He wheeled the tool cart over to the missile and parked it next to the warhead. Now, how on earth did one open this thing?
Andrew Bryant paced in the Operations Room at FBI headquarters. Angel Lightfoote and J. P. Rideout were there with him, as were several other members from Larry Kanter's former division, as well as representatives from the CIA and the US Air Force. Everything had happened so quickly, too quickly, but he knew that was the nature of every crisis. For better or worse, it was now centered at the FBI — Savas and Miller, and Mjolnir kidnapping Cohen, had seen to that. This made Kanter's Operations Room as good a congregation point as any. Live feeds to similar crises management teams at the CIA, the air force, and the Pentagon had been established.
Two monitors showed live satellite feeds from the airport. What had been much easier to see a little while before was now mostly obscured by smoke pouring from a large fuel fire. The dark plane identified by Inherp was nowhere to be seen.
The phone rang. Bryant pivoted quickly and watched as Rideout ID'd the call. “It's Inherp,” he said flatly.
“Pick it up, then!” snapped Bryant.
Rideout did so. The call went live to speakers in the room. A computer broke down the speech in real time and flashed it on one of the monitors in front of them.
“This is Michael Inherp.” The sounds of automatic weapons could be heard over the sound system. “We are under heavy fire from Mjolnir troops. I am with Rebecca Cohen and Frank Miller. Miller is wounded in the leg, and John Savas has left us to intercept a helicopter coming in to land. We presume it is here to evacuate William Gunn.”
An air force major looked at Bryant. “Fifteen minutes until the fighters can engage.”
Bryant nodded and spoke into a microphone around his neck. “Inherp, this is Andrew Bryant, FBI. I need to know—”
“Wait!” interrupted Inherp. “The plane has taken off. I repeat, the plane has taken off. It is loaded with the missile. Husaam Jordan is on the plane.”
Heads turned and voices mumbled beneath the background sounds over the speakers. The air force major spoke. “Inherp — are you sure? The missile is onboard?”
“Yes, sir. I saw it loaded myself.”
“Do you know where they are headed? What is their target?”
“No, sir. Only something important. Something game-changing, sir. Mr. Gunn believes it will cause a world war with the Muslim nations.”
“Damn it, Inherp!” yelled Bryant, “we need to know where this plane is headed.”
“Please, listen to me! Agent Jordan is on the plane. He just called Agent Miller. He must be with the missile. He needs experts to tell him how to disarm it! If we can't shoot the plane down, we can deactivate the missile!”
Voices spoke rapidly over each other in the room, over the phone links with CIA and the Pentagon. Faintly someone could be heard over the speakers asking for a phone.
“Everyone, listen to me!” came the strained voice of Frank Miller. The room became quiet. “We need someone from the air force to find an engineer, right now and conference call him in to Jordan. We're under heavy fire, and we need to move out! He's the one you need to speak with. Get a man on the phone to him!”
The line went dead. A rough voice came over the speakers. “This is General Jim Richards. I am instructing all air force personnel hearing this near me and elsewhere, down to the janitors, get me a weapons engineer with the expertise for this warhead, yesterday!”
The air force officers got on their phones and exited the room to make their calls. Bryant placed his fingers to his temple. This was all getting out of his control. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the large monitors flash. He looked up. The satellite feeds were gone, replaced with a flat map of the world. Red dots were appearing in several places across the globe.
“Hey, where is the satellite feed?” called one of the CIA agents. Bryant looked around with irritation. What the hell?
Rideout glanced over toward Lightfoote, who was furiously working her keyboard. “Angel, is this you?” She continued work but nodded slowly up and down, not taking her eyes off the screen. “Angel, we need to focus on Mexico. Can you switch it back over?”
An air force officer back in the room shouted over him. “Tell her to get that satellite feed back up! What the hell is she doing?” Red dots were popping up in several places, and red lines were being drawn between them. Lightfoote appeared oblivious to the rancor around her. Rideout looked at the screen and understood.
“She's marking out the locations of all the attacks,” he said.
Bryant shouted, “How is that relevant now? Damn it, Rideout, I've had just about enough of that little freak! Override her! Get the satellite feed back up this instant!”
Rideout spoke in a measured tone. “Andrew, I've learned to trust Angel's strange but often very important contributions. That's why Larry brought her in.” He turned to his new boss. “I'm going to give this a few minutes. The satellite feed isn't going anywhere.” Bryant glared at Rideout, who stared right back.
Across the world map, red marks appeared. New York, Caracas, London, Sudan, over the South Atlantic — digital thumbtacks at each of the sites of Mjolnir bombings. Red lines were now connecting nearly all of them, creating a shape with some clear sort of structure, but one that was not identifiable to anyone in the room.
Bryant shook his head. “I don't see anything of worth here, Rideout. This meaningless cartoon drawing is wasting our time. If you don't cut this back to the feed, I will have someone remove her.”
“Wait!” Lightfoote shouted, holding up one hand while continuing to type or use the mouse with the other.
Bryant was about to walk over and remove her himself when a digital image appeared on the screen, superimposed over the world map and the web of lines linking the attacks. The image was by now familiar to all in the room — an anchor shaped emblem, but flat at one end and curved to a point, a long shaft sticking out from that end. It was clearly a relic, old metal carved and weathered, the end of the shaft broadening out like the hilt of a sword, the face of a bird carved into the end. It was Thor's hammer.
Lightfoote manipulated the image, first turning it partially transparent to reveal the map underneath it. She then rotated it ninety degrees counterclockwise, resized it, and distorted it in each dimension slightly until the handle of the hammer rested on North and South America, the shaft extending across the Atlantic Ocean into Africa, and the head of the hammer landing on the Arabian Peninsula, with the sharp tip like a pointer centered on Saudi Arabia.