still tightly grouped when they hit — blowing Ibrahim’s right hand, the hand still holding the telephone, off just below the wrist.
The Saudi prince stood motionless, staring in horror at the blood pumping out of his shattered right arm.
Thorn grabbed the older man they’d taken prisoner and tossed him toward Ibrahim. “Use your belt! Put a tourniquet on him!”
“Oh, my God,” Helen said in horror.
Her shocked voice stopped Thorn in his tracks. He turned toward her.
She pointed at the several computer consoles that filled the room. One of them was live. It showed a digitally generated map of the surrounding region.
And a white dot blinked rapidly as it moved across the screen-heading inexorably toward Washington, D.C. One of the strike planes was airborne and closing on its target — with an armed 150-kiloton nuclear warhead aboard.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
DETONATION
Colonel Peter Thorn stared at the blinking dot in shock. Godfrey Field was barely thirty nautical miles from Washington, and the aircraft they’d seen based there had a cruising speed of two-hundred-plus knots.
Which meant they had maybe six or seven minutes before the equivalent of one hundred and fifty thousand tons of high explosive detonated right over the nation’s capital.
Several seconds trickled past — each an imagined lifetime of sorrow and regret. His shoulders slumped. “Oh, Christ.” Helen turned toward him. “We have to do something, Peter!”
Do what? What more could they do? Despite all the risks they’d taken, despite everything, they were too late. Ibrahim had managed to get one of his nuclear-armed planes off the ground.
And now the aircraft was following its preset flight plan, drawing ever closer to its programmed target.
He focused on the computer display. A single line below the digital map of the Washington metro area read: F1, FLIGHT CONTROL MENU.
Thorn grabbed the nearest chair, set his shotgun down, and sat down in front of the computer keyboard. He punched the F1 function key.
A new cursor popped on-screen, replacing the notation about a flight control menu: AIRCRAFT ID?: Swell.
Thorn whirled toward the older man they’d taken prisoner with the Saudi prince. The man had just finished rigging his belt around Ibrahim’s maimed right arm as a temporary tourniquet.
“You speak English?”
The balding, gray-haired man looked up from Ibrahim’s slumped, unconscious figure. The wounded man had fainted halfway through the effort to save his life. He hesitated. “Was? Ich verstehen She Night.”
Something in their prisoner’s eyes told Thorn he was lying. He stood up and kicked the chair backward. “Bullshit,” he said softly.
The German flinched.
Thorn stalked up to the other man, grabbed hold of him by the shirt, and yanked him upright. “I said, do you speak English?”
Their prisoner stayed mute, his eyes wide in fear.
It was time for more active measures, Thorn decided coldly.
He scooped his shotgun back and casually, almost negligently, aimed it toward the other man’s head. “I’m going to ask you that question one more time. If you lie to me …”
He chambered a round.
The German bit his lip, trembling even harder now. “But you cannot do this! You cannot torture me. It is against American law!”
Thorn leaned closer. He pressed the shotgun right against the other man’s temple. “That plane is carrying a nuclear weapon.
What makes you think I care about the law right now?” His finger tightened on the trigger.
“Mein Gott.” The German swallowed hard. “I … I will help you. Do not shoot me … bitte. please!”
Helen patted him down, fished a wallet out of his pocket, and showed Thorn a tourist visa issued to one Klaus Engel.
He grabbed the German and dragged him back to the live console.
The blinking aircraft indicator was now roughly halfway between the towns of Leesburg and Herndon, Virginia — which meant they probably had somewhat less than five minutes remaining.
He pointed to the question asking for the aircraft identification.
“What’s the ID number for that plane?”
Engel shook his head frantically. “I do not know, I swear it! I merely built and programmed the machine. I was not part of the planning cell!”
Thorn lifted the shotgun again.
“They are not numbers. They are code names,” the other man said, stumbling over the words in his haste to get them out. “But I do not know these names!”
Code names? Thorn glanced at Helen. “Do you still have that list we took off Wolf?”
“Yes.” She fished it out of one of her pockets and handed it over.
He scanned down the list until he found the five animal code names listed under Godfrey: Lion, Tiger, Leopard, Jaguar, and Cheetah, all in German. He looked up at Helen. “What do you think?”
“Try Lion,” she said flatly. “It’s the first on the list and the king of the beasts.”
Thorn nodded. That Was logical. Except for Ibrahim and a few others, most of those involved in this conspiracy were German.
Putting their primary target at the top of a list and attaching the name of the top of the animal kingdom to it would appeal to them.
He sat down at the keyboard and typed in L,O,W,E.
A new line appeared on the display: ID INCORRECT; AIRCRAFT ID?: Damn it.
Helen leaned over his shoulder. “Peter, there’s no umlaut symbol on this keyboard!”
Of course. Thorn tried again, typing in L, O, E, W, E, this time.
New data appeared below the digitized map on the computer display — showing information on airspeed, altitude, the plane’s attitude, heading, and degree of bank, throttle settings, and fuel remaining. At the same time, the video monitor just to the left of the computer screen flickered to life — showing a black-and white image of lighted suburban streets passing slowly astern.
Thorn scanned the numbers quickly, trying to make sense of them. From what he could tell, the strike aircraft was currently flying southeast at two hundred thirty knots — at an altitude of two thousand feet.
Two sets of coordinates — latitude and longitude — stayed constant.
A third decreased constantly. As he watched, it flickered from 25.4 to 25.3. He turned toward Engel and stabbed a finger at the screen. “Are these what I think they are?”
The German computer tech nodded nervously. “That is the detonation point. And the range to the target.”
Something about those coordinates looked familiar to Thorn.
Then it clicked. This aircraft was headed straight for the Pentagon which would put most of Washington inside the bomb’s blast and shock radius. He glared hard at Engel. “All right, how do I give this plane a new set of coordinates?”
“You cannot.”
This time Helen ground her weapon into the technician’s cheek. “Try again!”
“Please. It is true.” Sweat rolled down the German’s face. “You cannot change the aim point once the aircraft
