Wilke didn’t know whether or not to believe him. “Set to explode when?”
“Two minutes after eleven, this morning.”
“Christ,” Wilke swore. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” McGarvey said. “I think I’ll be able to find it, but the problem might be the crew. Could be someone aboard who’ll push the button if we show up in force.”
Wilke was shaking his head. “It won’t matter,” he said. “At least it won’t in another fourteen minutes. That’s all the time left.”
The Grande Dame II was tied up at the end pier, and although the marina was very busy there was no one to be seen on deck.
The chopper had set down in a parking lot a quarter mile from the ship, and they’d commandeered a delivery truck from a confused, angry UPS driver.
Wilke remained with his walkie-talkie in the truck parked at the side of the office about fifty yards from the ship. He’d called for a SWAT team, a hostage negotiator, and the Bureau’s Interpol liaison man. A pair of nuclear weapons experts had already been dispatched from nearby Travis Air Force Base on Carrara’s orders and were expected on the scene at any minute.
McGarvey walked directly down to the ship and climbed the ladder, absolutely no time now for explanations or any sort of delicacy. Even if they tried to run, they couldn’t possibly get far enough away to escape the probable blast radius.
At the top he halted for a moment, listening, his ear cocked for sounds aboard. Some machinery was running below decks, but there were no other noises.
Nakamura’s people would have abandoned ship in time to get well away. At least they would have if they knew what they carried and when it would explode.
Wilke had given him a 9-millimeter Ruger automatic, which McGarvey pulled out of his belt an cocked. He didn’t bother checking his watch; knowing exactly how much time remained wouldn’t help.
He ducked through the hatch, and hurried as best he could down the stairs into the machinery spaces where he’d had his confrontation with Heidinora back at Fukai’s docks. The big Jap had been doing something down here. Maybe making sure that the area was clear so that the sewage lift pump could be readied for the bomb.
Stepping out on the same catwalk he stopped. Below, the engines had been shut down, but a generator was running, and the lights had been left on.
There were pipes and lines running everywhere in a seemingly jumbled maze. Nothing seemed to make any sense, nothing seemed familiar.
Time. It always came down to time.
The same Company psychologist who’d once told him that he had a low threshold of pain had also told him that he was a man who did not understand when it was time to quit.
“I suppose I could study you for ten years and still not find the answer to that one,” the shrink had said. “If there is an answer-“
He spotted the oblong metal container, marked in French, PORTSIDE SEWAGE LIFT PUMP, attached to a series of pipes on the interior of the hull.
But there was no time left. It had to be nearly 11:02, and he could see with a sinking feeling that it would take a wrench or a pair of pliers to open the cover of the bomb. Two nuts held it in place.
Now there were only seconds. No time to search for tools. No time to call for help.
“Goddamnit!” McGarvey shouted in frustration.
He stepped back, raised the pistol, turned his head away and fired a shot nearly point blank at the left-hand nut holding the cover in place.
The bullet ricochetted off the metal, bending but not breaking the nut and bolt assembly.
“Goddamnit!” McGarvey shouted, and he fired a second shot, and a third, and a fourth, bullet fragments and bits of jagged metal flying everywhere.
But the bolt was off. Tossing the pistol aside, McGarvey pulled the left side of the cover away from the case, bending the metal back by brute strength, three of his fingernails peeling back.
The inside of the device was simple. A long, gray cylinder took up most of the space, while tucked in one corner was the firing circuitry and timing device.
The LED counter showed three seconds.
McGarvey reached inside to grab one of the blue wires, when someone came out onto the catwalk behind him. He looked over his shoulder as the LED counter switched to two.
A short, wiry man with bright red hair, wearing an Air Force master sergeant’s uniform, came up, reached over McGarvey’s shoulder into the bomb’s firing circuitry, and as the counter switched to one, pulled out a yellow wire.
The counter switched to zero, and nothing happened.
“Sorry, sir,” the sergeant said. “No time to explain. But you had the wrong wire.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Hagberg has written more than a dozen novels of suspense, which now have over three million copies in print worldwide. He has been nominated for three Edgars and the American Book Award, and won the American Mystery Award for COUNTDOWN (Tor, 1990)-“a red-hot suspense thriller that will curl your hair-Stephen Coonts. He has travelled extensively in Europe, the Caribbean, and the Arctic, and makes his home in Duluth, Minnesota.