Nighthawk

66

Emma stood in the empty Internet café and felt her knees go weak. Not only would Kurt and Joe be killed but the detonation would inflict lethal damage across a large swath of the Americas and the Caribbean.

“This can’t be happening,” she whispered.

She sat down on the floor, tried to breathe and found her lungs would not draw in any air. “This can’t be happening,” she said again.

Gamay approached. “Breathe slowly,” she urged. “You’re hyperventilating.”

“I killed them all,” Emma said, tears streaming down her face. “Kurt and Joe, and a hundred million more.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I was part of it!” she snapped, going instantly from despair to anger.

She knew what Gamay was trying to do, but she didn’t want to be told how it was going to be all right. It most certainly was not going to be all right.

“They’re carrying twice the mixed-state matter that was on the Chinese plane. Even from the middle of the Caribbean Sea, the shock wave will cover half the South. Every living soul from Houston to Tampa will be incinerated, irradiated or drowned in a hundred-foot wave. Along with half of Mexico, Central America and every living being on every island in the Caribbean.”

Gamay just stared at her. There was nothing to say.

Emma stood and turned away. In her darkest moment, when she would have rather died than be witness to what was about to happen, the defiance of Hurricane Emma flared the brightest. “I will not accept this,” she said. “I will not!”

She pulled free of Gamay’s attempt at kindness and willed her tired mind back into action. There had to be a way. There had to be!

She went over the properties of the mixed-state matter, the design of the containment units, tried to calculate the minuscule odds that they would survive if the Semtex detonated. But there was no way to stop the reaction; no known way, aside from the frigid cold of absolute zero, to stop matter and antimatter from annihilating each other.

She paced around the room searching for an answer. The frustration boiled over as she bumped a small table. In a fit of rage, she pushed it across the room. It slid with surprising ease, toppled and gouged a line in the painted concrete floor.

Emma stopped in her tracks, staring at a lengthy scratch. It was white on blue, like a vapor trail in the dusky sky.

Paul took a step toward her.

“Stop,” she said without looking his way. Something had come to mind.

Vapor trail… Contrail… The thought lingered in her consciousness. Streams of tiny ice crystals released by passing aircraft, high in the frigid sky.

The thought hit with so much force, she almost fell over. “There is a way,” she whispered. “There is a way!”

She turned with a snap. “Get Rudi back on the line. I need to talk to Kurt. I need to talk to him now. Before time runs out.”