The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

mountains, still outlined in orange by a distant setting sun. The opening called
to him, and as though in a trance, he walked up the ramp.
It was a scene from hell. Somehow this section had been shielded one way or
another from the blast. But not the thermal pulse. There were perhaps three
hundred seats, still largely intact, still with people in them. What had once
been people. They were burned black, charcoaled like overdone meat, worse than
any fire victim he'd ever seen in nearly thirty years of fighting fires. At
least three hundred, still sitting there, looking at where the field had been.
'Come on, Chief,' Major Lyle said, pulling him away. The man collapsed, and Lyle
saw him vomiting inside his gas mask. The colonel got it off him, and pulled him
clear. 'Time to leave. It's all over here. You've done your job.' It turned out
that four more people were still alive. The firemen loaded them on the engine
deck of the tank, which drove off at once to the evacuation point. The remaining
firefighters there washed everything off, and departed, too.
***
Perhaps the only good luck of the day, Larry Parsons, thought, was the snow
cover. It had attenuated the thermal damage to the adjacent buildings. Instead
of hundreds of house fires, there were only a few. Better, the afternoon sun of
the previous day had been just intense enough to form a crust on the yards and
roofs around the stadium. Parsons was looking for material on that crust. He and
his men searched with scintillometers. The almost incredible fact of the matter
was that while a nuclear bomb converted much of its mass into energy, the total
mass lost in the process was minuscule. Aside from that, matter is very hard to
destroy, and he was searching for residue from the device. This was easier than
one might have thought. The material was dark, on a flat white surface, and it
was also highly radioactive. He had a choice of six very hot spots, two miles
downrange of the stadium. Parsons had taken the hottest. Dressed in his
lead-coated protective suit, he was trudging across a snow-covered lawn.
Probably an elderly couple, he thought. No kids had built a snowman or lain down
to make angels. The rippling sound of the counter grew larger . . . there.
The residue was hardly larger in size than dust particles, but there were many
of them, probably pulverized gravel and paving material from the parking lot,
Parsons thought. If he were very lucky, it had been sucked up through the center
of the fireball, and bomb residue had affixed itself to it. If he were lucky.
Parsons scooped up a trowel's worth and slid it into a plastic bag. This he
tossed to his teammate, who dropped the bag into a lead bucket.
'Very hot stuff, Larry!'
'I know. Let me get one more.' He scooped up another sample and bagged it as
well. Then he lifted his radio.
'Parsons here. You got anything?'
'Yeah, three nice ones, Larry. Enough, I think, for an assay.'
'Meet me at the chopper.'
'On the way.'
Parsons and his partner walked off, ignoring the wide eyes watching from behind
windows. Those people were not his concern for the moment. Thank God, he
thought, that they hadn't bothered him with questions. The helicopter sat in the
middle of a street, its rotor still turning.