She wanted to get reassurance from Tyler that Fay would be all right, but wasting her breath on extracting meaningless platitudes wasn’t going to help her get to the airport any faster. She concentrated on sucking in air through her nose and exhaling through her mouth as she did on her twice-weekly jogs.
Tyler jerked his head around at the sound of an engine behind them.
She turned to see two motor scooters puttering toward them. Two skinny guys, both in their twenties, waved as they approached.
“We need those scooters,” Tyler said. “Follow my lead.”
The kids seemed like college students on summer break, backpacks slung over their shoulders.
Tyler smiled and flagged them down. The look was non-threatening, just a dirty, sweaty man and woman who were out in the middle of nowhere.
The riders came to a stop. Both of them paid more attention to Jess than Tyler.
“Hola,” one of them said to Jess. “¿Qué pasa?”
“No hablo Español,” Tyler said. “¿Habla Inglés?”
The men shook their heads.
“Do you speak Spanish?” Tyler said to Jess.
“No,” Jess said. “And we don’t have time for this.”
With a quick nod at the bikes, she took a running lunge and pushed the closest guy off his scooter, grabbing the handle before it could fall.
Tyler didn’t hesitate to follow her cue. He ripped the second man off his bike as if he were a doll. The man hit the ground with an “oof.”
“Sorry,” Tyler said, and hopped onto the seat.
They gunned the engines and zipped away before the men could get to their feet. In her rearview mirror she could see them give chase, but their cursing and arm-waving didn’t help them catch up.
The scooters could hit forty miles an hour, but the frequent potholes meant that thirty was pushing the safest top speed. Tyler pulled even with her.
“That’s one way to do it,” he said over the wind.
“Those guys will be fine. We can’t let Colchev get away with Nana.”
“We’ll park a truck across the runway if that’s what it takes to keep them from leaving.”
“I hope you’re right. She doesn’t have her medication.”
“What medication?”
“Insulin. She’ll tire quickly without it. If she doesn’t get another dose within a few days, she could pass out and go into a coma.”
“Is she diabetic?”
Jess hesitated, but she had to tell him. “Nana has pancreatic cancer. She wanted me to keep it quiet.”
“She seemed fine to me.”
“She had some rough days earlier in the month, but she’s been okay the past week.”
“How far along?”
“Stage four. Terminal. I’m not giving up hope, but most people in the same situation last only a few months. She’s supposed to start chemotherapy next week.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I would never have let her come along if I’d known.”
“I tried to talk her out of it, but you’ve seen how stubborn she can be.”
“She’s a tough bird. Maybe the doctors are wrong.”
They were only a few miles from town, but a thunderous roar coming from that direction made Tyler stop. Jess pulled to a halt next to him.
It sounded like a jet engine.
“Damn it,” he said. “We’re too late.”
The roar receded into the distance until she saw a white twin-engine private plane take to the air above the far end of the runway.
“No!” she cried out. “No!”
“It’s all right. The C-17 should be able to match the speed of Colchev’s jet. We’ll get into the air as soon as we reach the airport, and we’ll make sure to have a SWAT team waiting wherever they land.”
He revved his engine and took off.
“Why are they doing this?” Jess said when she caught up. “What’s so damned important about this weapon?”
“The Killswitch is an electromagnetic pulse device. Xenobium, the material we found in the cave, is detonated by explosives in the Killswitch, and it sends out a cascade of gamma rays that disrupts any magnetic field within range.”
“Which would do what?”
“It would cause a surge of electricity that damages electronic devices. Anything with a transistor would immediately shut down. Computers, communications, electrical grids, vehicles, airplanes would all be affected.”
“Do you think he’s planning to use this thing?”
“Possibly, but we don’t know what Colchev’s target is. Now that he has the components to make it work, he could take out a major city with it.”
“Good God! Imagine if he set it off next to an airport.”
“Every plane within range would crash. Hospitals would have no power. With no working fire trucks or water pumping stations, fires would rage out of control. Nuclear plants would melt down. We’re essentially talking about a worst-case terrorist event.”
Jess’s stomach twisted at the nightmare scenario.
“This is some kind of classified US weapon?” she said.
“Yeah, and I committed twelve felonies telling you all that. But I need your help to get it back. And we’ll get Fay back with it. I promise.”
He still knew her well. The platitudes helped.
They made better time once they hit the paved road going into Hanga Roa. In another two minutes they were on the airport tarmac.
Tyler came to a stop next to the huge cargo jet and jumped off the scooter without bothering to pop the kickstand. Jess did the same and followed him up the stairs into the C-17.
She stopped suddenly when she saw dead bodies scattered on the cargo floor. The plane’s three crew and the two other security men. All of them had been shot.
Tyler ignored the corpses and knelt on the opposite side of a copper-colored device four-feet long. The sleek piece of machinery had an inherently menacing quality.
“Is that the Killswitch?” she asked.
He met her eyes. “Yes. And it’s armed.”
“What?” She went around to Tyler’s side and saw a LCD display counting down. It read 15:23. 15:22. 15:21.
“Colchev must have set it before he left.” He waved the radiation meter over the weapon and grimaced when he saw the results. “The xenobium we found must be in here.”
“Oh, my God! Can you disarm it?”
Tyler examined the device and shook his head. “It looks like it requires a security code. Do you think you could decipher it?”
“Not without knowing anything about its internal safeguards to prevent tampering. What about cutting the wires?”
“I’m not even sure how it works. I could set it off just by tinkering with it.”
“Then let’s get it out of the plane. We’ll put it far away and then take cover.”
“That’s not going to work.”
“Sure it’ll take out the electronics, but at least it won’t blow up the plane.”
Tyler stood. She could see the gears in his head turning, weighing a set of bad options.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
“When it goes off, the xenobium in the weapon will emit high-intensity gamma rays. That’s how it causes the magnetic flux.”
Jess felt her gut twist. “Radiation?”
Tyler grimly nodded. “It doesn’t matter where we take it. If this bomb goes off, everyone on the island will die.”
THIRTY-NINE
Tyler briefly considered dumping the Killswitch in the ocean, but he had no idea whether that would short circuit it, causing a detonation before it got deep enough to remove the radiation threat.
“What are we going to do?” Jess said. “How far away do we have to get it?”
“I don’t know the effective range, so as far away as we can …”
Tyler paused and fixated on the dead pilot. The C-17. If he still had enough time, he could get the Killswitch far away. He checked his watch, comparing it to the countdown timer. To h
ave a chance of succeeding, he’d have to start right now.
He ran for the staircase leading up from the cargo deck to the cockpit.
“Where are you going?” Jess yelled as she came after him.
He sat in the pilot’s seat and fired up the auxiliary power unit that he would need to start the engines. Tyler thumbed through the checklist while the APU whined as it spooled up. It would take eight minutes to get all four engines warmed up.
“If I can get the plane over the open ocean,” he said, “it might be far enough to keep everyone safe.”
“Will it keep the island from getting hit by the electromagnetic pulse?”
“I don’t know.”
“But this is suicidal!”
Tyler thought back to what the pilot had told him about their previous mission before it had been scrubbed to ferry them to Easter Island. The C-17 was supposed to be going from Alice Springs to a paratrooper training op in Japan. That meant the crew had brought their own parachutes, standard procedure for an airborne drop.
“There are chutes on board somewhere. I’ll jump once I get into the air and set the autopilot.”
“Have you ever jumped from one of these?”
“A couple of times,” he lied. He’d done a few jumps at Grant’s urging, but those had been out of a propeller-driven skydiving plane, not a full-sized jet.
She looked around the cockpit. “Where are the chutes?”
“I don’t know. But they’ve got to be here somewhere.” He handed her his camera. “This has a wireless connection. Send every photo and video in there to your email address.” In case the Killswitch knocked out the island’s electronics, he wanted to make sure they had a record of the cave drawings.
Jess tapped on the camera’s display while Tyler worked on getting the engines started, the checklist on his lap. What he didn’t tell her was that it would take only one missed detail to screw up his entire plan. While he’d flown jets for years now, he’d only flown sleek twin-engine private planes, not four-engine monsters like the C-17. The principles were the same, but the handling was altogether different. And now he would have to skip all but the most important steps in the checklist to get into the air in time.
Tyler knew he was making a big assumption about the chutes. Aircrews always packed their own parachutes, to be used only in an emergency during the drop, but he didn’t actually have confirmation that they were on the plane already. He was willing to take the risk, but there was no reason to tell Jess.
“Done,” she said, looking up from the camera. “It’ll take a few minutes to upload them all, but they’re on the way.”
“Thanks,” Tyler said. “Now get off the plane.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“This is crazy!”
“Go!”
She stopped typing and dashed into the cabin behind the cockpit, but instead of leaving, she threw open locker doors.
Tyler didn’t have time to ask what she was doing. With the APU at full power, he started the number one engine. The engines had to be started in sequence from port to starboard, approximately ninety seconds for each one as the rotors reached the minimum RPM needed.
Jess returned carrying two parachutes. “Found them,” she said, dumping them onto the floor. “Even if you jump out safely, you’ll be miles from shore. You can’t swim that far.”
“There are life rafts embedded in the fuselage. I’ll deploy them before I jump.”
“Where are they?”
Tyler felt the color drain from his face when he realized that wasn’t going to work. He’d been part of the team investigating the crash of a C-17 in Alaska a couple of years before, so he was familiar with the aircraft. The plane’s Floating Equipment Deployment System, or FEDS, consists of three rafts ejected from the top of the aircraft.
Idiot, he thought. You should have remembered that the rafts are attached to the plane so that they won’t float away after a water landing.
Jess must have noticed his ashen pallor. “What’s the matter?”
“The life rafts are tethered to the aircraft. If I eject them in mid-air, they’ll just flutter behind the plane like kites.”
“Are there any inside the plane?”
“No.”
“Then we need to bring one of the other ones on board.”
She was right. He had to deploy them now. He ran to the loadmaster’s station, armed the deployment mechanism, and pulled the T-handle.
Three bangs jolted the aircraft. Two rafts sailed into the air on either side of the cockpit, trailing nylon ropes behind them. The protective clamshell coverings clattered apart on the ground, and the rafts began to inflate automatically. A third raft would be behind the starboard engines. The blown hatches would have a negligible effect on the plane’s aerodynamics.
He took the Leatherman from his pocket and pressed it into Jess’s hand. “Take this. There’s a knife on it. Cut the ropes loose on all of them, starting with the port raft, but be careful of the engines. Drag the forward rafts behind the engines. Then drag the other raft in through the rear cargo door and get out. I’ll close it when you’re clear.”
“No way. I need you alive if we’re going to save Nana. That’s why I’m coming with you.”
“Oh, no, you’re not.”
“Tyler, I’ve done more than forty jumps. Discussion over.”
Tyler could see she was going to be just as stubborn as Fay was. And she was right. He didn’t have time. Only ten minutes left to detonation.
“All right,” he said. “You win. Pull the raft in and close the crew door. There should be a button next to it. It’ll show green when the door is secure.”
She left and Tyler opened the massive rear cargo door. He saw Jess dash out and cut the cord on the port raft, using the line to drag it backward as she strained at the weight of the enormous raft. When she was clear, he started number two engine.
Jess repeated the process with the starboard raft. Tyler wanted to go help her, but doing so would have wasted time they didn’t have.
As soon as she was out of sight, Tyler started engine three.
He put the pilot’s headset on. It was already on the tower frequency.
“Tower, this is Air Force flight … uh, this is the Air Force C-17. Permission to taxi for takeoff.”
An accented voice answered after a pause. “I don’t have your flight plan, C-17.”
“This is an emergency takeoff. We’ll file the plan en route.”
“Negative, C-17,” came the shocked response. “Not without your paperwork. There could be traffic in your proposed flight path.”
“Tower, traffic won’t be an issue unless they’re on final approach. This was just a courtesy call to tell you to keep the runway clear. I don’t see anyone out there, so I’m taking off. Out.”
Engine three was still warming up, but he could use the first two engines to taxi.
A minute later, Jess returned and climbed into the right-hand seat, sweat pouring from her brow. “Those bastards are heavy,” she said between breaths, “but I got one aboard. The side door’s closed.”
Tyler closed the cargo door, pushed the throttles forward, and released the brakes. The C-17 rolled across the tarmac at a stately pace.
“Wait a minute,” Jess said. “You’ve only started three engines.”
“The plane is designed to take off with an engine out. We can’t wait to start the fourth. Put your seat belt on.”
He swung the big beast around and headed for the two-mile-long runway, lowering the flaps and making sure he didn’t miss anything critical on the checklist. Taking off wouldn’t do much good if he crashed at the end of the runway.
As soon as he had the nose lined up on the centerline, Tyler pushed the throttles until the fan speed reached ninety percent.
The engines howled in response. The plane surged forward, pressing Tyler against his seat.
He couldn’t help thinking, This is about the dumbest thing
you’ve ever done.
“If we’re going to die,” Jess said, “I need to tell you something.”
“We’re not going to die.” Yes, we are.
“The reason I didn’t come into your room with you last night is because I’m seeing someone.”
“You really think this is the best time for this?”
“I wanted you to know that it was a tough decision. Even after all these years, I still love you.”
Tyler was so shocked by her profession that if his hands hadn’t been glued to the yoke, he would have keeled over. He could have chosen from a thousand possible responses, but he had to keep his attention focused on the task at hand. Now he had a real reason not to die just yet.
His eyes met Jess’s for just a moment. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk in the raft.”
The C-17 hit takeoff velocity with a half-mile of runway to spare. Tyler pulled back on the yoke, and the massive plane rose smartly into the air. Easter Island receded behind them.
“I’ll get us up to three thousand feet,” he said. “I’ll keep us at a hundred and sixty knots for the jump and hope that’s slow enough, but I’m going to set the autopilot to speed up just before I leave the flight deck. That way we’ll get the maximum distance between us and the plane by the time it blows.”
“What should I do?”
“Go down to the cargo deck and keep hold of the life raft. I’ll open the cargo door, but don’t launch the raft until we’re ready to drop. At this speed we’re going a mile every twenty seconds. I’ll give you a minute to get down there and open the door, then I’ll join you and we’ll jump.”
Jess nodded and got out of her seat, taking one of the parachutes with her. “I’m not jumping without you.”
“I know. Go!”
She sprinted away. Tyler eased the jet to a heading of 180 and kept it steady at an altitude of 3,000 feet at 160 knots. He changed the transponder code to squawk 7700 and adjusted the radio to 243 megahertz, the guard emergency frequency.
“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Air Force C-17 from Easter Island. We are ditching six miles due south of the island. Request rescue boat. Repeat we are ditching on heading one eight zero from Easter Island VOR. Request rescue boat.”
He glanced at his watch. Six minutes to detonation.
The Roswell Conspiracy tl-3 Page 22
