Medusa's Child

THIRTEEN

Jerry Christian extended his lanky frame as far forward as he could from his flight engineer's seat and gently placed a bony left hand on the captain's shoulder. Scott was fumbling with the Flitephone receiver, trying to get it back in its cradle after terminating the latest conversation with the FBI. The severe turbulence was gone, but the Boeing was still bouncing and lurching as it flew westward, away from the hurricane's worst winds and toward an uncertain destination—the red "unsafe gear" warning lights still shining in their faces.

"Scott, we've got twenty-nine thousand pounds of fuel left. That's no more than three hours' flying time, depending on where you want to go. Could be a lot less if we stay at low altitude."

Scott McKay glanced back at the engineer and nodded.

"What's the word from the feds, Scott?" Doc asked, gesturing toward the Flitephone. "I take it they were less than happy we couldn't get into Pax River."

"Okay, here's the deal. Our FBI friend wants us to fly to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, enter a holding pattern, and wait for that group of experts from Pax River to get there. The Navy's going to load them in a Navy transport and fly them there. I wish them luck with those winds!"

Scott could see his engineer's head shaking in his peripheral vision. He turned slightly to the right. "What, Jerry?"

The response was wide-eyed and impassioned. "Why on earth would they choose McGuire? McGuire's far too close to New York and Philadelphia, and it's probably being battered by the hurricane as badly as Pax River. Even if that Medusa Effect thing or whatever it's called isn't real, my God, we're flying around with a twenty-megaton thermonuclear bomb that could kill, what, ten million, twenty million? Are they crazy?"

"Obviously they don't think we're going to blow up," Scott replied.

Jerry's eyes were flaring. "Can you imagine what we're dealing with here? What if that thing goes off while we're over New Jersey? The radiation bloom alone would cause millions of cancer and radiation deaths all over the East Coast, birth defects for decades, blindness, and worse. But if it can also produce that Medusa… what did they call it?"

"Wave. It's called a Medusa Wave," Scott said.

"Yeah. If it can create that sort of disruption, why would the FBI or anyone else want it even closer to New York banking centers?"

"Good point," Doc agreed instantly, his eyes still glued to the instruments as he brought the 727 through fifteen thousand and began to level off at sixteen thousand feet.

The voice of the Washington Center controller filled their headsets.

"ScotAir Fifty, I see your level off at sixteen. Turn right now three-zero-zero degrees, and state your intentions."

Doc looked over to the left seat as Scott picked up the microphone and stopped, his eyes studying Doc's.

"Suggestions?" Scott asked.

Doc shook his head and sighed. "I guess not." Scott strained to glance at the engineer. "You, Jerry?"

"No," the engineer responded. "I don't know what else we can do but work with them. But McGuire… I don't understand their logic. Maybe you should call them back."

Scott requested vectors direct to McGuire and took the new clearance as the copilot banked the aircraft toward the new heading and clicked on the autopilot. Doc ran his large right hand over his partially bald head and turned slightly in the seat, aware that Scott was waiting to confer with them both.

Doc caught himself glancing at the empty jump seat behind Scott where Linda McCoy had been sitting until a few minutes before. Over his protests about the turbulence, she had beaten a rapid retreat to the cargo cabin to check on Vivian Henry as soon as they'd climbed to a safe altitude. Doc suddenly missed her, as if her absence made a frightening dilemma even more lonely. He sensed they all felt her absence as Scott, too, glanced at the empty jump seat.

"I… feel like we're on some sort of out-of-control ride, guys. The situation is controlling us, but I don't know what else to do. I've worked around nuclear bombs before on aircraft carriers, but I've never had a live one strapped to my butt, not to mention the responsibility for God knows how many millions of lives riding, at least in part, on what we do. I mean, what if they can't defuse it? What do we do then?"

"Let's review what we've got, Scott," Doc began, counting off the points on the fingers of his right hand. "One, that device back there could be a dud, but neither we nor the government can take that chance. Two, if we assume it's real, then we've got less than two hours and thirty minutes left before it goes off, and if we're not at least, say, fifty miles away when it does, we're dead, too."

"Three," Scott broke in. "None of us knows how to defuse the thing, so we've got to do whatever's necessary to get this aircraft to an expert who knows how to stop the countdown. You agree? I mean, since we can't dump cargo from a 727 in flight, the only other course of action is to land somewhere and transfer the bomb to a C-141 or a C-130 and drop it at sea to protect the population. If it weren't for this damned hurricane, there'd be enough time, but, God, every minute we're flying around the eastern seaboard, we're almost terrorists ourselves! Can you imagine what the average person down there would think right now if they knew what we had up here over their heads?"

"Wonderful image for our little company, eh?" Doc asked.

"Tell me about it," Scott replied. "Can you imagine discovering that there's a plane flying nearby with a small object inside that could burn all the flesh off your body even from twenty or thirty miles away? To hell with the Medusa Effect, a live nuke is enough to get my undivided attention."

Doc nodded.

"And what happens if, as you pointed out, Scott," Jerry said quietly, "we get on the ground at McGuire and the experts can't defuse it or move it? What then? We'll be the infamous crew who brought it within range of New York and Philly."

Doc had been leaning to the left over the center console. He moved upright, deep in thought, as Scott gestured toward the rear of the Boeing.

"I know that, if nothing else, they can blow up our airplane with the bomb still in place. Even burning it would work."

Doc looked startled.

"Blow up…? That defeats the purpose!"

Scott was shaking his head. "It wouldn't trigger a nuclear detonation. That's the military way to dispose of a nuclear weapon to keep it from falling into enemy hands. I remember the briefings from the Navy. You burn it or set a high explosive charge to detonate the high explosives inside the bomb. That wrecks the nuclear triggers before anything nuclear can occur. The only problem is, you scatter radioactivity. You'd expose the plutonium core. We'd have to get ourselves well clear of the airfield before they did that."

"That would do it, then," Jerry said, sounding relieved. "If they can't turn the thing off, they can blow it up safely." He laughed briefly, without humor, adding, "After we have it on the ground and are away from this aircraft, of course."

Doc Hazzard was shaking his head sadly. "You're forgetting something, fellows."

"What, Doc?" Scott asked.

"How about Vivian? She can't move more than fifteen feet away or the thing goes off."

All three men fell silent for several seconds until Jerry broke the silence.

"Well, we're not really sure her dead husband is… or was… telling the truth about how far she can get from the bomb, are we? Maybe it will detonate if she goes too far, maybe it won't. We just can't be sure."

"Can we take the chance?" Scott asked. "We know it can track her, but would it give us another warning?"

Doc glanced back at the instruments to assure himself the autopilot was performing properly, then looked back, nodding. "Yeah. Yeah, I think there would be. The bastard wanted to torture her. He wouldn't just let it end like that. He'd warn again and again, just to keep her scared."

"So," Jerry added, "you think if they can't defuse it, we could test the pacemaker threat by moving her away from the thing in increments?"

"It isn't aware it's been moved from the Pentagon," Scott said. "We're well away from there and we're still alive."

Doc pointed to the controls suddenly and then to the captain.

"Scott, one of us needs to go check on those two. I had Vivian strapped down, but I'm worried about Dr. McCoy walking around back there."

Scott began throwing off his shoulder harnesses and unfastening his seat belt. "I'll take a look. We scared the living hell out of Linda trying to land back there."

"We scared the living hell out of ms trying to land back there!" Doc said.

"Before you go, Scott," the flight engineer said, "there's something else we should all consider."

Scott recognized the tone instantly. Whenever something passed from the serious to the critical, Jerry's voice underwent a subtle transformation, his eyes echoing the depth of an unspoken concern.

"What, Jerry?"

Doc settled back into his seat.

"I hate to bring this up, but we've been so busy considering Vivian a victim, we haven't even thought about the alternative."

"What alternative?" Scott asked, perplexed as to where this was heading.

"I like Vivian. I hope this isn't true, but…"

"What, Jerry?" Scott prompted. Doc, too, had looked around over his left shoulder to read the engineer's expression.

"Okay, suppose… just suppose… that it wasn't her dead husband who thought all this up. Suppose she's the one. Remember, he's been dead for two years. Would anything be different?"

Doc snorted and rolled his eyes. "That's idiotic, Christian!"

"Wait…" Scott held his left hand up to quiet Doc's protests. "You mean you think she might be behind this, Jerry? But why on earth? To accomplish what?"

Jerry was shaking his head again. "I don't know why. I'm not making a case. I'm just suggesting an alternative explanation we hadn't considered."

Scott and Doc exchanged glances as all three men fell into a silence broken immediately by the ringing of the Flitephone.

Tony DiStefano was on the other end. After less than a minute of conversation, Scott replaced the receiver once more, a puzzled expression on his face.

"What?" Doc prompted.

"Change thirty-seven," Scott said. "Seems they figured out that Jerry was right, and McGuire's too close to New York and Philly, so we're to fly south now to Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina."

Doc was shaking his head in disgust. "Okay. As usual, no one in government can make up their minds. What else?"

"He asked something very curious," Scott continued, making eye contact with Jerry. "He asked if Vivian Henry could overhear our conversation. I asked him why. He wouldn't tell me."

The telephone had been back in its cradle for five minutes before Doris remembered something significant. The shock of speaking with the FBI had muddled her for a while, but suddenly a clear image of the case file popped into her mind with the last name of the woman who had threatened to blow up the OPM prominently stenciled on the side.

It wasn't Henry. The fur-clad bitch's name was Watkins! So she wasn't the same one the FBI woman had asked about.

Doris sat for a moment on her threadbare living room couch and tried to concentrate, feeling even more scared than before. Maybe she should call the FBI woman back and tell her she'd given the wrong information.

Doris looked at the phone with her stomach in a knot. What if the FBI got mad at her for making a mistake? She could lose her job. She had lied to them, hadn't she?

But they don't know that unless I tell 'em.

Vivian Henry was probably just another pampered divorcee, she decided, and even if she hadn't threatened OPM, she'd probably thought about it, and that was almost as bad. After all, she had appealed the decision Doris had made. That made the Henry woman her enemy. She had questioned the government's wisdom and cost them time, and a court had ruled that Doris had been right all along. She remembered the ruling now. She'd felt good about that ruling. The bitch had gotten what she'd deserved, and Doris had felt important and smart. The memo had come down just last week.

The phone sat on a nearby table mocking her. You're in trouble! it seemed to scream. If you tell the FBI you lied to them, you're in big trouble!

It really didn't matter anyway, did it? Doris thought. The FBI wouldn't put the Henry woman in jail for making a threat. They never jailed anyone for threatening OPM workers. Happened all the time.

If I call, I'm in trouble, she decided. If I don't call, nothing happens to her or me.

That made sense. It wasn't her job anyway to worry about OPM's enemies.

Doris picked up the TV remote and punched the "on" button, her mind already shifting to the sleazy talk show in progress.

With Pete Cooke's information providing the missing pieces, the network's confidence level in the emerging story finally justified a break-in news report. ABC affiliates all over the nation cut to the single camera in New York. Peter Jennings was monitored simultaneously in all the other television network news departments, as well as TV screens in the Oval Office and the Situation Room of the White House, where an instant icy silence stilled all conversation.

"A drama is unfolding at this moment in the stormy skies of the eastern United States involving a civilian cargo jet which we have reason to believe may be carrying an armed thermonuclear weapon. The airliner, a Boeing 727 operated by a small Colorado firm named ScotAir, was originally headed for Washington National Airport. Less than an hour ago, however, it was ordered by the FBI to land at a naval air station south of Washington called Patuxent River. Due to the rising winds of Hurricane Sigrid, the landing attempt was unsuccessful, and the aircraft is now reported to be en route to yet another undisclosed location on the eastern seaboard.

"There have been instant denials of this story by the White House and other government agencies, but ABC's sources have been monitoring air-to-ground communications between the aircraft's captain and agencies of the government and confirm that the flight crew was trying to land at the Navy base to permit a team of nuclear experts to defuse a bomb which was apparently contained in a cargo shipment. At this moment the aircraft is being sent to another location, and we are trying to determine… exactly where that might be. ABC News has also learned that the crew of the Boeing 727 believes the bomb is counting down toward an automatic detonation less than three hours from now.

"Now, there is more to the nature of this bomb. Aboard this aircraft, ABC sources have discovered, may be a weapon the United States tried to build in the sixties and seventies, a weapon which, if exploded over or near a modem society such as ours, would do more than kill—it would also attack the economy and infrastructure by devastating computer systems, computer-based banking and financial systems, communications networks, and even the television network you're watching at this moment."

A full description of the Medusa Project and the Medusa Effect—and the scientific uncertainty that such a weapon existed—followed, as other news services leaped for their telephones and computers to catch up.

Within fifteen minutes, similar break-in news reports had aired on all the networks and most radio stations as residents of the storm-battered eastern seaboard began looking skyward and wondering where the lethal jetliner might be.

Tony DiStefano replaced the receiver with an ashen expression as several of his agents stood by, wondering what had happened.

"Donna, find a TV and turn it on. Some bastard leaked this story!" He launched a pencil at a far wall in utter disgust.

"What happened?" an agent named Bill asked.

"ABC just announced that we've got a live nuke that's set to go off inside three hours." Tony put his head in his hands.

"But, Tony," another agent began, "that's essentially correct."

"I know it, but the last thing we need is a national panic, and that"—he gestured toward the phone—"is exactly what's happening in the Situation Room."

"So we're losing control?"

"I'm not sure we want control!" Tony sat back in the swivel chair with an ashen expression and looked out the window. The angry clouds, sheets of rain, and blurred vision of trees bent at odd angles in the teeth of the storm had filled their peripheral vision for the last hour. "If that bomb goes off anywhere near a populated area… Lord! Thank God we've got him flying away from here, but even at Seymour-Johnson, even in North Carolina, we're talking millions of victims, even if the Medusa Wave doesn't work." Tony leaned forward, pointing out the window. "Do you know what happens to the eyes if you're unlucky enough to be looking in the wrong direction when a nuclear fireball erupts? It destroys your retina. Instantly."

"And if it is a Medusa Wave?" Bill asked.

"Then this entire country is in deep trouble." He jumped up suddenly. "Okay, let's stay focused. Here's the latest. The plane is headed for Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base at the Situation Room's insistence. The Air Force is going to evacuate the base and provide a small army of security police, some with heavy weaponry. The Pentagon has a plan in progress for getting the weapon offshore if they can't defuse it. I guess they'll let it blow up over water. How, I don't know. Not our department. We have the job of getting the captain to go to North Carolina. Our people on the ground have the responsibility for securing the crew and taking Mrs. Henry into custody. They'll need every second to work on the defusing, so the last thing we need is this woman holding the bomb hostage while she makes threats to explode it, if that's what she's intending to do." Tony surveyed the faces around him and let his eyes fall on Donna. "Of course, I'm still not convinced Mrs. Henry is our suspect. I can't figure out what she'd have to gain besides terrorizing the U.S. government."

"Revenge, Tony. She wants revenge," Donna said.

"She could be a potential suicide," Bill added. "What else does she have to live for, Tony? With what she's done already, any jury would throw away the key."

"Then we've got to figure out what she wants, — and pray she wants something we can provide, or pretend we can provide. Donna? Keep digging up backgrounds on the rest of the people aboard that plane. Maybe something we find out could help."

"Suggestion, Tony," one of the agents said.

"Sure. Go ahead."

"Has anyone searched her place in Miami with a Geiger counter? Might answer some key questions. You can't assemble fissionable material without leaving traces."

Tony stared at the man in silence for a few seconds.

"I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't think about that. Could you take care of it? Our Miami office will need a quick warrant."

"Done."

"And if there's no radiation?" Tony asked.

"There's probably no bomb."