Medusa's Child

SIX

Pete Cooke breathed a sigh of relief as his flight slowed and turned off the main runway. The landing had been hard enough to register on the Richter scale, but the pilots of the McDonnell-Douglas MD-80 had done an outstanding job of negotiating the advance winds of Hurricane Sigrid. After all, they were down in one piece, and as a pilot himself, Pete had been well aware that the two airmen up front were fighting exceptionally wild winds all the way to the ground.

Through the window the Wall Street Journal reporter could see the trees along the Potomac whipping crazily as his flight taxied south toward the terminal. The angle gave him a clear view of the runway they'd just assaulted— Runway 36—and a clear view of a tiny commuter plane struggling through the last part of its approach to the same ribbon of concrete.

It was a small twin-engine Jetstream, being kicked around rather dramatically by the heavy gusts. Pete found himself leaning forward to get a better look, sympathizing with the passengers aboard the little craft who were probably clutching airsick bags by now. As they passed over the runway threshold, a massive gust rolled the turboprop into a dangerous forty-five-degree bank, and, just as suddenly, the wings leveled. Pete expected to see the pilots begin a go-around maneuver.

Instead, amazingly, they continued their landing attempt.

The massive crosswind was blowing the Jetstream off centerline, but the pilots kept coming, determined to make the landing work. They were halfway down the runway and poised to make a normal touchdown, but the aircraft suddenly dropped through the last ten feet, coming down hard and partially sideways. The left main landing gear immediately collapsed in a shower of sparks, whipping the Jetstream around violently to the left. Still moving at more than a hundred miles per hour, the aircraft dragged its left wing, pushing its nose and right main landing wheels sideways against the runway surface until they, too, collapsed, leaving the craft to spin to a halt several thousand feet away in the middle of the intersection of Runway 36 and Runway 33—effectively shutting down Washington National Airport.

Looking back through his window in shocked disbelief, Pete Cooke saw doors and hatches fly open as the passengers and crew scrambled safely onto the concrete. Despite the sparks, there was no fire.

Thank God! he thought.

Pete fumbled with his tote bag beneath the seat in front of him, groping for the new handheld radio scanner he had begun carrying. His hand finally closed around it and he yanked it out and quickly punched in the memorized frequency for Washington Approach Control.

The runways wouldn't be usable until the damaged Jetstream was removed, but dozens of flights were headed for Washington National. They were going to end up in one massive airborne snarl of diversions and holding patterns, and both the reporter and the pilot in him wondered how the Washington Approach controllers were going to sort out the mess with a monster hurricane approaching.

ScotAir 50 was forty miles south of the Beltway when word came that Washington National Airport was closed.

"How long a delay?" Doc Hazzard asked the controller.

"No information on that, ScotAir. I'll advise when I know. For now, I can give you a holding clearance or send you to Dulles Airport or Baltimore."

In the left seat Scott McKay shook his head in agonized disbelief.

Just when I think it can't get any worse, it gets worse!

He mouthed the word "hold" to Doc, who nodded and punched the transmit button again.

"We'll take the hold, Approach. We need to get into National as soon as possible, but we do have enough fuel to wait."

"Roger, ScotAir Fifty, you're cleared direct to the Georgetown radio beacon to hold as depicted at one-zero thousand feet, right-hand turns."

Doc adjusted the volume control on the communications radio, then turned to check his work.

"Dammit! Scott, we've got to get these radio heads changed. I grabbed the wrong one again."

Scott's eyes shifted to the VHF radio control heads. The two were mirror images of each other, the result of Jerry scrounging a refurbished radio when the original equipment delivered with the old leased 727 had broken. Each radio head had two volume knobs, one for air traffic control, the other—usually kept at zero volume—for checking navigational signals. But the number one VHF control head had the important volume control on the left, while number two VHF had it on the right. It was constantly confusing, and more than a few times they'd had the embarrassing experience of flying along for twenty minutes out of touch because the wrong volume knob had been turned down.

"Sorry, Doc. We'll get it fixed as soon as we can."

Jerry had leaned forward. "About the holding pattern.

We weigh a hundred and seventy-two thousand pounds, guys," he announced. "That's a holding speed of two hundred forty knots."

Doc repeated the holding instructions and dialed in the radio beacon while Scott guided the Boeing to the left, his right hand retarding the throttles to slow to a speed of two hundred forty knots, trying not to focus on how much he just wanted to be finished with this flight. The desire to crawl off and lick his wounds in private was strong. The impending collapse of his airline—and his dream—was just too painful.

The holding pattern was an invisible racetrack in the sky. They would fly in one direction for a minute, turn right one hundred eighty degrees to fly in the opposite direction for another minute, then another right turn to repeat the exact same path, for as long as they had extra fuel.

Jerry Christian leaned over the center console and handed Scott a slip of paper covered with fuel figures. The 727's tanks had been filled in Tallahassee at a cost of eight thousand dollars, and somehow ScotAir's company credit card had been accepted one last time. At least that would get them all the way to Colorado.

"We've got forty-seven thousand pounds of fuel remaining," he counseled, "which gives us about an hour and a half of holding time before we'll have to depart for Denver. But if we changed our alternate to, say, Louisville, we could hold here in D.C. for over four hours."

Scott was already shaking his head no.

"In four hours we don't want to be anywhere close to here, considering the rate that hurricane's coming ashore."

Doc Hazzard spoke up. "I just monitored the weather for Dover Air Force Base, almost due east of us on the coast. This is not good, folks. The winds are already howling at over seventy knots." Doc glanced to the left at their new passenger, who was sitting in the same seat Dr. McCoy had occupied earlier, the observer's chair right behind Scott. Five-foot-five Linda McCoy had taken one look at five-foot-eleven Vivian Henry back in Tallahassee and decided there was no way the older woman could fold her long legs into the second jumpseat, a tiny affair sandwiched between the observer's seat and the back cockpit wall. Linda had moved immediately to the smaller seat.

Vivian Henry was restraining herself from asking the obvious questions, but her face betrayed deep worry, and the copilot leaned in her direction to explain what was blocking the runways below. She listened carefully before replying in a quiet, firm voice, "They can reopen their runways, then, in an hour and a half?"

Doc nodded, knowing it was no better than a wild guess. "They'll have to get permission from the safety board and the FAA to move the wreckage, but they can do it if they hustle."

Linda McCoy's face was too expressive to hide the dark worry she was feeling. She leaned between Jerry Christian's seat and the observer's chair. "I'm not a meteorologist," she began, "but I can tell you we'd better not underestimate this storm. The winds down there are going to get worse. Don't assume it's going to follow the pattern of any previous hurricane."

Something in her tone caused Scott to turn around.

"Why, Doctor?"

"This is a new breed of storm—one of the effects of global warming. Atmospheric science is my field, and I can tell you that the engine that's fueling that storm is a hotter ocean, and more heat coming out of the oceans means more energetic storms. You may have noticed in the last few years how hurricanes seem to be getting stronger, and more fearsome? Well, this is one of that new breed, and the worst is yet to come."

"You're scaring me, Dr. McCoy," Doc said, forcing a chuckle.

"I'm trying to," Linda replied. "I want you to understand that a cyclonic monster eight hundred miles in diameter has immense power. I don't want you fellows to underestimate its intensity. I especially don't want you to underestimate it if you're planning to land in it with my tail aboard."

From the engineer's seat Jerry Christian tried to suppress a smile as he watched the captain's eyes, waiting for the inevitable, possibly sexist remark about Dr. Linda McCoy's shapely tail. He knew Scott too well. He knew he'd be unable to resist, and for just a second the anticipation made him forget the inner panic he'd felt for the last few hours.

But there was no smirk on Scott's face, and no reaction, so profound was his distraction. The silence made Jerry feel even sicker, the hollow desperation welling up inside like the day more than a decade ago when he'd stumbled out of the flight simulator in Minneapolis knowing he'd blown his last chance to pass his copilot check with Northwest Airlines—an exam he had to pass to stay employed.

Jerry studied the captain's face, trying to sense his thoughts, realizing why the silence dismayed him so: If Scott McKay had lost his puckish sense of humor, it really was over.

Scott turned around as far as he could and tried to look at Vivian. "Mrs. Henry, we could probably land at Dulles Airport right away, if you wanted to change your destination."

The image of a flatbed truck came into her mind.

"I've already arranged my transportation for Washington National Airport, and that was a struggle. I'd much rather go to National."

"Okay," Scott began again, "but let's say Washington National doesn't reopen. We've got to plan for that."

Vivian sat in high-speed thought for a few seconds. If they couldn't land at National, Dulles did make sense, even if it took a day to get another truck dispatched.

"I think," she began, "what I'd like to do is wait and see if National opens up in time, if you can do that safely."

Scott thought about it before nodding in agreement. If he had come this far and burned up this much fuel to satisfy her, he could burn a little more. "Okay, let's say we'll give it forty-five minutes. If National doesn't reopen, we'll land you at Dulles, and I'll help you arrange transportation before we head west."

Vivian acknowledged the plan with a weak smile, the words of her Pentagon contact replaying in her mind: "I can't meet you later than 6 p.m." Rogers Henry had left extremely detailed instructions. "Once the shipment has arrived in Washington," he had written, "it must be delivered immediately to the Pentagon within the hour. This is very important! Security demands it!"

She had not concerned herself with why. He had never authorized her to question his judgment, though so long ago when they'd first met at Lawrence-Livermore labs, there had been no need. She was a young engineer specializing in weapon assembly techniques, starstruck to be dating the resident wunderkind, the rising star of theoretical physics. His judgment seemed beyond question until they married, and the kind and caring young husband began metastasizing into a monster determined to maintain total control at home.

She shuddered now to realize that even after his death, Rogers' iron will could control her thinking.

The senior FBI agent in charge in the makeshift command post in the Navy trailer was irritated. It had taken much too long to relay the distressing news that the missing cargo flight, ScotAir 50, was not on the ground at Denver International Airport, after all. He had been worrying about how their cargo should be examined, and how it could be tracked down if any part of what they had flown from Miami had left the Denver airport. The possibility that ScotAir 50 might have diverted somewhere other than its planned destination of Denver had occurred to no one.

And that, he concluded, was poor planning on his part.

This time the word came back in minutes.

"Okay, I understand," one of the FAA men was saying to the phone as he held up his right hand in a wait gesture. "We may need to contact him. Get me a direct line to that sector controller, please. Yeah, I'll hold."

"What?" the senior FBI man asked. "What?"

The FAA inspector took a deep breath and shook his head. "I'm not sure you're going to believe this."

"Try me."

"The one aircraft in the United States we most suspect of carrying material that could be used to construct a nuclear bomb?"

"Yes?"

"At this moment, it's in a holding pattern over Washington, D.C."

Doc Hazzard excused himself for a quick walk to the back of the aircraft.

"I can only watch us bore circular holes in the sky for so long without a break!" he explained as he slid his barrel-chested frame from the seat with surprising ease.

Within a minute, however, he was back, a quizzical expression crinkling his weather-beaten forehead.

"Uh, Dr. McCoy, you said several hours ago that you've got batteries and things ticking away in your equipment, right?"

Linda McCoy studied Doc's face before replying. "Yes. Why?"

"Well, I hate to tell you, but there's an electronic alarm going off back there."

Scott looked around at Doc, who shrugged his shoulders.

Linda followed Doc out of the cockpit and down the narrow passageway on the left side of the compartment, aware of a high-pitched sound that seemed to be rising in intensity as she moved aft. The Boeing 727 was cruising through bumpy air at low speed with very little engine noise, which let the warning horn echo from everywhere in the cargo compartment at once. She scanned her memory of the things her team had packaged back in McMurdo Sound in Antarctica, but nothing, as far as she could remember, could make a noise like that.

"It's coming from your second pallet, I think," Doc offered as they moved back slowly alongside the cargo.

"I can't imagine what that could be," she said, her head cocked to try to locate the source of the high-pitched sound, which had become almost deafening.

Doc Hazzard tried putting his head against the side of the pallet, while Linda squeezed past him, realizing that it was getting louder as she moved aft.

"Doc, that's not coming from my stuff! It's coming from the last cargo position." Linda pointed toward the rear of the cargo cabin.

Together they moved carefully alongside Vivian Henry's shipment and stepped behind it, and as Linda reached out to steady herself with one of the cargo straps, the noise changed at the same moment to an urgent electronic warble, causing both of them to jump.

"What on earth?" Linda asked.

Doc backed up and stared at the pallet briefly. "Wait here," he said. He motioned toward the front of the aircraft and Linda watched him disappear up the narrow passageway, returning in less than a minute with a startled Vivian Henry, who moved around her pallet slowly, her eyes wide and fixated on the large crate beneath the heavy-duty cargo straps and plastic sheeting.

"What's in there, Mrs. Henry?" Doc asked.

Vivian stared at Doc in uncomprehending silence for a few seconds, then suddenly shook herself awake.

"I… I don't know. I don't know what could be making that noise." Her voice seemed distant against the loud electronic warble.

"What's in the crate, I mean?" Doc tried again.

"My husband instructed me," she began, "to bring this to Washington personally. It's something I'm not supposed to discuss, but it's very important to our military… to the United States."

Doc Hazzard moved slightly in front of her, trying to look her in the eye.

"Mrs. Henry? Was there supposed to be anything running, or turned on, in there?"

Vivian took a deep breath. "No. It's a mockup. A dummy."

"If we got your husband on the phone, could he tell us?"

"He's deceased."

"What… was his business, Mrs. Henry?"

"He was a government scientist, before he retired."

"What kind of scientist, Mrs. Henry? What area?"

"Physicist," she replied in a small voice.

Doc felt off-balance all of a sudden. A jolt of apprehension had come with the title of "physicist," as if the word invested the pallet's unknown contents with more sinister possibilities. He shook off the feeling and tried again. "Is there anyone your husband worked with who would know about this?"

Vivian's eyes remained on the pallet as she shook her head, slowly at first, then with rapid back-and-forth jerks.

Linda had been watching her carefully, especially her eyes. It was obvious that Mrs. Vivian Henry had absolutely no idea what was in her own pallet. Or could it be that Vivian was just a good actress? If so, what was she hiding? A small, cold chill began to ripple down Linda's back.

"Okay," Doc said, "I think we better open it up."

"No!" Vivian Henry's reply was instantaneous, but her eyes remained glued to the pallet. "He left strict instructions… that…"

Doc put his large hands on her shoulders and slowly turned her around to face him until their eyes met.

"Mrs. Henry, something inside your pallet is sounding a warning. It's trying to tell us something, and we're a commercial cargo aircraft in flight. Unless your husband left specific instructions about what to do if you heard such a warning, we've got to figure out what this alarm means. Okay?"

She looked at him blankly.

"Okay?"

Her eyes dropped to the floor. "Okay."

Doc motioned to Linda, and together they began removing the cargo straps, using a penknife to cut through the side of the heavy vinyl covering, exposing a crate within.

"Hold on a second." Doc disappeared up the passageway again, returning quickly with a crowbar. He tried to control the creepy feeling that the alarm, which kept changing in pitch, was very much beyond his control. The nails screamed as he hauled them out of the wooden crate. The back panel finally gave way and fell, causing all three of them to step back as it clattered to the metal floor of the 727, revealing the crate's contents.

Facing them was a large stainless steel container. It was rectangular, but with rounded edges at each of the corners. The rear panel was over six feet wide, but only the surface of the metal was visible within the opened crate. There were no stickers or decals—no markings of any kind —only the outline of what appeared to be a removable panel approximately twenty-four inches square located about three feet up from the bottom along the left-hand edge.

Linda McCoy reached out to the panel, but the pattern of the electronic alarm changed before she actually touched it.

When she pulled her hand back, the alarm reverted to its previous warble.

"This thing's got a magnetic field sensor responding to us!" Linda said. "Why, I wonder?" She looked briefly at Vivian, who seemed frozen in place, her eyes riveted on the container. Doc stepped forward, braving the change in sound to run his hand along the panel.

There were four Phillips-head screws holding the panel in place, and Doc produced a small screwdriver, finding them easy to remove. When the last one was free, he pulled the panel loose and handed it to Linda.

The glow of a TV screen within spilled from the cavity as soon as the panel was open. Doc leaned close and noticed a foldout computer-style keyboard and number pad mounted below the screen. There was a message on the screen directing him to press the "Enter" key on the keyboard.

He did so.

Instantly the alarm stopped as a line of text appeared on the screen.

The numbers were changing slightly as the 727 moved over the ground, and Doc realized there had to be some form of inertial navigation system inside, tracking their precise position.

Without prompting, a second block of text suddenly appeared.