“That’s science fiction, right?” the major scoffed. “I don’t watch that sort of stuff.”
“An asteroid probably wiped out the dinosaurs, sir,” Crichton explained, trying not to sound as if he was speaking to a child. “It’s not science fiction, it could happen at any time.”
“But we’d get warning, right?” the XO asked. “There’s some sort of a group that watches for that sort of thing. They thought one was headed this way a couple of years ago…”
“No, sir, we wouldn’t,” Crichton said, shaking his head. “Not unless we were extremely lucky. Spacewatch can only scan about ten percent of the sky. An asteroid can come in from anywhere. But, again, there’s no evidence that it’s an asteroid strike. Asteroids will pick up debris, lots of it and big debris when you get a fireball like this, described as this one was which was that it seemed to be at ground level. Chondritic meteors can do an airburst, that’s probably what happened in Tunguska…”
“They teach this in NBC school?” the operations officer asked.
“No, sir, but there have been recognized impacts in the last ten years; this is real information,” the chemical specialist said. “Do you want it?”
“Go ahead, Specialist,” the battalion commander said. “But your point is that this doesn’t appear to be a meteor.”
“No, sir,” the confirmed. “I’ve caught what I can from the news while I’ve been running around. There’s a big ball of dust over the explosion site and news helicopters have been staying away from it for safety reasons. But they’ve noted that the damage path is damned near circular. Very unusual for a meteor.”
“Why?” the XO asked.
The Specialist sighed. “Angles, sir.”
“Sit, Crichton,” the battalion commander said. “Then explain. This is all new to me, too.”
“Thanks, sir,” he replied, grabbing a chair, then holding his hands up like a ball. “This is the Earth, right? For the damage to be circular it would have to have come in straight.” He pointed towards where he’d had his hand cupped, then pointed from the sides. “But a meteor can come in from any direction. It’s much more likely that it will come in at an angle. And if it hits,” he clapped his hands together and then fanned them out, “it’s like throwing a rock into a mud puddle. Most of the mud splashes away from the rock. Some splashes straight up. Some, a little, splashes back. They think the one that took out the dinosaurs hit down in the Yucatan. ‘Splashes’ from it hit in Europe and up in the tundra. The plasma wave crossed most of North America. Say one came in from the west for this. First of all, we should have seen, have reported, some sort of air-track. ‘A shooting star in the day.’ Then, we should have had flaming bits of rock raining all the way from here to Cocoa.”
“Which we didn’t,” the battalion commander said, nodding his head. “The Orange County Sheriff’s department wants to send a helicopter into the area to assess the damage and find out what’s going on. They have their own chemical and biological response person, but they want a military presence who knows something about nukes. All we’ve got for that is you. Will you volunteer for the mission?”
“Yes, sir,” Crichton said, his eyes lighting.
“It could be dangerous,” the commander pointed out.
“So was driving Highway One, sir,” the specialist replied. “But I’d give my left arm to be on the first survey team. For us it’s like being the first one through the door is for infantry. This is the mother of all doors for an NBC specialist.”
“Okay,” the battalion commander said, smiling. “I’ll give them a call and then call the Chief of Staff.”
“Well, that was the Army Chief of Staff,” the defense secretary said. It was forty minutes from Washington to Camp David by UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter. Three had been dispatched and picked up the national security advisor, the director of homeland security, the defense secretary and the Chief of Staff. The Vice-President was aboard Air Force Two circling over the Midwest but in contact by speaker phone. “He’s been talking to the local National Guard commander. His survey teams so far report no evidence of radiation and there was no EMP. He also says that it does not appear to be a meteor strike. I’m not sure about how high a certainty to put on that, he’s apparently depending upon the opinions of a private and evaluation of meteor strike is not part of his training.”
“The private agrees with FEMA,” the national security advisor said. “And Space Command. The evidence is not consistent with a meteor impact and I’m suspicious of meteors that hit research facilities.”
“So what was it?” the President asked. He had taken a twenty minute catnap and now paced up and down the room occasionally looking at the TV. “What’s the estimate of casualties?”
“We don’t have one so far,” the director of Homeland Security said. Technically he should have given the FEMA report, since it was under Homeland Security. But he liked and respected the NSA so he didn’t make an issue of it. He also was phlegmatic by nature, a man who never hurried in a crisis but stayed calm and made rapid, rational decisions. Many thought that he had been tapped by the President because he was the former governor of an important swing state but it was his unflappable manner that had gained him the post. “FEMA didn’t want to give even a wide estimate but the lowball I extracted from them was fifty thousand.”
“My God,” the President whispered.
“Yes, sir, it is very bad,” the director admitted. “But it’s contained and local emergency services are responding as well as can be expected.”
The phone rang and was answered by the national security advisor, who held it out to the President. “Your brother, sir.”
“Hey, Jeb,” the President said, calmly. “A black day.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, right away. Good luck and God Bless.”
He handed the phone back and nodded at the Homeland Security director.
“That was an official request from the governor to declare a state of emergency. I think this counts.”
“I’ll tell my people,” the director said, standing up and walking out of the room.
News helicopters that had been loitering near the dust-ball zoomed in on a white and green helicopter that bore the logo of the Orange County Sheriff’s department as it approached the scene of devastation. An area could now be seen that was stripped clean of all vegetation and homes although some foundations remained. The helicopter came in slowly and hovered low, stirring up dust from the ground to add to the pall that was drifting lightly to the west.
“There goes the first survey,” the defense secretary said, quietly. The National Military Command Center had already sent in its estimate of casualties. NMCC had programs and protocols dating back to the Cold War for estimating casualties. The estimate they had given him, backed by high end modeling that had taken a series of servers nearly fifteen minutes to run, said that the FEMA estimate was low.
By nearly an order of magnitude.
“We just picked up some dust,” Crichton yelled, cracking the door on the helicopter and holding out the wand on his Geiger counter. “Hold it there.”
“You sure this is safe?” the Emergency Services guy shouted, his voice muffled by his chemical suit and almost impossible to hear over the sound from the rotors.
“No,” Crichton responded. “But you want to die in bed?”
The Emergency Services guy, Crichton hadn’t caught his name, was used to responding to spills on I-4 in Orlando. He knew all about how to contain a dumped tanker truck of carbon fluoride. He even knew about containment and cleanup of a dumped load of radioactive material. But responding to a nuke was pretty much outside of his normal job description.