Nelson Demille - Radiant Angel

I’m a little squeamish about radiation exposure, but I understood that this was not my immediate problem.

... if you can remove any one of the three components... I looked for the digital countdown clock, one of the items that could possibly be removed, but there was no such thing. The clock must be internal, part of the electronic circuitry, not visible to human eyes. Petrov, of course, had the remote arming device and he could see how many minutes we all had left, but I could not.

I looked for the power source, but I didn’t see anything that looked like a battery, so it must be buried deep in the electronic bowels of this monster.

The third component was the explosive charge... but this explosive was made up of two elements: the nuclear core and the conventional high explosive that was wrapped around the core. And all of this was contained in a beach-ball-sized metal globe, which I was staring at, and there was no way to get into it. Nor did I want to.

Two electrical wires led into the globe, one on each side — and those wires led to the detonators buried in the high explosive material. And the wires came from a battery that I couldn’t see, and somewhere in the circuit was the clock, which I also couldn’t see. Damn it!

Okay... now what? Cut a wire? If you cut one wire leading to the charge, it collapses the other circuit, setting off the charge . Not a good idea according to my Bomb Squad instructor.

I felt sweat forming on my forehead, but my hands were very steady if I wanted to do something with them.

Then I understood that this was actually a win-win situation. If I got lucky and disarmed the bomb, all was good. But if I blew it, this far from the city, then the damage would be... well, acceptable. So if I removed myself from the equation, then I knew what I had to do. I grabbed both wires leading to the metal globe, understanding that they had to be pulled simultaneously — if one was pulled first, the other circuit would probably collapse in a nanosecond and send an electrical charge into the detonator, which would blow the high explosives, and the nuclear core would achieve critical mass and do its fission thing.

I tugged on both wires to sort of rehearse, then I heard a voice in my head, and the voice said, Submerge the electronics, stupid.

Then another voice said, “John!” That voice sounded more like Tess than God.

I stood and looked at her on the opposite dock, and saw blood on her left pant leg. “You okay?”

“I’m okay... Petrov said that Gorsky killed you.”

I wasn’t sure how she’d had a conversation with Colonel Petrov, and I didn’t care, but I cared about his health, so I asked, “Is he dead?”

“No. He’s... he may be following me.”

Shit.

She started limping toward the catwalk, and I asked her, “Who’s steering this ship?”

“I don’t know... I saw a dead man on the bridge.”

Well, he wasn’t steering. So either Petrov was steering or the autopilot was. I informed her, “Gorsky is dead. On the catwalk.”

“Good.”

“How far are we from Manhattan?”

“Maybe... less than a mile.”

So we had maybe five minutes — or less.

She moved across the catwalk and stepped over Gorsky like he was dog turd. She looked at the nuke as she came toward me on the dock and exclaimed, “You got it open!”

“Right.”

“Do you know what to do?”

“I do.”

“Thank God.”

I was about to dash to the catwalk and open the shell door, flooding the garage and submerging the nuke, which, if it was like my cell phone, would die quickly.

But Vasily Petrov had other ideas and he said, “Put your hands up and move away from the device.” He was standing at the double doors and aimed his MP5 at Tess. “Or I will shoot her.”

He was going to shoot her anyway, but he wasn’t going to shoot at me standing in front of the nuke, so I knew I could try to pull my Glock. Or pull the detonator wires.

“Move away!” He raised his submachine gun and pointed it at Tess, who knew the same trick I knew, and she dove over the side of the dock, but the water level was less than two feet now and she took a hard fall, though Petrov lost sight of her.

I used the opportunity to pull my Glock and pumped my remaining two rounds at him, then the gun clicked empty.

Petrov was down but not out, and he got to one knee, blood all over his arms and shirt. He raised his MP5 and aimed it at me, but hesitated because of the nuke behind me, which he did not want to blow prematurely, though I did, so I said, “Shoot, asshole!”

He didn’t shoot, but he stood and staggered toward the edge of the dock and looked down at Tess, who I could see from the boat, lying in the water. She’d been hurt in her dive off the dock and I knew she’d lost a lot of blood.

Petrov aimed his submachine gun down at her, and before I could pull the small pistol that I’d taken from Gorsky, Tess raised her Glock and put a bullet into Petrov, who tottered on the edge of the dock, then fell on top of Tess, who brought her arm around and fired another bullet into the side of Petrov’s head, splattering his brains out the other side. Can’t get deader than that. Das vidanya, asshole.

The water around her and Petrov was red, and I needed to put a tourniquet on her wound, but my only job now was to open the shell door and flood the compartment. I started to climb out of the boat and onto the dock.

A voice with an Eastern European accent said, “Please help me.”

I turned my head toward the voice and saw a guy coming from the double doors, dressed in blue denim. His shirt was open and there was blood on his chest and he was gripping his abdomen with both hands. “Who are you?”

“I am Mikhail. A seaman.” He also assured me, “A Bulgarian. Not Russian. All my mates are dead. I am wounded. Please—”

“Turn around and get down on the deck.” I started to reach for Gorsky’s pistol, but Mikhail had a similar gun and he pointed it at me.

“Do not move.”

What the...?

Mikhail informed me, “To be more truthful, I am not wounded. Also, I am a colleague of the late Colonel Petrov and the late Viktor Gorsky. Along for the cruise to see that all went well.”

I stated the obvious: “It didn’t.”

“I see that.” He continued, “Also I am here to eliminate all witnesses — including my colleagues.”

“Done that.”

“Thank you.” He, too, stated the obvious: “And now it is your turn.”

Well, I was totally pissed that this guy snookered me. That doesn’t happen often, but once was all it took. I glanced at Tess, but she was still lying on her back in the receding water with Petrov still on top of her. Shit.

To make sure Mikhail understood the situation, I told him, “In a few minutes, there won’t be any witnesses, including you, asshole.”

He replied, “I have reduced the speed of the ship.” He held up what looked like a cell phone. “And I have given myself another ten minutes to leave the ship.” He nodded toward the amphibious craft. “But before I leave, I wish to know from you what you and the CIA know about Operation Zero, and how you discovered this.”

I didn’t like being mistaken for a CIA guy, but I didn’t make an issue of it and asked, “What’s in it for me?”

“A quick bullet to your head. The alternative is several bullets to your abdomen.” He assured me, “Very painful.”

I already knew that from the last time I got shot in the gut, but I didn’t find either alternative very attractive or persuasive.

Mikhail sensed this, and he continued along the dock to get into a position to fire without hitting the nuke behind me. “What do you know?”