Boston, Massachusetts
July 05, 2018
A large area in the outer harbor had been restricted to shipping early that morning, forcing all marine traffic to take the northern channel to get out to sea. Exposed areas around the city's wharfs were cleared of people and a buffer zone established by the police. Logan operated at a reduced capacity using only the northern approaches and East-West runways. Visitors and locals alike who thought the Independence Day celebration and yesterday's POTUS visit had imposed unnecessary constraints were beside themselves.
Sandy concocted another cover story which involved a US Navy submarine-hunting P-3 aircraft operating from the old naval air station in Brunswick, Maine that had inadvertently dropped a live torpedo in the outer harbor while on a training mission. It sounded farfetched, but Sandy wrote it so believably no one would question its veracity. Of course, the Admiral got a one way call from a very irate Chief of Naval Operations who had to appear at a press conference and explain the mishap. He added that an EOD team had already been dispatched to the scene and expected the weapon would be recovered in short order. He sheepishly announced an investigation was underway.
The President would remain in Boston for the day and depart on Air Force One late that night. The morning's press conference deferred any details regarding the lost torpedo to the Department of the Navy. The Press Secretary conveyed the President's thanks for a wonderful celebration in Boston and specifically mentioned how proud he was of his hometown.
Embarked in a US Navy destroyer with the coordinates from the USCG FRB and armed with an underwater robot equipped with high resolution side-scanning sonar, the EOD team quickly found what remained of the canister and its contents by 10:00 a.m. The divers found two-thirds of the composite canister intact and fragments from the other third which contained the bulk of the explosive material. The team referred to it as a Double Ender. One part of the canister contained a shaped charge of C4 explosive and the other a large glass cylinder filled with an amber liquid thought to be poison gas. Miraculously, the glass was found unbroken in the mud at the base of an old I-Beam with a two foot web that separated its top and bottom flanges. What was left of the canister and its contents were deposited in an armored drum pressurized with inert nitrogen and fitted with chemical sniffers.
With the cargo secured, the destroyer headed due east and further out to sea. One of the EOD team referred to the configuration as the terrorist's version of the famous hors d'oeuvres, pigs in a blanket. By noon, the city began to return to normal. Most of the drunks were still sleeping off the celebration or nursing their hangovers and didn't care anyway.
From the scene, the EOD team's preliminary reconstruction assessment suggested the weapon had been remotely activated, and the triggering circuit had closed shortly after the canister sheared in two pieces by the impact of the dumbbell hitting a large I-beam that had somehow found its way to the harbor floor. Covered with years of accumulated marine growth, it stood proud of the bottom by a good eight feet, a single piece of steel buried and sticking upright just at the place the canister was being guided to the bottom. It was just dumb luck that the canister hit the I-beam as it did. The divers found one side of the I-beam's two foot wide web looked like it had been sandblasted down to bare metal as the serrated ball bearings were expelled by the explosive force which was largely contained within the three sides of the I-beam. The divers found a small pile of shiny serrated ball bearings at its base. The divers surmised that the only way Dan Steele survived was continuing his descent protected from the overpressure and shock wave by the width of the I-beam’s web.
When a Navy weapons lab analyzed the contents of the flask a few days later, they did find a very concentrated agent that had not been seen before. It had been sealed with a dollop of molten glass. Once broken and vaporized by the explosion, the wind would have randomly carried the gas to find its victims. Death would occur within minutes as the lungs' soft porous lining turned into a gelatinous mass that could no longer oxygenate the blood.