“I’m just a private citizen,” Forte protested, “and SD-1 is merely the R & D arm of Sunshine Industries, a profit-making-sometimes-corporation. What you’re asking for is a long-range national defense effort, not a finger in a leaking dike. That’s too big for SD-1. That should be bankrolled with public funds.”
“Which the public will never willingly part with-not, at least, until the comrades are wading ashore for the third time.” Traynor sighed. “That’s the American way.”
Forte contemplated the white-haired, ruddy-faced man across the desk. Traynor had been his friend and political ally for a long time, and his father’s before him. Forte had no compunction about turning down a request from an officeholder; indeed, it was his natural reaction. But friendship was different. “What do you want me to do?”
Traynor’s stern features relaxed. “The Russians have come twice in ten years, and many brave Texans died. The bastards will come calling again, as sure as county road commissioners have unnumbered Swiss bank accounts. When they do, we must not allow a single Texan to be at peril. This means that we must be able, at the first sign of Soviet aggression, to defeat them. And when I say defeat, I mean annihilate.
“To do this means that we must possess a weapon that is totally secret, totally intimidating, totally effective, and impossible to defend against. The weapon I have in mind will be the ultimate in stealth, speed, and destructive force. Only when it becomes evident that the Soviets are about to launch an attack against us will we call in their ambassador and reveal to him his country’s peril and helplessness, and make them leash the dogs of war.”
“A piece of cake,” Forte said, straight-faced. “I’ll have the boys work it out over the weekend. Come down Tuesday for a demonstration. We’ll destroy New York State.”
“Okay, I’m asking for miracles. But you’re in the miracle business, Rip. You’re the guy who brought in- brings in every fortnight-billion-ton icebergs from the Antarctic, when the mere idea used to get horselaughs from the scientific community.”
Ripley Forte massaged his weatherlined face and looked into space. “Very well, Mr. President,” he said finally, “we’ll have a shot at it. No promises. But it would help if you could share with me just what kind of weapon you want.”
President Traynor pursed his lips. “I can’t say at the moment-top secret, you know-but when you’ve got it built, call me, and I’ll tell you if it’s what I want.”
“The weapons’re not the problem,” insisted Dr. Ho Yang Pao, the slight young systems analyst whom Ripley Forte had assigned as project coordinator among the dozen department heads who sat around the big conference table deep underground at SD-1. “We have a number of fast-acting alternatives-nuclear devices foremost among them, then lethal bacteriological and chemical agents and their myriad variations. But we must decide which target, or targets, must be threatened with annihilation if push comes to shove with the Russians. Also, how to deliver the weapon virtually instantaneously.”
“No doubt about it,” agreed Ripley Forte, in the chair at the head of the table. “The target must be so vital that its loss would automatically destroy the Soviet regime. The optimum target, therefore, will be the regime itself. That is to say, the city of Kiev, where the leadership is headquartered.”
“Amen,” said Leslie Schmida, SD-l’s chief of civil engineering, whose family had been exterminated by Russian fire-bombing during the Soviet assault on Houston in 1998. “Better two million Soviet dead than another Texan.”
“Discussion?” Forte queried.
There was none.
“Kiev it is… Which brings us to the next item on the agenda. As Dr. Ho pointed out, our arsenals bulge with weapons that can destroy a city like Kiev in short order. How to get them there in a hurry is the problem.”
“Satellite-deployed munitions?” someone suggested.
“Vulnerable to ground-based lasers, killer satellites, or kinetic energy weapons like the Jim Bowie,” Forte pointed out. “Our satellites would be their first target in any new assault against Texas.”
“And submarine-based missiles would be equally ineffective,” Dr. Ho added. “Before the Russians launched a new attack they’d mobilize their defense forces. The 2,000-mile overland trajectory of our missiles would expose them to Russian antimissile missiles before they got halfway to the Ukraine.”
Forte nodded. “So that eliminates aerial and subsurface means of weapons delivery. Any bright ideas?” He looked around the table at a dozen blank faces. “Very well, think about delivery methods between now and our meeting tomorrow, and let’s get on to the next item on the agenda-the weapon itself.”
“Prosopagnosia,” said Per Lindstrom, a laconic polymath who headed biological sciences at SD-1.
Forte lifted an eyebrow. “Come again?”
“Prosopagnosia is a rare condition that afflicts persons suffering damage by trauma or stroke to that tiny portion of the brain that processes information about faces. A prosopagnosic looking in a mirror cannot recognize his own face, let alone those of others.”
Lindstrom could always be depended on for stimulating observations. Unfortunately, they seldom had anything to do with the business at hand. “Very interesting, Dr. Lindstrom,” said Forte, “but the problem that faces us is to decide upon a weapon that will destroy the enemy.”
“Prosopagnosia will. The Karolinska Institute for Neurological Research in Stockholm three weeks ago discovered the enzyme that disrupts the neural patterns governing the face-recognition area of the brain. The enzyme’s synthesis presents no insurmountable problems.”
A slow smile spread across Forte’s weatherbeaten face. “Pretty cute, Per. We synthesize the enzyme, suspend it in an aerosol, and at M-Minute, H-Hour, release canisters of the stuff at strategic points upwind of Kiev and-instant chaos! Guards will prohibit their officers from entering military installations-and shoot them when they try. Those officers already at their posts will suddenly see total strangers operating vital equipment and conclude-as the Russians are all too prone to do anyway-that the strangers are spies, and shoot them down. Confusion will multiply. It will be The Two Gentlemen from Verona all over again.”
“A Comedy of Errors,” a muted voice corrected him.
“Whatever,” said Forte, unabashed. “They’ll be too busy shooting ‘spies’ and ‘saboteurs’ to shake any spears in our direction. Per, I think you’ve got it.”
“Maybe,” put in Dr. Ho. “But what are we going to do with it? There’s still the delivery problem. Those ‘canisters upwind of Kiev’ aren’t going to sprout out of the ground with the spring rains.”
A somber silence enveloped the conference room. A destructive agent could be delivered to Kiev by only three means: air, sea, or land. The first two methods wouldn’t work. And the land route was still more impracticable-innumerable border checks would prevent the enzyme’s introduction by stealth, and no armed force Texas could muster would penetrate those concentric circles of armored divisions surrounding the nation’s new capital.
“If not submarine,” suggested Leslie Schmida, “how about subterranean?”
“Are you giving me the shaft?” joked Forte. “As in shaft drilled from Houston to Kiev straight down through the earth?”
“No,” replied Schmida. “I mean subterranean-sub as in subway.”
4. THE HOUSTON-KIEV EXPRESS
20 OCTOBER 2008
Ripley Forte decided that Chief Engineer Schmida, who had constructed more than four thousand miles of small-diameter people-mover tunnels for half a dozen municipalities ail over Texas, was capable of handling the job. He had the experience, the machinery, the men, and the spirit.
There was only one hitch: the maximum distance his men had ever drilled in a single day was seven miles. But President Tom Traynor had insisted that the ultimate anti-Soviet weapon, whatever it was, must be in place within a year-that is, by September 2009-before the Russians could gear up for yet another assault on Texas.
“What about it, Leslie?” Forte asked Schmida. “Remember, it isn’t a simple city subway project, through known geological formations, with easy access to support facilities, It’ll be through unknown terrain, areas of volcanic activity such as those you’ll encounter at the Atlantic midline ridge south of Iceland, with every nut and bolt and drop of water brought from Houston even when you have reached Kiev itself; we cannot risk discovery by putting down supply shafts anywhere along the route. And on top of all those handicaps, you’ll have to triple your best daily production rate, and do it for three hundred consecutive days.”
“Twenty miles a day, for three hundred days,” Schmida mused.
“That’s it.”
“It’ll mean a terrific strain on our equipment, even more on the men. They’ll have to have some incentive.”
“Patriotism?”
“That’ll be a positive factor, of course. How about pay-can I promise them all top-scale wages?”
“Triple the going rate. Think that will be enough?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe isn’t good enough. Let me think…” Ripley Forte put his feet on the desk and closed his eyes. The tunnel would explore terra incognita, a subsurface stratum that in most places had never been plumbed by pick or drill. There was no telling what they would encounter, especially under the unexplored ocean. Mostly, of course, they’d bore through mile after mile of sedimentary rock. But here and there the residue of the earth’s surging crustal plates, the cones of extinct volcanoes, the deposits of rivers flowing into the sea, would harbor unexpected treasures, as they did in the Yukon River valley and in the blue ground at Kimberley. No one could predict what they would find-nickel, manganese, diamonds, oil, gold, rare earths were just the most likely of the mouth-watering possibilities.