‘The plutonium,’ Nina interrupted with inspired urgency. ‘The plutonium!’ She ran back — not to her husband, but to the open container. The sinister grey sphere squatted within.
‘What about it?’ Eddie asked, puzzled. ‘You going to blow the door open with a nuclear bomb?’
‘Not quite.’ She went to one of the other metal cases and unlatched it, revealing a second sphere inside. ‘But I did some research about nuclear weapons on the flight to China.’ She gave him the dark smile of someone who had exhausted all other options but the desperate — or demented. ‘You know how much plutonium you need to achieve critical mass? Because I do.’
The freighter’s whole crew, including the loadmaster, were now sealed inside the cockpit. ‘I can’t tell what they’re doing,’ said one man, watching his CCTV monitor intently. ‘Why the hell didn’t we get this upgraded to HD?’
‘Take over,’ Petrov told his co-pilot, leaving his seat to see for himself. The other man continued to guide the An-124 on its long, slow circle of the airbase; the last update from the control tower maintained that the wreckage would be cleared from the runway within minutes, and troops were working flat out to fill the hole in the concrete with earth. Landing would still be risky, but if the North Koreans packed it firmly enough, there was a good chance that the Antonov — built to operate from battle-damaged runways — would make it over the crater with minimal damage.
Minimal extra damage, at least; the aircraft had already suffered plenty, one landing wheel all but wrenched off and the rear doors and ramp jammed open. His clients would be paying through the nose for all the repairs…
He put financial reparations to the back of his mind as he studied the screen. It showed the front of the hold, looking towards the nose. The bald man appeared injured, bloody patches on his chest and thigh, but he had moved to hunch against the remaining wooden crate. The woman, who seemed somehow familiar, had opened up two other cases.
‘Oh, shit,’ he whispered. He didn’t need high definition to identify the warning trefoils on them. ‘She’s messing with the nukes!’
The co-pilot, like all the crew a Russian air force veteran, looked around in alarm. ‘She can’t set one off, can she?’
‘I don’t think so, but…’ He watched as the woman lifted out one case’s contents and placed it on the deck. It looked like a ball, but from her strained movements it was much heavier than its small size suggested… ‘Fuck me!’ he said, suddenly afraid. ‘It must be uranium, or plutonium — it’s the only thing that could weigh so much.’
‘She won’t blow anything up that way,’ said the crewman, mystified, as she wrapped the sphere in a cargo strap, then tied it to one of the rings in the floor.
‘I still don’t like it. We should try to take them out ourselves before landing.’
‘The bald guy’s still got a gun,’ the loadmaster pointed out. The stowaway was in a good position to cover the ladder, and even wounded seemed fully capable of defending himself.
‘We can’t just sit here and wait for them to do whatever it is they’re doing.’ Petrov regarded the monitor again as the woman moved to the other open case. Rather than take out its sphere, though, she used a second strap to secure it inside, then carefully tipped the container on its side. She then pushed it across the deck until it was lined up with the sphere on the floor and tied another strap to it. ‘Whatever they are doing.’
It became clear that an answer would soon arrive as the woman checked her handiwork, then hurried to an intercom system at the side of the hold. She lifted the handset, and a buzzer sounded in the cockpit.
Petrov was still wearing his headset. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said, watching the screen closely as the crewman switched him in. ‘This is the captain,’ he said in English. ‘What do you want?’
‘Hi,’ the woman replied, her accent American. ‘We want a couple of things. First, let us into the cockpit. Second, fly us to South Korea. Sorry for wrecking your plane, by the way.’
‘I will not let you into the cockpit, and I will not fly you to South Korea!’ Petrov told her firmly. ‘We will land at Tonyong in a few minutes. I suggest you jump out the back, it will be quicker and less painful.’ The crew, listening in on their own headphones, smiled at his grim joke.
‘You know what else is painful?’ said the woman. ‘Dying of radiation poisoning.’
‘You can’t set off the bombs. There are safety features.’
‘I’m not going to set off the bombs. But what I am going to do is get down behind that big box full of gold bars,’ she pointed at the crate against which her companion was sheltering, ‘while I pull these two plutonium spheres together. They’re both just below the size at which they’ll reach critical mass so if they touch, or even get too close to each other, they’ll release a big burst of gamma radiation. You know what that is, I assume?’
The pilot had not worked directly with nuclear weapons during his time in the military, but he had become familiar with their basics. ‘Yes, I do,’ he said uncomfortably.
‘And what it’ll do to you?’
‘It ain’t gonna turn you into the Hulk!’ the bald man called out in the background.
‘It will kill you too,’ said Petrov, starting to sweat.
‘Not necessarily. Gold’s just as good as lead at blocking radiation. A lot more expensive, obviously, but we’ve got something like thirty million dollars’ worth of it here. We’ll be safe behind it, but the gamma rays’ll go straight through aluminum like it’s tissue paper. Planes are made of aluminum, right? Including the floor?’ She pointed at the hold’s ceiling above the first sphere, directly beneath the cockpit.
‘If we die, the plane will crash! You will die too!’
‘You won’t die right away. It might take hours, days, even weeks. But from everything I’ve heard about radiation poisoning, you’ll wish you’d died instantly. The North Koreans will have killed us by then… but if you take us to South Korea, we can all stay alive.’
The Antonov’s crew exchanged worried looks. ‘You would not do this!’ said Petrov, trying not to let his concern show in his voice, but not succeeding.
‘I would. Because it’s the only way we have to get out of this. So are you going to do what I say?’
‘No!’
‘Your choice.’ The figure on the screen hung up the handset, the captain hearing a loud click in his headphones as she disconnected.
‘She’s bluffing,’ he assured his crew, watching her toss the long strap attached to the case over the gold crate and join the man behind it. ‘She must be!’
‘You know this is the most fucking insane thing you’ve ever done, right?’ said Eddie as Nina crouched beside him.
‘I don’t even know if it’ll work,’ she admitted. ‘As far as I know it should, but I’m not a nuclear physicist.’
‘Shame we haven’t got that arsehole Fenrir Mikkelsson here to test it on. And will this gold really block the radiation?’
‘Again, I think it should, but…’ She gave him a resigned look. ‘Hopefully we won’t have to find out.’
She pulled the strap. The case, the plutonium protruding from its open top, slowly scraped along the deck towards the other sphere.
‘She’s doing it!’ cried the loadmaster, staring in horror at the screen. ‘She’s fucking doing it!’
The co-pilot turned in his seat. ‘Will it really kill us?’
‘I don’t know!’ said the pilot. ‘She seems to know what she’s talking about, but… I don’t know!’