The Aztec Prophecy

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Terror consumed Kim Taylor as she stared at the monstrous cobalt bomb before her, almost humming with power. It felt like it was alive, breathing almost — a hideous lead-gray beast intent on the annihilation of everything she had ever loved or known. This wasn’t something Wade was using to destroy San Francisco. This inhuman, obscene creation had used Wade to get what it wanted, and it terrified her. She hadn’t exactly led a sheltered life since becoming a field agent, but this was something else. Just looking at its sleek, lead-colored casing made her feel sick and that was before she even contemplated the extermination it was capable of delivering.

“Holy shit,” was all she could say, but everyone agreed with her.

After Camacho lowered Alex to the bunk, they all moved in closer and beheld Wade’s monstrous Hummingbird. When Scarlet saw the whirring numbers on Sobotka’s digital timer she shook her head in horror. “Less than nine minutes now…”

Kim glanced at the pale, sweat-soaked faces of her friends and swallowed hard. These people had fought with her across Mexico and California to stop the Order of the Sixth Sun and their insane suicide cult, but they could still lose everything if they failed to deactivate the weapon. The weight of eight million lives was on her shoulders and she felt every ounce of it.

8:37 to detonation…

Kim tried to focus. Back when the island was used as a prison, the inmates could hear the sounds of San Francisco blowing on the wind across the bay, but now all she could hear was the sound of SWAT teams as they cleared up the last stragglers of the Sixth Sun who were trying to flee on their boats.

8:31

Jack Camacho moved forward to do his thing. He was fully trained in explosive ordinance disposal techniques as part of the years he spent with the CIA’s bomb squad, not to mention the time in Afghanistan and Iraq in the US Army he spent diffusing IEDs. He knew the buck stopped with him. He’d stopped many threats over the years, but nothing like this had ever crossed his path.

8:11

He lifted the housing from around Sobotka’s jerry-rigged timer. It was good work, especially considering that he’d done it while Wade and Mendoza were pointing a gun in his face, but it was done fast and might give him options. Like all bomb disposal professionals, Camacho knew the preferable option was a controlled explosion, but that method was kind of unavailable when dealing with a nuclear device of this magnitude.

Instead, he knew he had only one option left to him — neutralizing the device right here on the island — and it was time to get to work.

Time.

He looked at the timer.

7:24

Time to move faster… But this was no ordinary bomb with a blast cap, batteries, duct tape and sticks of explosive… this was a Soviet-era cobalt bomb which like everyone else he had thought a mere myth until today.

Camacho knew the bomb was useless if the trigger failed to fire enough uranium along the cylinder into the main store of uranium in the heart of the bomb. This was how critical mass would be achieved and what would cause the nuclear reaction — but it was all dependent on the trigger, and that was linked to Sobotka’s timer.

6:15

“Bloody hell, Jackie Boy — get a move on!” Scarlet said. “If you carry on at this rate half the population of California’s going to be glowing like the Ready Brek kid.”

Camacho glanced over his shoulder, a look of confusion on his face. “Huh?”

“Ignore her,” Lexi. “We’re told this is how she deals with pressure.”

“But at least she does it with good poise,” Kim said, her words dripping with sarcasm.

5:51

“Something like this has to be finessed,” Camacho said, glancing at Scarlet. “I guess like taking you on a date.”

A grim ripple of laughter went around the group.

“Good job Hawke’s not here in that case,” Scarlet said, ignoring Camacho’s jibe. “He’d probably put it under his arm and try and swim it out into the ocean.”

Camacho said nothing, but crouched down and looked closer at the timer mechanism installed by Viktor Sobotka.

“So what do you think?” Alex asked.

Camacho sighed as he lifted the front panel off the timer. “Looks like we got three wires to play with — red, blue and yellow.”

“Is that good?” Kim said.

He shook his head slowly. “No. The timer only needs one wire to send a signal to the bomb in order to activate it.”

“What are you saying, Jack?” Scarlet said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“I think those sons of bitches put a couple of booby trap wires in here, and that means while one of these wires cuts the timer feed, the other two will detonate the bomb if and when they’re cut.”

Kim sighed and rubbed her temples. “And now we have less than five minutes to decide which is which. Damn it…”

Camacho sighed and pushed the sweat off his forehead. “Get Jackson to bring the girl back in here. She might know something.”