by Larry Bond
The thump of Ferguson’s body slamming to the floor a few yards away shook Conners awake. He stared as the flashlight spun wildly toward the rear of the plane, its beacon illuminating the metal grids lining the interior. The lids of his eyes felt like ice-cold daggers poking at his eyeballs. Conners started to get up but felt a heavy hand press against him; he crawled instead, making his way toward the light. When he finally got it, he pushed back to find Ferguson, who was lying on his back, arms and legs straight out.
“Jesus, Ferg, let’s go now,” Conners told him.
It was hard to tell if the CIA officer was even breathing. Conners put his ear to his chest, trying to listen.
The plane dipped forward, and Conners tumbled over his comrade. He tried to push himself off, and the plane jerked hard to the right. His stomach suddenly felt queasy — he leaned over and began to throw up.
7
ABOARD SF COMMAND TRANSPORT 3, OVER THE PERSIAN GULF
Corrine listened as Gray explained the abilities of the reconnaissance satellites, veering from the overly simplistic to the overly technical and back again. The bottom line itself was simple — it could take days to actually find the wreckage of the downed 747.
Assuming they had gotten it.
“Let’s assume we didn’t get it,” Corrine told Gray. “Where can it go?”
“Well, 747 range would be something over seven thousand miles,” said Major Gray. “Maybe even a bit more, depending on the version, how it was loaded, flight conditions.”
“We’ll have to search every airport or field that a 747 could land on within that range,” said Corrine.
“That has to be well over a thousand. I doubt it’s still in the air. The Navy would have found it by now,” said the expert. “They have the Gulf completely covered, and they’re in the Indian Ocean. Nothing without a civil registration — no plane is going to get past them. I’m sure we got it,” added Gray.
“Just in case,” said Corrine. “I’d like to talk to the Nimitz battle group as well. In the meantime, we’ll raise the alert level at Manila.”
“Your call,” he said.
“It is,” she agreed, clicking into the com circuit to get an update from Van Buren.
8
ON THE GROUND IN CHECHNYA
Based on her preliminary readings, Van Buren’s radiation expert, Captain Renya Peterson, declared the hangar area in the mountain completely off-limits until the robot probes could survey it. Tests at the mouth of the cave showed there were weak- and midlevel gamma generators and traces of alpha material inside; while the levels were not serious outside the cave, they were bound to be considerably higher inside. In contrast, only the building Ferguson had explored earlier had any level of material, and this was relatively low, generating the sort of readings one might find in a medical radiation department where procedures were lax.
A knot of radiation-containment specialists and support troopers huddled in space suits near the cave, waiting for an hour until the last of the guerrillas in the second building surrendered. Van Buren had fourteen prisoners, all severely wounded. He decided to evac them right away, which would avoid any conflict with the Russians, who were reported en route. That necessitated more off-loading of equipment and more delays, and so, by the time they were ready to send the little rover into the mountain, the sky had faint hints of the approaching dawn ripening its edges.
Larger than the PackBot Explorers made by iRobot and used for exploring caves and minefields in Afghanistan, the lower chassis of the Atomic Rover looked like a squashed shoe box with two sets of tank tracks at each side. The main set ran the length of the vehicle; at the front, another set of treads rose like arms, helping the critter climb over obstructions. On top of the robot was a small disk not unlike that used to pick up satellite transmissions; in this case it fed and received a stream of data to and from the base station, which was contained in a pair of large suitcases and a laptop about fifty yards from the mouth of the cave. In front of the disk were two very small video cameras, which fed high-definition optical and near-infrared images back to the station. A pair of radiation counters and isotope analyzers, along with a chemical warfare “sniffer,” were mounted near the nose of the tiny vehicle. A fuel cell propelled AR and could do so for roughly twelve hours.
As Van Buren watched, the device rolled across the gravel where they were standing and rambled onto the hardened apron the 747 had used to get out; it popped up on the lip of the cement near the entrance and moved inside. Two men controlled AR, one handling the driving and the other the sensors. Each lieutenant had been thoroughly cross-trained in his companion’s job and, if circumstances required, could handle the entire show himself.
The small vehicle stopped in the middle of the hangar-sized area and began scanning around. Since Ferguson and Conners hadn’t been found yet, Van Buren assumed they were somewhere inside, though he was starting to fear that the two men would not be found alive.
The radiation suits the team wore provided protection against alpha and beta waves, where the real danger was contamination by breathing or swallowing particles, or infection in open wounds. They could not, however, shield out gamma waves; safety there depended largely on limiting time and proximity to the source. Each man on the team carried several film sensors, badges similar to those worn by medical personnel in X-ray departments to record their exposure to potentially harmful radiation. Each suit had a sensor that would sound if the exposure levels exceeded the preset limits. Before disembarking, the gear would be shed and left at the site. Upon returning to Incirlik a strict decontamination and isolation procedure — VB’s experts jokingly referred to it as twenty Saturdays’ worth of baths — would be followed.
Captain Peterson peered over Van Buren’s shoulder. “Crazy fucks,” Peterson said, holding a small Palm-like computer device that analyzed the radiation data fed from the robot. “Crazy fucks.”
Coming from the mouth of any other member of the SF team, the words would have seemed normal. But Peterson wasn’t just a woman — she was short, weighed maybe a hundred pounds, and had the complexion of a porcelain doll. Van Buren could not have been more surprised if her head began spinning around on her body, and he stared at her, waiting either for an explanation or a ventriloquist to appear.
“How bad is it in there?” he asked.
“Layman’s terms?”
“Please.”
“If you stayed inside for four hours, you’d have about twice the lifetime dosage you would give a patient with Stage IV thyroid cancer,” she said. “Won’t kill you right off, but eventually it’ll catch up with you. They’ve got all sorts of different material. There’s a lot of low-level gamma rays, but they were working with some nastier stuff as well. They must’ve had an accident at one point, a small spill that they had to contain.”
The specialist began talking about radiation levels and probability curves, and Van Buren started to get lost in the details.
“Layman’s language,” he asked.
“There are a couple of hot spots that we have to watch for inside,” she said.
“What about our guys?”
“We can go in, but we stay away from the hot spots and limit exposure. Nobody more than an hour, and no one inside without a suit.”
“I meant Ferguson and Conners.”
“If they haven’t been inside too long — well, it depends on where they are and what else we find. We’re talking about long-term effects, how close they are, how susceptible to cancer they may be. It’s complicated.”
“Bottom line is, sooner they’re out the better,” said Van Buren.
“Amen.”
A large storage area at the left of the hangar had fifty-gallon drums packed with middle-level waste, mostly cesium 137 and cobalt 60 from medical applications. These generated gamma radiation partly shielded by a low, thick wall separating the space from the main hangar area. Almost directly opposite it at the right side of the building, microscopic amounts of uranium filled se
veral cement cracks, the remnants of the accident Peterson had speculated about. Besides presenting a danger, these traces suggested that the terrorists had had greater quantities and taken them away in the plane.
“This is what’s really scary,” said Captain Peterson, pointing to a chart display on one of the laptops. “That’s nitrate.”
“A bomb?” asked Van Buren.
“Has to be,” said Peterson.
“Uh-oh,” said one of the lieutenants driving AR.
A loud crack sounded through the speaker on the console. There was a flash in the screen, and the feed died. Cursing, the lieutenant’s fingers danced over the keyboard. Backup wire controls allowed the Rover to reverse its course, though the driver could not see where he was going and had to rely on the unit’s grid map.
“At least two guerrillas, maybe more, inside,” yelled the lieutenant on the monitor.
Van Buren pulled on his hood and ran toward the men crouched near the entrance to the hangar.
“Kalman’s in there,” said Lieutenant Yeger, who was in charge of AR’s four-man escort detail.
“Where?” said Van Buren.
“On the left.”
“Why did he go in?”
“He and Jacko went in to set up a backup relay antenna. The area where he was had been cleared. Jacko had started out, and Kalman was just about to. They were like, five yards apart, max.”
“Tell him to stay where he is.”
“I can’t. Radio’s out. Either he’s behind something that’s messing up the line-of-sight transmission, or the hangar shielding is killing it. I lost him on the com set.”
Peterson and two men dressed in the protective gear and carrying M4s ran up behind Van Buren as the guerrillas inside the mountain began firing at AR again. The rover stopped dead about a hundred feet from the entrance, its top blasted to pieces.
“We have to go in and get our people,” said the colonel. The hoods of the protective suits were equipped with voice-activated communications devices.
“Here,” said Peterson. “Come here and let me draw it out for you. There’s a few spots to avoid.”
She knelt and drew a diagram in the dirt, a kid working out a play in a pickup football game.
“This spot, you stay away from,” she said, showing where the worst of the radiation was. “Avoid these cracks. And keep your suit intact.”
The guerrillas were on a second level of the cave near the rear, above the hangar level. A team was waiting at the rear entrance to the facility, which Ferguson and Conners had used earlier. Yeger suggested that they make a feint at the entrance, drawing the attention of the people inside, while a team went in from the back. Van Buren agreed, after making sure they had their protective gear on.
The rear deck of the hangar where the gunmen were angled away, limiting their line of fire to the left side of the cave. This gave Van Buren’s men access to the interior — though it would bring them perilously close to the area contaminated by the uranium dust.
Of course, if the guerrillas came down to the main level, anyone going in could be easily cut down. The colonel decided to send a second rover — this one had no nickname, but looked almost identical to AR — inside to survey the area first. As they got ready to go, Peterson suggested they put a flash grenade on the robot to draw attention away if they needed to rescue Kalman or move under fire.
“No way to set it off,” said one of the rover controllers.
“Fuck hell there is,” said the diminutive woman. “Attach it to the front and pull the pin with the claw.”
Even Van Buren laughed at her eloquence.
Five minutes later, the robot ambled inside, not one but two grenades attached to the chassis by a thick band of duct tape. Peterson told them through the headset what she was seeing on the video. Her voice sounded almost seductive.
“You’re clean at the lip of the cave. One man, two on the ledge. There’s Kalman — he’s alive, I can see him moving. He’s on the left side, behind the lip of that wall,” she said.
“Team two ready at the back door?” Van Buren asked.
There was a slight delay while the message was relayed.
“Good to go,” said Peterson.
“Go,” said Van Buren.
9
HOKKAIDO, JAPAN
Rankin, Guns, and Massette unfolded themselves from the seats and walked toward the hatchway as the aircraft stopped rolling near the hangar area. Massette popped the door open, then jumped back — they were a good distance from the ground, with no ramp in sight.
A gray, four-engine DC-8 sat across the tarmac waiting for them, engines idling; the old aircraft had been leased by the American military and been commandeered to take them to Manila.
“Yo! Let’s go!” shouted a short, squat man, who stood on the ground about halfway between the two aircraft. “Let’s go!” he shouted again, his voice somehow loud enough to be heard over the idling engines. He was wearing civilian clothes, but his haircut and demeanor gave him away as military.
“Jump,” Rankin told Guns.
“Fuck,” said Massette, who could feel the pain in his leg already.
Rankin started to push him aside. Guns dropped to the floor and lowered himself, pulling his gear out with him as he hopped — literally, since he lost his balance and nearly toppled over — to the ground. Rankin just stepped off, though when he landed he wished he hadn’t, the sting punching his ankles. Massette finally decided to play it halfway, easing down to his butt and hanging his feet over before plopping to the ground.
“I’m Murphy,” said the man. “Where’s Rankin?”
“Yo,” said Rankin.
“You gotta get to Manila. This is your plane. Your boss has been trying to reach you.”
“Yeah, no shit. So who the hell are you?” said Rankin.
“I just told you.”
“You got to be a SEAL,” said Guns. “And I’m going to guess master chief, right?”
“And you’re a fuckin’ Marine,” sneered Murphy, who said nothing else as he walked back to the DC-8.
“How did they know that?” asked Massette.
“By smell,” said Rankin, pulling out his sat phone to call Corrine.
10
ON THE GROUND IN CHECHNYA
One by one, Van Buren’s team slipped into the cave while the rover moved forward to catch the guerrillas’ attention. The terrorists aimed their weapons at it, but did not fire; the audio feed picked up muffled conversation as the guerrillas discussed what to do about the miniature beast.
“Couple of people behind them,” whispered Peterson.
Van Buren was the next-to-last person inside. The team moved along the wall, crouching behind a low row of machines and broken crates. The point man stopped behind a pair of molded plastic chairs and aimed his M-4 toward the balcony.
“I can get one,” he whispered.
“Just hold,” said Van Buren. “Let the other team move into position.”
He nudged to the side, trying to locate Kalman. He thought he saw something moving in the dim light filtering in from the outside but couldn’t be sure. He resisted the temptation to run across and find him.
The rover stopped just before the wall beneath the guerrillas’ position, then backed slowly and began making a circle, primarily to draw their attention but also to check through an area of crates at the back to see if anyone was there. The second team, meanwhile, had entered from the back door and made its way to the edge of the ramp, using a simple scope device to observe the interior.
The seconds ticked off like the long hours of an interminable schoolday. Van Buren took a slow, controlled breath, vision narrowed to the dim viewer of the night-gear monocle. He fought off distractions — the thought of what he might tell his son about the mission tickled him a moment, then disappeared.
“Ready,” whispered Peterson.
“We go on the bang,” said Van Buren. “Shield your eyes.”
The rover slid to a stop. One of the guerr
illas stood and started to get down, climbing over the rail so he could go to it and examine it. The arm on the unit clicked, but nothing happened, the lieutenant having trouble manipulating it correctly.
Just pull the damn thing, Van Buren thought to himself. Then bam — the grenade flashed and exploded, a big Fourth of July firecracker going off at the back of the cave. The point man took out the terrorist on the balcony, while Yeger blasted the one who’d jumped down to examine the rover. A second flash-bang, tossed by the team at the ramp, exploded, followed by a pair of short bursts from MP-5s.
Van Buren ran across the open floor, looking for Kalman. Something hard bounced off his back — a ricochet that caught just the right angle — and he felt a stinging numbness in his arm. But he pushed up to his feet and found his man hunkered behind a row of long crates.
In the forty seconds or so that it took for the others to finish securing the hangar, the numbness in Van Buren’s arm spread to his neck, then up and around his face. His legs stiffened and he felt as if he were being choked. He grabbed Kalman by the arm, pulling him toward the mouth of the cave.
What would he tell James?
Van Buren reached the mouth of the cave, where men in space suits fell on Kalman, who was already protesting that he was fine. Someone shouted in Van Buren’s ear:
“Colonel, we’re advised that a convoy of Russian armored vehicles is on the highway roughly one hour away.”
“All right,” said Van Buren. His jaw hurt to move. “We’re wrapping up. Prepare the aircraft. Get the demolitions people in — blow the roof down.”
“Make it quick in there,” warned Peterson.
“Go, let’s go,” said Van Buren. “Where are Ferg and Conners?”
“They’re not here,” said Yeger. “We have two prisoners, two dead men.”
