The rotund bomb swung wildly in the grip of the manipulators. Because it hung directly in front of his forward view, Pitt could not avoid glancing at the evil thing without conceding it in his mind’s eye as the instrument of his own impending death.
Suddenly another terrifying thought mushroomed in his mind. If it broke free and rolled down the slope, he might never be able to retrieve it. He stiffened in desperate fear, not of death, but that he might falter in the home stretch.
Pitt moved quickly now, uncaring that he had taken a risk no sane man would ever have contemplated. He slipped the drive into reverse and applied extra power. The cleats wildly thrashed through the slippery ooze backward, and Big Ben sluggishly slowed to a crawl.
A wall of silt engulfed the vehicle as he brought it to a full stop. He waited patiently for visibility to return before easing forward for fifty meters, then engaging reverse and drawing the DSMV to a halt again. He continued this series of maneuvers until he regained firm control and had a feel for the interaction between the drive track and the mire.
His movements at the controls became hurried now. Each passing minute increased his desperation. At last, after nearly thirty minutes of intense effort to move the big DSMV where he directed it, the navigational computer signaled that he had reached his destination. Thankfully, he found a small level shelf protruding from the slope. He disengaged the power systems and parked.
“I have arrived at the detonation site and will begin to arm the bomb,” he announced through his communications phone in the forlorn hope Sandecker and Giordino might still be listening in somewhere above.
Pitt lost little time in lowering the manipulator arms and setting the bomb in the soft sediment. He released the grippers and interchanged the pincers for working tools. Once more he inserted his hand into the manipulator control and very carefully used a sheetmetal shear to cut away the panel on the tapered tail assembly that covered the main fusing compartment.
The housing inside contained four radar units and a barometric pressure switch. If the bomb had been dropped as planned, the radar units would have bounced their signals off the approaching ground target. Then, at a predetermined altitude, an agreed reading by two units would send the firing signal to the fusing system mounted on the front of the implosion sphere. The second arming system was the barometric switch that was also set to close the firing circuit at a preset altitude.
The firing signal circuits, however, could not be closed while the plane was in flight. They had to be triggered by clock-operated switches that were not bypassed until the bomb had dropped well clear of the bomb bay. Otherwise Dennings’ Demons would have gone up in a pre-detonated fireball.
After the panel was removed, Pitt swiveled a miniaturized video camera on the end of the left manipulator. He quickly found the barometric arming switch and focused on it. Constructed of brass, steel, and copper, it showed signs of corrosion but was still intact.
Next, Pitt coupled a slender three-pincer hand to one manipulator. The arm was flexed back toward the front of the DSMV, where the pincers opened the heavy mesh lid of a tool crib and removed a strange ceramic object that looked like a small deflated soccer ball. A copper plate was imbedded in the concave bottom, surrounded by a pliable bonding material. The appearance was deceiving. The object was actually a very sophisticated pressurized container filled with an inert puttylike compound composed of plastic and acid. The ceramic cover surrounding the caustic substance had been contoured to fit snugly over the barometric firing switch and form a watertight seal.
Pitt worked the manipulator hand and positioned the container around the switch. Once it was firmly in place, he delicately pulled a tiny plug that allowed the sea to seep very slowly into the container. When the inert compound inside came in contact with saltwater, it chemically turned active and became highly caustic and corrosive. After eating through the copper plate—the thickness governed a delayed sequence of one hour—the acidic compound would then attack the copper in the barometric switch, eventually creating an electrical charge that would set off the firing signal and detonate the bomb.
As Pitt retracted the manipulators and gently backed Big Ben away from the hideous monstrosity lying like a fat, slimy bulge in the mud, he stole a quick glance at the digital clock on his instrument console.
He had run a tight race. Mother’s Breath would explode forty-eight years late but within a new deadline in another time.
“Any word?” asked the President anxiously from the Oval Office.
“We have an unexplained communications breakdown,” Jordan reported from the Situation Room.
“You’ve lost Admiral Sandecker?”
“I’m afraid so, Mr. President. We’ve tried every means at our disposal but have been unable to re-establish contact with his aircraft.”
The President felt a numbing fear spread through him. “What went wrong?”
“We can only guess. The last pass of the Pyramider showed the aircraft had broken off with the Deep Sea Mining Vehicle and was headed on a course toward the island of Okinawa.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would Sandecker abort the mission after Pitt had successfully removed the bomb from Dennings’ Demons?”
“He wouldn’t, unless Pitt had a serious accident and was unable to complete the detonation.”
“Then it’s over,” the President said heavily.
When Jordan replied, there was the hollow ring of defeat in his voice. “We won’t know the full story until the admiral makes contact again.”
“What is the latest on the search for the bomb cars?”
“The FBI task force has uncovered and neutralized another three, all in major cities.”
“And the human drivers?”
“Every one a diehard follower of Suma and the Gold Dragons, ready and willing to sacrifice their lives. Yet they put up no resistance or made any attempt to detonate the bombs when FBI agents arrested them.”
“Why so docile and accommodating?”
“Their orders were to explode the bombs in their respective vehicles only when they received a coded signal from the Dragon Center.”
“How many are still out there hidden in our cities?”
There was a tense pause, and then Jordan answered slowly, “As many as ten.”
“Good God!” The wave of shock was followed by an intolerable fear and disbelief.
“I haven’t lost my faith in Pitt,” said Jordan quietly. “There is no evidence that he failed to prime the firing systems in the bomb.”
A small measure of hope returned to the President’s eyes. “How soon before we know?”
“If Pitt was able to adhere to the timetable, the detonation should occur sometime within the next twelve minutes.”
The President stared at his desktop with an empty expression. When he spoke, it was so softly Jordan could barely make out the words.
“Keep your fingers crossed, Ray, and wish. That’s all that’s left for us.”
72
AS THE ACID COMPOUND reacted on contact with the saltwater, it slowly ate through the timing plate and attacked the barometric pressure switch. The action of the acid on the copper switch soon created an electrical charge that shorted across the contacts and closed the firing circuit.
After waiting nearly five decades, the detonators at thirty-two different points around the core of the bomb then fired and ignited the incredibly complicated detonation phenomenon that resulted in neutrons penetrating surrounding plutonium to launch the chain reaction. This was followed by fission bursting in millions upon millions of degrees and kilograms of pressure. The underwater gaseous fireball bloomed and shot upward, breaking the surface of the sea and spearheading a great plume of water that was sprayed into the night air by the shock wave.