The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

joke, he had already found himself staring at the pilots in the squadron ready
rooms and wondering which of the handsome, proud young faces would not be around
when TR again made landfall at the Virginia Capes, whose pretty, pregnant wife
would find a chaplain and another aviator on her doorstep just before lunch,
along with a squadron wife to hold her hand when the world ended in distant fire
and blood. A possible clash with Libyans was just one more threat in a universe
where death was a permanent resident. He'd gotten too old for this life, Jackson
admitted quietly to himself. Still as fine a fighter pilot as any – he was too
mature to call himself the world's best anymore, except over drinks – the sadder
aspects of the life were catching up, and it would soon be time to move on, if
he were lucky, to an admiral's flag, just flying occasionally to show he still
knew how and trying to make the good decisions that would minimize the unwanted
visits.
'Problems?' Painter asked.
'Spares,' Captain Jackson replied. 'It's getting harder to keep all the birds
up.'
'Doing the best we can.'
'Yes, sir, I know. Going to get worse, too, if I'm reading the papers right.'
Like maybe three carriers would be retired, along with their air wings. Didn't
people ever learn?
'Every time we've won a war we've been punished for it,' CINCLANT said. 'At
least winning this one didn't cost us a whole lot. Don't worry, there'll be a
place for you when the time comes. You're my best wing commander, Captain.'
'Thank you, sir. I don't mind hearing things like that.'
Painter laughed. 'Neither did I.'
***
'There is a saying in English,' Golovko observed. ' "With friends like these,
who has need of enemies?" What else do we know?'
'It would appear that they turned over their entire supply of plutonium,' the
man said. A representative of the weapons research and design institute at
Sarova, south of Gorkiy, he was less a weapons engineer than a scientist who
kept track of what people outside the Soviet Union were up to. 'I ran the
calculations myself. It is theoretically possible that they developed more of
the material, but what they turned over to us slightly exceeds our own
production of plutonium from plants of similar design here in the Soviet Union.
I think we got it all from them.'
'I have read all that. Why are you here now?'
'The original study overlooked something.'
'And what might that be?' the First Deputy Chairman of the Committee for State
Security asked.
'Tritium.'
'And that is?' Golovko didn't remember. He was not an expert on nuclear
materials, being more grounded in diplomatic and intelligence operations.
The man from Sarova hadn't taught basic physics in years. 'Hydrogen is the
simplest of materials. An atom of hydrogen contains a proton, which is
positively charged, and an electron, which is negatively charged. If you add a
neutron – that has no electrical charge – to the hydrogen atom, you get