“That would do it, then,” Jerry said, sounding relieved. “If they can’t turn the thing off, they can blow it up safely.” He laughed briefly, without humor, adding, “After we have it on the ground and are away from this aircraft, of course.”
Doc Hazzard was shaking his head sadly. “You’re forgetting something, fellows.”
“What, Doc?” Scott asked.
“How about Vivian? She can’t move more than fifteen feet away or the thing goes off.”
All three men fell silent for several seconds until Jerry broke the silence.
“Well, we’re not really sure her dead husband is … or was … telling the truth about how far she can get from the bomb, are we? Maybe it will detonate if she goes too far, maybe it won’t. We just can’t be sure.”
“Can we take the chance?” Scott asked. “We know it can track her, but would it give us another warning?”
Doc glanced back at the instruments to assure himself the autopilot was performing properly, then looked back, nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, I think there would be. The bastard wanted to torture her. He wouldn’t just let it end like that. He’d warn again and again, just to keep her scared.”
“So,” Jerry added, “you think if they can’t defuse it, we could test the pacemaker threat by moving her away from the thing in increments?”
“It isn’t aware it’s been moved from the Pentagon,” Scott said. “We’re well away from there and we’re still alive.”
Doc pointed to the controls suddenly and then to the captain.
“Scott, one of us needs to go check on those two. I had Vivian strapped down, but I’m worried about Dr. McCoy walking around back there.”
Scott began throwing off his shoulder harnesses and unfastening his seat belt. “I’ll take a look. We scared the living hell out of Linda trying to land back there.”
“We scared the living hell out of us trying to land back there!” Doc said.
“Before you go, Scott,” the flight engineer said, “there’s something else we should all consider.”
Scott recognized the tone instantly. Whenever something passed from the serious to the critical, Jerry’s voice underwent a subtle transformation, his eyes echoing the depth of an unspoken concern.
“What, Jerry?”
Doc settled back into his seat.
“I hate to bring this up, but we’ve been so busy considering Vivian a victim, we haven’t even thought about the alternative.”
“What alternative?” Scott asked, perplexed as to where this was heading.
“I like Vivian. I hope this isn’t true, but …”
“What, Jerry?” Scott prompted. Doc, too, had looked around over his left shoulder to read the engineer’s expression.
“Okay, suppose … just suppose … that it wasn’t her dead husband who thought all this up. Suppose she’s the one. Remember, he’s been dead for two years. Would anything be different?”
Doc snorted and rolled his eyes. “That’s idiotic, Christian!”
“Wait …” Scott held his left hand up to quiet Doc’s protests. “You mean you think she might be behind this, Jerry? But why on earth? To accomplish what?”
Jerry was shaking his head again. “I don’t know why. I’m not making a case. I’m just suggesting an alternative explanation we hadn’t considered.”
Scott and Doc exchanged glances as all three men fell into a silence broken immediately by the ringing of the Flitephone.
Tony DiStefano was on the other end. After less than a minute of conversation, Scott replaced the receiver once more, a puzzled expression on his face.
“What?” Doc prompted.
“Change thirty-seven,” Scott said. “Seems they figured out that Jerry was right, and McGuire’s too close to New York and Philly, so we’re to fly south now to Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina.”
Doc was shaking his head in disgust. “Okay. As usual, no one in government can make up their minds. What else?”
“He asked something very curious,” Scott continued, making eye contact with Jerry. “He asked if Vivian Henry could overhear our conversation. I asked him why. He wouldn’t tell me.”
EAST WASHINGTON, D.C.—5:40 P.M. EDT
The telephone had been back in its cradle for five minutes before Doris remembered something significant. The shock of speaking with the FBI had muddled her for a while, but suddenly a clear image of the case file popped into her mind with the last name of the woman who had threatened to blow up the OPM prominently stenciled on the side.
It wasn’t Henry. The fur-clad bitch’s name was Watkins! So she wasn’t the same one the FBI woman had asked about.
Doris sat for a moment on her threadbare living room couch and tried to concentrate, feeling even more scared than before. Maybe she should call the FBI woman back and tell her she’d given the wrong information.
Doris looked at the phone with her stomach in a knot. What if the FBI got mad at her for making a mistake? She could lose her job. She had lied to them, hadn’t she?
But they don’t know that unless I tell ’em.
Vivian Henry was probably just another pampered divorceé, she decided, and even if she hadn’t threatened OPM, she’d probably thought about it, and that was almost as bad. After all, she had appealed the decision Doris had made. That made the Henry woman her enemy. She had questioned the government’s wisdom and cost them time, and a court had ruled that Doris had been right all along. She remembered the ruling now. She’d felt good about that ruling. The bitch had gotten what she’d deserved, and Doris had felt important and smart. The memo had come down just last week.
The phone sat on a nearby table mocking her. You’re in trouble! it seemed to scream. If you tell the FBI you lied to them, you’re in big trouble!
It really didn’t matter anyway, did it? Doris thought. The FBI wouldn’t put the Henry woman in jail for making a threat. They never jailed anyone for threatening OPM workers. Happened all the time.
If I call, I’m in trouble, she decided. If I don’t call, nothing happens to her or me.
That made sense. It wasn’t her job anyway to worry about OPM’s enemies.
Doris picked up the TV remote and punched the “on” button, her mind already shifting to the sleazy talk show in progress.
ABC NEWS, NEW YORK—5:48 P.M. EDT
With Pete Cooke’s information providing the missing pieces, the network’s confidence level in the emerging story finally justified a break-in news report. ABC affiliates all over the nation cut to the single camera in New York.
Peter Jennings was monitored simultaneously in all the other television network news departments, as well as TV screens in the Oval Office and the Situation Room of the White House, where an instant icy silence stilled all conversation.
“A drama is unfolding at this moment in the stormy skies of the eastern United States involving a civilian cargo jet which we have reason to believe may be carrying an armed thermonuclear weapon. The airliner, a Boeing 727 operated by a small Colorado firm named ScotAir, was originally headed for Washington National Airport. Less than an hour ago, however, it was ordered by the FBI to land at a naval air station south of Washington called Patuxent River. Due to the rising winds of Hurricane Sigrid, the landing attempt was unsuccessful, and the aircraft is now reported to be en route to yet another undisclosed location on the eastern seaboard.
“There have been instant denials of this story by the White House and other government agencies, but ABC’s sources have been monitoring air-to-ground communications between the aircraft’s captain and agencies of the government and confirm that the flight crew was trying to land at the Navy base to permit a team of nuclear experts to defuse a bomb which was apparently contained in a cargo shipment. At this moment the aircraft is being sent to another location, and we are trying to determine … exactly where that might be. ABC News has also learned that the crew of the Boeing 727 believes the bomb is counting down toward an automatic detonation less than three hours fr
om now.
“Now, there is more to the nature of this bomb. Aboard this aircraft, ABC sources have discovered, may be a weapon the United States tried to build in the sixties and seventies, a weapon which, if exploded over or near a modern society such as ours, would do more than kill—it would also attack the economy and infrastructure by devastating computer systems, computer-based banking and financial systems, communications networks, and even the television network you’re watching at this moment.”
A full description of the Medusa Project and the Medusa Effect—and the scientific uncertainty that such a weapon existed—followed, as other news services leaped for their telephones and computers to catch up.
Within fifteen minutes, similar break-in news reports had aired on all the networks and most radio stations as residents of the storm-battered eastern seaboard began looking skyward and wondering where the lethal jetliner might be.
FBI HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.—5:51 P.M. EDT
Tony DiStefano replaced the receiver with an ashen expression as several of his agents stood by, wondering what had happened.
“Donna, find a TV and turn it on. Some bastard leaked this story!” He launched a pencil at a far wall in utter disgust.
“What happened?” an agent named Bill asked.
“ABC just announced that we’ve got a live nuke that’s set to go off inside three hours.” Tony put his head in his hands.
“But, Tony,” another agent began, “that’s essentially correct.”
“I know it, but the last thing we need is a national panic, and that”—he gestured toward the phone—“is exactly what’s happening in the Situation Room.”
“So we’re losing control?”
“I’m not sure we want control!” Tony sat back in the swivel chair with an ashen expression and looked out the window. The angry clouds, sheets of rain, and blurred vision of trees bent at odd angles in the teeth of the storm had filled their peripheral vision for the last hour. “If that bomb goes off anywhere near a populated area … Lord! Thank God we’ve got him flying away from here, but even at Seymour-Johnson, even in North Carolina, we’re talking millions of victims, even if the Medusa Wave doesn’t work.” Tony leaned forward, pointing out the window. “Do you know what happens to the eyes if you’re unlucky enough to be looking in the wrong direction when a nuclear fireball erupts? It destroys your retina. Instantly.”
“And if it is a Medusa Wave?” Bill asked.
“Then this entire country is in deep trouble.” He jumped up suddenly. “Okay, let’s stay focused. Here’s the latest. The plane is headed for Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base at the Situation Room’s insistence. The Air Force is going to evacuate the base and provide a small army of security police, some with heavy weaponry. The Pentagon has a plan in progress for getting the weapon offshore if they can’t defuse it. I guess they’ll let it blow up over water. How, I don’t know. Not our department. We have the job of getting the captain to go to North Carolina. Our people on the ground have the responsibility for securing the crew and taking Mrs. Henry into custody. They’ll need every second to work on the defusing, so the last thing we need is this woman holding the bomb hostage while she makes threats to explode it, if that’s what she’s intending to do.” Tony surveyed the faces around him and let his eyes fall on Donna. “Of course, I’m still not convinced Mrs. Henry is our suspect. I can’t figure out what she’d have to gain besides terrorizing the U.S. government.”
“Revenge, Tony. She wants revenge,” Donna said.
“She could be a potential suicide,” Bill added. “What else does she have to live for, Tony? With what she’s done already, any jury would throw away the key.”
“Then we’ve got to figure out what she wants, and pray she wants something we can provide, or pretend we can provide. Donna? Keep digging up backgrounds on the rest of the people aboard that plane. Maybe something we find out could help.”
“Suggestion, Tony,” one of the agents said.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“Has anyone searched her place in Miami with a Geiger counter? Might answer some key questions. You can’t assemble fissionable material without leaving traces.”
Tony stared at the man in silence for a few seconds.
“I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t think about that. Could you take care of it? Our Miami office will need a quick warrant.”
“Done.”
“And if there’s no radiation?” Tony asked.
“There’s probably no bomb.”
FOURTEEN
FBI HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.—5:55 P.M. EDT
Donna reappeared with a new set of faxes.
“You ready? I’ve got the rundown on two of the crew.”
“Go ahead.” Tony sat down hard and began rubbing his forehead again.
“This is on the copilot. Name is John Turner Hazzard, nickname ‘Doc,’ age sixty-three, born in Conway, Arkansas, son of a Methodist minister, served in the Marines as an enlisted man in Korea, honorable discharge 1953, learned to fly on the G.I. Bill, and joined Pan American World Airways in 1956 after numerous flying jobs. Served as a Pan Am pilot and captain until the company’s bankruptcy in the eighties. Earned a bachelor’s degree from Southern Illinois University in ’89 and an M.B.A. from Syracuse in ’92. Married three times, divorced three times. No history of domestic violence. Unblemished FAA record. A few traffic tickets in recent years and an outstanding parking ticket in 1983, but no DUIs or other serious matters. No FBI record, no wants, no problems. FAA reports jobs in aviation since Pan Am are too numerous to itemize. Currently lives by himself in Colorado Springs, Colorado.”
“Hardly suspicious. Height and weight?”
“Big fellow. Six-foot-four, two hundred twenty pounds at last FAA physical.”
“And a Marine. Good. Who else?”
“I’ve got the flight engineer. Name is Gerald Donald Christian, nickname Jerry, age forty-three, born in Topeka, Kansas, no information on his family, graduated University of Kansas with a B.A. in 1975, private pilot license 1975, aircraft mechanic rating 1976, joined Northwest Airlines 1976. Terminated by Northwest in 1985 for unsuccessful performance in training. FAA record of a nonfatal accident in 1983 in a small plane, otherwise it’s unblemished. He has no FBI record, no military history, no wants, et cetera. Christian is married, three children, and lives in Dallas with them. Bankruptcy filing in 1989. No DUI or other traffic offense history.”
“And the captain?”
“He’s recent military. It’s coming. Give me fifteen minutes.”
THE WHITE HOUSE—5:56 P.M. EDT
One floor above the Situation Room the National Security Advisor and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs huddled in a hallway for an urgent private exchange. The four-star Army general had rushed over from the Pentagon ten minutes before.
At five-feet-five, the National Security Advisor had to crane his neck to look the six-foot-two-inch general in the eye, but he did so with the commanding authority of someone who has the ear of the President.
“Okay, John, we’re out of earshot. What is it?”
“We’ve found the Special Forces people we’d need, Stanley, to fly the airplane, if we can’t defuse the weapon, but …”
“You mean to fly it offshore, bail out, and let it detonate in the air somewhere east?”
“Yes, and the Air Force is prepared to use a cruise missile to bring it down at a safe range. Otherwise, you know, there’s Bermuda out there and God knows how many merchant ships. We’ve even got a carrier fighting its way south around the hurricane. Damned inconvenient timing.”
“So what’s the problem, John? Why are you in my face?”
“We need that weapon.”
The shorter man removed his glasses as if they were getting in the way of seeing the general clearly. “You what?”
“If the scientist who built that thing really succeeded in creating a Medusa Effect weapon, we need to know what’s inside and how it works. We need to try to sal
vage it by defusing it instead of blowing it up or dropping it in the ocean. To go with that plan, we’d have to launch that Boeing over the Atlantic with at least one hour remaining on the bomb’s clock. We estimate we can defuse it in one hour.”
“John”—the White House official shook his head and clenched his jaw—“you’re saying you want to play a game of chicken with an armed thermonuclear weapon on U.S. soil? Do you know how goddamned lucky we are it didn’t go off over your office already? Do you realize the potential loss of life involved here? Do you realize the history-altering potential of this thing if we make a mistake?”
“I very well understand the risks.”
“I’m not so sure you do. Do you also know this story just hit the airwaves? You do know, don’t you, that we can’t stall the media forever on what we’re planning to do?”
“I’m aware of all that, but there’s a big national security interest in this.”
“And I’m the National Security Advisor, but just … just a second!” He raised his hand in a stop gesture. “What are you military guys going to do if you can’t defuse it? Are you planning to blow it up with seven seconds remaining like James Bond, for God’s sake?”
“That was Goldfinger, 1964, Stanley. Great movie, but Bond didn’t blow up the bomb at Fort Knox, someone else came in and turned it off. If we can’t defuse it, then with ten minutes left we’ll detonate the high explosives and destroy it.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“We’ve had these contingency plans for decades for stolen nukes or compromised weapons. Burning is less precise, so we’ve already got the high explosives en route to the base. We’ll be wiring up the explosives as the disposal squad is trying to turn off the bomb’s timer.”
“Suppose the clock is lying? Suppose it goes off early, devastates our economy, kills a million folks in North Carolina, not to mention your people, when we could have had it go off safely over the Atlantic? You want to take that chance, John, just to study it?”
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