“Tell me again how he is going to get inside the bunker, if that is what it is.”
“He’ll shoot the guards,” Gotoh said simply, his eyes still on the display, careful not to let a flicker of annoyance cross his face at Kurita’s insistence on covering briefing material over and over.
“Does he have to do that? It would seem to imperil the mission, draw attention to the breakin.”
“True, Prime Minister. But guards of nuclear weapons are trained — conditioned is perhaps a better term — to shoot intruders. They call it Deadly Force Authorization. It means shoot first and forget the questions. The quickest way to penetrate the security around a nuclear weapon is to surprise the guards and kill them. Even then, one’s life expectancy is numbered in the minutes, perhaps only seconds. That’s why Namuru has the cameras. If he’s shot we’ll still have the data.”
“What about the time delay? They might disconnect and destroy his camera before we know what happened.”
“Unavoidable, I’m afraid, sir. But it is unlikely that if Namuru and his gear is captured that the gaijin Greater Manchurians could understand that he is transmitting. By the time they realized it, we would know all that Namuru knew.”
In the panel monitoring Namuru’s view a bush flashed close to the camera, then rolled away to reveal a length of fencing between two trees. The right panel showing the navigation display changed, a graph replacing the aerial photograph, the graph pulsing with circular curves.
“The fence is electrified with high voltage,” Gotoh announced. The view from Namuru’s helmet blurred as he approached the fence. Namuru’s hands flashed in and out of view, attaching a cable to the fence, just before the fireball exploded and the screens again went blank.
Namuru looked at the fence as his computer pad flickered with the electromagnetic signature of 11,000 volts surging through the aluminum cable braided through the fence. What could be seen through the fence was limited, since there were more trees there and little else.
Namuru snaked out the electrical cables that were in the back of the heavy vest, uncoiled the heavy insulated wires, withdrew the lengths of copper rods half a meter at a time. He screwed the copper rod lengths together, until there was a two-meter-long copper rod, then attempted to force the rod into the ground. It went in halfway, then had to be tapped with a rubber mallet from another vest pocket until the rod was buried in the ground with only five centimeters protruding.
Namuru hid the mallet under a bush. At least after this, he thought, much of the weight he’d carried in would be left behind. He took a cable and attached it to the top of the copper rod with a heavy copper clamp.
The other end of the cable he attached to a large alligator clip, then stepped back to inspect his work. He unfastened the computer pad and digital receiver watch, his vest and his utility leggings so that most of the metal objects were removed from his body. He put on the thick 100,000-volt rubber gloves. His boots were already wrapped in insulating material, one of the reasons his feet were so uncomfortably hot.
He took a deep breath, studying the cable winding through the aluminum mesh fence. The idea was to get his cable attached to the live electrical cable in the fence, thereby grounding the voltage to the copper rod in the earth. The live wire would then short its potential to ground, either tripping the electrical circuit at the generator or melting the wire at the connection to the rod. If he did this right the power would blast through the grounding mechanism and disrupt the entire circuit so that he could cut through the fence. But if he mishandled the operation 11,000 volts of power would pass through his body. That had happened to one of the Divine Wind officers in penetration training. The high voltage had blown off the man’s legs and one of his arms, stopped his heart and left him a smoking wreck. The training chief had cut the power, and the ambulance crew had revived the man, and he had actually lived for two days, the incredible pain of those days carved on his terrified burned features when they had buried him. A horrible way to die, a worse way to live. Namuru prayed, just don’t let it leave me burned and maimed.
He lunged with the alligator clip and hit the high voltage fence cable with it. The fireball had no sound, only a fist of pressure. Namuru saw the light expand to the size of a zeppelin and surround him as it smashed into him and blew him off his feet and sent him flying into the woods.
“What happened?”
“Looks like he took a shock,” Gotoh said, his voice a monotone. The screens remained blank.
“And he’s dead?”
“Too early to say, sir.” Gotoh had risen to hover over another younger officer at a neighboring console. The officer tapped furiously at a keyboard, stopping occasionally to manipulate a mouse, then typing again.
“We’re addressing the satellite now trying to get Major Namuru’s cameras to work again. If we can reestablish a link with his instrumentation we might be able to determine what is going on.”
The screen flashed a momentary broken image, then went dark again. Gotoh and Kurita waited.
“How long do we wait?”
“The mission brief calls for a four-minute delay before the satellite signals the chip with the poison canister in the major’s abdomen,” Gotoh said.
“How long has it been?”
“We were already on a five-minute delay from real time when the major got hit with the electricity. We saw it three minutes ago. I’d say Major Namuru has another sixty seconds before the computer aborts the mission and calls down to the chip to inject the poison.”
The screen flashed, then held. The camera view from Namuru’s helmet stared straight up at the sky, the boughs of two trees breaking the featureless clouds. The face-monitoring camera came up next. Namuru’s face was burned on the left side, his eye gone, the flesh seared and melting. His right eye was shut and swollen.
“Prime Minister, I don’t think we should wait for the mission computer. We should abort now. Namuru’s gone.”
Kurita stared at Namuru’s burned and disfigured face.
“I agree. General.”
Gotoh gave the order to the officer on the control console, who nodded and made the commands as if they had nothing to do with killing a fellow officer.
“The signal is out, sir,” the officer reported.
“He’ll be dead in thirty seconds if he isn’t already,” Gotoh said.
Kurita looked up at the screen. “We need another plan. We still must find out if Len Pei Poom has nuclear weapons. He could be targeting Tokyo even now.”
Namuru was burned from the inside out. His flesh felt hot and running on his left side, his face aching and puffy. His whole body ached, he couldn’t move. He concentrated for what seemed hours trying to move his right hand, finally able to move it upward. In the next ten minutes he used the hand to lift himself so that he was sitting up. He couldn’t see out of his left eye. He reached for his face and felt the burned flesh, hard and crumbling.
He crawled through the brush to find his watch and the computer pad. When he found them, the computer pad had melted into a puddle of plastic. The watch was also destroyed, the satellite above having given the signal to abort the mission. Which meant that his poison capsule should have been released and he should be dead.
Except that the electrical fireball must have fried the chip inside him. But if there had been enough power to kill the chip, there might have been enough to fracture the poison canister. It could be leaking even now, he thought. He had only hours to live — but then that was the whole idea of this mission.
He managed to stand, shaking when he finally made it. He took some water from his vest, then tried to put it on. It was too heavy and he was too weak. He would have to go in without it. He bent over the vest and pulled out the pistol, a spare clip, the two gas bottles, a small collection of electronic boxes and a small pack of film, then adjusted his helmet, wondering if the cameras were still operating. The circuits checked out — he should still be transmitting. He wondered if there was anyone on the other end. He stepped slowly toward the fence, saw the blackened hole the fireball had blown in it. He crouched down, walked through and limped to the trees, his strength coming and going erratically.