Medusa's Child

TWENTY-FIVE

The phone call from the Air Force command post at the Pentagon had been a surprise. Tony DiStefano hadn't expected a call back. After all, Tony thought, the military was in charge of trying to manage the crisis, even if they had screwed it up royally.

Of course, the performance of the FBI's man at Seymour-Johnson had been a gross embarrassment as well. They were in no position to toss mud balls at the Pentagon.

"Agent DiStefano?"

The voice identified himself as a major general.

"Yes, General?"

"You relayed that report about the single-digit code as a way of deactivating the Medusa weapon?"

"Yes, sir. Just a few minutes back."

"Was that information from a Dr. Jack Kravitz of Aspen, Colorado?"

"No. No, it was originally from a Dr. Gene Mislowsky, and it was relayed by a Pete Cooke, a reporter for, I think he said, The Wall Street Journal."

"Amazing."

"Why, General?"

"Let me verify this. The shutdown cipher code was the single digit '1'?"

"Yes, sir. It was apparently an educated guess based on that scientist's knowledge of Rogers Henry. But why? Who is Dr. Jack Kravitz?"

"Dr. Kravitz is another former coworker of Rogers Henry from Los Alamos."

"Lord, they're coming out of the woodwork."

"Apparently it was a team of thirty scientists."

"Dr. Kravitz called you at the Pentagon?"

"No, sir. He called the White House and managed to talk to the Situation Room, who patched him to us. We checked the roster from the Medusa Project days, and he's on it."

"General, what did he say?"

"He confirmed it. He told us in no uncertain terms that the single digit '1' was definitely the code Rogers Henry would have used."

"Independent confirmation, then?"

"Totally, unless he's lying about not knowing the whereabouts of Dr. Mislowsky or lying about having no contact with him today. It's always possible they could be comparing notes on a theory, one reinforcing the other. But he swore that wasn't the case, and there isn't enough time left to check it out directly from our end."

Tony felt his skepticism evaporating.

My God! One digit and they're out of the woods.

He shifted his focus back to the phone. "General, I've got a reporter named Pete Cooke on another line at the FAA's facility. He says the FAA can't reach the airplane. Can you?"

"Not yet, but we're trying everything."

Tony wanted to ask what "everything" meant, but thought better of it. "Can we help you, General, in any way?"

"Yes, sir. You already have helped immensely in giving me that confirmation, but if you could also run a quick background check through your computers on those two scientists and let us know what, if anything, you find, I think that would raise our confidence level that we're on the right track in trusting this single-digit code business… not that we have a choice, of course."

"I'll call you back, General."

"As soon as possible, please, Agent DiStefano. We're going to have an historic national disaster of unprecedented proportions on our hands in a little over thirty minutes if we can't reach those pilots."

General Kinney replaced the handset and leaned over the table where two other officers and a chief master sergeant were spreading out a map of the Atlantic Ocean from South Carolina to Bermuda. The level of intensity in the command post was the highest he'd seen in a decade. For the past half hour they'd been hearing reports about the economy of the United States rapidly coming to a halt, with financial institutions, markets, and clearing houses all trying desperately to secure themselves against the impending electromagnetic pulse. Aircraft were being grounded nationwide, most of them far short of destination. Freight and passenger trains were stopped in mid-track, and countless municipal facilities were shutting down.

The attempts to reach ScotAir were becoming frantic. The entire team was painfully aware they had the key to deactivating the Medusa Weapon, but couldn't use it unless ScotAir could be reached.

The general looked closely at the map. "They're flying into the Bermuda Triangle," he said.

"Yes, sir, whatever that means."

"So where are we?" the general asked his aide. "Can the F-16's make it?"

"The two F-16's that found him a while ago are headed back to shore. They would need refueling, sir, before we sent them east again. It'll simply be too late by the time they hit the tanker and turn around. We thought we could scramble some F-15's from Shaw Air Force Base, but they can't get airborne fast enough, and they only have UHF radios aboard, which makes that a questionable choice. We need someone who can broadcast on VHF and UHF."

"Any other air traffic along here?" The general traced a line roughly running due east from Grand Strand Airport and extending four hundred miles east.

Both aides shook their heads, and one replied, "All commercial air traffic has been routed way around the fringe of the hurricane. They're all probably too far away to use as a radio relay, except this fellow…" He pointed to a triangle with a Lufthansa call sign.

"Lufthansa's going into Miami, and he might be close enough. His company is calling him right now by satellite phone to see if he'll broadcast for ScotAir."

"I wish to hell ScotAir had a satellite phone, but his communications gear is apparently pretty basic."

"And we have one last possibility."

"What?"

"Actually, we have two, sir. We're asking NASA for help because the space shuttle Endeavor is in orbit right now and may be within range. They were scheduled to take live pictures of the hurricane today, so there's a chance they could help. Second, there's an SR-71 Blackbird flying over the hurricane doing some sort of high-altitude research. He's in the air now, and we're trying to reach him."

"Good! I've always been upset at the idea of parking the world's fastest, highest-flying airplane to save money. He has a VHF radio?"

"We're not sure, but it's worth a try."

A major appeared at the general's side, a deep frown on his face.

The general turned to him immediately.

"Something new?"

"Sir, the space shuttle won't be in range for two more orbits. That's about three more hours."

"Damn!" The general looked around at everyone in the room. "How much time do we have left?" he asked.

"Thirty-five minutes, sir."

He shook his head and sighed. "There's got to be a solution! There's got to be a way to reach that plane. Think, everyone. Get creative. No idea's too far out."

"General?" The voice of another officer crackled over the table. A lieutenant colonel. He was holding a receiver and looking excited.

"Yeah?" the general replied.

"The SR-71 is VHF-equipped. The pilot says if we'll scare up a tanker for him to head for afterward, he'll divert to the target area and try to raise the 727 from above."

"How high?"

"He's above sixty thousand feet, sir. He'll have quite a broadcast footprint."

"Where is he now? How far away?"

The general moved quickly to the colonel's side, tension and excitement mixing in his voice.

The colonel consulted his notes and spoke a few words into the phone before turning back to General Kinney.

"He says he'll be line-of-sight to that area in four minutes. He's flat-out full-throttle."

"Yes!" the general said, punching the air for emphasis and turning to his aide. "Get a KC-10 airborne or turned in the appropriate direction. Work with him." He pointed to the colonel still holding the phone, who raised his hand for silence as he struggled to hear the voice on the other end of the line.

The colonel looked up suddenly. "He's unable to patch us through directly to the 727 when and if he responds, so he wants to know in advance what the message is we're so anxious to send."

The general repeated the code and the method of entering it into a keyboard. "Just punch in the number '1.' No zeros, no decimals, just '1,' and then 'Enter.' "

"That's it?" the colonel asked.

"That's it. Ask him to do it and report back as quick as he can on whether it worked."

The colonel repeated the instructions into the phone, then fell silent, realizing all eyes were on him. He covered the mouthpiece.

"I'm standing by… I'm patched through his command post, and through them, into a satellite connection to the SR-71 commander."

Several people, including the general, checked their watches, mentally marking the four-minute point.

The tension aboard Air Force One had been rising almost exponentially in the previous half hour, but with word from the Pentagon that a single digit might turn off the detonation sequence—and the fact that no one could reach the 727—the President had resumed pacing around his side of the Starsuite as the National Security Advisor and the Foreign Policy Advisor entered the White House side of the Starsuite.

The President stopped and looked at the two men.

"I'm going to need to talk to the Russians in a few minutes. Then the British, French, Germans, and the Japanese Prime Minister. I need to keep everyone calm if this really happens. The Russians can see a nuclear detonation within seconds with their satellites, can't they?"

Stanley Shapiro, the National Security Advisor, nodded. "We're still given to believe they can, though, thank God, we're not facing Soviets with itchy trigger fingers anymore. Now that they're our good friends, the Kremlin's all wired up with our networks. You can be sure they know the basic outlines of this story already, but what they need to know is where to expect the detonation. Sir, have you considered submarines?"

The President appeared confused. "Subs? To call the airliner, you mean?"

"No, sir." Shapiro continued, "I mean, have you considered the repercussions if that crew somehow dumps the bomb on top of a Russian sub, or anyone else's sub, for that matter."

"Lord, no, I hadn't. Has the Navy…"

Stanley Shapiro raised his hand in a stop gesture.

"Well, sir, I've been looking into it. Both officially and unofficially, we know of no Russian subs or anyone else's subs in that general area right now. In fact, we have a carrier group trying to get to the south of the hurricane southwest of Bermuda, and they're closer than anyone else. But there is a danger you need to be aware of. Allies or not, if one of their subs happens to go down somewhere else for a reason they'd rather not discuss—and there are a lot of such reasons these days, including mutiny, gross negligence, forgetting to close a hatch, whatever—it could be very convenient to blame its loss on their friends in Washington and ask for compensation."

"So we do need to tell them immediately, right?"

"Yes, sir, but it's so late, even if they certified to us there were no submarines in that area, they could later say, 'Oops, you gave us the wrong coordinates and fried one of our boats!'"

"The Cold War is over, Stanley. It's not supposed to be so complicated anymore."

"Ah, but that's where statecraft reaches its highest form. How to hopelessly complicate the essentially simple."

"If they file a claim, we could say it was a French nuclear test," the President said with a deadpan expression.

The President picked up the interphone to the communications room aboard Air Force One.

"Set up a hot line call to the Russian President as soon as possible." He looked back up at the Situation Room side of the teleconference. "What else are we forgetting?"

"How about satellites? I was told the shuttle couldn't help, but see if we have a satellite overhead that can reach them on VHF radio frequencies. If they need authorization to change an orbit, whatever the cost, they've got it."

"I think," Stanley Shapiro began, "that SR-71 is our best hope, sir. He's working for NOAA, but under NASA's control. Call sign is Condor Ten. He'll be overhead momentarily."

"Maybe, but get on the satellite angle, too. We can't leave any possibility unexplored."

The boxes and equipment culled from the first two pallets were growing into an unmanicured jumble in the rear of the cargo cabin of the 727 as Scott and Jerry labored to move as much as possible in the time allowed, while the owner of the cargo, Linda McCoy, prepared for emergency surgery.

Scott stopped for a second in the rear of the cabin and wiped his forehead. He and Jerry were sweating profusely. The task of tying down the loose collection of boxes with a cargo net would take approximately two more minutes. The net had already been laid alongside the growing stack as the constant turbulence threatened to scatter the boxes all across the cargo floor.

The sound of the PA system clicking on caused Scott to look instinctively toward the ceiling.

"Scott, we've got less than ten minutes before the door should be opened. Ten minutes." Doc's voice reverberated around the mostly empty section between Vivian Henry and the mountain of Antarctic research gear.

There was no time for modesty, Vivian had decreed. She had shucked her blouse and bra and lain down several minutes before as Linda reapplied Betadyne antiseptic to the area where the pacemaker sat just beneath the superficial fascia of the skin, above the left breast and below the collarbone.

Linda placed a small blanket under her knees as she knelt by Vivian's right side. She'd tried to use the blouse as a drape of sorts, but Vivian had pulled it away.

"It was a very expensive present to myself, dear," she'd told Linda. "I don't want to bleed on it."

The process, Vivian had instructed, was really quite simple. The small, pocket-watch-sized pacemaker formed a flat, circular lump under the skin with a well-defined edge all around. A simple incision along the bottom of the lump running from the four o'clock to the eight o'clock position should be enough.

"As you cut," Vivian told her, "let the tip of the knife ride along the metal casing of the pacemaker. That way it'll be very clean and there's no problem gauging how far down to cut."

"Okay."

"When the bottom is exposed, reach in with two fingers and slowly slide the whole unit out from under the skin, just enough so that two wires are exposed. There's enough slack."

"The wires connect to the top?"

Vivian nodded. "Yes. That way the unit can be slid out in a downward motion."

The fact that there would be no anesthetic to deaden the area had been bothering Linda far more than the patient.

"Can you handle the pain, Vivian?" Linda had asked.

"There won't be much," Vivian had replied evenly. "It won't be comfortable, but it won't be bad."

"Maybe one of the guys has some liquor. Would you like some, if I can find something intoxicating?"

Vivian shook her head emphatically no.

"Linda, let me finish the instructions. As I said, there are two tiny wires that connect to the top of the unit. There is enough slack for them to come out with the unit and be grasped so you can disconnect them, but you do not want to pull on them any more than that."

"Why?"

"They're embedded intravenously. They run all the way to the right side of my heart."

"Oh Lord!" Linda's hand went to her mouth. "Oh Lord!"

Vivian reached out a hand to reassure her.

"You won't be affecting those interior wires in any way, unless you try to yank at them or pull at them."

"Absolutely I will not yank at them or pull at them! No way!"

She cocked her head and focused a questioning expression at Vivian.

"My God, Vivian, they're in your heart?"

"The other ends are. Now, calm down! All you're going to do is disconnect them from the unit when you slide the unit out, then gently place the wires back inside."

"What if they're touching? Won't they short out or something? I mean, I know I can't use black electrical tape to insulate them, but…"

Vivian laughed and shook her head. "The power source is the unit we'll be removing, the basic pacemaker. It doesn't matter if the wires touch when you put them back inside. My only point is, don't yank on the wires while you're disconnecting them or after they're disconnected."

"I promise. Believe me, I won't!"

"Good. That's all. Just so you know."

"I'm not a doctor, Vivian. I mean, I'm not a medical doctor. This stuff scares me."

"I know, Linda, but you'll do fine."

"What do we do about the bleeding?" Linda asked. "Will there be much?"

"No. Not much. Use those paper towels you brought from the bathroom to absorb what there is, but try not to put the towels in contact with the incision."

Vivian could see Linda's hand shaking slightly. Vivian reached out and took it again, saying, "Now, calm down.

I'm the patient and I'm calm, so you've got to be calm, too. This isn't open heart surgery. A doctor has to do the same thing when it needs new batteries."

"Really? How often?"

"Supposed to be every five years or so, but in my case the batteries haven't been lasting as long. Now I know why. All right, no more delays. We're out of time and I'm getting very cold."

Linda picked up the scalpel and felt its balance as if she were going to throw it at a target. She took a deep breath and mentally reviewed whether everything had been as sterilized as they could manage. Her hand steadied, and she gently held the lump of skin containing the pacemaker with her left hand as she positioned the blade of the scalpel with her right, being careful not to let the bouncing of the aircraft influence the cut as she pushed the tip of the blade and felt it slice cleanly into Vivian's outer skin.

Fifty feet toward the front of the aircraft, Doc Hazzard looked at his watch and picked up the PA mike once again.

"Scott, we're down to five minutes now before door-open time. Suggest you finish the cargo move."

He hadn't heard the sound of a human voice for more than fifteen minutes, Doc realized, and the absence of the constant radio chatter all airline pilots are used to hearing in flight made him uneasy. In fact, he was losing his cool altogether, and he didn't like that fact.

They were taking too much time in the back. He knew he was feeling scared and maybe a little abandoned. In fact, he was irritated and distracted, as if there were two Doc Hazzards snarling at each other in his head, one logical and one pure emotion. He wanted to scream at both of them. All his career he'd been proud of his reputation of being steady as a rock under pressure. "There's grace under pressure, and there's Doc under pressure," a friend had said once, introducing him at an Air Line Pilots Association dinner, "and Doc under pressure is calmer."

He thought back to an incident twenty years ago, when Pan Am was still a vibrant company. He'd overheard a conversation around a corner in the New York pilot lounge that had made him infinitely proud. "Ol' Doc?" a young first officer had said, not realizing Doc was in the area. "I love flying with that character. Nothing ever rattles him! If the right wing fell off, Doc Hazzard would call for another cup of coffee before ordering hard left rudder and calling for the emergency checklist. Only thing gets him excited is a sexy woman. He's a sucker for females."

Still am! Doc thought. But I guess I'm not imperturbable anymore.

He swiveled around and looked at the closed door with rising irritation. He forced himself to focus on the instruments and the flight path. The task of picking his way through the red splotches of severe weather showing on the color radar was taking its toll. He glanced over at the radio control heads on the center console between the captain's and copilot's seats, wondering if he should turn the radios back on. The number one VHF radio was on, he reminded himself, and tuned to the only VHF frequency that made sense for them out over the Atlantic: 121.5, the emergency frequency, or "guard" as the military aviators called it.

Anyone trying to call us would call us on guard, he reassured himself.

Something was nagging at him. But what? There was something else he'd overlooked. It had been a fleeting thought ten or twenty minutes ago when the fighters left, but now he couldn't remember. It had been something that needed checking, such as…

His eyes focused on the mirror image VHF radio heads.

Number one VHF has the damn volume control on the left, he told himself. He was finally remembering, but he had to focus on it. Number one VHF was the radio they'd left on with guard frequency.

That was it. Was the volume control still up? Maybe he'd better check to see…

Jerry burst through the cockpit door in a frenzy of sound and energy.

"Okay, Doc, we're going to be ready in a minute. Linda's still working on Vivian back there."

Doc made sure that the autopilot was still engaged and pushing them steadily eastward before turning back to Jerry.

"We're running out of time," Doc began. "Have you and Scott talked about body angle, speed, flap settings, anything?" Doc's tone was sharp and irritated and he knew it. Venting was an unusual trait for him and it caught him by surprise, especially when Jerry's eyes seemed to flare in response. Jerry shook his head as he took a slightly grimy cloth from the small compartment beneath the flight engineer's table and wiped his forehead with it. He'd obviously been sweating profusely.

"There's been no time to talk," Jerry explained. "We've been working like dogs to get that stuff repositioned, and we got far more done than I expected. We won't have to dump much of her cargo."

"That's just wonderful, but I'd really prefer we keep the tail on the airplane, and to do that we're going to need you up here in the performance manuals and helping with some quick planning. It could make all the difference."

Jerry stopped and stared at him for a few seconds before replying in a slower, more deliberate tone.

"I'm well aware of that, Doc. You've been sitting up here using the PA for the past ten minutes, so I thought maybe you'd be working on it in your spare time," Jerry said with a rising edge in his voice which caused Doc to bristle.

"Hey! I was 'working the PA,' as you put it, Jere, because I needed to make sure you guys didn't lose track of the time."

"We weren't going to lose track of the damn time!"

"I'm glad to hear it, because that little matter of airspeed and configuration may just determine whether we're still alive in about ten more minutes."

Jerry sighed a deep, disgusted sigh, set his jaw at a defiant angle Doc had only seen a few times over the past six months, and threw the cloth to the floor.

"Doc, if you don't like the way I'm doing my job, perhaps you and all your Pan Am experience would like to take over the panel, too!"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Well"—Jerry swept his arm in the direction of the empty left seat—"you've taken over the airplane, you seem to have all the answers, so I won't get in your way."

Scott McKay stopped just outside the open cockpit door, listening to Doc and Jerry's rising anger. He swept in suddenly and clapped a hand on Jerry's left shoulder as he moved toward the center console and caught Doc's eye.

"What's going on up here?"

Doc shook his head and snorted in disgust. "It's nothing, Scott. Just irritations. I was getting worried about the time."

Jerry arched a thumb at the copilot. "I was just stepping aside so he could run the whole show without…"

"STOP IT! NOW!" Scott snapped at the two older men, a furious expression crossing his face. "There's nothing going on here but our fright getting the best of us. We're a team, guys, until we park this bucket of Boeing bolts in Denver or get vaporized out here over the Atlantic. We're a damn team. That's how we started, that's how we'll end it. I'm not going to tell you to kiss and make up, but I am going to tell you that I don't want one more word of irritation directed at each other! Understood?"

"Sorry, Scott. My fault," Doc said, turning back toward Jerry, who waved him off.

"Forget it, Doc. Scott's right. I'm terrified."

"I am, too," Scott said. "You, Doc?"

He chuckled. "My reputation always held that Doc Hazzard is never scared. But right now, you could legitimately say that I'm scared shitless."

"Then let's focus all that nervous energy on figuring out how the hell we're going to lose the door without losing the tail, okay?"

Jerry had already grabbed the performance manual as he slid into the engineer's seat. "You got it. But first, we'd better start descending and depressurizing."

"What altitude, Jerry?" Scott asked.

"I'd recommend five thousand."

Doc shifted in his seat. "Ah, guys, I'd feel a lot more comfortable with ten thousand. You know, in case we have a control problem."

Scott looked from Doc to Jerry, who was nodding.

"Ten thousand it is."

Doc turned back to the control yoke to begin the descent with a nagging worry still bothering him that somehow he'd forgotten to do something.

To his left, the unchecked volume control on the number one VHF radio remained where Scott had inadvertently left it more than twenty minutes before: in the full down position.