The boat motored beneath the stern of a gigantic oil tanker docked next to a vast refinery, drawing the attention of an alert crewmember leaning over the ship’s railing. Because he was a Muslim, the crewmember aboard the large ship immediately noticed the scene on the deck of the shrimp boat below. This was not right. The Mexican flag fluttering over the small boat reminded him of a visit he had once made to the largely Roman Catholic country, but these men were obviously Muslims, like he was, and this was the wrong time of day to be saying their prayers.
His mind began to race and a sickening fear rose in his throat. Radical Islamic terrorists had caused great harm to his religion over the past few years, and he was afraid they were about to make it much worse. He watched as the colorful shrimp boat pushed through the oily water beneath the tanker. The frightened crewman thought for a moment and weighed his options. He had to tell the captain. They must notify the American Coast Guard!
He started to run franticly along the deck toward the bridge, tripping as he strained to keep the Mexican boat in sight. Racing up a flight of metal stairs, he paused and grabbed the railing to glance over the side. He watched as the tall, bearded man on the boat below looked up at him, his face highlighted by the surrounding industrial lights reflecting off the water. The man smiled and raised his hand as if he was waving goodbye before disappearing through the door of the wheelhouse.
The crewmember could now clearly hear the words of the men praying on the deck of the innocent-looking boat. They were speaking in Arabic, and the prayers were the prayers of martyrs asking for Allah’s blessing. He looked on in horror as they passed the bow of his ship and continued up the channel toward Houston. It was the last sight his eyes would ever see.
Inside the shrimp boat, the bearded man attached some wires to a square box-like device the size of a home dishwasher. He looked at a picture of his family and closed his eyes, uttering a final prayer before flicking a switch.
A blinding flash of white light that was seen from hundreds of miles away erupted from the small boat as it vaporized. The giant ship beside it, the refinery, and a large portion of the city close-by were also instantly gone, while at the same time, the signature mushroom-shaped cloud of a one megaton nuclear detonation rose in the confused sky above the bayous and houses and freeways of America’s fourth largest city. The explosion was eighty times more powerful than the bomb that exploded over Hiroshima in 1945. Everything within two miles was leveled except for some of the strongest buildings made from reinforced concrete. Ninety-eight percent of the population within this area was instantly killed.
The blast left a crater two hundred feet deep and one thousand feet in diameter that quickly filled with water from Galveston Bay after the initial shockwave. Nothing recognizable remained within a mile of ground zero. Three miles away from the center of the explosion, virtually everything was destroyed. Single-family residences within that area had been completely blown away; only their foundations remained. Within this area, fifty percent of the population lay dead, with another forty percent actively dying or injured and moaning in agony.
Farther out, about five miles from where the shrimp boat carrying the bomb had been converted into molecules, most buildings were heavily damaged. The windows of tall buildings had been blown out, and first responders would find the contents of the upper floors of these buildings scattered on the streets below, along with the people who had been inside.
Those out in the open within this five mile radius had experienced third-degree burns from the initial fireball, while those inside close to windows had been shredded by the flying glass and bullet-like pieces of debris. It was a scene of unimaginable horror, but this was only the beginning. Within thirty miles of the blast, a lethal dose of radiation had been delivered through the air. Death would occur within hours to most of those within this area.
The wind on this night was blowing north at seventeen miles per hour. The massive amount of dirt and debris that had lifted up into the grayish purple-tinged mushroom cloud now began to follow the wind for hundreds of miles before gradually falling back to earth. This material was also lethally radioactive, and death would soon visit entire families up to ninety miles away within two to fourteen days.
Farther away, about one hundred sixty miles from where the bomb had exploded, people would experience extensive internal damage to their digestive tracts and white blood cells, with the resulting loss of hair and unexplained cancers that would ravage them and their children in the years to come.
It would be ten years before the levels of radioactivity in these areas would again be considered safe, but for now, a large part of the country had been rendered an unlivable graveyard. America’s worst nightmare had just occurred.
Chapter 26
Snorkeling over the reef in the clear water of the Mediterranean coastline, John and Ariella were spearing fish for lunch. They had been in the water for almost an hour when Ariella swam up next to John and pointed to her divers watch. Reluctantly, they headed for the shore until their feet touched sand and they struggled through the surf up onto the beach. Ariella smiled as she held up a string of good-sized snapper. Camp ran up to John and sniffed at his single, small mackerel, before running off to chase an errant crab scurrying across a sugar-white sand dune.
Their morning fishing expedition over, the two headed across the weathered boardwalk toward the villa and joined the others at the poolside bar.
“Nice fish, John,” Daniel said.
“I probably should have thrown it back.” He cast a glance at Ariella. “Now she’s going to force me to eat it.”
“That’s right,” Ariella said. “That’s the rule around here. If you keep it, you eat it.”
“Maybe Camp would like it,” Nava said, winking at Alon.
On cue, Camp’s new crab friend pinched him on the nose. The little dog yelped and raced through the dunes to the safety of his human friends. “I think he’s had enough seafood for today,” John said.
Everyone was talking and teasing John about his miniature fish while an American news channel provided background noise. The newscasters were going on about the discovery of a large oil field in Israel when the red banner of a news bulletin flashed across the screen. With the events of the night before still fresh in their minds, everyone wondered if something else had occurred in the desert and turned their attention to the flat screen TV over the bar.
One of the television journalists held his hand to his earpiece and turned to his stunned-looking female co-anchor. His face took on a pale, vacant look. He paused for a moment; he seemed to be having trouble collecting himself before he looked directly into the camera and took a deep breath before speaking. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have just received news of an unbelievable nature. If this bulletin can be confirmed, our worst national nightmare has been realized. We’re hearing just now that a nuclear explosion has occurred in an American city, totally vaporizing an area within a mile of the blast and devastating an area for five miles around that. The city is Houston, Texas.”
Everyone by the pool stopped what they were doing and stared at the TV screen in total disbelief. It was one of those moments when, years later, people would recall exactly where they were when they heard the news. The television journalists were silent for a moment, not knowing what to say next or if professional decorum had rules for their emotions at a moment like this.
The female newswoman tried to compose herself before continuing. “We’ve just learned that apparently, sometime around 1:00 AM Central Standard Time, a small fishing boat entered the Houston ship channel from the Gulf of Mexico. Shortly thereafter, those onboard detonated what is believed to be a nuclear bomb in the center of one of the largest petrochemical industrial areas in the world. The scene was captured on tape by security cameras just before the blast. Authorities say it is an obvious attempt to knock out some of the country’s largest refineries and cripple the economy, with the added benefit of taking the lives of as many Americans as possible in the process.”