Six Seconds

by Rick Mofina

  And where was his dad?

  Logan searched the audience for his father, even his mother, when Sobil tapped the baton and shot him a look.

  Time to begin.

  Phone tight to his ear, Walker had stepped aside to take Graham’s urgent call.

  The children’s voices filled the gym with the first song as Graham quickly explained the links: Jake Conlin’s homicide; Samara’s martyr video; the Tarver murders; the traffic deaths; Maggie.

  Everything.

  The pieces fit.

  “You’ve got to do something, Walker!”

  “Give me her name again! She could be listed.”

  “Samara. Last name could be Russell or Ingram. I’m watching this thing play on her computer at the house.” Graham had rifled through files and bills in the house. He detailed Samara’s description as the live network coverage cut from the pope, to the choir, to audience reaction and back to the pope. “Walker, she’s got to be there. I’m watching it live-there! That’s her! There she is! That’s her!”

  “Where?”

  “Grab her!”

  “Where!”

  “Front row. Taupe suit, dark hair, getting ready to take a picture.”

  As Walker responded, a few feet from him his boss, Hank Colby, agent in charge of security, got a call from Tony Takayasu in Indian Head, Maryland.

  Other officials, including Colby’s supervisor, were patched in to the call.

  “Agent Colby, this is an urgent update to the sub stances found at Malmstrom and Washington State,” Takayasu said. “We’ve identified a potential threat. The substances are components of a complex radio explo sive.”

  “Have you confirmed it here? We’ve swept and scanned everything.”

  “No. It’s a newly engineered fabric. Undetectable. We can’t take risks.”

  “Fabric?” Fabric was everywhere-curtains, flags, school banners. Clothing, upholstery. “Give us details.”

  “We’ve got nothing yet,” an NSA official explained, “but we’ve locked on the item’s frequency range. Our satellites will alert us to any radio activity.”

  “Won’t it be too late by then?” Colby’s boss said.

  “Should we detect a signal, you’ll have time to respond,” the NSA official said. “And, as a counter measure we’ll use the satellites to release a radio pulse to thwart any trigger signal. But the pulse is a last resort because of the downside.”

  “The downside?”

  “It’ll knock out all power and wireless transmission for a minute, or two,” the NSA official said. “Meantime, sir, your team should work on removing your protectee as soon as possible.”

  “Will the Vatican pull the pope out?” Colby’s boss asked.

  “Not without confirmation,” Colby said.

  “You have my authority to physically remove the pope at your discretion, Hank,” Colby’s boss said.

  Colby’s ulcer burned.

  He looked for Walker and found him behind a curtain consulting a floor plan, talking on his radio to agents.

  83

  Cold Butte, Montana

  The choir’s first song ended; the pope clasped his hands together in approval.

  The audience applauded and Samara raised her camera to her face. Her finger moved over the button.

  In one minute she would rewrite history.

  In one minute the world would know her pain.

  In one minute she would be with her husband and child.

  She would activate, wait one minute, rush to the pope with her camera, then detonate. Her finger touched the raised button, caressed its smooth surface during the loud applause as she framed her target one last time before-

  Someone bumped her.

  A hand clamped over her camera, seizing it from her as someone gripped her arms, lifting her from her chair.

  Two big men in suits.

  “Medical emergency, Samara. Come with us,” one said into her ear over the applause.

  People watched as they took Samara away. News cameras recorded her escort from the gym. Most shrugged as attention turned back to the pope. The children commenced their second song.

  From a steel chair in the command post, her wrists and ankles restrained in plastic handcuffs, Maggie Conlin watched events unfold.

  The command post was housed in a customized RV equipped with banks of radios, computers, cameras and TV screens to monitor the papal event. Maggie had seen Samara’s arrest.

  “Oh, thank God, they’ve got her!”

  Agents in the truck were annoyed that Walker had placed Maggie with them rather than in a patrol car. Some suggested it was to keep her from the press.

  “Please, you have to let me talk to Agent Walker!” “Ma’am-” a frustrated agent turned to her “-you need to be quiet, or we’ll remove you to a police vehicle.”

  In an empty school hall, the agents placed Samara’s wrists in plastic handcuffs, leaving her hands in front of her. Walker then joined them to rush her out of the school to a cordoned area shielded with steel Dump sters. Explosives experts in protective gear immedi ately examined her.

  News teams were kept back. Cameras were trained from a distance on the puzzling events rapidly taking place.

  Colby called Walker at the scene, advising him that the weapon may be encased in fabric. Walker advised the bomb unit, but their search of Samara was in vain. Nothing was detected.

  Members of the bomb squad then began walking

  Samara toward a restricted area, beyond a far corner of the school parking lot, where the FBI and ATF bomb units were situated, along with the Montana Highway Patrol.

  A specially built bomb hut, half buried and draped with blast mats, sat in an isolated corner. They would keep her in custody there.

  But it was a long way off.

  Walker didn’t go. He hurried back into the school and called Graham to alert him to search the house for a new fabric purchase.

  “A flag, material, anything?”

  Returning to the stage, Walker feared that Samara wasn’t working alone.

  Half a world away, in Addis Ababa’s Mercato, in the secret bunker hidden under his fabric shop, Amir and his senior commanders also watched events.

  Huddled before a bank of laptops and TV screens displaying an array of images, they studied live news coverage of the pope’s visit, a replaying of the grisly flag test, and a geo-display map showing the school.

  Other images included Samara’s martyr video, which would be sent to news organizations after her mission was completed.

  “Something’s amiss,” one of the commanders said. “She should have activated at this stage. And we can’t contact the security cell.”

  “She’s been arrested, look.” One of the men touched the TV monitor showing Samara being taken from the gym.

  “We must abort,” the first commander said. “This jeopardizes everything, the network. It could lead them to us. Do you agree?”

  Amir blinked thoughtfully, then tapped his computer keyboard. He’d reviewed Samara’s reports and her notes on the agenda for the choir.

  They would sing three songs.

  Then the pope would thank the children. Personally.

  “Patience. We’ll override and detonate from here.”

  At the house, Graham watched Samara’s arrest on television with a sinking feeling.

  Where’s Logan?

  Graham searched the audience, then scanned the choir as it began the final song.

  He called Walker.

  “Walker, it’s Graham, I’ve got more information.”

  “We’ve removed Samara.” Walker had returned to the stage. “We’ve removed the threat.”

  “She should’ve had a boy with her, a nine-year-old boy named Logan Conlin, or Logan Russell.”

  “Logan.”

  “You should remove him, too.”

  At that moment, in Addis Ababa, Amir nodded and a code was entered into a laptop.

  The weapon’s one-minute activation count began.
r />   Seconds raced by.

  In Lone Tree County, in Jake Conlin’s double-wide trailer, a red light began flashing on Samara’s laptop and a digital clock began counting down.

  Graham’s stomach twisted.

  “Walker,” he said into his phone, “it’s started! There’s a countdown!”

  Where’s Logan?

  Maggie!

  Graham had forgotten about Maggie! Maybe she’d found Logan?

  Graham reached for the other phone.

  Walker alerted the command post, requesting an agent enter Logan’s name into the event database.

  His name came up.

  “Logan is in the choir,” the agent in the truck said, jerking Maggie’s attention to the screen. It was split with Logan’s school photo and live pictures of him.

  “That’s my son! That’s Logan!”

  As the final song ended with applause, Walker alerted the SWAT commander to Logan’s position: third from the right, second row, dark suit, silver and navy tie.

  “What are you doing with my son?” Maggie said.

  Concealed in the ceiling, in the gym’s ventilation system, an FBI sharpshooter radioed that he’d locked “the target” into his scope.

  Colby, on his cell, had just been alerted by Takayasu.

  “We’ve got activity, we’re sending the pulse!”

  Colby and Walker took Monsignor Paulo Guerelli aside.

  “Monsignor, we must get the pope out of the building now! We have a serious threat!”

  Guerelli’s smile at the choir dimmed, his jaw tensed with disappointment.

  “A threat? As we did in Seattle?”

  Cameras flashed as, one by one, the children ap proached the pope. He embraced them, gave them each a gift.

  Six seconds with each child.

  “Monsignor,” Colby said. “We must get him out!”

  Guerelli nodded, then conferred in Latin with the other Vatican officials before responding. “We will leave when the Holy Father is finished giving gifts to the children.”

  Walker still had Graham on the line.

  “Walker, I found a receipt in the house. Samara and Logan got new tailor-made suits a few days ago in Seattle!”

  Logan was approaching the pope.

  Walker alerted Colby and the SWAT commander. “It’s the kid, Logan! Logan is the weapon, take him out! ”

  Maggie heard the order to shoot her son. “No!”

  Logan filled the sharpshooter’s scope, Logan’s face brightening into a smile as the pope opened his arms. The crosshairs met square between Logan’s eyes. “I’ve got the target,” the sharpshooter said. Maggie screamed.

  In Addis Ababa, Amir’s detonation code left his bunker at the speed of light, hitting a satellite, then Montana at the same time Takayasu’s pulse shot to earth.

  “I’ve got him.” The sharpshooter’s finger began to squeeze.

  Time was up.

  Walker and several agents rushed to the pope. At the house, the clock emptied to 00:00, the red light switched to a flashing green. Graham gripped the laptop and hammered it against the floor.

  In the school, Logan’s suit suddenly heated and he vanished in white from the scope, disappearing into a papal embrace as the satellite signals struck.

  The gym’s lights went out.

  All radio contact died.

  All live news coverage ended.

  In the command post agents cursed as screens and monitors went black, radios and cell phones hissed with static.

  “Damn!” A Brazilian TV crew outside the school had been following Samara’s arrest, walking directly behind her escort when their live feed to Sao Paulo was cut.

  The crew member’s sudden cursing distracted the two agents who’d been taking Samara away from the school. When the agents turned to look behind them at the TV crew, Samara broke free and started running to the school, getting some ten yards ahead of the agents and crew before Amir’s satellite signal detonated Samara’s suit.

  In the blinding, burning flash, Samara met her son, her husband, her mother, her father and smiled as the roaring moment of death hurtled her to communion in paradise.

  The concussion wave sent the agents and Brazilian crew skimming over parked vehicles.

  A terrifying thud rocked the gym.

  The sharpshooter missed his target.

  The gunfire triggered screams.

  The death signal had reached Samara but the NSA’s pulse had stopped it from reaching Logan. Walker had tackled him, pulling him away from the pope, covering the boy with his body.

  Dazed and on the floor, the pope stared at them. Agents, weapons drawn, whisked the pope from the school and into an armor-plated SUV.

  Walker tore Logan’s suit from him; other agents and officers rushed to help.

  Children cried in the chaos as school alarm bells clanged and all the gym’s doors were thrust open.

  “Get everybody out!” Walker shouted, then pointed to sandbags behind the stage. “Get as many of those as you can!”

  They buried Logan’s suit under sandbags, then hurried him out with the others, evacuating the building in under a minute.

  In the command post, Maggie was hysterical.

  “What happened! Somebody tell me!”

  Agents tried frantically to restore power, switching on a generator. The console flicked back to life. Ig noring Maggie’s pleas, the agents worked on restoring order in the aftermath of the attack.

  The papal motorcade was shrouded in dust as it raced down an escape route over vacant fields to the Lone Tree County Fairgrounds. The pope was rushed into a helicopter which lifted off to an undisclosed location under jet fighter escort.

  Power returned.

  A fire burned at the site of the explosion, giving rise to a small cloud. Paramedics aided the wounded agents and journalists. Miraculously, their injuries were not life-threatening.

  Federal agents scrambled to assess the scope of the attack, while police officers helped get people away from the school area.

  Colby ordered a controlled evacuation of the large gathering at Buffalo Breaks.

  “Don’t let them panic. Do it section by section, be ginning with those closest to the large stage!”

  News crews spoke to their desks, who had been trying repeatedly to reach them.

  Two minutes and forty-seven seconds after the in cident, a NewYork wire service issued the first words: EX PLOSION AT PAPAL VISIT TO U.S.-CASUALTIES

  The breaking news alert flashed in newsrooms around the world, to TVs, Web sites, and public crawlers in Times Square, Tokyo, London, Toronto, Hong Kong, Berlin, Shanghai.

  Within minutes the world knew of the attack.

  Amid the confusion, Walker got Logan into a deputy’s jacket and as they headed through the park ing lot, Graham called Walker. After they exchanged information, Walker ordered Maggie Conlin released, then took Logan directly to the command post truck.

  As Maggie emerged from the RV, her eyes found her son. She dropped to her knees and opened her arms.

  Logan ran to her.

  Against the spectral cloud of Samara’s explosion, Maggie and Logan held each other, as the horror reeled around them.

  Epilogue

  On the day of the attack, the Vatican was steadfast against kneeling before a terrorist act. Hours after the scale of the incident became evident, the Vatican insisted that all the pilgrims who were sent away from the open-air Mass at the Buffalo Breaks be invited back.

  Nearly all returned. Calm prevailed over the traffic gridlock and that evening the pope celebrated the work of Sister Beatrice in a ceremony lit with one hundred thousand candles. He called for peace, tolerance, under standing and love for all people of the world, likening those virtues to the stars that would guide humanity through its night of fear.

  The investigation by U.S. and international security agencies led to a mercenary hiding in Algeria. The soldier, whose nationality was never determined, ad mitted to taking part in the assault on Samara’s family.
His admission led to other suspects and a trial for their crimes in an Iraqi court.

  All were hanged.

  Other global investigations resulted in the destruc tion of much of Amir’s network, the arrest of several commanders and agents in the organization’s cells in Ethiopia, Morocco, South Africa, Spain, Italy, Malay sia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

  The investigation failed to find and arrest “the Believer,” who was thought to have vanished some where in The Empty Quarter of Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

  In Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, working with the Canadian Security Intelligence Ser vice, the CIA, the FBI, British, German, French, Italian, Egyptian intelligence and other investigators around the world, concluded that Ray Tarver, his wife and their two children had been murdered by agents of Amir’s network.

  Interrogations of captured operatives in Berlin, Cairo, Rome and Paris enabled them to piece together what had happened.

  When the network had discovered that Tarver, a reporter from Washington, D.C., was going to break the story of the attack, Amir devised the strategy to lure Tarver to the Rockies with the promise of a major story. Ray Tarver and his family were then murdered in what appeared to be a wilderness tragedy.

  Kate Morrow, Tarver’s former newsroom colleague, began writing a book about the case and the price he and his family paid. Part of the earnings would go to a jour nalism scholarship Ray’s former wire service helped es tablish in his name.

  The book’s cover bore the powerful news photo graph of the moment Maggie and Logan were reunited after the attack. It was shot that day by Luke Rappel, a teenage journalism student. The image would become

  Six Seconds 467 known worldwide as the iconic portrait of the tragedy and go on to win many awards.

  For his part, Graham needed time alone in the Alberta Rockies, where he’d spent entire days search ing the Faust River for answers. Had he not been there at the outset, mourning Nora, he would not have found Emily Tarver, or the thread that led to the Conlins and the plot.

  Had it all happened for a reason?

  He didn’t know.

  Had he found a measure of redemption?