Chapter 89 Chapter Eighty-Nine

Robert Puller had been on standby for two hours in a U.S. military corrections battalion in accordance with the order of the Secretary of Defense.Although there were many nuclear weapons experts in the army, Puller insisted that the only person he needed, or trusted, was his brother.Things were tricky when it came to a prisoner serving a life sentence for treason.But when Pooler stubbornly stuck to his guns, even in a call with the four-star general, the secretary of defense stepped in and approved his plan.In fact, those who are opposed by the military have to admit that there are not many people in the world who are better at nuclear science than Robert Puller.

Robert was in a state of heightened alertness and anxiety.After all, his brother was nearing a nuclear bomb after all.In an earlier call, Puller had told him everything David Lelymore had told him. "Describe that box to me," Robert demanded now. "A metal box measuring 1.2 meters. Stainless steel. Bolted to the ground." "Louder. I can't hear you well." "Sorry, I'm speaking through a mask," Puller repeated the above message in a louder voice. "Okay. It's an implosion, not a gun detonation." "yes." "Tell me about those barrels. The empty one used to hold plutonium?"

"Exactly. At least it's marked." "Does that Lylemore guy know how much plutonium is in each barrel?" "Even if he knew, he didn't tell me about it. I don't think he really believed that they would throw these things here. I didn't disagree with him any more at the time." "I judge that its design and manufacture will not be very cutting-edge, so it should use at least six kilograms or even more." "That barrel holds well over six kilograms, even with the lead lining on the inside." "I understand, but with the size of the barrel you're talking about, we're pretty sure they're not going to put fifty gallons of plutonium in there to make a bomb. That's overkill."

"Maybe they're all crazy, don't you think?" "Maybe they're crazy, but I can only think in terms of science." "Can I pop the top of it? Will the radiation from the plutonium burn me all at once?" "How heavy is the roof?" Puller tugged at the case and patted the top. "Not very heavy." "Presumably it doesn't have a lead liner or other shielding. But the plutonium must be surrounded by conventional high-explosive charges, with padding and cavities, and maybe an intermediate layer or two to shield you. And we Knowing that it has a neutron reflective layer using tungsten carbide, which is super dense. You should be fine."

"should be?" "That's all I can say, brother." Puller took a deep breath and motioned Cole to back off.She did.He pulled hard, and the top cover came off.There was no dazzling blue light flashing through him all at once. "John?" "I'm fine, I'm not shining yet. I take that as a good sign." "Did you see the timer?" Puller looks back at Cole.She shrugged and managed to smile behind the mask. Puller asked, "Does this thing really use a timer?" "It's not for the exaggerated effect in the movie. The timer has a very practical function. The conventional explosives around the nuclear fuel must be detonated at exactly the same time, otherwise there will be weak holes in the detonation wave, and the nuclear fuel The inside ball will be squeezed by the pressure along the hole, and the nuke will be ineffective. We talked about this phenomenon before, boy."

Puller searched the box.Puller found it after poking aside a bunch of wires. "Okay, I see it. The green light we just saw must be coming from here. This guy must have internal self-powered energy, because there is no electricity in this place." "How is the timer set?" "Sixty-two minutes to go. It's counting down." "Okay," Robert asked. "Where are the wires?" Cole held a bright flashlight over the box to illuminate Puller.Puller's latest pair of night-vision goggles were still of great help in bright conditions. "A bunch of wires," Puller said, "and they're covering the timer. Should I cut a few of it? Maybe that'll stop the timer."

"No. They've probably set a trap. If you're dealing with twenty wires, only about three are functional. This is the usual method used in making ordinary time bombs. This method, we can assume , is also perfectly suitable for building an amateur nuclear bomb. You cut any of the camouflage wires, and you may reset the timer to zero in an instant, and you will have to say goodbye to the world." "Okay, don't cut the wires," Puller replied firmly. The room temperature was already unbearably high, and the protective clothing exacerbated the dryness and heat of the whole body.His mask was steamed and he wiped it off with his forehead.The effect was far from ideal, since his forehead itself was a major source of sweat.He later took off the mask altogether, wiped his eyes with his hand and put the night vision goggles back on.

"The detonator must have been at some point on the sphere," Robert said. "The explosion would have produced a large number of neutrons in the core of the bomb. The gold foil found at the crime scene may have been used on the neutron reflector, on the beryllium and Between the polonium layers, as we once guessed. In their outer layers, there are plutonium in the shape of small balls. Surrounding the plutonium, there are packings and cavities. The cavities will enhance the detonation wave centripetal Focus on the strength of the compression. The packing ensures that the nuclear charge is not blown apart too quickly, maximizing the explosive effect."

"Okay, Bobby. You don't have to lecture me on every detail." "I guess I just want to make sure I remember the principles," his brother said slowly. "Don't doubt yourself. You know this stuff, you're a genius, always have been." "Okay. The outermost layer of it is the explosive lens. You should be able to see those lenses. The pieces are put together to look like a football. They are the device used to ensure that multiple points of the sphere are detonated at the same time. The shape They're all carefully designed, almost an art form of geometry. Do you see them?"

"I see." "How many lenses are there?" "a lot of." "How are they lined up?" "There are almost no gaps." "Is there any gap in the connection part?" "Anyway, I can't find it." Puller heard his brother let out a sigh of relief: "Someone does know what they're doing." "What does this mean to me?" "As we've discussed, if they can manage to prolong the chain reaction long enough, the explosive yield of the bomb can be multiplied. From your description, the design and manufacturing technology of this thing seems to be quite mature."

Puller glanced at the timer.Fifty-nine minutes and twenty-seven seconds left. "How do I turn this thing off, Bobby?" "John, you can't actually turn it off." "Then what else am I doing here?" Puller yelled, so frightened that Cole nearly dropped his flashlight. "There is only one way left to try." Robert's voice was very calm. "We have to interfere with its detonation. The explosive lens is almost seamless, but if we mess with the timing of its detonation, we can make it not explode as expected." "Then what should I do?" "We first blasted it ourselves to disrupt its original blasting design." Puller glanced at Cole in astonishment. "Are you telling me that in order to prevent a nuclear bomb from detonating, we must first detonate the nuclear bomb? Is this the idea you gave me?" "That's right, that's it," said Robert. "Damn it," Puller muttered, "is the only way?" "If there is another way, I would have told you." "How about I just smash it around?" "It's pretty safe to say you're going to die if you do that, and there's going to be a big mushroom cloud over West Virginia." "I should have had the strike force come in earlier and use a helicopter to lift this thing up and throw it overboard." "There's not an hour they can't do it. Also, people always come to their senses when they regret it." "Maybe they can get here before it goes off, and try to stop the bomb from detonating or drop it in some deep cave." "Again, this was just 'hindsight.' It was too late." "If this thing gets out of hand, it's all my fault, Bobby." "Remember two things, John. If you can't get it under control, you're screwed, don't worry about it. Number two, the real culprit is the one or those bad guys who built the nuke, not you! How much time is left gone?" "Fifty-seven and a half minutes until the end." Puller looked at Cole, pointed to the direction they came in, and said with his mouth: Go away, right now. Puller pointed in that direction again.Cole shook his head again and again, with a very stubborn expression. When Pooler motioned to her for the third time, Cole gave him the middle finger. "John, are you there? What's the matter?" asked his brother. "It's nothing, just solved a small technical problem. You said it didn't work as expected, what exactly is going on here?" "Maybe it will produce an explosive equivalent of 500 tons, but this is just an estimate I made based on common sense. The cement dome will suppress its lethality to a large extent." "Five hundred tons equivalent? Five hundred tons of TNT?" Puller said. "You call that a miss?" "That bomb in Hiroshima was fifteen kilotons. It used sixty kilograms of uranium. Only six hundred milligrams of uranium actually fissioned, maybe as heavy as a dime. I don't know what they put in this guy How much plutonium was loaded, but we had to prepare for the worst. It was never designed just for a Hiroshima-sized explosive yield. It was a gun detonation, and this guy used an implosion; Hiroshima's nuclear fuel was Uranium, now it uses plutonium. To be sure, we can assume that it has an explosive yield equivalent to several million tons of TNT. That is enough to collapse that cement cover into geosynchronous orbit, and its radioactive contamination can spread to six The extent of the state is even more. And you, you probably can't find your bones in West Virginia." Fresh beads of sweat formed on Puller's face. "Okay, okay, five hundred tons doesn't sound like a bad thing now. Tell me how to make it not work as expected." "We had to make it explode earlier." "Yes, I understand. How to do it?" "Have you brought what I told you to prepare?" Cole took one look at Puller, then reached into his knapsack and pulled out a tube of dynamite, along with fuse, detonator, and timer.This was all she had prepared for Puller in advance.She handed these to Puller.He clamped the phones between his shoulders and chin and took them. "I thought you were telling me to use them to blow a hole somewhere. If you'd told me earlier that you were using them to blow a nuke, I probably wouldn't be here." "You will come," said Robert, "I know my little brother." It was said in a joking tone, but Puller knew there was no smile on his brother's face at the moment.In fact his brother was doing everything he could to calm Puller down.If possible, Robert tried to make Puller forget that he was in the company of a multi-million-ton equivalent of TNT and a radiant fountain. "Where do I put them?" "If you're facing the top of the bomb, put the explosive five degrees off center to the left." "Why five degrees?" "I like the number, John, always have." Puller reported to his brother after installing the explosives on the site. Robert said, "Very well. Now you have to set the timer so that our tubes of explosives go off before their intended detonation time. With nuclear weapons, a millisecond difference in detonation time can make a real difference." Sexual change. Your dynamite will blow a hole in the lens and start a cascade of explosions. The compression force from the successive explosions causes the sphere to shatter. The core will be squeezed out of the hole, The next series of critical and super critical steps will never happen again. Without the impact of neutrons in the core, the plutonium cannot be fissioned, and the bomb as a whole will not be able to achieve the desired effect." "Does this really work?" Puller asked. "Let me tell you about three scenarios that I can think of. If we're really lucky, there's a least costly outcome. That is, we get a nuclear bomb that goes off without fission of the nuclear fuel. At most, a small explosion shock wave will be formed, releasing some radioactive substances, and a one-meter-thick cement cover is enough to resist them. This is the best situation we hope for. The second or medium-level consequence is A 500-ton equivalent explosion occurred, but it lost its original power. You are in a remote mountainous area, and you have a one-meter-thick cement cover, which is obviously a good thing. The collateral damage can be completely controlled in a within a limited range." "There's actually a lot of people in this county," Pooler said, as Cole peered at him from behind the flashlight. "And they're having a hard time right now. There should never be another mushroom cloud to make things worse for them." "Sorry, I didn't know this before." "It's not your fault." Puller asked after taking a deep breath, "What about the third scenario?" "My method had some effect, but not much. We still experienced a nuclear explosion." "meaning is?" Robert didn't speak for a little while, then he went on: "I've never lied to you, John, and I won't tonight. What it means is that a good chunk of where you are now is going to evaporate off the face of the earth. It’s like being hit by a hundred hurricanes at the same time. There’s nothing left for miles around. That’s what nuclear weapons look like.” "Understood." Puller suddenly thought of something. "Give me a few minutes," he said. "What?" asked his brother. "Either way, it's going to explode anyway, isn't it?" "yes." "Then wait for me for a few minutes." Puller put down the phone and ran away quickly.Cole hurried after him. "Pole, what are you doing?" He ran to the barrels, looked at them first, then looked around to find their destination, and finally made the most suitable decision. "That's the tunnel of the mine over there. I'm going to roll these barrels down the tunnel as far as they can. When the explosion happens, if we're lucky, the shock wave will shake them into the deepest part of the tunnel , with tons of dirt and rock falling on it. That's the only way we can do it for now." "Better than them flying over West Virginia," Cole said. Puller's muscles tensed.He tipped the first barrel down and quickly rolled it down the alley.There was a gentle downhill in the alleyway, and the barrel rolled along the slope into the darkness.Puller rushed back to roll the second bucket, and saw that Cole was also trying to lift a drum, but her strength was obviously not enough. "Just shine the flashlight for me," he said, "I'll do the work." After a few minutes all the drums had been pushed into the tunnel.The two ran back to the nuke, and Puller picked up the phone. "I am back." "What the hell are you doing?" demanded his brother. "Moved the drum containing the nuclear material to a safe place." "Oh yes. Good job. Very good. Are you ready?" "Do you sense that luck is coming?" Puller said. His brother replied: "More importantly, do you feel that luck is coming?" Pooler licked his lips and looked at Cole again.She stood there motionless like a marble statue. He set the time with a timer and detonated the bomb they had installed thirty minutes later.This time is enough for them to get out of the danger zone. They heard a groan. "Roger is waking up," Cole said, and her brother-in-law literally writhed on the ground. Puller said, "Go untie him and make him understand we need to get out of here—" "Pooler," Cole screamed, "look." Robert must have heard her cry."What happened?" he asked on the other end of the phone. Puller didn't answer.His attention was entirely on the timer of the nuke. It was still displaying forty-seven minutes and eight seconds left before the detonation, and suddenly, the number changed to five minutes left. Another mechanism set up by these guys.Presumably designed for someone to touch the top of the case. Puller reset the detonation time of his dynamite to the only time that could be chosen—less than five minutes. Puller closed the lid on the nuke.He and Cole hurried to Roger Trent.Puller took out his dagger and cut the rope on Roger's body three times and five times twice.They lifted Roger to his feet and dragged him as he ran toward the ventilation duct. "John!" Robert Puller yelled from the telephone. His brother didn't answer, but threw the phone next to the nuclear bomb. The most important thing is to escape the fortress. Yet even as he ran hard beside Cole, as hard as they dragged Roger to pick up speed, Pooler knew one thing was for sure. We are dead.