“Why are they doing this?” Jess said when she caught up. “What’s so damned important about this weapon?”
“The Killswitch is an electromagnetic pulse device. Xenobium, the material we found in the cave, is detonated by explosives in the Killswitch, and it sends out a cascade of gamma rays that disrupts any magnetic field within range.”
“Which would do what?”
“It would cause a surge of electricity that damages electronic devices. Anything with a transistor would immediately shut down. Computers, communications, electrical grids, vehicles, airplanes would all be affected.”
“Do you think he’s planning to use this thing?”
“Possibly, but we don’t know what Colchev’s target is. Now that he has the components to make it work, he could take out a major city with it.”
“Good God! Imagine if he set it off next to an airport.”
“Every plane within range would crash. Hospitals would have no power. With no working fire trucks or water pumping stations, fires would rage out of control. Nuclear plants would melt down. We’re essentially talking about a worst-case terrorist event.”
Jess’s stomach twisted at the nightmare scenario.
“This is some kind of classified US weapon?” she said.
“Yeah, and I committed twelve felonies telling you all that. But I need your help to get it back. And we’ll get Fay back with it. I promise.”
He still knew her well. The platitudes helped.
They made better time once they hit the paved road going into Hanga Roa. In another two minutes they were on the airport tarmac.
Tyler came to a stop next to the huge cargo jet and jumped off the scooter without bothering to pop the kickstand. Jess did the same and followed him up the stairs into the C-17.
She stopped suddenly when she saw dead bodies scattered on the cargo floor. The plane’s three crew and the two other security men. All of them had been shot.
Tyler ignored the corpses and knelt on the opposite side of a copper-colored device four-feet long. The sleek piece of machinery had an inherently menacing quality.
“Is that the Killswitch?” she asked.
He met her eyes. “Yes. And it’s armed.”
“What?” She went around to Tyler’s side and saw a LCD display counting down. It read 15:23. 15:22. 15:21.
“Colchev must have set it before he left.” He waved the radiation meter over the weapon and grimaced when he saw the results. “The xenobium we found must be in here.”
“Oh, my God! Can you disarm it?”
Tyler examined the device and shook his head. “It looks like it requires a security code. Do you think you could decipher it?”
“Not without knowing anything about its internal safeguards to prevent tampering. What about cutting the wires?”
“I’m not even sure how it works. I could set it off just by tinkering with it.”
“Then let’s get it out of the plane. We’ll put it far away and then take cover.”
“That’s not going to work.”
“Sure it’ll take out the electronics, but at least it won’t blow up the plane.”
Tyler stood. She could see the gears in his head turning, weighing a set of bad options.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
“When it goes off, the xenobium in the weapon will emit high-intensity gamma rays. That’s how it causes the magnetic flux.”
Jess felt her gut twist. “Radiation?”
Tyler grimly nodded. “It doesn’t matter where we take it. If this bomb goes off, everyone on the island will die.”
THIRTY-NINE
Tyler briefly considered dumping the Killswitch in the ocean, but he had no idea whether that would short circuit it, causing a detonation before it got deep enough to remove the radiation threat.
“What are we going to do?” Jess said. “How far away do we have to get it?”
“I don’t know the effective range, so as far away as we can …”
Tyler paused and fixated on the dead pilot. The C-17. If he still had enough time, he
He ran for the staircase leading up from the cargo deck to the cockpit.
“Where are you going?” Jess yelled as she came after him.
He sat in the pilot’s seat and fired up the auxiliary power unit that he would need to start the engines. Tyler thumbed through the checklist while the APU whined as it spooled up. It would take eight minutes to get all four engines warmed up.
“If I can get the plane over the open ocean,” he said, “it might be far enough to keep everyone safe.”
“Will it keep the island from getting hit by the electromagnetic pulse?”
“I don’t know.”
“But this is suicidal!”
Tyler thought back to what the pilot had told him about their previous mission before it had been scrubbed to ferry them to Easter Island. The C-17 was supposed to be going from Alice Springs to a paratrooper training op in Japan. That meant the crew had brought their own parachutes, standard procedure for an airborne drop.
“There are chutes on board somewhere. I’ll jump once I get into the air and set the autopilot.”
“Have you ever jumped from one of these?”
“A couple of times,” he lied. He’d done a few jumps at Grant’s urging, but those had been out of a propeller-driven skydiving plane, not a full-sized jet.
She looked around the cockpit. “Where are the chutes?”
“I don’t know. But they’ve got to be here somewhere.” He handed her his camera. “This has a wireless connection. Send every photo and video in there to your email address.” In case the Killswitch knocked out the island’s electronics, he wanted to make sure they had a record of the cave drawings.
Jess tapped on the camera’s display while Tyler worked on getting the engines started, the checklist on his lap. What he didn’t tell her was that it would take only one missed detail to screw up his entire plan. While he’d flown jets for years now, he’d only flown sleek twin-engine private planes, not four-engine monsters like the C-17. The principles were the same, but the handling was altogether different. And now he would have to skip all but the most important steps in the checklist to get into the air in time.
Tyler knew he was making a big assumption about the chutes. Aircrews always packed their own parachutes, to be used only in an emergency during the drop, but he didn’t actually have confirmation that they were on the plane already. He was willing to take the risk, but there was no reason to tell Jess.
“Done,” she said, looking up from the camera. “It’ll take a few minutes to upload them all, but they’re on the way.”
“Thanks,” Tyler said. “Now get off the plane.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“This is crazy!”
“Go!”
She stopped typing and dashed into the cabin behind the cockpit, but instead of leaving, she threw open
