Severe Clear by Stuart Woods

Author:Stuart Woods [Woods, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

32

When Hamish went to the kitchen for breakfast, Mo was looking very nervous. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing is wrong, it’s just that the material has arrived, and I’m excited. The doctor has been working most of the night.”

Hamish went into the dining room where Dr. Kharl was working and found him on his knees before the open Vuitton trunk, tightening some screws. He was wearing heavy gloves.

The doctor looked up. “Welcome back,” he said.

“Is it finished?” he asked.

“All done, except for completing the three small devices and what you have to do.”

“I?”

“Or whoever will activate the device,” Kharl said. He stood up and retrieved an object resting on top of the trunk. It was made of metal and was a flat plate about half an inch thick, with a teat-shaped closed tube attached to its bottom. “Some of the material is in here,” Kharl said, tapping the teat. He unscrewed the top of the plate. “There is a layer of plastique here, with a threaded hole on top that will admit a detonator.” He dropped the teat end into the tube and screwed it tightly into place, then screwed a small metal tube containing the igniter into the top. “Then close this panel”—he pointed—“insert this key”—he held up one like the ones he had seen for the smaller devices—“then tap into the keypad the elapsed time to ignition, up to ten hours, then turn the key to the right. When the digital clock reaches zero, the blasting cap will set off the plastique, which will fire the tube containing a bullet of enriched uranium into the fissionable material at the bottom of the trunk, creating what is known as a critical mass. You must be many, many miles away by that time.”

Hamish unrolled a map of Los Angeles and pointed to The Arrington’s location with a draftsman’s compass. “What sort of damage can we expect from this device?”

Kharl took the compass and placed it on the scale at the bottom of the map, adjusting it to the correct distance. “Each kiloton of explosive force will decimate everything inside a radius of one nautical mile, or about six thousand feet. This device has an explosive power of about two and a half kilotons, and thus, a destructive range of about two and a half nautical miles, or a little over three statute miles.” Kharl placed the point of the compass on The Arrington’s location and drew a circle around it.

“Now, you see what lies in the path of complete destruction: inside the circle are all of the Bel-Air neighborhood and all of Beverly Hills, to the edges of West Hollywood. To the west, much of the blast will be contained by the Santa Monica Mountains, but there are dense residential neighborhoods within the circle. To the south, complete destruction reaches to about Santa Monica Boulevard, including practically the entire campus of UCLA, and much of Centurion Studios, where movies are made. To the north the mountains will absorb much of the

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