GEN13 - Version 2.0 by Unknown Author

hard news that had already been filed consisted of the usual sorts of budget wrangling between the President and Congress, a piece on rising crime rates, strife in the Middle East, and that sort of thing. Nothing terribly remarkable, other than the Kolodny disaster.
    He pulled up the indexes from the previous several days. He leaned back in the chair and started to scan through them as he hit the “redial” button on his phone.
    This time, the phone on the other end picked up on the first ring. “Greenberg.”
    “Lynch.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    “The Kolodny .”
    “You and everyone else in the world. It’s a madhouse around here. We’ve got D.O.D. breathing down our necks, the White House calling every ten minutes ... Maybe we could dig up some answers for them if we didn’t have to spend all our time answering the phone.”
    “That’s a lot of fuss for an accident.”
    Greenberg snorted. “Yeah, right.”
    “You’re not convinced.”
    “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what the hell it is. But it’s sure no accident.”
    “Bomb?”
    “Not like any I’ve ever seen. No blast radius, none of the scorching or scoring that you’d get with a bomb.” “So what, then?”
    “Damned if I know. Two breaches in the hull. Big ones. One of them measured out at point-nine meters long, the other at two-point-six.”
    “Mm. But not a bomb.”
    “Nah. Preliminary investigation of the scene shows multiple stress points at the seams between the plates, loosened rivets ... It’s like the damned thing just shook itself apart.”
    “Maybe someone sabotaged it before it left port. Weakened the seams, loosened the rivets.”
    “The Kolodny left port sixty-three days ago. Even if it took this long for the undersea pressure to take its toll—— which isn’t bloody likely—there’s regular maintenance that happens every day on those subs. There’s no way that kind of damage would have gone undetected this long. Whatever happened, happened last night.”
    “And that’s why you’re so sure this wasn’t an accident.”
    “Well, that and one other thing.”
    “What’s that?”
    “The part we’re not giving to the press.”
    “Which is ... ?”
    “There’s a Trident II missile unaccounted for.”
    Lynch gave a low whistle. “So that’s why all the pressure from the Brass.”
    “You got it. They get a mite touchy when we can’t find one of their nukes.”
“Do you realize what you’re saying?”
If Freefall had been using any caution at all, she
00:01:18. " " '

“Do you realize what you’re saying?”
    “No, Lynch, I don’t realize what I’m saying. Tell me what I’m saying,” Greenberg said, exasperated. “Of course I know what I’m saying. Those holes in the sub aren’t big enough for a Trident to just fall out. Someone took it. That means there’s a rogue warhead out there. We don’t know who’s got it, we don’t know how they did it, we don’t know who they’re going to shoot it at, and it’s got our signature on it.”
    “Besides that,” Lynch replied. “From the way you were describing things, I assumed this was a suicide mission. Someone infiltrated the crew, did the damage, and probably died with the rest of them. But that’s not it.
    “If that missile is gone, then whoever took it survived to get off. And they managed to take a 130,000-pound missile off a sub from one thousand feet down.”
    “That’s about the size of it,” Greenberg agreed. “Not exactly a modus opperandi I’m familiar with. Know any roving packs of terrorist killer whales?”
    “Anyone take responsibility yet?”
    “The usuals. ‘Retribution against the imperialist American government, yadda, yadda, yadda.’ But they’re all blowing smoke. None of them knew about the Trident.” “So what now?”
    “What do you think? Publicly, we chalk the whole thing up to a ‘tragic malfunction,’ honor the heroic dead, and swear to make sure the equipment is upgraded so that it never