Day of Wrath

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE DETONATION

Colonel Peter Thorn stared at the blinking dot in shock. Godfrey Field was barely thirty nautical miles from Washington, and the aircraft they’d seen based there had a cruising speed of two-hundred-plus knots.

Which meant they had maybe six or seven minutes before the equivalent of one hundred and fifty thousand tons of high explosive detonated right over the nation’s capital.

Several seconds trickled past — each an imagined lifetime of sorrow and regret. His shoulders slumped. “Oh, Christ.” Helen turned toward him. “We have to do something, Peter!”

Do what? What more could they do? Despite all the risks they’d taken, despite everything, they were too late. Ibrahim had managed to get one of his nuclear-armed planes off the ground.

And now the aircraft was following its preset flight plan, drawing ever closer to its programmed target.

He focused on the computer display. A single line below the digital map of the Washington metro area read: F1, FLIGHT CONTROL MENU.

Thorn grabbed the nearest chair, set his shotgun down, and sat down in front of the computer keyboard. He punched the F1 function key.

A new cursor popped on-screen, replacing the notation about a flight control menu: AIRCRAFT ID?: Swell.

Thorn whirled toward the older man they’d taken prisoner with the Saudi prince. The man had just finished rigging his belt around Ibrahim’s maimed right arm as a temporary tourniquet.

“You speak English?”

The balding, gray-haired man looked up from Ibrahim’s slumped, unconscious figure. The wounded man had fainted halfway through the effort to save his life. He hesitated. “Was? Ich verstehen She Night.”

Something in their prisoner’s eyes told Thorn he was lying. He stood up and kicked the chair backward. “Bullshit,” he said softly.

The German flinched.

Thorn stalked up to the other man, grabbed hold of him by the shirt, and yanked him upright. “I said, do you speak English?”

Their prisoner stayed mute, his eyes wide in fear.

It was time for more active measures, Thorn decided coldly.

He scooped his shotgun back and casually, almost negligently, aimed it toward the other man’s head. “I’m going to ask you that question one more time. If you lie to me …”

He chambered a round.

The German bit his lip, trembling even harder now. “But you cannot do this! You cannot torture me. It is against American law!”

Thorn leaned closer. He pressed the shotgun right against the other man’s temple. “That plane is carrying a nuclear weapon.

What makes you think I care about the law right now?” His finger tightened on the trigger.

“Mein Gott.” The German swallowed hard. “I … I will help you. Do not shoot me … bitte. please!”

Helen patted him down, fished a wallet out of his pocket, and showed Thorn a tourist visa issued to one Klaus Engel.

He grabbed the German and dragged him back to the live console.

The blinking aircraft indicator was now roughly halfway between the towns of Leesburg and Herndon, Virginia — which meant they probably had somewhat less than five minutes remaining.

He pointed to the question asking for the aircraft identification.

“What’s the ID number for that plane?”

Engel shook his head frantically. “I do not know, I swear it! I merely built and programmed the machine. I was not part of the planning cell!”

Thorn lifted the shotgun again.

“They are not numbers. They are code names,” the other man said, stumbling over the words in his haste to get them out. “But I do not know these names!”

Code names? Thorn glanced at Helen. “Do you still have that list we took off Wolf?”

“Yes.” She fished it out of one of her pockets and handed it over.

He scanned down the list until he found the five animal code names listed under Godfrey: Lion, Tiger, Leopard, Jaguar, and Cheetah, all in German. He looked up at Helen. “What do you think?”

“Try Lion,” she said flatly. “It’s the first on the list and the king of the beasts.”

Thorn nodded. That Was logical. Except for Ibrahim and a few others, most of those involved in this conspiracy were German.

Putting their primary target at the top of a list and attaching the name of the top of the animal kingdom to it would appeal to them.

He sat down at the keyboard and typed in L,O,W,E.

A new line appeared on the display: ID INCORRECT; AIRCRAFT ID?: Damn it.

Helen leaned over his shoulder. “Peter, there’s no umlaut symbol on this keyboard!”

Of course. Thorn tried again, typing in L, O, E, W, E, this time.

New data appeared below the digitized map on the computer display — showing information on airspeed, altitude, the plane’s attitude, heading, and degree of bank, throttle settings, and fuel remaining. At the same time, the video monitor just to the left of the computer screen flickered to life — showing a black-and white image of lighted suburban streets passing slowly astern.

Thorn scanned the numbers quickly, trying to make sense of them. From what he could tell, the strike aircraft was currently flying southeast at two hundred thirty knots — at an altitude of two thousand feet.

Two sets of coordinates — latitude and longitude — stayed constant.

A third decreased constantly. As he watched, it flickered from 25.4 to 25.3. He turned toward Engel and stabbed a finger at the screen. “Are these what I think they are?”

The German computer tech nodded nervously. “That is the detonation point. And the range to the target.”

Something about those coordinates looked familiar to Thorn.

Then it clicked. This aircraft was headed straight for the Pentagon which would put most of Washington inside the bomb’s blast and shock radius. He glared hard at Engel. “All right, how do I give this plane a new set of coordinates?”

“You cannot.”

This time Helen ground her weapon into the technician’s cheek. “Try again!”

“Please. It is true.” Sweat rolled down the German’s face. “You cannot change the aim point once the aircraft is aloft. Herr Reichardt insisted on that as a security precaution!”

Reichardt? Who the hell was he? Thorn filed the name away for future reference. He focused on the task at hand. “Are you telling me that goddamned plane is totally locked on autopilot?”

“No, no!” Engel insisted. “You can control the aircraft manually.”’ “How?”

The technician plucked a joystick off the top of the console and held it up. “Using this. and the keyboard.”

“Set it up. Now!” Thorn growled. Ibrahim’s bomb-laden plane would be over the Pentagon in roughly four minutes.

Engel leaned over his shoulder, hastily plugged the joystick into a port near the display, and began entering commands on the keyboard.

“Peter?” Helen said quietly.

He looked at her. “Yeah?”

“Can you fly that plane from here?”

Thorn shrugged. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

They were out of other options. Rounding up one of Ibrahim’s surviving pilots and getting him to cooperate would take too long. For a brief instant, he wished he’d spent more time playing around with the computer flight simulators that were so popular nowadays. For now, the computer tech would have to do.

“The system is ready,” Engel announced, taking his hands off the keyboard. He quickly pointed out the keys that would activate various aircraft controls. “Those are your throttle settings, your rudder controls, and …”

Thorn listened intently, forcing himself to memorize each key.

He could feel his heart rate accelerating. When the German finished, he nodded abruptly. The aircraft indicator was now over Reston — and the distance to target changed to 16.1. “Is there anything else I should know?” he asked.

The computer tech nodded. “You must keep the aircraft at least two nautical miles away from the detonation point. Once it flies inside that circle, the bomb is armed — and it will detonate if the range begins to open again. Also, you must not let the aircraft drop below three hundred meters — a thousand of your feet — or climb above five thousand meters. Once it reaches either altitude, a barometric fuse will detonate the weapon. Herr Reichardt’s and Prince Ibrahim’s instructions were very explicit.”

“How truly wonderful,” Helen commented acidly.

Thorn thought a moment. “If we can’t dive, we’ll have to get this sucker to climb. Even fifteen thousand feet above the ground is better than nothing.”

Helen frowned. “With a 150-kiloton bomb on board, Peter?

That’s still not high enough.”

“It’s a start,” he replied.

“Yeah.”

“This will relay any air traffic control communication you receive,” the German computer tech said, offering a radio headset plugged into a control panel next to the keyboard.

Thorn yanked the earphones he was wearing off, and slipped the new headset on. Then he tapped the keys controlling the throttle settings for both engines — pushing them to one hundred percent power. Then he took a deep breath. “Here we go.”

He tugged the joystick to the right.

Two thousand feet above the densely populated suburban landscape, the twin-engine Jetstream 31 turboprop abruptly rolled to the right — almost standing on its wingtip. It lost altitude rapidly.

Inside, a tiny instrument linked to a constant barometric pressure reading prepared itself for the last act of its short life.

Strike Control Center Helen Gray saw the video picture suddenly shift as the aircraft practically turned onto its side. The altitude reading spun down falling from two thousand to seventeen hundred and then sixteen hundred feet in seconds. She held her breath.

Peter quickly pulled the joystick back to the left. Slowly, the image showed the aircraft rolling back to level flight. Its altitude stabilized around fourteen hundred feet.

The computer technician’s face turned a ghastly shade of white.

“Careful! The controls are sensitive. And they are not integrated. To turn safely, you must use the rudder control key and the joystick!”

Helen could see the sweat on Peter’s forehead now. He stared intently at the screen. She kept quiet.

His hand holding the joystick slowly relaxed, while the other hovered over the computer keyboard. The range to target now read 10.9.

Farrell’s laconic voice broke over their headsets. “Delta One and Two, this is Three. I’ve got my weapon on ten-plus bad guys out here. Some of them are pretty badly shot up. And a Fairfax County police unit just pulled up outside the main gate. Any suggestions on what I should tell them?”

“Try to stall them,” Helen said tersely. “We’re a little busy in here, Sam.”

“So I’ve heard,” Farrell replied. “You let me know when to duck and cover, okay?”

Helen suddenly realized the retired general must have heard almost everything going on inside the control center over the voice-activated radio circuit. She swallowed. “I’ll let you know, Sam. Scout’s honor.”

“Okay,” Farrell said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

Peter glanced over his shoulder and flashed her a quick, worried grin.

“Second time lucky, right?”

Helen nodded seriously. They weren’t going to get a third chance.

“Right.”

His hands started moving, this time gently tugging the joystick right while simultaneously tapping the key controlling the aircraft’s rudder.

Strike Aircraft Lion, Over Arlington, Virginia The twin-engine plane banked slowly, gradually changing its heading from southeast to almost due south. Once on that new course, it rolled back to level flight, pitched up slightly, and began climbing.

Control Center Thorn felt his pulse slow a bit as the strike aircraft’s altitude started increasing — rising steadily from fourteen hundred feet.

He glanced at the range to target. It read 6.8. The number changed — to 6.9.

He breathed out.

An irritated voice suddenly squawked through his radio head set.

“Unknown aircraft climbing through two thousand on heading one seven seven, this is Washington Center ARTCC. Who are you? And what the hell do you think you’re doing? Be advised you are straying close to restricted air space.”

Thorn hit the mike switch. “Washington ARTCC, this is Colonel Peter Thorn, United States Army. The twin engine plane you’re monitoring is a remotely piloted aircraft carrying an armed 150-kiloton nuclear warhead. I repeat, this nuclear warhead is armed.”

“What?” the air traffic controller said sharply. “Jesus Christ, if this is some kind of joke—”

Thorn cut him off. “This is no joke. I repeat, that plane is carrying a live nuclear weapon. I’ve got control over it for now but I suggest you give me a safe heading that will take this thing away from the District and any other inhabited area.”

The radio went dead.

He watched the altitude number creeping up through three thousand feet and then glanced up at the digital map. The robot plane was now over Alexandria. The TV monitor showed an array of brighter city lights and the winding, black trace he knew must be the Potomac River.

The Washington Center air traffic controller came back on line. “Okay, Colonel. We’re going to assume you’re telling the truth …”

“Good move,” Thorn said sharply, still watching the screen.

“We’re clearing a corridor that should take your plane out to sea a safe distance. What’s your fuel status?”

Thorn checked the numbers and read them off.

“Okay. You should have plenty of range left. Here’s what I want you to do. Maintaining your air speed and your current rate of climb, come left to new heading one two zero. That’ll take you out over southeastern Maryland to Chesapeake Bay. I’ll relay further instructions as needed.”

“Understood.” Thorn complied, carefully moving both the joystick and the rudder control. “I also suggest you alert both the FBI and the D.O.D about this situation.”

“Don’t you worry about that, Colonel,” the traffic controller said. “The shit’s already hitting the fan all over Washington. For your sake, I really hope this isn’t some cock-and-bull story to get attention.”

“Considering that I’m not a trained pilot, and that there is a real nuke aboard that plane, you’d be a lot better off hoping I’m full of crap,” Thorn snapped back. He adjusted the controls again. “Coming left to one two zero. Let’s get this crate out over the Atlantic as fast as possible.”

New bits of data flowed through the onboard computer inside the Jetstream 31. Range to target: Increasing. Heading: Steady. Time elapsed since original projected detonation: three hundred seconds.

The data triggered a new subroutine-one added by Dr. Saleh, Ibrahim’s computer expert, after Reichardt’s German specialists finished the basic programming.

A readout attached to the TN-1000 suddenly blinked to life.

It read 00:15:00.

Thorn saw a new set of numbers flicker into existence in the lower right-hand corner of his monitor:

00:14:59.

00:14:58.

00:14:57.

His heart seemed to stop. “Oh, hell.”

Helen leaned closer, her own face pale. “What is it, Peter?”

“The bastards must have put in another backup arming trigger,” Thorn said quietly. “I think that bomb is going to detonate in less than fifteen minutes. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

Engel, the German technician, stared at the damning numbers on the screen in shock. “It is impossible. I did not write such a subroutine.”

The other man was probably telling the truth, Thorn decided.

From what they’d seen so far, Ibrahim and Wolf had both liked to exercise complete control. He’d bet that few, if any, of their subordinates had ever known all the pieces of the puzzle. Not that it made much difference now, he realized coldly.

The hard truth was that fourteen-plus minutes didn’t leave him enough time to get the plane safely out over the ocean. He ran the numbers hastily through his mind. He could fly that aircraft roughly fifty or sixty nautical miles further down-range before the nuke went off. On its present course, that would put the new detonation point somewhere over thinly populated Dorchester County, Maryland. That was better than having the bomb explode right over Washington but there were still half a dozen or more small towns inside the probable blast radius. And that meant civilian casualties could number in the thousands.

Thorn keyed the radio mike. “Washington ARTCC. We have a new problem here.”

“Go ahead, Colonel.”

Thorn quickly laid out the situation they were facing.

There was a moment’s silence before a stunned voice came back over the circuit. “Oh, God.”

Thorn saw the detonation countdown on his screen blink through 00:13:00. His hand tightened on the joystick. “Look, I need some help here. Right now!”

“I’m patching you through to the Pentagon Crisis Operations Center,” the anxious air controller said hurriedly. “Wait one.”

Thirty seconds passed before another voice, this one older and calmer, sounded in his headset. “Colonel Thorn? This is Brigadier General Dodson. Let me make sure I’ve got this straight: We’re looking at the detonation of a 150-kiloton Soviet-era warhead in roughly twelve minutes, right?”

“Yes, sir.” Thorn could see streetlights glowing against the dark earth below. The aircraft was over Washington’s fastgrowing southeastern Maryland suburbs now.

“Then here are the parameters we’re facing,” Dodson continued.

“Assuming optimum burst height, we can expect the following …”

Thorn listened to the general’s grim statistics in silence. They paralleled his own rough mental calculations. Lethal radiation exposure up to one and a half miles from the detonation point.

A shock wave strong enough to tear most houses apart out to four and a half miles, and to shatter glass nine miles away. And a thermal pulse hot enough to cause second-and thirddegree burns to anyone caught outdoors over an area eleven miles in diameter.

He grimaced. The optimum burst height for a warhead of this size was around two thousand feet. Pushing the aircraft up to nearly fifteen thousand would help reduce the damage when the bomb went off — but it was still going to be ugly. Very ugly.

Thorn waited until the general finished giving him the bad news. “So, then what do you suggest, sir?”

“We can’t have this damned thing going off over land,” the other man stated firmly.

“agreed.”

“Then we’re down to just one option, Colonel,” Dodson said.

“You’ll have to fly it south over Chesapeake Bay.”

Thorn nodded to himself. Then he stopped suddenly, remembering the maps he’d studied of the Washington area. “Sir, that means the bomb’s going to detonate—”

“Six miles away from the Par River Naval Air Warfare Center,” the general finished. “I know, Colonel. But we’re getting a warning through to them right now. We couldn’t possibly alert any civilians anywhere else in time. So we’re just going to have to ride this one out.”

“Jesus,” Thorn said softly.

“I don’t like it either, Colonel,” Dodson agreed. “But it’s the best we can do. So you just concentrate on keeping that plane in the air long enough to give us a chance to put the alert out to everyone we can.”

“Yes, sir.” Thorn refocused his attention on the controls in front of him. The detonation countdown flickered through 00:09:00.

Brigadier General Andrew Jackson Dodson, U.S. Air Force, tore his gaze away from the clock. They had a little less than six minutes left. He swung around toward the short, balding Navy captain at his right.

“What’s the word from Par River, Frank?”

“The sirens just went off, sir. I’ve got the duty officer on the phone now. He understands the situation. Everybody’s heading for the shelters.”

“What about their equipment?” Dodson asked. Par River was the U.S. Navy’s premier test center for new aircraft.

“We’re going to lose some planes, sir,” the Navy captain admitted.

“It’s not a combat base. The hangars aren’t hardened.”

“Understood.” Dodson nodded. That was going to hurt. But it was still better to lose hardware — even expensive hardware — than lives.

The Air Force general turned toward one-of his other officers, a Marine lieutenant colonel. “What about civilian air traffic, Jim? Anything inbound?”

“No, sir,” the Marine answered. “Washington ARTCC is rerouting everything well north or south. Not that there’s much in the air right now.”

“What about shipping traffic?” the general asked. The Chesapeake Bay intercoastal waterway was one of the busiest shipping lanes in the U.S. “I’ve checked with both Baltimore and Norfolk. There’s nothing in the danger zone.”

Dodson nodded again. Thank God for small favors, he thought. This early in the morning there wasn’t much stirring along the eastern seaboard.

“General,” another aide said suddenly, motioning to the secure phone in his hand. “The White House is on the line. They ant to know if they should evacuate the President.”

“Negative. There’s no time.” Dodson frowned. Somebody over at the White House wasn’t thinking straight. He checked the clock again.

Four minutes left. They’d barely have been able to get a chopper airborne before the bomb went off.

“Shit,” the Marine lieutenant colonel said suddenly.

Dodson swung around. “What?”

“We just got a call from Norfolk, sir. There’s a Spruance-class destroyer en route to Baltimore for a goodwill visit— DD987, O’ Bannon.”

The general swore suddenly. “Where is she exactly?” He followed the Marine officer’s pointing finger to a large digital map of the Chesapeake Bay region and paled. “Christ almighty … get a flash warning off to her! Now!”

The long, gray, graceful silhouette of the destroyer O’Bannon slid quietly through the waters of the Chesapeake Bay — moving north at a steady twelve knots. To the west, lights marked the location of the Patuxent River Naval Air Warfare Center. Smaller lights glimmered on the eastern shore — marking waterfront homes belonging to wealthy Washingtonians or locals.

Lieutenant Mike Rydell, U.S. Navy, O’Bannon’s watch officer, felt his jaw drop open. He stared at the signal rating. “We just got what?”

“A flash nuclear strike warning, Lieutenant! They say it’s no drill!”

Rydell grabbed the message from the rating — scanning the coordinates shown and comparing them with the bridge plot. Oh, hell. The Navy ran periodic exercises on how to respond to a nuclear attack, but he’d never expected to ever do it for real not in a million years. He froze for an instant, but only for an instant, and then reacted.

Rydell tossed the message to one side and whirled around — already snapping out orders. “Captain to the bridge!” He swung toward the helmsman. “All ahead flank! Left full rudder! All lookouts inside! Sound General Quarters! Now!”

Caught by surprise themselves, the rest of the bridge crew stared back at him for a split second — their horrified faces ghostwhite even under the red lamps used to preserve night vision.

Then they exploded into action.

Klaxons howling, the destroyer heeled sharply to port, throwing a higher bow wake as four eighty-thousand-horsepower gas turbines kicked her up toward full speed.

Thorn nudged the controls slightly, altering-course to bring the aircraft onto a heading of one five five degrees. The bomb-laden turboprop should be right in the middle of the channel now. And almost directly over those poor bastards aboard that destroyer.

His hands tightened again.

My God, he wondered desperately, isn’t there someplace else I can send this damned thing? He forced the thought away. There wasn’t anywhere else.

He glanced at the digital readout winding down in the corner of his display. “Ops Center, this is Thorn. Thirty seconds.”

Dodson’s strained voice came over his headset. “Understood, Colonel. Give me a running count, please.”

Thorn felt Helen’s tense hand on his shoulder. She squeezed slightly.

He cleared his throat. “Twenty-five. Twenty. Fifteen.

Ten.

“Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four …” His pulse hammered in his own ears. “Three. Two. One.”

The screen blanked abruptly — wiped clean of all data. Static replaced the picture on the video monitor.

Thorn swallowed hard. “Detonation.”

Surrounded by a crowd of stunned prisoners and Fairfax County police, Sam Farrell stared southeast.

A roiling fireball flashed above the horizon, turning darkness into a flickering, deadly, man-made day for several seconds.

Slowly the fireball faded from white to orange to a final dull, bloody red.

At last, even that vanished — leaving the stars and the night sky untouched.

Fifteen thousand feet over the still, placid waters of the Chesapeake Bay, the Jetstream 31 turboprop ceased to exist blown first into its constituent atoms and then stripped down even further into a muddled sea of subatomic particles.

In its place, a sudden pinpoint of boiling energy burst into existence — a fireball spearing through the night sky ten thousand times hotter than the surface of the sun. Gamma rays sleeted outward — smashing into and ionizing the surrounding air molecules.

Chemical reactions formed a dense layer of smog tens of meters deep around the small, still-expanding fireball.

X rays raced outward ahead of the plasma core, heating everything in their path to tens of millions of degrees.

Two hundred microseconds after detonation, a shock wave formed at the surface of the fireball — roaring away from the explosion at one hundred times the speed of sound.

Four miles from the base of the mushroom cloud, the shock wave was still moving at nearly the speed of sound when it slammed into O’Bannon’s stern. Caught in its powerful, howling grip, the destroyer bucked forward — buried under a wall of water thrown skyward. Railings, radar, and radio antennas all tore loose and vanished.

The ship disappeared from view inside a maelstrom of spray and flying debris.

Thorn sat numbly, staring at the static on his screens and listening to the crackling hiss over his headset. There were nearly four hundred men aboard that destroyer. Men who might already be dead — fried by heat or radiation, crushed by impact, or trapped in a ship already heading for the bottom.

Helen stood at his side, her hand still on his shoulder.

A voice sounded in his headset. “This is Dodson.” Thorn sat upright.

“Go ahead, sir.”

“We’ve reestablished contact with Par River, Colonel,” the general said “They’ve taken a hell of a lot of damage — planes thrown around, instruments smashed, but nobody was hurt.

They all made it into cover in time.”

“What about O’Bannon?” Thorn asked softly.

Dodson hesitated, then replied: “There’s no word, yet, I’m afraid.

We’re still trying to make radio contact.”

Thorn stiffened feeling as though he’d been punched in the stomach. “I see.”

“Look, son, you did everything you could. Nobody could have done more,” Dodson said.

Thorn shook his head. “I wish I could believe that, General.”

He lowered his head, staring blankly.

Helen knelt beside him. There were tears in her eyes. “Oh, Peter …”

Thorn’s head snapped bolt upright. There were cheers coming through his headphones!

“Thorn, this is Dodson!” the general said suddenly. “Par River just called in. They’ve established contact with O’Bannon by signal lamp.

Her radio antennas were smashed, but she’s still afloat! Par River says she’s battered, she’s lost most of her topside gear, and she’s scorched as hell, but she’s steaming in under her own power!”

“What about casualties?” Thorn heard himself ask, still not daring to believe the destroyer had survived the blast.

“They have wounded ― mostly impact trauma cases-but no fatalities,” Dodson answered. “Whoever was on watch put her stern to the blast point and ran like hell! She made it just far enough away to ride out the shock wave!”

Slowly, with shaking hands, Thorn pulled off the headset and turned toward Helen.

She looked up at him with shining eyes full of joy and wonder.

“You did it, Peter. You did it.”

“No,” he said, pulling her closer. “We did it.”