrete. Collateral damage should be manageable.”

“This county is full of a lot of people, actually,” said Puller, as Cole stared at him from behind the light she held. “And they’re basically having a real shitty life right now. So the last thing they need is a mushroom cloud popping into their misery.”

“I’m sorry, John, I didn’t know.”

“No reason you should.” Puller drew a long breath. “And the third scenario?”

“My plan works, but it doesn’t work that well, and we still go nuclear.”

“And that means?”

Robert didn’t say anything for a few moments. “I’ve never lied to you, John, and I won’t start tonight. That means that a large chunk of where you are will be completely vaporized. Like a hundred hurricanes hitting all at once. There won’t be anything left for miles. That’s just how it works.”

“Okay.” Puller thought of something. “Give me a few minutes,” he said.

“What?” asked his brother.

“This thing is going to go boom under any scenario, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then give me a few minutes.”

He set the phone down, jumped up, and ran off. Cole rushed after him.

“Puller, what are you doing?”

He reached the barrels, sized them up, eyed where he would be taking them, and decided on the best way.

“Mineshaft is over there. I’m going to roll these barrels into the shaft as far as I can. When the boom hits, if we’re lucky, the concussive force will send these suckers deep into the rock and then bury them under tons of crap. It’s our only option at this point.”

“Better than into the West Virginia air,” said Cole.

His muscles straining, Puller tipped the first barrel onto its side and quickly rolled it into the mineshaft. There was a slight downward slope and the barrel rolled on its own down into the darkness. Puller ran back to the other barrels and found that Cole was trying to topple one over too, but her strength was not enough.

“Just hold the light on it,” he said. “I’ll supply the muscle.”

A few minutes later all of the barrels were in the mineshaft. Puller and Cole ran back to the nuke and he picked up the phone.

“I’m back.”

“What the hell were you doing?” demanded his brother.

“Putting barrels of nuclear shit in a safer place.”

“Oh, right. Good idea. Okay, you ready?”

Puller said, “Do you feel lucky?”

His brother replied, “More to the point, do you feel lucky?”

Puller licked his lips and glanced at Cole. She stood there as though marbleized.

He set the timer on the dynamite stick to thirty minutes. That would give them plenty of time to get out of the blast area.

They heard a groan.

Cole said, “Roger is waking up.”

Her brother-in-law was indeed stirring.

Puller said, “Go untie him and make him understand that we need to get out—”

“Puller,” Cole shrieked. “Look.”

Robert apparently heard this. He said, “What’s going on?’

Puller didn’t answer. He was too busy staring at the nuke bomb timer.