FORTY-TWO
The NSC meeting was as small as any had been during Haugen's presidency. Besides the actual council members, only three persons attended; Milstead, Gupta, and Father Flynn. There were no aides; the president had things to say that were best said to a minimum of ears.
The attendees came in looking more serious than usual, as if the president's mood of yesterday had infected them over the phone. Actually he felt better today. A shaft of winter sunlight reflected off Gupta's mahogany bald spot—like a sign from God, Haugen told himself. Too bad Flynn couldn't see it from where he sat. When they were all seated, Haugen opened the session. "Dr. Gupta," he said, "tell these other people what you told me."
Gupta got up. "That much and more, sir. Gentlemen, starting the night before last, there's been a marked shift in the jet stream. Certain characteristics strongly suggested that the shift was artificially induced; so I had instrumented aircraft sent to investigate. Our uncertainty level went to zero: The Soviet government has used scalar resonance transmitters to shunt the jet stream into a particular course, and it's likely to hold that course as long as they maintain their artificially induced high and low pressure cells.
"This has started an arctic air mass moving south through western and central Canada. Most of the plains, midwest, and east will be severely affected, all the way to the Gulf.
"From the Great Lakes southward, particularly southward, we can expect heavy precipitation along the front. From about the Ohio River south, snowfall accumulations will be very heavy..."
The president interrupted. "From the Ohio River south?"
"That's right, Mr. President. Farther north there'll be less moisture available, so less snow. South of Tennessee or northern Alabama, a lot of it will fall as rain, turning to snow later, and along the Gulf Coast the rains will be torrential. And then, when the front passes through, it's going to get cold. Damn cold!
"We're looking for at least fifteen inches of snow in Tennessee and maybe as much as twenty-five or more. And there'll be freezing temperatures all the way south through Florida. For as long as the pattern remains."
And the country was already suffering from lack of fuel oil. The president shook his head.
"In other words," he said, "we're looking at the beginning of a weatherwar. Is that it?"
"Yes sir. You could call it that."
"What would happen if we used our own transmitters to disrupt the pattern? Can we do that?"
"We could. Last night I ran a number of alternative scenarios with our computer models, assuming a variety of Soviet responses. And while our prediction models aren't designed for a sequence of manipulations and counter-manipulations, some of the results seem to be worse than doing nothing. So frankly sir, I'm a little afraid of what might happen if we tried to break it up. If the Soviets would simply let us break the pattern, I'd have no qualms. But I can't see any reason why they would."
"And there's no natural explanation at all for this jet stream shift? Could the Mount Spurr ash drift have anything to do with it?"
"No sir. And actually, two jet streams are involved. A northern and a southern. We're sure that location of the northern one is the result of Soviet manipulation: The pressure cells could hardly have formed naturally where and when they did in the pressure milieu immediately preceding them, and our on-site instrument check detected low-grade heat extractions to maintain them in place."
"All right. Can you people produce comparably severe weather for Russia?"
"I've run some models on that too, sir. We can give Russia her worst snowstorm in maybe fifty years, and follow it with a helluva coldwave."
"What will this do to the weather in central and western Europe?"
"Italy, the Balkans, Turkey—they'll all get fairly prolonged heavy precipitation—rain near the coast, and snow inland and at high elevations where they normally get snow. A maybe once-a-decade size storm there. It'll pretty much miss West Germany, but it'll be heavy in Poland and Czechoslovakia. And Finland. It'll be very heavy in Rumania and worse to the north and east, then slacking off past the Urals.
"I'm talking about something like thirty inches or more in the region from maybe Odessa to Minsk, Volgograd to Gorkiy, slacking off past the Urals. And with winds and drifting. It'll be a calamity.
"That'll be followed by a cold wave of the sort they get maybe once in ten to twenty years."
The president looked the council over. "Comments?"
"What will the Soviets do," asked Valenzuela, "when we've done that?"
"Good question." Haugen turned to Gupta. "I don't suppose you have an answer for it?"
Gupta shook his head. "It's impossible to say how the Soviets will react."
"Any other comments? Jumper, what's on your mind?"
"They've got more transmitters than we have; twelve to three. What will that mean if we make a contest out of this?"
"The twelve to three difference in transmitters won't mean much for the United States and Canada," Gupta answered. "Not if the Soviets stick to weatherwar. They can create and maintain bad weather over a lot more of the world than we can, but I don't see that as an advantage to them.
"Of course, they might decide to create some earthquakes and eruptions, and our highly susceptible west coast areas have a lot of people in them, while the most susceptible Soviet area, the Kamchatka Peninsula, has very few. The Caucasus would be our best retaliation site. But seismic warfare is likely to escalate into explosive energy releases anyway, and then go nuclear, and I can't visualize the Kremlin taking that risk."
Haugen could visualize it. He pursed his wide mouth, then exhaled gustily. "Now I think we know why they triggered the Mount Spurr eruption; Pavlenko assumed we'd be afraid to retaliate against this." He scanned the serious faces around the table. "Okay, I'm going to make a tentative battle plan. Jim, I want you to monitor the pressure cells they've created; see if they're maintaining them in place. If they're still in place twenty-four hours from now, give the Kremlin a blizzard to remember.
"Any disagreement?" He looked around, his eyes pausing for just a second on the silent Jesuit, but it was Valenzuela who responded.
"What would you think of communicating with Pavlenko first?"
"Not much, Val. I'm convinced the man is psychotic. Any sign of sweet reason, he'd read as weakness, and escalate, try to drive us to our knees. On the other hand, if we confront him, he may back down." Or will he? If he's psychotic?
An emergency phone rang beside the president. He picked up the privacy receiver. "This is the president. What is it?"
The others watched the president as he listened. His face paled. After about a minute he said "thank you," hung up, and looked around. "Gentlemen," he said, "what appears to have been a neutron cluster warhead was exploded over Pretoria, South Africa, a few minutes ago. Considering the weapon, and the population of the district, the dead should number something like half a million. And Pretoria being the administrative capital of the RSA, we can also assume their government's been wiped out.
"Satellite data shows it was fired from coastal forest in southern Mozambique. We can assume the Mozambique government got the missile and the launcher, and certainly the warhead, from the Soviets. It looks like Soviet intimidation—something to scare the world. The American and European publics especially. And most particularly me.
"Any possibilities I've overlooked on this?"
Valenzuela shook his head slowly. "It's inconceivable that the British would have provided it, or the French. Or the Israelis. The evidence is that no one else can make that kind of warhead."
The president nodded. "All right, let's adjourn this meeting. Val, you need to draft a statement for the press concerning the Pretoria tragedy. Not pointing a finger at anyone; we'll let others do that. And let me see it before you release it."
He turned to Gupta. "Jim, don't wait twenty-four hours. Crank up your blizzard today."
***
Arne Haugen and Stephen Joseph Flynn watched the noon news together. The fatality estimate was 540,000, white and black. The camera footage was gruesome. It was summer in South Africa, and daylight saving time; the warhead had exploded during evening rush hour, and it had not yet been dark when the television helicopters had overflown Pretoria. The streets were full of wrecked and stalled cars, the downtown sidewalks littered with dead. Small bodies lay strewn about a playground.
There was little visible damage to structures, and radioactivity was minor, but the death toll was staggeringly complete. There was no visible trace of movement; apparently it was too late in the day for vultures to be abroad, and smaller birds had not yet infiltrated from outside the death area. Tomorrow would be uglier, Haugen told himself, and the next day worse.
"What is there to say?" asked the president.
Father Flynn shook his head. He couldn't think of anything.