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Cabrillo had just pulled back the panel when Truitt arrived.
“Let’s try freezing the firing mechanism,” Truitt said.
The timer was at one minute twelve.
“Go,” Cabrillo yelled.
Truitt’s gloves were frozen to the block of dry ice and he could not feel his hands. He tossed the block, gloves and all, onto the nose cone and then slid his gray hands under his armpits. The timer clicked a few more times then stopped cold.
Cabrillo looked over at Truitt and smiled. “I’m surprised that worked,” he said.
“Necessity,” Truitt said through gritted teeth, “is the mother of invention.”
Cabrillo nodded and reached for the voice microphone at his throat. “I need the bomb guys at the Queen Victoria Memorial ASAP.”
Fireworks erupted over the park and throughout London as the New Year came.
Two minutes later a car pulled up and a British officer climbed out. Soon another car arrived containing an expert from the U.S. Air Force. Five minutes later the two men had the firing mechanism removed and stowed. Now the bomb was just a housing for an orb of enriched uranium.
Its heart was ripped from its body, and with it went the life force that could bring death.
WHILE THE BOMB experts were rendering the device inert, Cabrillo and Truitt walked over to Amad’s body, which was lying in a pool of blood on the pavement. The radio had reported that Lababiti had been detained and was now being brought back to London by helicopter. Elton John was still singing and the sound filled the air. The scene around the motorcycle was being cordoned off by British military and intelligence officials, and most at the concert were unaware of what had happened.
“Nothing but a kid,” Cabrillo said, looking down.
Truitt nodded.
“Let’s get you to the medic to look at your hands.”
Kasim and Ross, who had arrived a few minutes after the timer was stopped, were wheeling the smashed Black Shadow over toward Cabrillo. The classic motorcycle was a mess. The tanks and side panels were scratched, the handlebars bent and one tire was flat. A perfect specimen of motorcycle history had been destroyed. Cabrillo looked at the motorcycle and shook his head.
“I want you two to go back to the dealership,” he said to Ross and Kasim, “and pay the man whatever his asking price was. Then I want you to ask him where to send it to be restored again.”
“You’re keeping it, boss?” Ross asked.
“Damn straight,” Cabrillo said.
Right then Fleming appeared and Cabrillo walked over to brief him. Lababiti was being brought back to downtown London, but it would be weeks before he filled in the pieces.
PART TWO
42
ON BOARD THE U.S. Navy guided-missile frigate, Scott Thompson and his team from the Free Enterprise had yet to crack. Although they had been grilled by the navy commander of the ship since the time of their surrender, they had yet to disclose a thing.
In the pilothouse, Commander Timothy Gant was awaiting the arrival of a helicopter from shore. The sky was black and the wind was whipping the seas into a white froth. On the radar scope a blip indicating the incoming helicopter moved nearer.
“She’s on final, sir,” the helmsman said, “winds twenty to thirty from the north and northwest.”
Gant reached for his radio. “Get her secured to the deck the minute she touches down,” he said to the head of his deck operations.
“Roger that, sir,” the man answered.
The helicopter appeared out of the haze with her landing light illuminated. She came straight for the ship and barely slowed as she neared. “I’m coming in hot,” the pilot said over the radio. One hundred yards, eighty, sixty, forty, twenty before the pilot slowed. Once he was just above the deck one-third of the way down the ship he saw the men with flashlights. Then he saw the open spot on the deck and dropped the helicopter down. As soon as the skids touched, a quartet of deckhands bent over at the waist ran out and secured the skids with chains. The rotor blade had not yet stopped when a single man carrying a valise climbed out and was led over to the door inside. Gant had come down to meet him and opened the door.
“Come on inside out of the weather,” Gant said as the man entered the ship. “I’m Commander Timothy Gant.”
The man was tall and lanky with a slightly pockmarked face and a hook nose. “Dr. Jack Berg,” the man said, “Central Intelligence Agency.”
