Nighthawk

64

Kurt saw through the peephole as Davidov made a sudden move toward the control panel. He’d overheard every word and knew what Davidov was planning.

There was no time to shout a warning, no time to do anything but act. With quick precision, Kurt raised the HK45, aimed at Davidov through the door and pulled the trigger twice.

The HK45 boomed and the armor-piercing shells punched through two layers of steel and struck Davidov in the ribs and the thigh. The statesman crumpled to the floor in pain.

“I’m begging you,” Kurt shouted to the pilot. “Level the plane off and open the door.”

Pushing Davidov aside, the pilot stretched from his seat and released the door. It swung open and Kurt stepped inside. “What altitude are we at?”

“Thirty-five thousand feet,” the pilot said.

“Too high,” Kurt said. “Almost certainly too high.”

As if to prove the point, a sudden flash lit up the coal black sky outside the cockpit windows. It came in a staggered flicker, white-purple and then white-blue. It blinded like a nearby lightning strike would, but it was distant and soundless and so far off that the entire western horizon slowly came to life.

As the glowing color spread higher and farther, it gave way to a darker blue and then a greenish color reminiscent of the aurora borealis. It took on a texture, churning in long filaments, twisting and curling back in on itself in a mesmerizing, hypnotic display.

There was no sound, no shock wave, but the radios soon squealed and the computer screens skewed oddly to the right. On the panel above, whole rows of circuit breakers tripped, one after the other.

By now, Joe and the flight engineer had joined Kurt in the bomber’s cockpit. As the flight engineer began resetting the tripped breakers, Joe stared out the window.

“What is that?” Davidov said from his position on the floor. He was in pain but not lethally hit. The double-layered steel door had taken much of the force out of Kurt’s shots.

“The Chinese plane,” Kurt said quietly.

“The Chinese…” Davidov grunted from his position on the floor.

“I told you,” Kurt said. “He gave a deadly present to all of us.”

Far beyond the horizon, out over the Pacific, a ball of fire, the likes of which no human had ever seen, expanded in spherical shells that stretched fifty and then a hundred and then two hundred miles across before finally fading.

Lightning shot out of the inferno in all directions, along with an electromagnetic storm of X-rays, gamma rays and other forms of ionized radiation. The upper atmosphere was ionized instantly, while down below enough seawater to fill Lake Erie was instantly vaporized. The fire and the shock wave left a circular depression that dented the Pacific to a depth of two hundred feet.

As the shock wave subsided and the ocean sought to level itself, a ring of enormous waves surged into the depression from all sides, eventually colliding and being thrust back outward again.

Several thousand miles away, Kurt, Joe and the Russians were seeing only the reflection of the events. An effect known as a light echo filtered through thousands of miles of atmosphere and was distorted by the curvature of the Earth. Yet not one of the five men on board the Russian bomber could take their eyes off of it.

“Something must have gone wrong,” Joe said. “They can’t have reached China yet.”

Kurt helped Davidov up and into a jump seat. The wound to his ribs was broad but not deep; the wound to his leg hadn’t hit any vital arteries.

“How far… how far away?” Davidov asked.

“Five thousand miles,” Joe estimated, “give or take.”

“To reach us from five thousand miles away…” Davidov said without finishing his thought.

“The Chinese had two units on board,” Kurt said. “Fifty pounds of mixed-state matter. We’re carrying twice that.”

Davidov nodded and gripped the edge of the seat. “Why? Why would anyone want this? What has Russia done to him?”

“It’s not going to explode over Russia,” Kurt said, “but as you cross Europe.”

Kurt explained the rest of what they knew. Davidov seemed more shocked with each revelation.

“We need to use your communications system,” Kurt said. “We need to reach our people and find out if there’s any possible way to prevent what we just saw from happening again.”