The crew member’s sudden cursing distracted the two agents who’d been taking Samara away from the school. When the agents turned to look behind them at the TV crew, Samara broke free and started running to the school, getting some ten yards ahead of the agents and crew before Amir’s satellite signal detonated Samara’s suit.
In the blinding, burning flash, Samara met her son, her husband, her mother, her father and smiled as the roaring moment of death hurtled her to communion in paradise.
The concussion wave sent the agents and Brazilian crew skimming over parked vehicles.
A terrifying thud rocked the gym.
The sharpshooter missed his target.
The gunfire triggered screams.
The death signal had reached Samara but the NSA’s pulse had stopped it from reaching Logan. Walker had tackled him, pulling him away from the pope, covering the boy with his body.
Dazed and on the floor, the pope stared at them. Agents, weapons drawn, whisked the pope from the school and into an armor-plated SUV.
Walker tore Logan’s suit from him; other agents and officers rushed to help.
Children cried in the chaos as school alarm bells clanged and all the gym’s doors were thrust open.
“Get everybody out!” Walker shouted, then pointed to sandbags behind the stage. “Get as many of those as you can!”
They buried Logan’s suit under sandbags, then hurried him out with the others, evacuating the building in under a minute.
In the command post, Maggie was hysterical.
“What happened! Somebody tell me!”
Agents tried frantically to restore power, switching on a generator. The console flicked back to life. Ig noring Maggie’s pleas, the agents worked on restoring order in the aftermath of the attack.
The papal motorcade was shrouded in dust as it raced down an escape route over vacant fields to the Lone Tree County Fairgrounds. The pope was rushed into a helicopter which lifted off to an undisclosed location under jet fighter escort.
Power returned.
A fire burned at the site of the explosion, giving rise to a small cloud. Paramedics aided the wounded agents and journalists. Miraculously, their injuries were not life-threatening.
Federal agents scrambled to assess the scope of the attack, while police officers helped get people away from the school area.
Colby ordered a controlled evacuation of the large gathering at Buffalo Breaks.
“Don’t let them panic. Do it section by section, be ginning with those closest to the large stage!”
News crews spoke to their desks, who had been trying repeatedly to reach them.
Two minutes and forty-seven seconds after the in cident, a NewYork wire service issued the first words: EX PLOSION AT PAPAL VISIT TO U.S.-CASUALTIES
The breaking news alert flashed in newsrooms around the world, to TVs, Web sites, and public crawlers in Times Square, Tokyo, London, Toronto, Hong Kong, Berlin, Shanghai.
Within minutes the world knew of the attack.
Amid the confusion, Walker got Logan into a deputy’s jacket and as they headed through the park ing lot, Graham called Walker. After they exchanged information, Walker ordered Maggie Conlin released, then took Logan directly to the command post truck.
As Maggie emerged from the RV, her eyes found her son. She dropped to her knees and opened her arms.
Logan ran to her.
Against the spectral cloud of Samara’s explosion, Maggie and Logan held each other, as the horror reeled around them.
Rick Mofina
Six Seconds
Epilogue
On the day of the attack, the Vatican was steadfast against kneeling before a terrorist act. Hours after the scale of the incident became evident, the Vatican insisted that all the pilgrims who were sent away from the open-air Mass at the Buffalo Breaks be invited back.
Nearly all returned. Calm prevailed over the traffic gridlock and that evening the pope celebrated the work of Sister Beatrice in a ceremony lit with one hundred thousand candles. He called for peace, tolerance, under standing and love for all people of the world, likening those virtues to the stars that would guide humanity through its night of fear.
The investigation by U.S. and international security agencies led to a mercenary hiding in Algeria. The soldier, whose nationality was never determined, ad mitted to taking part in the assault on Samara’s family. His admission led to other suspects and a trial for their crimes in an Iraqi court.
All were hanged.
Other global investigations resulted in the destruc tion of much of Amir’s network, the arrest of several commanders and agents in the organization’s cells in Ethiopia, Morocco, South Africa, Spain, Italy, Malay sia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
The investigation failed to find and arrest “the Believer,” who was thought to have vanished some where in The Empty Quarter of Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
In Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, working with the Canadian Security Intelligence Ser vice, the CIA, the FBI, British, German, French, Italian, Egyptian intelligence and other investigators around the world, concluded that Ray Tarver, his wife and their two children had been murdered by agents of Amir’s network.
Interrogations of captured operatives in Berlin, Cairo, Rome and Paris enabled them to piece together what had happened.
When the network had discovered that Tarver, a reporter from Washington, D.C., was going to break the story of the attack, Amir devised the strategy to lure Tarver to the Rockies with the promise of a major story. Ray Tarver and his family were then murdered in what appeared to be a wilderness tragedy.
Kate Morrow, Tarver’s former newsroom colleague, began writing a book about the case and the price he and his family paid. Part of the earnings would go to a jour nalism scholarship Ray’s former wire service helped es tablish in his name.
The book’s cover bore the powerful news photo graph of the moment Maggie and Logan were reunited after the attack. It was shot that day by Luke Rappel, a teenage journalism student. The image would become
Six Seconds 467 known worldwide as the iconic portrait of the tragedy and go on to win many awards.
For his part, Graham needed time alone in the Alberta Rockies, where he’d spent entire days search ing the Faust River for answers. Had he not been there at the outset, mourning Nora, he would not have found Emily Tarver, or the thread that led to the Conlins and the plot.
Had it all happened for a reason?
He didn’t know.
Had he found a measure of redemption?
He didn’t know.
For his action from the Faust River to Cold Butte,
Graham was told he would receive the Governor General’s Medal of Bravery. There was also talk that Graham, Walker and Takayasu’s team were being consid ered for the President’s Medal of Valor. And all of the people involved in thwarting the assassination were invited to the Vatican, where the pope thanked them per sonally.
Because Maggie’s information contributed to the capture of key operatives in Amir’s global network, a Manhattan law firm offered to represent her without charge, to ensure she received a fair portion of reward money posted by international security agencies. The amount sought was half a million dollars.
Jake Conlin was buried in a small cemetery in Northern California near a place where his parents had gone on vacation every summer. As a boy, Jake lived for the adventure of the long coastal drive. It nurtured his love for the road.
After the funeral, Maggie took comfort in Jake’s
468 Rick Mofina final e-mail message to her. She shared it with Logan during counseling sessions.
“He came back to us in the end, honey, always remember that.”
Samara lived in her video.
She became known to the world as it played repeat edly in the postincident analysis of what came to be “The Montana Attack.” It gave rise to debates and reviews of foreign policy, security, religion and global terrorism.