The Hamlet Warning (27 page)

“Casualties will be high, then.” 

“Fifty, a hundred thousand?”

Coon slowly turned a full circle, studying the city. His answer was objective, distant, almost disinterested. “I’d say that’s a good ballpark figure,” he said. “But it might be more. Many more. We’re dealing with a very sophisticated device. Difficult to say.”

Loomis walked to the corner of the tower and knocked out two louvers for air.

Farther up the street, the celebration had resumed. Again El Conde was wall-to-wall with people. Less than a mile away the top of the
palacio
could be seen. Two miles beyond, behind the Embajador Hotel, were the Polo Grounds — and the helicopter.

Thirty-six minutes.

It might be possible.

Coon and Johnson were squatting, peering into a hole with the mirror. Coon was explaining why it couldn’t be disarmed.

Loomis interrupted. “How heavy is the damned thing?” he asked.

Coon considered his answer carefully. “Frame and all, five or six hundred pounds, probably.”

“Would vibration set it off?”

Again Coon considered, fondling his pipe. “Might not. The firing mechanism fortunately is electric. The system should stand a fairly severe jolt.”

Johnson looked up at Loomis. “Are you thinking what I’m afraid you’re thinking?”

“There’s no other way. We’ll have to get it out of here.” He squatted beside Coon and put a hand on the bomb. “What would happen if it was kicked out of a helicopter into the ocean?”

“It’d go,” Coon said without hesitation. “You see, the firing mechanism is electric, and salt water …”

“All right,” Loomis interrupted. “It’s an air burst, then. Johnson, get it loose from the tower while I get what we’ll need.” 

Johnson turned and started hunting through the tool box. “You going to get the chopper?” he asked.

“Not enough time,” Loomis said. “And with these overhead wires I couldn’t get close enough. The rescue hoist probably wouldn’t take the load, anyway. We’ll have to move the bomb to the chopper.”

“Could we make it?” Johnson asked.

“Fifteen minutes to the Polo Grounds. Twenty minutes to get it out to sea,” Loomis said.

Johnson was digging frantically in the tool box. “May take me that long to find a fucking wrench that fits,” he said.

Loomis stepped down the ladder and searched for a phone. He located one on the second floor, reached the air base at San Isidro, nine miles away, and ordered the necessary gear flown by helicopter to the polo field.

When he returned to the roof, Zaloudek was dead. Loomis went to the body and made a hurried search through Zaloudek’s pockets. He found nothing significant. He stripped off the chronometer watch and put it on his own wrist.

The watch now showed twenty-nine minutes until detonation.

Loomis explained to the colonel what he would need. Officers were assigned to round up the equipment and crews. A sergeant went to find technicians to restore electrical power to the building, if possible. They would need the old elevator.

Loomis climbed back into the tower. Johnson was having trouble removing the last bolt.

“The fucking threads are stripped. See?”

When Johnson spun the wrench, the nut turned on the bolt, but failed to follow the threads.

Picking up a pair of pliers, Loomis pushed Johnson aside. “Let me at it,” he said. He grabbed the nut with the pliers and, pulling upward with all his strength, slowly turned the nut. 

The threads still did not catch.

“Get out of my fucking way,” Johnson said, advancing on the bomb with a sledge hammer.

Coon at last was jarred out of his scientific objectivity. “My God, Johnson! Don’t hit it with that!”

For an answer, Johnson swung the hammer. The blow bent the bolt, canting the nut over at an odd angle. A second, harder blow moved the nut an inch up the shaft. The third knocked it clear. The bolt dropped to the roof below.

“Let’s go!” Loomis called down to the colonel. Six soldiers climbed the ladder and gathered around the bomb, maneuvering for hand-holds. There weren’t many. At most, only five or six could find leverage at the same time — a hundred pounds of dead weight per man.

With Loomis and Johnson helping, the soldiers struggled to move the bomb.

Slowly, inch by inch, they lifted it from the floor of the tower. Straining, grunting, stumbling over tools and each other’s feet, they managed to move it to the coaming, where it was carefully lowered to a crew waiting below on the roof.

The trip across the roof seemed to take ages. Loomis climbed out of the tower and went to the front of the bomb. He found a hold and helped to guide it through the narrow door.

In descending the stairs, the full weight of the bomb rested on those below. And in the close confines of the steep half-flight down to the elevator, there wasn’t much room. Loomis and Johnson took much of the framework across their shoulders. Each step down to the fifth-floor landing was agonizingly slow, the Latins ahead, those behind yelling encouragement.

When they reached the fifth floor, word came from below that electrical power had been restored. They set the bomb down and waited for the elevator. Johnson rolled his eyes at the ceiling in exasperation as the old cage creaked relentlessly up the five floors. It seemed to take forever. When it at last arrived, the doors were propped open. Loomis and Johnson retained their holds and guided the bomb into the cage. As the old elevator took the strain, Loomis could hear the overhead cables pop and groan under the unaccustomed weight.

“This fucker’s going to go clean through to the basement,” Johnson said.

Loomis figured hurriedly. Eight men at one-seventy-five average plus the bomb would weigh approximately a ton. “This brass plate says the maximum is a thousand kilograms,” he told Johnson. “That means it’s tested for more than a ton.”

“When? In nineteen-ten?”

A soldier closed the outer doors, then the accordion-mesh inner doors of the cage. Loomis flipped the lever to
abajo
. The old elevator moved downward with a heart-freezing, metallic moan. It jerked fitfully to a stop, groaned downward six more feet, then halted abruptly.

“You and your fucking ideas, Loomis,” Johnson said.

Loomis frantically worked the control handle several times. The elevator wouldn’t budge. The six soldiers stopped breathing.

“The cables may be binding,” Johnson said. “Take it back up.”

Loomis reversed the lever and the elevator rose slowly. He flipped it back to
abajo
and the cage moved downward, past the first stop, to just above the third floor before grinding to a squealing halt.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Johnson fumed. “Doesn’t anything work right anymore?”

He reached overhead to an emergency panel, secured by set-screws. Freeing the corners of the metal plate, he pushed it to one side, then lifted himself up, head disappearing through the hole. After a moment, he dropped back to the floor of the cage.

“From what I can see, it looks like a mess of spaghetti up there,” he said. “The weight has twisted the cables. We’ve got to get this fucker out of here.”

Loomis opened the cage doors and began struggling with the outer doors to the third-floor level. One of the soldiers found the emergency catch that released the doors and they swung open.

The cage was suspended more than four feet above the third level.

The colonel and the rest of the soldiers had gone downstairs to the first floor to await the elevator’s arrival. From the first-floor indicator, they soon realized that the old cage was stuck in the shaft. They now came swarming onto the third-floor landing. Loomis could hear the colonel yelling, attempting to bring order out of chaos.

“Come on,” Johnson said. “Let’s toss the damned thing out. If they can’t catch it, that’s their tough luck.”

But the floor of the elevator was suspended less than three feet from the top of the outer elevator door. The bomb jammed in the opening. With all of them pushing, the bomb still wouldn’t go through. It lacked less than an inch of clearing the outer door.

“Only one thing to do,” Johnson said. “Pull it back. We’ll lay it on its side. If it goes, it goes.”

With the help of the soldiers outside pushing, they managed to pull the bomb back inside the cage. They carefully turned the bomb on its side, then slid it to the edge of the cage, and through the narrow opening into waiting hands on the third floor.

Loomis and Johnson helped the soldiers squeeze out of the cage, then followed.

The colonel and his crew moved the bomb down the stairway amidst a bedlam of shouting and confusion.

“I hate to criticize people obviously doing their best,” Johnson said. “But that looks like the Three Stooges hanging paper.”

The flat-bed truck and police escort Loomis had ordered were waiting at the front door, and the narrow street was jammed with people. Apparently the whole town had swarmed into El Conde to celebrate the end of the war. Rumors of the bomb had spread like wildfire. Curiosity proved stronger than prudence. The crowd stood gawking at the bomb
a
atómica
, pressing in for a closer look. Police cleared the way as the soldiers carried the bomb to the truck. Loomis and Johnson climbed up beside it. Coon materialized out of the crowd and was helped aboard. The police escort turned on the sirens. The convoy began to move slowly through the packed street.

Johnson flopped onto his back on the bed of the truck, propped one boot up on the bomb, and studied his watch.

“Twenty-two minutes until one,” he said. “Way I figure it, we’re ten minutes behind your schedule.”

“We’ll make it,” Loomis said. “Nothing can happen now.”

“Maybe. But if we have a flat, don’t count on me to hang around to help fix it.”

The convoy reached El Conde Gate, circled the park, and began making better time out San Martin. With the way cleared by police sirens, the driver floorboarded the old truck.

“We won’t be able to get this damned thing far out to sea,” Loomis told Coon. “From what you know of prevailing winds aloft, what would be the best direction?”

“Straight south,” Coon said. “The fallout probably will drift westward. With any luck it will miss Port-au-Prince and Kingston. By the time it reaches the Yucatan Peninsula, or is blown back by the jet streams in the upper levels, the diffusion should be sufficient to render the radiation harmless.”

“Why don’t we just drive this truck on out into the country and leave it?” Johnson asked. 

“There’s considerable population anywhere you go within twenty miles,” Loomis told him.

“And the fallout would probably blow inland,” Coon said. “There’d be radioactive dust. You’d have to figure on casualties from that. At sea, most of the debris will fall over open water. Just get it as far out as you can, Loomis.”

“I’ll do my best,” Loomis said.

“What do you mean,
you’ll
do your best?” Johnson asked. “I’m going too, you know.”

The truck slowed and made a right turn toward the polo grounds. Loomis could see the helicopters.

He wanted to say no to Johnson. But Johnson would be needed.

“You’re the one who dumped this damned thing on me,” Loomis told him. “I wouldn’t think of leaving you behind.”

Chapter 30

Minus
00
:
16
Hours

Loomis started the engine, wound up the rotors, and pulled pitch, using the throttle mercilessly. He began moving seaward immediately after dustoff. The Hotel Embajador passed beneath the ship. And the Jaragua. To the left, Loomis could see the tanks still deployed on Avenida Bolívar. Farther to the left was the sprawling yellow
palacio
compound. The greenery and brilliant colors of the flower gardens in the Ciudad Nueva went by in a blur. The old cannon at the mouth of the Río Ozama was soon behind, and they were out over open water, climbing steadily. The sea was calm and incredibly blue beneath scattered, lazy white clouds.

The confidence Loomis had felt earlier was gone. Although his hands were steady on the controls, he felt desperation bordering on panic.

Fifteen minutes left.

Johnson plugged into the intercom system aft. “You’re sure getting careless on your preflight checks,” he said. “I wonder if it’s safe to ride with you.”

Loomis forced himself to concentrate. At 140 miles an hour, they were covering 2.3 miles per minute. In ten minutes, they would be 23 miles out. 

That would have to do.

Johnson was at work securing the bomb to the frame of the ship with cargo straps. “How do we know ol’ Zaloudek wasn’t a few minutes off?” he asked.

“He was a perfectionist,” Loomis said. “I think we can count on that.”

“Maybe his watch was wrong.”

“No. It was right.”

“How do you know?”

Loomis held up his left arm. “I’m wearing it,” he said.

Below, as the depth of the sea increased, the water gradually changed to a deeper shade of blue. Loomis pushed the throttle to the stops, risking engine heat for more speed, more altitude. A chatter swept through the ship as the helicopter’s natural harmonic frequency, altered by the heavy load, suddenly was at odds with the rotor speed, setting off violent vibrations.

“Hey!” Johnson yelled. “Cut that out! This thing’s walking!”

Loomis backed off on the throttle, and the vibrations eased. He looked aft. Johnson was sprawled full length, his feet propped against the bomb, holding it in place. Johnson shook his head in exasperation, rolled to his knees, and again went to work tying down the bomb. Loomis leveled off at five thousand feet. He knew now they would have to be content with their present speed.

“I hate to bring this up, in case you haven’t thought about it,” Johnson said. “But how in hell are we going to get rid of this thing? If we kick it out over the ocean, it’ll blow our ass right out of the sky.”

Loomis had thought ahead — to what he knew would be the biggest gamble of his life.

“There are a couple of parachutes back there somewhere,” he said. “We’ll jump. It’s a calm day. The chopper may be able to take the bomb on another ten miles or so by itself before detonation.” 

Johnson sat up and looked at him. “Is that possible? I thought you had to stay on top of these eggbeaters every second.”

Johnson was right, in a sense. Helicopters lack the natural stability of an airplane which, undisturbed by wind or air currents, theoretically could fly indefinitely once the controls were set. A helicopter’s many design problems include a strong tendency to spin in the opposite direction from that of the rotor. Any surge of power, change of pitch in the rotors, or of attitude immediately requires compensation in the controls. In the early days, a helicopter pilot couldn’t take his hands off the controls for a moment. Someone once described flying a helicopter as like riding a motorcycle in four dimensions. The description was apt. Now, there were a few improvements.

“This one is equipped with a Stability Augmentation System,” Loomis explained.

“An autopilot?”

“Not exactly. It’s just a device to allow a chopper pilot time enough away from the controls to read a map, scratch his balls, or whatever. It’ll probably bounce all over the sky after a few minutes. That’s why I wanted you to tie that damned thing down. But the ship should maintain altitude and attitude. With the right settings, and a little luck, it ought to be good for ten miles. That’ll be enough.”

Johnson came up and put a hand on his shoulder. “Loomis, I wouldn’t want you to think I don’t have confidence in you, or anything like that. But is this going to work?”

Loomis forced his aching hands to relax on the controls. “I don’t know,” he said.

“That did it,” Johnson said. “Now I
am
beginning to lose confidence in you.”

Ten minutes until one.

“If you’ve got that thing secure, move as far aft as you can,” Loomis said. “I need you back there for balance.” 

With Johnson against the rear bulkhead, Loomis began experimenting with the Stability Augmentation System to see how long the helicopter would remain in steady, hands-off flight. The major worry was the ship’s center of gravity. When they jumped, the balance probably would be altered enough to affect flight. But Loomis figured that he and Johnson were close enough to a balance on each side of the COG. If so, the point would be changed little when they jumped. The guesswork might be close enough.

Loomis found that the ship had a tendency to bank off toward the left with the SAS. The device held well for a brief time, then the flight path began to veer. Loomis became so engrossed in the problem that he let too much time pass.

Eight minutes until one.

“Get your chute on!” he called to Johnson. “We’re due out of here in three minutes!”

Johnson pulled the chutes from a storage space. He tossed one toward Loomis and began wrestling into the harness of the other. He had trouble with the straps. They were adjusted for a much smaller man. “It says ‘U.S. Army Air Corps’ on this thing,” Johnson said. “If I find ‘American Expeditionary Force’ stamped on it, or Eddie Rickenbacker’s name tag, I’m staying with the ship.”

“That one was Hap Arnold’s,” Loomis said. “I’ve got Rickenbacker’s.”

Loomis left the controls long enough to get into the parachute and Mae West. The chopper held steady. Three minutes had passed.

“Five minutes till doomsday!” Johnson yelled. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

Loomis carefully set the controls, attempting to adjust for the ship’s tendency to veer to the left. He wished he had more time, but he knew there was nothing else he could do but gamble that the ship wouldn’t fly for a mile or two, then start spinning out of control, perhaps even circle back on them like a nuclear boomerang.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Sit on the deck, and push out and down. You may get lucky and miss the rear rotor.”

Johnson nodded. He disconnected from the intercom and slid back the hatch. He sat on the floor, put his feet out the door, gripped the side of the frame, and leaned out, preparing to push himself out.

He pulled back in. “Oh shit,” he yelled. “Look up ahead!”

Loomis stood up and looked. Dead ahead, hull down on the horizon, twenty-five to thirty miles away, was a large cruise ship. Loomis knew it was a Cunard liner, bound from St. Thomas to Kingston with more than a thousand passengers aboard.

“Go on!” Loomis shouted to Johnson. “Jump!”

Johnson shook his head and scrambled to the rear of the compartment. He knew enough about choppers to know that Loomis needed his weight to balance the ship.

Loomis climbed back into the pilot’s seat and altered course. A ninety-degree turn to the east would give the cruise ship twelve miles or more of leeway. That was all he could do.

Loomis carefully steadied the chopper on the new course. He then hurried back to the hatch, motioning for Johnson to jump. Johnson scooted to the door and put his feet out. He hesitated.

“Four minutes!” he said. “How long will it take us to reach the water?”

“We’ll make it!” Loomis yelled. “Just get your ass out!”

Johnson jumped. Loomis saw him clear the rotor. He didn’t wait to see Johnson’s chute open. He rolled out the hatch, pushing hard with his feet as he cleared the coaming.

The wind blast was terrific. Although he was worried about altitude, he waited for a moment before pulling the D-ring, hoping drag would slow him, lessening the shock of the chute’s opening.

But he knew he couldn’t wait long. He pulled the ring, saw the silk deploy, and then felt he was being drawn and quartered as the ill-fitting harness cut into his crotch. He fought the risers, stopping his oscillation.

Johnson’s chute was a quarter of a mile away and slightly below him. Loomis pulled the risers, spilling air to move in that direction.

He turned to look at the helicopter. It was still on course, bouncing erratically, but holding fairly steady flight.

Four minutes at 2.3 miles per minute would place them 9.2 miles from ground zero, with a prevailing cross-wind at the upper levels.

They might survive, if the chopper held its course.

If Zaloudek was one minute off, they might not.

Loomis concentrated on hitting the water, holding his swings to a minimum, going in feet first. He went under and waited to make certain he wasn’t trapped beneath the silk before he released the C02 to inflate his Mae West.

The sea was calm. Gentle waves lapped at his chin. With his Mae West he bobbed easily in the deep swells. Occasionally he could see Johnson a hundred yards away. Loomis pulled out of his chute harness and paddled toward him.

He met Johnson swimming in his direction. “One minute!” Johnson called, pointing to his wrist. “What are we supposed to do?”

“Close your eyes,” Loomis said. “Face away from it.”

“I’ve seen a dozen training films,” Johnson fumed. “I’ve read the instructions a hundred times. And right now I can’t remember a fucking thing.”

Loomis kept his own eyes tightly closed. “The light flash is first,” he said. “It can blind you. And keep low in the water. Strong radiation comes with the flash.” 

They waited for a time in silence.

“I don’t believe the son of a bitch is going to go,” Johnson said. “It’s been more than a minute.”

Loomis fought down an irrational impulse to turn and look, to attempt to see what had happened to the helicopter. “No, it hasn’t been a minute,” he said. “I’ve been counting.”

Johnson started to reply, but was interrupted on the first syllable by the detonation.

Nine point two miles from Loomis and Johnson, the mass of Uranium-235 not much larger than a grapefruit went critical, soaring to several hundred million degrees in a hundred millionth of a second — far surpassing the heat on the surface of the sun. Pressures at the core went instantly to more than a hundred million atmospheres, sending neutrons multiplying, expanding faster at that moment than any other object in the galaxy — more than five million miles an hour.

For an instant, through his closed eyelids, Loomis saw the outline of sky, horizon, and sea and of Johnson a few feet away. And he knew that in that instant he and Johnson were being bombarded by a tremendous barrage of beta and gamma rays. But at nine miles, with most of their bodies protected by a shield of water, the dosage should not be fatal.

“Christ!” Johnson yelled. “I had my hands over my eyes. Light came
through
my fingers! I saw the bones!”

The heat came next — wave after wave of searing air that turned the surface of the sea into a furnace. Deep swells in the wake of the air blast set them bobbing like corks.

Then, with an ear-splitting roar of a thousand lightning bolts, the shock wave passed. Forgetting all caution, Loomis turned to look.

A massive fireball was climbing rapidly, rolling inward, expanding as it soared toward the stratosphere, leaving a tall pillar that grew steadily into a mushroom cloud forty thousand feet high. Loomis and Johnson watched the fireball in awe.

“I’ll sure say one thing for ol’ Zaloudek,” Johnson said. “He was one bomb-making son of a bitch.”

Slowly, the mushroom cloud began to spread. The top gradually broke into a huge smoke ring. Then the residue started drifting westward.

“I think the fallout will miss us,” Loomis said.

“What about that poor damned cruise ship?” Johnson asked.

Loomis watched the drift of the cloud, figuring angles. “The fallout should be behind them,” he said. “They’re safe.”

Johnson lay back in his Mae West and studied the nuclear cloud. “And I’ll say one thing for you, too, Loomis. You really know how to entertain a fellow,” he said. “I haven’t had so much fun in a coon’s age. Now I’d like to return the favor. Why don’t you come back with me to help hunt the other one?”

“What about that old contract on me?”

“Loomis, we’re all heart.”

The water was warm and comfortable. For the first time in weeks, Loomis felt relaxed, at peace with the world. He didn’t want to commit himself. He knew he might feel different later. “I may retire from all this,” he said.

“Oh hell, Loomis. You’ve got another year or two left in you,” Johnson said. “We need you. And you may never have an opportunity like this again.” He pointed to the nuclear pillar, still rising and spreading across the southern sky. “You’ve got to admit that these Hamlet people are a little out of the ordinary.”