Medusa's Child

  “We do. We think it’s vital we have that technology.”

  “Why vital? We’re not at war with anyone currently, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  The general sighed and looked down the corridor before glancing at his feet and deciding how much to say.

  “Okay, Stanley, in a nutshell, by the late seventies we were pretty sure of two things. One, our major facilities—military and civilian, communications and power grids—had been hardened adequately against electromagnetic pulses from nuclear explosions. Second, we were pretty sure there was no such thing as a Medusa Wave.”

  “And now you’re not so sure?”

  “And now nearly two decades have passed and our society is vastly different. Our communications networks and just about every industry—not to mention the average American home—are dependent on computers. Most of the work we did before to harden the nation’s infrastructure against an EMP in the sixties and seventies is now useless. We’re very, very vulnerable to even an ordinary EMP in this country. You wouldn’t even need a Medusa Wave to wipe out all the computers. Do that, and there goes the entire financial system.”

  “I didn’t know that. I’d read about EMPs years ago. I thought we were hardened. You’re saying if Medusa is unleashed, a thermonuclear tragedy is the least of our problems?”

  “Absolutely. And I don’t want to think what happens if the technology should fall into someone else’s hands.”

  “But why, John, have you fellows all of a sudden decided a discredited theory is now a viable fact? You canceled this program two decades ago!”

  “Two decades ago we didn’t have anyone claiming to possess a working model. In addition, several top secret studies in the late eighties reopened the debate suggesting that the Medusa Effect was real and achievable, after all. My predecessors did nothing about it, but now …”

  “So if it’s not really a Medusa weapon, you don’t need to study it, and we could detonate it offshore. But if it is a Medusa, we need to keep it right here so you can study it to prevent someone else from threatening us in the future. Interesting situation, don’t you think?” The National Security Advisor chuckled as he rubbed his forehead. “We don’t need enemies. We’re threatening ourselves. Answer me one other question, John.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Could this dead scientist really have obtained explodable nuclear material? I thought we could rely on you fellows to keep the stuff locked up.”

  The general let out a long sigh. The memory of a briefing many months before came to mind, a briefing only given the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It had been a frightening eye-opener relating to the past security of nuclear bomb production in the United States, and a military secret not even the White House was supposed to know: Not all the fissionable material in the military’s hands was accounted for. He suspected the Energy Department had similar secrets about their stockpiles of plutonium.

  “Stanley, we have to assume it’s possible. Not every human reliability system is perfect, and this Dr. Henry was the chief of the project, with unlimited access. Did his superiors account for every molecule of enriched material? You’ll have to ask them.”

  The shorter man nodded with a rueful expression as he watched his taller colleague squirm, knowing exactly what had been left unsaid.

  “Okay, John. I’ll relay your recommendation to the President. He may want to sit down with all of us shortly. When does the team leave Pax River?”

  “Momentarily.” He looked at his watch. “They should be lifting off right now.”

  PATUXENT RIVER NAVAL AIR STATION, MARYLAND—5:58 P.M. EDT

  The wide-eyed Navy lieutenant in the left seat of the Grumman S-3 twin-engine transport remembered launching his craft into a frightening storm from the deck of the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy just two months before. With the combined speed of the ship and the forty-knot gale, the winds over the deck had been at eighty knots, less than he now faced from the land-based airport at Pax River. But then he’d had the comforting kick of a steam catapult in his back. This time all he had were the plane’s engines to launch him into the teeth of a hurricane, and the task seemed slightly suicidal.

  He’d received his orders at the command post by phone from the Pentagon to carry a small group to Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, but no one would tell him the reason why. He’d tried to explain how dangerous the weather had become, but the admiral on the other end wasn’t listening to any excuses, and no one seemed interested in his opinion. Five Navy and two FBI personnel were going to be risking their lives and his, and he didn’t even know why.

  Taxiing had been brutal. The aircraft had been spun around and nearly pushed off the taxiway. With a combination of brakes and power, he fought the gusts to a draw and finally got the aircraft into position at the end of the runway. He was aligned with the runway now, the wind howling at over seventy knots from the right, and it seemed he could probably just push the power up, pull back on the yoke, and lift straight up.

  In any event, it would be a short ground roll.

  “Ready?” he asked his copilot. A pair of frightened eyes stared at him with feigned equanimity as the lieutenant jg nodded.

  He pushed the power up, verified that both engines were steady, and released the brakes. The aircraft seemed to stagger forward, then lift off suddenly, as he struggled to hold the nose down to gain real speed. They headed toward a dark mass of clouds crossing the far end of the field with pelting rain washing over them as the altimeter began to wind up.

  “Gear up,” he ordered. The copilot positioned the gear handle as he banked the craft to the left, heading north. The weather radar was useless, a mass of red-colored splotches covering the screen and warning of violent weather no airman should be trying to penetrate. He’d tried to make sense of the radar picture before takeoff, but the entire sky was filled with what looked like severe thunderstorm activity, and the presence of a small hook-like appendage on the end of the massive cell to the north of the field had escaped his attention—until now.

  With the force of a thousand freight trains, the unearthly howl of winds spinning in excess of three hundred miles per hour reached both pilots’ ears simultaneously as the Grumman entered the side of a tightly packed tornado funnel at a hundred and ninety knots and instantly flipped sideways, exceeding by several hundred percent the maximum design loads for the structure as the wings and the tail were ripped from their fittings and flung away in a cloud of aluminum parts. In the same split second, the right engine tore free, the propeller blades stitching a series of gashes in the disintegrating fuselage as it flung itself into the void. The main body of the aircraft, deprived of its structural integrity, split open and exploded into shards of metal as the bodies of those inside became lifeless projectiles in the maw of the funnel. In less than two seconds, what had been a flying machine was nothing more than a grisly rain of debris falling to the north of the base.

  On the radar screens in departure control, the flight suddenly became a collection of targets, then disappeared along with the transponder. In the tower the visibility to the north was nil. Repeated radio calls went unanswered. It was nearly three minutes before the tower controllers concluded jointly that the Grumman and the nine souls on board were history.

  The tower operator picked up his crash phone as the chilling sound of an emergency locator beacon began broadcasting its plaintive wail through the tower’s speakers.

  ABOARD SCOTAIR 50—6:01 P.M. EDT

  Linda McCoy had been on her way to the cockpit when Scott McKay met her in the passageway.

  “Scott!” She grabbed his arm and motioned toward the rear with a toss of her head. “It’s reeling off more warnings. You need to hear this.”

  He followed her quickly to the rear of the third pallet. Vivian Henry was standing now, arms folded, her eyes glued to the screen a foot in front of her, but maintaining her distance, as if touching the loathsome thing would contaminate her. She glanced over as Linda a
nd the captain came into view.

  “He’s repeating the same warnings now, over and over, but I don’t understand.”

  Scott moved beside her and read the message scrolling across the screen.

  I AM WELL AWARE THAT THERE ARE PLANS BEING MADE TO TRY TO MOVE THIS DEVICE. I HAVE ANTICIPATED ALL POSSIBLE METHODS OF RELOCATION AND HAVE ENGINEERED THIS DEVICE TO INSTANTLY DETECT ANY MOTION IN ANY AXIS. THERE IS NO PHYSICAL OR ACCESSIBLE SWITCH OR SENSOR YOU CAN AFFECT OR DEFEAT. IF YOU ATTEMPT TO MOVE IT, IT WILL DETONATE WITHOUT FURTHER WARNING. ALSO, DO NOT THINK THAT THE TRIGGERING MECHANISM CAN BE DEFEATED BY HIGH EXPLOSIVES OR BURNING. THIS IS NOT A STANDARD MILITARY NUCLEAR DEVICE. BURN IT OR EXPLODE ANYTHING CLOSE TO IT, THE NUCLEAR TRIGGER WILL ACTIVATE BEFORE THE CASING IS COMPROMISED. YOU NOW HAVE ONE HOUR, FIFTY-NINE MINUTES REMAINING TO EVACUATE THE PENTAGON AND THE D.C. AREA.

  Linda watched Scott McKay step back slightly. His face carried a dazed expression and he seemed totally preoccupied.

  “You see what I mean?” Vivian began. Scott didn’t answer. His attention remained entirely on the screen.

  Vivian turned instead to Linda. “What I don’t understand is, he says it can detect movement, but all we’ve done since it activated is move. Up, down, sideways, and back.”

  “Oh Lord!” Scott’s voice cut her off, and just as suddenly he looked from Vivian to Linda and back with embarrassment.

  “What?” Linda shot back.

  A sudden jolt of turbulence threw them all off-balance. Linda grabbed a cargo strap, but Vivian tumbled to the right and Scott almost lost his balance as he reached out to catch her. When the aircraft had steadied, he caught Linda’s eye.

  “It was nothing, Linda. Just a thought,” Scott explained.

  “How about sharing it?” she prompted.

  Scott again looked from Vivian to Linda and back.

  “Okay. This thing claims it can detect motion, but it obviously can’t, and it still thinks it’s in the Pentagon. I’ll bet anything it has an inertial navigation system in there and the program froze somehow when it detected we’d reached the Pentagon’s coordinates.”

  “Meaning?” Linda asked.

  “Meaning we could throw the damn thing overboard or move it anywhere and it wouldn’t know the difference.” Scott looked at Vivian. “I don’t know whether your ex-husband was bluffing or not. You said he never bluffed, and you may still be right. It could be his device has malfunctioned. But this damn thing sure as hell cannot detect motion. You’re right about that, Vivian.”

  Vivian Henry suddenly moved forward to the open screen and read it once more. She turned with a strange expression on her face, her eyes looking beyond the captain toward the rear of the cabin.

  “All those years, I believed every word Rogers told me because he decreed I had to. I think … I think it’s time I stopped believing him.”

  She began walking slowly toward Linda and Scott, then past them, moving steadily to the rear of the otherwise-empty cargo cabin. She was several feet past when Scott realized what she was doing.

  “Vivian! The distance to the pacemaker isn’t the same thing!”

  “I refuse to believe him,” she said, her voice surprisingly strong and audible over the noise of the slipstream.

  Scott could see Linda glance at the Medusa weapon, then back at Vivian, alarm showing clearly in her eyes.

  Vivian was ten feet away and moving steadily. She passed the fifteen-foot point and continued without hesitation as Scott held his breath.

  There was no sound from Rogers Henry’s contraption. No indication of a response. Scott remembered Doc arguing that the pacemaker threat might be false. Maybe he was right.

  Vivian was twenty-five feet away, moving steadily toward the rest rooms at the aft end of the cabin.

  If that threat was a lie, too, Scott thought, maybe we can assume the whole thing is a hoax. He let his mind wander for a second. How would he feel if it turned out to be a hoax? How would it feel to know that they’d been goaded into trying a near-suicidal landing at Pax River for nothing?

  Vivian reached the rear of the cabin and put her hand on the door to the aft airstairs. She turned then, slowly, the hint of a smile showing on her face, the first smile Scott could remember seeing since she’d come aboard.

  He felt himself breathe again and heard a nervous chuckle from Linda.

  Vivian held out both arms and bobbed her head to the side, as if taking a bow and acknowledging success.

  “You were right, Vivian!” Scott yelled, the sound of his voice echoing in the empty interior of the aft cargo cabin until it was drowned out by another sound that originated behind them, from the direction of the Medusa device.

  “Vivian Henry has moved more than fifteen feet from this device in violation of my orders!”

  Rogers Henry’s computerized voice boomed.

  “You were warned. She must physically touch this device in the next five seconds to avoid immediate detonation.”

  Vivian was instantly in motion, sprinting forward, racing toward the device. She shot past Scott with wide-eyed terror on her face and threw herself at the back of it, her arms cushioning the impact as she fell against the metal surface.

  “Your return has been detected, Vivian.”

  The voice sounded as soon as she touched the surface.

  “But you disobeyed me. Detonation will now occur in thirty seconds. Reflect on the millions you’ll now be responsible for slaughtering. You made a fatal mistake, Vivian.”

  Another disembodied sound—an expressionless computer voice—began counting backward as Linda and Scott looked at each other in helpless panic.

  “Twenty-eight, twenty-seven, twenty-six …”

  The sound of Vivian’s voice rose in the background as an anguished counterpoint. “No! Damn you!”

  “Twenty-three, twenty-two, twenty-one …”

  Linda McCoy sprang into motion, launching herself at the back of the device. She pushed Vivian aside and reached inside to begin punching the attached keyboard with any combination she could think of, trying desperately to get a response.

  The voice continued, relentlessly and unchanged:

  “Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen …”

  Scott felt time dilate as his mind raced ahead. They’d been overconfident, made a fatal assumption, pushed the device too far. It was too late to reconsider. There was no one to reason with. The possibility that he was about to die loomed before him as a reality.

  Doc and Jerry! If they were all going to die, perhaps he owed them a few seconds’ warning. There would be no time for an explanation. He might be able to reach the cockpit if he broke and ran …

  Doc’s words from a half hour before suddenly came back to him like a thunderbolt. “The bastard wanted to torture her,” Doc had said. “He wouldn’t just let it end like that. He’d warn again and again, just to keep her scared.”

  As Vivian Henry sank to her knees in tears, her fists impotently pounding the unyielding stainless steel of the container, and Linda McCoy continued punching the keyboard with maniacal determination, Scott realized it was all happening precisely as Rogers Henry had planned.

  “Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen …”

  With a sudden calm deliberation, Scott moved forward and placed his right arm through the same opening, grasping Linda’s right hand and moving it off the keyboard. She looked up at him frantically, as if he’d lost his mind, as the computer voice continued unfazed.

  “Ten, nine, eight …”

  “What are you doing? Let me go!” Linda yelped at him.

  “Nothing’s going to happen, Linda!”

  “Six, five …”

  “We’ve got to stop it!” she yelled, trying to pull her arm away from him.

  “Four, three, two …”

  “It’s all a bluff, Linda!”

  “One.”

  Silence.

  Linda McCoy froze. Her eyes searched Scott’s for an answer. She looked at the Medusa weapon, and then at Vivian, sobbing softly
on her knees.

  Except for the slipstream, there was no other sound from the device for nearly thirty seconds.

  Finally the computerized voice of Rogers Henry returned with a single word:

  “BOOM!”

  The screen returned to the original countdown in silence, the numbers 01:57:00 showing clearly.

  Linda closed her eyes and wavered for a second, leaning against Scott and grabbing his shoulders for support. He held her awkwardly for a moment, then pulled her to him and hugged her tightly.

  She laid her head on his shoulder, and he could feel her shaking inside.

  Finally she straightened up and pulled back, discreetly clutching his hand.

  “I’m so embarrassed …”

  “Don’t be,” Scott said softly. “I thought we were dead, too … at first. At least you were doing something about it.”

  She searched his eyes. “How did you know?”

  “Something Doc said earlier in the cockpit. As usual, he was right.”

  They looked in each other’s eyes for a few seconds, Linda still holding on to Scott’s hand, before both turned to help Vivian to her feet. They steadied her between them until she insisted on sitting down on the same blanket she’d occupied before.

  “You see how it is?” she said. “He wasn’t bluffing. He always wins.”

  Both Linda and Scott knelt beside her.

  “But he was bluffing, Vivian. We’re still alive.”

  “He wasn’t bluffing about my pacemaker. He’s still going to kill me. He just wants to enjoy it.”

  Linda McCoy cupped Vivian Henry’s face in her hands and forced her to meet her eyes.

  “Vivian, listen to me. Rogers Henry can’t enjoy anything. He’s dead! Understand? This is just a device he programmed, that’s all. We can beat it, because it malfunctioned. It doesn’t know it’s been moved. That, and knowing he wants to torture you, gives us opportunities.”

  Vivian smiled slightly, patted Linda McCoy’s hand, and looked away, unaware of the captain’s puzzled expression. What opportunities could she possibly mean? What else could they do? It all depended on the group of experts from Pax River now.