Cloudburst

Twenty One IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

“Hold tight ‘til he levels it out,” McAffee said. Once off the ground the noise abated. The team had placed and activated several small magnetic lights, each one spreading a wide beam of high-intensity light. Some of the men were squeezed in the spaces between the four big boxes, their arms pressing to the sides to steady them.

Joe, however, was already prying at one of the wood coverings. It was all cosmetic, he was sure. Whatever was in there was heavy, and, with the amount of shielding necessary to make the crude reactors feasible, the wood wouldn’t support any of it.

“Shouldn’t you wait, Anderson?”

Joe ignored the major and kept working at the box. By the time the aircraft leveled somewhat he had one side almost off.

Delta had its own job to do.

“Lewis.” Graber led the sergeant forward. He shone his flashlight on the curved right side as they walked. Red numbers stenciled on white backgrounds proceeded in ascending order as they moved. Each one was a location number, identifying the support section at that point. The 747, like other large aircraft, was made up of many parallel circular frames which were held together by long metallic stringers that ran the length of the fuselage. Around the skeletal cylinder a thin skin of aluminum was stretched, giving the aircraft structure and most of its load-bearing capability. Graber was looking for a specific section — or ring — that would put them below their desired entry point.

But first things first. Before going in they had to see what was there. Debriefing of released hostages had told them that the passengers were all forward now. That would lead one to believe that the terrorists were also. But they had to know for sure. If they went in aft, and there was a bad guy standing over them, it would be beneficial to know that first so he could be taken out.

Sixteen C. Sixteen C. “Where are — here.” Graber stopped and cocked his head to the right to get a look at the ceiling. They were all walking hunched over in the five-foot-five- inch cargo hold. He ran his hand from right to left on the smooth aluminum panel. Above that would be a flame- resistant plastic floor liner that acted as a sound and climate insulator, and above that an eighth of an inch of padding, and then the carpeting. The center floor stringer was his guidepost. Six inches to the right was the spot. He looked forward at the solid metal bulkhead three feet away, then behind three feet at the forward most crate. The rest of the team was readying the charges near the door.

“Do it, Lewis.”

The sergeant was the team’s tech specialist, which meant that he handled the high-tech — expensive — gear. In this case an ultra-high-speed lithium-powered drill and the fiber-optic viewing device that would be inserted through a hole into the cabin above.

Lewis scratched the spot with an etching pen, just to give the carborundum bit a starting point. There was only one speed on the specially built instrument: fast, or fucking fast as its users said. The sergeant held the pen-like tip and tucked the flexible drive cable under his arm. It led to the actual motor unit, hooked to his belt.

It whirred first, then went almost silent. He touched it to the aluminum. Only a slight hum was heard. That was the beauty of the instrument. Unless you were drilling through granite or marble, the high rotational speed of the bit simply pulverized its target, allowing no room for resistance. The high heat tolerance of the carborundum bit aided in the silencing of the work. Friction caused great deals of heat, which expanded traditional bits of steel or light alloys. As it expanded it would contact the sides of the hole it was boring, causing sound. A foot away the captain could barely hear it.

Lewis sensed the breakthrough and continued with little pressure on the instrument, cutting right through the plastic and padding. Dyed guide marks on the bit told him the penetration and when to stop. “Through.” He switched it off and let it dangle to the floor. Next he undid the instrument and set it down.

“Let’s take a look.” The captain checked the time. Six minutes.

Lewis retrieved another instrument. It looked like a camera lens, or a sniper scope, with an eyepiece at one end and a thin black tube at the other. Barely visible extending from the tube was a thin monofilament wire, much like fishing line. At the end was a micro-manufactured lens.

Graber slid the fiber-optic lens through the hole after spraying it with an aerosol coolant. His left hand maneuvered the filament housing while his right held the viewer to his eye.

The picture was bluish at first as the lens penetrated the carpet’s fibrous clumps, then absolutely clear except for the slight fish-eye distortion of the wide-angle lens. Graber had practiced this often, and he found that the stress of a real takedown wasn’t affecting his performance. He moved the lens to the left and right with simple twists of the housing, his head instinctively twisting to mimic the motion.

“Clear,” he announced after twenty seconds.

“Nothing at all?” Lewis inquired. McAffee approached.

“Both sides.” Sean pointed to the bulkhead. “There’s a wall right above that.”

“Aft most galley,” the major said, remembering the layout. He touched the ceiling just aft of the hole. “Row forty-five, troops.”

Lewis nodded. “Right on.”

McAffee and Graber started marking the precise points for the entry holes. Each would be just forward of seats 45D and 45G, the inner aisle seats at the front of the rearmost cabin section. They measured out the twenty-four by twenty-inch space needed. It was close. The longer dimension was laid out parallel to the bulkhead.

“Charges. C’mon.” Jones and Buxton brought the frame charges to the spot and test-positioned them first.

“It’s tight, but a good fit.” Jones did some crude hand measuring. “Move them back an inch, okay? There’s plenty of room back to the seat.” He pointed to the metal plates eight inches behind that marked the tie-down point where the seats were bolted to movable runners.

“They could be a little forward, remember.” Graber remembered the pilots of the practice aircraft showing them how the rows of recliners could be slid up and back to a desired position, then wrenched down and locked.

“Not here,” Jones contradicted. “It’s the forward row, so, like that pilot said, they’ve got to have thirty-six inches.”

“You’re right.” It came back to Sean. “So if we move back a bit we’ll have more pull-up room.” It would make it easier for the troopers to get out of the hold, not having the galley wall in their faces.

Jones did a quick position check, then peeled off the strong adhesive covers on the business side of the frame charge and placed it on the aluminum overhead. Lieutenant Buxton did the same.

Joe had no interest in the military side of things. He was at work. A form of obsessive tunnel vision focused him on the task at hand.

Once the covering was off he could see the first device. The sketches didn’t do it justice, either in description of ugliness or bulk. It was squat, and massive, resembling a newly picked garden vegetable, upside down, with four short roots poking out at equal angles toward the sky. And it was as black as coal.

The roots were the chutes, each containing the nuclear material — if the information was correct. It was time to verify one part of it. He removed a neutron analyzer from his bag. It, itself, was a short black object, with an LCD display at the bottom. The top held the actual instrument. Radioactive material, because of its constantly unstable nuclear state, was a voracious neutron emitter. That was the quality that made it so powerful. Neutrons racing away from their source struck the nuclei of other atoms and, in simple terms, sliced them open, sending even more neutrons out toward other atoms. In subcritical nuclear assemblies the reaction would never reach the stage where neutrons were continuously bombarding and attaching themselves, only because the mass of nuclear material needed was insufficient. When a precise amount or more was present, the reaction would become self-sustaining — a chain reaction — or, without proper controls, supercritical: the point when physical temperatures overcame subatomic bonds and the critical mass melted.

Joe switched the instrument on and placed it over the bulbous center of the object — the core, if he was correct. There was an increased amount of neutron ‘travel’ as he called it But not exceedingly abnormal. He slowly rotated the instrument on its side, and saw an instant and steady increase in activity.

The neutron analyzer used by NEST was an expensive and miniature model of larger instruments that measured activity in nuclear power plants. Its added feature was that it was directional: It could detect not only the amount of neutrons transiting through two-inch-square gold filaments, but also, by measuring the time between transits through the parallel sensors, it could determine the angle of penetration, and thus the direction.

He kept the analyzer’s body touching the curved top of the device and slid it up to one of the chutes. It was sure, as the readout showed. There was nuclear material in the chute, and not just a small pellet or a depleted slug from a waste site.

“The real thing,” Joe said aloud, though the others were too involved to notice. He moved the instrument to the center between two of the chutes. The readings weakened, then rose again. That meant there was an equal amount of material in each chute. “Damn it, they were right.” It was a thermal reactor, probably with three fourths of a critical mass in each of the chutes.

So if that were the case, how was the thing going to be triggered. Joe examined the reactor — it was that, now — above and below. He crawled around the base of it, and felt with his hands over every exposed portion. Nothing. Just a greasy black exterior. It had to be in the chutes. There appeared to be no obvious work on the cylindrical tubes: They were as smooth as the rest of the thing. The tops…

And there it was. There had been some work done there, and then patched with something: lead and oakum, maybe, or possibly filled with a molten lead. Joe picked at the surface of it with his nails. It was solid, with no signs that it had ever been intended to be opened once constructed.

Son of a bitch. He knew what that meant. It confirmed what everybody had told him — what everybody believed.

What would the trigger be, then? A radio signal? Maybe barometric, set to go off when there was a sudden change in pressure. Like when a bomb goes off at altitude, Joe thought. No, that had too many variables. Whoever had planned this part knew his stuff, so he had to figure for maximum effect. That would mean letting the material come to reaction in a semi steady environment. The reactors would have to be level, or — he checked the lower shape once more — possibly within five degrees of level. A radio signal seemed the most logical, but not reliable. Even a coded signal could be set off by a fluke, or the transmitter might be screwed up. And what if the chutes didn’t all go off? Of course the reactors needed only two to drop for a critical mass, but the waste didn’t make sense. They were going for effect. It had to be a reliable system to trigger it, one that was reliable and consistent.

A timer. A timer. That had to be it! Uniformity in release. Reliability. A system with little chance of interference or false triggers. And…and the time factor. That’s why the guy with the bomb was taking all these chances with the aircraft. It had to be in position on time, or there would be no point in hurrying.

Joe had to smile. Sadr, you brilliant bastard. But now your toy is on my turf. Time to think. Time to—

“Ready your weapons!” McAffee shouted. All the men pulled back the slides on their SIGs, chambering the first round, then did the same to their identical backup weapons which were then reholstered. Antonelli and Quimpo readied their special grenade launchers. They were based on the HK-69 pistol-shaped launcher, a weapon designed for firing 40mm grenades of various types. The round they inserted, though, was quite special and had never been tried in the situation they were going to use it in. But then, they had never even anticipated something like this happening.

The major did a final check of his troops, then went aft.

“You better brace, Anderson.” The civilian’s face was black from something, and so were his hands. “Mask and helmet on until we secure the aircraft.”

Joe nodded. “It’s for real, Major.”

McAffee gave the ugly thing a look, with real distaste in his eyes. “Yeah. I thought it would have to be. You can do your thing?”

“I’ll try. It’s on a timer, I figure, but there could be some backup trigger up there. A radio if there is one. So don’t give anybody with a transmitter a second look.”

“Anybody up there with a gun gets only one look.”

Again, Joe nodded, and the major went back forward. He was a civilian, and these were soldiers, Joe realized. But had they killed before? Had they? he wondered, knowing that some of them might be getting their first taste of death. He just hoped they were all on the right side of the bullet.

Hadad was nervous, but telling himself not to be. The plane was damaged; hurt like a dying whale. And it was climbing so slowly. They were already ten minutes out of the airport, with the coast fading behind them in the darkness, yet the altitude had risen only modestly. Was there something more wrong with the aircraft? Sadr had said that they would need to be at twenty thousand feet for maximum effect, but would they be able to go that high?

The worry must end, Hadad decided. Allah had seen to it that he had come this far, through the small trials of the mission so far. It would all work. He left his seat and exited the cockpit.

“Jesus. It’s almost rime.” Buzz checked over his shoulder.

Hendrickson knew that, and also that the terrorist hadn’t removed that bomb like the other times after takeoff. “Four-Two-Two to U.S. military aircraft.”

There was added silence, then a reply. “What is going on, Four-Two-Two? Why are you on the air?”

The cockpit door opened again before the captain could answer. He looked back. The hijacker was there, as he had been for most of the ordeal, and as before, he had removed the bomb. Hendrickson noticed him sucking on the end of his thumb.

“Why are you watching me, American?” Hadad plopped down into the seat.

Hendrickson turned back around, not bothering to answer.

“You are flying low. Why?”

The first act, Buzz thought.

“With no flaps we have to rely solely on the elevators, and with reduced power we can’t overdo our nose-up attitude. It’s something called a stall condition, if you care.” Take that. The captain thought it was convincing.

“How long until we reach twenty thousand feet?”

“An hour.”

So they would reach the desired altitude. Good. Hadad wanted nothing more to hinder him beyond then. “When we reach that altitude, stay there.”

“Whatever you say,” Hendrickson replied with just a hint of sarcasm.

Hadad ignored the pilot’s tone. Instead he kept a finger outside the Uzi’s trigger guard, just in case. The Americans were getting arrogant. He might have to sacrifice another passenger in the air, if the pushing did not stop. He cradled the gun on his lap and hoped that they would behave. Then he said a silent prayer to Allah.

He had no way of knowing that it fell on deaf ears.

The MiGs turned left and right, away from the F-106, and headed for the haven of their base.

Cooper didn’t notice. “Repeat, Springer Seven-Eight.”

“Your target has broken protocol. There was a transmission, then no response to our inquiry. I don’t know if it means anything, but mission parameters dictate informing you.”

It wasn’t good. It couldn’t be. Major Cooper bore the burden of his mission, to an extent the controllers on the AWACS couldn’t imagine at this point. The pilot of the hijacked jet had broken the instructions given to him less than an hour ago. With that the major knew that he had an authorization to fire.

He could move in and fire immediately.

The 747 was six miles ahead, its position marked by its bright anti-collision lights. Was something going wrong on board? If the pilot were trying to contact him he couldn’t hear it. Only the AWACS was dialed in on the plane’s frequency: the civil emergency air net. The F-106 was on military. The AWACS was his only direct link to the jet.

Positioning himself was a simple matter. He throttled up and brought the F-106 level with and three miles behind 422. The old visual sight for the Genie swung down into position at his touch. It was an old one, but then none had been used in twenty years, just as the Genie itself had been relegated to curious relic status. He took his first look through the sight, the eyepiece and first-stage magnifier of which resembled a modem starlight sniper scope. It was nothing so fancy, and had no light-amplification property at all.

Fortunately the target—the target? — was lit. Cooper adjusted the Delta Dart’s heading and pitch slightly to bring the 747 into the aiming reticle. In the sixties he had been one of the first pilots to fly operational missions with a ‘hot’ Genie in the racks, and had even fired three training rounds. That was a luxury given to few pilots of the era. It had made him the prime candidate for this mission. He felt comfortable in the old bird, and the layout, at first foreign, was completely familiar again. Everything was where it was so long ago. He was the right man for this, and it made him angry to believe that.

Should he fire? Now? It wasn’t time. Whatever was going to happen onboard shouldn’t have gone down by now. But the radio call?

“What is going on?” Cooper added a silent curse in the name of compartmentalization. Need to know. Shit! His orders were brief. Four minutes past 0900 Zulu—0400 local — he was supposed to open his bay doors and fire the Genie at flight 422 and the couple hundred people who just happened to be on her. Only the proper code phrase broadcast from the hijacked aircraft would belay the shoot-down order.

That was cut-and-dry enough, Cooper figured. He wasn’t going to kill hundreds of people just because some pilot forgot his instructions. If the time came, he would do his duty as ordered. He was a soldier, and he was a doctor. It was an uncomfortable and wholly incompatible combination of ideologies, one that he had to live with.

His left hand moved to the side console and moved the Genie’s arm switch from safe to fire. The bay doors opened behind and below him. Only a touch on the stick-mounted fire button was required now.

Antonelli and Quimpo were closest to the charges, and they would be the first through. Not much of the blast should hit them. There was, however, always some shock factor when shaped charges were used, even in the low power they were employing.

McAffee and Graber were behind the big Italian, just five feet from where the left-side entry hole would be. The major checked the time.

“Weapons ready.” Everybody had their SIGs in hand, pointed upward with their fingers off the trigger. The two point men held the HK-69s two-handed.

Graber had his free hand on the frame charge detonator taped to the cargo hold floor.

“This is a go, troops,” McAffee yelled. “Everybody on your toes. Let’s smoke some bad guys.”

“Right on,” Buxton said back.

A last look at the watch. McAffee’s free left hand reached back. Three. Two. “Cover!” One.

His hand slapped Graber’s knee at the count of zero.