The Trigger

  Occasionally, inevitably, his newsagents' context parsers would hiccough, and offer Greene a lighter moment - an article on a 'explosion' in fire ant populations in Missouri, or a Devonian cometary impact in Nevada. Those were balanced by the stories Greene could not shrug off, the senselessly cruel, the shamelessly brutal. The mental pictures stayed with him for days - of fragmentation grenades hurled into the middle of a crowded church in Manila, of a bungled letter-bomb murder in Grozny that killed a one-month-old girl in her mother's arms.

  But nowhere yet had the newsagents found evidence of the Trigger being used as he had been promised it would be - of would-be bombers killed by their own bombs, of despots deposed and armies deprived of their armories, of thugs and punks and wiseguys stripped of their finely machined blued-steel masculinity. The bleeding and dying, the suffering and crying continued unabated, on every continent, in every country, with only the most poignant and dramatic deaths even registering on the conscience and consciousness of strangers half a world away. All was as it had always been.

  Greene did not despair, because he was enough the cynic that he had expected no better. Even so, he felt the lost opportunity more keenly with each passing day - felt it for himself and for those he had called friends, and for her who was never far from his thoughts. A noble gesture wasted, a year lost, and lives disrupted without purpose. It was not from the surrender of hope that his disappointment came, but from the sacrifice of good intentions. They had fallen on hard ground, and it looked more and more as if he would have to step forward and tend them.

  That prospect seemed so certain, in fact, that Greene's preparations were already well underway. He now had three encrypted copies of the Trigger file secreted on remote servers, all physically located outside the United States. Two of those copies were wrapped in a digital envelope addressed to more than a hundred public distribution sites, from newsgroups like alt .peace and sdphysics to preprint servers in sixteen countries. The third was targeted at nearly two hundred private mailboxes belonging to disarmament activists and the Terabyte team's peers around the world - physicists of every flavor, experimental engineers, and the research directors of unencumbered high-tech companies.

  All in all, Greene calculated that his efforts - incorporating the newest and sneakiest tricks of direct-mail spammers - would spawn no fewer than ten thousand copies of the massive file by the end of the first hour. Depending on the speed and effectiveness of any Pentagon interventions - roadblocks, packet assassins and cancelbots being just a few possibilities - there could be half a million copies or more in circulation by the time they found and shut down the source servers. And at that point, it would be too late. Too many recipients would have taken note of the digital elephants Greene had dropped off at their front doors. It would be impossible to make them all go away.

  The threat that most concerned Greene now was the knock at the door that came without warning. He was the weakest link - a classic single-point failure mode. So he had set up all three of his caches with 'dead-man' mailers, their schedulers set three days ahead. If something happened to him, so that an innocuous net "ping" failed to reach his mailers at least once every three days, everything would be set in motion without further involvement on his part. That same mechanism would give Greene a head start - a few hours, a few days if he wanted to risk it - in which to fade into the shadows, if and when the call came.

  But the reason he was sitting in front of a terminal in the wee hours of the night - instead of cuddling the woman in his bed, as any sane man would - was to find out if just possibly all that work had been in vain.

  A few minutes before two, as he was closing his newsagents, he heard the living-room floor creak. 'Hey,' she said softly as she approached.

  'Hey,' he said, bringing CNN up and muting the sound. 'You're a light sleeper.'

  'Not as light as you, apparently. What are you doing - posting a review to alt-dot-gotlucky-dot-com?' she murmured, wrapping her arms around his bare chest from behind.

  'Keeping up with current events,' he said. 'President's on a tour of the Far East.'

  'I've known guys who had to smoke afterwards, and guys who had to eat afterwards, and guys who had to jump up and brush their teeth afterwards -'

  That's endearing.'

  'Intensely,' she said, as a CNN LIVE EVENT bumper appeared on the screen. 'But if you don't come back to bed, I'm going to have to go home thinking I got passed over for a politician - and a dopey-looking one, at that.'

  With a touch of his left hand, Greene started a video capture. With another, he brought up the volume. With his right, he squeezed Kiera's hand, stopping her from pulling away. 'Fifteen minutes and I'll be all over you again.'

  She giggled. This gets you hot?'

  'Well, you know about the genetic link between testosterone and explosions, right?'

  The introductions over, President Breland was beginning to speak.

  Kiera peered over his shoulder at the screen. 'You're expecting explosions?'

  That's the rumor. Not at the podium,' he added quickly. They're going to clear a minefield.'

  'Isn't that dangerous? And doesn't it take a long time?'

  'Usually. That's why this is news.'

  She looked at the screen and saw only talking heads. 'Fifteen minutes? You promise?'

  'Twenty, tops.'

  She kissed the top of his head. 'Maybe I'll go take a shower, then.'

  'What Napoleon said to Josephine.'

  'Hmm?'

  'Don't.'

  She made a surprised noise - but not a displeased one. 'Don't keep me waiting.'

  'I won't.'

  When she was gone, Greene allowed himself to smile. He'd gotten his first glimpse of the air-cushion vehicle at rest in the background, behind the President. The smile broadened to a delighted grin when the first closeup came. When a mock blueprint followed it to the screen, Greene sat back in his chair and started chuckling quietly in the dark.

  '"Harmonic Demining Vehicle",' he whispered to himself. 'I like that. Like the phoney antennas, too - and those big Leslie speakers fore and aft. Very cheesy. Harmonic demining - yeah, that'll do.'

  Greene had misjudged his own degree of glee and fascination. More than an hour passed before he finally tiptoed back into his bedroom. When he did, he found Kiera sound asleep and snoring lightly. He intended to make amends in the morning, but she left the bed early and did not return, hiding in a long shower and then keeping him at a distance until she could escape.

  To his surprise, Greene found he did not particularly mind the lost opportunity, or regret the broken promise. He did not try to detain her, or explain himself. His first thought that morning was to wonder how the event was being reported on the leading headline services. His second thought was about Leigh Thayer, and about the suddenly improved prospect of seeing her again.

  'Before Pol Pot and Lon Nol, before America's secret war and Cambodia's brutal civil war, this was a farm,' President Breland said to the cameras that carried his image around the globe. To his right was the Chairman of the Supreme National Council; to his left, the director of the Cambodian Mine Action Center. 'These fields produced rice, and the woods beyond them yielded firewood and fruit.

  This was not a factory farm, or a state cooperative, or even a cash cropland. This was the family farm of Ngos Iran.' Breland looked down the platform to where the thin, hunched-shouldered man stood barefoot, in jacket and sampot. 'He, and his eight siblings, and his parents, Poth and Ravi, worked these flooded fields for their own survival. If in a good year there was enough extra to fill a cartful to sell at market, they counted themselves blessed.

  'But then the soldiers came, and Mr Tran lost a brother to a bullet. In time, those soldiers were driven off by other soldiers, and Mr Tran lost a second brother - recruited by bayonet, and never heard from again. Again and again, four different armies have skirmished over this land, which lies too close to the Mekong River and the Kampong Cham road to escape their attention.


  'The armies are gone now, but their calling cards of death remain - dozens of plastic-cased antipersonnel mines, hiding under the water, hiding under the mud. One killed Mr Tran's oldest sister. Another took his father's right leg. No one lives off this land now. No one grows rice here. It's too dangerous, even for desperate and hungry people.

  'But the mines in Cambodia are not just one family's tragedy -they are a national tragedy. There are more amputees here than anywhere else in the world - one out of every two hundred people. Four hundred civilians are killed every month, in what the Khmer call peacetime.

  'Why doesn't someone do something? Someone has been trying. For more than a generation, the Cambodian Mine Action Center has run one of the best organized, most dedicated, and most successful demining programs in the world. Working one step at a time, one mine at a time, the CMAC teams - more than three thousand men and women, most of them trained by CMAC - have removed more than seventy thousand mines, and cleared more than six thousand square kilometers of land. And every square kilometer the CMAC clears allows fifty refugees to return home.

  'But despite their unceasing efforts, there are still eight million mines concealed under Cambodian fields, waiting along Cambodian roads and trails, hidden in Cambodian forests. These fields have been red-flagged, on a list of sites to be demined, for nine years.

  The CMAC - the people of Cambodia - have done all anyone could ask to rid their country of this scourge. They need and deserve our help - and help is what we have brought.

  'Behind me is a remarkable machine - the first of what I promise will eventually be hundreds of Harmonic Demining Vehicles, which I intend to see put to work everywhere that our help is welcomed. Using principles of sound energy which will be familiar to anyone who's ever attended a concert, the HDV can do in an hour what would take a platoon of trained deminers a week -and without the terrible casualties all too often suffered by these brave volunteers.

  'This land has seen too much blood spilled, and lain fallow for too long. It's time for Mr Tran and his family to return home to their village and to their fields. That is why I have asked the US Army's newly-formed 318th Engineering Brigade to bring their first HDV here, and to demonstrate to the world that the era of the mine is ending. Mr Tran, I hope these will be the last soldiers that are ever seen in your fields.'

  Breland turned away from the podium and made a signal - a circle drawn in the air with his forefinger - to the Army lieutenant standing at attention with his crew in front of the HDV. The lieutenant answered with a salute. As he and his men climbed aboard the vehicle, Breland allowed himself to be steered to one of the five chairs sheltered by three large sloping panels of clear acrylic shrapnel shield - a concession to the Secret Service, who had wanted Breland to make his speech from a studio in Phnom Pehn.

  There was a rustle and murmur of anticipation as the HDV's turbines wound up, and the air-cushion vehicle rose up off its collapsed rubber skirt. With its ducted steering fans all spinning, it turned and approached the boundary markers. As it neared the first flag, another sound was added - the basso thrum of the high-output speakers, which reached Breland's ears almost as a pulse, even though he knew it was a continuous sound.

  Almost at once, half a dozen small fountains of earth and water erupted from the abandoned rice paddy in an arc just ahead of the HDV. The individual explosions, muffled by the overburden, were barely louder than their scattered echoes, but they nevertheless caused the hundred or so spectators to start, and then - inexplicably - crowd closer. As the HDV glided forward over the edge of the field, the explosions continued, to the delighted applause of his hosts.

  When the vehicle paused at the treeline and then turned to begin a second, parallel pass, Breland could see that the air-cushion skirt was splattered with Mekong mud, but there was no sign of any damage.

  'How many of these can you lend us?' asked the Supreme National Council chairman, leaning close to Breland.

  'We're organizing them in squadrons of four,' said Breland. 'I was hoping you'd allow me to station two squadrons here. My experts tell me that they should be able to have all the lowland areas cleared by the end of the year.'

  'By the end of the year -' the Chairman echoed, marveling.

  Just then, without warning, a single huge explosion erupted just a few meters inside the edge of the flagged area. Something hard rattled against the shield, and the entire platform shook. Breland flinched reflexively, then started to stand, his ears ringing. The explosion had curtained the HDV from his eyes behind a solid wall of mud, smoke, and water.

  He was grabbed by two Secret Service agents, who clearly meant to take him to the floor shielding his body with their own. But he shook them off angrily as Colonel Grassley of the 318th came running up to the platform.

  'What's happening, Colonel?' he called, helping the CMAC director to his feet.

  'UXO, Mr President - unexploded ordnance. Probably an artillery shell or mortar round that buried itself in there. Sounded like a big one - the Chinese copied the Russian 82mm towed mortar, could have been something like that. Could even have been an iron bomb we left behind.'

  'Is the HDV damaged?' But by then he could see that it wasn't - though now well-painted with mud, it was still moving forward, passing close by a small crater that was quickly filling with water.

  'No, sir. Do you want us to continue?'

  The commander of the Secret Service unit stepped forward and tried to take that question, but Breland was quicker. 'Absolutely, Colonel. Clear that entire field.'

  The Secret Service was now at Breland's elbow, angry and insistent. 'Mr President, we have to move you back -'

  I'll sit back down, John,' he said in a low voice the microphones did not catch. 'That's as far as I'm going to let you move me.'

  In another ten minutes it was over. There were no more big explosions, and only a single medium-sized one, which Grassley identified as an antitank mine. In all, some three dozen 'poppers', as the director of CMAC referred to the small antipersonnel mines, detonated in the first sweep of the field. The HDV made a second sweep at right angles to the first, but not a single additional explosion ensued. It appeared that the first sweep had been one hundred percent effective, locating and destroying every threat lurking under the surface.

  As the HDV settled onto its skirt in the parking zone, Breland jumped down from the platform and crossed the road to congratulate its crew. His Secret Service detail hurried nervously after him, hoping his next stop would be the Presidential helicopter, and a quick trip back to the safety of Singapore. But as Breland was finishing with the crew, he saw that Ngos Tran had also left the platform, and was walking haltingly toward the red flags, all alone in his wonder and uncertainty.

  It was then that, on impulse, Breland made the gesture which almost every news editor around the world would choose as the defining image of the day. Crossing the ground with long but unhurried strides, he joined Ngos Tran where he stood.

  The two men could hardly have been less alike, or from more different worlds - West and East, city and farm, broad-shouldered and thin, tall and stooped, empowered and impoverished, a President and a peasant farmer. Neither could understand a word that the other spoke. But in a few gestures, they made their meaning clear.

  Is it really safe? Tran wanted to know.

  Come - see for yourself, was Breland's answer.

  Side by side, the two men walked past the flags and into the soggy field that half an hour earlier neither of them would have dared enter.

  Before long they were joined by the Cambodian officials, then others from the platform, all rushing to demonstrate that they, too, were not afraid. But the others were irrelevant. The cameras barely paid them any mind.

  It was Ngos Iran's tearful gratitude - looking up at Breland and clasping both his hands, the two men standing ankle-deep in the mud - that would earn photographer Milos Thurban a Pulitzer Prize.

  And it would earn President Mark Breland inestimably more.

  * * *


  16: Perplexity

  Nagasaki, Japan - Seismic tracings 'prove without a doubt' that China conducted an underground nuclear test in violation of the Comprehensive Test Ban, according to the director of World Nuclear Monitor. The bomb transients are unmistakable. This was a new design, with a higher yield than we've seen before,' said Dr Ray Milius. 'I expect it's the warhead for the DM0.' The Chinese Space Agency test-fired its new long-range rocket last month. But officials in Beijing insist that the seismic event, centered near the Lop Nor nuclear test area, was an earthquake rather than an explosion, and that the Dong Feng 10 was designed as a booster for the Lotus manned spacecraft.

  Complete Story State Dept 'reviewing Data' Video: DF-10 Launch

  Japan's Premier Protests Was Test Meant as Warning' to Russia, US

  Dr Leigh Thayer's control and measurement team was in command of the test range for the afternoon. It had prepared more than 400 samples of materials being evaluated as Trigger shields - from metals to crystals to liquids to inorganic compounds rich in nitrogen. Each material would be tested in three thicknesses -one, three and five centimeters - and at two distances - ten and twenty-five meters.

  Lee called these test sessions the Scramble, because the predominant image of them was of the entire team scattered across the test range, carrying sample trays and hurrying from one test pad to the next. The tests themselves only took a few seconds each, so it seemed as though they were in an endless cycle of set-up and collection.