Pier One and the Ferry Building, Jason made a last-ditch leap…and grasped the left skid bar on the helicopter.
Holding on with his left hand, he reared back and punched at the belly of the helicopter with his right. His blow easily pierced the thin outer aluminum skin and continued on through, rupturing the helicopter’s fuel tank. The engine sputtered and sounded as if it was going to quit, so Jason let go of the skid bar, fell about twenty meters, and splashed into San Francisco Bay just a few hundred meters from the piers.
He was able to swim easily to the nearest pier, where a crowd of stunned onlookers watched as the robot climbed out of the bay. But when he looked to see the crash, he found the helicopter was still flying along.
“Doug, the Department of Energy at Lawrence Livermore Labs has dispatched an Accident Response Group to your location, ETE twenty minutes,” Ariadna radioed to Doug Moore. “They’ll be able to defuse the device. They’ve looked at the images from your cameras. They can’t positively identify it but they say it appears to be a nuclear device, probably a nuclear missile or artillery shell warhead.”
“Oh, shit,” Moore breathed.
“They’re also dispatching a NEST crew to search for any other devices the terrorists might have left there.” NEST, or Nuclear Emergency Search Team, was a squad of trained engineers and scientists who used sophisticated sensors and other devices to locate nuclear weapons or components.
“Anything we can do while we’re waiting?” Maxwell asked.
“According to the readouts on that yellow box attached to the device,” Ari said, “the DOE guys say the warhead appears to be armed but the fusing is either not set or disrupted somehow. There is a radar transmitter in front of the device that can set it off, and it can also be detonated by impact or shock, so don’t touch anything.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Maxwell said.
“They’re familiar with the yellow box attached to the device: it’s a maintenance test kit, used to check those things before deployment,” Ari said. “The blinking Fire light has them a little confused, and it might be a modification that the terrorists made so they could set it and then have time to get out of the area.”
“What are you saying, Ari?” Doug asked.
“If it’s blinking, it’s a good thing.” Ari replied. “If it comes on steady…well, you’ll probably never see it come on steady, if you know what I mean.”
“Unfortunately, I do.”
“The ARG guys say most likely it’s a gun-type fission weapon, which means there are two chunks of uranium-235 on either end of the thing,” Ari went on. “There’s a mechanical safety device that’s supposed to keep the two halves apart if it’s accidentally triggered. If you can find that safety device and engage it, it won’t detonate even if it’s triggered. The ARG guys are setting up a video feed as they head out to you, so keep your CID cameras on the weapon and let them study it.”
“Rog,” Doug replied. He examined the device carefully. “I see a space where a safety device might have gone, but it’s been removed. Why don’t I just break the sucker in half?”
“Better wait for the word from the ARG team,” Ari said.
“I’m okay with that.” He turned to Jake Maxwell. “Sir, I think I’ve got it from here. Why don’t you get your men together and help the major?”
“If he needs our help, we’ll go,” Maxwell said. It was pretty weird talking to the big robot like this, but since they had all been stuck at Pecos East together he had started thinking of the men inside the robots rather than just the machines themselves. “I’ll stay here for now. Okay, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir. Thanks.”
A few minutes later: “Doug, the ARG guys are about ten minutes out,” Ari radioed. “How are you doing?”
“Fine, Ari,” Doug replied.
“I miss shooting with you, Doug,” Ariadna said. “You taught me a lot. You’re a good teacher.”
“I had a very good student.”
“We’re going to keep on training after this is over, aren’t we?” she asked. “You said you’d teach me assault weapons and heavier stuff next.”
“I can’t wait, Ari,” Doug said. “Not just the gun stuff, but…”
“But what, Sarge?”
“I can’t wait to be with you again,” Doug said. “I miss you.”
“Hey, I miss you too, Doug,” Ari said. “It’s not just the gun stuff at all. I like being with you.”
“Ari, I wanted to tell you something a while ago, before all the stuff in Brazil happened…”
“You can tell me now, big boy.”
“I wanted to tell you…” Instead, he stopped……because the Fire light on the test kit stopped blinking.
Moore didn’t hesitate—he immediately karate-chopped the device right in the middle, his microhydraulically powered hand crushing the steel-encased device as easily as a beer can, blocking the slug of uranium in the front of the gun before it could reach the second slug in the rear, form a critical mass, and create a thermonuclear reaction.
That was the last action he would ever remember—but it saved the lives of millions of souls that morning.
The explosive charge in the warhead exploded milliseconds after Moore crushed the cannon. The ten kilos of high explosive blew into a tremendous fireball, scattering debris from the two uranium-235 slugs into the atmosphere. The explosion triggered a second explosion—this time, in the backup blasting caps embedded in the one thousand kilos of octanitrocubane explosive in the second SUV. Both Moore and Maxwell were vaporized in the second explosion.
Buildings in San Francisco and most of the Bay area are designed to withstand tremendous side-to-side motions to guard against earthquake collapse, but this design makes them vulnerable to upward and outward forces. The first satchel charges set off by the terrorists weakened the main stairwell and elevator shafts, whose structures were the principal interior support structures for the entire building except for the earthquake-resistant outer shell…the ONC explosion would take care of the rest of the building’s interior support.
The fireball created by the ONC explosion traveled directly upward through the entire thirty-two-story building like an immense cannonball racing through an old iron cannon, incinerating everything in its path. Once the fireball reached the roof, pressure built up within the building, shattering every window and completely gutting the interior of the building, leaving the reinforced outer shell intact—but without any interior supports, the building would never stand. Seconds later, the Kingman Building started to collapse inside itself like a planned demolition implosion. Within seconds, there was a huge pile of steel and concrete at the place where the Harold Chester Kingman Building once stood.
Jason Richter had just started jogging as fast as his malfunctioning CID unit could go back toward the Kingman Building when the ONC explosion ripped it apart. He watched in horror as the Kingman Building went down in a huge cloud of dust and debris. The sound was deafening. People were screaming behind him, running in all directions in panic. The fogbank of debris rushed over him, but he was still too stunned to move.
“Jason!” Ariadna radioed. “Can you hear me? Jason!”
“I hear you, Ari,” he replied solemnly. Jason took a deep breath inside the CID unit. Soon the dust and debris was so thick he couldn’t see a thing.
“What happened? I lost the video feed from Doug. Can you see him out there?”
He was being pummeled by chunks of flying steel, glass, and concrete as well as by the windblast created by the collapsing building, but he still could not make himself move for several long moments.
“Jason…!”
“He’s gone, Ari,” Jason finally said. “The Kingman Building blew up…he’s gone. Doug is gone.”
“Wha…what?” Ari asked. “Say again, Jason? What happened?”
“Zakharov has got to be stopped,” Jason said. “We have got to pick up his trail and track him down fast, before he kills any more innocent people. We have to think of a way to find this guy before he strikes again. We have to take the fight to him this time.” He paused, taking another deep breath, then turned and started walking out of the river of debris swirling all around him. “Sergeant Major Jefferson.”
“Sir?” Jefferson radioed from his spot on one of the “Rat Patrol” dune buggies, which had evacuated on Maxwell’s orders uptown on California Street.
