Critical Mass

by David Hagberg

  “Fukai Semiconductor aircraft on an easterly heading, north of the Hawaiian Islands, please come back. This is the U.S. Naval warplane off your port side,” he radioed.

  There was no answer. His communications would be monitored and recorded aboard the Vinson, just ahead of them now.

  He pulled out his motorized drive Haselblad camera and took a half-dozen shots of the 747’s flight-deck area, then got back on his radio.

  “Red Dog Two, this is One. Marc, what do you see over there?”

  “I see the crew, but they look … dead to me, Joe,” Morgan radioed.

  “Brood House, this is Red Dog One, you monitor?”

  “Roger.”

  “What do you advise?”

  “Stand by.”

  Dimaggio dropped a couple of meters lower, and mindful that the 747’s wing was just aft of his own tail, he eased in a little closer.

  From here he could definitely see that the crew was dead.

  “Brood House, this is Red Dog One. The crew are definitely dead. I see blood on the back of the pilot’s head.”

  “Roger,” the Air Wing CO radioed. “You are authorized to arm and uncage your weapons. Designator, Yellow Bird three-easy-love.”

  Dimaggio quickly flipped through his authenticator book. “Wild Card seven-one-delta.”

  “Roger,” the Vinson radioed dryly.

  “Red Dog Two, I’ll take aft and starboard.”

  “Right,” Morgan radioed back, and they both peeled away, making looping turns right and left, as they climbed to get above and behind the big airliner. They both uncaged their AIM-7F Sparrow air-to-air missiles.

  Nothing happened. Liese pushed the button again, but still nothing happened. Nakamura had been lying. The bomb was evidently set on a timer, or there was some sort of a coded sequence in which to push the button.

  McGarvey yanked the device out of her hand and got up. But again she was like a wild animal, driven by some inner compulsion to attack and kill. She viciously yanked the stiletto out of Nakamura’s skull and leaped up.

  McGarvey stepped aside, pulled out the Bernadelli, cocked the hammer with his thumb and shot her point-blank in the face.

  The bullet entered her skull just above and to the left of the bridge of her nose, destroying her face and snapping her head back. She was dead before she crumpled to the deck.

  McGarvey turned and sprinted back up to the flight deck, manhandling the pilot’s body out of its chair in time to hear someone on the radio.

  “Fukai Semiconductor aircraft on an easterly heading north of the Hawaiian Islands, this is your last chance to respond before we fire.”

  79

  “BROOD HOUSE THIS IS RED DOG ONE, NEGATIVE RESPONSE, advise,” Dimaggio radioed.

  The jetliner was one mile ahead and five hundred feet below them. Dimaggio had illuminated it with his doppler radar and had a positive lock for the Sparrow.

  “Red Dog One, you have permission to fire,” his confirmation came. “Repeat, you have permission to fire.”

  “Roger,” Dimaggio said, and he reached with his thumb for the air-to-air weapon-release button on his stick.

  McGarvey scrambled into the pilot’s seat, snatched up the microphone and frantically searched for the proper transmit frequency selector. Outside, the afternoon was beautiful, with only a few low clouds beneath them, and the pale blue of the Pacific Ocean lost in the haze on the horizon. There were no signs of any warplanes, but McGarvey figured they would by now be above and behind, ready to shoot.

  He pushed the microphone button. “U.S. warplanes about to shoot at the Fukai Semiconductor 747 aircraft, do you copy?”

  The radio was silent. McGarvey leaned forward as he tried to get a look aft, but he still couldn’t see anything but blue sky. Of course the warplanes did not have to be within sight in order to attack. Some of their missiles were accurate forty nautical miles out.

  “U.S. warplanes, this is the Fukai 747 north of the Hawaiian Islands, do you copy?”

  “Roger, we copy. You are required to immediately break away from your present heading, do you understand? If so, acknowledge.”

  “Negative,” McGarvey radioed. “You’re going to have to get confirmation of what I tell you, but we’ve got to get this aircraft on the ground and soon.”

  “Repeat, you are required to immediately break away from your present heading. This is your last warning. If you do not comply immediately you will be shot out of the sky.”

  “Listen to me. My name is Kirk McGarvey. I am an American intelligence officer, something you can verify by calling Washington. Everyone else aboard this airplane is dead, including the crew. We’re carrying a nuclear device that is probably set on some sort of timer. It’s hidden in a unit marked hydraulic distribution system—secondary. Have you got that?”

  There was no answer.

  “Goddammit, ace, I asked, did you get that?”

  “Stand by.”

  McGarvey sat back in the seat for a long moment, closing his eyes and trying to let his mind go blank. He wanted to crawl away and curl up in some dark corner somewhere, to lick his wounds—both mental and physical. But it was not possible now, nor had it ever really been possible ever since his parents had been killed in Kansas … a century ago? Ten lifetimes?

  And, as before, the death and carnage that always seemed to surround him solved nothing, offered no satisfaction. Even the woman’s death, for what she had done to Elizabeth, had been empty. Liz’s life would not be changed for the better because of it. Nor would his. The deaths were nothing more than another chapter in his continuing nightmare.

  Minutes later the F/A-18s showed up just off both sides of the 747.

  “Mr. McGarvey, you still with us?” Dimaggio radioed. McGarvey could read the pilot’s name and rank stenciled on the Hornet’s fuselage beneath the canopy.

  “That’s a famous name you got there, Dimaggio. Any relation?”

  “I wish,” Dimaggio said. “You’re it aboard?”

  McGarvey was looking directly at the young man. “Except two female flight attendents,” he said. “That’s the good news. The bad is that the biggest plane I’ve ever flown was a V-tail Bonanza, and that was fifteen years ago. I never did get my license.”

  “Did you land it?”

  “Badly.”

  “But you walked away from the landing,” Dimaggio said. “So things aren’t as bad as we thought they might be. Now listen up, Mr. M, this is what we’re trying to work out for you.”

  Twenty-three U.S. Navy and Marine Sea Stallion helicopters out of Pearl and off the CVN Nimitz showed up almost simultaneously along the west coast of Niihau, the most isolated island in the Hawaiian chain, and immediately began announcing the evacuation of all residents.

  Eighteen miles long and five miles wide the island was home to less than two hundred people who spoke only Hawaiian, though they understood English, who did not use electricity, plumbing or telephones, and who got around by bicycles and horses.

  During the Second World War an airstrip had been laid down on the island’s arid interior, and although it had been lengthened to take jets almost twenty years ago, it had never been used except in emergencies.

  Even before the evacuation had begun, a C-130 Hercules was touching down on the strip with fire fighting and medical units out of Pearl, while another C-130 circled overhead, ready to lay down a thick blanket of foam along the entire runway and surrounding area the moment the supplies and personnel were secured and the first C-130 took off.

  Also among the personnel were two Air Force nuclear weapons specialists on loan to the Navy at Pearl. Everything humanly possible to secure the bomb aboard the 747 when the jetliner landed was being done. McGarvey’s survival was secondary, even though it was up to him to bring the big jet in.

  “Ten to one he doesn’t make it,” one of the technicians aboard the circling AWACS commented. “But the device should survive a controlled crash landing with no real problem.”

  The 747�
�s controls were surprisingly light, the jetliner even easier to fly, in some ways, than the small four-place Beech Bonanza.

  Ted Kinstry, a veteran 747 pilot for United Airlines, had been brought out from Honolulu aboard the AWACS to talk McGarvey in, and although he figured the chances of pulling off a survivable crash landing were far less than ten to one, he instantly established a rapport with McGarvey and talked him through the motions, step by step.

  “I have the island and the runway in sight now,” McGarvey radioed. On instructions he had dumped most of the 747’s fuel out over the ocean before changing course for the nearly five hundred mile straight-in approach.

  While still well away from any land, Kinstry had McGarvey make two simulated landings, using an altitude of twenty thousand feet as the imaginary ground level. On the first landing, McGarvey managed to pull up and level off at eighteen thousand five hundred feet; the second time at nineteen thousand seven hundred.

  “You crashed and burned both times,” Kinstry had told him. “But there was an improvement.”

  “Let’s try it again,” McGarvey suggested.

  “No time or fuel. Sorry, Mac, but the next time is the big one.”

  Which was now.

  “We’re going to start using flaps now,” Kinstry’s voice came into McGarvey’s headphones.

  “Why so soon?” McGarvey asked.

  “Because we need to slow you down sooner. This time we’re not using landing gear. You’re going to belly her in. It’ll tear hell out of the aircraft, but the landing will be easier.”

  “You’re the boss,” McGarvey said, trying to blink away the double vision that was coming in and out now, at times so badly he could barely read the instruments. He hadn’t told that to Kinstry. It wouldn’t have helped.

  “You don’t have to reply from now on unless you have a question,” Kinstry said calmly. “Reduce throttles to the second mark.”

  McGarvey pulled back on the big handles on the center console, and the aircraft’s nose immediately became impossible to hold.

  “Don’t forget to adjust your trim each time you change a throttle or flap setting,” Kinstry cautioned, and McGarvey did as he was told, the jetliner’s nose immediately coming up, the pressures on the control column easing.

  “Now we’re going to five degrees of flaps. Again, watch your trim.”

  McGarvey lowered the flaps which acted as huge air brakes, slowing the plane even more, the roar of the wind over the added wing surface suddenly loud.

  Ahead, the runway seemed impossibly narrow and much too short.

  “I have you in sight. Come right slightly to line up with the runway.”

  McGarvey turned the wheel very slightly to the right as he applied a little pressure to the right rudder pedal. The big jet ponderously swung on line, then passed to the right. He had to compensate left, then right before settling in.

  “You’re at eight thousand feet, glide path a little high. Reduce throttles to the third mark, and flaps to ten degrees.”

  McGarvey did both, remembering to adjust the trim each time, and the plane slowed even further, the roar now very loud.

  “Looking good,” Kinstry said. “Reduce throttles to the fourth position, and increase flaps to twenty degrees—maximum.”

  The big jetliner was no longer so easy to handle even with the trim tabs properly adjusted. The controls seemed sluggish and unresponsive, and McGarvey got the unsettling impression that the jetliner was hanging in the air by the very narrowest of speed margins just above a stall.

  “Your glide path is a little low, pull up the nose.”

  McGarvey eased the wheel back, and the stall horn began beeping shrilly, a red stall-indicator lighting on the panel flashing brightly.

  “I’m getting a stall warning,” McGarvey radioed.

  “Don’t worry about it. Your glide path is looking good, bring it right a little more. From now on you’ll probably have to hold a little right rudder, looks as if you have a slight crosswind.”

  The plane came right and lined up perfectly this time. The stall warning continued to buzz.

  “At one thousand feet, glide path is a little low, pull up,” Kinstry said.

  The stall warning continued to buzz, and now the runway was definitely too small by at least a factor of ten, maybe more.

  “At eight hundred feet, glide path still a little low, pull up.”

  The jetliner began to shudder, the control column vibrating in his hands. McGarvey knew enough to understand that the wings were on the very verge of stalling.

  “Four hundred feet,” Kinstry said. “Three hundred feet, your glide path is perfect.”

  The end of the runway was less than one hundred yards out.

  “Two hundred feet … one hundred feet … You’re over the end of the runway, chop power now!”

  McGarvey hauled back on the throttles, cutting all power to the engines, but instead of dropping out of the sky like a stone, the ground effect between the wings and the runway took effect and the 747 seemed to float for a second, or longer, then it touched down with a terrible crash. The big airliner bounced once, hit on its belly again, and then the controls were yanked out of McGarvey’s hands, everything outside his windows turning opaque white as the plane plowed through the fire retardant foam.

  He could do nothing but brace himself against the inevitable crash, and he finally let himself succumb to his wounds, his loss of blood, and lack of rest over the past weeks.

  Slowly the big jetliner began to decelerate, turning almost gently to the right. And finally something crashed against the portside wing, the plane slewed sharply left, and came to a complete halt.

  For a long time McGarvey allowed himself the luxury of breathing, and of not having to think or concentrate for his own life, and his world collapsed around him into an indistinct but pleasant grayness.

  80

  VERY EARLY ON THE MORNING OF THE SEVENTH DAY OF McGarvey’s hospitalization at San Francisco’s General, Kelley Fuller, wearing a pretty knit dress and sandals, showed up. She was still deeply frightened, and when she touched his lips with her fingertips she was shaking.

  “Phil said he pulled you out of there just in time,” McGarvey said. Most of the past week had gone by in a blur for him. Until today the doctors had kept him sedated most of the time to hold him down.

  “I was going crazy,” she said. “I didn’t know what had happened to you. I thought maybe you had drowned.”

  “I found the bomb.”

  “I know, and Fukai is dead. All the papers are saying he died of a heart attack when his plane crashed-landed on that island. They’re calling him a national hero in Japan.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” McGarvey said. “He’s dead and it’s over.”

  She was staring at him, an odd expression in her eyes. “You’re really an extraordinary man,” she said softly. She went to the door and closed it, then propped a chair under the knob so that no one could come in. “I came to see how you were, and to thank you for saving my life,” she said, coming back to the bed. She stepped out of her sandals, and then pulled the dress off over her head. She wore nothing beneath it.

  “If you pull my stitches my doctors will have your hide,” McGarvey said, throwing back the covers.

  “So let them sue me,” she said, gently slipping into bed with him, and easing her body on top of his. Her skin was like silk against his, and the nipples of her breasts were hard, her breath warm and fragrant.

  He let his hands run down her back, along her hips and the mound of her buttocks, feeling himself responding almost immediately.

  The bedside telephone rang, and he reached over and picked it up. “Later,” he said, “One hour.” He broke the connection, but left the phone off the hook.

  “I don’t know if that will be long enough,” Kelley said, kissing his forehead.

  “Let’s try,” McGarvey said. “We can at least do that.”

  “Who was that on the telephone?” Kelley asked when they were fi
nished. She’d gotten out of bed, used the bathroom and then put on her dress and stepped into her sandals.

  All through their lovemaking she had asked him questions about what he had seen and done while in the Fukai compound. Each answer had seemed to spur her on, almost as if she were playing some sort of sexual game with him.

  “It was Phil Carrara,” McGarvey said tiredly. Because of his wounds he had no energy, no stamina. He felt very weak.

  Kelley’s breath caught in her throat, but McGarvey didn’t see it. “Get some sleep before you call him,” she said. “You need it.”

  “Are you going to stay?”

  “I have to go. But I’ll come again tomorrow.”

  McGarvey was beginning to drift again. He watched as Kelley pulled the chair away from the door. She blew him a kiss and then was gone.

  For a long time he let his mind drift, his eyes half closed. Odd, he thought, that she had left so suddenly. Odd that she hadn’t even kissed him goodbye.

  He turned that over in his head, worrying it like a dog might worry a bone. Something wasn’t adding up, but it was hard to make his brain work.

  A nurse bustled into the room, a stern look in her eyes. “Are you awake?” she demanded.

  McGarvey opened his eyes. “Just barely,” he answered, smiling, but something was bothering him. Something he couldn’t quite put a finger on.

  “Well, your telephone is off the hook, and somebody from Washington wants to talk to you,” she said. She replaced the phone on its cradle, and almost immediately it rang. She answered it. “Yes, he’s awake.” She handed the phone to McGarvey. “As soon as you’re done, I want you to get some rest.” She breezed out of the room, shaking her head.

  “Kirk, is that you?” Phil Carrara asked.

  “Sorry I hung up on you before, but something came up,” McGarvey said, his attempt at humor as weak as he felt.

  “They said Kelley Fuller was out there to see you. Is she there now?”