Medusa's Child

  Linda nodded. If Vivian was sure, so was she.

  Scott punched the transmit button again. “Shark, I think we’ve solved the problem. The pacemaker will be physically removed and attached to the device before we dump it. Impact with the water is the only variable, other than getting the door off without losing control. We’ve got to get rid of the two forward pallets first.”

  Scott thought he heard a small gasp from Linda, but his concentration was on what to say, knowing that every word spoken to the two F-16 pilots would make its way back to the Pentagon.

  “When are you planning to dump it, sir? How far out?”

  Scott looked at Doc, who shrugged his shoulders.

  “We … haven’t had a lot of time to plan, Shark. Let’s say another hundred miles. However far we can get. We’ve got to get the door open pretty soon to accomplish this.”

  “We have a request, sir.”

  “Yeah. Go ahead.”

  “Could you come up on a long-range VHF frequency and talk to Washington Center?”

  Scott agreed, took down the frequency, and dialed it in. The whole world seemed to know where they were now, Scott thought. Radio silence hardly made sense anymore.

  “Washington Center, this is ScotAir Fifty.”

  The response was immediate.

  “Roger, ScotAir Fifty. We have a radio relay on this frequency. Stand by.”

  What’s a “radio relay” in air traffic control terms? Scott wondered.

  The next voice in his ear had a familiar ring, but it didn’t register at first.

  “Is this … Navy Lieutenant Commander Scott McKay, over?”

  Scott pushed the transmit button. “Yes. I’m a Reservist these days, but go ahead.”

  “Scott, I’m calling from Air Force One. This is the President.”

  Scott instantly felt off-balance, the lethal situation they were in fading into momentary irrelevance at the thought of a call from the President of the United States.

  But his situational awareness returned in almost the same instant. They were carrying a nuclear weapon away from the mainland of the United States because governmental incompetence had blown all efforts to help.

  The call made sense.

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “Scott, you’ve got a difficult job ahead and I won’t take more than a few seconds, but I wanted you to know you were right. We’ve got positive confirmation now that if we’d tried to blow up that device on the ground at Seymour-Johnson or anywhere else, the full Medusa Wave would have resulted. Your actions saved us from our own stupidity. We’ve screwed this up and left you out there all alone to deal with it. I’m deeply sorry you got so little help.”

  “I … thanks for confirming that, sir.”

  “I don’t think we can do anything to help you from here, except with prayers. I’ll be standing by. Good luck, Scott. Your President and your country are already infinitely grateful to all of you.”

  “Sir, that should include Vivian Henry. She had nothing to do with this. She’s a victim.”

  “I understand, Scott. God speed.”

  They sat in silence for nearly thirty seconds before Scott reached down and flipped back to the UHF frequency.

  “Shark? You fellows better get going. Thanks for the relay.”

  “Good luck, sir.”

  The two fighters peeled off to the right and disappeared immediately into the murk as Scott placed his hand on the radio control heads.

  “I suppose we might as well secure the radios.”

  “Turn them off, you mean?” Doc asked.

  “We’re over the ocean, we’ll be outside VHF for Washington Center in a moment, and we don’t have long-range high-frequency gear. Any reason not to?”

  Doc thought about it and slowly shook his head. “No, but I’d keep one of the VHF’s on the emergency frequency, 121.5.”

  Scott nodded his head and adjusted the number one radio before turning off the number two VHF and the UHF.

  “There goes our last contact with the civilized world,” Scott said.

  “Ain’t all that civilized,” Doc shot back. “Scott, we’d better get some altitude.”

  “Right. Take us up to ten thousand.” He turned toward the empty engineer’s seat. “Jerry? How’re you coming with that?”

  Jerry’s voice came from under the engineer’s station. “I’ve got it wired. I was just about to push in one of my jury-rigged breakers. You ready?”

  “Go.”

  There was the small sound of a circuit breaker being pushed into place, a tiny plink of a sound.

  “There,” Jerry announced. “No sparks, no smoke. We’re ready.”

  “Scott?” Linda said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I … hadn’t thought ahead. I forgot about my pallets being in the way. You can’t get the bomb to the door without moving them, can you?”

  Scott shook his head no.

  “I … was pretty sure of that. Scott, I’ve got two years of hard work in those boxes. Is there any way we could save them?”

  Scott’s eyes searched hers for a moment, reading the worry there. “We blocked off the forward two pallet positions when we launched this airline, so we could have the option of putting a few passenger seats up front. If those two positions were usable, we could move your pallets forward and out of the way, but there’s no way to reconfigure now. I wish we could.”

  Jerry had already scrambled to his feet and was brushing the layers of dust off his pants. Scott looked at him.

  “Am I right, Jerry?”

  Jerry nodded and looked at Linda as he pointed to the cockpit door.

  “Linda, are there things in there we could pull out? If it’s not an impossible size, we could tear down the pallet and relay your gear to the back and try to tie some of it down.”

  Linda was nodding. “Yes. There are some big pieces, but my computer tapes, the memory drives, and one of the Dobson Instruments, if I could save those, it would be wonderful. I also have a battery-powered cesium clock, but … that can go, I guess.”

  Scott had been checking time and distance equations in his head. Less than thirty-nine minutes remained.

  “You’ll have to move fast, Linda. We need to get that door open in no more than, say, ten minutes. The door should be off no later than fifteen minutes from now, which means you’ve got about fifteen minutes maximum to move your equipment.”

  “Then let’s get going.” Jerry was already clearing the door with Linda right behind him as Scott’s voice reached her ears.

  “I’ll be back in a minute to help.”

  “Go on, Scott,” Doc said. “I can handle it alone. You want to cruise at ten thousand?”

  “Higher than that, Doc, if needed. Hell, you’ve been flying these things since before I was hatched. Whatever you think.”

  “We’re penetrating the hurricane even more deeply. I’ll try to keep us out of the red echoes, but please be careful back there. It’s going to be increasingly violent.” Doc looked around as he spoke, but Scott was already out of the seat and through the door. He was alone, and he caught himself glancing to the right and feeling a twang of loss that the F-16’s had left.

  Okay, we’re climbing through eight thousand feet to level at ten thousand, Doc reminded himself, feeling suddenly isolated. Here I am flying solo in a 727 in a hurricane over the ocean with a ticking nuclear bomb aboard. If I didn’t already have some great stories for the grandkids, I will now!

  His thoughts unreeled at high speed, images of his first wife Betty and their two sons and his second wife and family flashing across his mind’s eye—hating the possibility he might never see them again. Of course, they’d miss him, too, absentee father though he’d been. He loved his kids, and he still loved his wives, despite the divorces. Lucy came to mind, his third wife. Unable to conceive, thank God, since together their lives had been a whirlwind of wild sex, wild times, wild fights, and the wrong type of three-ring circus for a kid. Lucy had written just last week—E
-mailed him, to be exact. She was dating again, which was good. He was glad they’d stayed friends, even occasional lovers, though if she remarried, the sex would have to end.

  Or not. With Lucy, who knew? Describing her as a free spirit was an understatement.

  A huge blotch of red on the radar indicating a severe thunderstorm cell appeared thirty miles ahead and Doc altered course nearly twenty degrees to the south to avoid it. The echo was so intense, all echoes behind it were eliminated, meaning there was a solid wall of airplane-eating turbulence, water, hail, and who knew what else churning out there, waiting for a hapless pilot to venture into.

  Doc looked at the readout from the navigation computer. The winds were howling from behind now at over a hundred and five knots, pushing them beneficially farther over the Atlantic. He thought about the continental shelf. If the bomb waited to explode until it sank, maybe, just maybe, the water and the wall of the continental shelf could shield the mainland of the United States from the worst of the Medusa Wave.

  Linda grabbed Jerry’s arm just outside the cockpit and described what Vivian wanted done and what equipment they’d need. “Do you have all that?”

  “Yes, we’ve got a well-equipped first-aid kit. Scott insisted on it. Right by the galley, here.”

  Jerry leaned over and pulled out the sizable metal box just as Scott came through the cockpit door.

  “What did I insist on?”

  “The first-aid kit. Last time I looked, it had a scalpel, Betadyne antiseptic, bandages …”

  “How long will it take?” Scott asked.

  Linda shook her head. “I don’t know. She said it would be quick. I’m guessing five to ten minutes.”

  “How about your pallets, Linda? How much do you need to rescue? I mean, if it’s all small boxes, maybe we can relay them behind the bomb and save the majority.”

  “Some are vital, some aren’t. I know what I need, but let’s get Vivian taken care of first.”

  Scott shook his head. “No. Bad use of resources. Take two minutes to help us tear into your pallets to show us what to pull out, then while you operate on Vivian, we’ll do our best with the equipment.”

  A frightening series of bumps and lurches sent all three scrambling for handholds. Instead of subsiding, the turbulence became constant and lightning flashes began illuminating the interior through the cabin windows.

  “We’re going to have to work fast,” Scott told them. “Jerry, grab that crowbar. Do you have a knife for the plastic?”

  “Yeah, and shears.”

  Linda moved ahead of Scott and Jerry around the side of the pallets.

  “Just a second,” she said, grabbing the first-aid kit from Jerry and disappearing toward the back. In less than a minute she was back.

  “I told Vivian what we were planning and gave her the kit. She’ll prep herself.”

  “Which one first, Linda?” Scott stumbled to his right and fell against her. She caught him and grabbed the strap on the first pallet for support.

  “This one. My computer tapes are in a metal container back in there.”

  Jerry began slashing away at the thick plastic sheeting covering the cargo. As he pared it back, Scott pulled it aside and played a flashlight on the stack of cardboard and metal containers.

  “How much of this needs to be moved, Linda? You need it all?”

  “Not all, no.” She scrambled through the plastic and began pulling frantically at the boxes until several metal canisters beyond were exposed.

  “The metal carriers. All of the small ones. The big crates are too heavy. Save as many of these cardboard boxes as you can. The second pallet has mostly heavy stuff. I’ll … I’ll just have to lose it. But the boxes have my research records, and the metal canisters are vital.”

  As Scott helped her back out of the pallet, the aircraft took a shuddering leap to one side, knocking them all off-balance. Linda fell against Scott and his arms automatically closed around her as he scrambled for footing on the tangled plastic. He gently took her shoulders and moved her away until they were looking at each other in intimate proximity in a slightly awkward moment that seemed to linger.

  Jerry waited a few seconds, then canted his head toward the pallet. “Come on, you two.”

  Linda pulled back in embarrassment and Scott did the same. She gestured toward the rear. “I, ah, better get back there.”

  “Right,” Scott replied.

  “I’ll keep Vivian to one side so you can get past.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  Jerry’s voice reached them from within the plastic sheathing. “Let’s get this heavy one first, Scott.”

  Scott turned to help him as Linda moved toward the back, feeling somewhat self-conscious. She’d heard about attractions growing in the midst of great peril, but she’d never experienced it.

  If that’s what it is, she thought, chiding herself. It’s not just Scott. You care about all of these people.

  But a very persistent voice in her head was saying otherwise.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  FAA AIR TRAFFIC SYSTEM COMMAND CENTER, ROSLYN, VIRGINIA—7:21 P.M. EDT

  Pete Cooke’s nationwide beeper began vibrating furiously, and he pulled it out of its small belt holster and turned on the backlighting to read the tiny screen.

  CAN’T RAISE YOUR CELLPHONE! CALL ASAP! IRA

  Pete moved to a nearby phone and dialed The Wall Street Journal’s 800 number in New York. Ira answered immediately and asked why Pete’s cellular phone had been turned off.

  “I don’t want to disturb anyone in this air traffic control facility. What’s up?”

  “We got a call a few minutes ago from a very disturbed fellow, another one who used to work with Dr. Rogers Henry in Los Alamos. He got your name and a number from the physicist you first talked to in Silver Spring. The name’s Dr. Gene Mislowsky. He demanded to speak with you immediately. He sounded panicky.”

  “What about?”

  “I didn’t ask, but I think you oughta call him.”

  Ira passed the number and Pete placed the call. It was answered on the first ring.

  “Dr. Mislowsky?” Pete asked. “This is Pete Cooke.”

  “Mr. Cooke, I wasn’t sure who to talk to, but maybe you can help. I understand you were listening in to the airplane carrying the Medusa Weapon.”

  “Yes, I was. Earlier. They’re out of range now.”

  “It’s counting down to detonation, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what the crew said, repeatedly.”

  “And they don’t know how to turn it off, right?”

  Pete filled him in on the abortive attempt to get experts to the weapon at Pax River and Seymour-Johnson and the apparent decision of the crew to try to dump it at sea.

  “Mr. Cooke, did anyone on that airplane, at any time, mention that the bomb had a keyboard or a keypad connected to a computer? Any sort of keyboard?”

  Pete thought back through the exchanges. “One of those on board, Mrs. Henry, in fact, was said to have typed something into the device at one point, so it had to have a keyboard of some sort. I’m sure I heard the word ‘typed.’”

  “That’s what I thought. They’re obviously running out of time, Mr. Cooke, but I’ve got to talk to them. I know how to shut it off.”

  Pete paused, unsure of what he’d heard.

  “What do you mean, Doctor? You mean, you know how to open it, get inside and defeat it?”

  “No no. How to walk up to whatever keyboard it has and shut it down with the entry of one single, solitary digit. One number!”

  “How do you know? Did you help build it?”

  The possibility that he was talking to a nut crossed Pete’s mind, but he could probably validate the man’s former position with one call if he needed to.

  “Hell no!” Dr. Mislowsky answered. “We worked for over a decade as a team trying to develop it, but we never got the chance to assemble a prototype. Rogers Henry had a very unique approach to passwords and entry codes. We didn’t discover tha
t fact until the project was disbanded and we were all required during out-processing to disclose whatever personal codes we used during the project. His code shocked everyone. He’d been laughing at us for years.”

  “What was his code, Dr. Mislowsky?”

  “We’re almost out of time. Someone needs to get my information to that crew. Who should I call, Mr. Cooke? That’s the help I need.”

  “Well, probably the Pentagon …”

  “Already tried. I couldn’t find the right people. No one there was going to talk to me until they checked the Los Alamos personnel file archives. Idiots! Don’t they know what they’re up against?”

  “I … may know someone, if you’ll tell me the disarming method.”

  “Okay, ‘1.’ But I still want to talk to them myself.”

  “‘One’? One what?”

  “The digit ‘1.’” There was a sigh on the other end of the line, as if the man were making a decision not to hold back. “As crazy and simplistic as it sounds, that was Rogers’ security code. Everyone else was compounding multiple digits and alphanumeric combinations, and, at the time, we even had security entry pads developed that could accept up to ten-digit codes. But Rogers apparently decided the very last cipher anyone would think of trying is ‘1.’ And, amazingly enough, he was right.”

  “Wait a minute! You’re telling me that if those people aboard that jet will just walk over to the bomb and punch in the number ‘1’ …”

  “And hit ‘Enter.’”

  “Okay, ‘1’ and ‘Enter.’ You’re telling me the damn thing will simply stop ticking?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “How can you be sure? What if you’re wrong?”

  “Then nothing happens and it keeps ticking. There’s nothing to lose. And if I’m wrong, a single digit is hardly going to detonate the thing. Rogers only used that number to deactivate or open things. He used it as his personal cipher code, and he never had it compromised until the end of the program for the very same reason you’re having trouble accepting it: It’s too damn simple.”

  Pete closed his eyes and shook his head. Nothing is ever this simple. One digit! An end to all this with one digit!