Critical Mass

by Steve Martini

  “I’m banking that they’ve got their hands full, concentrating on that island for the next several hours. If your people hold up their end.”

  “My people will hold up their end. They will die holding up their end.”

  “Then by the time the Feds figure out the device was never there to begin with, it will be too late. Oscar will have the truck on the mainland. They won’t know what to look for. A million miles of road to cover and a nuclear device they can’t be sure where. With every hour, the circle to be searched will grow, and with every mile, the odds shift to our side. They have no description of the vehicle, and if they are lucky enough to corner him, they have to worry whether he’ll detonate it.”

  “He won’t, right?” Taggart was adamant. “Not until we reach the target. This is not now some blind act of vengeance. We have a purpose, a goal. If we don’t reach our objective, we don’t detonate. That was understood from the beginning.”

  “Agreed,” said Thorn. “But they don’t know that.”

  Taggart wasn’t sure he believed him. The council, the militia leadership, had offered a bonus of a million dollars if Thorn met the target date. There was no way he could make the deadline, so Taggart was worried that Thorn and his cadre might set off the device in some city or town along the way—cut and run. The group had lost financial leverage by transferring the final payment the night before they left the island. It had been done through numbered accounts in Europe, and Thorn had confirmed the payment. Those had been his terms. He was taking no chances.

  Now Taggart didn’t have a choice. “I am authorized,” said Taggart, “to offer you an incentive to deliver the device to the appointed site even though you missed the date.”

  Thorn looked at him but didn’t say a word. The prospect of more money. “I thought you guys were belly-up. Financially, that is.”

  “We have half a million,” said Taggart.

  “Oh.”

  “A contingency fund.”

  “And what exactly is the contingency in this case? You don’t trust me?” He smiled.

  Taggart didn’t say anything.

  “Half a million would buy some more trust, I suppose.”

  “And how much trust is that?”

  “Half a million’s worth.” Thorn smiled and looked straight ahead down the channel. “Half now, half when it’s delivered,” said Thorn.

  “All of it after it’s delivered.” They had already been down that road.

  Thorn laughed out loud, the kind of mocking chuckle a man makes when he’s already had you once. Then he made a face of acceptance. “That makes a bonus of a million and a half if I meet the target date.”

  “Dream on,” said Taggart.

  “The date has not yet come and gone,” said Thorn.

  “Fine. A million and a half. We both know you’re not gonna drive that truck across the country in three days.”

  Thorn didn’t say a thing, but merely arched his eyebrows as if this were a matter of opinion. “Take my advice,” said Thorn. “You should operate as if everything is on schedule.”

  “Right. Even if it isn’t,” said Taggart.

  “You hired me to deal with the details.”

  “I didn’t hire you at all. You came with the device.”

  “For good reason,” said Thorn. “Learn to have some faith.”

  Faith was not the first thing that came to Taggart’s mind when he thought about Thorn.

  “Don’t go spending the bonus money,” said Thorn. “I still have three days.”

  PADGET ISLAND

  Pinholes of light punched through the walls of the living room, as bright sunlight broke over the dock and the front of the house. The noise of the shots was distant but Joselyn could hear the distinct and repetitive impact of the bullets as they pierced the front wall of the house and lodged in the wall on the other side.

  She followed the man in the wet suit on her hands and knees, then took his lead and went to her stomach. They hugged the floor and shimmied along the back of the couch under a horizontal rain of death. Windows and mirrors shattered. A table lamp over her head disintegrated in a shower of clay shards. The paneling on the kitchen cabinet doors came apart like tree limbs run through a shredder. The stacked dishes on the shelves exploded in a thousand pieces of fired ceramic.

  He had made it to the back door when it hit him, low in the back, lifting him off the floor and spinning him in agony. The wet suit erupted in blood.

  Joselyn was in shock. She dropped the handgun and crawled toward him.

  “What can I do?”

  The man didn’t respond. All that passed from his lips was a groan of agony.

  She lifted his head and looked down at his stomach. The bullet that struck him in the back had passed through his body. Blood was pulsing from the wound.

  She crawled on her hands and knees without thinking, headed for the kitchen and the towel that was draped over the oven door. The snap of bullets breaking the sound barrier an inch from her head brought her back to her senses. She hit the floor and crawled on her stomach. Joselyn grabbed the towel and three seconds later was back at his side. She pressed the towel to the open wound with as much pressure as she could muster lying on the floor.

  She looked into his eyes. They were half open, half closed, staring at nothing. Though Joselyn had never seen the trance of death, she recognized it, held a finger to his nostrils in hopes of feeling some sign of breath. There was nothing.

  Her hands were covered with blood. She looked around her on the floor. The pistol. She grabbed it. The man in the wet suit had said something about Green Giant. Gonna shred the place. Had to get out.

  Joselyn reached up far enough to grab the knob on the back door. She turned it and opened the door an inch. Like an invitation to a convention of hornets, a score of rounds hit the door turning what was left into splintered firewood.

  Her face shielded in her hands, Joselyn looked at the small machine gun on the floor next to the dead sailor’s hand. She didn’t know if she could figure out how to fire it. She had seen him do it in the room. She picked it up and looked for a safety catch. There was a small lever on the side. She flipped it up and saw a painted red dot on the black metal. Now the question was: were there any bullets in it?

  Carefully, as if not to hurt him, she pushed against the dead man and rolled him over, then eased the canvas satchel off his shoulder.

  She looked inside. There were black metal clips like the one in the machine gun. Joselyn pulled one out. It was heavy and she saw the copper heads of bullets stacked inside. And there was something else, smooth and round, the size of a large metal egg. She had seen pictures of grenades that looked like pineapples. This was different. But it had a metal clip along the side and a pin connected to a round ring, holding the clip in place. She lifted it in her hand to get a sense of its weight, then wondered how anyone could throw the thing. It weighed as much as a cast iron pan.

  Carefully she put it back in the bag and moved the articles around with her hand. There was a compass, a shiny metal mirror, a drab green can of what looked like food. That was it.

  She tried to figure out how to get the clip out of the machine gun. She pulled on it but it wouldn’t come. She saw a button on the side and pushed it, and the clip fell out onto the floor. There were bullets in it but she couldn’t tell how many. Assuming the one from the bag was fully loaded she slid it into the gun and hit the end of the clip against the floor. It clicked into place. She flipped the lever on the side until the red dot appeared, then pointed the fat muzzle toward the wall on the far side of the room. She flinched and turned her head away as she squeezed the trigger gently. She was startled only by the near silent vibration in her hands as a dozen bullets riddled the wall.

  So much for target practice. She grabbed the satchel and edged her body toward the door. If the house was a target for something called Green Giant, she had to get out.

  She flattened her body to the floor and with one hand swung the door open. Anothe
r flurry of shots rang out. Bullets snapped the air in the open doorway. She slid the muzzle around the edge of the door frame, and without looking she pulled the trigger. Once, twice, three times. She tried a fourth but it wouldn’t fire.

  Joselyn pulled the gun back in before they shot it off. She pushed the button and the clip fell out. It was empty. She reached into the satchel and found another and slid it into the gun. Quickly she stuck the muzzle out the doorway and pulled the trigger. Nothing.

  She looked at it, slapped it on its side, hit it on the floor, and tried it again. It wouldn’t fire. If they realized she had a broken gun, they’d be on her in a second. She reached for the pistol in the bag and pulled it out.

  Suddenly she remembered. The sailor had slid something back on the top of the pistol when he loaded it. She looked. There was nothing like that on the machine gun. Then she saw a small knob on the side. She hooked a finger over it, pulled hard, and slid it back. When it got to the farthest point, the knob slipped out of her finger and slammed forward. She reached for it again and without thinking squeezed the trigger. Bullets ripped the wall six inches away.

  “Fixed.” It scared the hell out of her, but at least it worked. She stuck the muzzle out the door and fired again. Within seconds the clip was empty.

  She couldn’t hit a damn thing, and she knew it. Joselyn looked in the satchel. There were only two more clips, and the Green Giant was coming. She didn’t have a clue as to what it was or how much time she had. For all she knew within a minute she would be lying dead on the floor next to the sailor.

  She reached in the bag and felt around, found the small metal mirror. She loaded a fresh clip into the gun, then rolled over on her back so that she was flat on the floor with her head just inches inside the frame of the door. She held the mirror in her left hand and slowly eased it past the edge of the door. Finally she could see who was shooting at her. Four men behind a wall of sandbags, their rifles resting on top. They were maybe fifty feet away. Joselyn had been shooting into the dirt.

  BUCK THOMPSON HAD his own rifle, a .270 Winchester with a scope and a kick like a mule. It had a Remington bolt action, and he couldn’t fire rapidly, but he could thread the needle at two hundred yards. He had arrived from down in California only the day before, carrying a satchel of cash from their fund-raising activities back to Taggart. Now Thompson was in the thick of it.

  “How many you think are in there?” He looked at the guy next to him behind the sandbags.

  “One. I think.” The guy was reloading a clip from an M-16, sitting in the bottom of the bunker with his back against the sandbags. “There was another one, but I think we got him.”

  Thompson peeked over the top of the bags. He could see a bright reflection off a piece of metal or glass. “Son of a bitch is checking us out with a mirror.”

  The other man slammed the clip into his rifle and came up next to him. Soon there were four heads peeking over the top.

  “He’s laying with his head against the wall, just to the right of the door at the level of the floor. Let me have one shot at the mirror,” said Thompson. “That’ll force him to lie still flat on his back. Give me a count of three, then concentrate your fire right at the level of the porch floor, just to the right of the door. Put enough rounds there, we’ll get him in the head.”

  Thompson slid the bolt back on his rifle and brought it up to the top of the sandbag.

  SHE’D BEEN LOOKING at the image in the mirror for several seconds, taking it all in before it finally registered: the four men were standing in a bunker.

  One of them took aim. Joselyn pulled the mirror in a half second before he fired. The round smashed into the wooden threshold at the bottom of the door and a spray of splinters caught the back of Joselyn’s hand. She grimaced in pain, and pulled it to her chest. She took one long breath and then, without waiting or looking, pulled two splinters as long as porcupine quills from the back of her hand. Searing pain ran up her arm, but the rush of adrenaline and the fear of death worked like a narcotic.

  She rolled on her side toward the door. She remembered the two men she had overheard talking about the bunkers being wired for explosives. Forming a mental image of the sandbags and their location, she stuck the muzzle out the door, holding it higher this time, and pulled the trigger. A dozen rounds rattled off, nothing.

  Bullets smashed through the wall an inch behind her head, shattering the maple leg of the end table under the window and slamming into the dead sailor. His lower body danced on the floor like a marionette pulled by invisible strings.

  Joselyn lifted the muzzle higher and pulled the trigger again, holding it down. She couldn’t tell how many rounds she fired, but the gun stopped shooting just an instant before the concussion blew what was left of the windows out of the back of the house. The superheated air of the blast rushed through the open door like a firestorm. Joselyn could feel the radiation on the side of her face. One of the sandbags came down, slamming through the roof over the porch. It landed with a thud two feet from the open door. Joselyn could see the scorched fabric of the bag still smoking.

  Now there was silence, broken only by the crackle of flames somewhere outside. Carefully, Joselyn peeked around the door frame. The bunker was a scorched ruin. There was no sign of any of the men. She wasn’t going to wait for their friends to show up, She dropped the pistol and the mirror into the satchel and picked it up. Then scurried to her feet. She took one last look at the dead sailor on the floor, then ran as fast as she could out the door, headed for the wooded high ground behind the house.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  SITUATION ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE

  Hirshberg closed the door and left behind the acrid odor of coffee having cooked too long over a heated plate. The corridors in the basement of the West Wing were now bustling with people as the workday moved toward noon. As he passed the White House Mess, headed for the small flight of steps and the president’s office upstairs, Hirshberg yearned for a fresh cup of coffee. But he didn’t have time.

  Hirshberg climbed the stairs two at a time and headed down the crowded corridor. Young interns and secretaries parted for him like the waters of the Red Sea. None of them knew precisely what was going on, but the president had canceled all of his meetings outside of the White House, and Cabinet secretaries and military personnel had been seen entering and leaving the Oval Office all morning.

  It was a busy time of year. Preparation was ongoing for the State of the Union address, now just a few days off. But events in the West Wing had the smell of an international crisis, not the usual domestic soothsaying of growth in the economy and fine times ahead.

  Hirshberg was growing double bags under each eye to match the double chin his wife had been warning him about. He was no longer a kid, and staying up all night had long since lost the excitement it held in his youth.

  He didn’t bother with formalities but walked into the Oval Office and closed the door behind him. The president was huddled with General Richard Skzorn, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and two other military aides. They were seated on the couches near the fireplace.

  The president looked up. “Any word, Sy?”

  “Yes, sir. None of it good.”

  “Give it to us.”

  “Coast Guard cutters a mile off the island report gunfire, and one large explosion.”

  “How large?”

  “Conventional,” said Hirshberg.

  There was a palpable sigh of relief from the president. “Any word from the SEALs? They’re our eyes and ears. We’ve got to get information from them to know what to do.”

  “We have nothing from them directly,” said Hirshberg.

  “That means either the satellite station didn’t function right, or maybe they lost it going in,” said the president.

  “They could have gotten caught in a firefight before they had a chance to set up,” said the general.

  “In any event, we’re blind,” said the president.

  “That’s not the worst part,” sai
d Hirshberg. “We now have casualties.”

  “Who?” said the president.

  “The SEALs did make contact with one of the Coast Guard cutters on a military frequency. It was very brief and sketchy before their signal broke up. They were calling for boats to get them off. They were under fire. According to the information, two of the five-man team never made it onto the island. We think they were lost at sea in the night drop.”

  “Jeez.” The president got up from the couch, hit his thigh with one hand, and turned his back to the men sitting across from him on the couch.

  “How did we get in this mess? We shouldn’t have gone in at night. That was a mistake. And there should have been a much larger force, more time for planning.”

  “Mr. President, you will recall that is what we recommended,” said the general.

  “I know. I know,” said the president. “I made the call. The responsibility rests here. It doesn’t make the pain any less.” He turned to Hirshberg. “Do we have ships in the water, searching for those men?”

  “It’s pretty difficult right now, Mr. President. With incoming troops and a gunship in the air. Besides we’re trying to screen vessels on the sound. Private pleasure craft, commercial fishing vessels. Just in case they got the device off the island.”

  The president took a long, deep breath and thought for a second. “Has the Coast Guard seen any traffic coming from that island this morning?”

  “Not since oh-five-hundred when the blockade was put in place.”

  “Then let’s forget screening the vessels. We can’t cover everything on the sound. Let’s assume that the device is bottled up on that island,” said the president. “Get what boats we can spare to search for those men.”

  “Mr. President, I don’t think we can take that chan—”

  “Don’t argue with me, Sy.”

  Hirshberg knew when it was useless, but he tried anyway.

  “They couldn’t survive in that water for more than two hours, Mr. President. Even in wet suits.”