Dark Zone (41 page)

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Don’t worry?”

“Look, I’m a professional. Just take care of yourself,” she said finally, heading back for the Chunnel tube.

Donohue watched the woman leave. She must be some sort of undercover police officer—but she had an American accent.

CIA?

Or a British MI5 agent undercover. If that was the case, it would be dicey dealing with her.

Not with that accent. Clearly American. And an American would be an asset.

She was
something.
She’d nearly flattened him in the tunnel earlier.

Help her and she’d vouch for him when they got out. No one would even question him.

Donohue decided he had nothing to lose by following along and finding out. He gave her enough time to get out of the service tunnel and back into the train tube, then began following as quietly as he could.

111

Dean examined the boxes more carefully this time. They were definitely different units, but they were locked together somehow. The surface seemed to be a plastic material painted to look like metal at first glance. At the top of one of the boxes a small watch face had been inserted in an octagonal cutout; as Dean watched, time slipped away: 424, 423, 422 ...

He tried to pry the clock up and out of the indentation with his fingers, but it wouldn’t budge.

He could break it, probably, by slamming something into it. But would that stop the timer or merely cause the bomb to explode prematurely?

Where was the stinking Art Room when he needed them?

Dean climbed up over the seats and squirreled around to the back of the car. He saw the dim outline of the power car down the tracks; it sounded like it had been started up again.

Whoever was in it would be waiting for the gunmen.

He stepped back, thinking there must be a way to close the door manually. But it wasn’t obvious, and after a moment searching he decided he was better off trying to figure out how to defuse the bomb.

There were now a little more than 350 seconds left—less than six minutes.

He could break the timer as a last resort.

He began hunting for another switch, looking at each side of the device. When he didn’t find one, he thought it might be possible to pry the watch out and reset it. He reached into his pockets, looking for his keys, only to remember that he didn’t have any. He bent to the dead woman whose body rested against the bombs. Her pocketbook was on the floor near her seat. He opened it and fished around. There was a small nail file at the bottom.

As he started back he heard a sound at the end of the car. He pulled the pistol from his belt as he ducked behind the seat back.

“You going to shoot me?”

“Lia.”

“That thing there’s a nuke,” she said, limping toward it. “Johnny Bib says it’s put together like building blocks. We have to pull one of the blocks away.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Oh yeah, I made it up.”

She reached forward and put her fingers on the crack at the side, pulling. It didn’t budge.

“We have to pull it apart? It won’t explode?”

“I have no idea, Charlie Dean. Just help me.”

“Wait,” said Dean. He ran to where he’d dropped the MP-5, thinking they might be able to use it as a pry bar.

“What happened to your leg?” Lia asked, pointing to the bloodstain.

“I bit a ricochet. How’s your calf?”

“Still here. Johnny Bib’s a nut, you know.”

Dean couldn’t get the muzzle of the weapon into the razor-thin opening between the boxes. He started using the gun like an ice pick, hammering away. Nothing moved.

“This back one, here,” said Lia. “Look, there’s more of a crack. Give me that nail file.”

She took the file and began wiggling it in. It hit something about an inch in.

“Slam the file down,” she said. “I think I hit a lock or something. Come on.”

As Dean positioned himself, he saw the time draining—they were in the two hundreds now.

“Here, come on, come on,” said Lia. She grabbed the gun and together they slammed it down on the file. It broke, but the box moved about a quarter of an inch away from the others, just enough to slide the gun in.

They pushed together, once, twice—and the third time was the charm. The box moved perhaps an inch away.

“More!” Lia yelled.

Dean got up on the seat back and kicked at the gun, forgetting that he had hurt his leg. The knee twisted and the pain was so bad he felt his whole body go weak and then numb.

But the box moved about six inches.

“Again, come on,” said Lia, and she twisted around to help him. He put the pistol down and they pushed, once, twice, three times, a fourth, a fifth—the snaps at the bottom finally gave way and the box tumbled down with a heavy crash.

So did they, rolling into the seats and then onto the floor, Lia barely avoiding getting crushed.

As Dean looked up, a shadow came around the comer at the back of the train. He dove for his pistol.

Mussa heard something as he climbed onto the train. What were Muhammad and Kelvin up to?

He checked the machine gun he had taken from Ahmed. He’d have to kill them, too. There were only a few minutes left, no sense keeping them alive now.

As he turned the corner, the bomb seemed to explode. His first thought was that Allah had permitted him the sublime ecstasy of seeing his weapon erupt.

And then he realized he was very wrong. Someone was trying to take it apart. He was so shocked it took a moment before he could lift his weapon.

Donohue crouched at the back of the car, trying to decipher what was going on from the others’ conversation.

The woman had found a man, on either the train or the tracks. They were American agents. They were talking about a bomb. A nuclear bomb.

Had Mussa stolen a nuclear device?

Donohue ran into the car, starting to say that he would help. As he did, he saw not the woman or the man she’d found somehow, but Mussa, standing at the far end.

There was a submachine gun in his hand.

Lia’s head slammed hard on the floor and the box crashed alongside her, a half inch from her face.

She was in Korea, in the terminal. There was a man at the door, yelling.

The old man who’d been with her before the other plane arrived. He was in charge of the terminal or something, some sort of civilian official.

He stood in the doorway. The officer whirled back in anger, pulling out his pistol, but the old man remained there, a solemn look on his face, shaming him.

He said something.

The officer started to raise his gun, but the old man gave no ground.

Silently the officer waved at the others. They left, and so did he.

Why had she forgotten that? Why had her brain pushed it away? The old man had saved her.

God bless him for his courage.

Mussa couldn’t believe it: Donohue stood at the end of the car.

Donohue!

He turned his submachine gun toward him and began to fire.

Dean heard the submachine gun rattle as he grabbed the pistol. He twisted upward. The shadow lurched forward—the man with the submachine gun was firing at the far end of the carriage, ignoring him.

Dean’s first bullet struck the side of the man’s head. It seemed as if it had no effect. With the second shot, the head disappeared backward, blood flying in a thick spray everywhere.

“Come on! Come on!” Dean yelled, scrambling to get up. “Let’s get out. Come on.”

Lia lay on her stomach on the floor between the seats and the piece of bomb that they had moved. Tears were flowing from her closed eyes and her whole body heaved with sobs. Dean grabbed her, pulling her past the man he’d just shot, a light-skinned Arab dressed in the uniform of the train crew. He half-carried, half-dragged her to the end of the car. He let go of her, thinking he would jump down to the tracks and reach back for her. But when he got to the ground she had already clambered down.

“I can do it on my own, Charlie Dean,” she said as he tried to help her.

“For once in your life, accept some help, damn it,” he told her. “Just shut up and be thankful.”

“I am thankful,” she whispered as he hoisted her over his shoulder. “And not for once, either.”

112

Rubens paced back and forth in the Art Room. The French response team had just gone into the service tunnel that ran down the middle of the Chunnel. It would take several minutes before they reached the area Lia had called from.

In the meantime, all he could do was wait. This was the worst thing in life, wasn’t it? Simply standing—or rather pacing—doing nothing.

It was how he felt with the General, really. Unable to help.

Perhaps Rebecca felt that way as well. Maybe she fought simply because doing something was better than nothing.

The front half of the train was now safely in England. The power in the lines that fed the train through the pantograph at the top of the train had just been cut, in case this was being used to power the bomb somehow—though it was probably a futile gesture.

But you had to do something, didn’t you?

“Jesus!” said Telach.

Rubens turned and saw a puff of smoke blowing from the feed of the British side of the Chunnel entrance.

“Oh, God,” said Telach.

Rubens walked to her and squeezed her elbow. “Steady now,” he said. “Just steady.”

“Earthquake data,” said Chafetz. “Incomplete. Incomplete. P waves are—hold it. ...”

Rubens waited. Seismologists generally divided the shock from an earthquake—or an underground explosion—into two types of waves, P waves and S waves. More familiarly, the blast could be measured on the Richter scale commonly used for earthquakes. In theory, a sixty-kiloton explosion would register into the sixes on the Richter scale, though the exact force would depend on the circumstances. (Actual nuclear devices that yielded sixty kilotons often registered considerably less on the Richter scale—though the force of their impact was hardly negligible.)

Rubens crossed his arms in front of his chest, waiting.

“What’s going on?” asked Hadash from Air Force One.

“Mr. President, there’s been an explosion in the Chunnel,” Rubens said.

Marcke came on the line. “They detonated the nuke?”

“We’re still looking for data, sir.”

“Three—we don’t have numbers here,” said Chafetz.

Rubens turned at her. One of the analysts in the back section stood up and yelled, “Less than three-point-two. Less! Not a nuke.”

A
huge
explosion nonetheless.

But not a nuke.

Someone started to clap. Several other people started to say something else.

“Please,” said Rubens, raising his arms. “We have much more to do. And two people in the Chunnel.”

The room went silent.

“Mr. President,” said Rubens. “It appears their explosion failed to detonate the warhead, if they had it.”

“Thank God,” said Marcke.

“Yes, sir.”

113

They’d gotten no more than three or four hundred yards from the power car when the tunnel behind them exploded. Dean, with Lia still on his back, flew down face-first into the tracks, slamming so hard he blacked out. When he came to, Lia was clawing at him, pulling him forward.

“Come on,” she said. “Come on.”

“Wait.”

“No!”

A roar filled his ears. His face was wet and he thought he’d cut himself.

Then he realized his pants and shirt were wet as well.

“Come on!” Lia screamed. “Water’s flooding the tracks. The access tunnel is there. Go! Come on!”

Dean got up, then stumbled as a wave of water pushed at him from the back.

“Come on!” Lia yelled, pulling at him.

Water was everywhere. By the time they managed the twenty or thirty yards to the access doorway it was to his knees.

Lights were flashing in the service area. Alarms were sounding, but above it all Dean could hear the rush of water.

“This way,” said Lia. “Toward France.”

“It’s miles.”

“You want to wait for the water to reach us? Go! Go!”

Dean started after her. She tripped over something and, unable to stop himself, he tripped over her. They tumbled down against the concrete, sprawling.

“I don’t think I can go any further,” he said.

“You have to,” she hissed, pushing up.

“Stay where you are,” said a voice in French.

Dean looked up to see a French FAMAS assault rifle in his face. He’d never been so happy to have a gun pointed at him in his life.

114

Rubens waited until he heard Lia’s voice for himself before finally allowing himself to believe his people were all right.

“They had this bomb cobbled together from a bunch of carts or crates that looked like the things they use to give out meals from,” she told him.

She and Dean had been taken to a hospital in Calais. Rubens had no idea how good the medical facilities were; all he knew was that it had no video hookup, so he could only talk to his two ops.

“You’d have thought the French would have figured it out,” she added. “They’re so obsessed with food.”

“I’m glad to hear you’re still your cynical self,” said Rubens.

“I’m not cynical,” she said.

“Sarcastic. Excuse me.”

“I have a lot to be sarcastic about,” she said. “And thankful for.”

The last remark was so completely out of character for Lia that Rubens found it impossible to say anything else until Dean came on the line.

“Mr. Dean, I hope your injuries are not too severe,” he told him.

“I’ve had worse.”

“Our understanding is that the northbound tube of the Chunnel is completely flooded,” Rubens told him. He was looking at a video image from the French side—several feet of water surrounded the closed access doors.

“Everyone on our half of the train is dead,” said Dean. “What happened to the other side?”

“The front part of the train was able to make it out before the explosion,” Rubens told him. “It followed its protocol for a decoupling at speed. It could have been much worse. Much, much worse.”

The other train tube was intact. Divers with special protective gear would be sent to inspect the flooded tube—and recover the warhead’s plutonium, assuming it could be found and recovered safely. Eventually, the Chunnel would be repaired.