Radiant Angel

I expected to hear from Petrov again, but the speaker was silent. He could have jumped ship, but I didn’t think that was part of his plan. And maybe he was lying about Tess and she’d whacked him… but the ship was still moving forward, and I didn’t hear anyone’s voice on the speaker. Not Petrov’s and not Tess’.

I took a deep breath and squeezed on the trigger, wondering if I’d hear the sizzle of fried electronics, or the Big Bang. One way to find out.

Tess scrambled up the ladder and slid quietly across the white fiberglass roof, between the radar tower and the ante

Up ahead she could see the skyline of Manhattan, maybe three miles away, and getting closer. A pink dawn was visible on the eastern horizon. It was going to be a nice day.

She saw a helicopter overhead flying in slow circles, and a few hundred yards off the port side was a Coast Guard cutter, keeping pace with The Hana, and to starboard was an NYPD Harbor craft, also ru

She waved her arm, hoping they knew that a female agent had boarded the hostile ship. Don’t fire.

Tess held her Glock in both hands and propelled herself over the edge of the roof until she was staring down through the windshield into the dimly lit bridge. She saw a body on the floor, and it wasn’t Petrov’s, who was off to her left, looking down at the lighted video screen on the instrument panel. She held her Glock at a downward angle and took aim.

Petrov suddenly looked up and saw her face staring at him a few feet away, and he went for his gun.

Tess fired three rounds into the windshield, realizing instantly that they weren’t penetrating. Petrov returned the fire, with the same results.

They looked at each other for a moment through the fractured glass, then Tess jumped to her feet and emptied her magazine into the fiberglass roof, above where Petrov was standing, but she realized the roof was also bulletproof. “Damn it!”

She scrambled back to the hatch and dropped ten feet to the vestibule floor, then reached into her pocket for a full magazine.

Before she could reload, she was aware that something was moving, and she looked toward the bridge to see the door sliding open. Standing there was Vasily Petrov, pointing his pistol at her.

“Bitch!”

Tess saw a flame spit out of his silenced pistol, and felt something hit her in the chest, knocking her back against the elevator.

He fired again, and again he hit her in her Kevlar vest, knocking her off her feet.

Petrov seemed momentarily pleased, then confused.

Tess dove for the spiral staircase as Petrov fired again. She went over the railing and dropped to the deck below.

Petrov was at the top of the staircase and he fired again, this time hitting her in the left thigh.

She rolled as she slammed a magazine into her Glock and emptied it up the staircase, then ran into the salon and sprinted across the bloody carpeting, tripping over a body, then getting to her feet and continuing until she reached the outdoor lounge.

She was aware that she was covered with blood and that some of it was hers, but it wasn’t gushing, though the wound was starting to throb. She took a deep breath and looked back into the salon, but she couldn’t see Petrov.

As she moved down the outside staircase to the main deck, she saw a large ship about three hundred yards off the starboard side. The ship had a strange bow and she realized it was an icebreaker. They were going to ram The Hana and sink her—her meaning The Hana, but also meaning her. Well… it was a smart move. Maybe the only move left.

She had no idea where Petrov was, but she hoped he was following her so she could kill him before the nuke did.

Tess moved cautiously down to the main deck, then to the staircase that went down to the garage, and began to descend. The wound in her thigh was now sending sharp pains down her leg, and she held the rail with one hand and her Glock in the other.

There was no good reason to descend into the flooded garage, except to see for herself if Corey was dead. And if he was, that meant that Gorsky was alive, and she would also kill him.

Before I fired into the nuclear device, I had a lucid moment and remembered Urmanov’s aluminum box. I’m not good with tools, but I evolve fast.

I found what looked like a screwdriver, except that the tip had a very odd shape with three prongs. I looked at the four holes in the corners of the metal faceplate, which I assumed held recessed screws, and I put the screwdriver in one of the holes and twisted, but it didn’t budge. Shit.

I was about to give up on this idea, but then I thought that this being a Russian suitcase nuke, it was not user friendly, so I twisted clockwise, which is supposed to tighten a screw, and I felt it turn.

I quickly removed all four screws, but there was no place to get a grip on the recessed steel faceplate to lift it off. Then I noticed a narrow notch on the right edge of the plate, big enough to get a knife blade into. I took my pocketknife—Swiss Army—and extended the blade, which I slid into the notch and levered the faceplate up an inch, enough to get my fingers under it. So if I lifted it, would it blow?

One way to find out. And I did, and it didn’t.

I threw the faceplate into the water and looked down at the inside of a nuclear suitcase bomb. Holy shit.

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.