Chapter 14 - Strike
The cruise missile bulleted over the terrain, hugging the ground and maneuvering like a running back dogging tacklers on his course to the goal line. The diminutive craft gobbled up kilometers of roads, irrigation canals, houses, and fields in seconds leaving swirls of dust in its wake. The mountains at the other extent of the broad plain it negotiated were unaware of its coming. It followed a broad dirt road that led into a mountain canyon. Only a short way into the canyon the missile cut engines and coasted over razor wire topped fence. In fewer than three milliseconds, it evaluated the possible targets and chose the one that wasn’t a decoy. It then banked sharp right and dove. This maneuver cut its speed and lined it up with a large steel door built into the side of the canyon at an angle to discourage exactly what was happening. Just meters before it would slam into the iron door, it exploded into a cloud of gray smoke, which hit the door and surrounding rock with hardly a sound. There was nothing left of the missile just the smoke that sifted down to the threshold of a door big enough for trucks to pass through if it had been open. The cloud, now a pile of dust, sat against the door for a few seconds then it shrank and disappeared as if hovered up by an invisible homemaker’s invisible vacuum cleaner and was gone.
On the inside of the door, in the artificial light, a cloud puffed from under the foot thick iron door and as though under the influence of a gentle leaf rustling autumn breeze rolled down a long passage way cut through solid rock.
At length the passage was interrupted by more doors. These were open at the moment. Beyond the second set of doors the passage opened up to a larger area. Here were men and equipment moving around. There were signs written in Arabic on the walls of the chamber. On one wall, which was concrete block not rock like the others, there was posted a sign, next to yet another closed door. This sign showed the three-bladed fan on yellow — the international sign for “Radiation danger”
The dust rose from the floor like a fog lifting and drifted to the ceiling. Above the suspended lights it was invisible to the men below. It spread and seeped into the ceiling rock and concrete and was gone.
Cracks began where the dust had entered. The cracks spread to the area over the door. On the other side of the door they zigzagged to a place in a large room over metal tanks and machinery tended by men, some in HazMat, suits. The cracks filled the chamber's ceiling. Only when white dust and pebbles began to fall to the floor in increasing volume did the men notice.
As they looked up, chunks of ceiling fell around them. As they ran toward the exit the whole ceiling fell in. As they raised arms to shield themselves from hundreds of tons of falling rock, their screams where first drowned out by the noise of the cave-in and then silenced as lungs and bones were crushed and flesh was mashed. The tanks and cylinder centrifuges were fractured spilling their enriched uranium hexafluoride gases. The workroom filled with debris. The gas condensed as a grey dust like crystal and seeped through the debris to mingle with blood and pool on the floor of the now rock filled underground enrichment facility.
The large doors in the mountain face started to open powered by large unseen electric motors. As soon as there was enough of an opening, would-be rescuers rushed in. When the doors finished their effort and stood wide open their capacity was filled with an ejection of dust and debris and sound from collapsing tunnel ceilings and walls. Other uniformed men were more prudent and did not enter but witnessed dust, as it belched out of the opened doorway into the air and was carried away by a lazy breeze.
From the rubble, a few electric sparks voiced a finale. Then there was silence.