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.
