Medusa's Child

FOUR

The Navy chief warrant officer who had found the telltale spike in the record of gamma ray activity sat at his station in a corner of the trailer feeling increasingly frightened as the level of noise and confusion escalated. It wasn't the possibility of weapons-grade nuclear isotopes on the loose that scared him, it was the distinct feeling that he'd set off a cherry bomb in a buffalo herd, stampeding weighty bodies in all directions. One way or the other, he was going to get trampled.

Five cellular telephones were built into a command desk in the Navy trailer, and all were in use—along with three other handheld versions brought by the FAA men and a newly arrived FBI agent. The Navy technician had lost count of the number of times he'd explained the tracing to everyone in the trailer plus a dozen back in Washington, as well as faxed it on a secure channel to Navy headquarters in the Pentagon. Besides his own service, the Air Force and Army had somehow become involved, too, as had the National Security Council, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Secret Service, and the Customs Service. No one had questioned his conclusion. All efforts had been focused on finding where the source of the readings had gone, and no fewer than twenty-two outbound passenger flights had been identified as departing during the time frame the readings had dropped to zero.

"What's going on?" he had asked the commander. "Are they going to send all the flights back here?"

His boss had shaken his head and spoken quietly. "They're trying to get them back, but many have landed at their destinations, and even those they can intercept elsewhere"—he shrugged—"no one else has one of these detectors in place. A Geiger counter's probably useless, because the nuclear core material is undoubtedly shielded. So how would anyone know where to look?"

"It could be in a truck, a bus, or even a van," one of the FAA men had warned earlier.

An expert on nuclear terrorism at the NRC had made it even worse. "It could be," he had told them all by secure telephone, "in any garden-variety car as well."

No one had dared voice the question that worried them the most: If the nuclear material couldn't be found, where was it headed? And for what purpose? As the minutes ticked by, the image of the gutted Federal Building in Oklahoma City haunted them all—a single building leveled by nothing more exotic than fertilizer and fuel oil, a tiny fraction of the power of a nuclear explosion.

With wild weather whipping the nation's capital and a powerful hurricane already battering the mid-Atlantic coast, the logistics officer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had been hoping all morning for an early shutdown of federal offices. His small vacation cottage on Chesapeake Bay sixty miles east of the city was in danger and worrying him silly. If the winds got too high before he could get there to board up the windows, it was going to be a disaster, and the winds were already being reported over forty knots. Each phone call interrupted his monitoring of the latest weather reports, and he'd been thinking of leaving the receiver off the hook when an aggravated courier called from Florida to add one more irritant to the list.

Why, the voice demanded to know, had the aircraft chartered to fly high-priority cargo to NOAA's Colorado facility left without taking the cargo?

The logistics officer turned to his computer with a disgusted sigh and let loose a flurry of keystrokes. That would be the ScotAir flight.

"The guy called me several hours ago," he began, "and I gave him permission to take a couple of extra NOAA pallets along."

"Yeah, but he left the main event, the weekly courier pallet from Punta Arenas, Chile, which is what we hired him for. I'm already an hour late. I've got to get this stuff in the air. Get that sumbitch back here! And by the way, when you get him? Tell him the air freight forwarder here wants to talk to him, too. Seems he took off with somebody else's cargo, and they're madder than hell and want it back."

The logistics officer pulled out another stick of gum and tried to ignore his aching for a forbidden cigarette as he toggled the appropriate computer keys to bring up ScotAir's Flitephone number and reached for the receiver.

Scott McKay quietly replaced the receiver of the Flitephone and stared out the windscreen in deep despair, oblivious to the municipal grid of New Orleans passing under the Boeing 727's nose some seven miles below, but acutely aware of the eyes in the cockpit watching his every breath. He would miss flying the 727.

Stop it! he told himself. He didn't fire us. He just yelled at us.

"Captain, we need to talk." The feminine voice inches behind his ear startled him. The presence of Linda McCoy had slipped his mind.

Scott forced himself to respond. He loosened his seat belt and swiveled around to sit sideways, looking at his copilot before glancing around at the scientist.

"Just a second." He turned back toward the right seat. "Doc, call the controller, please, and get us an immediate clearance back to Miami."

Doc immediately reached for the transmit button.

"No!" Linda McCoy barked the word practically in Scott's ear as Doc looked around with a raised eyebrow and hesitated.

Scott looked over his shoulder at her and gestured for time. "Dr. McCoy, just a second. I'll explain."

"There's nothing to explain. I've got to get to Denver. You are not reversing course."

"I… have no choice. We've got to repair this mistake, and fast."

"Captain McKay." She paused and took a deep breath while unsuccessfully trying to make eye contact with him. His eyes were on the center panel, his hands clasped together, as if bracing for what she had to say.

"Look, Captain, as a representative of your contractor, NOAA, I'm essentially ordering you not turn this plane around. Drop me in Denver first. Then you can fly back to Miami or wherever you want."

Scott McKay sighed and studied a small scratch on the center console, just aft of the transponder panel. McCoy was the type of woman who excited and infuriated him. Forceful and feminine at the same time, with a soft oval face framing her startlingly large brown eyes, her shoulder-length black hair swept behind her ears. Even the khaki jumpsuit-flight suit she wore was carefully tailored and accentuated her trim athletic body. He'd been aware of the tiny hint of perfume she wore, and it compensated in a way for her abrasive attitude back in Miami. He'd been disappointed, he realized, that he couldn't seem to charm her into compliance.

Now, of course, he really didn't care. There was only one person he wanted to mollify, and that was the NOAA contract officer in Washington.

He looked around at last and met her gaze, trying to see her only as a customer.

"Dr. McCoy, you don't understand. Back in Miami we left the main courier pallet we were contracted to deliver to Denver. Your pallets are on board as a courtesy."

"You can go back after you drop me," she replied.

Scott shook his head before she finished. "No. Denver is more than two hours from here. It would take an extra six hours to get back to this precise point."

She was shaking her head vigorously in response. He could feel her hair whipping the air inches from his head.

"Captain, that courier pallet is no longer time-critical. Mine, however, are."

"I'm sorry, Dr. McCoy."

"If you reverse course on me, I'll personally see to it that you lose that damn contract!"

Scott let his gaze drop to the center console again as he fought a tidal wave of conflicting emotions. Linda McCoy didn't understand what was happening to them, and he wasn't sure he wanted her to know the embarrassing facts of how close they were to financial oblivion. Yet, the temptation to strike back was too great. He looked up at her again with a tight smile and a small flash of vindictiveness.

"You'll cancel our contract?"

"I'll certainly try, if you insist on this."

"Well, Doctor, the threat rings hollow. You know why? Because if I don't turn around, I will lose the contract. That phone call was from one of your bureaucrats in Washington, who was nice enough to inform me that because we left the main pallet back in Miami, if we don't get back there in the next two hours, he'll cancel us. I have no choice. But I'll tell you what I am going to do, and I'm sorry if it doesn't meet with your approval. We're going to fly back to Miami, and as soon as we unload and refuel and pick up the right cargo, we're flying you directly to Denver—but not before." He looked back down at the console, seeing nothing in particular. "It could easily be our last significant act as an alleged airline. I don't have any confidence that they'll forgive this mistake."

Jerry Christian sighed audibly at the comment, and Linda McCoy looked puzzled.

"Last act?" she asked.

Scott nodded. "Without the proceeds from that contract, we are, quite simply, out of business." The words made him sick to his stomach, but they needed to be said. There would be no hope without it.

"If I can't make the lease payment on this airplane next week, the whole thing's up in smoke. Right now, I don't have the money. I was counting on the NOAA check, and frankly, I have the sick feeling that guy back in Washington has no intention of forgiving us. Something in his voice tells me we're already history."

"Scott!" Doc Hazzard's reproving tone from the right seat cut him short. "It ain't over till it's over."

"Got an extra thirty grand you could loan me, Doc?" Scott said with a snort as he turned back forward in the seat, already regretting his tone. Doc didn't deserve that.

Linda McCoy fell into uneasy silence. The copilot read back a revised clearance and began turning the 727 toward the southeast.

Scott sat back, his eyes focused on nothing, his mind surveying the damage. What was going to hurt the most would be the smirks of those who had laughed at his idea to begin with, especially some of the bankers who had ignored his M.B.A. degree and sneered at the "paltry" sum of three hundred thousand as insufficient start-up capital. The house in Central City and the money was all that he had left of his father, and now the money was gone. He had dreamed of turning it into millions.

Scott pictured his father, stern, often unyielding, but loving, always able to let a sudden smile burst like sunshine through storm clouds. Scott had worked hard for those flashes of paternal approval, and success would have equaled the same thing.

Perhaps, though, there was still a chance. Maybe he was misinterpreting things.

Scott shook his head at the surrealistic thought of failure. Salvation had seemed so close just a few days ago. He wondered whether he should stay in Central City if he had to shut it down. Maybe he could apply again to United Airlines. Maybe this time he'd be lucky.

Scott could see Jerry's crestfallen face in his peripheral vision, and his thoughts turned to his two friends, his only employees.

Doc Hazzard would be okay, of course, no matter what happened. The thirty-three-year veteran captain from Pan Am would always land on his feet—and always with a beautiful woman in tow. Doc was amazing. No, he was far more worried about Jerry Christian, who had a family to support and nothing to fall back on. He'd do his best to help Jerry find something else. If they folded, there would be enough cash in savings to pay Jerry's rent and his own for a few months, and by then, maybe something would turn up.

"Captain, I'm very sorry to hear this," Linda McCoy said at last, her tone a bit softer. "I had no idea it was that critical. I… suppose I can hang on while you do what you have to do."

Scott nodded his head without looking back, but Linda McCoy leaned forward, around the side of the captain's seat.

"The NOAA contract is it, then? You've no other options to stay afloat?"

Scott McKay shook his head as he lifted the Flitephone receiver from its cradle once again.

"None that I can see," he told her quietly, deciding to omit the details. He pulled a slightly rumpled business card from his shirt pocket and punched the phone number into the keypad, dreading the necessary follow-up conversation with the Miami freight forwarder. Perhaps he could calm the man down. He'd had enough people disappointed in him for one day.

It had taken only one call to the Air Force's Air Mobility Command for the logistics officer to find a quicker solution than waiting for ScotAir to return. An Air Force C-141 cargo jet was preparing to leave Fort Lauderdale empty, bound for the West Coast with an Air Force Reserve crew aboard looking for gainful employment. Their headquarters had agreed to divert the huge cargo jet to Miami to pick up the stranded NOAA pallet just as word came that everyone in the U.S. government within the Beltway could go home before the hurricane hit.

There was one remaining task. A vengeful little delight he was definitely looking forward to, considering the aggravation he'd been caused: a final conversation with the captain of ScotAir 50, whose outfit was obviously too unreliable to be working for Uncle. For the second time in fifteen minutes he pulled up ScotAir's number and reached for the phone.

The operations manager had known for several hours that he was personally responsible for the misloading of ScotAir 50. Not that he would ever admit it, of course. He replaced the telephone in his office feeling somewhat relieved that the crew themselves thought they were at fault. Best to keep it that way. He'd been shorthanded on the morning shift, so a brief delay in sacking an incompetent employee had seemed reasonable. He decided to say nothing and let the man work through lunch, but an overly chatty dispatcher had tipped the employee when he punched in for the morning shift that he was going to be canned.

By 11 a.m., the operations manager had discovered that every load his employee had touched in the previous hours had been purposefully scrambled. With an incredible amount of energy from the rest of the work force they managed to unsnarl the mess, with one exception. Before noon the government-chartered ScotAir flight had hauled the wrong pallet into the air and departed for Colorado.

The shipper whose pallet ended up aboard ScotAir found out about the mixup about the same time NOAA's representative discovered their time-critical shipment had been left behind by the same crew.

The shipper was an older woman scheduled to accompany her cargo personally, which meant it must be something of significant value. That possibility made the operations manager even more nervous, especially considering it was his mistake her pallet had been shanghaied in the first place. Her large, heavy, palletized crate had been hauled in from someplace in South Miami around 9 a.m. and the woman had arrived a few minutes later to execute the paperwork and pay the fees. She'd left for a while before her flight was due to arrive, but returned in plenty of time—only to find that her pallet had disappeared.

From the first she had been coldly assertive in that quiet, intense way that always scared him. People with such assurance were best taken seriously, and he knew only too well what would happen if she did, in fact, file a lawsuit as she threatened. He'd be history at Universal.

The first challenge had been figuring out which crew had flown away with her cargo. The second challenge was contacting them, especially since his calls to the office phone back in Colorado for a company called ScotAir kept terminating in the usual irritating voicemail run-around.

The real challenge, though, was figuring out how to get the woman's pallet reunited with her and on its way to Washington, D.C., in time. He was well aware of the major hurricane moving in from the Atlantic and threatening the nation's capital, filling CNN with reports of impending disaster. There didn't seem to be any way the ScotAir 727 crew could return to Miami in time. On top of that, word had come that the Air Force was going to take the abandoned NOAA cargo in the next half hour, leaving little reason for the 727's crew to fly back in the first place. He'd been agonizing over what to do when the ScotAir captain called.

The idea of diverting the ScotAir crew to Tallahassee to join up with their inadvertent client was his. A small stroke of genius, he assured himself, even if the 727's captain did reject the idea at first. The ScotAir captain had said he was going to return and dump the woman's pallet, and that was that.

The operations manager had taken a deep breath and tried again. "If you want to avoid a lawsuit, you'd better meet her somewhere else," he told the captain, carefully avoiding any reference to shared liability. "I'd suggest Tallahassee. Listen, Captain, this lady's hopping mad and ready to sue if she and her stuff don't get to D.C. ahead of that storm. You can't do it if you come back here."

"How," the captain had asked, "can we arrange that fast to get her northbound?"

"Already taken care of," he had announced. "She's at the terminal now, waiting for my confirmation to board. We'll pay for the ticket."

When the ScotAir captain agreed and terminated the connection, the manager picked up a handheld radio from the desk and spoke the call sign of the man he'd dispatched to the passenger terminal with the woman.

"Luis? Go ahead and put Mrs. Henry on the Tallahassee flight as planned. Give her an extra twenty dollars so she can take a cab from the terminal to the air freight area.

The plane she'll be looking for is a Boeing 727, ScotAir Flight Fifty."

When the acknowledgment came, he replaced the radio and looked at his watch. A frantic FAA inspector had shown up a few minutes earlier demanding a list of the cargo flights they had worked that morning, and the list they'd handed over had been done in great haste. As operations manager, he knew he should have checked it for mistakes, but there wasn't time. He had no idea why the FAA seemed so upset, though normally he would have been curious. Certainly it wasn't about the vengeful employee he'd just fired. That was too petty a matter for the FAA. No, something unusual was going on around the airport.

He needed a break, and it was lunchtime, after all. He made a mental note to verify the accuracy of the list after lunch. Whatever the feds were worried about wasn't his problem.