Текст книги "Gideon's War / Hard Target"

Автор книги: Howard Gordon

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Gideon's War and Hard Target

Gideon fired once, and the first man fell, his Makarov...

Seeing this, the second jihadi pulled Kate in front of him to use as a human shield, but a bullet from Gideon’s AK drilled a hole through the bridge of his nose.

Gideon felt as if he were watching a film of a shattered mirror running backward, the pieces knitting together before his eyes, every piece in perfect alignment, his reflected image snapping into focus where only a second earlier there had been nothing but shards and glimmers and fractured glimpses.

He fired a second shot into the jihadi before he hit the ground.

Then he snatched up the tools and collected as much ammunition as he could carry from the dead jihadis. He felt Kate trembling as he wrapped his arm around her and swept her past the pile of dead men. Without a word, they made their way toward the bomb on D Deck that Tillman was threatening to detonate less than ten hours from now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHUN WAS ON A Deck, reading the ID badge of the dead hostage whom Omar had let take a piss. What Chun found there was worse than he’d imagined. Aside from the hostage, Wafiq and Abbudin were also dead, and Omar was missing. Chun’s voice tightened as he gave Timken a damage report, grateful that he was delivering the news over the radio instead of face-to-face. “ID says he’s a diver-welder. His name’s Garth Dean.”

“How the hell did he get loose?” Timken asked.

“He didn’t, sir. Not exactly. His cuffs are still on.”

“So you’re telling me that an unarmed woman and a hostage with his hands tied behind his back took out three armed men?”

“It looks that way.”

Chun heard the anger in Timken’s silence. What Chun didn’t hear were the ball bearings rattling in Timken’s pocket as he formed a simple plan.

“My men are still sweeping A Deck, sir.” Chun said. “She can’t have gotten far.”

“Forget about that, Chun. Just meet me in B-14.”

“Sir, we need to find her.”

“No. She’s going to come to us. Now get down to B-14.”

Timken smiled to himself, pleased with his plan, as he set off for the cabin where he’d secured his high-value hostages.

Big Al Prejean was sitting on the floor of cabin B-14 when the four jihadis walked in. Two were Mohanese and two were American. One was a big guy of Asian descent, the other the bearded white guy who called himself Abu Nasir. Prejean was halfway relieved to see them. Stearns had been talking nonstop since they’d been thrown in the cabin together, and it was driving him up the wall. Not once had the ambassador expressed any remorse or sorrow over the violent murder of his press attaché. Instead, he ignored Prejean and talked nonstop to Parker, speculating that the president must surely be mounting some kind of rescue mission. After all, he and Parker were very important people. Beneath his bravado, the man was petrified.

Stearns stopped talking the moment Abu Nasir entered the cabin.

A soft clacking sound came from inside his pocket as he surveyed the room warily. His right hand was plugged into his pocket, the number 82 tattooed on his wrist. Abu Nasir looked at Parker for a moment, then at Big Al, before finally settling on Stearns, who squirmed under the icy scrutiny of the American jihadi.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Stearns said, his nervous voice breaking the silence. “I understand your grievances. You’ve got some legitimate issues with the Sultan, and I want to offer myself as an intermediary. If you let me speak to the president, I’m sure he’ll be willing to listen to your demands—”

“Give me your sock,” Abu Nasir said.

“Excuse me?”

“Your sock. Give it to me.”

Gideon's War and Hard Target

Big Al considered himself to be a pretty tough guy. But...

Abu Nasir plucked the watch from Stearns’s hand, dropped it on the floor, and brought down the heavy heel of his steel-toed boot. It made a sharp cracking noise.

“Give me your fucking sock. And don’t make me ask you again.”

Stearns didn’t need any more convincing, although it took him a moment to decide which shoe to remove. His hands were shaking as he untied the laces of his right shoe and pulled it off. The stench of sweat-soaked silk filled the cabin as the ambassador peeled off his sock and handed it to Abu Nasir.

CHAPTER THIRTY

KATE’S EARS WERE STILL ringing. Before being shot by Gideon, the jihadi had discharged his gun inches from Kate’s ear and had then fallen on top of her, knocking her to the floor. Gideon had pulled her to her feet and ushered her through the doorway and set out for D-4. Kate was about to thank him for saving her life, but she saw something in his face that stopped her from saying anything. His eyes were opaque, lost in some private thought that demanded only her respectful silence.

They moved at a fast clip toward D-4 without speaking a word. Gideon’s mind kept playing back to the moment he had discovered his mother’s body, the gaping wound in her chest, the empty expression on her face. He remembered piling his father’s guns on the bedsheet and dragging them across the lawn toward the pond behind their house. He remembered throwing them, the splash of each handcrafted weapon as it disappeared into the water. And he remembered his oath, never to fire a gun again.

He remembered standing on the podium at the UN only two days ago, listening to the president of the United States introduce him as a man who “has dedicated himself to that ancient and most sacred cornerstone of our moral code: Thou Shalt Not Kill.”

But Gideon had killed. He had killed without hesitating because he had no other choice. He had killed with ease and efficiency, shattering in a moment the core conviction that had defined him for his adult life. But rather than remorse or even confusion, he felt the bracing clarity of having finally released something he’d held on to far too tightly for far too long. What surprised Gideon most was the whispered voice he heard in his head. Good kill, son.

The warmth of his father’s imagined approval surprised him, although it was short-lived, dispersed by a sudden burst of static that filled the corridor. Gideon and Kate stopped in their tracks as a voice boomed over the rig’s public address system.

“Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention please?”

Kate recognized the sadistic drawl of Abu Nasir, and looked at Gideon.

“Your brother . . .”

“My brother?” Gideon frowned and shook his head. “That’s not him. That’s not his voice.”

Kate studied him for a moment, trying to find a way to explain his evident denial in as sympathetic a way as she could muster. “You haven’t spoken to him in seven years. He’s not the same person you knew.” She went on to describe Abu Nasir, reminding him of the numbers she’d seen tattooed on his wrist. Gideon couldn’t dispute her facts or her conviction. He had barely recognized Tillman in the photograph Uncle Earl had given him, and maybe Tillman’s voice had changed just as dramatically. Could his brother really have transformed into someone who no longer resembled the man fixed in Gideon’s memory?

But the man who called himself Abu Nasir was in fact Orville Tim-ken, and he was now pacing a tight line before the public address system microphone. “I’m directing this announcement to Ms. Kate Murphy, our resourceful host on this fine rig. Wafiq and Abbudin were good soldiers. How you managed to take them out, and do whatever you did to Omar . . . well, all I can say is that I am impressed. So impressed, in fact, that I would like you to join me in cabin B-14 so we can have a little sit-down before things get more unfriendly than they need to ge heñ€†t.”

Big Al realized with relief that Kate had escaped from the jihadis. After they’d taken her the last time, he was afraid they had killed her. Somehow she had not only gotten away but had also managed to take out three of them. That’s my girl, he thought to himself. He met Earl Parker’s eyes with a tight nod of pride. Parker’s face, however, betrayed no emotion.

“I’m here with Mr. Parker, Mr. Prejean, and the Honorable Randall J. Stearns, ambassador to the court of Sultan Ali IV, who has been kind enough to lend me one of his socks.”

Ambassador Stearns looked up fearfully as Timken shoveled a fistful of ball bearings into his empty sock. “Please,” Stearns said, “I’m not giving you any trouble, you don’t have to do this—” Abu Nasir slapped him hard, a crisp, ringing, open-handed strike that reddened his fleshy face and shut him up.

“Ms. Murphy . . .” Timken filled the sock with more ball bearings as he continued to speak, his voice slow and clear so that the microphone could pick up every word. “I am filling the ambassador’s sock with an even pound’s worth of ball bearings.” He funneled more of the tiny metal balls into the open sock, making a clattering sound that was audible over the speakers.

As Timkin tied the sock with a simple knot, Stearns felt a wet warmth spreading through his crotch and down his thighs and realized numbly that he was pissing himself. He stared at the sock, mesmerized, as Timken swung it back and forth like a pendulum until the momentum carried it into a full circle.

“These ball bearings are manufactured by the Timken Corporation, the world leader in ball and roller bearing technology. If I may, Ms. Murphy, I’d like to demonstrate just why the Timken ball bearing is universally recognized as the finest and most durable antifriction device on the market today.”

Big Al started to stand. “Leave him alone, you sonuvabitch—” Chun gave Prejean a sharp push with the sole of his boot. Hobbled by his flex-cuffed ankles, Big Al toppled onto the ground like a felled tree.

Parker spoke softly. “Nothing you can do, Al.”

Big Al knew he was right. There was not so much as a glimmer of humanity animating the man’s cold black eyes. Big Al clamped his lips shut and looked away as Abu Nasir continued his macabre introduction.

“Machined to the most exacting tolerances, it is the go-to bearing for dozens of applications.”

Timken was increasing the speed of the sock’s orbit, which made a soft swishing noise in the air. “I’d have to say, my favorite application is how effectively it delivers an excruciatingly slow and painful death to the enemy.” Suddenly Timken whipped the weighted end of the sock onto Stearns’s shoulder.

Thud.

The diplomat’s scream filled cabin B-14 and echoed throughout the rig. His arm went limp, hanging from his broken shoulder as he held up his remaining arm in a pathetic attempt to shield his face from the next blow. But the weighted sock folded his elbow backward against the joint at an impossible angle.

Thud.

The sickening craoulñ€†ck of shattering bones and joints was punctuated by the ambassador’s agonized cries. A third blow caved in Stearns’s cheekbone and the orbit of his eye, which popped out of its socket and dangled from a cord of blood vessels and cartilage. Another to the back of his skull sent Stearns to the ground for the last time. Timken continued pummelling the ambassador’s dead body, only stopping when the blood-soaked sock finally exploded, sending ball bearings flying in all directions, rattling off the portals and bouncing on the steel decking.

Timken was breathing heavily, waiting for the rolling and bouncing ball bearings to settle before he spoke. “You catch all that, Ms. Murphy?” He sighed theatrically. “Because you forced my hand. It’s your fault I had to end the brief and undistinguished diplomatic career of the Honorable Randall J. Stearns. But I needed to demonstrate my resolve. I’ve got plenty more ball bearings, and unless you come to B-14 and surrender yourself to my tender mercies, I will take off Alphonse Prejean’s sock and show him the same treatment I showed the ambassador.”

“Don’t listen to him, Kate!” Big Al shouted.

“You’ve got five minutes, Ms. Murphy. Ticktock.”

Timken switched off the amplifier, then turned to Chun, who’d had to look away from the carnage in order to keep from puking.

“I feel much better now, Chun. How about you?” Chun nodded. Tim-ken checked his watch, then looked down at the ambassador’s tangled and mutilated corpse. “Clean up this mess.”

Throughout the horrible broadcast of Randy Stearns’s murder, Gideon held Kate tight against him, her body wracked by deep choking sobs. Then she pulled away and wiped her tears. “I have to go,” she said with sudden resolve.

“No, you don’t,” Gideon said.

“Al Prejean is like a father to me, I can’t let that monster kill him—”

“He’ll kill you, too.”

“No, he won’t. Not as long as this storm keeps up. He’s worried about the damping system. That’s what we were talking about just before I got away.”

“You heard what he did.” Gideon’s voice was etched with anger. “Kate, please don’t do this.”

“I appreciate your concern, but this isn’t your call.”

As much as he wanted to protect her, Gideon knew she was right. He was surprised by the strong and sudden connection he felt with this woman, and he found himself unable to release his grip on her shoulders, until she placed her hands reassuringly on top of his.

“You need to disarm that bomb, and you need to do it now,” she said. “Since they don’t know you’re alive, you’ve got surprise on your side. Please.”

He fixed her with a look. “As soon as I do, I’ll come back for you.”

She nodded. “I need to go.”

“Wait,” he said. She regarded him expectantly, but it took Gideon a moment to find the right words. “I’m m tñ€†glad I met you,” he said finally.

Something caught like a fishhook in her gut. “Please don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“It sounds like something you’d say to someone you’re never going to see again.”

He moved his hands from her shoulders to the sides of her face. “Be careful.”

Suddenly, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. “You be careful, too,” she said, then walked past him toward the stairway that would take her to B Deck. He watched as she opened the door and turned back to him.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

“I know he’s still your brother,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

The door closed with a flash of auburn hair, and Kate was gone, leaving Gideon in a whirl of emotion. He forced himself to push aside his concern for a woman he’d met only a few hours ago and realized that he remained troubled by her insistence that it was Tillman who had murdered Ambassador Stearns. Gideon was willing to accept that his memory might no longer be the most reliable way to identify his brother. But even accounting for Tillman’s altered voice and misguided ideology, he still couldn’t believe that his brother would murder an unarmed hostage, especially not with the sadistic relish this man had demonstrated. Even more troubling, Gideon still couldn’t accept that his brother wanted him dead.

But if the man claiming to be Tillman wasn’t really Tillman, then who the hell was he and what did he want? And where was Tillman? More questions for which he had no answers. The only thing he was certain of was that he would never find those answers unless he got down to D-4 and disarmed the bomb.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

THREE OF TIMKEN’S BEST men were dead because of the crazy bitch.

Before, when he ordered the rig manager to change into the yellow jumpsuit, she had eyed him like an insect, taunting him with her half-naked body. Despite his urge to tear off her bra and panties and teach her a lesson for looking at him that way, he had remained stone-faced. Timken had resisted the impulse then, and now he wanted to hog-tie her and do what he should have done before. But Parker warned Timken to leave her alone until they were sure they didn’t need her any longer. She was the only one on the rig who knew about that damn clunking sound, which seemed to be happening with greater frequency—once every ten minutes or so—and with greater intensity. You could feel it through the soles of your feet. Parker promised Timken that once they were certain they didn’t need her, he could do whatever he wanted with the woman.

Parker needed to make sure the rig remained standing long enough for the storm to pass, and to carry with it the obstructing cloud cover. The success of his plan depended on the Obelisk’s destruction being recorded by the satellites and surveillance planes that were being deployed over the South China Sea. If Parker understood anything, it was the power of the image.

Kate stumbled as the jihadis pushed her into B-14. The first thing she noticed was the blood—on the ceilings, on the walls, on the bedsheets– streaks of it everywhere. Although the ambassador’s body was nowhere ain t‡to be seen, she knew where the blood must have come from.

“Dammit, Kate, why didn’t you listen to me? I told you to stay away!” In the tangle of emotion in Big Al’s voice, the anger quickly gave way to relief. “Thank God you’re all right.”

“If they hurt you . . . I couldn’t have lived with myself.” She looked forlornly around the blood-spattered cabin. “It’s my fault he killed the ambassador.”

“Bullshit.” Big Al snorted. “They killed him. You had nothing to do with it.”

“Shut up.” The jihadi named Chun spoke with an American accent, which Kate thought was strange. He pulled her arms behind her while one of the smaller jihadis secured her wrists with plastic cuffs. Chun jerked his head toward the hallway and then followed his two men silently as they exited the room.

The door closed behind him. Kate waited another minute to make sure no one was listening at the door before she whispered to Parker and Prejean. “The president is sending a Delta team to take the rig back.”

“I thought the terrorists jammed the radio,” Prejean said.

“They did.”

“Then how do you know about this Delta team?”

“Gideon Davis.”

Parker’s hound dog eyes blinked, as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. Then he spoke for the first time. “Gideon?”

“Yes. He’s on the rig.”

Keeping her eyes pinned nervously on the door, Kate explained how she had escaped from the jihadis and pulled Gideon from the sea. Prejean noticed that whenever she mentioned this man Gideon, she seemed to brighten. It was a subtle thing, but Prejean knew her well enough to pick up on it, and he allowed himself a small smile. During the nearly ten minutes it took her to get through the story, Parker listened impassively, trying not to betray his anger and concern at this unwelcome news.

“This bomb Gideon is trying to disarm . . . where is it?” Parker asked.

“There’s a storage room on D Deck adjacent to the rig’s most structurally vulnerable point. Even a small explosion there could take down the rig.”

“Makes sense,” Prejean agreed.

“And when is this Delta team coming?” Parker asked.

“The eye of the hurricane is supposed to pass over the rig before the deadline runs out. The Deltas are dropping through the eye. If Gideon can disarm the bomb before they land . . .”

“They’ll have a chance of rescuing the hostages and taking back the rig from those jihadi bastards.” Prejean smiled as he finished her thought. “We may get out of this alive, chérie. At least we have a fighting chance.”

Other than his initial surprise that Gideon had survived, Parker betrayed no emotion during her explanation. Kate assumed his measured reaction was just the way he processed stressful situations. As she was about to finish her story, the div�€†noise reverberated through the rig.

CLUNK!

“There it is again,” Parker asked innocently. “It keeps happening, and it seems to be getting worse.”

“There’s a design flaw in the rig’s passive damping system. There’s a forty-ton weight about sixty feet below sea level that’s whacking into its housing—”

“Mr. Prejean told me what it is,” Parker interrupted. “He seems to think it’s serious.”

“We had concerns about it when the waves were eleven feet. But with this hurricane coming in and the waves pushing thirty feet, we’re in uncharted territory. Without looking at the engineer’s analysis, I couldn’t tell you for sure.”

“Engineer’s analysis?” Parker repeated.

“An engineer named Cole Ransom was supposed to come out here to assess the problem and fix it if necessary. He was scheduled to be on the same chopper as you. I think Abu Nasir killed him for his passport, so he could take his place on that flight.”

Parker thought for a moment, then nodded toward Cole Ransom’s notebook computer, which was sitting on a desk on the far side of the cabin. “That’s the computer Abu Nasir was carrying. If it’s the engineer’s computer, maybe you can find out how serious the problem is.”

Prejean added. “He’s right, chérie. We need to keep this rig standing long enough for the Delta boys to land.”

The idea had only settled for a moment, when Parker coughed twice. He regarded Kate apologetically. “The damp is giving me a cold.” A moment later the door opened and Chun appeared, his AK leveled at the hostages. “Mr. Parker . . . Abu Nasir wants to talk to you.” One of the smaller jihadis lifted Parker by the arm and ushered him from the cabin. Before the door closed, Parker nodded to Kate, as if to confirm what they’d talked about.

Chun had been listening to their conversation inside the cabin with a stethoscope-like audio amplifier. Parker’s cough had been his signal to be taken out. The first thing he did when he got outside the cabin was thrust his wrists toward Chun. “Cut these damn things off.”

Gideon clutched the railing to keep from being blown off his feet as he descended the stairs to D Deck. He shifted the AK he’d slung around his shoulder into firing position as he slipped through the narrow margin of a door into a corridor. It was empty. He began working his way through the maze of passages, taking care not to make a sound.

Gideon hugged the wall around the corner from D-4 when he heard two men speaking in Malay. Gideon didn’t dare peer around the corner for fear of being seen. Among the tools he’d collected from the equipment room was a mirror with a stainless-steel stem, which demolition experts use to view the inaccessible innards of a bomb. Gideon used it now to look around the corner of the adjacent corridor. Posted outside cabin D-4 were four jihadis. And one of them was walking toward his position.

Gideon pulled back and tried hiding. He pressed his back into a shallow alcove, when the approaching jihadi appeared around the corner, busily engaged in biting the cellophane ear�€†wrapper off a pack of cigarettes. He had clearly walked down the hallway to take a smoke break. He was all the way around the corner before he noticed Gideon in the alcove. The jihadi froze, the cigarette pack dangling from his teeth by a thin thread of plastic.

Realizing that if he shot the man, it would alert the other three guards, Gideon smashed the wooden butt of his AK across the man’s jaw. The cigarette pack flew from the man’s teeth, and he dropped like a sack of bricks. Gideon hoped the howling wind outside had concealed the sound. He trained his gun at the corner and stood silently for a moment, listening.

Nothing. No sounds of alarm, no footsteps, no shooting.

He took a fresh clip from a pouch on the man’s load-bearing vest. The magazine was comfortably heavy from its thirty unfired rounds. Then a pouch on the man’s belt caught his eye. It contained a black cylindrical piece of metal. For a moment Gideon thought it might be some kind of impact weapon for close-quarters combat—a collapsible baton, maybe. But then he looked closer, saw the small black hole in the end, and realized what it was.

Gideon had been concerned about firing at the men in the hallway with the AK, afraid that the noise might alert everybody else on the rig, giving him very little time to defuse the bomb. Even the sound of a typhoon couldn’t hide an AK-47 blasting away on full auto.

Unless you had a suppressor.

And now he did.

He slid the black cylinder from the jihadi’s pouch and quietly screwed it onto the mating threads of his rifle muzzle. Five quick turns and the suppressor was firmly seated. While he was doing this, he devised a game plan. It was surgical in its efficiency. He would put a head shot into whoever was looking in his direction first, then another one into whoever was closest to him. Then he would take down the third man, who would probably be firing to cover his retreat. Three carefully aimed shots delivered in rapid sequence.

Before he could finish reviewing the mental checklist, he heard a wild shout behind him. The man on the ground had obviously regained consciousness and was warning his friends in frantic Malay.

Time to improvise.

Gideon stepped around the corner and started firing. Unfamiliar with the weapon, he hadn’t noticed that the AK was set on full auto. Which was just as well. The three men in the hallway had all swung around to see what the shouting was about. Gideon swept the AK back and forth across the hallway, once, twice, a third time, fighting to keep the muzzle down.

The fusillade of 7.62mm rounds chewed the three jihadis to pieces. It took less than two seconds to burn through the magazine.

Gideon then whirled around to deal with the jihadi he’d hit with the butt of the AK. The man was groggily clawing for his Makarov. Gideon tried to kick him in the face, but the man was quick, rolling away as he pulled the Makarov from his holster.

Gideon dove onto the man, twisting his hand around and pressing the muzzle against the man’s abdomen and squeezing the trigger. It turned out that the human abdomen is roughly as effective at quieting a closed-breech weapon as a suppressor. The Makarov made some racket—but it wasn’t nearly as loud as Gideon expected.

Loud enough tos M�€† be heard on one of the upper decks? He hoped not. The typhoon was astonishingly noisy now—the wind howled as the waves buffetted the base of the rig, and the relentless rain knifed into the steel exterior of the rig at seventy miles an hour.

Gideon threw open the door of the storage room, flipped on the light.

At the far side of the windowless room was the large steel box Kate had described seeing winched down by the crane. She had been right. This was the place.

Stacked neatly on the floor beside the box lay an array of electronic equipment—video monitors, black boxes with switches on them. A thick bundle of cables ran from the equipment to an access panel on the wall. Gideon moved closer. What he saw on the panel’s display caused him to stop breathing.

A thin LED window displayed a countdown, the seconds ticking down with frightening rapidity. It was the bomb’s timer, and it was rigged to the detonator.

08:43:07... 08:43:06...

He looked for something to prop against the door to keep anyone from entering. Other than the big metal box and the electronics, the room was bare. On the far side of the room was a door with the words EQUIPMENT LOCKER stenciled on the front. But it was secured with a heavy padlock. He’d just have to hope that nobody showed up while he was working.

Gideon studied the tools he’d brought as he set them on the floor in a neat row. During his months in the Cambodian jungle, Horst had taught him an enormous amount, but this was going to be a lot trickier than defusing some aging Soviet antitank mine. Horst had always said that the single most important tool for disarming a bomb was your eyes. Before even touching a wire, you had to study the bomb, the trigger, the mechanism—everything. There was zero margin for error.

The detonation control equipment consisted of several black metal boxes—standard nineteen-inch rack-mount boxes of the same size as home stereo equipment. The bottom box bore two large rocker switches on the front. One read POWER and the other read ARM. Both were in the on position.

The next piece of equipment also had a big red rocker switch on the front. Next to that was a knob labeled FREQ. A small antenna protruded from the side. It looked exactly like the wireless router in Gideon’s office at home. He guessed that it was some kind of relay that allowed the bomb to be triggered remotely—from the control room. Or even from a boat. Which meant, as he expected, that if the people who had seized the Obelisk were threatened—say by a Delta Force inserting from above—the bomb could be detonated remotely before the time ran down.

The next box was the timer with its red LED numbers and a numeric keypad like the kind found on cell phones. On top of this rested yet another black metal box with two rows of small LED lights running across it. The top lights were all white, and in the second row the lights were all green. Thin white wires ran out the back, snaking across the casing and disappearing into the access panel. He counted twenty-four. Twelve white LED lights, twelve green LED lights, twenty-four wires. One wire for each light. This was a good deal more complex than he had expected.

Significantly, there were no cables connecting the big steel box with the detonation controls.

Stranght�€†ge. He’d expected the detonator to be wired directly to the bomb. It could be radio controlled, of course, but that wasn’t optimal. Radio was usually a secondary rather than a primary means of detonation. Radio frequencies could be jammed, sunspots could interfere with reception– any number of things could cause a problem.

He surveyed the lid of the box, checking to make sure it wasn’t booby-trapped. There was a small gap, large enough to see that there were no wires or magnets or contacts inside that might signal a booby-trap circuit. The lid was, however secured with a small padlock.