Len forced himself to watch the computer display as the video showed the sky, then the horizon, then an aerial shot of the ground approaching. He tried to show no emotion as he recognized the Tamga facility approach the view. All a Japanese trick — after all, the technology to fake this was well within their means. But then the compound continued to grow closer in the video display.
Len held his breath. (HAPTE8 tamga, greater manchuria The transmission came in from Galaxy satellite number three. The satellite identified itself, then issued a go code for the weapon to continue on its flight path for the target. If the message had not been received, the missile would have turned around and flown back out to sea and self-destructed. The attack could not take place unless the Japanese Defense Agency gave final confirmation within one minute of final arming and detonation of the warhead. But the message decoded to “detonate over target as planned,” and the missile made its final turn toward the target, now only one kilometer away over the ridge forming the Tamga Valley.
The warhead self-checks remained satisfactory. The missile armed the warhead detonator train, removing the safety interlocks from the system. It moved the canister of plutonium dust into proximity of the high-explosive cylinder so that the donut-shaped plutonium canister completely surrounded the explosive. The explosion cloud would not chemically alter the plutonium, but rather disperse it. Next to the plutonium canister highpressure bottles of explosive ethylene gas were located, the gas pressure so high that a bottle failure alone could blow up half a city block. On the outside skin of the warhead were plastic bottles of vinyl acetate monomer liquid along with layered annular plastic bottles of other liquids, called “stardust” since they were miscellaneous additives that caused the polymerization to be able to proceed in the high temperatures of the fireball generated by the small high-explosive charge of the central detonator. The entire warhead was filled with inert nitrogen, which meant there was no stray oxygen to ruin the onboard chemicals or cause the ethylene to burn on warhead detonation.
Now fully armed, the warhead reported back to the missile computer that it was ready. The missile, at range to the target indicating half a kilometer, pulled up on the winglets and climbed for the sky.
The Tamga facility was now dead ahead by only a few hundred meters. The missile nose-cone video camera saw only the heavens above as the missile climbed, and when the altitude indicated a height of 1500 meters the winglets rotated to send the missile plummeting down over the target.
The video camera showed the facility laid out like a still-color aerial photograph, the afternoon sun casting the low shadows of the trees over the compound, which grew rapidly closer as the missile dived for the center, the humpbacked earthen bunker shown on the navigation files describing the target. The view continued to grow until the surrounding complex was gone, only the central buildings and the bunker in view, with one of the SS-34 missiles rolled out on the southwest side of the bunker, the shadows of people clear in the camera view.
Altitude 500 meters. The detonator, a small blasting cap, was energized by the missile-computer circuitry.
Seeing the high voltage, the detonator exploded and caused the high-explosive charge to go off.
Altitude 450 meters. The high-explosive detonation rippled through the plutonium canister, the fireball reaching out to the ethylene bottles and rupturing them. Contained in the high-energy gases of the explosion were plutonium fragments and ethylene gas. The ethylene did not burn or explode, since the high explosive had already used its oxidizer, and there was no oxygen inside the warhead, only nitrogen. The blast circle then extended to the vinyl acetate monomer bottles and the stardust, the plastic material of the bottles vaporizing, the liquid, then atomizing and vaporizing as well, taking the aerosol stardust with it. The pressure pulse blew off the warhead skin, and the cloud grew, a sphere of high pressure, high-temperature gases, the ethylene gas mixing with the vinyl acetate monomer in the high temperatures and reacting to form a vinyl-acetate ethylene copolymer — a liquid latex glue — which completed its reaction, using up the ethylene and vinyl acetate and stardust, the gas cloud finally cooling and changing from a sphere to a teardrop shape as it fell toward earth.
The polymer glue then mixed with the plutonium dust and rained down on the earth, the first droplets falling onto the ground of the bunker, the SS-34 missile that had been rolled out, and those standing by the missile.
After weapon one detonated, weapon two’s warhead exploded, adding a second wave of plutonium-latex rain down on the compound below.
