Temple

by Matthew Reilly

  It hadn’t been easy. There had been several false starts—including one who had made it to the election as a vice-presidential candidate, only to lose in a landslide. Four others had made it to the New Hampshire primary, but then faded to secure their parties’ candidacy.

  And of course, you always had some—like that Woolf fellow—who would quit politics before they had even begun to truly explore their presidential potential. It was an extra expense, but no matter. Even Senator Woolf had served a useful purpose.

  But now . . .

  Now, it was different . . .

  Now, he had one . . .

  His theory had been borne out of a very simple fact.

  For the last forty years, every American president bar two has hailed from two very elite clubs: state governors and federal senators.

  Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon were all senators before they became President. Carter, Reagan, and Clinton were all state governors. The only exceptions were George Bush Sr. and Gerald Ford. Bush was a member of the House of Representatives, not the Senate, and Ford’s rise to the Presidency stands in a category of its own.

  But, as General Charles Russell had also discovered, men of influence were also men of extremely unpredictable health.

  The ravages of their political lifestyles—high stress, constant travel, chronic lack of exercise—often took a great toll on their bodies.

  And while getting the transmitter onto the heart of a sitting President was nigh on impossible, given the narrow source of American Presidents—senators and governors—getting it onto a man’s coronary muscle before he became President wasn’t out of the question.

  Because, after all, a man is just a man before he becomes President.

  The statistics for the next fifteen years spoke for themselves.

  Forty-two percent of U.S. senators had had gallbladder surgery during their time in office, gallstones being a common problem for overweight middle-aged men.

  Of the remaining fifty-eight percent, only four would avoid some sort of surgical procedure during their political careers.

  Kidney and liver operations were very common. Several heart bypasses—they were the easiest operations during which to plant the device—and not a few prostate problems.

  And then there had been this one.

  Halfway through his second term as governor of a large southwestern state, he had complained of chest pains and labored breathing. An exploratory procedure performed by a staff surgeon at the Air Force base just outside Houston had revealed an obstruction in the Governor’s left lung, detritus from excessive smoking.

  Through a deft procedure involving state-of-the-art fiber-optic cameras and ultra-small wire-controlled surgical instruments called nanotechnology, the obstruction was removed and the Governor told to quit smoking.

  What the Governor did not know, however, was that during that operation the Air Force surgeon had attached a second piece of nanotechnology—a microscopic radio transmitter the size of a pin-head—to the outer wall of the Governor’s heart.

  Constructed of evanescent plastic—a semiorganic material which, over time, would partially dissolve into the outer tissue of the Governor’s heart—the transmitter would ultimately take on a distorted shape, giving it the appearance of a harmless blood clot, thus masking it from discovery by any observation techniques such as X-rays. Anything larger or more regularly shaped would be detected on an incoming President’s first physical, and that just couldn’t be allowed to happen.

  As a final precaution, it was inserted into the Governor’s body “cold”—unactivated. The White House’s AXS-7 anti-bugging system would detect an unauthorized radio signal in an instant.

  No.

  Activation would occur later, when the time was right.

  As usual, at the end of the procedure, one final operation was performed: a fine-grained plaster mold of the Governor’s right hand was made.

  It would also be necessary, when the time came.

  The guards came for him ten minutes later.

  Cuffed and chained, General Charles “Caesar” Russell was escorted from his cell and taken to the waiting plane.

  The trip to Indiana passed without incident, as did the somber walk to the injection room.

  The record would later show that as he lay spread-eagled on the injection table like a horizontal Christ, his arms and legs bound with worn leather straps, the prisoner refused to take the last rites. He had no last words, no final expression of remorse for his crimes. In fact, throughout the whole pre-injection ritual, he never said a word at all. This was consistent with Russell’s posttrial actions—indeed, his execution had been fast-tracked because he had lodged no appeals of any kind.

  The military tribunal that had sentenced him to death had said that so heinous was his crime, he could never be allowed to leave federal custody alive.

  They had been right.

  At 3:37 P.M. on 20 January, the grim procedure took place. Fifty milligrams of sodium thiopental—to induce unconsciousness—was followed by ten of pancuronium bromide—to stop respiration—and then, finally, twenty milligrams of potassium chloride to stop Russell’s heart.

  At 3:40 P.M., three minutes later, Lieutenant General Charles Samson Russell was declared dead by the Terre Haute county coroner.

  Since the General had no living relatives, his body was taken from the prison by members of the United States Air Force for immediate cremation.

  At 3:52 P.M.—twelve minutes after he had been declared officially dead—as his body was being rushed through the streets of Terre Haute, Indiana, in the back of an Air Force ambulance, two electroshock defibrillator paddles were applied to the dead General’s chest and charged.

  “Clear!” one of the Air Force medical personnel yelled.

  The General’s body convulsed violently as a wave of raw electric current shot through his vascular system.

  It happened on the third application of the paddles.

  On the electrocardiogram monitor on the wall, a small spike appeared.

  The General’s heartbeat had resumed.

  Within moments, it was pulsing at a regular rhythm.

  As General Russell well knew, death occurs when the heart is no longer able to deliver oxygen to the body. The act of respiration—-breathing—oxygenates a person’s blood, and then the person’s heart delivers that oxygenated blood to the body.

  It was the supply of hyperoxygenated blood coursing through Russell’s arteries that had kept him alive for that crucial twelve minutes—blood that had been biogenetically crammed with oxygen-rich red cells; blood which during that twelve-minute period had continued to supply Russell’s brain and vital organs with oxygen, even though his heart had stopped beating—blood which had been supplied to the General during the two transfusions that had been required after his unfortunate beatings at Leavenworth.

  The military tribunal had said that he would never leave federal custody alive.

  They had been right.

  While all this was happening, in a stark empty cell in the Departure Lounge at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, the rickety old television remained on.

  On it, the newly crowned President—smiling, ecstatic, elated—waved to the cheering crowds.

  O’Hare International Airport

  Chicago, Illinois

  3 July (Six months later)

  They found the first one at O’Hare in Chicago, sitting inside an empty hangar at the farthest reaches of the airfield.

  A regulation early morning sweep with an electromagnetic reader had revealed a weak magnetic signal emanating from the suspect hangar.

  The hangar had been completely deserted, except for the warhead standing in the exact center of the cavernous interior space.

  From a distance, it looked like a large silver cone about five feet tall mounted on a cargo pallet lip close, one would recognize it more easily as a conical warhead designed to be inserted into a cruise missile.

  Wires sprang out from its sides, connecting
the warhead to a small upwardly pointed satellite dish. Through a clear rectangular window set into the warhead’s side, there could be seen a luminous purple liquid.

  Plasma.

  Type-240 blast plasma. An extremely volatile quasi-nuclear liquid explosive.

  Enough to level a city.

  Further investigations revealed that the magnetic signal that had been detected inside the hangar was part of a complex proximity sensor array surrounding the warhead. If anyone stepped within fifty feet of the bomb, a red warning light began to flash, indicating that the device had been armed.

  Lease records revealed that the empty hangar belonged to the United States Air Force.

  Then it was discovered that according to the airfield’s log books, no Air Force personnel had set foot inside that hangar for at least six weeks.

  A cad was made to USAF Transportation Command at Scott Air Force Base.

  The Air Force was vague, noncommittal. It knew nothing about any plasma-based warheads at its civilian hangars. It would check with its people and get back to O’Hare ASAP.

  It was then that reports came flooding in from around the country.

  Identical warheads—all of them surrounded by magnetic proximity sensors; all with fold-out satellite dishes pointing up into the sky—had been found inside empty Air Force hangars at all three of New York’s major airports: JFK, La Guardia and Newark.

  And then Dulles in Washington called.

  Then LAX.

  San Francisco. San Diego.

  Boston. Philadelphia.

  St. Louis. Denver.

  Seattle. Detroit.

  Fourteen devices in all, at fourteen airports across the country.

  All armed. All set. All ready to go off.

  All they were waiting for now was the signal.