The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

on speaker, sir.'
'Talk to me, Dan.' Jack put his phone on speaker, also. A watch officer handed
him a cup of coffee.
'We don't know anything. No heads-up at all, Jack. Thinking terrorists?'
'At the moment, it seems the most plausible alternative.'
'How sure are you of that?'
'Sure?' Ryan shook his head at the phone, Goodley saw. 'What's "sure" mean,
Dan?'
'I hear you. We're still trying to figure out what happened here, too. I can't
even get CNN on the TV to work.'
What?'
'One of my communications people says the satellites are all out,' Murray
explained. 'Didn't you know that"
'No.' Jack pointed for Goodley to get back into the Ops Center and find out. 'if
that's true, it could scratch the terrorism idea. Jesus, that's scary"
'It's true, Jack. We've checked.
'They think ten commercial commosats are nonfunctional,' Goodley said. 'All the
defense birds are on line, though. Our commlinks are okay.'
'Find the most senior S&T guy you can find – or one of our commo people – and
ask him what could snuff out satellites. Move!' Jack ordered. 'Where's Shaw?'
'On his way in. Going to be a while the way the roads are.'
'Dan, I'll give you everything I get here.'
'It'll be a two-way street.' The line went dead.
The most horrible thing was that Ryan didn't know what to do next. It was his
job to gather data and forward it to the President, but he had no data. What
information there was would come in through military circuits. CIA had failed
again, Ryan told himself. Someone had done something to his country, and he
hadn't warned anyone. People were dead because his agency had failed in its
mission. Ryan was Deputy Director, the man who really ran the shop for the
political drone placed over his head. The failure was personal. A million people
dead, maybe, and there he was, all alone in an elegant little conference room
staring at a wall with nothing on it. He hunted a line to NORAD and punched it.
'NORAD,' a disembodied voice answered.
'This is the CIA Operations Center, Deputy Director Ryan speaking. I need
information.'
'We do not have much, sir. We think the bomb exploded in the immediate vicinity
of the Skydome. We are trying to estimate yield, but nothing yet. A helicopter
has been dispatched from Lowery Air Force Base.'
'Will you keep us posted?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Thank you.' That was a big help, Ryan thought. Now he knew that someone else
didn't know anything.
***
There was nothing magical about a mushroom cloud, Battalion Chief Mike Callaghan
of the Denver City Fire Department knew. He'd seen one before, as a rookie
firefighter. It had been a fire in the Burlington yards just outside the city,
in 1968. A propane tank-car had let go, right next to another trainload of bombs