Andy McDermott: The Midas Legacy

‘We can’t just sit here and wait for them to do whatever it is they’re doing.’ Petrov regarded the monitor again as the woman moved to the other open case. Rather than take out its sphere, though, she used a second strap to secure it inside, then carefully tipped the container on its side. She then pushed it across the deck until it was lined up with the sphere on the floor and tied another strap to it. ‘Whatever they are doing.’

It became clear that an answer would soon arrive as the woman checked her handiwork, then hurried to an intercom system at the side of the hold. She lifted the handset, and a buzzer sounded in the cockpit.

Petrov was still wearing his headset. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said, watching the screen closely as the crewman switched him in. ‘This is the captain,’ he said in English. ‘What do you want?’

‘Hi,’ the woman replied, her accent American. ‘We want a couple of things. First, let us into the cockpit. Second, fly us to South Korea. Sorry for wrecking your plane, by the way.’

‘I will not let you into the cockpit, and I will not fly you to South Korea!’ Petrov told her firmly. ‘We will land at Tonyong in a few minutes. I suggest you jump out the back, it will be quicker and less painful.’ The crew, listening in on their own headphones, smiled at his grim joke.

‘You know what else is painful?’ said the woman. ‘Dying of radiation poisoning.’

‘You can’t set off the bombs. There are safety features.’

‘I’m not going to set off the bombs. But what I am going to do is get down behind that big box full of gold bars,’ she pointed at the crate against which her companion was sheltering, ‘while I pull these two plutonium spheres together. They’re both just below the size at which they’ll reach critical mass so if they touch, or even get too close to each other, they’ll release a big burst of gamma radiation. You know what that is, I assume?’

The pilot had not worked directly with nuclear weapons during his time in the military, but he had become familiar with their basics. ‘Yes, I do,’ he said uncomfortably.

‘And what it’ll do to you?’

‘It ain’t gonna turn you into the Hulk!’ the bald man called out in the background.

‘It will kill you too,’ said Petrov, starting to sweat.

‘Not necessarily. Gold’s just as good as lead at blocking radiation. A lot more expensive, obviously, but we’ve got something like thirty million dollars’ worth of it here. We’ll be safe behind it, but the gamma rays’ll go straight through aluminum like it’s tissue paper. Planes are made of aluminum, right? Including the floor?’ She pointed at the hold’s ceiling above the first sphere, directly beneath the cockpit.

‘If we die, the plane will crash! You will die too!’

‘You won’t die right away. It might take hours, days, even weeks. But from everything I’ve heard about radiation poisoning, you’ll wish you’d died instantly. The North Koreans will have killed us by then… but if you take us to South Korea, we can all stay alive.’

The Antonov’s crew exchanged worried looks. ‘You would not do this!’ said Petrov, trying not to let his concern show in his voice, but not succeeding.

‘I would. Because it’s the only way we have to get out of this. So are you going to do what I say?’

‘No!’

‘Your choice.’ The figure on the screen hung up the handset, the captain hearing a loud click in his headphones as she disconnected.

‘She’s bluffing,’ he assured his crew, watching her toss the long strap attached to the case over the gold crate and join the man behind it. ‘She must be!’

‘You know this is the most fucking insane thing you’ve ever done, right?’ said Eddie as Nina crouched beside him.

‘I don’t even know if it’ll work,’ she admitted. ‘As far as I know it should, but I’m not a nuclear physicist.’

‘Shame we haven’t got that arsehole Fenrir Mikkelsson here to test it on. And will this gold really block the radiation?’

‘Again, I think it should , but…’ She gave him a resigned look. ‘Hopefully we won’t have to find out.’

She pulled the strap. The case, the plutonium protruding from its open top, slowly scraped along the deck towards the other sphere.

‘She’s doing it!’ cried the loadmaster, staring in horror at the screen. ‘She’s fucking doing it!’

The co-pilot turned in his seat. ‘Will it really kill us?’

‘I don’t know!’ said the pilot. ‘She seems to know what she’s talking about, but… I don’t know!’

The sphere in the case inched ever closer to its twin. All eyes were fixed upon it, the Antonov’s crew all too aware that it was less than five metres beneath their feet — and that the woman was right about the aluminium floor. ‘We can’t go to South Korea,’ said the co-pilot. ‘We’re carrying a damn nuclear missile ! They’ll lock us up for breaking the arms embargo!’

‘We could dump it out of the rear ramp before we cross the border and say the Koreans never told us what we were transporting,’ the loadmaster suggested.

‘You think they’d believe that?’

‘That doesn’t matter right now!’ Petrov cut in, close to panic. The spheres were now only a hand-span apart, and still edging nearer. He watched them, paralysed by indecision… then hurriedly darted to activate the internal speaker system. ‘Okay! Okay! Stop! Don’t do it! We’ll take you to South Korea!’

Nina and Eddie both looked up at the source of the echoing, panicked voice. ‘You think they’ll really do it?’ he asked, dubious.

‘There isn’t much we can do if he’s lying,’ she admitted. ‘But he sounds pretty scared, so…’ She stood and rounded the crate, relievedly pushing the case away from the tied sphere, then returned to the intercom. ‘Okay, I’ve moved the plutonium apart. Now would be a good time to show some good faith, because I can always push them right back.’

‘We’re changing course now,’ said the captain. Seconds passed, the An-124 continuing to circle — then it banked, much less steeply than before, and increased power. The lights of the airbase receded into the distance beyond the rear doors as it levelled out again.

Nina allowed herself a tired smile. ‘They’re doing it! We’re actually going to get out of here!’

Eddie grunted as he stood, keeping one hand over his leg wound. ‘This probably isn’t the best time to mention that the border between North and South Korea is the most heavily defended in the world, is it?’

The Antonov picked its way through the crumpled labyrinth of valleys of North Korea’s south-eastern region. The cockpit lights had been all but extinguished to let the pilots adjust their eyesight to the darkness, but despite their tension as they guided the hulking aircraft between the hills and mountains, staying as low as they dared to avoid radar, it was one of the flight crew behind them who was under the most pressure. Using a paper chart, he was trying to plan a route to the border that would both stave off detection for as long as possible — and keep the plane from rounding a peak to find nothing but a wall of rock directly ahead.

With no time to plot a course in advance, he was forced to relay directions to the pilots on the fly. ‘In forty seconds turn, uh… twenty degrees starboard,’ he said, having to approximate the speed-to-distance calculations in his head. ‘Next turn after that will be to port.’

Not taking his eyes off the moonlit landscape beyond the windscreen, Petrov spoke to Eddie, who was in the crew seat immediately behind him — both to make sure the pilots were taking them south, and to keep them covered with his gun. ‘Please, we have to go higher. The mountains are getting bigger. If we take the wrong route, we will not be able to climb fast enough to get over them.’