Donohue crouched at the back of the car, trying to decipher what was going on from the others’ conversation.
The woman had found a man, on either the train or the tracks. They were American agents. They were talking about a bomb. A nuclear bomb.
Had Mussa stolen a nuclear device?
Donohue ran into the car, starting to say that he would help. As he did, he saw not the woman or the man she’d found somehow, but Mussa, standing at the far end.
There was a submachine gun in his hand.
Lia’s head slammed hard on the floor and the box crashed alongside her, a half inch from her face.
She was in Korea, in the terminal. There was a man at the door, yelling.
The old man who’d been with her before the other plane arrived. He was in charge of the terminal or something, some sort of civilian official.
He stood in the doorway. The officer whirled back in anger, pulling out his pistol, but the old man remained there, a solemn look on his face, shaming him.
He said something.
The officer started to raise his gun, but the old man gave no ground.
Silently the officer waved at the others. They left, and so did he.
Why had she forgotten that? Why had her brain pushed it away? The old man had saved her.
Mussa couldn’t believe it: Donohue stood at the end of the car.
Donohue!
He turned his submachine gun toward him and began to fire.
Dean heard the submachine gun rattle as he grabbed the pistol. He twisted upward. The shadow lurched forward — the man with the submachine gun was firing at the far end of the carriage, ignoring him.
Dean’s first bullet struck the side of the man’s head. It seemed as if it had no effect. With the second shot, the head disappeared backward, blood flying in a thick spray everywhere.
“Come on! Come on!” Dean yelled, scrambling to get up. “Let’s get out. Come on.”
Lia lay on her stomach on the floor between the seats and the piece of bomb that they had moved. Tears were flowing from her closed eyes and her whole body heaved with sobs. Dean grabbed her, pulling her past the man he’d just shot, a light-skinned Arab dressed in the uniform of the train crew. He half-carried, half-dragged her to the end of the car. He let go of her, thinking he would jump down to the tracks and reach back for her. But when he got to the ground she had already clambered down.
“I can do it on my own, Charlie Dean,” she said as he tried to help her.
“For once in your life, accept some help, damn it,” he told her. “Just shut up and be thankful.”
“I am thankful,” she whispered as he hoisted her over his shoulder. “And not for once, either.”
112
Rubens paced back and forth in the Art Room. The French response team had just gone into the service tunnel that ran down the middle of the Chunnel. It would take several minutes before they reached the area Lia had called from.
In the meantime, all he could do was wait. This was the worst thing in life, wasn’t it? Simply standing — or rather pacing — doing nothing.
It was how he felt with the General, really. Unable to help.
Perhaps Rebecca felt that way as well. Maybe she fought simply because doing something was better than nothing.
The front half of the train was now safely in England. The power in the lines that fed the train through the pantograph at the top of the train had just been cut, in case this was being used to power the bomb somehow — though it was probably a futile gesture.
But you had to do something, didn’t you?
“Jesus!” said Telach.
Rubens turned and saw a puff of smoke blowing from the feed of the British side of the Chunnel entrance.
“Oh, God,” said Telach.
Rubens walked to her and squeezed her elbow. “Steady now,” he said. “Just steady.”
“Earthquake data,” said Chafetz. “Incomplete. Incomplete. P waves are — hold it…”
Rubens waited. Seismologists generally divided the shock from an earthquake — or an underground explosion — into two types of waves, P waves and S waves. More familiarly, the blast could be measured on the Richter scale commonly used for earthquakes. In theory, a sixty-kiloton explosion would register into the sixes on the Richter scale, though the exact force would depend on the circumstances. (Actual nuclear devices that yielded sixty kilotons often registered considerably less on the Richter scale — though the force of their impact was hardly negligible.)
Rubens crossed his arms in front of his chest, waiting.
“What’s going on?” asked Hadash from Air Force One.
“Mr. President, there’s been an explosion in the Chunnel,” Rubens said.
Marcke came on the line. “They detonated the nuke?”
“We’re still looking for data, sir.”
“Three — we don’t have numbers here,” said Chafetz.
Rubens turned at her. One of the analysts in the back section stood up and yelled, “Less than three-point- two. Less! Not a nuke.”
A
But not a nuke.
Someone started to clap. Several other people started to say something else.
“Please,” said Rubens, raising his arms. “We have much more to do. And two people in the Chunnel.”
The room went silent.
“Mr. President,” said Rubens. “It appears their explosion failed to detonate the warhead, if they had it.”
“Thank God,” said Marcke.
“Yes, sir.”
113
They’d gotten no more than three or four hundred yards from the power car when the tunnel behind them exploded. Dean, with Lia still on his back, flew down face-first into the tracks, slamming so hard he blacked out. When he came to, Lia was clawing at him, pulling him forward.
“Come on,” she said. “Come on.”
“Wait.”
“No!”
A roar filled his ears. His face was wet and he thought he’d cut himself.
Then he realized his pants and shirt were wet as well.
“Come on!” Lia screamed. “Water’s flooding the tracks. The access tunnel is there. Go! Come on!”
Dean got up, then stumbled as a wave of water pushed at him from the back.
“Come on!” Lia yelled, pulling at him.
