“Trust?”
“Trusting the male of our species. Any male.” She looked at Vivian and smiled a radiant smile as she cocked her head and fluttered an eyebrow for emphasis. “Long story for later. I love ’em—I just can’t trust ’em. You know, can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em, and they’re too dumb to train.”
“I’d love to hear your life history, Linda. I wish there was time.”
“There will be. This evening, for instance. But it’ll sound like a soap opera. A version of As the Stomach Turns.”
Linda readjusted the cargo strap over Vivian’s lap and gave her a small hug before returning to the cockpit. She put on her seat belt and headset as Doc read back the latest air traffic clearance and dialed in a new frequency. Without warning he glanced up and caught her eye.
“Notice anything, Doctor?”
She looked around, wondering what he meant. “You mean, other than the fighter escort?”
“Yeah. Hear much on the radio?” Doc wasn’t smiling.
“No.”
He nodded. “They’re grounding air traffic all over the country as a precaution. The frequencies are getting quieter and quieter.”
Scott turned partway around to look at her. “Linda? We’re about twelve miles out, and I think they’re gonna let us land straight-in without holding. When we get on the ground and stop—while we’re shutting down things up here—I’d like you to go take the automatic deployment bar off the inflatable emergency slide on the front left door right behind the cockpit and open the door, being very careful not to fall out. Help them get the portable stairs positioned. Doc and Jerry will be right out. I want to see all three of you sprinting across the tarmac to the arms of the FBI, and I want them to get you out of here immediately. We’ll get your equipment off as quickly as possible.”
“Understood. No offense, but I can’t get away from this airplane fast enough. But what about you? And Vivian?”
“I’ll be okay. As soon as we’ve secured the bomb, I’ll be right behind you. It’ll be a classic ‘feets-don’t-fail-me-now’ situation.”
“With Vivian?”
“She’ll be with me.” He paused. “I hope.”
“What do you mean, you ‘hope’?”
Scott gestured to the Flitephone. “I’m … getting the disturbing impression they think Vivian is far more involved than she is. The FBI may want to have some extensive talks with her.”
“Define ‘involved,’ Scott.”
“Ah, I think they’re unconvinced she’s a complete victim. You overheard some of DiStefano’s earlier questions, right?”
Linda grabbed Scott’s seatback and pulled herself closer, glancing at Doc and back to Scott as she searched for nuances. “I thought those were standard questions off a hijacking checklist. Now you’re telling me they suspect her?”
Scott shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s not a comfortable feeling, the questions they’ve been asking.”
Doc looked over at Linda and nodded as Scott continued.
“I’m scared to death they think we’re being held hostage up here by Vivian, which is a ludicrous idea. But remember, they’ve never met her and she is the one who actually shipped the bomb to the Pentagon. I’m sure to them, with her background involving the nuclear program and her husband being dead for two years, it probably looks more than suspicious. I just don’t want any trigger-happy skycop or fed down there taking a potshot at her.”
Linda seemed awash in thought for a few moments as Doc’s voice filled the air.
“Okay, Scott, we’re descending through eighteen thousand now, altimeter two-eight-eight-six.”
“Two-eight-eight-six,” Scott echoed as he adjusted his two altimeters on the forward panel.
“The weather’s coming forward, Scott,” Jerry added as he handed Scott a small laminated card covered with grease pencil markings. “Winds are getting up there, but this weather’s a wus compared to what we went through at Pax River. Three-five-zero at eighteen, gusts twenty-two. Light rain showers.”
“Thanks, Jerry,” Scott acknowledged.
“Scott,” Linda said. He turned around far enough to see she was staring at some indistinct point on the center console, though for a second he let his eyes try to follow hers. There was nothing of consequence there.
“Yeah?”
Her eyes came up and latched on his with an almost physical impact.
“Scott, Vivian may be in big trouble if they’re thinking that way.”
“What do you mean?” Doc interjected from the right seat, and Linda glanced over at him.
“What I mean is, the only evidence anyone has of whether she set this up or he set this up is the bomb itself and what her husband programmed it to say.”
“I’m not following you, Linda,” Scott said.
She gripped the back of Scott’s seat even harder, shook it slightly, and pulled herself forward, her mouth almost brushing his ear, triggering sensations he didn’t have time to consider, but which somewhere inside he knew were very pleasant.
“I’m no lawyer, but …”
“That’s why we respect you, Doctor,” Doc said with a grin.
She ignored the comment. “I don’t know the law, but I’ve had some exposure, and the problem is evidence. There’s evidence up the kazoo, if you wanted to read it that way, that Vivian Henry purposely brought this bomb on a civilian aircraft to terrorize the government. If it’s a real nuke, and I think it is, there’s no end to the laws she could be accused of violating. If they can’t turn this thing off and analyze it—if they blow it up or dump it or destroy it—there goes the only evidence that exists showing that her husband set her up.”
“You mean the computer program inside?” Scott asked.
“Yes. I mean, she could have programmed even that, but if they have the whole thing to probe and decipher, she could probably prove that he did it, and not her.”
“Why, Linda? Why would she do all this? What motivation would she …?”
Scott stopped cold.
“What is it?” Linda asked.
“I’ve …”
Doc’s voice cut off the thought in midsentence. “Passing eleven thousand for ten thousand, Scott. I’m slowing us to two hundred fifty knots. Radar shows a bunch of returns ahead we need to steer around.”
Scott nodded at Doc. “Roger. Would you take care of the radios for a few minutes?”
Doc nodded. “You bet.”
Scott looked back at Linda.
“She has a motivation, Linda. At least in the eyes of the feds. Remember the fight over her pension? Did you know DiStefano asked me if I knew about that?”
“I didn’t hear him say that. I couldn’t overhear everything.”
“He did. And suspiciously.”
Linda McCoy let out a deep breath. “That lady is a victim, Scott. I’d bet my life on it.” She paused. “I guess we’re all betting our lives on it. But do you think our testimony alone—this crew and I—would be enough to keep her safe from prosecution? We all heard the device threaten and scare her.”
“But that operations manager in Miami will swear he heard her threaten my crew and me to get us to come back and pick her up. She’s the shipper. She arranged everything. She could have made up the story about her husband wanting her to ship the device and written the detailed instructions she said he left.”
“Bull!” Linda shot back.
Scott shook his head after a few seconds of thought. He could sense Linda’s shoulders slumping slightly behind him.
“Linda, maybe a lawyer would say something or see something different, and maybe there’s other evidence in Miami we’re not considering, but everything we’ve seen and heard and experienced she technically could have manipulated by herself.”
“Never! That’s setting her up to be an abuse victim yet again.”
“I know that! You know that! But would a prosecutor accept that? Good grief, Linda, the whole nation’s aware of this now! Even if nothing happens
, they’re gonna want as much blood as they did after Oklahoma City. Since they can’t try a dead man, they’ll probably go after his wife.”
“No one in this country seems to understand a thing about spousal abuse. ‘If she was abused,’ they’ll say, ‘and if he was such a horrible man, why would she have done her husband’s bidding, even after his death?’” Linda shook her head and sighed. “Provided we get out of this, Vivian will be in great legal peril.”
“If the device is destroyed.”
“I know. So what do we do?” Linda asked.
Scott shook his head sadly. “We land. We taxi in. We pray they can defuse this thing. And we get ourselves to a safe distance as rapidly as possible.”
“I can’t …” Linda began.
“Linda! Linda, listen to me!” Scott’s voice was full of authority, but his eyes were full of compassion, and she could see he was equally upset. “One step at a time. We’ll defend her every way we can. But right now, the country needs to get its experts at that weapon back there. We mustn’t forget the power of what we’re carrying.”
“Scott?” Doc’s voice cut through his thoughts.
“Yes,” Scott answered as he swiveled himself back around in the left seat.
“We’d better do this together. I’ve tiptoed around the buildup on the left, there, but we need to get down in altitude.”
“Right. Okay, I’ll take the radios now.” Scott checked the frequency and asked the controller for a lower altitude as he scanned the approach procedure. He’d already briefed the approach to Seymour-Johnson, a relatively simple combination of radar vectors to an instrument approach.
He checked the mileage. They were eight miles out.
The controller responded, “Roger, ScotAir Fifty. Fly heading one-six-zero degrees, descend to and maintain two thousand feet.”
Scott reset the altitude alerter to two thousand feet as Doc altered the course. There was one major duty remaining, and they were almost out of time.
“Doc, we’re set up for the ILS approach.” Scott turned toward Linda. “That’s an instrument landing system approach, Linda. We can follow it down with great precision when we can’t see.” He turned back to Doc. “I’ve got to raise the mission commander down there. Watch the radios, please.”
“Roger. Come back soon, old son.”
Scott spun the frequency selector dials on the military-style UHF radio on the center console. “Seymour-Johnson mission commander, this is ScotAir Fifty. Are you there?”
A voice came back almost instantly. “Roger, ScotAir. This is Colonel Peters. Go ahead.”
“Did our FBI contact, Tony DiStefano, brief you on my concerns, Colonel?”
“Yes, Captain.”
Using the push-to-talk radio versus the Flitephone was a pain, Scott thought, as he pressed the transmit button again.
“Did DiStefano tell you there’s no way this device can be treated like a military nuke in terms of emergency disposal?”
“You can talk in the clear, Captain. Yes, he told me you were insisting the thing will detonate if we try to blow it up or burn it.”
“And you’re not convinced?”
“Captain, we know what we’re doing, okay? You’re not a nuclear expert, nor am I, but we have someone here who is, and he’ll call the shots.”
Scott poised his finger over the transmit button but held back pressing it. How adamant should he be? After all, he was just guessing. They obviously knew infinitely more than he did about how to explode a nuclear warhead and what not to do.
The image of the runway ahead filled his mind’s eye. In a couple of minutes they would be down and the nightmare would almost be over. The impending failure of ScotAir, the airline, seemed totally insignificant now. Just getting rid of the threat seemed the best goal in the world, and it was very close.
They’d know what to do.
Wait! Scott thought. He said, “someone.” The colonel had referred to the nuclear team in the singular. There was supposed to be a group of experts inbound.
“Ah, Colonel, has the Pax River team arrived yet?”
Seven miles ahead, standing on the ramp, Colonel Jeff Peters felt a warning flag go up in his mind about the Pax River crash. Someone hadn’t told ScotAir.
“Captain, no one survived that crash.”
The long silence from the 727 raised the hairs on the back of Peters’ neck. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to tell them.
“Say again, Colonel? What crash are we talking about?”
“Ah, Pax River. The people who were to work on the device were in an accident a while ago, Captain. We’ve brought others in, however.”
“The disarming team? They were killed?” Scott asked.
“Affirmative, sir.”
Scott heard Linda inhale sharply behind him.
“Who else do you have?” Scott asked.
“Captain, don’t worry about it. We’ve got a man from Wright-Patterson who zipped in here a few minutes ago. He’s up to speed.”
One guy? Scott thought, his mind reeling from the news.
“Scott,” Doc began, “I can do this solo, but I’d prefer we do it together.”
“Yeah, just a second, Doc. Keep her coming.”
“Roger.”
One technician to disarm a bomb designed by a scientist who had probably thought of every possible solution. And the stakes if the technician didn’t know what he was doing?
Scott pressed the transmit button. He felt his voice becoming more strained and he was fighting not to let it show. “Colonel, I’ve got to have your personal assurance that there will be no attempt to burn or explode this weapon. I don’t get the assurance, I don’t land.”
The reply was swift. “Captain, you have my assurance. We’ve got a C-141 right here on the deck and standing by to fly the bomb out if necessary.”
“Good!” Scott said as he punched the transmit button again. “Roger. We’ll be on the runway in a moment. You’ll have a ‘Follow Me’ truck, I take it?”
“Yes, sir. He’s waiting.”
Scott changed the radio to the tower frequency as Doc ordered the flaps to five degrees.
The runway was coming into view in the distance.
It was almost over.
COMMAND POST, SEYMOUR-JOHNSON AIR FORCE BASE, NORTH CAROLINA—6:23 P.M. EDT
For a moment, the name White House Signals made no sense to the young Air Force staff sergeant who answered the phone.
Then it coalesced.
“Yes, sir!”
“We need to set up a feed of several different radio frequencies back to us here for relay to Air Force One, understand?”
“Ah, what do you mean, ‘relay,’ sir?”
“We need you to get very clever and find a way to commandeer at least four telephone lines out without compromising your normal functions. Each of those lines will need to be carrying the audio, in other words, monitoring a different radio channel. One for your control tower frequency, one for ground control, one for the command channel your commander is using to coordinate, and one connected to the ear of your duty officer, in case we need something else.”
“I … think I can set that up, sir. But why?”
“Because the President of the United States wants to listen in on what’s happening, and he wants it hooked up sometime yesterday. Good enough?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“So how much time do you need?”
The staff sergeant looked around at his duty officer, a major, who was watching him closely with a highly suspicious look on his face. The sergeant gestured for the major to wait. “Probably ten minutes, sir. We just have to tape a couple of receivers to the radio speakers in the command post.”
“As fast as possible, Sergeant, please. Here are the telephone numbers.”
Signals passed four different unlisted numbers with a Beltway area code and a master number, in case they were disconnected.
“I’ll need to brief my commander,” the sergeant said.
&nbs
p; “No, you start working now. Tell your commander to talk to me on this line right now, please.”
“Yes, sir.” The sergeant turned to the major with a fleeting feeling of superiority. The power conferred by relaying such a call was invigorating.
“Major? The White House would like a word with you on line four.”
Rewarded by the appropriate look of panic on his commander’s face, the sergeant quickly turned back to his console to begin the process of jury-rigging the system.
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE—6:26 P.M. EDT
Twenty-five minutes after he’d left the Starsuite, the President returned, summoned by an urgent request from his Chief of Staff to review the alarming progress of Hurricane Sigrid.
“Okay, folks, we can convene this session of Disasters ‘R’ Us,” the President said seriously.
“We’ve arranged a tie-in with the National Hurricane Center in Miami, sir,” the Chief of Staff said, “because this thing is already chewing up the Atlantic coast to a degree we’ve never experienced. You need to see the latest satellite photos. We’re already bracing for the disaster declaration requests.”
The President raised his hand. “Before you switch over, give me an update on the 727.”
A deputy stepped forward with a sheaf of papers and a headset, which he removed.
“Uh, sir, the aircraft is on approach to Seymour-Johnson at this time. We’ve got two F-16’s with him. The base is under the same hurricane watch, but it’s the downwind side of the storm, so the winds are reasonable. They’ve evacuated the base … the last few tankers are leaving right now … and I’m hearing that the bomb defusing expert has arrived.”
“Can he handle it?” the President asked point-blank.
The deputy shrugged. “No one knows, sir. At least he’s there.”
“Are you monitoring communications at the base?”
“Yes, sir. Control tower, ground, command radios, several other channels. We couldn’t get video hooked up, but we’ll be piping everything else through to you on your request.”
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