A Time for War

by Michael Savage

  He went to the ladder, where the phone showed he had a few bars, and called the field director.

  “Jack, good news! We’ve got the terrorist—”

  “Bad news. We’re at the clinic. The Chinese have triggered a bomb of some kind to spread pneumonic plague. We’re trying to get to it but they’re saying it can’t be shut down.”

  “How much time?” Forsyth asked.

  “About eight, ten minutes,” he said.

  There was a short silence. Jack heard him say away from the phone, “Is the Hawk still there?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hold him!” Forsyth came back on the line. “Jack, do they have police onsite?”

  “One car—they were just down here, sent for help.”

  “Have them pull as close as possible to the device, lights and sirens on. Tell them it’s a Code 3 emergency, authorization FBI 746. I’ll be there ASAP.”

  “All right, but—”

  “Evacuate but don’t do anything else. Out.”

  Jack closed his dead phone then hurried to the ladder.

  “Where are you going?” Dover asked.

  “Forsyth is on the way.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I have to talk to the cops, I’ll be back in a second.”

  He disappeared up the ladder just as Dover broke through the dirt wall and pulled Maggie through. Beyond her Dover could see a prone form—and a fax machine.

  “Is that the device?” she asked.

  Maggie nodded. “It’s active. You hear it?”

  Dover nodded. “The FBI is coming to deal with it.”

  “How? There’s no time—”

  “I don’t know,” Dover said. She smiled at Maggie, like whistling past a graveyard. “What I do know: with about six or seven minutes to go, at least we won’t die of suspense.”

  ~ * ~

  “Call the tower—tell them to turn the Hawk around.”

  Deputy Director Cranston was running alongside Forsyth and Fitzpatrick. He made the call on the radio as they reached the staircase. The three of them ran down. Fitzpatrick was cradling the carrying case with the EMP device in his arms. Forsyth had told him to take it, over the protestations of the Chinese diplomats.

  “You will create an international incident!” Yan Hua warned.

  “Ram it,” Forsyth said. “I’m trying to prevent one!”

  Between the actions of Cranston and Forsyth, Fitzpatrick had never been prouder to be part of a team.

  “Clear the airspace over the highway, north,” Forsyth told Cranston. “We’re going to be breaking some regulations.”

  “You got it. G’luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  The Hawk had literally just lifted off and was back on the ground as they arrived. Forsyth got in front and Fitzpatrick jumped in the back. The field director jabbed his finger up and north. The chopper rose quickly.

  “Follow 101 north, fast, as low as you can,” Forsyth said as he put on the headset. “Fifteen miles. How long at max?”

  “We’re rated at one hundred and sixty knots, one hundred and eighty-four mph.”

  “No good. We have less than five minutes,” Forsyth said. “Can you push her?”

  The chopper seemed to catch fire—literally. The cockpit dipped slightly, the fuel took on the scent of an oil blaze, and the helicopter ripped dizzyingly through the night. The fuel smell made Fitzpatrick slightly light-headed and he heard his own heartbeat inside the headset. He was glad he had something to do rather than look out the window at cars so close he felt they were going to skid across the tops of trucks. Forsyth had not bothered to explain the plan but Fitzpatrick had figured it out. He had taken the EMP device from the case and was trying to make sure he knew how to work it.

  Forsyth ducked his head between the seats. “I’m told that thing is unidirectional!” the field director remarked.

  “Damn well hope so,” Fitzpatrick said.

  “It has a fifteen-hundred-foot range before porosity becomes a factor,” Forsyth told him. “When we get there, you’ll see a cop car in the general target area. We’ll try to get you above an open section of roof so you can aim straight into the ground.”

  The Hawk swerved left and right to avoid billboards as it sped lower and faster, the pilot obviously trying to cover as much distance as possible. No doubt he had figured out the mission listening to his passengers. He was pushing to get the helicopter as near to the target as possible.

  “Lieutenant, I’m going to give you a half-mile warning when I see the target,” Forsyth said. “We’re looking for a blown-out structure and a cop car. There will probably be a bunch of cars and—”

  “I see them,” the pilot replied. “Three o’clock, fire engines, prowlers. Banking over.”

  Fitzpatrick put the device on the back of his right wrist and strapped it in place. It was like wearing a watch with a spyglass attached. It was frightening to contemplate the power he had on his forearm.

  Automatic weapons were deadly but they were honest, he thought. The sound matched their destructive power. This thing is sinister, evil.

  “I’m going to have to open the door,” Fitzpatrick said as they neared.

  “I’ve got about thirty seconds,” the pilot told him. “I’m gonna swing around, point you there, and when I say ‘open,’ you yank on that handle and fire.”

  Fitzpatrick’s heart was no longer just in his ears: it was in his jaw as well.

  Don’t screw the pooch, he told himself. His hands were trembling and he tried to relax. He hoped this thing had some kind of spread in case his eyeballing aim was off. He put his left hand on the latch. The ruined building was about a quarter of a mile distant and roughly thirty feet below them.

  The helicopter suddenly whirled, as though someone had stuck a pole through the heart of the rotor.

  “Go!” the pilot shouted.

  ~ * ~

  Jack climbed down the ladder and came over to Maggie and Dover who were huddled beside the opening in the wall. He hugged Maggie, saw their hopeful looks. Jack did not bother to discourage them. If the plague germs were released, chances were good no one would be getting out of this alive.

  Jack had once done a program on dirty bombs and weaponized bacteria. The natural heat generated by any city, and the winds that swept across most port cities, would spread radiation and toxins across a two-mile radius in under a minute. The toxins would go even farther, and faster, if there was some kind of detonation and not merely a release. He knew that these men had planned carefully. The area would be a dead zone within seconds.

  Oddly enough, he considered going over to Bruno’s for a last glass of Gaja Sori San Lorenzo. Jack wasn’t big on wines, but ever since Bruno had introduced him to the ‘04, he had become a fan.

  He hated the buzzing of the device on the other side of the dirt wall. It was like a mosquito in his ear, one he couldn’t swat away. The only reason he didn’t take the ladies to Bruno’s was because he wanted to be here when Forsyth did whatever he planned to do, just in case he could help.

  Jack did not bother checking his watch. Forsyth was probably already too late. They had a minute-and-change, at best. All that had happened was that the red-and-blue lights of a police car had moved closer. No one had come down here.

  Maybe Forsyth changed his mind and was leaving town. He wouldn’t blame him, especially if this was hopeless.

  Jack heard, then felt, the helicopter as it arrived. The rotors beat hard for a few seconds and the ground literally shook.

  And then the lights outside the hole went off.

  “Holy shit,” Jack said.

  He couldn’t see the women but he heard Dover shift. “Jack, the device. Isn’t it supposed to—”

  “Blow up,” Jack said, smiling. “Yeah!”

  He took out his cell phone, tried it, and actually cheered when it refused to turn on. “Holy shit,” he said again. “He did it.
He used the EMP. Doesn’t matter how you wire a bomb if you don’t have electricity to run it. He shut it down!” The irony of Hawke’s Squarebeam technology being used to save lives, including his own, was not lost on him.

  The helicopter was still beating overhead. A light from above shined into the hole. Jack walked over to the ladder and climbed up. He went out what used to be the back door and stared into the most beautiful white light he had ever seen.

  He couldn’t see who was in it. The fact that it wasn’t God made this a very, very good result.

  ~ * ~

  Jack did not linger in the light. He realized that someone had better go back into the tunnel and secure the bomb and the men who had tried to trigger it.

  “Someone” meant Jack Hatfield.

  Go down in torn civvies that can’t keep dust out, let alone biotoxins, he thought. Keep things safe ‘til the men in the hazmat suits get here.

  The story of my life.

  After settling Dover and Maggie on a slab of concrete that had once been a piece of foundation, Jack turned back toward the hole. The helicopter was still hovering overhead, lighting the scene until the fire department and emergency services cops could arrive with portable spotlights. Enough of a glow spilled into the tunnel so that Jack could see the opening in the absolute dark that surrounded it.

  His arms trembling, he started down the ladder.

  Whoever said “It’s all over but for the shouting,“ had never actually fought a war, Jack thought. Or played a championship game. Or run a marathon.

  When a hard-fought battle has been won, or lost, a sense of high energy lingers—sometimes for minutes, sometimes for an hour or more— followed by sudden, crushing exhaustion. It is not just weariness of the body but of the mind. All you can process are moments, events in your immediate vicinity. And for the warrior, “it” is never over.

  Post-traumatic stress disorder, the shrinks call it, Jack thought. Before that it was shell shock. Neither term was really accurate. The condition was actually hopelessness, realization that the terrible aggression you threw your shoulder against had only been halted, not stopped. It would be back, in another body, with another terrible purpose.

  That fear was what kept soldiers up at night. The fact that victory was temporary, fleeting.

  Sometimes more fleeting than one had just imagined moments before—

  Jack stopped at the opening in the earthen barricade through which he’d pulled Maggie Yu. There was a glow in the distance where there should be no glow. Everything inside and out had been hit by the pulse. There should be nothing darker on the planet than this tunnel.

  Jack ducked through, saw an orange circle of light hanging near the roof of the tunnel. It was about ten feet distant and moving away from him. He put his hand against the wall to his right to make sure he didn’t stumble over the bomb, which he knew was on the left. He felt his way along the pitted brick surface as he moved toward the illumination.

  The light stopped and turned.

  Jack saw a flickering flame—a cigarette lighter. In the ruddy illumination was a thin face looking back. The face was covered in blood from a wound on the forehead; Jack wasn’t sure but he thought he could see bone. Beside the face, at the very edge of the glow, the man was holding a chess piece. A queen.

  The man was making for one of his targets, one of the holes nearer the financial district.

  Jack didn’t think. He ran toward the light.

  The man dropped the lighter. It burned on the ground, casting its dull glow upward. Jack saw him reach for the chess piece with his free hand.

  He was going to snap it.

  Jack was on him in two great strides, grabbing the man’s right arm with both hands, yanking it from the chess piece. He succeeded, but the man surprised him by putting the queen’s head in his mouth.

  “God damn you!” Jack yelled.

  He was trying to bite the thing. Jack released the man’s right arm and tried to grab the piece, realized that it might just as easily break in the struggle. Snarling with animal ferocity, Jack put his palm against the back of the man’s hand, closed his fingers around those of the terrorist, and pushed hard. The chess piece was shoved into the man’s mouth. Jack kept both his hand and that of his opponent against the man’s chin, preventing it from opening. Teeth crunched, plastic cracked; all that stood between Jack and death was the man’s closed lips.

  Grunting, Jack dug his fingernails into the terrorist’s flesh, squeezed, pushed him against the wall to pin him there. He bent the man’s head back. He couldn’t choke him, didn’t want the man to lose consciousness. He had to swallow the damn thing.

  His cheeks, Jack thought.

  While Jack fought off the man’s free hand with his own, he shifted his thumb and index finger so they pressed against his two cheeks. It was a trick he remembered from survival training: you could generate saliva by constricting the mouth.

  The man shook his head violently as Jack pushed his cheeks in, hard. He could hear the man gagging. He was going to have to swallow or choke.

  The man swallowed. He coughed inside his closed mouth, tried to retch, but Jack held him firm.

  Within moments there was a change over the entirety of the man’s body. He began to spasm, as though he were possessed. Jack heard bubbling sounds. They were not coming from the man’s stomach but from inside his throat. His veins were erupting. Even in the dim light Jack could see the darkening of the skin on his neck. His limbs jerking helplessly, the terrorist was no longer resisting him. Jack put both hands against his mouth to keep it shut.

  The man’s cheeks bloated. He gagged, drowning in blood. It seeped from between his lips. Jack had a feeling that the airborne toxins were secure now, embedded in bodily tissues and fluids. Jack slid him along the wall to the floor, stepped back, picked up the flickering lighter. There was a spot of blood on his hand and his first thought was to use the flame to burn it off. He stopped, realizing that that might aerosolize any bacterium, and simply wiped it on the man’s shirt.

  He looked down at the figure convulsing on the earth. Spots of blood were soaking through his clothes. They were beading on his forehead, thin streams were running from his nose, and there were ugly, dark blue lines under his face and in the whites of his eyes. The veins began to burst like hot dogs on a grill, some of them releasing blood under the skin, some over it. The man continued to twitch even after life had left him, the blood reacting to whatever pathology was feeding on it.

  That medical minds, trained to heal, could conceive of and execute a weaponization project like this was the greatest horror Jack had ever faced. That wasn’t just hate, like Islamic terrorists trying to explode a dirty bomb. It was cool calculation, the result of rational thought.

  There is your fear, Jack thought. There is hopelessness. The fact that minds smart enough to create such a thing were cold enough to use it.

  The cigarette lighter winked out. As it did, Jack became aware of movement and light to his left. He looked over at beams poking here and there in the dark.

  Carl Forsyth shone a light on his face.

  “Hi, Jack,” he said.

  “Hey.”

  “Everything secure down here?” he asked.

  “It is now,” Jack said, as he backed unsteadily from the dead man.

  Several beams played across the dead man.

  “You sure about that?” Forsyth asked.

  Jack took a moment. He did a quick catalogue of his own bodily functions. He didn’t taste blood. He looked at his hands, felt his cheeks, forehead. “Yeah,” he said.

  Forsyth stayed back as men in the white, Level A Positive Pressure Personnel suits filed around him. They looked like lunar explorers, their air cylinders and breathing apparatus inside the garments for protection. Three of them went to the bomb, one cuffed the other terrorist who was just coming to, and one came over to Jack carrying handheld electronics. He was testing the air, Jack’s breath. Jack couldn’t s
ee his face in the dark behind the visor. It was like a medical exam where you didn’t think you had anything to worry about until they actually started doing tests.

  “Prelim AC,” Jack heard from Forsyth’s radio.

  That was the technician, muted inside his suit, letting the field director know that everything seemed to be all clear.

  Forsyth moved forward, shone his light on the dead man.

  “What happened?”

  Jack told him. He was in reporter mode, reciting facts concisely. In the telling, it felt as though the struggle had happened to someone else.