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"Good work today."
Rapp was caught slightly off guard. For some reason he was expecting to get his ass chewed out. "Thank you, sir."
"Paul tells me that our technical people aren't sure they can stop this thing from going off. Is that what you're hearing?"
"Yes, sir. I was told defusing it was a fifty-fifty proposition at best."
"How much time do we have?"
Rapp looked at his watch. "Forty-five minutes, sir."
Reimer quickly interjected, "That's not enough time to take it out to sea, Mr. President."
"Then what do you propose we do?"
"We have two options, sir. We can dump it in the Chesapeake, in which case the immediate fatalities will be limited to the number of boaters in the area, though due to the fact that the bay is not very deep the fallout will be significant. We'd end up with a sizable cloud of radioactive vapor that would spread for hundreds of miles, and since the wind is coming from the east, it would move toward the more populated areas."
"Could it reach Washington?"
"Possibly."
"How many fatalities?"
"Initially probably somewhere around a hundred, but the fallout could drive that number easily above a thousand as cancer rates would skyrocket. It would also take decades for the Chesapeake to rebound, as well as the contaminated surrounding areas that take the brunt of the fallout."
There was silence. "What's the second option?"
"The second option, sir, is a bit controversial, but it is also the one that would result in the fewest casualties, and do the least harm to the environment."
"Let's hear it, then."
"Take the bomb by helicopter to Mount Weather and put it inside. Then close the blast doors to limit the fallout."
Mount Weather was a secure hardened facility built in the 1950s, located fifty-five miles from the White House. It was the main location in the Federal Relocation Arc, a system of just over a hundred shelters in five states designed to house key government employees in the case of a nuclear attack or other emergency.
"Mount Weather!" someone shouted. "I'm at Mount Weather! You can't bring the damn thing here!"
Rapp recognized the voice as belonging to the attorney general. Rapp pictured the look of panic in the man's face and smiled. Every cloud had a silver lining.
"Mr. President," said the Director of Homeland Security, "Mount Weather is the backbone of our emergency command-and-control system. The replacement cost would be staggering it would be at least several billion dollars."
"We're a rich country," answered Valerie Jones. "We'll build a new one. Mr. President, you can't drop this thing in the Chesapeake Bay."
Rapp was slightly taken aback. He thought this was probably the first time he'd ever agreed with Jones on anything.
"FEMA has offices located on that mountain, sir," countered Secretary McClellan. He was referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "And the Blue Ridge Mountains are as much a national treasure as the Chesapeake Bay. The Appalachian Trail runs within two miles of the place."
"I think the FEMA facilities will survive the blast, Mr. President," Reimer said. "Mount Weather is carved out of the most dense rock on the East Coast, and it has two sets of vaultlike blast doors that are each five feet thick."
Before Reimer could continue, the conference call broke out into a free-for-all with invective and opinions flying back and forth. All of the sudden Rapp felt really tired. The leather chair was comfortable, and the slight vibration from the helicopter was putting him in a trance. He let out a yawn and almost put his feet up on the cooler but he caught himself at the last second.
Rapp shook his head and looked at his watch. After another moment of listening to the arguing he said, "Mr. President." The free-for-all continued, so he repeated himself a little more loudly. Again, no one yielded so Rapp yelled, "Everybody shut up! Right now!"
The arguing trickled to a stop, and Rapp said, "Mr. President, you need to make a decision. I'm already in the air with the bomb headed west away from the city. Now, if you want me to dump it in the Chesapeake, then you'd better tell me quick, because I'm going to have turn around and haul ass back over the city, and hope I can get there in time."
"You're already on your way to Mount Weather?" asked a shocked Attorney General Stokes.
"Yes, and quit your whining, I'm the one whose been baby-sitting this thing for the last hour."