|
|
|
|
|
|
thought not. They were all professionals, all of them volunteers who knew the dangers before they agreed to come. The Device had to be met and defeated. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
He was almost over the warhead now. The cold had worked its way deeper into Morgan's inner being. It was more than a physical cold, it was an awesome sense of what could happen here and what it would mean all across the planet. He had a momentary vision of Oppenheimer dramatically quoting the Bhagavad Gita in the New Mexico desert. Surely he had never envisioned the world ending on such an absurd note as this. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Morgan swam down to the broken missile. At six minutes and nine seconds elapsed time, his light pierced the silty gloom in which the Device lay, looking like an innocent section of pipeline, beginning nowhere and ending nowhere. Deep pits had been excavated around it at two-meter intervals by the airlift. In some of the deeper diggings, it appeared that he could probably, with some effort, pull himself under the missile to the other side for inspection. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"I am approaching the warhead," he reported to the surface. At this depth his voice was a burring drone, like the sound of an insect. He swam down into still deeper water, his fins disturbing the silt and whatever other detritus lay on the bottom. The bomb was indeed a modified SS-18 ICBM, monsters built by Nikita Khrushchev, deployed by Brezhnev. "We will bury you," Krushchev had said. When Gorbachev appeared, young, vigorous, we wanted to believe the world could be a better place, Morgan thought. The world gave Gorby a Nobel Peace Prizeand now the world was in a reality check. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Colonel?" The sonar phone carried the acting divemaster's voice. "Everything all right?" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Fine, Chief," Morgan said. "Stay cool." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
As he swam down the length of the Device, he caught his breath. There was something primitive, savage, about a ballistic missile of this size, Morgan thought. It was a wonder that the Pravda, once it had been extensivelyand imprudentlymodified to make possible carrying this monster, could have |
|
|
|
|
|