The Tigress had blended in nicely, Bakarat thought.
Omar shouldered Samara’s computer bag then set up her computer alongside their equipment on the folding table where Bakarat was working under the shade of a beach canopy.
To anyone who’d happened upon them, they were re searchers for a European wildlife magazine.
“Sister,” Bakarat greeted Samara. “This is a great honor. Uncle sends his prayers.”
She nodded then took stock of the hardware on the table. The laptops, cameras, field glasses, satellite phones. Well-thumbed notebooks with codes, tables, calculations. “Is everything ready?”
“All is ready,” Bakarat said. “Conditions are good. Our subjects are well positioned.” He passed Samara a set of binoculars to use to see the deer.
Omar was making calculations in his notebook, then entered them on one of the laptops. Then he set the co ordinates into one of the satellite phones.
“Are we ready, Omar?” Bakarat asked.
“Ready.”
“Sister, this is what you need to know.”
The scientists explained to Samara the basics behind the new weapon. Then they showed her an animated program which simplified the science that had gone into developing the system. They’d produced a new synthetic fabric that was highly explosive, undetectable and detonated through radio frequencies.
It worked like this:
A radio signal was sent to activate the new material, which was equipped with nanoreceivers. After the signal was received, it took about sixty seconds for the process to “warm up” to the stage of detonation readi ness. At that point, the controller could detonate it at will.
Samara studied the animated demonstration on Bakarat’s laptop.
“You send a radio message to the material. Upon receipt it takes sixty seconds to warm up,” Bakarat said.
“Then it’s a bomb,” Samara said.
“A bomb waiting for a second command to detonate.”
“And how do you explode it?”
“You send a second signal. It can be sent from
Six Seconds 321 anywhere in the world via a laptop, wireless through the Internet, as long as it is programmed with the proper codes, see?”
Bakarat’s animation showed it bouncing from satel lite phones via wireless connection to a laptop.
“Or, through your camera,” Omar said. “Many digital cameras have a focus assist beam. When pressed, it emits an infrared light beam from the front of the camera to the subject to measure distance. We’ve programmed your camera with the codes to send a signal to your laptop.”
Omar, who was very soft-spoken, repeated the process.
“You activate the fabric, wait sixty seconds, and a green light will flash indicating you may detonate the bomb at any time. The next second, or the next day.”
“The kill zone is tight,” Bakarat said. “Everything within eight to ten feet.”
Samara looked at him.
“If you use the camera, you can be at any distance, as long as nothing obstructs your focus beam. On the laptop, you can set a timer to start a countdown to the process, or use the camera. We’ve programmed the codes, set you up with everything.”
Samara studied her laptop with the step-by-step in structions Omar had installed.
“Are you clear?” Bakarat asked.
“I think so.”
“Ready to test it?” Omar handed her a camera.
Samara studied it.
“Go ahead, photograph the flag down there.”
Samara focused and pressed the button.
“See.”
They watched her laptop count down sixty seconds. As they waited, Bakarat chuckled.
“The irony is rich, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?” Samara asked as the seconds ticked down.
“We’re at the edge of Malmstrom, part of the stra tegic command for the American Minuteman III inter continental ballistic missile,” Bakarat said. “There are some five hundred nuclear warheads buried in silos across North Dakota, Wyoming and right here in Montana.”
Samara nodded.
“And did you also know that U.S. forces bound for Iraq once trained here before deployment.”
The seconds ticked.
“And here, in the realm of America’s might, we prepare to plunge a sword of sorrow into the heart of the entire nonbelieving world.”
A light flashed green and beeped.
“You’re good to go,” Omar said.
“You now have a bomb. Point your camera at the flag and take a picture.”
Samara found the flag and deer in her viewfinder.
She pressed the button.
Her brain registered the blinding white flash before she heard the whip-crack of the blast and saw the bloodied-dust plume in the distance.
When it cleared the flag and deer were gone.
53
East of Great Falls, Montana
A sudden burst of distant light near the ground flashed in Jim Yancy’s periphery.
What the hell?
Must be a lightning strike, the rancher thought before the firecracker pop rolled across the plain to him.
No, couldn’t be lightning. Not with this clear blue sky.
Yancy shrugged it off, edged his ATV forward and went back to repairing fencing along his property near Malmstrom Air Force Base. Likely military people doing some live fire exercise, or detonating old shells. But he hadn’t seen them do any of that for years.
The more Yancy thought about it, the more it made him curious. He squinted under his ball cap toward the flash and watched an SUV driving from it, kicking up dust clouds.
After it vanished, Yancy left his fence and headed to the site. It was odd. Nothing out there but a whole lot of nothing. Yancy had lived in these parts most of his life and that SUV was no military vehicle.
He had a bad feeling about this.
He came upon a tattered rag the size of a washcloth. Red, white and blue, like Old Glory. He saw a salt lick, a fragment of a tin bucket, blood-soaked shortgrass crowned with the head of a white-tailed deer.
Its dead eye locked in open horror on Yancy.
“Gee-Zuss-H!”
Yancy called the Cascade County Sheriff.
The deputy and Malmstrom military personnel arrived first. Then came the Air National Guard fire fighters, Malmstrom’s EOD technicians, Montana Highway Patrol and the FBI.
It was clear that something had exploded, but after investigating they were puzzled as to just what it was. The components remained a mystery. More calls were made through the chain of command to Washington, D.C., and by that afternoon Tony Takayasu’s team had arrived from Maryland.
They’d barely had time to recover from their call to Pysht and had only begun further analysis of the sub stance in the Nigerian beer bottles, when they were deployed to Malmstrom in Montana.
