"What about the bomb?" Eight said. "It's a two-person job to rig it to the flux compression generator, to fire the krytrons."
"I know," Clayton said. "We're running low on manpower here."
"Could I help?" Ilse said.
Clayton looked at her. "I think you need to."
SEAL One started coughing uncontrollably, grimacing, then reached up for SEAL Two.
"More local. Please. Gimme another shot."
Ilse peered through the hatch at the foot-wide physics package sitting in the missile. By her own count, from the initiator at the very core to the wires attached to the krytrons, it had a dozen layers. She knew it wasn't really dangerous now, giving off sporadic alpha particles and weak neutrons and soft gamma rays from spontaneous fission — whatever got past the reflector and dense high explosive would be stopped by clothes and skin or was virtually harmless in short doses. Still, just looking at the thing gave her the creeps.
"It's essential we get each connection perfect," Clayton said. "If just one krytron misfires or goes off too soon or late, the implosion wave's distorted. We just scatter U-235 around the bunker, or worse, we crack open the archaea lab without the heat to sterilize it properly."
"What do you want me to do?" Ilse said.
"Watch this little oscilloscope screen. Make sure the peak of the curve hits right at the tick mark here, and its full wave form comes up above this threshold line. That'll mean we have a good solid connection."
"That's so all the signals get there at the same time?"
"Yeah," Clayton said. "And keep your eyes glued to this display window. We're looking for an inductance of one hundred nanohenries and a capacitance no more than one hundred microfarads total. We need a nice square firing pulse, with a rise time under two microseconds. If something's off, you tell me. I'll compensate at my end in the arming gear. That's what this little keyboard's for."
"We have to do this with ninety-two different krytrons?" Ilse said.
"SEAL Eight and I already did a few, but yeah … It'll go faster once we get in rhythm. Don't rush it, Ilse, please. A slipup here would be bad."
Jeffrey came back to the missile bunker after hiding the runner's body. He'd already cleaned his K-bar and now he wiped blood off the Boer walkie-talkie. "Somebody who speaks Afrikaans needs to monitor this. Here's the dead guy's paybook — you'll know his name and unit."
SEAL Two looked up. "I can do that, sir. Ilse and Lieutenant Clayton are kinda busy now."
"The radio has built-in encryption," Jeffrey said. "That's good — it garbles voices. Also, the atmospherics'll still be bad up here from the EMP box we set off. You, pretend to be the runner. Don't rush your answers. Whisper a translation to me, I'll tell you what to say"
SEAL Two flipped through the paybook. "Okay. I'll let you know as soon as I hear them call this guy. Meantime, I want you to do something for us. SEAL One's BP keeps dropping and he's slightly cyanotic. He needs whole blood. You're the only one here with his type, B positive."
"You want me to stand right here?" Jeffrey said.
"Yeah," the SEAL corpsman said. "Gravity feed should do it. I got two empty one-pint bottles I want to fill from you. Roll up your sleeve."
"These bottles aren't sterile," Jeffrey said.
"Like that really matters," SEAL One said.
"You hungry?" Jeffrey said, bending down to One. "Wanna candy bar?"
"Last meal?" SEAL One said. "Yeah. And more water." Jeffrey rolled down his sleeve just as the runner's unit called in from the village. SEAL Two translated.
Jeffrey put his lips to SEAL Two's ear. "Tell them you're at the Sharks Board and there was some kind of voltage surge. Say they thought they were struck by lightning but that wasn't it. Tell them the missile's fine, everything's fine, and they're cleaning up the mess."
SEAL Two passed that on. A different voice came from the walkie-talkie speaker. SEAL Two whispered, "It's the senior corporal. He says he'll report it to the power company, and they'll probably send a repair crew from Durban in the morning. He says missile control keeps bugging him that we dropped off the line. He wants to talk to the sergeant." Jeffrey made the facial expression for "yikes," trying to think on his feet. He felt groggy from the blood donation. "Okay," he whispered, "tell him the sergeant's in the head, I mean the latrine, having a long slow one."
SEAL Two relayed, and Jeffrey heard the corporal laugh. Then the corporal asked for the lieutenant.
"Tell him to wait one," Jeffrey said. "Then don't hit talk." Jeffrey ran his hand over his face. He stared at the overhead but his mind was blank. Then he glanced at Ilse and got an idea. Jeffrey used his helmet mike. "Seven, Four … Seven, Four."
"G'head, Four."
"Seven, when you cleared the upper level, were there any female staffers?"
"Yeah, a couple."
"Good-looking or ugly?"
"One of each."
"Okay, thanks." Jeffrey turned to Two. "Tell the corporal the lieutenant's otherwise engaged, out in the truck with a lab technician."
Again the corporal laughed. Then he said more in Afrikaans. "He wants me back down there," SEAL Two said.
"Tell him they want you to stay put here, to help beef up the guard, because of the alert, with the voltage surge and everything."
SEAL Two passed that into the walkie-talkie, in fluent Afrikaans of his own. The corporal's answer was long.
"Big problem," Two whispered. "He says that's a good point, strengthening security, something bad could happen between now and dawn. He's rousing the rest of the platoon. They'll come on duty now instead of at daybreak."
"Urn, uh," Jeffrey said, "ask him when they'll get here." Jeffrey felt like he was shitting a brick while he waited for the answer. Just like the alleged sergeant, ha ha.
"They have to shave and eat," Two said, "then walk up for the exercise. Just about an hour, probably."
"Tell him understood."
SEAL Two said something else in Afrikaans and put down the walkie-talkie. "Done."
"Did he sound suspicious?" Jeffrey said.
"Not that I could tell," Two said, "but then, if he was smart, he wouldn't have let on, would he?"
Jeffrey turned to Clayton. "You hear all that, Shaj?"
"Unfortunately."
"We got a deadline," Jeffrey said. "Start the timer now and set it for fifty, repeat five zero, minutes. Then we need to finish up and get out of here." Clayton's eyes widened. "There's no way we'll be back in the minisub by then."
"I know," Jeffrey said. "Work fast. I have to run up to the roof of the Sharks Board, get precise wind speed and direction for the ROEs."
"What, you can't just stick a wet finger outside the bunker?" Jeffrey shook his head. He pulled a handheld anemometer from his pack, then peeled a couple of chocolate bars and wolfed them down. He drank a whole canteen. My last meal? he wondered.
The rain had almost stopped. The air outside the bunker was so fresh, Jeffrey realized now how much it stank in there. He trotted up the front steps of the Sharks Board. The place was a shambles.
His Kevlar moccasins crunched on the broken glass in the entrance lobby. Farther in was a mix of nasty smells. Tattered blackout curtains flapped and fluttered in the wind, but otherwise there was an eerie silence. The walls were peppered, no, shredded, with holes from bullets and grenade shrapnel and from the blast of satchel charges. Broken ceiling tiles, shattered fluorescent light bulbs, twisted aluminum struts lay everywhere. The concrete facing of structural columns was badly pocked, deep .50-caliber armor-piercing hits, shallow ones from hollow point, and smaller nicks from Boer 7.62 and 5.56 mm full-metal-jacket rounds. Jeffrey stepped on expended brass and stepped around discarded ammo clips.