Chapter 8 - Terrorism

“No one can kill Americans and brag about it. No one.”

Ronald Reagan

The United States government mobilized immediately. An air raid alert was sounded in every first strike city across the nation. Mobilization of USSTRATCOM for a full scale offensive was ordered within minutes of the explosion. Within 20 minutes of the disaster, news networks were informing the nation of the horror. Currently, all that was known was that a nuclear weapon had detonated in the heart of Chicago. Radar sightings, a tremendous crater, and the amount of particulate matter projected into the atmosphere meant the device was not dropped from an aircraft but exploded at or below ground level.

Television and radio interrupted all programs to bring coverage of the incident. People around the world were horror stricken by the magnitude of the violence. Cameras rolled across a barren bull’s-eye surrounded by sparsely placed askew telephone poles. The Chicago River flowed into a thousand foot wide crater where the South Fork of the Chicago River and the Chicago rail yards had once met. The heart of the city was completely destroyed for two miles from the epicenter. For another mile people were seen on TV wandering about aimlessly screaming, sitting on piles of debris in tears, tearing through debris to get at loved ones, or trying to rip melted nylon off of their bodies. Overpasses, bridges, buildings and signs were flattened beyond recognition. Although the day had started as a bright winter morning, the view from the camera showed an overcast city fatally wounded in less than a minute, without warning or cause. Soot drifted across every camera shot. A giant dust devil focused a funnel of airborne dust and soot around the inner city in testament to the apocalypse.

All investigative agencies of the government; Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA, the NSC, and all three armed forces investigative teams were working to determine the enemy. Each agency mobilized 100% of its existing forces to determine who and how this atrocity had been committed. As the teams worked, calls were being received from people claiming responsibility for the destruction.

Chapter 22 - Peace and Freedom

“Freedom cannot be trifled with. You cannot surrender it for security unless in a state of war, and then you must guard carefully the methods of so doing.”

Arthur Hays Sulzberger

January 3

 Yesterday, CIA field operative Slim Parker informed us of detected movement towards the 38th parallel in Korea. His satellite photos indicated heavy artillery, tank, and militia transport to the DMZ. Had the North Koreans honored the treaty signed on October 14, 1994 that granted the IAEA access to the North Korean nuclear power plants, the indicated troop movement would not be significant. Because we were unable to determine if the plants had been converted to produce weapons grade plutonium, it is assumed by all governmets that North Korea does have nuclear potential and that they have the means of delivering that potential within a 500 mile radius. This places both South Korea and Japan at risk if escalated confrontation should result in nuclear exchange.

 Our government's international policies are seriously strained by the destruction of Chicago. Domestic unrest has never been this high. There are riots in the streets of New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston calling for retribution against the villain that killed their relatives and destroyed our city. The people of the United States are not satisfied with the lip service given by their government so far on who they suspect and the justice that will be exacted. We are, as a nation of leaders, afraid of the turmoil. There have been a few claims to the destruction of Chicago. Those who have made claims, have been bombed within very little time. Unfortunately, it is obvious based on our information, that none of the groups making claims have the capabilities to build nuclear weapons.

 Today the president of South Korea, Roh Tae Woo, called an emergency meeting of the United Nations. He will be asking the free nations of the world to mount a nuclear first strike against North Korea to save his country. There is no doubt that his request will be denied. Who is writing this?

Chapter 23 - The Essentials

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Henry David Thoreau

January 26

 I’m sitting on top of a mesa to the north of Baranca Mesa where Len’s house is. I can see his house through the binoculars from here. It’s 11:00 o’clock on a warm bright clear morning. I walked here from Len’s house by the trails that he hiked as a child.

 I have been tracking Len’s life for 30 years. His was the very first case I was assigned in the nuclear arena. I was asked at that time to determine whether his father, Thomas Mahoney a nuclear engineer, had been passing on highly classified nuclear information to his son. The original seed of doubt came from a science fair project for which Len had won national recognition during his Senior year in High School. Len had created a computer model in 1970 using FORTRAN and finite element analysis to simulate a controlled nuclear explosion in the center of a hurricane. The computer simulation was the first simulation to incorporate a yet unknown field called fuzzy logic and neural networks. Most importantly, Len described a containment system for the explosion that directed discrete amounts of energy from the nuclear blast into specific directions. His system was an almost exact description of a highly secret nuclear weapons containment system being fabricated by the United States Military. It was the CIA’s belief that his father must have given him the information.

 It turned out that his father hadn’t passed on any information. Len had conceived of the ideas on his own. Incredibly, he had also developed the math and computer language derivatives necessary to successfully finish his project.

 It is a practice of the CIA to assign any person that has come under scrutiny to an agent and have that individual tracked throughout their lifetime. It was my involvement with Len and his chosen field of Nuclear Physics that propelled me into being in charge of all nuclear terrorist activity for the CIA.

 In all these years, the two most salient features of Len’s personality profile that have struck me are his extreme genius and his pursuit of kindness. He is a gentle, well meaning individual. I came to Los Alamos because Len is the absolute last name on the list of individuals and groups who have potential for building nuclear weapons. My initial inquiries into Len’s activities in the two weeks since the explosion forced me to drop all other activities and fly here. Len has been missing with his best friend Jack Cransten since the day of the explosion. Upon arriving in Los Alamos early this morning I immediately went to his home address. No one was there. I called his wife at her father’s house. She met me at her house in Los Alamos an hour later. Maria Mahoney looked like the world had fallen in on her. I introduced myself and told her that because of her husband’s high profile in nuclear physics we were worried about the possibility of him having been kidnapped. I could tell that she was normally a very beautiful women. The news I delivered made her already worn appearance deepen as she slumped further into her chair.

 She said, “Madre de Dios, my world is falling apart. What can I do to help you find my husband, Mr. Felenstein?”

 I told her that it would help to understand and know her husband as well as possible. If she had anything like diaries or journals that he kept it would be very helpful.

 Maria went out of the room for a couple of minutes and came back with twelve 9 by 12 black bound books.”

 “These are my husband’s journals. He has been keeping a journal in one form or another since he was 8 years old. I hope I’m doing the right thing by giving these to you. I am afraid for him, Mr. Felenstein. Please find him.”

 “I’ll try Mrs. Mahoney. I’ve go to go now.”

 That was our whole conversation. From there I went to the Labs and obtained any notebooks and engineering books he had been working on. The Lab had put out an internal bulletin on Leonard but had tried to avoid any interference by outside investigation resources. They were apologetic but begged me to understand the sensitive nature of his absence.

 I took the books back to my hotel room and began to read through his journals. The first chapter spoke of this mesa where I’m now sitting. I’ve always believed that the best way to understand what is going on in someone’s life is to think as much like the person as you possibly can. That’s why I’ve carried the twelve journals in a backpack up here on this snow covered mesa. I want to know who Leonard Mahoney was and is.