Then a second later the entire island shook as though the God of Thunder himself had spoken.
The effect of a thermobaric blast against living targets is gruesome. First, the pressure wave from the fuel-air explosion flattens anyone caught unprotected. If you are within the kill zone and unlucky enough to survive the pressure wave, the vacuum created collapses your lungs so that you suffocate. Not all of the fuel in the bomb is guaranteed to go off, so if the fuel deflagrates but doesn’t detonate, anyone still left alive will be severely burned and probably also inhale the burning fuel. Since the most common FAE fuels, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, are highly toxic, undetonated FAE is as lethal to personnel caught within the cloud as most chemical warfare agents.
Luckily for Halifax, he was at ground zero for the first of the three MOABs that hit the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station on Little Diomede. As he was talking with Rodriguez he just had time to register the sound of an explosion and a sharp kerosene-like odor before he and every man, woman and bird on the surface of the Rock were obliterated.
It was like two or three earthquakes hit them in quick succession, followed shortly afterward by a thundering series of booms. Spreading outward from the point of impact on top of the rock dome a series of pressure waves pushed the sea surrounding Little Diomede down and outward. The pressure waves passed quickly, and the displaced seawater came flooding back.
Little Diomede was ultimately supposed to be fitted with blast doors and airlocks at the mouth of the Slot that could withstand a tactical nuclear strike and enable the base to keep functioning. There had been no urgency; they had not yet been installed.
The gantry over the submarine docking bay rocked and a part of the reinforced roof over the small harbor collapsed. Seconds later a huge wave flooded in through the entrance of the cave and instantly submerged the entire dock area in waist deep water.
Anyone there fifty feet below the trailer who had kept their feet through the first round of violence was knocked down by the force of the water and as Rodriguez got to her feet she saw the harbor was a maelstrom of churning water and flailing personnel. Her mind raced.
A nuke, we must have been hit by a nuke! But, shouldn’t there have been a flash? Wouldn’t a nuke have evaporated the seawater, turned it to steam? The cave was open to the sea, so if they were at the center of a nuclear explosion, even here under the Rock they should have been toasted to a crisp.
Not a nuke, then.
She saw Bunny struggling to her feet, cursing as usual.
That was as far as thinking got her. Outside the trailer people were drowning. She jumped for the door and ran down to the still rising waterline.
IN YOUR FACE
Bondarev woke with a headache like he’d dropped an entire bottle of whiskey in a single sitting, then realized he was still strapped into his cockpit. His vision was blurred and greying out, alarms were sounding in his ears and he could smell the distinct ozone tinged smell of fried wiring. An instant of panic rose in him, the most basal fear of all fighter pilots — fire!? With one hand he reached for his ejection handle, with the other he fumbled for the oxygen dial that supplied air to his mask, turning it to full rich, breathing deeply.
Almost immediately his vision cleared, his headache dropped to a dull throb, and he could see he was flying straight and level, about a hundred meters above the sea. His heads-up display was dead, but his instruments still worked, if they could be trusted. A quick scan told him he had taken a hit from either missile or gunfire. His right wing was perforated and the control surfaces there jammed, but his engine was running within normal operating ranges. No fuel or fluid leaks being reported. His combat AI had saved his life and gotten him out of the fight, put him on autopilot and set a course for Lavrentiya. He was about twenty minutes out.
He knew better than to take manual control. If it’s broken, don’t try to fly it. Cutting out the autopilot now, without knowing the state of his aircraft or how the AI was compensating for flight damage could send him into an irrecoverable spin and he didn’t have the altitude to risk it. Just like when he was in his passenger car at home in Vladivostok, he was putting his life in the hands of the AI.
He should never have looked down at the floor of the cockpit. But something felt wrong and he realized his right foot felt wet. That was when he noticed the noise, the high whistling sound of air rushing past and into the cockpit. He looked down. There were holes in the wall of the cockpit where no holes should be. And a pool of blood on the floor by the pedals where no blood should be.
Between the two of them, Rodriguez and O’Hare had pulled ten people out of the water before anyone else around them had reacted. Being up in the command trailer a good distance from the mini-tsunami had helped them get their wits together faster than most people, but pretty soon there were twenty or thirty people down at the waterline, hands grasping limbs, heaving bodies out of the water.
Most were alive.
Some weren’t.
It seemed to Rodriguez they were just starting to get on top of things — there were more people up above the waterline than there were still foundering in the water.
Suddenly there was an almighty crash from the direction of the topside elevator as the plane lift and a few hundred feet of cable crashed to the floor of the cave, then as though in sympathy, the loading crane by the submarine dock gave a forlorn groan and with majestic gravity, it fell across the Pond, its heavy crown smashing into the transformer room on the other side of the dock. The last thing Rodriguez saw was Master Sergeant Collaguiri and a group of men disappearing under dust and rubble.
And then the cave fell into total darkness.
Perri fell to the bottom of the ladder and just managed to get out of the way before the hatch above slammed shut with a clang and Dave and his rifle fell in a heap right where he’d landed.
“Screw this,” Dave grunted.
Perri looked up, “Did you lock it?”
“No I didn’t freaking lock it,” Dave swore, looking at him like it was a totally unreasonable question. “I came in head first. You can lock it.”
Perri didn’t argue. Pulling himself up off the floor he climbed the ladder and pulled the combination padlock through the eyelets that Dave had drilled into the wall, clicking it shut. He slid down the ladder using just his hands to slow himself and landed lightly. He had so much adrenaline in his system he felt he could have flown down.
He looked at Dave and the two of them burst out laughing. It was a hysterical, uncontrollable kind of laughter and they let it roll all the way out and then back again before they both fell onto their backsides.
Perri gasped, “That was insane.”
“Asymmetrical you said?” Dave said, wiping his eyes. “That was totally asymmetrical man!”
“I know.”
“I thought maybe you could hit it, maybe a bullet would get through the roof, but I never thought…”
“I know.”
“Did you see those missiles blasting off? Was that us?”
Perri remembered the missiles arcing into the sky and heading out to sea, definitely hunting something out there. “Don’t think so.”
Dave wiped his face. His hand was shaking, and he sat on it.
They were both quiet a while.
“That was one mother of an explosion. You don’t think…” Dave asked.
“Think what?”
“You think we killed anyone? I mean, the school…”