The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

'Sir, he's not a bad guy. I hear he's a good father and all that. His wife's a
sweetie. It's just that he never learned to handle people, and nobody ever
bothered teaching him right. Despite that he is a capable officer. If he'd only
give an inch on the humanity side, he'd be a real star.'
'Are you comfortable with your op-orders?'
'If we sniff out an Akula to go in and track him – safe distance and all that.
Am I comfortable? Hell, yes. Come on, Commodore, we're so quiet there's not a
thing to worry about. I was surprised Washington approved this thing, and all,
but that's bureaucratic stuff. The short version is, anybody can drive this
boat. Okay, maybe Cap'n Ricks isn't perfect, but unless our boat breaks, Popeye
could do the mission.'
***
They put the Secondary assembly in before the Primary. The collection of lithium
compounds was contained in a metal cylinder roughly the size of a 105mm
artillery casing, sixty-five centimeters high and eleven centimeters in
diameter. It even had a rim machined on the bottom end so that it would fit
exactly the right spot. There was a small curved tube at the bottom that
attached to what would soon be the tritium reservoir. On the outside of the
casing were the fins made of spent 238U . They looked like rows of thick, black
soda crackers, Fromm thought. Their mission, of course, was to be immolated to
plasma. Beneath the cylinder were the first bundles of 'soda-straws' – even
Fromm was calling them that now, though they actually were not; they were of the
wrong diameter. Sixty centimeters in length, each bundle of a hundred was held
together by thin but strong plastic spacers, and the bottom of each had been
given a half-turn to make each bundle into a helix, a shape rather like that of
a spiral staircase. The hard part in this segment of the design was to arrange
the helixes to nest together perfectly. Seemingly trivial, it had taken fully
two days for Fromm to figure out, but as with all aspects of his design, the
pieces all fit into proper place until that portion of the design seemed a
perfectly assembled mass of . . . soda straws. It almost made the German laugh.
With tape measure, micrometer, and an expert eye – gradation marks had been
machined into many of the parts, a small detail that had impressed Ghosn very
greatly indeed. When Fromm was satisfied, they went on. First came the plastic
foam blocks, each cut to precise specifications. They fit into the elliptical
bomb-case. Ghosn and Fromm were now doing all the work. Slowly, carefully, they
eased the first block into place within the flanges on the interior of the case.
The straw bundles came next, one at a time, nesting perfectly with those
immediately under them. At every step both men stopped to check the work. Fromm
and Ghosn both checked the work, checked the plans, checked the work again, and
checked the plans again.
For Bock and Qati, watching a few meters away, it was the most tedious thing
they had ever seen.
'The people who do this work in America and Russia must die of boredom,' the
German said quietly.
'Perhaps.'
'Next bundle, number thirty-six,' Fromm said.
'Thirty-six,' Ghosn replied, examining the three tags on the next batch of a