Marko cringed. For a second, he wondered if the SEAL would pull out that oversized pistol he wore and shoot Marko between the eyes for mishandling the lift.
Instead Beckam opened the gate and waited as Marko slid the bridge and locked it in place. He jumped out onto the ice and spoke into the microphone headset he wore.
“Danny — it’s definitely Shoe-Goo. We’ve got three in the oven ready to pop. We caught a break. The series read: Charlie, Oscar, Papa, Echo, November and three digits, nine series.”
Beckam pressed the headset against his ear to hear the response. Then he nodded. “I sure as hell hoped you haven’t burned too many brain cells after all that post-mission party time in Little Creek.”
Beckam nodded and then returned to the lift. He pointed at Marko. “After you drop me, raise the lift. You’re gonna see a SEAL coming this way hell-bent-for-election. You’re not gonna breathe until he gets here. If you have to piss I expect you to wet your pants because I don’t want your hands off those controls. You understand you’re not to move for any reason?”
Marko nodded quickly, wondering how long he could actually hold his breath.
“Now get me back down into this hole, pronto.”
The basket dropped so fast that Beckam had to hold on to avoid getting thrown out.
CHAPTER 105
Beckam ducked back into the structure. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a pen and a small pad of paper.
“You guys come prepared?” Jack said, amazed that Beckam would have pen and paper in a combat zone.
“Yeah. It’s hard to remember everything with RPGs exploding around your ass.”
“What is your plan?”
“There are only a handful of these warheads in existence. The cost and time necessary to charge the Hafnium to the point where it becomes effective means you can only manufacture a couple of these warheads a year. These are the COPEN series; I recognized the serial numbers right away. COPEN is short for Copenhagen. Hafnium is the Latin translation for Copenhagen — a little inside joke from the bomb-builders at Los Alamos.”
He glanced up. “Normally that wouldn’t help us worth shit without the codes, but Danny, bless his heart, happens to have an eidetic memory.” Beckam looked at Jack. “Photographic. He’s got a photographic memory. It’s bailed us out of shit on more times that I can count. He says if the serials match up to what we’d trained on, he’d remember the code for each of the weapons.” Beckam glanced at his watch. “It’d be just our luck to have ‘em detonate before Danny gets down here.” Beckam copied the serial numbers onto his pad.
Once finished, he sat and, for the first time, almost appeared to relax. “Take a load off, Jack. We’ve got five, maybe ten minutes on our hands with nothing to do but wait.”
“You don’t look real nervous,” Jack said.
“If it’s our time to go, at least it’s gonna be fast. And what the helclass="underline" we did everything we could do.” Beckam glanced around the inside of the structure. “I just can’t get out of my mind what Fischer told me.”
Jack sat on a used aluminum equipment case. “What’s that?”
“How the Russians knew we’d found this place.” Beckam leaned forward. “He said that something you did down here triggered off a high-energy beam, like a microwave signal used for communications, but thousands of times stronger. It was aimed out into space, and Fischer said it cooked half the satellites operating in the southern hemisphere.”
“We felt it too,” Jack said. “When Leah got access to the lab, or whatever it is, something happened to all the handheld radios and GPS units operating at the time. They were fried.”
Beckam chuckled. “I got a feeling Dr. Andrews is gonna have the last laugh when all this is over. Seems to me when she got those power systems running again, this mother phoned home. Whoever set up this little chamber of horrors might have reason to return.”
Jack was interrupted by the sound of the aluminum basket hitting the ice.
“Skipper!”
“Here!” Beckam called back.
Jack turned as Frantino worked his tall frame through the entryway. “Jesus,” he said. “They made a mess out of this place.”
“That’s nothing compared to what’s in store if you can’t remember the codes and sequence for these little delights.”
Frantino grimaced when he saw the canisters lined up side by side.
Beckam read off the serial number for the first canister. “Any chance you happen to remember the codes?”
Frantino took a deep breath. “I’m gonna have to see the PALs in reverse order, since I always remember the arming codes first in sequence, then the disarming code — not to mention the sequence.”
“PALs?” Jack asked.
Beckam nodded. “Permissive Arming Links. Lingo generally used for traditional nukes, but these warheads use similar arming procedures, not quite as complicated since they have to arm ‘em in the field.” He glanced over at Frantino. “I’ll read off the serial numbers and you’ve got to match the codes.”
“What would happen if you fed in the wrong code?” Jack asked.
“They’d cook-off with a one minute delay unless the proper code was entered on a second attempt.”
“Then it was good we didn’t mess with them.”
Beckam glanced up. “Chances are, one of the warheads will blow before we get them all disarmed anyway.”
Jack decided then that his best contribution to this enterprise was to remain silent. As he watched, Beckam scribbled down the nine-digit code, repeating each letter and number in sequence while Frantino, eyes shut tight, recited the numbers from memory. He also told Beckam the time delay required between entering the two sets of digits.
“That’s it,” Frantino said, taking a deep breath. “Unless I had a brain fart and didn’t match the right set of codes with the right warhead, you should be good to go.”
Beckam hovered over the first warhead. He quickly entered the numbers into the keypad while Jacked watched over him.
“Get ready on your watch, Danny.”
Frantino pushed the sleeve of his jacket up, making his wristwatch visible. “Ready.”
“First sequence: Charlie-9er-2-1-Echo-4-Alpha-5-Fox-0.”
Beckam entered each digit as Jack watched on in fascination. When finished with the last digit he said, “Mark.”
Frantino counted down the required 15-second delay sequence between strings for the first warhead.
When Frantino hit zero, Beckam began entering the second string.
When the final digits had been entered, the LED readout on the panel flashed the remaining time on a counter and then went blank. Jack couldn’t help but notice that the warheads had less than eleven minutes remaining on their timers.
Within minutes, Beckam had successfully disarmed all three warheads.
He tossed the notepad to Frantino. “Copy down the arming codes, delays and sequence for each warhead.”
Frantino’s eyes opened wide.
“We have Russians on the way, Danny. No time for explanations.”
Frantino nodded and then began to scribble the codes on the torn pieces of paper.
“Why three?” Jack asked. “If what you say is right about the blast, one of these would vaporize a good part of the valley.”
“Redundancy is standard procedure for nuclear-tactical combat. Plus, we don’t know what this structure’s made of. Fischer obviously wants to make sure it’s useless to the Russians.”
“Could those be detonated now?” Jack eyed the bombs.
Beckam shook his head. “Unless the arming codes are inserted, they are as safe as Aunt Millie’s Strawberry Preserves. You could toss them off a cliff and they wouldn’t detonate — although I wouldn’t test my theory in a populated zone.” He glanced up. “Danny, get back into position. I’ve got to finish down here. I’ll join up with you in twenty minutes.”