SHARK FLIGHT—7:18 P.M. EDT
There was no choice but to use afterburners for the first few minutes, in order to catch up with the 727. Logically, the lead pilot had decided, a civilian crew trying to get as far away from the coast as possible and out to sea would head due east.
He set his course in the same direction.
The fighter’s radar had a range of more than two hundred miles, but it was cluttered with returns now from massive waves rolling across the storm-tossed Atlantic for a hundred miles east of the Carolina coast. Echoes from two Coast Guard aircraft had popped up a bit to the south, but there was no sign of the Boeing. The two fighters had pulled their engines back to normal cruise when a lone echo began strobing on their scopes, moving first to the northeast, then to the southeast, and showing very low to the water.
“That’s got to be him,” the major said on the intercom frequency. “It looks like he’s trying to evade detection.”
He plotted an intercept, electing to fly almost directly over the airliner at ten thousand feet, then drop down into formation with him.
The major looked at his watch again. He had been given ten minutes.
He had less than five left.
The target reversed course once more as the major began his descent, flying entirely on instruments with his wingman hanging in five feet from his right wingtip. The single-engine fighters were being tossed around rather substantially, but the intermittent hail was worse. The impacts of the hailstones pummeling the Plexiglas canopy sounded like gunfire.
The two F-16’s slid below one thousand feet and the pilots began catching glimpses of the water. At five hundred feet the forward visibility improved slightly, and they closed cautiously to within three miles of the target using nothing but radar before spotting the Boeing.
The leader used a hand signal to alert his wingman, then pushed up the throttle slightly, indicating they would come from the right side and slightly below.
ABOARD SCOTAIR 50—7:18 P.M. EDT
Linda almost expected to see Vivian sleeping when she returned to the back of Rogers Henry’s bomb.
Instead, she was writing frantically.
“Let me guess. That’s a complaint to the airline about the bumpy ride and the lousy dinner?” Linda teased.
“Especially the dinner.” Vivian’s smile was more apparent than before. “No”—she gestured to the sheets of paper in her lap—“I’m being positive. I’m writing down everything that’s happened, so I can clearly recall it later.”
Linda briefed her on the plan for the cargo door and her worries about the pacemaker.
“Vivian, did you have any idea he’d jury-rigged your pacemaker?”
She shook her head. “No, but I remembered something a while ago I’d forgotten. Most pacemakers don’t drive TV’s crazy, but mine always did.”
“TV’s? The signal, you mean?”
She nodded. “Not always, but every now and then when I’d get close to a TV, there would be this jumbled pattern of visual noise across the screen which sort of pulsed every few seconds. And then there were his harassing phone calls. He always seemed to know when I was back at my apartment, or for that matter, wherever I was. I’d begun to think he was following me twenty-four hours a day or had hired detectives.”
“But it was the pacemaker beacon?”
“Apparently.” She nodded. “It would explain things. It would also explain why I had to have the battery replaced so soon.”
“I … know a little about radio …”
Linda had knelt beside Vivian, but a sudden lurch of the aircraft knocked her backward, her legs flying unceremoniously upward while she flailed for a handhold. She picked herself up and then sat down, vigorously rubbing what would be a nasty bruise on her thigh where she’d hit one of the cargo floor rollers.
“Ouch!”
“Hold on to my cargo strap, Linda. You were asking me something.”
“Yeah. I was hoping against hope, you know, that we might find a way to do what the military said they were going to do, and that’s turn on some other radio that would emulate the signal of your pacemaker.”
“So we’d have time to get away after we dump the bomb?”
“That’s right.”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” Vivian said quietly.
“But we may, Vivian, because it may not bluff this time when it senses you’re not there. It may …” Linda paused as she studied Vivian’s face and began to discern her meaning.
Vivian had been looking at the floor with her lips pursed. She glanced up suddenly with a look of grim determination.
“There is … a better way, Linda.”
Shock consumed Linda’s features and the young scientist raised her hand in immediate protest.
“Vivian! You’re not going to think that way! There’s no way in hell any one of us would consider letting you go overboard, just to …”
Vivian shook her head. “No, no, no! I’m not planning suicide. But I’m not going to let Rogers defeat me so easily this time. No, Linda, that’s not what I was going to say at all.”
“Well … good … because I … wasn’t going to let you.”
Vivian reached out her right hand, took Linda’s wrist, and began moving it back toward her chest. Linda pulled back slightly, an uncomfortable expression crossing her face, but Vivian tugged harder, her left hand simultaneously fumbling with the buttons on her blouse.
“The pacemaker, Linda. I want you to feel where it is. Have you ever seen one before?”
Linda shook her head. “No.”
“Here. Don’t be shy. Place your hand on it and feel around the edges. See how close it is to the surface of my skin?”
Linda obeyed, then withdrew her hand self-consciously.
“Yes.”
“Well, I figured it out a little while ago. Don’t you suppose there’s a first-aid kit aboard this craft?”
“I … yes. I’m sure there would be. Why?”
“Because you’re going to perform some minor surgery on me and remove that thing.”
“I’m what?”
“You heard me. We’re going to take it out, then we’re going to tape it to Rogers’ bomb, and then, for all its stupid little silicon brain knows, I’m going out the door with it.”
Linda looked from the device back to Vivian.
“Can we do that?” Linda asked. “Won’t you run the risk of a heart problem?”
She chuckled. “I daresay I’d run a slightly greater risk of a heart problem if we set off a thermonuclear explosion. No. I will do fine, dear, and it’s just a small incision. The pacemaker will slip right out. I’ll direct you. I just can’t do it myself.”
“Vivian, I’m not medically trained.”
“Have you ever had first-aid training?”
“Well, yes, but surgery is a tad different.”
“Have you ever had to deal with an extremely bad cut or bleeding injury that required you to take instant, decisive action?”
“Yes. My brother almost cut off his fingers once, and I was the only one there.”
“How’d you hold up?”
“Fine, until later. I got sick later.”
“Okay, then this will be easy.”
Linda’s startled expression slowly dissolved into a tenuous smile. She reached out and placed her hand on Vivian’s shoulder. “You’re a pretty tough cookie, you know that?”
Vivian glanced at the bomb, then back at Linda, and smiled.
“You know, I’m beginning to think I really am. And after all those years of believing I was helpless. How about that?”
TWENTY-THREE
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE—7:18 P.M. EDT
The President had been pacing almost constantly for the previous ten minutes, driving not only his aides in the Air Force One Starsuite close to distraction, but also those on the Situation Room side of the telecommunications connection as well.
“That’s the downside of this technology,” a White House staf
fer had whispered to a colleague when they were able to slip into the hallway for a few minutes. “Even when the man’s four thousand miles away, we get to watch him pace and fret and frown as if he’s across the table.”
The President repeated his previous traffic pattern and ended the pacing with a heavy landing in one of the plush swivel chairs emblazoned with the presidential seal. He reached for the intercom button to the cockpit.
“Where are we, Colonel?”
“About a hundred miles west of Skagway, and about thirty minutes from meeting the tanker for refueling, sir.”
“Thanks.”
He turned his attention to the screen and the military aide on the Situation Room side, a chief master sergeant who was wearing a headset and writing furiously.
“Chief, what’s your latest information?”
The impeccably groomed NCO straightened up and pulled off the headset.
“Sir, the F-16’s have spotted him. They’re moving in right now to try to get him on the radio.”
“Where are they?”
He checked his notes. “Approximately eighty-five miles east of the shoreline, sir, over the Atlantic.”
“And how much time left?”
“Forty-three minutes.”
The President sat in his airborne chair aboard Air Force One and drummed his fingers for a few seconds as the chief master sergeant stood ramrod-straight some four thousand miles away in the basement of the White House and watched him. The Situation Room was buried too far down in the White House complex for anyone within to hear the wind howling outside, but Washington, D.C., was beginning to suffer real damage as the winds rose above a steady seventy miles per hour. Dilapidated slums a mere eight blocks from the Capitol to luxurious homes in Georgetown began to shed shingles, doors, shutters, and windows.
“Chief,” the President said suddenly, “hook me in again with the Starsuite at the Pentagon.”
“Yes, sir.” A quick incline of his head to the communications specialist working the master control board, and the other half of the airborne Starsuite switched to the Pentagon. The President suppressed a chuckle. His order had been carried out so fast, the personnel on the Pentagon side had not been alerted the President was “coming” back. Suddenly the Commander in Chief was staring at them across the conference table, projected into the room as if physically sitting there. The reaction was a slightly wide-eyed jump as several officers turned and tried to look as if they had expected him all along.
“Fellows, get your bosses in here, would you?”
The two-star Air Force general appeared, flanked by a colonel and followed by a three-star.
“Check me on this, gentlemen, but if I’m reading my watch right, even if our fighters turned him around right this second, he’s twenty-five minutes from the ramp at Grand … where was it?”
“Grand Strand, South Carolina, sir.”
“Right. You agree with the time? Until we get him parked, I mean?”
They consulted their watches and each other and quickly nodded. “That’s a reasonable estimate, sir.”
“Okay. That would leave less than twenty minutes to detonation. Even if we just raced our two pilots onto the airplane and pulled the civilians off, and even if we could instantly solve the pacemaker problem, it would take five minutes to get airborne again at minimum. That’s less than fifteen minutes of flying until it goes off. Guys, there’s no way in hell we’re going to get this plane far enough from the coast if we bring it back now.”
The generals exchanged glances.
“We know that, sir,” General Kinney said, “but we haven’t been able to come up with another solution. The only alternative is to let them go.”
The President grimaced and looked away in thought for a few seconds before replying. “I hate to do that. We’re sending these folks to almost certain death. But there’s no choice left, is there?” He sat in contemplative silence for a few more seconds before coming forward in his chair.
“Okay. I want you to call the guys in the F-16’s and tell them … tell them it’s time to turn around. If they’ve made contact with the captain, find out exactly what he’s planning to do and wish him godspeed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“General, also have the pilots tell that captain, if they can …” He looked around at an aide on the Air Force One side of the room. “Is there any way I could talk to them directly?”
One of the colonels in the command post stepped forward slightly.
“Sir, you mean the 727?”
The President nodded. “Yes. Any way we could hook up directly?”
Several quick conversations ensued on the Pentagon side before the colonel turned back to the President.
“Sir, if you’ll stand by a few more minutes. Our guys are almost in formation with him. We’re relaying now, and maybe we can hook something up through a VHF frequency and air traffic control.”
ABOARD SCOTAIR 50—7:20 P.M. EDT
The darkening ocean and ragged clouds that continued to flicker by the copilot’s window were becoming all too familiar to Doc Hazzard as they lurched through the turbulence. He had stopped looking for pursuing fighters some time ago, so the presence of two gray shapes pacing them below and to the right of the cockpit had gone unnoticed.
Doc jerked his head to the right suddenly, thoroughly shocked to see two F-16’s less than thirty yards away flying in silent formation with the 727 as it bucked and bounced its way through the low-level turbulence of the hurricane.
“Jeez! Scott, they’ve found us!”
Scott’s head jerked right as well.
“What?”
“The F-16’s. To the right, and slightly below. The lead’s gesturing something.”
Scott unsnapped his seat belt and shoulder harnesses and leaned up and to the right until the canopy of the lead F-16 was in view. The hand signals were universally recognizable, and he quickly read the frequency and dialed it into the UHF as he sat down and buckled up again.
“This … should be interesting,” Scott said. “I don’t see any reason not to talk to them. They’re armed, and they’ve got our address. You agree, Doc?”
“Absolutely, I agree. Those boys could knock us down with any one of those missiles.”
Scott keyed the microphone.
“ScotAir Fifty here. You up this frequency?”
The response was instantaneous, the voice the same one Scott remembered from the final approach to Seymour when they’d helped check the questionable landing gear. “Yes, sir. This is Shark Five on your right wing.”
“So your orders now are to force us to turn around or shoot us out of the sky, right? Brilliant plan! Thanks to your idiot commanders not listening to us, we’re going to have to do this ourselves. Get rid of the damned bomb, I mean.”
“We’re not under orders to force you back, sir. There’s not enough time left anyway for you to return. Please confirm that your status with the device is the same. Is it showing about forty minutes to detonation?”
Linda had returned from the back and was listening. She checked her watch.
“I just checked it, Scott. Nothing’s changed. It’s showing forty-one minutes.”
Scott relayed the confirmation.
“Sir, my command post and the White House want me to ask what you’re intending to do, and if there’s anything … I mean, I know this is pretty lame … but can we help in any way? We’re not here to interfere.”
Scott reached over and touched Doc’s left arm. “I guess we can stop zigzagging now.”
Doc laughed and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “Sorry. Escape and evasion maneuvers were getting to be automatic. They were staying with us, in any event.”
Doc steadied the course to due east as Scott held his finger over the transmit button and looked outside in thought before replying.
“Ah, Shark, you’re talking to a former F-14 jockey over here. You can’t have a lot of extra gas, so just go ahead and get out of here.”
“
We’re fine for ten minutes more, sir.”
“Look, I know this isn’t your fault, but now that we’ve been essentially abandoned, we’re going to try to jury-rig our cargo door to open and hopefully rip off in flight. Then we’re going to dump the device out the cargo door and hope it doesn’t detonate when it hits the water. If we hadn’t been lied to back there at Grand Strand, we could have transferred the thing to a C-141, and he could have dropped it easily. The Air Force tried to spring another trap instead.”
“I don’t understand, ScotAir,” the F-16 leader replied.
“The C-141 back at Grand Strand. There was supposed to be one there. It was obviously another hoax. That’s why we’re out here now on our own, with a pretty substantial chance of killing ourselves in the process of trying to dump the bomb.”
“Sir, they didn’t lie to you about the C-141.”
“Yeah? We saw the KC-10 on final. That’s when we bugged out.”
“There was a KC-10, sir, that’s true. But the C-141 landed five minutes after he did. I swear to you that’s true.”
There was silence in the 727 cockpit as Scott realized they had made the wrong assumption. There was no time to repair it now. The die was cast.
He took a deep breath and glanced at Doc, who was watching the instruments and purposefully refraining from a reaction.
“Well, you’d better get out of here, Shark. There’s a chance this thing will explode when we dump it out and it loses the pacemaker signal, if you’re aware of what I’m referring to.”
“We are, sir. We’ve been briefed.”
“Scott?” Linda’s voice wafted in like a welcome wave from behind him, and Scott turned, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah?”
“We’ve got it solved,” she said calmly. “The pacemaker, without Vivian, will go out with the device.”
Scott turned even farther to study her expression, wondering if she was kidding.
“How?”
“She wants me to remove it. It’s a simple surgical procedure, but she says we can do it and she’ll be okay without it.”
“ScotAir, you still with us?” the F-16 leader asked.
“Yes. Stand by just a second, Shark.”
Scott gestured to the cargo cabin. “You’re sure it will work?”
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