nuclear bomb.
A research scientist at the Los Alamos nuclear facility in New Mexico, Kady was one of the volunteers on call to a unit of the U.S. government’s Department of Energy known as NEST. The initials stood for Nuclear Emergency Search Team and they precisely described the unit’s task, which was to cope with national security’s worst nightmare: a bad guy with a nuke.
Since NEST had been founded in 1975 there had been more than one hundred reports of possible threats. Of these, around thirty had been investigated. They were all hoaxes. Homemade portable nukes made great storylines for movies. A team of seventeen government scientists even tried to build a bomb as an experiment, just to see if it could be done. But in actual fact, there had been no unauthorized nuclear weapons of any kind on U.S. soil.
Until now.
The call had come in from the FBI in Minneapolis-St. Paul to the Department of Energy’s Emergency Operations Center in Washington, D.C. From there, it was routed to the NEST headquarters at Nellis Air Force Base northeast of Las Vegas. Within minutes, Kady had been assigned to lead a seven-person NEST team. Within the hour, they had taken off from Los Alamos County Airport, on the way to Minneapolis.
The team’s destination was a waterside vacation property on the shore of Gull Lake, a popular destination for city dwellers seeking fresh air, good fishing, and fun on the water. The FBI had cordoned off the area with the help of local police. Floodlights had been brought in to light up the modest timber cabin. The special agent in charge was named Tom Mulvagh.
“So what’s the story?” Kady asked, as her team began unloading gear from one of the two black Econoline vans that had transported them to the site. She was holding a gloved hand across her brow to keep the rain out of her eyes. A bright-red fleece hat was jammed down over her chestnut hair.
“The owner here, name of Heggarty, bought the place four years ago,” said Mulvagh, his face half in shadow beneath his hooded parka. “Now he’s looking to convert the loft space, fit in an extra bedroom. Anyway, he’s measuring up and he can’t figure it right. The interior dimensions of the loft space don’t match the exterior dimensions of the building. He keeps coming up three feet short. Then he realizes that the end wall of the loft is really a partition, with space behind it. So he knocks it down and that’s when he sees a large, brown leather suitcase-he described it as kind of old-fashioned, not like a modern style. He looks closer and there’s an electric cable coming from this sack, connected to a power supply in the wall.”
Kady grimaced. “Tell me he didn’t open the case.”
“Sure he opened the case-human nature. That’s when he saw a metal pipe, a black box with a blinking red light, and what he called, and I quote, ‘That damn towel-head writing.’ ”
She frowned. “Arabic?”
“Don’t think so. From his description, we concluded it was Cyrillic script-Russian.”
“Okay, so now did he keep his hands off the pipe and the box?”
The special agent grinned. “Yeah, he was smart enough to get scared at that point. He called up the PD in Nisswa, and they passed him on to the Crow Wing County sheriff ’s office in Brainerd. They contacted us, and here we all are.”
“Better check it out, then.” Kady looked around. “We’re going to be wearing protective suits. I guess we can change in the vans.”
“Sure,” said Mulvagh, “but do it quick. Makes me nervous standing around here, thinking about what’s in there.”
She gave him a reassuring pat, as if she were his protector, even though Mulvagh looked a decade older than she, and was six inches taller and probably fifty pounds heavier.
“Trust me-it’s okay. If that device really is some kind of Soviet bomb, it’s almost certainly got a permissive action link-that’s a specific code to be entered before it’s armed. Without that, nothing’s going to happen. My guess is it’s been in position for a decade, probably more. And if it hasn’t gone off in all that time, why’s it going to blow now?”
“Because it doesn’t like being disturbed?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be extra polite.”
35
Larsson’s battered Volvo station wagon was already waiting outside Carver’s building when he finally arrived. The Norwegian got out and looked Carver up and down appraisingly, looking for any visible signs of trouble.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Get us inside,” Carver replied. “I don’t like being stuck out on the street-too exposed.”
His voice was tense, strung out.
“You all right, man?” asked Larsson. “You don’t sound so good.”
“I’m fine.”
“Whatever you say.”
Carver hurried into the apartment building and started making his way up the stairs to his top-floor flat. Larsson let him get ahead a few paces, watching him skeptically, then followed on up the old wooden staircase that wound up through five stories, creaking under his feet with every step. When he got to Carver’s flat, the door was already open. Carver was standing in the living room, looking around, aghast at what he saw-or, rather, didn’t see.
“Where is everything?” he asked.
The room had been stripped bare of furniture.
