Jet swung into the shaft and eased herself down the service ladder that ran along the side. Once on the roof of the car, she pried the service hatch open and held her phone inside, again using its screen for scant illumination, noticing as she did that it had a dent in the case from where she’d fallen on it in her earlier elevator escape.
The screen’s dim light caught a flash of blue aluminum on the floor. There, in the corner – a metal suitcase, its contents capable of turning the building into a supernova unless she was able to stop it in time.
She slipped the phone into her pocket, slid her legs through the hatch, and lowered herself in, supporting herself with her arms. Counting the seconds in her head, she dropped down beside the case and retrieved her phone, then stabbed the screen to life before holding it up and studying the bomb. Her eyes roved over the latches searching for an obvious booby trap; seeing none, she unclasped first the left, then the right, and swung the top open.
A timer with a digital readout blinked neon red digits at her, with four and a half minutes remaining on the display as it counted down. She swallowed hard, then raised her phone to her ear and hit the call button, and when the director answered on the second ring, gave him the abridged report.
“I’ve got the device in front of me. It’s got four minutes to go on the timer. Get the technician on the line, now. This is cutting it way too close,” she spat, a bead of sweat running down her forehead.
Twenty seconds went by before a younger voice came on the line. “This is Ben. Tell me exactly what you see.”
Then the signal cut off, the phone crapping out, damaged from her fall. Grimacing, she slammed it against her leg twice and then tried again.
“Repeat. Didn’t get the last part,” she said.
“Tell me what you see.”
“There’s a timer with a digital readout. Next to it is a circuit – no, two circuit boards, with what looks like four wires disappearing underneath them. And there’s a battery outside of a long gray casing; the bomb casing–”
Ben cut her off. “Did you say wires? There shouldn’t be any wires. Are you sure?”
“I know what I’m looking at.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I’ll take a picture and send it to you. Stand by,” Jet said, then pointed the phone’s tiny camera lens at the device and closed her eyes as the flash went off. She checked the image, took another close-up of the timer, and then pushed send.
There was silence on the other end of the line, and when Ben’s voice came back on, he sounded far less confident than he had before.
“It’s been modified. I don’t know exactly why, or how. It’s impossible to tell from here without dismantling the casing for the circuit board, but that will take too long, and there’s no guarantee of a quick workaround,” he said.
“How about just unplugging the battery?”
“No – it’s set up so that if you do that it’ll detonate. There’s a secondary lithium battery that acts as a backup inside the charge detonator. The bomb is basically that explosive element, and the two uranium sections – the bullet and the target. The charge explodes, the two sections collide, and the reaction occurs in a split second.”
“Thanks for the dissertation. How do I stop it?” Jet asked between gritted teeth.
“I’m thinking. Let me study this for a minute…”
“In case nobody explained this to you, every minute counts. Why can’t I just take it and throw it in the ocean?”
She heard the director mutter something in the background.
“Because you wouldn’t get there before it went off. You wouldn’t even make it to the lobby in time. And immersing it in a sink or tub won’t work – it’s water-resistant. Now stop talking. I’m thinking,” Ben said, his voice sounding slightly panicked. Jet decided it wasn’t the time for assertiveness and bit her tongue, allowing him some breathing room. After what seemed like forever, he came back on the line.
“You see that long chip in the socket next to the timer? With the 89-whatever number printed across the top? That’s the timer controller. If you pull it, assuming they haven’t done anything to it, it should stop the clock.”
“And what if they have?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Shit. This is the best you can do? Something that might work? What about clipping one of the wires, like in the movies?”
“I don’t know what those wires do. And unfortunately, this isn’t the movies.”
“Put the director back on,” Jet ordered, seething.
“I’m here. I put you on speaker,” the director said.
“I now have just over two and a half minutes. And no way of stopping the damned thing from exploding. What do you want me to do?” she demanded, an edge to her voice.
“Take a deep breath, and then….” The latter part of his instruction broke up, distorted so she couldn’t make him out. She shook the phone in frustration – of all the times for the damned thing to be shorting out – then held it up to her ear.
“What did you say?”
“I said pull the chip.”
Jet eyed the device distrustfully and brushed sweat out of her eyes before reaching into her back pocket and flicking open her knife. She looked skyward and offered a silent prayer, then carefully slid the tip under the chip and levered it out of the socket, wincing as she did so.
The display flashed on and off several times.
“It’s blinking,” she reported, and then nearly choked as the display resumed its countdown.
“Oh God. It’s still ticking. Looks like…I have less than two minutes before it goes off.”
“Wait. Clip the–”
“What?” The signal broke up again. She rapped the phone against the floor and then punched at the screen, putting it in speakerphone mode.
“I didn’t hear you. What?” she barked.
“I said clip the wire on the–”
Static cut off the last words.
“On the what? Clip the wire on the what?”
“…left of the…”
More interference. She squinted in the darkness at the bomb, the timer’s pulsing glow shimmering against the black rubber wiring insulation. Left of what?
“Repeat. I didn’t get that last part,” she said, a deadly calm now settling over her.
Ben’s voice was distorted, but she thought she made out the word ‘timer’.”
“Did you say left of the timer? Nearest the battery?” she demanded, her voice tight.
Nothing. The phone sat as silent as a rock, an occasional burst of static squawking from its tiny speaker, the garbled words unintelligible.
Jet watched as the timer continued its relentless countdown, and prayed for something intelligible to come through the phone. Ten seconds went by, then another ten. She reached over and banged the cell repeatedly, each crack as it struck the floor like a coffin nail being hammered. Only white noise emanated from it, and with resigned frustration she abandoned her punishment of the cell and stared at the bomb, its timer mocking all of her efforts to thwart it.
With a deep breath, she slid the knife blade under the wire she thought Ben had singled out, holding either end with her fingers, and pulled up, slashing it. The blade came free, cutting only half the wire’s copper core, and she swore, the timer blinking its taunt as it continued its countdown to destruction, now reading only thirty seconds as it blurred toward zero.
Jet blinked sweat out of her eyes. At the current rate she’d be dead before she could exhale her final breath. She slipped the blade back under the wire with a trembling hand and then slashed again with all her might, knowing that this would be her last act on Earth if she’d called it wrong.
The wire severed and the timer froze.
At twelve seconds remaining on the clock.
She fell back against the elevator wall, her pulse pounding in her ears, and glared at the battered phone.
“Did – you – do it?” Ben asked, his distinctive vo
ice choppy, barely discernible.
“It worked,” she said simply.
She heard cheering on the director’s end, and then the line crackled and dropped out.
Jet exhaled noisily and slowly rolled her head, working the tension out of her neck muscles, and the phone vibrated insistently from its position near the case. She answered it, but the director’s words still sounded distorted.
“G – job. Congr – lations.”
“Thanks. My phone is damaged so you’re breaking up. What do you want me to do with the device?”
“Hand it off to Eric. Your part in this is over,” he said.
“I can’t. Eric’s dead.”
Silence.
“What about sshhccrrssshhh?”
She banged the cell on the marble elevator floor again, hating the little device more than she could have thought possible.
“What?” she asked.
“Aaron. What about Aaron?” he asked, then the signal deteriorated from more interference.
“Let me check. Hold on.” Jet tapped the earbud and spoke softly. “Aaron. Respond. Come in.”
Nothing. Only silence on the com line.
She tried again, but got no reply.
“I’m not getting anything. Assume he’s compromised,” she said, suddenly tired.
“Damn. All right. Get – device out – Doha. There’s a fort a hundred kiloshshhsh north, near – coast. Al Zubara. It’s a mushshhgsh now, but it’s desolate. Go now, shhcrrshh I’ll arrange –”
White noise hissed from the speaker in an obnoxious burst. She held the phone away from her and hit it again. The call went dead, and when she tried to redial the director, all she got was the dull hum of nothingness.
Perfect.
She tapped the earbud again and tried Aaron, but there was no response.
Jet looked overhead at the escape hatch and quickly calculated that the case wouldn’t fit through it. She closed the lid and re-latched it, then stood and searched for a pressure bar release on the interior of the elevator. Finding none, she slid her knife between the doors and then twisted, forcing them open an inch – just enough room to wedge her fingers in. She braced her boots and heaved against the right one until it slid aside with a low scrape. Scowling, she spied the tops of the next floor’s doors occupying the bottom three and a half feet of the elevator doorway and knelt down in front of them.
This time it was harder to force them apart, but driven by determination, she managed, using the pressure from her palms to slide them wide. After a brief look through the opening to gauge the distance to the floor, she slid the heavy case to the edge of the elevator and shouldered the carrying strap. Her stomach tensed as she jumped onto the marble tiles, absorbing the heavy case’s drop with her legs and back, which shrieked in protest at the impact.
Ignoring the pain, she moved to the stairwell and began the long process of descending twenty-four stories, gripping the handrail with all her might in case she lost her footing, her mind racing over the latest cryptic instructions from the director – take the nuke to a fort in the middle of nowhere.
Maybe he had another operative who was going to smuggle it offshore from there? Bahrain was just across the Gulf, twenty-five miles away. Perhaps the Mossad had more assets on that small island, or it would be easier to put it on a jet from there than Qatar?
Her back spasmed and she briefly stopped to rest, thinking through the logistics of her odd instructions.
The director wanted the bomb transported to Al Zubara. He’d seemed adamant, so that was where she would go. She knew from the map she’d studied during her briefing that there was a major highway that ran north – Highway One. From there she was sure she could find it.
Jet shifted the strap, trying to ease the pressure on her lower spine, and then, her face intent on her task, continued her descent, the stairwell silent except for the soft impact of her boots on the concrete steps.
Chapter 39
When Jet arrived at the lobby it was empty, Aaron nowhere to be seen. She inched to the reception desk and her worst fears were confirmed – Aaron had been shot in the head with a small caliber pistol and was lying on the floor behind the counter in a pool of coagulating blood.
A noise sounded from the stairwell doors at the far end of the lobby, and Jet took that as her cue to get out of there. She sped to the front entrance, then pushed through the doors and took measured steps to where Isaac was waiting with the van.
She scowled at him through the window. “Take me to my car. Come on, let’s get out of here. Now.”
Jet swung into the passenger seat and hauled the case onto her lap, and Isaac jammed the transmission into gear and lead-footed the gas, spinning the wheels as he made a long U-turn before speeding toward the main artery.
“Mind telling me what’s going on?”
“Aaron and Eric are dead. Just drive,” she said, ignoring his request. Isaac had been kept out of the loop by the director – he wasn’t at a high enough level to know much more than he already did, and there was probably a good reason for that.
The van pulled alongside her car and stopped. Jet opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle, and after scanning the street for threats, turned to face him.
“Your part in this is over. You don’t want to know anything more, believe me. I’ll swing by the safe house later today to get my things. Wait for me there.” She moved several feet away, then stopped. “Thank you, Isaac. You did well.”
“I wish I knew what it was I did well at, but never mind. Mine is not to reason why. I’ll see you when I see you. You need anything?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m good. Just keep your head down.”
His eyes drifted to the drying blood on the front of her abaya – traces of Eric’s last stand. “You don’t need to tell me twice,” he said with a grim half smile.
She watched as he disappeared around the corner at the end of the block, then opened the doors and placed the case on the back seat, securing it in place with the safety belt.
Jet withdrew the headdress from her pocket and donned it again, then inched the little car onto the quiet street, keeping her speed down so as not to attract any undue attention, an anonymous woman who wouldn’t warrant a second glance.
She made good time on the eight-lane highway, the traffic sparse, with only a few large ore trucks and tankers heading north, and then found herself the only car on the road when she pulled onto the smaller thoroughfare headed towards the coast, a blue sign announcing Al Zubara pointing the way.
As she drew nearer she saw a lone vulture, looking forlorn and miserable, perched alongside a road hazard sign featuring a black outline of a camel against a white reflective backdrop. The sight gave her pause and she nearly burst out into giddy laughter, the natural delayed response to the stress in the elevator hitting her like a summer storm.
The fort was plainly marked, a sign in English and Arabic announcing it as closed propped against the empty parking lot gate, the two temporary offices next to it unoccupied. Jet eased the car behind the buildings so it would be shielded from the road and took stock of her surroundings – empty, no other humans in sight. She stepped from the air-conditioned vehicle interior and was immediately assaulted by a harsh, dry wind blowing from the south, carrying with it dust and not much more, the low moan as it passed through the structure’s four turrets a mournful lament. The sun blazed down on her as she strode past a ceremonial cannon to the building’s sole entrance and pushed against the ornate wooden doors, verifying they were locked before trying the smaller portal cut into the one on her right. To her surprise it opened easily, and she drew her weapon before swinging it wide, cautiously eyeing the interior courtyard before returning to the car.
Jet lugged the bomb to the entry and pushed her way into the fort, then closed the door behind her and bolted it shut. A small dust devil spiraled into the air in the center of the hard-packed dirt yard, and she watched it absently before carrying the case to the nearest doo
rway and setting it inside the barren room. Shaking off the vague sense of unease that she’d been struggling with since she’d pulled off the road, she took a fast tour of the lower level barracks, confirming that they were empty, and then climbed the stairs to the second level, which was also deserted. She was preparing to enter the nearest turret when she heard the rumble of heavy vehicles in the distance, and then four military Humvees with .50 caliber machine guns mounted behind the cabs came trundling down the road, headed straight for the parking lot and her lone car.
Jet pressed herself against the rampart and watched through one of the gun slits as the vehicles pulled onto the barren track leading to the parking lot before taking up position at the four corners of the fort grounds. Camouflage-clad soldiers dropped from the beds brandishing assault rifles, their bronzed faces somber even from a distance. She felt beneath her robes and withdrew her 9mm pistol and eyed it with grim pessimism. Even in her skilled hands the weapon was no match for a squad of trained soldiers with enough firepower to wage a war.
The diesel engines idled noisily as the gunmen established a perimeter, and then another sound intruded – the thumping of large rotor blades overhead. Jet raced down the stairs and took cover under a heavy stone overhang, wary of an assault from above, and then crept to the fort’s wooden gateway and peered through a narrow gap. A Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter sporting Qatar army markings dropped from the sky and hovered over the parking lot before settling down in the center of the baking asphalt.
The powerful turbine slowed as the side door opened and a figure stepped out, wearing khaki civilian trousers and shirt, a tribal headdress shielding his face from the sand and dust being thrown up by the downdraft. He moved away from the aircraft and marched to the fort entry, then tried the doors, as she had.
Jet heard the rattle of the bolt fighting to hold, and she called out in Arabic, “I have a gun and a bomb. I’ll detonate it rather than be taken alive. I don’t know what this is, but leave now, or I’ll take you all with me.”
The figure backed away from the door and responded in Arabic. “Sounds serious. But before you blow us all to kingdom come, perhaps you could take the time to field a call?”
JET V - Legacy Page 24
