"Abdoullah" had finished unpacking the second crate, and now he
examined what he had: two fifteen-kiloton nuclear devices, made using
enriched uranium-235 from the Kahuta Nuclear Research Center. He smiled
again to think they had been smuggled out right from under the noses of
the officials at Kahuta, directly up the security elevators leading
down to the U235 centrifuge at Level Five.
The research center was situated more or less in between the sister
cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, in northeast Pakistan, where it was
surrounded by barren, scrub-brush rolling hills that looked toward the
looming border of Afghanistan. Kahuta was the heart of Pakistan's
nuclear-weapons program, and its many levels of high-security
infrastructure were buried deep belowground. The only structure visible
to a satellite was the telltale concrete cupola and an adjacent
environmental-control plant for air filtration. Security was tight,
with high fences, watchtowers, and an army barracks near at hand.
The security was for a reason. In 1975 Pakistan began acquiring
hardware and technology for a plant capable of producing weapons-grade
uranium. Bombs require 90 percent enrichment, and when the U.S.
discovered the project, it had threatened to cut off aid if any uranium
was enriched beyond 5 percent. Pakistan agreed, then went right ahead.
Between 1977 and 1980, using dummy corporations and transshipments
through third countries, the government smuggled from West Germany an
entire plant for converting uranium powder into uranium hexafluoride, a
compound easily gasified and then enriched. Two years later the Nuclear
Research Center purchased a ton of specially hardened "maraging" steel,
from West Germany, which was delivered already fabricated into round
bars whose diameter exactly matched that of the (also) German gas
centrifuges under construction at Kahuta. Shortly thereafter, the plant
at Dera Ghazi Khan was on-line, producing uranium hexafluoride
feedstock for the Kahuta enrichment facility, and the Kahuta facility
was using it to turn out U235 enriched uranium in abundance.
At the same time, Pakistani operatives were hastening to acquire high-
speed American electronic switches called krytrons, the triggering
devices for a bomb. Their efforts to obtain nuclear detonators required
several tries, but eventually they got what they needed. They dispensed
with above-ground testing of the nuclear devices they had assembled,
having procured the necessary data from China, and instead just went
ahead and made their bombs. They then secured them on Level Five of the
Kahuta reprocessing facility--against the day they would be needed.
Until now. Liberating two of those well-guarded A-bombs had required a
lot of unofficial cooperation from the plant's security forces.
Batteries of surface-to-air missiles protected Kahuta from air
penetration, and elite paratroopers and army tanks reinforced the many
checkpoints, making sure that no vehicle, official or private, could
enter or leave the complex without a stamped authorization by the
security chief. Only a lot of money in the right hands could make two
of the devices disappear. Sabri Ramirez had seen to that small
technicality. . . .
Abdoullah patted one of the nuclear weapons casually and admired it.
The bomb itself was a half meter in diameter, its outer casing of Octol
carefully packed inside a polished steel sheath embedded with wires.
Expensive but available commercially, Octol was a 70-30 mixture of
cyclote-tramethvlenetetranitramine and trinitrotoluene, known
colloquially as HMX and TNT. It was stable, powerful, and the
triggering agent of choice for nuclear devices. Inside the Octol
encasing each device were twenty-five kilograms of 93 percent enriched
U235. When the external Octol sphere was evenly detonated, it would
compress the uranium core sufficiently to create a "critical mass,-'
causing the naturally occurring radioactive decay of the uranium to
focus in upon itself. Once the radiation intensified, it started an
avalanche, an instantaneous chain reaction of atom-splitting that
converted the uranium's mass into enormous quantities of energy.
The trick to making it work was an even, synchronous implosion of the
outer sphere, which was the job of the high-tech krytron detonator
switches. . . .
Which, Abdoullah realized, were still in the Sikorsky. The krytrons
were packed separately and handled as though they were finest crystal.
"Rais," he said, looking up and addressing his Berkeley classmate now
standing by the door, "I need the detonators."
"Well, they're in the cockpit, where we stowed them." He was tightening
his commando sweatband, itching to try out his Uzi, still unfamiliar.
Would the others notice? In any case, he wasn't here to run errands.
"Then go get them, for chrissake." He had considered Rais to be an
asshole from the day they first met in the Advanced Quantum Mechanics
class at college. Nothing that had happened since had in any way
undermined that conviction. The guy thought he was hot stuff, God's
gift to the world. It was not a view that anybody who knew him shared.
"Why don't _you_ go get them?" Rais said, not moving.
"Because I want to check these babies over and make sure everything is
a go." What a jerk. "Come on, man, don't start giving me a lot of shit,
okay? This is serious. Everybody's got to pull his weight around here."
Rais hesitated, his manhood on the line, and then decided to
capitulate. At least for now. Abdoullah was starting to throw his
weight around, get on the nerves. The guy was real close to stepping
out of line.
"All right, fuck it." He clicked the safety on his Uzi on and off and
on, then holstered it.
"As long as you're at it, why don't you just take them directly down to
the clean room. We'll be assembling everything there anyway, since
that's where the elevator is they use to go up and prep the vehicles."
"That's cool. See you down there." Rais closed the door and walked out
into the Greek sunshine. He was starting to like this fucking place.