Loomis carefully set the controls, attempting to adjust for the ship’s tendency to veer to the left. He wished he had more time, but he knew there was nothing else he could do but gamble that the ship wouldn’t fly for a mile or two, then start spinning out of control, perhaps even circle back on them like a nuclear boomerang.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Sit on the deck, and push out and down. You may get lucky and miss the rear rotor.”
Johnson nodded. He disconnected from the intercom and slid back the hatch. He sat on the floor, put his feet out the door, gripped the side of the frame, and leaned out, preparing to push himself out.
He pulled back in. “Oh shit,” he yelled. “Look up ahead!”
Loomis stood up and looked. Dead ahead, hull down on the horizon, twenty-five to thirty miles away, was a large cruise ship. Loomis knew it was a Cunard liner, bound from St. Thomas to Kingston with more than a thousand passengers aboard.
“Go on!” Loomis shouted to Johnson. “Jump!”
Johnson shook his head and scrambled to the rear of the compartment. He knew enough about choppers to know that Loomis needed his weight to balance the ship.
Loomis climbed back into the pilot’s seat and altered course. A ninety-degree turn to the east would give the cruise ship twelve miles or more of leeway. That was all he could do.
Loomis carefully steadied the chopper on the new course. He then hurried back to the hatch, motioning for Johnson to jump. Johnson scooted to the door and put his feet out. He hesitated.
“Four minutes!” he said. “How long will it take us to reach the water?”
“We’ll make it!” Loomis yelled. “Just get your ass out!”
Johnson jumped. Loomis saw him clear the rotor. He didn’t wait to see Johnson’s chute open. He rolled out the hatch, pushing hard with his feet as he cleared the coaming.
The wind blast was terrific. Although he was worried about altitude, he waited for a moment before pulling the D-ring, hoping drag would slow him, lessening the shock of the chute’s opening.
But he knew he couldn’t wait long. He pulled the ring, saw the silk deploy, and then felt he was being drawn and quartered as the ill-fitting harness cut into his crotch. He fought the risers, stopping his oscillation.
Johnson’s chute was a quarter of a mile away and slightly below him. Loomis pulled the risers, spilling air to move in that direction.
He turned to look at the helicopter. It was still on course, bouncing erratically, but holding fairly steady flight.
Four minutes at 2.3 miles per minute would place them 9.2 miles from ground zero, with a prevailing cross-wind at the upper levels.
They might survive, if the chopper held its course.
If Zaloudek was one minute off, they might not.
Loomis concentrated on hitting the water, holding his swings to a minimum, going in feet first. He went under and waited to make certain he wasn’t trapped beneath the silk before he released the C02 to inflate his Mae West.
The sea was calm. Gentle waves lapped at his chin. With his Mae West he bobbed easily in the deep swells. Occasionally he could see Johnson a hundred yards away. Loomis pulled out of his chute harness and paddled toward him.
He met Johnson swimming in his direction. “One minute!” Johnson called, pointing to his wrist. “What are we supposed to do?”
“Close your eyes,” Loomis said. “Face away from it.”
“I’ve seen a dozen training films,” Johnson fumed. “I’ve read the instructions a hundred times. And right now I can’t remember a fucking thing.”
Loomis kept his own eyes tightly closed. “The light flash is first,” he said. “It can blind you. And keep low in the water. Strong radiation comes with the flash.”
They waited for a time in silence.
“I don’t believe the son of a bitch is going to go,” Johnson said. “It’s been more than a minute.”
Loomis fought down an irrational impulse to turn and look, to attempt to see what had happened to the helicopter. “No, it hasn’t been a minute,” he said. “I’ve been counting.”
Johnson started to reply, but was interrupted on the first syllable by the detonation.
Nine point two miles from Loomis and Johnson, the mass of Uranium-235 not much larger than a grapefruit went critical, soaring to several hundred million degrees in a hundred millionth of a second — far surpassing the heat on the surface of the sun. Pressures at the core went instantly to more than a hundred million atmospheres, sending neutrons multiplying, expanding faster at that moment than any other object in the galaxy — more than five million miles an hour.
For an instant, through his closed eyelids, Loomis saw the outline of sky, horizon, and sea and of Johnson a few feet away. And he knew that in that instant he and Johnson were being bombarded by a tremendous barrage of beta and gamma rays. But at nine miles, with most of their bodies protected by a shield of water, the dosage should not be fatal.
“Christ!” Johnson yelled. “I had my hands over my eyes. Light came through my fingers! I saw the bones!”
The heat came next — wave after wave of searing air that turned the surface of the sea into a furnace. Deep swells in the wake of the air blast set them bobbing like corks.
Then, with an ear-splitting roar of a thousand lightning bolts, the shock wave passed. Forgetting all caution, Loomis turned to look.
A massive fireball was climbing rapidly, rolling inward, expanding as it soared toward the stratosphere, leaving a tall pillar that grew steadily into a mushroom cloud forty thousand feet high. Loomis and Johnson watched the fireball in awe.
“I’ll sure say one thing for ol’ Zaloudek,” Johnson said. “He was one bomb-making son of a bitch.”
Slowly, the mushroom cloud began to spread. The top gradually broke into a huge smoke ring. Then the residue started drifting westward.
“I think the fallout will miss us,” Loomis said.
“What about that poor damned cruise ship?” Johnson asked.
Loomis watched the drift of the cloud, figuring angles. “The fallout should be behind them,” he said. “They’re safe.”
Johnson lay back in his Mae West and studied the nuclear cloud. “And I’ll say one thing for you, too, Loomis. You really know how to entertain a fellow,” he said. “I haven’t had so much fun in a coon’s age. Now I’d like to return the favor. Why don’t you come back with me to help hunt the other one?”
“What about that old contract on me?”
“Loomis, we’re all heart.”
The water was warm and comfortable. For the first time in weeks, Loomis felt relaxed, at peace with the world. He didn’t want to commit himself. He knew he might feel different later. “I may retire from all this,” he said.
“Oh hell, Loomis. You’ve got another year or two left in you,” Johnson said. “We need you. And you may never have an opportunity like this again.” He pointed to the nuclear pillar, still rising and spreading across the southern sky. “You’ve got to admit that these Hamlet people are a little out of the ordinary.”
“There’s where you’re wrong,” Loomis told him. “This was just a warning for the future. There’ll be other bombs, other Hamlet Groups, as long as you people are so careless with your materials.”
“Maybe Washington has learned something.”
“I doubt it,” Loomis said. “Your power plant reactors are turning out more of the crap all of the time. What in hell are you going to do with all of it?”
Johnson shrugged in his Mae West. “How would I know?” he said. “It’s not my problem. What’s your answer on the job?”
“Tell them I’ll think about it,” Loomis said.
Johnson looked around at the horizon. “It just occurs to me. This is one hell of a big ocean you got out here. How long you think we’ll have to wait before they find us?”
“Iberra will be here in twenty minutes or so,” Loomis said. “He shouldn’t have any trouble locating us. We left him a good marker.”
> Iberra made it in fifteen. He lowered a sling and Loomis helped Johnson into the loop.
Loomis waited in the water until the sling came back, slipped into the loop, and was lifted to the open bay of the chopper.
They hovered for several minutes, watching the huge mushroom cloud drift slowly toward the west.
Then Iberra wheeled the bird toward Santo Domingo and a long night of decontamination and celebration.
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The Hamlet Warning Page 28