Joint Task Force #2: America by David E. Meadows Page A

hill, were over fifty Africans—all but one was dead. The patrol thought at first that the truck had blown up on its own, killing the Africans. Africans sometimes overload transportation. What they discovered as they searched for survivors were some of the dead with single bullet holes to their heads. There would be no reason to put a bullet into the heads of people who are expected to die in an explosion, only to dispose of those who should survive one.” His hands parted as he held uphis index finger for a second. “One African was alive, but he died before an ambulance could get to him, but not before the patrol managed to interrogate him.”
    Tucker watched the movement of the French officer as he spoke. The motions revealed taught muscles; biceps stretched the openings of the short sleeves belying a first impression of a thin, lanky, Frenchman. As he watched, Tucker casually observed sinewy muscles creating faint ripples beneath the white uniform. This was no normal Admiral’s aide-de-camp. What was his real job, he wondered?
    “Based on what the man told before he died—about a huge square van so large a man could walk inside it—the patrol passed a code word to our military control center in Abidjan. Seems the van or container or whatever we call it suffered some damage, and the ones who had killed the Africans had waved a magic wand around it to check the damage. We dispatched a complete chemical-biological warfare team along with armed escorts to the inlet.” He paused for a moment, slowly raised his hands from the table, leaving the elbows on it, and spread his fingers, palm outward, toward the listeners. “Just before sundown, one of the team decided to run a Geiger counter along the pier.” He dropped his hands back on the table. “Nothing. Not a thing. He walked the pier, checked the few remaining boxes—of which nothing but rags were found—and still no detection. Unexplainable and against regulations, the sergeant forgot to turn off the Geiger counter when he had completed his check.”
    St. Cyr cocked his head to the side. “This is because the machine—how do you say it—eats up batteries, n’est pas? ” Without waiting for an answer, he nodded again to Admiral James. “As he walked past the hulk of the truck, the machine clicked. Startled, the noncommissioned officer waved it around the area, and as he approached the bed of the truck, the needle went off the scale.”
    “What does that mean?” Admiral Holman asked.
    “It means, Dick, that whatever they loaded from thattruck on board that ship is nuclear,” Admiral Marker added.
    “That is true,” St. Cyr acknowledged. “The dead African said a heavy, dark van—probably black—was transported to the pier by the truck and loaded onto the ship. He did not say whether they loaded it into the hold or whether it was too big to fit. We think it could be tied topside on one of the weather decks. I would think the helicopter deck would be the better option. The other complication is that we do not know what type of ship it is. It could be a freighter; a collier; a cruise ship; a sailing vessel—though the size of the truck indicates it would be a large ship. A large enough ship to cross the ocean.”
    “You see where we’re going with this, Commander Raleigh?” Admiral James asked.
    Tucker shook his head. “Sorry, sir, I really don’t.”
    “This ship that Captain St. Cyr has been telling us about is somewhere out there in the Atlantic Ocean. What we don’t know is where it’s going, and we don’t know for sure that it has a nuclear weapon on board.”
    “Our analysis is very accurate,” St. Cyr objected.
    “Most likely it would be a dirty bomb,” Admiral Marker interjected.
    “That may be, Grace, but if that dirty bomb explodes in the Potomac, out there”—James pointed north—“near the Pentagon, it would contaminate everything within five to six miles.”
    “But Duncan, we don’t know the size of it