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Paul and Mae were alone.
About to drop a nuke on America.
Mae fought back tears as she entered information into the computer.
A B61 Model 4 tactical nuclear warhead is a kiloton-range weapon with a dial-a-yield feature. Dial-a-yield allows aircraft crews to change the B61s output while in midflight. As ordered, Mae set in a yield of ten kilotons. She set the detonation point at one thousand feet, armed the weapon, then told Paul that it was ready to fire.
He flipped open the covering plate on the nuke trigger. He thought of his three sons back at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, wondered how many sons like them were down there in Detroit, how many daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces and cousins. And dogs. How many dogs were down there?
His finger gripped the trigger. His hand felt weak. He hoped that maybe, just maybe, hed have an unexpected stroke and lose the ability to squeeze it.
Mae said, Do it, Paul.
He squeezed.
He didnt have a stroke.
The trigger clicked home.
The twelve-foot-long B61 rocket fired, launching away from the F-15E at 750 miles per hour. As the bomb streaked toward the target, Paul went full throttle and shot away from Detroit at supersonic speed.
The seven-hundred-pound B61 dropped toward the city. The guidance computer tracked a signal emitting from near the corner of Franklin and Riopelle. The B61 wouldnt actually hit the ground, but if it had, it would have landed only twenty feet away from the satphone in Perry Dawseys hand.
At twelve hundred feet, a gas generator fired, ejecting a twenty-four-foot nylon/Kevlar-29 ribbon parachute. In just three seconds, the B61 slowed from 750 miles an hour to 35.
It drifted down until it hit eleven hundred feet, where barometric pressure activated a firing mechanism that began a nuclear chain reaction.
Detonation.