Terrorists Steal an Atomic Bomb!

I Tried to Warn Everybody.
My name is Cody Etu. I tried to warn everybody but nobody would listen. This is how it happened.

One Sunday my parents drove us to Dayton, Ohio, to visit my aunt and uncle.

Being fidgety, my parents wanted to drive around town looking for garage sales. Not that the cluttered house we called home needed more clutter.

My aunt and uncle, God bless them, said they were pretty tired of doing that and hey! why don’t we go to the Air Force Museum.

Mom and Dad were steadfast in their desire to avoid anything that smacked of learning and journeyed off to go garage selling.

After they left, my uncle threw a map on my lap. The National Museum of the United States Air Force.

Being only 17, and not knowing better, I blurted out – right here in Dayton!?

Son, did you ever hear of the Wright Patterson Air Force Base?

I did some quick reading and then we headed off to the museum.

The museum is basically three huge hangers full of historic airplanes, from the Wright Brothers on up to stealth fighters and unmanned drones.

Plus, it’s free.

Being a history buff I got hung up in the B-52 exhibit and after a while my aunt and uncle said they were going upstairs to the café for a coffee.

That’s when I noticed a group of people standing around a bomb on a cart.

When no one was looking one man put his hands across the barrier to see if the cart would move. It did!

Jumping Jupiter!

I kind of filtered in and around the group and acted like I was only interested in the military might on display, pretending to read the sign.

I noticed the sign said the bomb was of the atomic variety.

Surely this thing is disarmed, I thought.

Nevertheless, three men now started pushing the bomb back and forth, maybe to see if the cart would continue to move along.

When we came into the museum there were uniformed guards, mostly older men, walking around. I saw none around at this time.

I moved away to marvel at the size of a B-52 while keeping an eagle eye on the group.
There must have been a dozen of them, with some women and children, talking in a language I did not understand. One of the men moved to the perimeter of the building where there was a large exit door with alarm signs all over it. He had something in his hand, and jiggled the door a bit, and then opened it…quickly and then closed it. The alarms did not sound.

Where are my aunt and uncle when I need them? I started running, gradually picking up speed, until I got out to the main lobby area where I asked a man at the information desk where the cafeteria was. He pointed up a stairway.

I took two…three…four steps at a time. There were my aunt and uncle, sitting drinking coffee. No offense, but that seemed to be about all they lived for. Anyway, I blurted out that some people – maybe terrorists – were trying to steal an atomic bomb. For God sake! We gotta do something!

My uncle must have gone through World War II or Korea or Vietnam or something because he started laughing, real hard like. Let me buy you a coffee, he said. My heart was pounding and my face was getting hot and I felt like I had discovered something sinister going on and all my aunt and uncle could do was laugh at me.

I ran back downstairs and into the exhibit with the B-52.

The atomic bomb was no longer there.

What! Where had it gone?

I went to the door with the alarm signs all over it and pushed the bar and sure enough alarms started sounding. An older man wearing a suit and a name badge came up and scolded me. I tried to tell him that an atomic bomb had been stolen, it was right over there, and I pointed, but even the sign was gone.

Young man, relax. Are you here with your parents?

I took that as a sign that I was off the hook for setting off the alarms and I ran out only to find my aunt and uncle coming into the exhibit. I am telling you what I saw, I cried.
I dragged them over to the spot where the bomb had been.

I don’t see a sign of any bomb, my aunt said.

It was right here! I pointed.

There was silence.

They must have pushed it out that door and I showed them the door with all the alarm signs on it.

From that point on I just went quietly. We walked through the Cold War exhibit and the Space exhibit. I could barely concentrate, but the planes and missiles and space capsules were fascinating.

The next day after school my mom got a call from my aunt.

In the Dayton Daily News there was a front page story. An old atomic bomb had been taken from the museum Sunday by a group of people who backed a truck up to the door on the Memorial Park side of the building.

Air Force officers were quoted as saying the bomb had been disarmed but not dismantled.
Meaning the guts were intact.

My dad said, now all we gotta do is wait for the other shoe to drop.

I am guessing that when that bomb drops nobody will confuse it with the other shoe.
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