Rick Mofina - Six Seconds

Her fingers caressed the camera’s buttons as she tried to bring her pulse rate to normal. Any anxiety she betrayed fit with the event.

Her heart was still racing from her encounter with Logan’s mother. It was fortunate Samara had recog nized her from Jake’s photos.

How did she track them down to Cold Butte? It meant she knew something.

Samara looked around.

Did others know?

Thank heaven she was able to turn Logan away before he recognized her. It confirmed that her mission was destined because she was protected.

Soon. Very soon.

Three songs and six seconds. One minute to activate, then she could detonate. She brushed the button and welcomed a kaleidoscope of memories, giving her the sensation that she was floating.

She was a few feet from the pope.

Before anyone could stop her, it would be done.

Once the applause faded, Sobil Mounce-Bazley, the choir director, tapped her baton on her podium.

The shuffle of programs and throat-clearing under

Six Seconds 453 scored the nervous tension as the magnitude of the event registered with the children.

The helicopters, the police, TV news lights, camera flashes and all these people.

This was such a huge deal.

The man sitting over there was the pope.

This was a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Sobil commanded the full attention of her singers but Logan couldn’t stop thinking about his mother.

He had to find a way to call her again. And that incident with the crazy lady a few minutes ago was freaking him out. She’d sounded a bit like his mom.

And where was his dad?

Logan searched the audience for his father, even his mother, when Sobil tapped the baton and shot him a look.

Time to begin.

Phone tight to his ear, Walker had stepped aside to take Graham’s urgent call.

The children’s voices filled the gym with the first song as Graham quickly explained the links: Jake Conlin’s homicide; Samara’s martyr video; the Tarver murders; the traffic deaths; Maggie.

Everything.

The pieces fit.

“You’ve got to do something, Walker!”

“Give me her name again! She could be listed.”

“Samara. Last name could be Russell or Ingram. I’m watching this thing play on her computer at the house.” Graham had rifled through files and bills in the house. He detailed Samara’s description as the live network coverage cut from the pope, to the choir, to audience reaction and back to the pope. “Walker, she’s got to be there. I’m watching it live-there! That’s her! There she is! That’s her!”

“Where?”

“Grab her!”

“Where!”

“Front row. Taupe suit, dark hair, getting ready to take a picture.”

As Walker responded, a few feet from him his boss, Hank Colby, agent in charge of security, got a call from Tony Takayasu in Indian Head, Maryland.

Other officials, including Colby’s supervisor, were patched in to the call.

“Agent Colby, this is an urgent update to the sub stances found at Malmstrom and Washington State,” Takayasu said. “We’ve identified a potential threat. The substances are components of a complex radio explo sive.”

“Have you confirmed it here? We’ve swept and scanned everything.”

“No. It’s a newly engineered fabric. Undetectable. We can’t take risks.”

“Fabric?” Fabric was everywhere-curtains, flags, school banners. Clothing, upholstery. “Give us details.”

“We’ve got nothing yet,” an NSA official explained, “but we’ve locked on the item’s frequency range. Our satellites will alert us to any radio activity.”

“Won’t it be too late by then?” Colby’s boss said.

“Should we detect a signal, you’ll have time to respond,” the NSA official said. “And, as a counter measure we’ll use the satellites to release a radio pulse to thwart any trigger signal. But the pulse is a last resort because of the downside.”

“The downside?”

“It’ll knock out all power and wireless transmission for a minute, or two,” the NSA official said. “Meantime, sir, your team should work on removing your protectee as soon as possible.”

“Will the Vatican pull the pope out?” Colby’s boss asked.

“Not without confirmation,” Colby said.

“You have my authority to physically remove the pope at your discretion, Hank,” Colby’s boss said.

Colby’s ulcer burned.

He looked for Walker and found him behind a curtain consulting a floor plan, talking on his radio to agents.

Cold Butte, Montana

The choir’s first song ended; the pope clasped his hands together in approval.

The audience applauded and Samara raised her camera to her face. Her finger moved over the button.

In one minute she would rewrite history.

In one minute the world would know her pain.

In one minute she would be with her husband and child.

She would activate, wait one minute, rush to the pope with her camera, then detonate. Her finger touched the raised button, caressed its smooth surface during the loud applause as she framed her target one last time before-

Someone bumped her.

A hand clamped over her camera, seizing it from her as someone gripped her arms, lifting her from her chair.

Two big men in suits.

“Medical emergency, Samara. Come with us,” one said into her ear over the applause.

People watched as they took Samara away. News cameras recorded her escort from the gym. Most shrugged as attention turned back to the pope. The children commenced their second song.

From a steel chair in the command post, her wrists and ankles restrained in plastic handcuffs, Maggie Conlin watched events unfold.

The command post was housed in a customized RV equipped with banks of radios, computers, cameras and TV screens to monitor the papal event. Maggie had seen Samara’s arrest.

“Oh, thank God, they’ve got her!”

Agents in the truck were annoyed that Walker had placed Maggie with them rather than in a patrol car. Some suggested it was to keep her from the press.

“Please, you have to let me talk to Agent Walker!” “Ma’am-” a frustrated agent turned to her “-you need to be quiet, or we’ll remove you to a police vehicle.”

In an empty school hall, the agents placed Samara’s wrists in plastic handcuffs, leaving her hands in front of her. Walker then joined them to rush her out of the school to a cordoned area shielded with steel Dump sters. Explosives experts in protective gear immedi ately examined her.

News teams were kept back. Cameras were trained from a distance on the puzzling events rapidly taking place.

Colby called Walker at the scene, advising him that the weapon may be encased in fabric. Walker advised the bomb unit, but their search of Samara was in vain. Nothing was detected.

Members of the bomb squad then began walking

Samara toward a restricted area, beyond a far corner of the school parking lot, where the FBI and ATF bomb units were situated, along with the Montana Highway Patrol.

A specially built bomb hut, half buried and draped with blast mats, sat in an isolated corner. They would keep her in custody there.

But it was a long way off.

Walker didn’t go. He hurried back into the school and called Graham to alert him to search the house for a new fabric purchase.

“A flag, material, anything?”

Returning to the stage, Walker feared that Samara wasn’t working alone.

Half a world away, in Addis Ababa’s Mercato, in the secret bunker hidden under his fabric shop, Amir and his senior commanders also watched events.

Huddled before a bank of laptops and TV screens displaying an array of images, they studied live news coverage of the pope’s visit, a replaying of the grisly flag test, and a geo-display map showing the school.