| |
Otto Hansch had his orders. It was simple. Stop anyone getting to the command centre. His leader said anyone, and that means anyone. He was even to shoot his own boys if it came to it.
Hansch had a contingent of sixty soldiers at his command. Some were professionals, although of a doubtful age. Most were merely boys. But of those boys, he knew a handful were his and his alone. They would do what it takes to keep the enemy at bay.
The plans of the complex were simple if you could see them, but of course, the enemy had no way of knowing what it was they were getting into. In addition, he had an advantage. His leader showed him the marvel of TV.
Developed independently in Britain and Germany in the 1930s, Television showed the world a wonderful new age. The coronation of the British King George was filmed for television for thousands to watch from the comfort of their own homes. Nazi Germany provided the world’s first televised Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. Now Hansch was shown something even more wonderful, closed-circuit television. Couple this with a radio system that allowed Hansch to direct his men from the CCTV control centre, and he knew he had a big advantage over the pitifully small group that had infiltrated his master’s lair.
Hansch waited until they had travelled some 100 meters before he flipped a switch.
"Let the games begin," he sneered as he watched Major Reid on his monitor.
Jamie and Petra took up the rear of the group. The pair followed the others at a stoop and felt claustrophobic. They held hands as much for comfort as for safety. At regular intervals along the way, the left wall gave way to an open gap. Unfinished rooms gave off a cold whiff of musky air as they passed. They both looked at the large, black, holes and quickly looked away. The empty blackness sent a cold shiver down their spines.
They were first to hear the whirring of electric motors behind them, only just audible over the electric motors on Monroe’s King-Kong platform.
"Shhh, can you hear that?" Jamie stopped, mid-stride, and listened.
Petra started to speak but Jamie cut her off, holding his hand up.
"God damn, it is the statue? Is the statue closing?"
Jamie raced back the way they had come and was just in time to see the crypt closing down and the last vestiges of light slipping away from him. The final crump killed all light except the dim electric bulbs spaced at five-foot gaps on the right side of the passageway.
"Damn," Reid shouted as he caught up with Jamie, "now how do we get out?"
"We shouldn’t be worrying about that; we should be worrying about finding our way to the nuclear weapon."
Jamie saw what he took for confusion in Reid’s face. Something he had never noticed before. In all their time together, Reid had always been focused on the job in hand. Now he seemed uncertain of himself.
"We should see if we can find a switch or something-"
Jamie caught Reid’s arm as the Major began scrabbling around the base of the crypt. "Major, we have to go on. There is nothing for us here. If the Russian’s are correct and the war for Germany is lost, who knows what sort of a madman is up ahead, ready to press a button and force a real thousand years Reich on the world?"
Reid paused, his arm visibly shaking. "Jamie, forgive me. I have a problem with confined spaces."
It was at that point that all the lights dimmed, then went out. Immediately there was a moan, en masse. Everyone began talking at once. Jamie knew that Reid was in trouble, he was standing right next to him, and his breathing was erratic and deep. The noise was eerie.
"Boss! Boss!" Jamie’s shouting had no effect at first, and the turmoil and din of the others were not making things any better.
"Hold the noise down, quiet," Jamie shouted.
Suddenly, a bright flare ignited some twenty feet away from Jamie, lighting the passageway more clearly than the meagre electric bulbs ever had done.
"Anyone know who put the lights out?" Monroe was crouched with a large red flare in one hand and his Colt .45 in the other.
"No," Jamie replied, "but Major Reid is having a problem. I never knew, but it seems he is afraid of confined spaces."
"Well," Monroe mused, "this place would sure do it to him then. Now what do we do?"
Reid though was made of sterner stuff and with a gigantic effort of self-control, he stood as tall as the passageway would allow and took a long, shuddering breath and blew the air out slowly. "I’m ok, just a slight twinge."
"OK, we need light. How many flares do you have Colonel Monroe?" As he asked the question, Jamie nodded to Anderson.
"Five only."
Anderson was walking the length of the column, checking on his British comrades. As he reached the last he shouted back to Jamie, "Ten."
"OK, that will have to do. Anderson, you take the rear and half the flares. I’ll take the lead with the Major and Petra behind me." Anderson took Monroe’s flares and then divided them between himself and Jamie. "OK, everyone set?" Jamie neither needed nor expected any response to his question. Jamie walked on, and the others followed.
Otto Hansch was at odds with himself. He liked to think that he was in control of any given situation. If he were not, then he would attack and make sure he came out on top. However, here in the control room, with a technology he barely understood and an enemy that he knew little about, he was flustered, and it showed.
He was alone in the control centre. The room was small; twelve foot by eight-foot and a custom built, horseshoe shaped, desk took up most of the room. On this desk were, what his master had called, monitors. His master had been very precise about what he could and could not touch. There were six monitors in all. Hansch could use two, the nearest two to the entrance to the room. These showed various areas of the complex. On a small board in front of each monitor, Hansch could flick a switch and the view on the monitor would change. The entire complex consisted of the passageway in, then the main complex that was divided into five areas. Hansch had been told that Area One was for accommodation, Area Two for medical and technical services; Area Three for fuel production and storage and Area Four was engineering. Area Five was not to be monitored at all. His Master told him to watch each area and ensure the enemy was destroyed if they enter the complex. He was not to touch anything else in the control room.
Hansch’s Master gave him access to one other astounding piece of technology. He wore a headset with a microphone as did all his key men, and he could talk to them directly and at the same time switch either of his two monitors to show what that man was seeing.
However, despite all this, or maybe because of it, Hansch was uncomfortable. He wanted to lead from the front, not to hide behind some outlandish technology. Nevertheless, he had his orders. Therefore, he sat and sweated it out.
Hansch could see the allied troops, or rather, he could see their flares as they made their way through the long darkened passageway that led to the complex. Although Hansch had put out all the lights in the passageway, he could not control the lighting in the main complex. At the end of the passageway, there was a door. It was well lit, as was the main complex. The door had a small control pad on it with keys numbered 0 to 9. To gain entry you had to do one of two things. Either knock, as Hansch or his men had, and wait to be let in or to key in a four-digit number that opened the door. Hansch watched and waited.
Jamie hoped that the flares would last, for the sake of the Major, if no one else. Walking in darkness towards who knew what was daunting enough, but to do so being claustrophobic must be truly awful.
They trudged for what seemed like hours and Jamie was down to two flares when, suddenly, he could see light up ahead. Jamie passed the flare to Reid. "Take this Boss; I think I see light ahead."
Reid gladly took the flare and turning his back on Jamie, shielding the light.
"Yes, there’s light up ahead."
Hansch was watching with some fascination as the small group approached. Finally, flares doused, they stood before the imposing door. The passageway had widened at this point, and they were now standing, as he had done so a few days ago, before a double metal door with the Nazi swastika on both doors. He could see the groups’ puzzlement as they tried pushing the heavy doors. Nothing happened.
"What do we do now? Knock," Monroe asked, pointing to the heavy doorknocker.
"Looks like we need to enter a code," Jamie said, pointing to a keypad.
"Brother, they don’t want us in here do they?" Monroe peered over Petra’s shoulder. "Can’t we just smash the thing off?"
"No, that will probably trigger an alarm, or worse. But we’re not beaten yet. Hatton, you’ve got the DC haven’t you?"
Hatton moved up the column, taking off his backpack as he came. "Here we go, skipper." Hatton had taken what looked like a boxy briefcase out of his pack and handed it to Jamie. Jamie unbuckled the khaki casing and slid out a wooden box one foot by one foot by half a foot deep. He unlatched a clip at the front and opened the box up. Inside the lid was a smaller version of the monitors Hansch was using. The base of the wooden box had what looked like a typewriter set in it.
"What is that are you sending them a letter?" Monroe was craning his neck to get a glimpse of the device.
"Yes, what is it?" Petra too was eager to know what was in Jamie’s box of tricks.
"Very hush-hush," Reid ventured, "and not something we can easily explain." Reid was feeling a lot happier now that they were out of the darkness.
"I see the British government doesn’t want us to have its secrets?" Monroe said.
"Not at all, it is just that we have no idea how it does what it does, but it is very clever, nonetheless."
"So, what is it called and what does it do?" Monroe asked, somewhat impatiently.
"It is called a DC, a Desktop Computer," Jamie began, "and it works things out."
"Things, what sort of things?" Monroe asked, intrigued now.
"Well, this is a good example. I’ll let Jamie demonstrate." Reid stood to one side and let Monroe; Petra and Geshenko have a clear view. "I’ll take the face plate off of the control panel on the door, Jamie."
Jamie nodded. "Pass the battery pack, Hatton."
Hatton slid his pack across the floor to Jamie. Jamie delved into the pack, pulled out two cables, and clipped them onto two terminals at the rear of the keyboard. Delving back into the pack, Jamie pulled a black and red cable from it and connected these to the back of the DC.
"OK?" Jamie asked Reid.
"OK." Reid flipped off the face cover of the keypad on the door and then opened the device. Inside was a tangle of wires. Reid cut two and taken the black and red wires leading to the DC, he clipped them onto the end of the two corresponding wires on the keypad. "OK, go."
Jamie pressed a red button on the keyboard of the DC and after a second or two; the screen went from an opaque grey to black. Suddenly, a word appeared on the screen.
WORKING.
The dots after the word flashed on the screen, alternating on and off.
"Now we wait."
"Wait for what?" Geshenko asked Jamie.
"The code, of course," Jamie said, grinning.
Otto Hansch had also been paying a lot of attention to what Jamie and Reid were doing. As Reid opened the front panel of the keypad, an alarm bell sounded three times and then there was silence. Hansch had no idea what that meant and was thankful when it stopped.
Hansch flicked a switch on his control panel. "Team One, Luger?"
"Luger here." Luger’s voice was a clear as a bell over Hansch’s headset, almost as if Luger were in the same room.
"Are you in position?"
"In position."
"Team two, Bitzchar."
"Team two, in position and ready."
Hansch had separated his men into four teams, and he now contacted the remaining two to make certain they too were in position. Hansch had a bad feeling that the Allied troops were about to make a mockery of the security on the first door.
"So how long will this take?" Monroe was getting impatient.
"That depends on how the information, if there is any, is stored?" Major Reid answered absentmindedly, as he waited for the TV monitor to change and give them the information they wanted.
"And how is it stored?"
"Not sure really, it’s something the boffins back home had to deal with. We simply use the device."
"Who came up with this idea?" Monroe was frustrated at the delay, but he was equally fascinated with the device.
"Q."
"Queue, as in form a Q..."
"No," Reid cut him off, "Q, as in Quartermaster."
"And I suppose you’re going to tell me that the guy in command of MI6 is called, B, for Boss?"
"No. It’s M actually, M for Melville."
"Melville?"
"Colonel Melville Jones. He is the head of MI6."
"I can’t abide all this secret stuff. They wanted me to join O.S.S., but I told them no way, too much cloak and dagger for me." Monroe wrinkled his nose as if he could smell a rotting corpse.
"Da, I am with Davy Crockett, here," Geshenko laughed as he patted Monroe’s back, hard. "Too many cooks spoil the borscht; I read this somewhere."
"Yeah, Alexei and I are on the same wavelength. How’d you get into this Major?"
"Me? Ohh, right place at the right time I suppose. I spent holidays in Germany; my grandparents were from Alsace; I studied in Cologne, engineering, and I almost married a German girl. You could say I’m English with a splash of Teutonic."
"I’ll have a Gin & Tonic any day."
As Monroe spoke, Reid held up his hand and pointed to the TV Monitor on the DC.
FINISHED: 5830
The number was flashing on the screen.
"Very well, off you go." Reid took the outer casing off the door’s keypad device in his left hand and with his right; he tapped in the numbers from the TV monitor. There was a hiss and then a click as the door unlocked and swung away from the group with a loud creak.
"Don’t forget, Luger. Wait until they are all through the doors before you fire."
"OK."
Hansch’s palms were sweaty. The Allied troops and the girl were readying themselves to pass through the complex. He did not understand what a girl was doing with the Allied troops, but she looked oddly familiar. He watched the monitor, waiting, for the moment when his boys would open fire. That was what he relished, the killing. His body ached for it, and his mind willed it. Luger was ready and waiting for the order. In seconds, they would enter the complex, and the killing would begin. Hansch realised he was breathing rapidly and his hands we very sweaty. He felt like a Gladiator must have felt, before they entered the arena and faced their destiny. As the last of the Allied troops entered the complex, Hansch flicked the switch and almost yelled, "Fire!"
Reid looked left and then right. The corridor he had just entered was very long, both ways. The walls were solid stone, probably hacked out of the mountainside by slave labour.
How many dead are buried within these walls?
Every now and then, he could see the Nazi flag hanging against either wall, and these were interspersed with alcoves. The nearest held a painting. Nothing he recognised but no doubt looted and valuable. As he scanned the walls, either left or right, there were no obvious doorways. His gaze fell on a map on the wall opposite the doors they had just opened. He pointed as Jamie appeared to his right. "Looks like someone is trying to make life easier for us."
"Mmm," Jamie mused, "bit obvious. And I don’t like the fact there’s no cover side of this corridor."
"Yes, I agree." Reid turned back toward the doorway he had just entered the corridor from and held his hands up. "Gentlemen, and Lady, please, back into the passageway. We have to arrange a little cover for our own protection."
As he finished the sentence there was a deafening roar to Reid’s right. He and Jamie hurled themselves toward the passageway, barging people back into the passageway with great haste.
The machine machine-gun fire
"Anyone hurt?" Reid looked around and nodded in satisfaction.
"Now how in hell did they know we are here?" Monroe was picking himself off the floor. He had been closest to the doorway, trying to get the King-Kong platform to go forward, but it kept butting the passageway wall.
"I suspect we’re being watched," said Reid, "and I think I know where the spy is." He was looking up into the corner of the passageway, to the top left of the doorway. In the gloomy blackness, something glinted. "Have we any flares left anyone?"
Monroe handed Reid a flare. Reid took it and said, "Watch your eyes." He ignited the flare and there, once the initial glare had died down, revealed for the first time was a small camera.
Monroe and the others grouped together.
"A camera?" Monroe shook his head.
"Not any old camera," said Reid, "this is a TV camera."
"TV, what is TV?" Geshenko asked.
"Yeah, what is TV?" Monroe said.
"A wonderful British invention, it means Tele-Vision. What you get with this camera is a black-and-white moving image, but probably no sound, that is piped to a control room in this complex. So, wherever these little beauties are, we can be assured we will be on camera."
"TV, huh, very useful on a Saturday night. Be able to see what the neighbours are up to? ", Monroe said, unimpressed.
"Da, spying, always the spying with you people."
Geshenko too was unimpressed.
Reid smiled. "Mark my words, in fifty years time, the whole planet will be glued to these things, watching a movie or a football game. The Germans produced their TV systems at the same time we did, and they have already televised the Olympic Games in 1936."
"Nah, don’t see it myself. You will never get millions of Americans sitting in front of those things watching a movie. Not in a million years."
"Well, we will see. However, we digress; we have a problem to solve."
"Easy!" Monroe said, as he shot the camera with his Colt .45.
"Yes, as you say, easy." Reid’s eyes rolled heavenward. "Now, Jamie. I think we need some shielding."
"Yes, Boss. Colonel Geshenko, if you would be so kind, we need the two flat cases we asked you to load onto King-Kong earlier."
"Hey, you mean to tell me this thing was loaded with your stuff too. And I had to beg to get my laser on this heap of junk." Monroe was not happy and Geshenko was even less happy.
"This heap of junk is a product of Soviet technology... think yourself lucky I not make you carry your laser pop-gun."
Geshenko and Yuri bustled around King-Kong and slid two flat boxes to the floor.
"At least they won’t see what we have up our sleeves now that, Davy Crocket has shot the spy on the wall." Reid said as he undid the flat cases.
Williams pushed forward and took charge of one case as Anderson took charge of the other.
Within minutes, the British had opened the cases and distributed flat-packed pieces, that when assembled looked like the sort of armour a Gladiator used. The British troops donned the armour and each carried an oblong shield and powerful handgun.
"Now what in heaven’s name have your Guys come up with?" Monroe was shaking his head from side to side.
"Very light and very strong, sir," Anderson said, tapping his breastplate. It can’t stop armour piercing, but it can stop standard-issue German rounds." Anderson formed some of the material into a makeshift crown and placed it on his head.
"This material can stop a .45 from a Thompson," Jamie added, "and it’s light enough to be able to move quickly."
"And it’s flexible," Williams chimed in. "We call it NEDS, after Ned Kelly."
"Ned Kelly! Da, Australian highwayman, I think I read this somewhere." Geshenko nodded and grinned.
"Very nice," Monroe said unconvinced. "If you think I’m standing behind one of you guys and walking up to the enemy, then you have another think coming."
"No need. Williams, myself, Anderson and Jamie will do the job." Reid said as he clapped his hands together.
Hansch was blind. His monitor showed no signs of the allied troops, and they were not on any other monitor. He was screaming down the radio at Luger. "Where are they?"
"I don’t know. We cannot see anything. There is no sign in the corridor, and we cannot chance to walk down to the doorway. They must still be in the passageway, and if they are they can pick us off as easily as we can pick them off."
"I need to know where they are. Send someone down, now."
"Hansch, it is suicide."
"I don’t care, do it now. What the..."
As Hansch was flicking between camera shots, he alighted on the camera that showed Luger’s position and the length of the corridor. There, at the passageway doorway, he could see four men dressed in some sort of armour making their down the corridor toward Luger and his boys.
"What are they? Luger, what are they?"
"How would I know?"
"Shoot, shoot them now."
Luger had four boys with him, none of them older than him. All looked terrified. They knew something was coming down the corridor towards them, but none had seen it, only Luger- and he was visibly shaking. Luger grabbed the first person behind him and pushed him forward, toward the corner.
"Hans. Come around here now and start firing," Luger blurted out as he waved his hand toward the corner leading into the corridor.
"Then you and you and you," he said quickly, tapping on the other three boy’s shoulders.
All four looked at each other and back at Luger.
"Now, now, or I will shoot you myself." Luger had managed to put himself at the rear of the group, and the hapless Hans was stood at the corner. The boy took a quick glance down the corridor and rapidly withdrew his head.
"What is it?" One boy asked.
Hans shook his head. "Don’t know. They have armour on and are carrying shields."
Luger was now trembling as much from fright as from frustration that no one was following his orders.
"Get going, now!"
Hans shook his head, and then jumped as a loud pistol shot went off to his right. Hans turned and looked in horror as the body of the last of the four boys twitched on the floor of the corridor.
"Now who’s next?" Luger screamed. In terror, the remaining three boys rounded the corner and began firing.
Each boy managed a couple of shots before they were gunned down in a hail of bullets. Luger stood transfixed, his hands holding his Luger pistol were trembling with fear. At the sound of approaching feet, Luger turned and ran in the other direction.
Otto Hansch watched in horror as the four men reached the end of the corridor. They turned the corner, waited a few seconds and then opened up the wall of shields. One soldier went to the bodies of the boy soldiers to see if any survived and shook his head as he stood up from kneeling to check the pulse of the boy. Hansch flicked a switch and, not for the last time that night, screamed into his microphone "Luger! Luger!"
Major Reid stood up, looked at the body of the boy, and shook his head. "They’re so young. This one can’t even be in his teens."
"Maybe not, Boss. But he could just have easily pulled the trigger and killed one of us."
Reid nodded.
"We have to move on, Boss. We have no time to waste. There are more lives at stake here, many, many more." Jamie stood, his handgun hanging loosely from his hand, waiting for the Major to decide on the next course of action.
Reid took in a deep breath of air; it smelled musty and seemed charged with electricity. Where he stood, at the apex of the corner, he could see two long corridors. The one they came from seemed to have no break in it. The one they had just captured seemed exactly the same. "Okay, we secure this area. Knock out any cameras you can find. Jamie, wait here I’ll go back and sort out the defence of the corridor we just came down and take a look at the map."
As Jamie watched Reid trot down the first corridor, he turned to Anderson and Williams. "Get about halfway down this corridor and set up a defensive shield. Any trouble I want two long whistles, OK?"
The two soldiers nodded and walked quickly down the corridor.
Hansch sat with his head in his hands, not knowing which way to turn, when his control panel beeped. It beeped again and a red light flashed. The beeping continued, and the red light continued to flash. Hansch knew it was his master, wanting an update.
He flicked a switch, and a familiar voice echoed around the small control room.
"What is happening? Have you defeated the invaders?"
Hansch grabbed the microphone in front of him and pressed a stud on the base. "No, we are delaying them, but they have managed to break through the complex."
"How?" The disembodied voice shouted.
"I don’t know. They used some device and the door just opened. They have destroyed some of the cameras and..."
"This is impossible. This complex is supposed to be impregnable." The voice was raging now, almost demented. "Fix them, don’t make me come to you and sort this out myself. You are Werwolf; you are Himmler’s chosen ones."
The connection was broken, and Hansch had never felt more alone.
Reid, followed by the others, came back to the corner where Jamie was waiting patiently.
"OK, Jamie, this is the situation. I have Yuri and Dimitri guarding the far end of the other corridor. Unfortunately, we do not have any way of communicating with them. All cameras from Yuri’s position to here are now defunct."
"Same here, Williams and Anderson are halfway down this corridor."
"We have four dead Werwolf here and about a dozen back at the lake. I think there may be another fifty at least. God knows how many there were here before Hansch arrived with the Uranium."
"Well, there could be at least a hundred or maybe even a thousand, we just don’t know." Jamie felt slightly down, always did when working with unknowns.
"I think there weren't any more than a handful of people here in the first place." Petra said, quietly.
All eyes turned to her.
"And what makes you say that?" Reid asked.
"Did you read the map opposite the passageway?"
"Yes, I did."
"Then you did not notice the sign-off date?"
Reid frowned, "Sign-off?"
With more confidence, Petra continued. "I don’t know if you have noticed, but this place looks pretty new."
Reid nodded. "Yes, that had occurred to me."
"Then if you look at the map, you will see at the bottom that there is a sign-off date, the date the construction engineers handed the place over to the authorities."
The penny dropped, and Reid smiled. "And what was that date?"
Petra smiled too. "Two weeks ago."
"So they haven’t had time to place troops here. In fact, they would have only had time to remove the labour force and move in equipment." Reid was impressed with Petra’s logic.
"So that means that this place is designed for one thing and one thing only." Monroe said, realisation written across his face.
"One launch of a weapon," Geshenko added.
"It would only take one weapon with such a devastating blow to the heart of Democracy that the war would be lost." Jamie faltered.
Monroe watched Jamie’s ashen face.
"What? What?"
Jamie slumped against the corridor wall. "We’re too late. This is not about one atomic weapon trained on London, or New York. That would not stop the Allied armies. This is about multiple launches."
Petra gasped. "There’s more than one nuclear weapon?"
***
"Kapital! Prinz! Bitzchar! Where in hell are you?"
Hansch knew he was running out of time.. Two whole corridors were now blind to him, and his remaining groups were not acknowledging him on the radio. He was blind, with his hands tied behind his back. There would be nothing for it; he would have to search the complex for his men.
Jamie was visibly shaken by his own, dreadful, thoughts. The others just stood, silently urging him to tell them his thoughts.
Reid broke the silence. "I fear we’re too late. We, I, have been a fool. There’s more than one weapon."
Petra repeated her question. "You think there is more than one Nuclear weapon?"
"No, I think there is only one. That’s designed to have maximum impact, and I think the target is London."
"Not New York?" Monroe asked, incredulously.
"Not New York. Think about it. In the European theatre of operations, apart from on the ground, where is the war being fought from?"
"London," Jamie answered, "and to destroy London is to destroy the Allied High Command."
"Not only that," Reid went on, "but also it would have a devastating effect on morale and on the entire war effort, with London gone then the Allied ports would soon be in disarray. Communications would be affected. The Allied war effort would halt at a stroke and would be paralysed for months."
"But it would pick up again." Monroe added.
"Da," Geshenko nodded, enthusiastically. "And this weapon would not stop the Red Army."
"Correct," Reid answered, "but it would stop supplies to the Red Army from Britain. How long would any Soviet Army of occupation last without the help of Britain and America?"
"But America would not be affected to the same degree as Britain, would they?" Petra asked.
"No," Reid agreed, "not unless there was something else the Nazis had up their sleeve."
Jamie latched onto Reid’s train of thought. "Oh my God. Not the submarines?"
"Submarines?" Geshenko bellowed.
Monroe was lost for words.
"Exactly Jamie, submarines in the Atlantic. I can’t fully explain now, but I’ve seen a German test firing of a missile, a big missile, from under water, from a submarine!"
"You think they have a submarine with a Nuclear weapon?" Monroe was thinking fast and not keeping up very well.
"No, I’ve already said I don’t think they have the capability of launching two nuclear weapons. But, they may have something equally devastating."
"What man? What?" Monroe was getting past the stage of simply being able to listen. He wanted answers when it came to his nation’s security.
"I believe they have developed a biological weapon, and it can be fired from a submerged submarine, somewhere in the Atlantic. Its target is the Eastern Seaboard of the United States of America."