“Our scientists believe that the viability of the tubes’ life support systems, once disconnected from the structure, will be limited. How long they’ll last, we can’t say. That means that you—.”
“Forget it, Fischer. I’d rather see these people dead, than living in some kind of glass-encased prison, being tested like rats in laboratory.”
“You speak a collection of Native American languages — is that correct?”
“Enough to have your ass kicked on most reservations.”
Fischer smiled despite himself. “You could work with us gathering information.”
Leah reared back. “You don’t give a shit about these people, do you? All you care about is finding more about whoever built the laboratory.”
Fischer shrugged. “The technologies that we obtained could offer the United States an opportunity to lead the world for generations in advanced technologies spanning every application thinkable.”
“You mean weapons.”
“Defense, medical technologies, power supplies spanning centuries, transportation — the opportunities are infinite.”
“Forget it, Fischer. Not interested.”
Before Fischer was able to reply, one of the scientists shouted and then clambered over the equipment.
Fischer jumped up as the scientist waved his hands wildly, while pointing back toward the life-support tubes. Fischer nodded several times and his face paled visibly.
He turned and grabbed Leah by her parka and yanked her to her feet. “You talk quite a game, Dr. Andrews. Let’s see just how callous you are.”
“What’s happening?”
“Apparently, the pods’ power systems are beginning to fail.” He nodded toward the scientists, who were busy ripping the insulation off the tubes. “One of the inhabitants is suffering a seizure — a young female.”
Leah felt her face going numb with the realization that it must be the little girl she’d seen when they first found the tubes and the cliff dwellers.
She wheeled around, turning her back to Fischer. “Get these cuffs off and let me get to work.”
CHAPTER 102
Jack led Beckam through the jumbled mess of cutting tools and equipment containers left behind by the science crew, past both doors, and into the second chamber, where the three metallic barrels sat side by side.
Beckam knelt and didn’t touch them but studied each with the practiced precision of a weapons expert.
To Jack, they seemed much too small to release a mushroom cloud like he’d seen on television hundreds of time before. “Are they…?”
Beckam didn’t respond. He was busy examining the casings on the black canisters.
Jack crouched down and studied the cases. He resisted the urge to reach out and touch metallic surface of the barrels. “Nukes?”
“No,” Beckam said. He glanced over at Jack and offered a faint smile. “If I tell you what they are, I’m supposed to kill you.”
Jack found himself smiling in return, in spite of the situation. “You’ve killed me already. What are they?”
“Hafnium-isomer warheads.” His fingertips worked over the control panel as he talked. “These are the next-generation tactical weapons. Super secret, James Bond.”
“How do they work?”
“Each one of these contains about twenty pounds of charged Hafnium,” Beckam said.
Jack shrugged.
“You ever take physics? Hafnium is a metal, atomic number 87 on the periodic scale. To make a bomb you bombard it with a super-high-energy source. Think of it like a charged battery from hell. You heat the Hafnium with a short burst of X-rays and this mother explodes with a force ten-thousand times as strong as TNT. It’ll sterilize a half-mile radius with enough gamma radiation to—”
“To turn all living tissue to shoe-goo,” Jack said, feeling a chill run down his spine. “Right?”
“Since there’s no fission, it leaves no trace radiation like a nuclear detonation. Most people think these are just theoretical weapons. That they haven’t been developed. So they can be used with what we call plausible deniability. Each of these will detonate with the force of about 500 tons of TNT. That’s not on the scale when it comes to tactical nukes, but for this kind of job, they happen to be perfect.”
“Jesus,” Jack whispered. “I bet you never thought you’d see one of these in action.”
Beckam glanced up from the control panel, locking his gaze on Jack for a second. “How do you think we blew up that nuclear weapons facility in Iran last year and got away with it?”
“You did that?”
Beckam nodded, wincing slightly. “Destroyed the facility and fried every Iranian scientist and quite a few Russian and French scientists and technicians to boot. With weapons that supposedly don’t exist.” He turned back to the three bombs.
“Can you disarm ‘em?”
On the top of each canister sat a raised, lit panel six inches long by three inches wide. Next to the panel were two buttons. Beckam reached down and depressed both buttons at the same time. The panel flipped open, exposing a series of keys. Then he slid one of the canisters clear of the other two and began scanning the side.
“What are you looking for?” Jack asked.
“Serial numbers on the casing. I want to see if these are the same weapons we trained on for the Iranian mission.” He glanced at Jack. “There are literary only a handful of these warheads in existence. It is possible once these went back into storage that the codes weren’t changed.”
“Wouldn’t you need a code book, or something?”
“Yeah, you’d need a codebook to arm and disarm the weapon while in the field. The codes are two strings of nine digits consisting of letters and numbers. In addition each warhead had a specific time delay required between entering of the first string and second. If the book said to enter the strings ten seconds apart, the arming mechanism would lock out if you didn’t hit the first digit of the second string within two seconds of the set delay.”
Jack felt his heart sink as Beckam continued to feel along the side of the casing.
“Bingo.” Beckam crouched sideways and examined the serial number cut into the case.
“Without the code books, what can you do?”
Beckam favored him with a Buddha-like smile. “Never underestimate resourcefulness of a SEAL.”
CHAPTER 103
Ridley shouted over the roar of the propane preheater. “How much fuel have you put into the wing tanks?”
Garrett pulled back the hood off his jacket. “Five hundred gallons; how much more do you want?”
“That’s going to get you from here to the end of the runway, son.”
Garrett nodded and pointed toward the mechanics, Perez and Lyon, as they loaded additional fifty-gallon barrels of high-octane fuel onto sleds attached to the snow machines. “We have more on the way.”
“That and what the Russians already pumped into the tanks will have to do,” Ridley said. He pointed toward the Russian tractor. “I found a battery in the equipment shed. We’re going to drag this old war horse through the sastrugi and onto smooth ice with the tractor.”
Paulson stuck his head out the side cockpit window and shouted. “You about got this thing patched up, Mac?”
“I sure as hell hope you know what you’re doing, because this bomber doesn’t fly itself like that overpowered pimp wagon sitting back in Chile.”
Paulson winked. “You just get those engines cranked up.”
“One hour,” Ridley shouted, “and we’re out of here — for better or worse.”
CHAPTER 104
“Get me to the surface!”
Marko jumped at the sound of Gus Beckam’s voice coming from the bottom of the crevasse. His hands moved over the elevator controls almost like it were Beckam operating them himself. When the basket hit the tripod Beckam had to hang on to avoid being thrown from the basket.