“What we’re getting mostly is gamma, and some of that it probably shielded, too,” continued Ferg. “I mean, we’re sick dogs, Dad, don’t get me wrong — even if we get out of here pretty soon, a lot of interesting medical stuff in our future.”
“Leukemia?”
“Oh, sure. Think of it this way — smoking cigarettes probably isn’t going to make things any worse.”
“What’s cancer like, Ferg?”
“How’s that?”
“You got it, right?”
Ferguson felt something prick at him, as if the question were a physical thing. No one in Joint Demands, not even Van or Slott, knew.
“That’s compartmented need-to-know, Dad,” he said, pushing past the surprise by turning it into a joke.
“We heard rumors, but no proof. Now I can tell.”
“It sucks, Dad. But at the moment, it beats the alternative. Come on, let’s get to work.”
“I’m sorry you got it.”
“Me too. Come on, let me see what happens if I strip those wires down and cross them.”
“I got a better idea, Ferg. Since we’re going to kill ourselves anyway.”
“Fire away, Dad.”
“We got two grenades. Throw ‘em up near that door, see if they blow through the panel.”
“They’re only flash-bangs, Dad,” said Ferg. “They’re just going to make very loud booms.”
The aircraft seemed to tremble, then Ferguson and Conners felt it tilting forward and starting to descend.
“Let’s go for it,” said Ferguson. “Let’s do it.”
“Yeah,” said Conners. He handed over the grenades, then slid down to the floor. Ferguson reached down for him, but got the shirt he’d discarded earlier instead. It had something in the pocket.
“What about the Russian grenade Ruby gave me?” Ferguson asked. “The VOG thing. Any way to set it off?”
“We don’t have a launcher. It works like one of our 40 mm grenades in a 203. The pins inside hold the trigger off until there’s centrifugal force. It has to spin fast.”
“Can we take it apart?”
Conners tried to focus. The grenades came in two basic models, one with an impact fuse in the nose, the other — this one — slightly different, designed more specifically as an antipersonnel shrapnel weapon, throwing metal over a wide area. It hopped up when it landed, then exploded.
If they could set off the cap at the back, the propellant might explode.
Or not.
Hit the charge in the front. Something would go off.
“Spit it out, Dad,” said Conners.
“There’s a fuse in the nose, an explosive charge — if you hit it point-blank, I think it would explode. It might be enough to set off the propellant then.”
“You think I could throw hard enough to set it off?”
“Not even you could do that, Ferg,” said Conners.
“So if I shoot it, what happens?” said Ferg.
“Yeah,” said Conners, as if Ferguson had given the answer rather than the question.
“I don’t know if the shrapnel will go through all the shit they have inside the plane,” said Ferguson. “But it will go through us.”
“Yeah.”
“All right,” said Ferg. He took the grenade and his gun. “I’ll do it near the cockpit. Take those bastards with us maybe.”
“Go for it.”
Neither man moved. Both were willing to die — both realized they were
Then Conners had another idea. “The flash-bang might set it off, if you wedged them together right. It’s not much of a killing force, but it could set off the percussion cap at the back, or maybe the fuse in the front, because it has to be pretty loose to begin with.”
“Which one?”
Conners thought. “The back. It’s like a bullet being fired.”
“I could shoot the back point-blank, like a striker.”
“Yeah.”
“What the hell,” said Ferguson. He grabbed hold of Connors and dragged him toward the front of the plane.
“What are you doing, Ferg?”
“We’ll use the grenade to blow open the door. We’ll huddle under the ledge, the explosion misses us, we go get the bastards. The flash-bang will be the striker. It’ll work.”
Conners said nothing as Ferguson dragged him forward, convinced belief was better than despair. Finnegan’s saga floated into his brain. Oh, for a good slug of whiskey right now, he thought to himself.
“Shoot me before we crash,” said Conners, as Ferguson let go of him.
It was dark, so Conners couldn’t see Ferguson wince. The CIA officer patted the SF soldier on the arm, then started to climb up toward the door he’d found earlier.
“I’m going to stick the grenades in the door and jump,” Ferguson told him. “If it works, it’ll either blow a hole in the fuselage, or the door to the cockpit, or ignite the whole plane.”
“Or it won’t work,” muttered Conners.
“Always a possibility,” said Ferg.
Conners curled himself against the metal, hunkering his head down. The pain of his wounds hadn’t disappeared, but his mind seemed to have pushed itself away from it. He felt as if he could think at least; he was conscious, awake, and knew he’d be awake when he died. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
It took Ferguson two tries to get back on the ledge near the door. The small metal bar that had acted as a handle for the door was about a half inch too tight to hold them together; Ferguson squeezed it back but still didn’t have enough room. He fit the Russian grenade in place and forced the stun grenade down, wedging it with his knife between the two devices. He tried to position the tip of the blade at the center of the Russian grenade, like a striker against a detonating cap, but he couldn’t really see what he was doing. The flash-bang squeezed only about a third of the way down.
It wasn’t going to work, Ferguson thought as he gripped the top of the M84 grenade.
Better to do
Maybe the sound of the damn flash-bang going off would scare the piss out of the terrorists, and they’d lose control of the airplane. Or maybe it would ignite the Russian grenade, shoot it through the cockpit, and put a hole in the back of the pilot.
And maybe they’d all just go boom. There certainly were enough explosives packed into the 747.
“So this is the way I go out, Dad,” he said. He was speaking to his own father, not Conners, though maybe in a way he’d always been talking to his dad when he talked to the older SF man.
“See ya in heaven, boys,” said Ferguson. He pulled the pin on the grenade, heard — or thought he heard — a click, then jumped off the ledge.
19
Rankin leaned out of the helicopter as it whipped over the compound. There was a docking area with a pair
