Castilla started pacing again. “I’ve been thinking about this nanoweapon ever since you first told me about it. Have you considered what will happen if Takahashi actually uses it? Have you really thought it through? The entire Chinese power grid will go down when the plastic gets eaten off the wires. Dams will collapse and flood entire regions. Building will implode, machines will fall apart. And not just cars and tractors. Even the shovels people might be able to use to eke out an existence will crumble. We’re heading into winter and a billion people could be without heat, without shelter, without food. Six million Jews died in World War Two. This could make that look like a historical blip. There’s no way to spin this that we aren’t talking hundreds of millions of casualties, Fred. Hundreds of millions.”
“You spoke with him,” Klein said. “And like you say, you looked into his eyes. Where do we fit into all this?”
“That’s just it, Fred. For the first time in three-quarters of a century, we don’t. Takahashi has no particular love for the US—he blames us for a lot of Japan’s problems. He’s not stupid, though. He knows that we account for more than a fifth of the world’s economic activity. We’re necessary to keep the world from complete economic collapse and to maintain the status quo to the degree it’s possible. All he asks of us is that we stand back and watch him butcher millions of women and children. Simple, right?”
Castilla reached into his pocket and pulled out a small case, retrieving a single cigarette from it. The president had been carrying that cigarette around since he quit smoking twelve years ago. For emergencies, he liked to say.
Klein was going to voice his disapproval but instead remained silent as his old friend flicked a lighter to life.
“I don’t sleep too well,” Castilla said, letting the smoke roll from his mouth. “But one of the few things that let me catch a few hours here and there was knowing that if everything went pear-shaped, I had the most powerful military on the planet. Now you’re telling me that it was all bullshit.”
Klein put his palms flat on the table in front of him. “We still do, Sam. A modern military isn’t just a tool to destroy an enemy. We use ours to rebuild countries after they’ve been devastated. We’re the most effective disaster relief organization in the world. We provide security, we promote stability. We create technology that trickles down to private industry and moves the world forward. And let’s face it, Takahashi has a point. We provide jobs and fund defense contractors. What you have to understand is that Japan hasn’t built a twenty-first-century military. They’ve built a twenty-first-century war machine.”
49
Northeastern Japan
Randi Russell paused at the entrance to the kitchen and looked around. The shades were drawn and the only light was coming from a lamp hanging over a tiled island in the room’s center. The house was a bit dilapidated, but also large and isolated, which was what she’d asked for. Besides, it had power and heat, so it was one step above most of the places she’d haunted over the last decade.
She watched the four people inside run their fingers along a map spread out on the island and talk in hushed tones. On the left were Eric and Karen Ivers, Covert-One operatives she’d known since she’d first signed up. In fact, they’d snatched her at gunpoint and taken her to her first meeting with Fred Klein.
The man in the middle was probably six feet five, blond, and wiry. Since Klein had sent him despite the fact that he would stick out like a sore thumb in Japan, it seemed likely that he had serious skills.
The man to his right was a good foot shorter, but Japanese, thank God. While Randi had redyed her hair black and used makeup to color the skin on her face, it was only enough to fool a casual observer with very bad eyesight. He’d have to be their point man for all things public. The rest of them would be forced to move around at night, keeping to secondary roads. If spotted in this rural setting, they’d garner a lot of interest from the widely scattered locals.
“Any brilliant ideas?” she asked, continuing into the room.
Everyone turned toward her and she shook hands with the tall blond man. “You must be Vanya. Pleasure.”
“The pleasure is mine, Randi. I am looking forward to working with you.” His accent was a little vague. Eastern European for certain, but she couldn’t place the region. Probably by design.
Turning to the man next to him, she gave a short bow. “And you’re Reiji. An honor.”
He returned the bow but didn’t say anything. Hopefully because he was the quiet type and not because Japanese was his only language.
Finally, she gave a nod to the Iverses. “Congratulations on the wedding. Sorry I couldn’t be there.”
They both responded with an understanding shrug.
As she looked into their faces, she wasn’t really sure what to think. They were only five in all and two were completely unknown to her. The fact that they had Fred Klein’s confidence meant a lot but she still preferred working with people she’d seen in action. Or at least knew by reputation.
“I take it you’ve all been briefed on the nanotech we’re concerned with?”
Nods all around.
She leaned over the map and tapped a red dot in the center of the island. “We believe that the weapon’s being developed here at a nuclear storage facility bored through the side of a mountain.” She slid her finger along a thin line. “This represents the only road in. Everything else is steep and densely wooded. There’s a relatively flat section to the south of the facility that’s bordered by a deep canyon, with steep but negotiable walls. The nearest population center is a small village about forty miles east.”
She pulled out her phone and brought up a photo. “This is the entrance. Call it five meters in diameter. The bottom’s been flattened and there are rails leading inside. It’s about a kilometer through the cavern before you get to the main blast doors.”
She swiped to a second photo. “Here you can see the chain-link fence that surrounds the facility. Four meters high, topped with razor wire. Beyond the obvious cameras, the one guard is the only security visible.”
“Can we assume that there’s a lot that’s not so visible?” Karen asked.
“Definitely. But I can’t say what it is.”
“Certainly, that tunnel is a shooting gallery,” Vanya said. “I’d put chain guns in the walls and operate them remotely. In a matter of seconds the air would be so full of bullets you wouldn’t be able to breathe.”
“Don’t forget mines,” Reiji said in respectable English. “Antipersonnel mines would be extremely effective in that confined space.”
“And that’s just the conventional stuff,” Randi said. “The Japanese military seems to have spent the last thirty-plus years developing whole new classes of weapons. The truth is we have no idea what to expect. If we’re right about this place, we could be facing things we’ve never seen before.”
“And if we’re wrong, we’re going to be facing a lot of very confused forklift operators,” Eric said.
That actually got a round of subdued laughter. Not enough to break the tension, but enough to at least take it down a notch.
“Do we know anything about the blast doors?” Karen asked.
“The specs call for a foot of steel, but we think it might be stronger than that.”
“Stronger than a foot of steel?”
Klein’s military brain trust had been going through Takahashi’s claims and had recently come upon something that everyone—including her—had missed: the good general’s limo. Everyone attributed his surviving Yoshima’s assassination attempt to luck, but if you looked at the tape with no preconceived notions, it was clear that luck had nothing to do with it. His car should have been completely vaporized. Instead, it seemed to have suffered barely a scratch before being whisked away by helicopters never to be seen again.
“Maybe a lot stronger, actually.”
“It sounds like it would be easier to just go through the damn rock,” Eric said.
“It doesn’t ma
tter if the door is made of paper,” Vanya said. “The likelihood of anyone surviving an incursion into that tunnel is very remote, no?”
“I know that I don’t want to be the poor son of a bitch standing there with his dick in one hand and a power drill in the other,” Eric said. Everyone seemed to agree.
“Okay,” Randi said. “So we forget the front door.”
“I hate to point out the obvious here, but a bunker buster,” Karen offered. “Quick, effective, and it should get around whatever ground defenses they’ve dreamed up. We could fly it in from our base on Okinawa. They’d have zero time to react.”
Reiji’s brow furrowed. “Bomb Japan? This cannot happen, yes?”
Randi looked up at him. The man was undoubtedly a patriot and she was hesitant to talk freely on this subject in front of him. Having said that, Klein had specifically cleared everyone standing around this table. As far as he was concerned, their loyalty to Covert-One was above suspicion.
“Unfortunately, it can happen, Reiji. Based on what I’m being told, nothing is off the table. The problem here isn’t approvals so much as the nanotech we suspect is being housed at the facility. There’s no way to overstate how dangerous it could be if it got out. We can’t risk blowing it into the atmosphere.”
“Deliveries?” Eric said.
“What little intel we have suggests that everything going in and out is examined with some kind of particle scanner. You couldn’t smuggle in a cockroach.”
“The Cask of Amontillado,” Vanya said. Everyone just stared at him.
“Three Americans here and none of you read Poe? Your education system is as bad as I have been led to believe. My point is this: We don’t really want to get in here. We just don’t want them to get out. Why not seal it up?”
“That’s the kind of out-of-the-box thinking we need,” Randi said. “But in this case, I don’t think it’s workable. We believe that there’s a lot of mental horsepower and equipment in there…”
“She’s right,” Reiji interjected. “When the workers and scientists realize what we’re trying to do, they will panic and try to get out any way they can. If they succeed, their weapon could get out with them.”
Everyone fell silent and that silence stretched out a depressingly long time.
“I don’t read much Poe, but I like movies,” Eric said finally. “This thing reminds me of the alien in those Sigourney Weaver flicks. In the unlikely event you find a way to hurt it, it bleeds acid all over you.”
Randi ran over the map again, trying to come up with something—anything—they were missing. “Come on, people. We’re supposed to be the best at this kind of thing. Get me into that damn facility.”
50
Northeastern Japan
From his position on the cot, Jon Smith studied the room for what must have been the thousandth time. Clearly Takahashi hadn’t considered the necessity of housing prisoners in this facility and had been forced to repurpose what appeared to be a break room. The kitchenette was still there, including a refrigerator stocked with food. Furniture was utilitarian, and a small bathroom with a sink was on the other side of a pocket door.
More interesting was the construction. The walls were natural rock and hardened mud, while fixtures—even the fridge—were a mix of ceramic, carbon fiber, and wood. His clothes had been taken and he was now wearing the same white cotton jumpsuit as the two workers he’d glimpsed when he’d been moved to this cell. Buttons appeared to be bone and there was no belt that would necessitate a buckle. Shoes were slip-on and contained no nails that he could discern.
So, while he couldn’t be 100 percent certain that the nanotech was being developed here, the lack of materials it could consume suggested that it was at least being stored here.
The question was, what could he do about it? The door wasn’t budging and the best tools he had for tunneling were a few plastic spoons left in one of the drawers.
Even if he could escape, what would he be escaping to? For all he knew, World War III was already being fought on the other side of the millions of tons of earth above him.
Smith stood and picked up one of the folding chairs with his right hand. He lifted it carefully out to his side, the searing pain behind his shoulder blade not quite as bad as it had been the day before. He wasn’t sure if he’d survive long enough for it to matter, but he might as well use the idle time to get some of his strength back.
Halfway into his third set, the door leading to the corridor outside slid back. He dropped the chair and turned, expecting Takahashi but instead seeing someone very different.
The man who entered was probably no more than five feet six, but the fact that he walked slightly stooped made him seem smaller. His hair was long, but growing only in intermittent patches on a damaged scalp. The discolored skin on his face seemed to have collapsed in places, but his eyes were surprisingly clear.
Despite the disfigurement, there was little question as to his identity. And there was even less question that he had been working in Reactor Four on the day of the tsunami.
“Dr. Ito,” Smith said, indicating the chair he had just put down.
The scientist nodded gratefully and took a seat without speaking. His expression was hard to read due to the intermittent paralysis of his facial muscles, but his body language suggested fear. Of what, though?
“My compliments,” Smith said as he took a chair on the other side of the table. “Your nanotechnology is half a century ahead of anything else I’ve seen.”
Ito gave a barely perceptible bow to acknowledge the compliment. “Molecular engineering. It was my dream. Can you imagine the possibilities? Skyscrapers building themselves. The repair, and perhaps even creation, of organs without surg—”
“But that’s not what you created,” Smith interjected.
“No,” he said, a hint of misery mixed with his thick accent. “The closer I got, the more afraid people became.”
“Of the dangers?” Smith prompted.
Ito nodded. “A scientist such as yourself will recognize the irony. The more success I had, the harder it was to get funding. No one wanted to be associated with a potential accident.”
“No one but Takahashi.”
This time the nod was more of a head jerk. Strangely violent.
“He had virtually unlimited resources. And he was very generous with them.”
“But there are always strings attached, aren’t there?”
Ito leaned forward, suddenly seeming to need the table for support. “He wanted my invention to consume concrete, metal, and plastic. This wasn’t ideal from a safety standpoint, but the dangers were acceptable. After I made self-replication work, of course I wanted to branch out in other directions. To find practical uses for the technology. Takahashi, though, wasn’t interested.”
As a scientist, Smith could sympathize. It was easy to become blinded to everything but that next breakthrough. Discovering something capable of changing the world, the opportunity to take a place alongside the great minds of history—all things that could be more intoxicating than any drug.
“So when it became clear that your invention destabilized the materials it fed on, Takahashi wanted you to focus on controlling it.”
Ito looked at him suspiciously.
“I’m not just a scientist, Doctor. I’m a soldier. And I wouldn’t be a very good one if I didn’t understand that weapons that can’t be controlled aren’t very useful.”
Ito was silent for a few moments before speaking again. “I didn’t start my life intending to make weapons, Colonel Smith. But I wanted to create. I wanted to explore my theories.”
“And this was the only way to do it,” Smith prompted. “Takahashi was your only source of reliable funding so you did what he asked.”
Another jerky nod. “I built in limitations to their ability to replicate from the beginning for obvious reasons. Takahashi asked that I also create limitations based on geographic position—so they would shut down outside a preset area. It seemed l
ike a prudent additional measure.”
“And do those measures work?”
“Flawlessly in our tests,” he said with discomfort that Smith understood perfectly.
“How many replications did you perform in your tests, Doctor?”
He seemed to want to stand, but didn’t have the energy. “Tens of millions.”
“And how many replications would you expect if this was used as a weapon?”
“The number is nearly incalculable. Larger than the number of stars in the universe. I’ve explained this to the general many times—that as the number of replications increases, so do the chances of a disastrous mutation. But he seems less inclined to listen with every passing day. He’s changed, Colonel. You’re still a young man, so you wouldn’t understand. Takahashi doesn’t have many more years left. He’s dedicated his life to this. He—”
“Dedicated his life to what?”
Ito looked around him as though someone might be watching. “I thought it was to create a new Japan—one that could rival or perhaps even surpass America. Imagine what the weapons we’ve developed could accomplish. We could destroy North Korea’s military-industrial complex without harming its citizens. Or even specific weapons in precisely defined regions. Can you imagine? There’s no limit to where our technological and military power could have led the world.”
In many ways, Ito was right. What if his nanotech could be targeted at bomb-making materials or even gunpowder in the Middle East and Africa? Hell, in certain neighborhoods in inner-city America. How many lives would be saved? How many countries could be stabilized? The problem, though, was one of intent. America had done shockingly well in wielding its overwhelming power. While imperfect, the US had a stable government with built-in checks and balances, a deep-rooted culture of democracy, and a general reticence to project power unless it was absolutely necessary.
Takahashi, it appeared, had none of those virtues.
“I understand that this isn’t what you intended, Dr. Ito. But you know as well as I do that what you intended doesn’t matter. Takahashi’s provoking a war with China and he plans on demonstrating Japan’s new military superiority by wiping that country off the map.”