Ruins

“That’s a destroyer,” said Tovar, “Arleigh Burke class—an older ship, even twelve years ago, but very dependable; the navy used them for years. The Sullivans was named after five brothers who all died in the same battle in World War II.”

“I thought you didn’t know about the nuke,” said Hobb.

“I didn’t,” said Tovar, “but you’re talking to an ex-marine. Try to name a navy ship I don’t know the specs of.”

“Then tell us the specs of this one,” said Mkele. “Would that class of destroyer be armed with nuclear missiles, or would they have just put one in the cargo hold for onboard detonation, like a suicide bomber?”

“Arleigh Burke destroyers would be outfitted with Tomahawks,” said Tovar. “That’s a nuclear cruise missile with a two-, maybe three-hundred-kiloton payload. Those are designed for long-range attacks, but the Partials had enough antimissile defense to shoot one down before it hit home. The reason it’s sitting right off the coast of Long Island, I assume, is that they brought it close to detonate on site; it would have sacrificed the fleet, and most of New York and New Jersey and Connecticut, but it would have destroyed the Partials pretty decisively.”

Haru grimaced, marveling again at how desperate the old government must have been to consider such a thing—though he supposed it was no more desperate than their situation now. Before the world ended, and knowing that it was about to, a nuke would have been a small price to pay: You’d kill everyone in range, and destroy the area for decades to come, but the Partials would have been gone. It might have actually been worth it. Now, though, with the last of the human race sitting just forty miles away . . .

“What’s the radius of destruction?” asked Haru. “Is the entire island dead?”

“Not necessarily,” said Tovar, “but we don’t want to be here if we can help it. At that payload the initial fireball’s going to be about a mile and a half wide—that’s the part that’s two hundred million degrees—and the physical shock wave will destroy everything within five or six miles. Everything in that zone is going to go up in flames, instantly, and that much fire starting that abruptly will suck in enough air to jump-start a raging hurricane with air temperatures hot enough to boil water. Every living thing within . . . ten miles of ground zero would be dead in minutes, and five or ten miles farther out you’d still kill enough of everything not to know the difference. Here on the island we won’t have any of those primary effects—we might feel a thump, and anyone looking right at the detonation will be blinded, but that should be the worst of it. Should be. Until the radioactive ash cloud gives us all leukemia and we die in slow, crippling agony.”

“And how big is the ash cloud?” asked Haru.

“A nuclear ash cloud doesn’t radiate out like a shock wave,” said Mkele. “It’s a distribution of physical material, so the exact pattern will depend on the weather. The major winds in this region tend to blow northeast, so most of the ash cloud will drift that way, but we’re still going to get some peripheral fallout—flurries around the edges, and castoffs from the winds in the firestorm.”

“Anyone less than ninety miles downwind will be dead within two weeks,” said Tovar. “We just have to hope the winds don’t change.”

“So the Partials would be effectively destroyed,” said Hobb.

“Everyone on the mainland, yes,” said Mkele, “but this close to the blast zone we’re going to lose a lot of humans as well, even under ideal conditions.”

“Yes, but the Partials will be gone,” Hobb repeated. “Delarosa’s plan will work.”

“I don’t think you’re grasping the ramifications here—” said Haru, but Hobb cut him off.

“I don’t think you are either,” Hobb snapped. “What are our options, honestly? Do you think we can stop her? The entire Partial army has been trying to find Delarosa for weeks, and they can’t; we can barely leave this basement without getting shot at, so I’m pretty sure we’re not going to find her either. We could find her strike force, maybe, because we have protocols in place for that, but the team delivering the warhead is likely beyond recall. This bomb is going off, whether we like it or not, and we need to be ready.”

“The Partials will catch her,” said Mkele. “A warhead’s not an easy thing to transport—it’s going to compromise her ability to stay hidden.”

“And if that happens, she might just blow it on sight,” said Hobb. “As long as she’s twenty miles from East Meadow, our major population center is safe, and then the winds will blow the fallout north to White Plains.”

“If she makes it twenty miles,” said Haru.

Tovar raised his eyebrow. “Are we prepared to risk the human race on a bunch of ifs?”

“What are we risking?” asked Hobb. “We send someone to stop her, and everyone else to evacuate the island—we’re not risking anything unless we don’t act.”