Radiant Angel

by Nelson DeMille

  Now for the nuke.

  Vasily Petrov stared at the video monitor. Was it possible that Gorsky was dead? He kept staring at the dim image on the screen, then watched as the American climbed out of the water and onto the catwalk, then found the switch to the pumps, then the switch to the overhead lights. The garage brightened and Petrov continued to stare at the screen as the man Depp searched Gorsky’s body, then ran to the dock toward the submerged lifeboat—and the nuclear device.

  It was not possible that this man could disarm the device even if he was trained. There simply wasn’t enough time for the water to recede and for him to get the locked trunk open.

  Petrov looked at the clock on the dashboard. Then back at the image on the screen.

  The time until detonation was so short that Petrov knew he needed to do nothing… but the American had found Urmanov’s tool kit… so perhaps he needed to go below and kill this man. But first he needed to kill the woman outside his door.

  Tess stood in the vestibule, her gun drawn, staring at the bridge door, thinking about how to get to Vasily Petrov and whoever else was on the bridge.

  Petrov’s voice said, “I can see my man Gorsky on the monitor. He has killed your friend in the garage.”

  Tess felt her stomach tighten.

  “It is finished. Save yourself. Go!”

  Tess aimed her Glock at the intercom, fired, and silenced it. “Bastard!”

  She looked up at the eyeball video camera in the ceiling and fired three rounds into it. “Fuck you.”

  She also noticed a skylight on the ceiling, and she moved under it, seeing that it was hinged. It was about ten feet above her head, impossible to reach, but there must be a ladder.

  She looked around, then saw a lever next to the elevator buttons, marked ROOF HATCH. She pulled the lever and a collapsible steel ladder fell from an overhead compartment.

  Tess slapped a fresh magazine into her Glock and began climbing the ladder, which would take her to the roof above the bridge, and also to the sloping windshield where she could lie flat over the edge of the roof, look into the bridge, and empty her Glock into Vasily Petrov.

  I stood on the catwalk and hit the switch marked PUMPS, and heard them engage. I found the light switches, turned them on, and the garage brightened.

  I also noticed a switch marked SHELL DOOR, which I assumed opened the door in the hull. I glanced at the amphibious craft tied to the dock. That was a way out of here if the pumps didn’t work fast enough to get the water below the nuke. The question was, How fast was that amphibious craft and how big was that nuke? I hoped I didn’t have to find out.

  I also hoped that Tess was having better luck on the bridge, but I could feel that the ship was still moving forward, meaning that the bad guys were still in command.

  I quickly searched Gorsky’s body to see if he had something, like a remote control device, or a code to stop the clock, but all he had on him was a small pistol and a knife. As for extra MP5 magazines, apparently he’d used them up murdering everyone. I pocketed his pistol.

  The water level was dropping, and I came down from the catwalk and ran along the dock to the submerged boat. I glanced at Urmanov, whose slumped body was soaked in blood. Another asshole who’d made bad decisions.

  I noticed an overnight bag on the dock, and it looked like the one Urmanov had carried to the amphibious craft. I knelt and opened it, finding an aluminum box that I also opened and saw it was filled with small precision instruments, which were obviously for the suitcase nuke.

  I looked at the black trunk, still underwater. Maybe another two or three minutes before I could get to it. I jumped into the half-submerged boat and examined the trunk, noticing now that it had a hasp and combination padlock. “Damn it!”

  I also noticed a wire coming from the side of the trunk, and I followed it visually and spotted a black ball floating in the water. This, I guessed, was the antenna that would pick up radio signals from a remote control and transmit the signals to the device; and Petrov undoubtedly had the remote, so there was no question now that the asshole had reset the time from 08:46 to… now.

  I left the wire plugged into the trunk, thinking that if Tess could get onto the bridge and get hold of the remote, and if she or I could figure out how it worked, we might be able to stop the clock. Not likely, but… Well, I was due for a break. But I actually needed a miracle.

  The water had dropped to an inch above the trunk. I moved off to the side, knelt in the cold seawater, pulled my Glock and put the muzzle right above the water. I aimed at the combination lock and fired three rounds.

  The bullets hit the lock and it swung on the hasp, and I fired four more rounds, then grabbed the damaged lock and pulled. It held fast.

  “Damn it!”

  I sat in the submerged boat, waiting for the water to drop a few more inches. Seconds, minutes, inches.

  The speaker crackled, and Petrov’s voice said, “What are you doing, Mr. Depp?”

  I looked toward the catwalk where the public address speaker was mounted on the hull. “Fuck you.”

  “I can see you, but I cannot hear you.” He suggested, “Come to the catwalk and use the intercom. I need to speak to you.”

  “No, asshole, you need to die.”

  “I cannot hear you, Mr. Depp.”

  “The name’s Corey!” I flipped him the bird, then I looked at the trunk. The lid was now above water.

  Petrov said, “I have killed your lady friend.”

  I took a deep breath, then unslung my MP5 and pointed it at the top of the trunk.

  Petrov’s voice was a bit urgent. “Do not shoot at the device. You could detonate it.”

  Or stop the clock. Well… either way was okay. Tess would agree.

  “Save yourself.”

  I shifted my aim to the lock, which was now clearing the water, and emptied my last MP5 magazine into it.

  Petrov had no comment.

  I knelt and pulled at the lock, which still held. “Damn it!”

  I remembered the Halligan tool I’d tossed here to draw Gorsky’s fire, and I saw it lying on the dock. I jumped onto the dock, grabbed the tool, and jumped back into the half-submerged boat. I shoved the tapered end between the lock shank and the hasp and twisted, reminding God that it was time for a break. The lock shank held, but the hasp ripped loose from the trunk. “Thank you.” I tossed the lock and hasp aside and lifted the heavy lead-lined lid until its supporting arms locked into place. And there in front of me was the bomb.

  There were no dials, no switches, and no ticking clock. Just a smooth metal faceplate, secured by four recessed screws or bolts. The four color-coded ports were obviously for leads and wires attached to the arming device, which, more obviously, I did not have.

  Okay, so back to basics. I pulled my Glock, stood, and pointed it at the shiny metal faceplate of the nuclear device.

  I expected to hear from Petrov again, but the speaker was silent. He could have jumped ship, but I didn’t think that was part of his plan. And maybe he was lying about Tess and she’d whacked him… but the ship was still moving forward, and I didn’t hear anyone’s voice on the speaker. Not Petrov’s and not Tess’.

  I took a deep breath and squeezed on the trigger, wondering if I’d hear the sizzle of fried electronics, or the Big Bang. One way to find out.

  Tess scrambled up the ladder and slid quietly across the white fiberglass roof, between the radar tower and the antennas.

  Up ahead she could see the skyline of Manhattan, maybe three miles away, and getting closer. A pink dawn was visible on the eastern horizon. It was going to be a nice day.

  She saw a helicopter overhead flying in slow circles, and a few hundred yards off the port side was a Coast Guard cutter, keeping pace with The Hana, and to starboard was an NYPD Harbor craft, also running alongside the yacht.

  She waved her arm, hoping they knew that a female agent had boarded the hostile ship. Don’t fire.

  Tess held her Glock in both hands and propelled her
self over the edge of the roof until she was staring down through the windshield into the dimly lit bridge. She saw a body on the floor, and it wasn’t Petrov’s, who was off to her left, looking down at the lighted video screen on the instrument panel. She held her Glock at a downward angle and took aim.

  Petrov suddenly looked up and saw her face staring at him a few feet away, and he went for his gun.

  Tess fired three rounds into the windshield, realizing instantly that they weren’t penetrating. Petrov returned the fire, with the same results.

  They looked at each other for a moment through the fractured glass, then Tess jumped to her feet and emptied her magazine into the fiberglass roof, above where Petrov was standing, but she realized the roof was also bulletproof. “Damn it!”

  She scrambled back to the hatch and dropped ten feet to the vestibule floor, then reached into her pocket for a full magazine.

  Before she could reload, she was aware that something was moving, and she looked toward the bridge to see the door sliding open. Standing there was Vasily Petrov, pointing his pistol at her.

  “Bitch!”

  Tess saw a flame spit out of his silenced pistol, and felt something hit her in the chest, knocking her back against the elevator.

  He fired again, and again he hit her in her Kevlar vest, knocking her off her feet.

  Petrov seemed momentarily pleased, then confused.

  Tess dove for the spiral staircase as Petrov fired again. She went over the railing and dropped to the deck below.

  Petrov was at the top of the staircase and he fired again, this time hitting her in the left thigh.

  She rolled as she slammed a magazine into her Glock and emptied it up the staircase, then ran into the salon and sprinted across the bloody carpeting, tripping over a body, then getting to her feet and continuing until she reached the outdoor lounge.

  She was aware that she was covered with blood and that some of it was hers, but it wasn’t gushing, though the wound was starting to throb. She took a deep breath and looked back into the salon, but she couldn’t see Petrov.

  As she moved down the outside staircase to the main deck, she saw a large ship about three hundred yards off the starboard side. The ship had a strange bow and she realized it was an icebreaker. They were going to ram The Hana and sink her—her meaning The Hana, but also meaning her. Well… it was a smart move. Maybe the only move left.

  She had no idea where Petrov was, but she hoped he was following her so she could kill him before the nuke did.

  Tess moved cautiously down to the main deck, then to the staircase that went down to the garage, and began to descend. The wound in her thigh was now sending sharp pains down her leg, and she held the rail with one hand and her Glock in the other.

  There was no good reason to descend into the flooded garage, except to see for herself if Corey was dead. And if he was, that meant that Gorsky was alive, and she would also kill him.

  Before I fired into the nuclear device, I had a lucid moment and remembered Urmanov’s aluminum box. I’m not good with tools, but I evolve fast.

  I found what looked like a screwdriver, except that the tip had a very odd shape with three prongs. I looked at the four holes in the corners of the metal faceplate, which I assumed held recessed screws, and I put the screwdriver in one of the holes and twisted, but it didn’t budge. Shit.

  I was about to give up on this idea, but then I thought that this being a Russian suitcase nuke, it was not user friendly, so I twisted clockwise, which is supposed to tighten a screw, and I felt it turn.

  I quickly removed all four screws, but there was no place to get a grip on the recessed steel faceplate to lift it off. Then I noticed a narrow notch on the right edge of the plate, big enough to get a knife blade into. I took my pocketknife—Swiss Army—and extended the blade, which I slid into the notch and levered the faceplate up an inch, enough to get my fingers under it. So if I lifted it, would it blow?

  One way to find out. And I did, and it didn’t.

  I threw the faceplate into the water and looked down at the inside of a nuclear suitcase bomb. Holy shit.

  I’m a little squeamish about radiation exposure, but I understood that this was not my immediate problem.

  … if you can remove any one of the three components… I looked for the digital countdown clock, one of the items that could possibly be removed, but there was no such thing. The clock must be internal, part of the electronic circuitry, not visible to human eyes. Petrov, of course, had the remote arming device and he could see how many minutes we all had left, but I could not.

  I looked for the power source, but I didn’t see anything that looked like a battery, so it must be buried deep in the electronic bowels of this monster.

  The third component was the explosive charge… but this explosive was made up of two elements: the nuclear core and the conventional high explosive that was wrapped around the core. And all of this was contained in a beach-ball-sized metal globe, which I was staring at, and there was no way to get into it. Nor did I want to.

  Two electrical wires led into the globe, one on each side—and those wires led to the detonators buried in the high explosive material. And the wires came from a battery that I couldn’t see, and somewhere in the circuit was the clock, which I also couldn’t see. Damn it!

  Okay… now what? Cut a wire? If you cut one wire leading to the charge, it collapses the other circuit, setting off the charge. Not a good idea according to my Bomb Squad instructor.

  I felt sweat forming on my forehead, but my hands were very steady if I wanted to do something with them.

  Then I understood that this was actually a win-win situation. If I got lucky and disarmed the bomb, all was good. But if I blew it, this far from the city, then the damage would be… well, acceptable. So if I removed myself from the equation, then I knew what I had to do. I grabbed both wires leading to the metal globe, understanding that they had to be pulled simultaneously—if one was pulled first, the other circuit would probably collapse in a nanosecond and send an electrical charge into the detonator, which would blow the high explosives, and the nuclear core would achieve critical mass and do its fission thing.

  I tugged on both wires to sort of rehearse, then I heard a voice in my head, and the voice said, Submerge the electronics, stupid.

  Then another voice said, “John!” That voice sounded more like Tess than God.

  I stood and looked at her on the opposite dock, and saw blood on her left pant leg. “You okay?”

  “I’m okay… Petrov said that Gorsky killed you.”

  I wasn’t sure how she’d had a conversation with Colonel Petrov, and I didn’t care, but I cared about his health, so I asked, “Is he dead?”

  “No. He’s… he may be following me.”

  Shit.

  She started limping toward the catwalk, and I asked her, “Who’s steering this ship?”

  “I don’t know… I saw a dead man on the bridge.”

  Well, he wasn’t steering. So either Petrov was steering or the autopilot was. I informed her, “Gorsky is dead. On the catwalk.”

  “Good.”

  “How far are we from Manhattan?”

  “Maybe… less than a mile.”

  So we had maybe five minutes—or less.

  She moved across the catwalk and stepped over Gorsky like he was dog turd. She looked at the nuke as she came toward me on the dock and exclaimed, “You got it open!”

  “Right.”

  “Do you know what to do?”

  “I do.”

  “Thank God.”

  I was about to dash to the catwalk and open the shell door, flooding the garage and submerging the nuke, which, if it was like my cell phone, would die quickly.

  But Vasily Petrov had other ideas and he said, “Put your hands up and move away from the device.” He was standing at the double doors and aimed his MP5 at Tess. “Or I will shoot her.”

  He was going to shoot her anyway, but he wasn’t going to shoot at me s
tanding in front of the nuke, so I knew I could try to pull my Glock. Or pull the detonator wires.

  “Move away!” He raised his submachine gun and pointed it at Tess, who knew the same trick I knew, and she dove over the side of the dock, but the water level was less than two feet now and she took a hard fall, though Petrov lost sight of her.

  I used the opportunity to pull my Glock and pumped my remaining two rounds at him, then the gun clicked empty.

  Petrov was down but not out, and he got to one knee, blood all over his arms and shirt. He raised his MP5 and aimed it at me, but hesitated because of the nuke behind me, which he did not want to blow prematurely, though I did, so I said, “Shoot, asshole!”

  He didn’t shoot, but he stood and staggered toward the edge of the dock and looked down at Tess, who I could see from the boat, lying in the water. She’d been hurt in her dive off the dock and I knew she’d lost a lot of blood.

  Petrov aimed his submachine gun down at her, and before I could pull the small pistol that I’d taken from Gorsky, Tess raised her Glock and put a bullet into Petrov, who tottered on the edge of the dock, then fell on top of Tess, who brought her arm around and fired another bullet into the side of Petrov’s head, splattering his brains out the other side. Can’t get deader than that. Das vidanya, asshole.

  The water around her and Petrov was red, and I needed to put a tourniquet on her wound, but my only job now was to open the shell door and flood the compartment. I started to climb out of the boat and onto the dock.

  A voice with an Eastern European accent said, “Please help me.”

  I turned my head toward the voice and saw a guy coming from the double doors, dressed in blue denim. His shirt was open and there was blood on his chest and he was gripping his abdomen with both hands. “Who are you?”

  “I am Mikhail. A seaman.” He also assured me, “A Bulgarian. Not Russian. All my mates are dead. I am wounded. Please—”

  “Turn around and get down on the deck.” I started to reach for Gorsky’s pistol, but Mikhail had a similar gun and he pointed it at me.