Critical Mass

by Whitley Strieber

  Jim approached the old Cheyenne. It was one tired airplane, with cracked paint and slick tires and what could be metal fatigue crazing one of the landing gear. This plane was going to take somebody to heaven, and soon.

  Again, the faint, empty ticking from the Geiger counter.

  Jim did a walk around the Baron, with the same result.

  He was so tired now that he was worrying about his ability to notice details and make judgments. He had caught not so much as a catnap since his predawn escape in Texas, and it was past eleven now. He was beyond exhaustion, and it looked like he was coming up against another blank wall here, and it was just so damn dangerous to do this alone.

  The Citation and the Baron were both passenger carriers. The Citation could probably lift the bomb as well as a pilot, but the Baron couldn’t, so it was out. Unless, of course, this was one of those legendary suitcase nukes. But such things were science fiction. Nuclear materials don’t work like that. You might be looking at only a few pounds of plutonium, but the rest of the bomb was going to be a good three or four hundred pounds, possibly more.

  The Cheynne could take a decent payload and it was configured for cargo. It would belong to some air tramp, probably. Guy who might do a fair amount for money.

  Jim got up on the wing and unlatched the door. He leaned down into the warmer air in the plane, scented with leather and machine oil.

  Tick. Tick.

  Shit.

  He pulled his head out of the confined space and returned to the FBO. To help him keep his eyes open, the old man had turned on the radio. “Oil prices are going through the roof, the dollar is in free fall, and gold is predicted to be at fifteen hundred dollars an ounce by year end. . . .”

  “Could I see the filed manifest and logs on the cargo guy?”

  The old man unfolded himself, got a large logbook, and brought it over to the counter. Jim turned to the section tabbed “Ressman” and looked through it. One flight earlier today, up to DIA to pick up a load of antibiotics and move them to Telluride. Guys like this did a lot of medical supplies, no doubt.

  Jim turned the page. Last night, it had been machine tools and chicken to Pahrump, Nevada. “Chicken to the Chicken Ranch,” he muttered.

  The old man chuckled. “Ressman didn’t get a lick of it, I don’t think.”

  Jim copied down the recipient’s phone number. But where was the 707 area code? In fact, was 707-747-7727 even a phone number? Maybe Boeing?

  “I need to make a call.”

  The old man pushed a telephone across on a long cord. He dialed. “The number you have called is not a working number. . . .”

  The phone number was handwritten, the rest of the manifest typed. This number had been jotted down by a pilot in a hurry, and the numbers of Boeing jets had just slipped into his head.

  Jim made a second call, this one to Mr. Ressman’s emergency number, noted on his particulars form.

  A ring. Another. “Hey, Barker, whassa matter?”

  “This is not Mr. Barker. I am Agent Edward Ford, Mr. Ressman. I need to talk to you about a load you moved last night.”

  “I knew it! Damn it, I knew it!”

  “You knew what?”

  “It was drugs; damn it, I shoulda cracked that damn crate!”

  “You had evidence to suggest you weren’t carrying a properly manifested load?”

  “Officer, I had no such evidence. Which is why I carried it. Goddamn it, stay right there. I’m just across the highway, I’ll be right over.”

  In a normal situation, Jim would have had Ressman controlled immediately. Because this was a national security emergency, he would have been taken to a safe house for interrogation, and no lawyers need apply. Not tonight, though. Jim needed help immediately, and this man, he felt sure, was able to provide it.

  He went outside and watched, and soon lights were coming along the road, then turning into the airport’s drive. He paid off his cabbie and let him go. Jim would be a while with Ressman; he knew that.

  A man in a soiled mechanics coverall got out of a tiny rental car and strode up to Jim. “Todd Ressman,” he said, putting out a big hand.

  Jim took his hand, shook it. “Mr. Ressman, tell me about the load with the manifest error.”

  “I’m fucked. Goddamn it, I am fucked! Look, I’m not into any illegal activity, and there was no reason to doubt the load. It was—”

  Jim still wasn’t sure what he was dealing with here. The plane had shown no evidence of a radiation signature. Maybe it had indeed been a load of chickens, or, more likely, coke. “What made you think you might be carrying drugs?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. It all seemed completely normal. Just a guy left a phone number off the manifest, and I was looking at weather on the way and—”

  “Where did you take the load?”

  “I left it in the cargo cage in a little airport in Nevada.”

  “Mr. Ressman, you are going to take me to this airport.”

  “I—”

  “Let’s go; we need to be in the air right now.”

  “Uh . . . I—”

  “I’ll pay for your fuel used at the end of the trip. If you don’t cooperate, you’re going to go down right here, right now.”

  How far down, Mr. Ressman could not begin to imagine, but it looked bad for him. This man was facing life in a supermax if the bomb didn’t detonate. If it did, he was headed for the needle.

  “Going down?”

  “You filed a counterfeit cargo manifest, Mr. Ressman. If the cargo was illegal, then you are going to need a lawyer. As it is, you’re facing a significant fine. So I expect your full cooperation.”

  Ressman strode into the FBO. “I’m taking a passenger to Pahrump, Nevada,” he told the operator. “File it for us, please. I’m gonna go over at ten on heavy mixture, full cruise. Got that?”

  “Got it.”

  As they entered the hangar, the operator pushed the big doors open.

  Jim settled into his seat, watching the plane come to life as Ressman threw switches. In minutes the engines were roaring and the plane was rolling out toward the night. “How long?”

  “At full power, a couple of hours.”

  “Fast as you can.”

  The old plane clattered down the runway, then seemed to leap off and just slide into the air. She didn’t look like much, but she wanted to fly. At least, as long as the engines kept running and the tail didn’t fall off, or a wing.

  “We’ve got seven hundred miles to cover, and I’m good for three hundred and eight miles an hour,” Ressman said. “There’s a headwind, so I think we’re looking at about two-seventy. That’s gonna get us in just past midnight, Pacific time.”

  “Just don’t blow the damn thing up.”

  “Oh, she’ll make it. She’s too mean an old cuss to quit.”

  Which is what they all said before they went in. Jim closed his eyes. Pahrump. The airport had to be tiny, without a doubt completely unguarded, probably totally abandoned after dark. You could fly out of there and stay under FAA radars all the way into the LA basin. Then you just pulled up to about three thousand feet, and the rest was going to be history.

  “You want to set that radio on the NOAA emergency channel for me, please?”

  Ressman set the radio. Jim saw Ressman’s eye shift in his direction, then return to his work. Ressman’s mind was probably a hive of questions right about now. What would NOAA Emergency have to do with a drug bust? Why was it so urgent they chase down the cargo right this instant, instead of, for example, bringing in the feds in Las Vegas?

  Well, let him be suspicious. He’d learn nothing, not from Jim Deutsch.

  The plane bounded along as it crossed the silent Rockies, invisible in the darkness below. They were probably far too close to the peaks for comfort, so Jim was just as glad that the instrument lights, dim as they were, still made it almost impossible to see out. He’d flown one too many missions over trackless mountains in dog-tired planes. His number had to have been up a
long time ago.

  For what seemed like hours, the plane bucked and pitched.

  “Lotta turbulence,” Jim commented.

  “Mountains make the air restless at night.”

  On and on it went, the pitching, the wallowing—until, suddenly, everything changed. Now, a sense of stillness settled in, as if the plane weren’t moving at all. So they were over the desert at last. Here and there below, Jim could make out a faint light. He’d always wondered what kind of lives unfolded in places that lonely, in a country like this. In Iran or Afghanistan, he knew, the lives were terrible. But here you probably had satellite television, some kind of ranching to do, farming, maybe, if there was water. A peaceful life.

  He squirmed in his seat. The bomb had now been at large for at least three days, maybe four. He watched his own reflection in the window. Tired man, eyes shadowed with fear.

  As a child, he’d always protected the younger kids. He’d been good to his little sister, to Mary the angel, as he now thought of her. Mary. How strange the world was; how odd that death even existed. He forced the thought away, of what it must have been like on the night she died, the party, all the kids, the lights of Cancún. She’d gone swimming drunk at four in the morning. His last relative, Mary. He’d gone halfway across the world to bury her.

  Only when the drumming tempo of the engines rose an octave did he realize that he had been napping.

  The plane hummed; the night flowed past outside. “How far out are we?”

  “Ninety-six miles. Twenty minutes, we’re on the ground, assuming I can find the damn ground.”

  “No lights?”

  “You can turn ’em on as you come in. Assuming you’ve guessed right and you’re in range.”

  He stared into the darkness ahead. Vegas would be at about two o’clock, still below the horizon. LA would be at eleven o’clock, and well below it.

  Out the windshield, he could see the cowling of the plane, ahead of it a faint glow, rising steadily as they came closer. “Vegas is out there,” he said.

  “Yeah. Gonna be pretty, when we pass south.”

  Then he saw the cowling as if it were lit by the midday sun, a black, nonreflective surface covered with chipped paint. Then the glare faded and winked out.

  “Jesus,” Ressman said, shaking his head. “What in hell was that?”

  As Jim’s eyes recovered, the instrument lights flickered and turned off.

  “Shit! Battery!”

  Red running lights soon illuminated a cockpit full of dead electronics.

  “What the fuck? What was that?” Ressman’s voice was high.

  As Jim’s vision returned, it brought with it a depth of anguish that was unlike anything he had ever felt before. This was not grief or shock. It was anger—rage. At whoever had done this stupid, stupid thing, but more at himself. He should have found a way to make his report. Maybe if he’d just flown to Washington—but no, he didn’t see how he could have done it differently, not without compromising security.

  The pilot was struggling, the plane wallowing and pitching, barely under control.

  Jim had failed as profoundly as a professional in his position could fail. The system had failed, too, but he didn’t count that. He was ninety miles from the bomb and the bomb had gone off. That close!

  It was deep failure, profound, in-the-bones failure, of the kind that weaves the darkest strands of history and leads to the ruin of nations. He said, “Are you in control of this thing?”

  “I’ve got no instruments and it’s dark out there! What happened to my instruments?”

  “Can you get me to the closest airport?”

  “Las Vegas?”

  “There is no Las Vegas.”

  10

  THE SONG IN THE DESERT

  One could say that a man in a certain hotel room picked up a stub pencil and marked the number 2 beside the word “croissant” on a narrow yellow menu, then saw silver light. Or one could say that a girl called Sally Glass feigned a moan of pleasure in the bed of a man whose soul was tired and found that the man’s face spattered her like hot grease. Or one could say that the light that came like a hammer set everything from one end of the Strip to the other on fire and scraped the surfaces off all the buildings and smashed them like crushed hats.

  In that moment there were chips being exchanged and sports books in action and Ethel Rhodes in the buffet at the Flamingo walking among the diners saying, “Keno, keno,” with her cards and her entire history from birth to this instant, she who had once caught a twinkling glance from Frankie Laine, and who had a daughter, Crystal, making a good dollar in Nye County.

  In that moment, the temperature rose from seventy-three degrees Fahrenheit in the Baccarat Room at the Bellagio to thirty-eight hundred degrees. To those who happened to look up at the instant of death, it appeared as a smooth, glaring surface, silver-white. To those who heard something, it was a sound like a lonely whistle on a late-night street, as gamma rays destroyed their auditory nerves. In the split paroxysm of death, they felt not pain but a perverse euphoria as the atomic particles shot electricity into their pleasure centers.

  All became steam, then fire, then vapor, the transformation in under a millisecond.

  Did they ascend, or was Jim Deutsch’s view the truth, that we have this life alone?

  Still, death in that place was in the details, the sewage that was set afire in the drains, a deck of cards, fused into a brick, that would be found the next morning in the garden of a house in a suburb twelve miles from ground zero, and the head of Linda Petrie from Grand Coteau, Louisiana, the eyes wide, a little sad.

  Body parts, whole bodies, shoes, clothing, furniture, sheets, forks and knives, cars, trucks, beds, window frames, groceries, roofing, rugs, dogs and cats, within two miles of ground zero, were swept up and hurled three more miles, dropping—many of them in flames—over the more distant suburbs.

  In the desert night, ten minutes ago: Jim Deutsch is ninety-three miles away at an altitude of eight thousand feet. Delta 424 is on final at McCarran, Northwest 908 behind it just rolling into approach. Claire Nester on 424 is waiting for her baby to wake up and howl from the pain in his ears, and she remembers a time just a few weeks ago when there was no Georgie. Her eyes of love regard the man sleeping beside her, her Tom, in amazement and gratitude. He loves me. He wants me. He loves the baby. Our baby. My son from my belly.

  And then the red light streaming in the windows like sunrise, and the tremendous jerk, and her last thought, hurts—

  To go from being to nonbeing in a millisecond—is that death?

  Is not death details, the laying down of hands, the sliding away of breaths, the light going from the eyes?

  There are prayers being said at St. James’s Catholic Church. After a long struggle, twenty-four-hour adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is now a reality here, and Mrs. Alfonso DeLaGarza kneels in the chapel. In her left hand, she has a missal open to next Sunday’s liturgy. She glances down, and the little book disappears from between her fingers and that is the last thing she knows.

  The gray bricks of the building turn to vapor as hot as the surface of the sun.

  In Hari Sushi, Joe Manila pretends to be a Japanese sushi master, but he is not like the sushi chefs of Tokyo, who might spend years learning. He has a good knife and a lot of jokes and sees the fish turn black before his eyes, the chunk of tuna, then sees no more.

  Fire in splendor.

  In Chippendales at the Rio, the France, Texas, Red Hat Club is clapping in unison as “Derek”—actually Harry—Fisher dances and plays with his G-string.

  Then there is air there, white air.

  The stage on which he stood will be found by an urban archaeologist. It will be part of a larger chunk of fused black glass. In it will be the shadow of a male torso, and some sequins. This discovery will be made in seventy-three years.

  Within half a second of the detonation, the ceiling of Nine Fine Fishermen in New York–New York implodes, and everybody looks up toward t
he popping sound, and sees it coming at them, a forest of tiny cracks squirting fire.

  The plane that brought the fire had bounced along the desert floor, and its pilot had thought that it would not rise. The name of the man who flew it isn’t important. He had been born in Indonesia in 1988 and had little experience of life. He had flown to Mexico from Finland under one name, then crossed to California under another, a careful, narrow young man who looked Asian, not Arab, but whose abiding passion was his faith, and who found it fantastic that others, on hearing of Islam, were not inspired to accept this truth.