Sandor was still wearing the SEAL helmet, his headphones now constantly ringing with the various voices that were on the call, a headache in the making when he needed a clear mind. He stepped ahead of the others as they made their way to the end of the pier.
“Gentlemen,” he broke in, his voice loud and firm over the microphone, “with all due respect I would appreciate it if you would all shut the hell up right now except for Captain Krause. We’re in the middle of trying to resolve this crisis and you’ll just have to stay tuned for results. Sir?”
“Go ahead,” the CO said.
“I’ve got Major Formanek and Captain Franz heading the team to disable these nukes. I need a straight answer sir. Am I dealing with the best available technicians?”
There was silence on the line for a moment. Then Krause said, “Let me get this straight. You’re in the middle of a hurricane with fifteen minutes to go before your ass winds up in the center of a nuclear explosion, and you want to know if there’s a more qualified group to handle this situation?”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking.”
“You’ve got balls, son, I’ll give you that, so let me set you straight. If the sun was shining and I had two days to put a group together, I’d still want Carol Franz leading the charge. You copy that?”
For the second time that day, Krause made him smile. “Copy that, and thank you, captain.”
Sandor turned back to the river, where two Coast Guard boats awaited. He looked to Formanek, Franz, and the other six members of their squad. “So, we need to jump in these speedboats, corral the pods while they’re still running downstream, then disarm them both. That’s the plan?”
“That’s the plan,” the major agreed.
“All right, anyone not absolutely necessary to the mission should get the hell out of here now. We have no idea what’s really in these floating coffins, but let’s put as few people directly in harm’s way as we need to.”
“We’re all necessary,” Captain Franz told him.
“We have two of the terrorists, both have been shot, any chance they might be helpful to have along?”
“Highly doubtful,” Franz said. “There’s still the chance they’re willing to die for this cause, whatever it is, and so they may lie to us or slow us down. I’d rather we rely on our own team,” she said.
“All right then,” Sandor agreed, “let’s move out,” and they jumped into two waiting speedboats and took off upriver.
It took less than two minutes for them to reach the Coast Guard cruisers that were heading south as escorts alongside the two bombs. The pods had been set to track slowly, actually fighting the current so the detonation of the nuclear devices would occur as close to the refinery as possible while giving the terrorists time to get away in their truck.
Sandor was on the boat with Captain Franz, Major Formanek in charge of the other.
“If they’re on timers we can’t waste another moment,” Franz told her squad. “From what we know, it’s unlikely that any sort of triggering mechanism is tied to the hatches. The men involved had neither the time nor the expertise to rig that, would you agree, Agent Sandor?”
He nodded, for an instant trying to recall the last time someone had referred to him as “Agent Sandor.”
“You agree, major?” she asked into her headset.
Formanek gave the thumbs-up from across the way.
“If we’re wrong,” she went on, “it could be a disaster, but I think it would be worse to lose the opportunity to disarm these weapons because we allowed the clock to run out on us while we tried to figure a safer way to get inside the pods.”
“It’s your show now,” Sandor told her.
Each of their boats was fitted with a large netting device that could be employed for various purposes. Today they would be used to haul in the fiberglass encasements, allowing the technicians to work on them as they continued to run alongside the USCG vessels. This way they did not have to interfere with the programmed navigation systems in case they were somehow part of a triggering device. With long, expandable aluminum rods, the nets were extended to corral the pods and secure them while still moving downstream.
The maneuver was fairly simple and within less than two minutes each pod was drawn next to the railing of the boats. The two teams immediately went to work, Franz leading the way to open one, Formanek the other.
The captain had been correct: unbolting the hatches did not ignite any sort of defensive device. Once they got inside, however, the real danger began.
“You were right,” Captain Franz reported to Sandor. “There’s a digital display and it shows there’s not more than ten minutes still remaining here.”
“And mine,” the major reported from the other boat.
“The problem is that the timer appears to have been set with an acceleration device.” She looked across at Formanek, speaking into her headset. “Is that what you get sir?”
“Affirmative,” Formanek replied.
“Which means,” Sandor said as he peered over her shoulder at the interior of the gray fiberglass shell, “any attempt to disarm the mechanism…”
“Is designed to bypass the timer and set it off.” She finished the thought.
“How do you work around that?”
Franz and two of her men already had their heads and hands inside the pod now. “The nuclear device is fairly antiquated,” she explained, “appears to be an old Soviet RA-115. But the timer is modern, digital and hardwired on a circuit board. No red or green wire to clip here.” She turned around and looked up at Sandor. “So, if you can’t take a chance playing with the trigger, it’s time to unload the gun.”
Sandor’s earphones suddenly filled with a battery of questions, one voice atop another from Washington, until he again reminded all of them to pipe down and wait until he had an update. Captain Franz and Major Formanek, meanwhile, agreed that there was no room inside the pod for anyone to enter and work on the nuclear weapons that way, and there was no way to get them on land with enough time to tackle the problem from there. Without wasting another moment, Franz pulled off her helmet, took a couple of hand tools from her kit, and had two of the men grab her by the ankles and lower her, head down, into the pod. Formanek did the same with his team.
All the while the rain pelted them, the winds rocked the small craft, and they continued their inexorable path downriver. Sandor tried to stay out of the way, but he could not resist inching forward to see what progress, if any, she was making.
After a couple of tense minutes hanging over the edge of the boat into the fiberglass shell, Franz said, “Weapons-grade plutonium.”
One of the young members of her team glanced at Sandor. “The radioactivity exists,” he explained, “but until it’s detonated it poses no real danger.”
“I understand weapons-grade plutonium,” Sandor replied. “If we all don’t get blown to smithereens, at least we don’t have to worry about glowing in the dark afterward.”
No one laughed.
Captain Franz asked for a ratchet wrench, 24 mm. They handed it down to her and, after another few minutes, she said, “I think I’ve got it. Tell the major to try twenty-four millimeters on the interior plate.”
The information was promptly conveyed to the other boat.
Then, a few moments later, she said, “I’ve got it open. Now pull me up. And slowly.”
They did so and, as she emerged, she was holding a sphere in her hands, smaller than a soccer ball and appearing as harmless as that. They helped her to her feet as she continued to cradle the destructive orb in her hands. “Open the box,” she ordered, and carefully placed the plutonium into a lead-lined case on the deck, then grabbed a headphone from one of the men. “How far has the major gotten?”