Rick Mofina - Six Seconds

Stone-faced soldiers and police officers guided them through metal detectors, boys and girls extended their arms, removed shoes, jackets as security wands passed over them and dog handlers patrolled at close proximity.

Once he was cleared, Logan moved with the line toward a school entrance.

Maggie was going to lose him.

“Logan!”

He turned at the sound of shouts but did not see Maggie as she launched herself over the metal barri cade, stumbled onto the cleared road and ran toward him calling his name.

People yelled to police and pointed.

At that moment, officers and soldiers rushed Maggie, reaching for their weapons. Radios crackled with rapidfire transmissions. Security breach Sector 27! We have a security breach at 27! A Montana Highway Patrol he licopter turned and pounded toward the scene. TV news cameras wheeled, focused, capturing a hysterical woman running across the empty road to the school live on network television. A cameraman said calmly into his headset, “Alert New York, we’ve got something here.” On the school roof, FBI sharpshooters advised that they had “the target” in the crosshairs of their scope and could drop it in a heartbeat.

“Standing by for green,” one FBI shooter whispered into his headset, then placed his finger on the trigger of his rifle.

A rookie Montana patrolman, who was a former tackle from Missoula, got to Maggie first. He took her to the ground hard. His six-foot-four-inch body covered hers and in one smooth motion he got one metal cuff on her right wrist.

The chopper whooped above.

Other officers swarmed the scene.

Standing there in his new blazer, Logan had wit nessed the incident, but without recognizing that the woman at the center of it was his mother.

Maggie screamed for him, reaching through a forest of legs and boots toward him with her soon-to-be-cuffed left hand. But his eyes never found hers. The prop wash from the chopper was deafening, but Maggie saw a question form on his face just as a hand clamped his shoulder and turned him from her, nudging him into the school.

The hand belonged to the person in the picture in the truck stop restaurant.

Samara.

Across the chaos, the two women met in one intense gaze.

Anguished mothers from different worlds, heart broken by events not of their making, willing to pay any price for their family. Samara’s eyes were fixed with purpose, forged in some hellfire of unwavering love that burned into Maggie’s.

“That woman abducted my son!” Maggie shouted. “She could threaten the pope! You have to arrest her! You have to alert Special Agent Blake Walker! Now! Logan!”

None of the deputies, troopers or agents understood Maggie over the chopper, let alone gave a second thought to her words.

To them she was the threat.

Maggie offered little resistance as they pulled her to her feet, told her of her rights as they completed hand cuffing her hands in front of her.

“You have the right to remain silent…”

“Logan!”

As Samara entered the school with Logan, she took a deputy and a Secret Service agent aside and showed them several badges of identification.

“I’m a nurse with the county helping with this event,” Samara said, then nodded to Maggie. “That woman is psychologically disturbed. She came to the school last week and indicated that she would ‘get rid of the pope’ if he ever came here.”

The deputy and agent nodded as they copied Samara’s ID information, took notes then reached for their microphones.

Indian Head, Maryland

Immediately after the test, Takayasu assigned team members to alert specialists in an array of fields with federal security agencies.

Calls from Takayasu’s unit were rare, but when they came, they were given priority status. Today, they were deemed an “extremely urgent matter of national secu rity.” No effort was spared to contact the experts, who were reached at offices, homes, labs, airports, funerals and vacation resorts.

Encrypted password-coded files containing calcula tions, formulas and findings of the incidents at Pysht, Malmstrom and the test at Indian Head were instantly e-mailed and a teleconference call was convened from the lab’s meeting room.

A quick round of introductions showed that the tech nical expertise on the line came from the highest levels of national security, such as the National Security Agency, the Central Security Service, Army Intelli gence, NASA security, the Naval Security Group,

Six Seconds 441 members of the Computer Network Defense Red Team and others from Fleet Information Warfare Center. Before Takayasu led the call, a question was put to him.

“Is this for real?” a man from the NSA asked.

“This is real and we have to move fast. We need to jam the signal, or hijack it with a disabling protocol. Can it be done?”

“We could do something with SDI technology, or, NSA or NASA satellites,” another caller said.

“What’s the target zone?”

“We believe the target zone is Lone Tree County, Montana,” Takayasu said.

“That’s where the pope’s just landed. We’re watching it live!” said one expert. “Didn’t they already arrest some hysterical woman who breached security?”

“We’re cutting this close! Just cancel the event,” the Army Intelligence chief said.

“We’ve tried. The Vatican refused,” a supervisor from the Secret Service Intelligence Division said. “The threat is not confirmed. And yesterday, in Seattle, we had two incidents we thought involved assassination attempts. Both were false alarms. The Vatican almost never cancels an event, even when a threat emerges. As we speak, the pope’s got one hundred thousand people waiting for him in Montana.”

“We think this new weapon’s in play right now against the pope in Montana?” the CSS caller asked.

“Or his next stop in Chicago,” the Secret Service caller said. “We’re concerned about all the dots: the intel from Issa al-Issa, the intel about a ship, the material found on the coast and at Malmstrom. We can’t risk this. We’re down to minutes.”

Everyone heard the clicking of a computer keyboard.

“Lone Tree County is two thousand two hundred twenty feet above sea level. Longitudinal and latitudi nal position is- Hang on.” One of the satellite experts on the line was doing the math. “Our best chance at this stage is to send a pulse. But we have to program the nearest bird.”

“How long?” Takayasu said.

“Not sure, twenty minutes at least.”

“This is going to be close.”

“It might not work. And if it does, there’s a huge risk that goes with it,” the satellite expert said.

Cold Butte, Montana

Sirens yelped and emergency lights wigwagged as the papal motorcade made its way through Cold Butte. Cardiac time again.

Walker was in the SUV among the lead vehicles preceding the papal car. Along the route he scanned the faces of people at the barricades, relieved the pope was not walking at the rope but waving from the moving popemobile.

It was safer.

After Seattle, security had been heightened.

The entire route had been swept seven times. K-9 teams had conducted building probes. Bridges, vantage points and streets were patrolled by deputies from five counties. Officers from the Great Falls, Lewistown and Billings police departments and the Montana Highway Patrol supported federal agents.

All were advised “to check everything again and jump on anything out of place! Anything!”

Four helicopters circled above. Three were security; one was the press pool for aerial news pictures.

Sharpshooters and spotters with binoculars were positioned on all rooftops overlooking the procession. Walker was grateful no building was taller than three stories. Skyscrapers were an assassin’s dream.