Sharp Shot (13 page)

“There was something inside it?” said Jade.

“Makes sense,” agreed Chance. “Something hidden.
Something heavy.”

The scientist was nodding. “And we need to know where it came
from.” He turned and spread his hands. “This whole place,
it's been cleared out. But there's enough here to know what it was
for.”

“Which was?” said Rich.

“It's a small nuclear facility. Oh, I don't mean a reactor or
anything,” he said, catching sight of Rich's expression. “I
mean it's for processing small amounts of nuclear material.”

“But nuclear material is very hard to get hold of, isn't
it?” said Jade. “That's what all the fuss is with Iran and
North Korea and places like that, because they're trying to make
it.”

“Is that what they were doing here?” asked Rich.
“Processing plutonium or something?”

“No,” said the scientist. “I'm afraid this is the
other end of the process.”

From across the room came an angry clicking sound. The other
scientist had opened the metal container Jade had seen, and was holding a
device over the open top. He closed the canister up again quickly. He
looked pale.

“I'm guessing it's not cold coffee, then,” said Jade
quietly.

“This lab,” the first scientist told them, “is for
putting together the components of a small nuclear device.”

“Device? You mean—a
bomb
?” Rich
gasped.

“I mean a bomb. And for that they needed weapons-grade nuclear
material.”

“But where would they get it?” said Jade.

It was Chacewho answered. “From a secret Iraqi nuclear
installation that was destroyed before the first
Gulf War. It was smuggled
out by Darrow, hidden inside what looked like an antique statue of a lion.
That's what he's really been after all this time. Maybe he was in the pay
of Saddam Hussein and smuggling out his precious plutonium when we blew up
the plant. They obviously had it all ready for him to take. He must have
been rather miffed when we left it behind in the desert.”

“But now he's got it back,” said Rich. “Now Crown
Prince Ali has a nuclear bomb.”

Chance nodded. “And we have no idea where it is, or what he
plans to do with it.”

The discovery at the lab changed everything. Suddenly Ardman's team
was officially welcomed. King Hassan was informed of their arrival and the
situation, but spared some of the details of the attack on his uncle's
desert palace. That same desert palace was now turned into the nerve
centre of the operation to search for the missing nuclear device.

“There's no sign of Crown Prince Ali,” Ardman explained
at a hurried update briefing as soon as he arrived at the palace.

They were all gathered in what had been an enormous dining room. One
of Ardman's senior staff, a man called Goddard, was now in charge of
clearing up the mess Chance's team had made and of sifting
through the
debris and searching the palace for any clues as to where the bomb had
been taken.

Pete and Alan had set up their equipment in another reception room,
while there seemed to be a never-ending stream of helicopters arriving and
leaving from the roof and small jets from the airstrip a quarter of a mile
away.

Rich and Jade were sitting at the back of the briefing. Chance was at
the front of the room, together with Dex and a few other men in military
uniforms. One of the two scientists was also there, the other still
working in the laboratory to piece together exactly what had happened
there.

“King Hassan can't just denounce his uncle,” Ardman was
explaining. “He's got people he can trust looking for him, but Ali
has a lot of support in the military. He could be on any number of army
bases or airfields.”

“With his bomb,” Chance added.

“Indeed. Now, we have put out pictures of Darrow. Every police
station, army base or citizen who watches TV knows he's a dangerous
criminal and with luck someone will have seen him. That may give us some
leads.”

“If he hasn't already scarpered,” said Goddard from the
doorway. He was just back from checking on how his team was doing.
“I mean, he's delivered the statue
—so he's probably taken his dosh and done a runner.”

Chance shook his head. “I think after the trouble we've given
him—and he must know by now what's happened here—Darrow will want to
be in at the kill.” He turned to Halford. “What do you
think?”

“I think that's right,” Dex agreed. “He's not one
to walk away from something before it's finished. That said, he'll want to
make sure he's well away from the place the bomb's going to go
off.”

“If it is,” muttered Rich.

Ardman heard him. “I'm sorry—what was that?”

Rich looked down at his feet, embarrassed.

“No,” Ardman went on, “I want to know. I'm not
telling you off for talking in class. We're in a bit of a fix, to say the
least, so if you have a comment I really do want to hear it, Rich.”

Rich looked up. “I was just wondering if they intend to set off
the bomb at all. The threat might be enough for whatever they're
after.”

“That's right,” said Jade. “I mean, they can only
set it off once. After that, the threat is gone.”

“It
is
a nuclear bomb,” Ardman pointed
out.

The scientist stood up, ready to make a point. “True, but from
the amount of material we believe they have, it's relatively small. It
could take out a suburb of the capital city, and it would cause lots of
collateral damage from the radiation and electromagnetic pulse, but in
nuclear terms, she's a midget. Maybe the threat is greater than the
reality.” He shrugged apologetically, and sat down again.

“No,” said Chance. “I don't know about Crown
Prince Ali, but if Darrow has in effect provided a weapon—any weapon—
he'll want to see it used.”

There was silence for several moments, then Ardman snapped,
“Suggestions?”

“What's Ali's end game? What's he really want to achieve from
all this?” asked Dex. “If we knew that, we could take a stab
at how he plans to achieve it.”

“I think we can assume he wants to stop the elections,”
said Ardman. “Ideally, his dream scenario if you like, would be to
seize absolute power from his nephew and chuck out the Americans.”

In the doorway, Goddard was talking quietly into a radio. He raised
his hand as he finished the conversation.

“Yes, Mr Goddard?” Ardman prompted.

“That was Pete. He thinks they might be on to something.
There's a couple of laptop computers down in the lab. Not much of any use
on them, but Alan's working on the hard discs to see what's been
erased.”

“And what's Pete doing?” asked Chance.

“He's found a shredder.”

Rich recalled seeing the shredder in the lab. “How does that
help?” he asked.

“After the Iranians took the US Embassy there, they got
students to go through the shredded documents and piece them back together
like a jigsaw,” said Ardman. “But it took years. Please tell
me Pete has a rather more timely solution to the problem.”

Goddard shrugged. “Well, sir, you never know.”

Jade nudged Rich. “Come on, let's go and see if we can help.
This is boring and we're not going to learn anything new.”

“Where are we going?” Rich asked as he followed Jade
out.

“You heard Ardman. The Iranians got students to put the
shredded documents back together.”

“So?”

“So, we're students, aren't we?” said Jade.

They made their way back down to the laboratory.

“Ardman said it took them years, though,” said Rich.
“How long have you got?”

In the lab, Alan was hard at work at one of the computers that had
been left behind. He glanced up as Jade and Rich came in.

“Good job they didn't know we were coming,” he said.
“Or they'd have taken these with them, or destroyed them completely.
Same goes for the remains of that statue and the containment flask. Then
we'd have no idea what they're up to.”

“You found anything useful so far?” asked Rich.

Alan shook his head. “Lots of technical stuff about the weapon.
Bomb design and emails between Ali and Darrow. Incriminating, but not very
helpful.” He settled back into his work.

Pete had tipped the contents of the shredder out on to the next
workbench. He was gently teasing apart the mound of thin strips of paper.

“Looks like fun,” said Jade.

“Yeah, terrific. Luckily the shredder doesn't cross cut as
well, so we have all these long strips like fettuccini pasta.”

“Can we help?” asked Rich.

“If you can get the strips separated and intact, then I can
scan them in. Once I've got images of each shredded strip in the computer,
I've written a program that will try to match them up.”

“Will it take long?” asked Jade.

“Probably. The real problem is that there are so many different
sheets, some of them double-sided. The program just tries each strip
against every other until it finds two that fit together. If we could cut
down the number of possible combinations it would be a lot
quicker.”

Rich and Jade set to work at opposite sides of the pile of shredded
paper. It was slow, meticulous work to take a strip of paper carefully
from the pile without tearing it. Sometimes, several strands were close
together, looped through the others in the same way. They tried to keep
these together, as it seemed likely they were from the same sheet—or the
same few sheets fed through the shredder at the same time.

Pete took the separated shreds of paper over to a small desktop
scanner. This was attached to a computer. Rich could see images of each
strand appearing on the screen. The program slowly worked through
different combinations, as it tried to match
the shape of the torn edges
and the printed words. It was obviously going to take a very long time.

“It's a shame some of the sheets weren't a different
colour,” Jade complained as she eased another strand of paper from
the pile and smoothed it out. “If they'd colour-coded their plans,
like using yellow paper for anything really useful and important and blue
for stuff that doesn't matter, then that would speed things up, wouldn't
it?”

“Certainly would,” agreed Pete.

“Or if they'd just shredded less stuff,” Rich muttered.
He prised apart some of the tightly packed paper as he followed the piece
he was trying to get out. It was easy to keep track of the strip of paper
he wanted if he angled his head slightly because it caught and reflected
the light.

With the shredded strip finally free, Rich smoothed it out and put it
on the end of the workbench ready for Pete to scan.

He was halfway through recovering another strip when he realised what
he had done.

“Hang on!” he said out loud, hurrying back to the
separated strips of paper arranged at the end of the workbench.

Jade and Pete both heard something in his tone of voice and hurried
over. Alan glanced up from his work.

“What is it?” said Jade.

“What you said about different coloured paper.” Rich
picked up the strip he had just put down with the others. “It was
easy to see this strip, because it caught the light. Look—it's glossy.
The rest is just ordinary printer paper, but this is from a sheet that's
different.”

“Let me see.” Pete took the paper carefully from Rich.
“You're right. This is a coated paper from an inkjet printer. Not
that we have any idea if that means it's more or less important, but at
least we can deal with the glossy paper separately from the rest. Should
speed things up a lot.”

They separated the sorted strips into two piles. There were already
several glossy shreds of paper, and because it was easy to spot now they'd
thought of it, Rich and Jade concentrated on finding more. There were not
that many, and most of them were close together—suggesting they came
from a single set of pages.

Pete scanned in the glossy strips first. The computer was soon
assembling them rapidly into just one single
large sheet on the computer
screen.

“Looks like a map or a plan,” said Jade. Buildings,
roads…Wonder where it is.”

“I'll get Dad,” said Rich. “Maybe he'll have some
idea of where this is and if it's important.”

It was important, and it was frightening. As soon as he saw it, Chance
recognised the plan as a map of a military installation. Comparing the
plan with satellite images, it didn't take long for Pete to find a match.
Within the hour, most of the team were leaving the desert palace and
heading for the main American airbase in East Araby.

“Why not just tell the Americans and start a full-scale
search?” Jade yelled to Chance over the sound of the helicopter
engines.

“And start a panic as well? There are families based there, and
it's on the outskirts of the capital.”

“Then evacuate everyone,” said Rich.

Chance shook his head. “Can't afford for King Hassan to look
like he's losing control. Any hint of trouble, and the hardliners he's
fought to get on board will insist he postpone the elections. They'd never
restage them.”

“So that's why Ali has planted the bomb on the US base?”
asked Jade. “Just to frighten his brother out of the
elections?”

“No, it's not that simple.” Chance leaned towards his
children. “He's going to set off the bomb, no question.”

“But why?” Rich wondered.

“Think about it. A nuclear explosion on a US airbase where they
station Stealth Bombers. What will everyone think happened? They won't
believe that Crown Prince Ali got access to nuclear technology and blew up
part of his own capital city.”

Jade could see what he was getting at. “Everyone will think
there was an accident. They'll think it was an American nuke that went off
by accident.”

“And then?” Chance prompted.

“The elections will be called off because of the
crisis,” said Rich, “and King Hassan will have to throw out
the Americans.”

“That's only two out of three of Ali's goals,” said
Jade.

“The third comes easily enough. After the blast, Ali will
insist on imposing martial law. And he's head of the armed forces. Hassan
may cling to power for a
while, but he'll be finished. He invited the
Americans in, remember. Then he showed weakness by planning the elections.
The generals who aren't already on Ali's side will soon come over to him.
It'll be a coup in all but name.”

“And thousands of people will die,” said Jade.

“Tens of thousands. Unless we find the bomb before it goes
off.”

“No pressure then,” said Jade.

Rich nodded. “Let's just hope it doesn't go off while we're
there looking for it.”

“I guess the situation couldn't be much worse,” agreed
Jade.

“That's why you're not staying,” Dad told her.

Jade didn't answer. She looked at Rich, and he nodded slightly. This
was a discussion they could save for later.

Their helicopter was coming in to land at the edge of one of the
runways on the airbase. Huge transport planes were lined up off to one
side. The angular nose of a B-2 Stealth Bomber was poking out of a nearby
hanger. A Jeep bumped rapidly over the grass towards the helicopter as it
touched down.

Inside the Jeep, Jade was surprised to see Chuck
White and Kate Hunter,
back in their business suits despite the heat, and wearing their dark
glasses.

“Looks like they're on duty,” she said. She meant it as
a joke.

But Chance didn't look like he was joking. “Then the situation
just got a whole lot worse,” he said.

“We've organised a search of the base,” said Chuck White,
as soon as they were in a private briefing room in the main admin block.