“A tall order indeed,” Sandecker noted.

“Granted, but these were not ordinary men. They had created the greatest military industrial machine in history virtually from scratch and ruthlessly used it to squash two formidable foes on several continents and seas. But even all their determination and resourcefulness wasn't up to this challenge. Fortunately for them, two unconnected developments intersected and showed them the way. The first was the development of the air craft that came to be known as the flying wing. The design had its problems, but there was one unplanned characteristic that made it very attractive. Stealth technology. The plane's slim silhouette and clean surface meant that under the right circumstances it could slip undetected past radar.”

“My guess is that you're talking about Russian radar,” Sandecker said.

LeGrand smiled mysteriously. “Supposedly all flying wings, including those still in production, were destroyed by the Air Force. But the president gave the go-ahead for a modified version to be built in secret. It had even greater range and speed than any of the original models. In short, here was a delivery system that could get in and out of Siberia without being detected.”

“In my experience the Russians are not a dull people,” Sandecker said. “If their lab went up in smoke they would surmise the U.S. was behind it.”

“Undoubtedly, which is why the second part of the equation was crucial,” LeGrand said. “That was the discovery of anasazium. It was a by-product of the work at Los Alamos. The scientist who discovered the substance was an amateur anthropologist. He was fascinated by the old Pueblo culture that once lived in the Southwest. He named his discovery after the Anasazi. The material has a number of interesting properties. The one that attracted the most interest was its ability to change the hydrogen atom in subtle ways. If anasazium could be secretly introduced into a Soviet weapons lab, it might mess up the fusion research. Estimates were that it would hamstring their bomb project by several years. The U.S. would gain time to build an intercontinental bomber and missile fleet so advanced that the Soviets would never catch up. The plan was to float bombs down on parachutes. They would explode, and release the substance in liquid form, which would get into the lab's ventilation systems. By itself the substance is not any more harmful than water to humans. Those under attack would think they heard a very strange thunderstorm of extremely short duration.”

“It doesn't sound exactly like pinpoint bombing.”

“It wasn't. As they say, desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“What if the plane crashed for some mechanical reason?”

“That possibility was taken into account. There was no poison pill like the one Francis Gary Powers didn't take after his U-2 crash. They wanted no talkative survivors. No parachutes were packed for the crew. In fact, it would have been impossible to parachute from the plane. Ejection seats had not yet been developed, and the pilot's canopy could not be jettisoned. If wreckage were found it could always be said that this was an experimental plane tragically gone off-course.”