Deluge (The Best Thrillers Book 2) by James Best (top romance novels txt) 📗

seemed straightforward. Evarts suspected that O’Brian played by intelligence community rules, not Pentagon rules. O’Brian shared little, but Evarts could guess. O’Brian supposedly kept the initial discussions with Livermore confidential, but once they wanted to proceed to planning, he wouldn’t budge until the process included the secretary of defense, which meant the president. The governor and Gleason were too far down the road to back out, and their political situation had become untenable. The national government had used classic carrot and stick incentives to get state approval of the Livermore plan. They hinted that without approval, disaster relief would be withheld or slowed, but if the governor acquiesced, the state could expect massive additional support. The pettiness and self-serving maneuvering disillusioned him. He always strove to keep things simple, and he found himself sympathizing with the federal approach.

He wasn’t privy to all the machinations, but in the end, the state government didn’t have a real choice. Documented human death from the rainstorm exceeded ten thousand. Animal and plant deaths were incalculable and unfathomable. Water had buried the Central Valley, and Sacramento lay under what could only be called a lake. The Delta had doubled in size. New lakes had formed in the Sierras, most dammed by accumulated debris that wouldn’t hold the water back for long. No major highway remained passable. Most of the state experienced power, water, and sewage outages. Radio, telephone, and cell towers were down everywhere. One television station guesstimated that one third of California’s population had fled. Evarts suspected it might be more. Damage estimates exceeded hundreds of billions, with the long-term financial impact projected at over a trillion dollars. San Francisco and Los Angeles were riot torn. San Diego had lost Mission Beach and SeaWorld. The blockage of US 101 at Santa Barbara had dammed the rush of people heading south to the extent that unaided humanity overflowed the countryside all the way to Santa Maria.

The situation had become unsustainable, so the governor had approved bombing the Pacheco Pass to drain the Central Valley. Except for one condition. He wanted the nuclear aspect kept secret. Evarts smiled to himself. Right, like that was going to happen.

Evarts had spent the prior day evacuating northern San Benito County, which stood in the way of floodwaters released from the Central Valley. Highway 152, following the lower terrain of Pacheco Pass, had been closed at both ends. O’Brian had used a helicopter and SAR teams to evacuate the few people who lived in the pass. Everything was at the ready, and fewer than thirty people across the nation had advance knowledge of a nuclear attack on United States soil. The governor had declared martial law to quell the riots, but also to accentuate the direness of the situation, which he hoped would provide a modicum of political cover for the bombing.

After their preparatory actions, Evarts and O’Brian had been flown to this hilltop by helicopter at two o’clock in the morning. The two of them, plus the helicopter pilot, were the only ones allowed on the ground to witness the bombing. In a little over an hour, they had raised a camouflage canopy to keep their equipment dry, set up tables and monitoring equipment, and brewed coffee on a portable stove. Official radio contact had been established with Gleason’s office. Gleason insisted that all communication had to pass through his office, but unbeknownst to him, O’Brian had a second channel to the Pentagon. A third radio allowed O’Brian to talk directly to the pilots as a safety precaution in case the strike had to be aborted.

Smith would monitor seismic activity from Gleason’s office at San Francisco State University, and Evarts had installed on-site devices that would augment Smith’s feeds from Caltech. Hopefully, they wouldn’t set off an earthquake.

“They should have told the State Department,” Evarts said as he sipped coffee.

“To what purpose?” O’Brian asked.

“Forewarn Mexico.”

“Like they warned us about spilling two hundred and fifty-six million gallons of sewage into the Pacific. Hundreds took ill, including the mayor of Imperial Beach.”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

O’Brian chose to ignore Evarts’s platitude. Evarts set the point-one-lux video camera to record and went back to scanning the pass with night-vision binoculars mounted on a tripod. The final analysis had recommended fourteen tactical nuclear explosions along twelve miles of the pass. The B61-12 bombs would range from ten to a hundred kilotons, depending on the lay of the land. Behind the nuclear weapons was a flight of B-1s loaded with nonnuclear bunker busters to clear any debris obstructing the flow of water.

“Tom, any unusual readings?” O’Brian asked via the handheld radio.

“All’s quiet on the western front,” Smith replied.

Evarts checked the fit of his noise cancellation headset and glanced at his watch. Four am. The first bomb—

Boom! He felt the earth tremble. This was really happening. Then in rapid succession, earthshattering explosions! Evarts counted the first three, then gave up. He just wanted it to be over. Damn, it was loud! One right in front of them. Two miles away, and he felt fear. In the army, he had experienced simulated artillery attacks, but nothing like this. They should have set up camp further away. Living in California, he knew earthquakes, but the ground had never vibrated with such savagery. Now the explosions were moving up the pass, away from them. Every one jolted his nerves! Through his headset, Evarts heard Smith repeatedly shout Clear, meaning no unusual seismic readings.

Then everything went quiet. The nuclear round was complete. Thank goodness. Even in the dark, Evarts could see debris and smoke billowing up, but not in the familiar form of a mushroom cloud. Fourteen bombs, so close together, generated nothing so orderly. Perhaps from a greater distance, the pyrocumulus cloud appeared mushroom shaped, but not close up. As Evarts watched the cloud expand, he again thought that they should have set up camp further away.

He checked his handheld digital Geiger counter. “Radiation reading normal,” he told O’Brian.

He realized he had shouted into the quiet.

O’Brian did