Six Seconds

52

East of Great Falls, Montana

Distant reddish-brown figures emerged in the field glasses slowly coming into focus.

White-tailed deer.

Some two hundred yards off.

A doe and two spotted fawns stepping from the forb and dogwood.

Snouts to the ground, they browsed around the lone U.S. flag affixed to a pole of pine dowelling. Quite a sight against the grand sky. Nothing out there but the deer and the flag, flapping in the open range at a height of precisely five feet.

The flag had been erected by the deer watcher, Ali Bakarat, a specialist in chemical engineering.

Using an alias, Bakarat was identified as a professor from England. He was visiting the U.S. to attend an international symposium in Portland, Oregon. It had ended a week ago. He’d told American authorities that he was taking a holiday and driving across America to New York, before his return to London.

Previously, he’d flown from Addis Ababa, to Algiers, to Cairo, to Istanbul, Paris then London. None of which was known because he’d used counterfeit documents. His fingerprints and eye scan did not raise any red flags. He didn’t exist on any no-fly or Interpol watch lists. But here he was, east of Great Falls, Montana, at the fringe of Malmstrom Air Force Base, finalizing his part of the operation.

He’d broken a salt lick, spread chokecherries and snowberries, and set a water bucket around the flagpole. It was like a candy stand for the deer. They would graze for hours. Bakarat looked at his watch when he saw his partner’s Jeep approaching, raising dust.

Bakarat’s associate, Omar, an expert in molecular nanotechnology, had arrived with the operative.

The nurse.

Samara.

She wore jeans and a Seattle Mariners T-shirt, which enhanced her figure. Even under her ball cap and dark glasses, her beauty exceeded the description given Bakarat by the old men in Africa.

The Tigress had blended in nicely, Bakarat thought.

Omar shouldered Samara’s computer bag then set up her computer alongside their equipment on the folding table where Bakarat was working under the shade of a beach canopy.

To anyone who’d happened upon them, they were re searchers for a European wildlife magazine.

“Sister,” Bakarat greeted Samara. “This is a great honor. Uncle sends his prayers.”

She nodded then took stock of the hardware on the table. The laptops, cameras, field glasses, satellite phones. Well-thumbed notebooks with codes, tables, calculations. “Is everything ready?”

“All is ready,” Bakarat said. “Conditions are good. Our subjects are well positioned.” He passed Samara a set of binoculars to use to see the deer.

Omar was making calculations in his notebook, then entered them on one of the laptops. Then he set the co ordinates into one of the satellite phones.

“Are we ready, Omar?” Bakarat asked.

“Ready.”

“Sister, this is what you need to know.”

The scientists explained to Samara the basics behind the new weapon. Then they showed her an animated program which simplified the science that had gone into developing the system. They’d produced a new synthetic fabric that was highly explosive, undetectable and detonated through radio frequencies.

It worked like this:

A radio signal was sent to activate the new material, which was equipped with nanoreceivers. After the signal was received, it took about sixty seconds for the process to “warm up” to the stage of detonation readi ness. At that point, the controller could detonate it at will.

Samara studied the animated demonstration on Bakarat’s laptop.

“You send a radio message to the material. Upon receipt it takes sixty seconds to warm up,” Bakarat said.

“Then it’s a bomb,” Samara said.

“A bomb waiting for a second command to detonate.”

“And how do you explode it?”

“You send a second signal. It can be sent from

Six Seconds 321 anywhere in the world via a laptop, wireless through the Internet, as long as it is programmed with the proper codes, see?”

Bakarat’s animation showed it bouncing from satel lite phones via wireless connection to a laptop.

“Or, through your camera,” Omar said. “Many digital cameras have a focus assist beam. When pressed, it emits an infrared light beam from the front of the camera to the subject to measure distance. We’ve programmed your camera with the codes to send a signal to your laptop.”

Omar, who was very soft-spoken, repeated the process.

“You activate the fabric, wait sixty seconds, and a green light will flash indicating you may detonate the bomb at any time. The next second, or the next day.”

“The kill zone is tight,” Bakarat said. “Everything within eight to ten feet.”

Samara looked at him.

“If you use the camera, you can be at any distance, as long as nothing obstructs your focus beam. On the laptop, you can set a timer to start a countdown to the process, or use the camera. We’ve programmed the codes, set you up with everything.”

Samara studied her laptop with the step-by-step in structions Omar had installed.

“Are you clear?” Bakarat asked.

“I think so.”

“Ready to test it?” Omar handed her a camera.

Samara studied it.

“Go ahead, photograph the flag down there.”

Samara focused and pressed the button.

“See.”

They watched her laptop count down sixty seconds. As they waited, Bakarat chuckled.

“The irony is rich, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?” Samara asked as the seconds ticked down.

“We’re at the edge of Malmstrom, part of the stra tegic command for the American Minuteman III inter continental ballistic missile,” Bakarat said. “There are some five hundred nuclear warheads buried in silos across North Dakota, Wyoming and right here in Montana.”

Samara nodded.

“And did you also know that U.S. forces bound for Iraq once trained here before deployment.”

The seconds ticked.

“And here, in the realm of America’s might, we prepare to plunge a sword of sorrow into the heart of the entire nonbelieving world.”

A light flashed green and beeped.

“You’re good to go,” Omar said.

“You now have a bomb. Point your camera at the flag and take a picture.”

Samara found the flag and deer in her viewfinder.

She pressed the button.

Her brain registered the blinding white flash before she heard the whip-crack of the blast and saw the bloodied-dust plume in the distance.

When it cleared the flag and deer were gone.