Craig swung open the rover’s rear door. He bent to search, scrambling under the back seat. Nothing but a watercooler and thermos jugs, not even a tire jack. It was probably buried somewhere under the heavy warhead.
He thrust his hand under the front seat, patting around. Where were those tools? There, something long, cold, and hard. He yanked out a foot-long screwdriver smudged with oil and grime.
“I’ve got something.”
“Quickly!”
Craig tossed the screwdriver over the back seat. Ursov caught it and immediately began to pry open the shoebox on top of the warhead. Beads of sweat drooled down the general’s ruddy face. His close-cropped gray hair was plastered to the side of his head.
The general bent over the device and spoke quietly, almost reverently. “I have learned during these disarmament inspections that you Americans have installed numerous Permissive Action Links so that your warheads cannot be accidentally detonated. Unfortunately, when Mr. Waterloo armed this weapon, he circumvented those protective devices.” He grunted as he popped off a cover, then started working with the screwdriver again.
“Therefore, all I must do is to engage the PAL without setting off the explosive lenses surrounding the bomb core —” He slipped and the blade of the screwdriver jammed deep inside the Permissive Action Link. He cursed, flailing his hand and blowing on his skinned knuckles.
Craig felt a chill run through him as he hurried around the vehicle. He desperately wanted to ask what had happened, but he knew he couldn’t afford to jar General Ursov out of his concentration.
The helicopter’s throbbing rotors broke the desert silence above; Craig heard faint warbling sirens in the distance, coming closer — but the NEST or EOD teams would get here too late. The countdown clock’s LED showed only a minute and a half remaining. They would all die together.
Ursov muttered to himself. He swiped sweat from his face with his forearm. Rain blew inside the back compartment. “The timer will not disengage!”
Craig heard a sudden pop, then a crackle, as if something had shorted in the warhead. Seconds later Ursov rattled the screwdriver around and pounded on the casing. Craig looked on, his eyes wide. His breath quickened.
Blinking in the sunlight, he shaded his eyes to peer hopelessly up at the hovering helicopter. In the instantaneous nuclear flash, the crew wouldn’t feel a thing, wouldn’t know what had hit them.
“Stand back,” Ursov snapped, not looking at him.
Craig staggered to the front of the vehicle, as if that might protect him. What else could he do?
“I said, stand back!” Clenching his hand and hammering with long swipes of the screwdriver, General Ursov chipped away at the breach in the warhead, pounding and twisting in the small hole he had opened in the shoe-box.
The Russian looked like a madman, his eyes red, his face full of sweat. He battered at the interior, and tiny beads of a solid material came pattering out. Again and again he struck the delicate systems, digging deep inside.
Suddenly, a burst of metallic shavings and charcoal-gray dust spewed from the hole like a tiny smoke bomb. Craig threw himself backward. Ursov dropped the screwdriver and staggered back out of the cargo compartment. He reeled in the glaring sunlight. The numbers of the LED counted down — less than a minute.
The Russian general stumbled away from the land rover. “Get away!” he cried hoarsely. He waved a hand spattered with gray dust. “Quickly! It is going to explode!”
Going to explode? Craig felt frozen with fear. Does he expect me to run away from a nuclear fireball?
But unreasoning instinct kicked in. Feeling as if he were moving in slow motion, Craig sprinted away from the rover, ducking deeper into the washout gully, ignoring the ankle-deep streams of brown water and searching for some kind of shelter. While Ursov ran at an angle from him, Craig bolted for an outcropping of rock, pumping his shoes in the uncertain mud. He tripped over a rock, but he scrambled back to his feet and picked up speed running full bore.
Above him the helicopter tilted its wings and buzzed away, uselessly trying to flee the impending holocaust.
Craig scrambled over a smooth table of rock. Sliding down in a spider-walk, he lunged out to get behind the outcropping. His pants ripped, and he winced as he banged his knee, cutting open a gash. He tumbled into a small depression behind the rocks, drenched with water and painted with mud.
No matter how far he had run, he remained well within the fireball zone. Perhaps it would be better just to stay here.
He thought fleetingly of Trish, but the recent memories of Paige overwhelmed him. Had the vicious Sally Montry managed to drive her hostage beyond the lethal radius of the weapon? Craig sucked in a burning breath as he realized all the opportunities he had missed with her.
He couldn’t hear General Ursov, and he wasn’t about to peek around the natural shelter to find the man, to thank him for trying. But it wouldn’t matter anyway since everything around would be instantly incinerated —
He heard the pop of an explosion. A laughably small echo and thump.
Startled, Craig waited for something else to happen, but there was nothing. Only the sound of the response team sirens growing louder, and the distant echoes of thunder.
Craig crawled around the rock, wincing as he nursed his battered leg. Some distance away, General Ursov raised his arm, waving for assistance.
Smoke curled up from the land rover, which had rolled onto its side, as if a giant had smacked it aside. The tailgate was bent up and torn away. The small explosion hadn’t completely destroyed the vehicle, but it had been enough to blow away the back end.
Some of the high explosives had detonated, but Ursov had somehow prevented the nuclear core from undergoing a chain reaction. The small explosion had damaged the vehicle, but nothing more. The atomic bomb had been contained.
Dizzily, Craig slumped back against the rock as he heard the sirens grow louder, and the sound of approaching helicopters. Within minutes the place would be swarming with help.
But he still had to make sure Paige was all right.
CHAPTER 48
One of the Air Force helicopters came low to the ground, kicking up sprays of water and sand; a cloud of dust swirled around the heavily armed behemoth as it bumped to a landing, settling onto the soft ground.
Two armed security policemen jumped down from the passenger compartment and spread out, fanning the area with their automatic weapons — but they didn’t leave the immediate vicinity of the craft.
Dressed in white protective gear with hoods, three members of the NEST response scrambled out. One carried a radiation detector and held up a gloved hand, sweeping it from side to side, focusing on the site of the explosion, while the others drew up short. They stood warily back from the remains of the blasted land rover and the ruined warhead.
A hundred yards away, Craig pulled himself up on the slick outcropping of rock and watched the team. A day late and a dollar short, he thought. Good thing Ursov had accomplished whatever it was he had done, somehow damaging the stolen warhead enough to prevent it from going critical.
One of the security men spotted the Russian general from his shallow hiding place. Ursov limped toward them, wiping at an ash-like gray substance that clung to his shirt. The stocky man looked dazed, but held himself upright as he painfully made his way across the desert.
The NEST person with the radiation detector motioned toward the main helicopter, while medical teams and decontamination units rushed toward Ursov. Two women hauled out a long hose and started unreeling it, stopping just in front of the Russian. They unfolded a plastic container like a child’s swimming pool and instructed the general to step into it. They used their gloved hands to tear off his shirt and pants, stuffing them into plastic contamination bags.