‘Message received,’ came the reply. ‘Fifty seconds to drop. Wind speed and direction on your escape vector remain constant.’ A pause, then: ‘Good luck.’
Durnovtsev did not reply, instead checking his instruments, preparing himself. The actual release of the bomb was controlled from the ground; his job was to fly the bomber on an exact heading, taking the prevailing winds into account so the Tsar Bomba would parachute down as close to its target as possible. Even though it could destroy an entire city the size of New York, for whatever reason his masters at the Kremlin wanted their superweapon to hit the right spot. A demonstration to the West of precision as well as power, he supposed.
All musings vanished at another radio message. ‘Thirty seconds to drop. Prepare for device release.’
‘Confirm thirty seconds to release,’ Durnovtsev replied, before switching to the aircraft’s internal intercom. ‘Thirty seconds! All crew, secure stations and confirm readiness!’
One by one his men reported ready, all systems green. ‘Fifteen seconds,’ said the ground controller. Durnovtsev’s stomach knotted, but he held his hands firmly on the controls, ready to act. One last check of the instruments. Everything was as it should be.
‘Ten seconds!’ A glance at the compass. The Tu-95 was now heading almost due east, curving in towards its target; to survive, he had to turn the lumbering bomber to the south-west as quickly and sharply as possible. ‘Drop in five seconds! Four! Three! Two! One – drop!’
The release mechanisms opened – and the Tupolev shot upwards as twenty-seven tons of death fell from its gaping bomb bay.
A massive parachute snapped open in the slipstream the moment the bomb was clear of the fuselage. Barometric sensors would trigger the detonators at an altitude of 13,000 feet above sea level. But even with the huge ’chute slowing it, the Tsar Bomba was still plunging earthwards at a frightening speed, giving the bomber and its chase plane less than three minutes to reach safety.
If they could.
Durnovtsev had already slammed the flight controls hard over, throwing the Tu-95 into a sharp banking turn. The smaller Tu-16 held its course for a few more seconds, its cameras and observers tracking the bomb to make sure the parachute had deployed, before it too swung south-west. Its pilot immediately went to full power, the jet rapidly outpacing the wallowing turboprop.
‘The payload has been dropped and the parachute successfully deployed,’ said the voice in Durnovtsev’s headphones, relaying the news from the second aircraft. ‘Estimated detonation in two minutes and forty seconds. Go to maximum speed and initiate blast procedure.’ Then, barely audible: ‘God be with you.’
As a loyal communist Durnovtsev was not a believer, but he certainly appreciated the sentiment. The Tupolev came about on to its escape heading; he levelled out, one hand pushing on the throttle levers to the detent. The Tu-16 was already shrinking into the distance.
The airspeed indicator showed that the Tu-95 was now travelling at just over 510 knots, its four mighty engines straining. ‘Begin blast procedure!’ he ordered. Across the cockpit, his co-pilot pulled a pair of thick, almost opaque dark goggles down over his eyes. Durnovtsev waited until the insectile lenses were secure before donning his own. Day turned to night, the instruments barely visible through the tinted glass.
But he knew that the sky would become much brighter very soon.
Volkov stared up at the clouds again. Even over the sound of the dogs, he could now hear the bomber. The rumbling drone was subtly different, though. A Doppler shift; the aircraft was moving away from him.
He shook off a vague sense of unease. Whatever the plane was doing, it could have nothing to do with him – or the reason he was here. He touched the steel cylinder’s case, making sure it was secured in place. It was. Reassured, he looked back as the sled crested a rise. The blackened remains of the facility stood out against the snow, the entrance to the pit an ominous yawning mouth. The runestone was a single broken tooth at its edge.
There was no sentiment as Volkov regarded his former workplace for the last time. What mattered above all else was the work itself; what he had discovered, and where it could lead.
He turned his back on the scene, a small smile rising. With the sample in his possession and a new life awaiting in the United States, that work would continue.
‘Thirty seconds to detonation!’ Durnovtsev barked into the intercom. ‘All crew, brace for blast!’
He pulled his seat-belt straps as tight as they would go before clenching his hands back around the controls. The compass was an indiscernible shadow through the goggles, but holding the Tupolev on course was about to be the least of his concerns.
The ground controller continued the countdown. Twenty seconds. Ten. A last look around at the other crew in the cockpit. Dark shapes regarded him with impenetrable black eyes. One of the men in the seats behind him was holding a small cine camera, its lens pointed over Durnovtsev’s shoulder at the front windows. The pilot gave him a brief nod, trying to dismiss the thought that it might be the last time anyone ever saw his face, then looked ahead once more.
Five seconds. Four. Three—
Even through the heavily tinted goggles, the sky suddenly became as bright as the sun.
Volkov checked his watch again: 11.32. The dogs were making better time on the return trip to the boat, perhaps as eager as he was to get off the bleak island—
The leaden grey clouds turned pure white.
A flash lit the landscape from high above, its reflection from the snow blinding. Steam rose around the sled, the bitter cold dispelled by a searing heat . . .
Volkov’s last thought was one of horrified realisation – the bomber had been on a mission – before he and everything for miles around vanished in an unimaginable fire.
The Tsar Bomba detonated two and a half miles above the ground. Durnovtsev had done his job with great skill; even with the inherent inaccuracy of a parachute-dropped weapon, it was within half a mile of its target.
But a fifty-megaton hydrogen bomb did not need to be precise.
The nuclear fireball, over two miles across, was as hot as the sun’s core. It never reached the ground, its own rapidly expanding shockwave bouncing back up off the surface to deflect it. But its flash alone, racing outwards at the speed of light, was enough to melt rock and vaporise anything lesser in a fraction of a second. Behind it came the blast, a wall of superheated air compressed so hard that it was practically solid. What little survived the flash was obliterated moments later.
The Tu-95 was almost thirty miles from Ground Zero when the bomb exploded. Even inside the plane, its crew felt a sudden heat as high-energy radiation, X-rays and gamma rays, passed through the aircraft – and their bodies. Sparks flashed around the cabin, the nuclear burst’s electromagnetic pulse surging through the bomber’s wiring. Durnovtsev heard an unearthly squeal in his headphones as their little loudspeaker converted the electrical overload into sound.
The brightness outside faded, but Durnovtsev knew the danger was far from over. The shockwave was on its way. Even with the Tupolev going flat out, it would catch up in seconds. He braced himself, hands on the controls ready to react . . .
It was as if the bomber had been rammed from behind by a speeding train.
For a moment Durnovtsev was stunned by the force of the impact, his restraints cutting tightly into his chest and crushing the breath from him. He struggled back to full awareness, gasping inside his oxygen mask as he pulled up the goggles. The sky was an angry orange-red, the fireball illuminating it like a miniature star. A colossal booming roar filled his ears: the sound of the atmosphere itself burning.
The artificial horizon was tumbling, the altimeter needle spinning rapidly down. A sickening feeling in his stomach told him he was in free fall. The Tupolev was dropping out of the sky, swatted like a wasp. It had already fallen a kilometre, and was still plunging . . .
The cloud layer below had been evaporated by the shockwave. The cold sea glinted through t
he windows – the Tu-95 was nose down. Durnovtsev pulled back hard on the controls to level out. The engines were still at full power; he eased them off to reduce the stress on the wings. The horizon slowly dropped back down through his view.
Nausea faded, the pressure on his chest easing. ‘Is everyone all right?’ he shouted over the crackling rumble. To his relief, all his crew replied in the positive. Next came a systems check. There had been some damage, but the aircraft was still in the sky with all four engines running. As far as Durnovtsev was concerned, that was a successful outcome.
He tried the radio. As he’d expected, nothing came through but a strange static screech. The explosion had ionised the atmosphere, making transmissions all but impossible. He had no idea how long it would take the effect to fade – all he could do was follow his orders and return to base.
The navigator provided him with the correct heading, but as he made the course change, Durnovtsev was stuck by a compulsion to see what he had wrought. He turned the bomber further so he could look back towards Novaya Zemlya through the cockpit’s side windows.
What he saw chilled his blood. The Tu-95 had climbed back to its original altitude, over six miles above sea level . . . but the mushroom cloud had already risen far higher, demonic fire still burning within as it roiled skywards. A ring of smoke and ash was expanding around its base.
Nothing on the ground could possibly have survived.
Durnovtsev stared at the fearsome sight for one last moment, then turned his plane for home.
The landscape around Ground Zero was now unrecognisable from what it had been just minutes before. Snow had flashed to steam, the frozen soil beneath turned instantly to cinders before being blown away by the immense force of the blast. Even the very rocks had melted into a glaze covering the bowl of the newly formed crater.
Nothing remained of the facility. It had been atomised, along with the two men. Even the runestone, which had withstood the harsh climate for over a thousand years, was gone.
As was the pit.
The blast had sealed it for ever, countless tons of molten and shattered rock filling it in. The dark secrets it contained would now remain hidden for eternity.
Except . . .
The runestone, and the words inscribed upon it, were no more. But they had been recorded, translated, and analysed. The men who had ordered Durnovtsev’s mission knew what it said.
And knew the danger it still represented. A danger they could not allow to be released.
The guide-stone has brought you here
To fight the final battle of Ragnarök
One pit of the serpent lies before you
The other awaits across the Western sea . . .
1
New York City
Fifty-Three Years Later
‘Nina, Eddie!’ cried Lola Adams – née Gianetti – across the coffee shop. ‘Long time no see!’
Nina Wilde hopped to her feet to greet her friend. Lola had, until five months earlier, been Nina’s personal assistant at the International Heritage Agency. The reason for her departure was peering curiously at the world around him from a papoose on the chest of Lola’s husband. ‘Lola, Don, hi! Wow, it’s so great to see you both again! And to meet this little guy in person for the first time. Oh, he’s beautiful!’
Nina’s own husband also stood. ‘Yeah, that’s not a bad-looking sprog you’ve got,’ said Eddie Chase with a grin. ‘Shame about the name, though.’
Lola pouted. ‘What’s wrong with Gino? It was my grandpa’s name.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just not as good as my suggestion. Now Eddie, that’s a name for a baby.’ He frowned. ‘Wait, that didn’t come out like I meant it to.’
Nina laughed. ‘Accurate, though.’ The balding Englishman pulled a face, to which Gino responded with a gurgling laugh of his own. ‘Aw, look at that! He’s so sweet.’
‘He is,’ said Lola, embracing the pair, ‘when he’s not occupying every moment of my time. And I thought you were demanding, Nina!’
Now it was Nina’s turn to look affronted, while Eddie chuckled. ‘Come on, sit down,’ he said, pulling a chair out for the young mother. ‘So being a parent’s a bit stressful, is it?’
‘You have no idea, man,’ said Don as he unfastened the papoose. ‘I thought being a firefighter was tough, but pulling people out of burning buildings is a cakewalk compared to watching out for a baby.’
‘Don’s worse than I am,’ Lola said as she sat. ‘There’s danger everywhere, isn’t there, hon? To him, every room looks like a deathtrap out of a Final Destination movie. It drives me nuts, ’cause now I can’t even plug in my hairdryer without unlocking the gadgets he’s put on all the outlets.’
‘Safety’s a serious business, babe,’ Don replied, in a way that suggested it was far from the first time he had been teased.
The big-haired blonde took Gino from the papoose, settling the baby on her lap. ‘Anyway, we’re just about getting a handle on things, so we can finally catch up with everybody. What have I missed? What have you guys been up to? Have you found any more ancient wonders or saved the world again?’
‘What, since the last time?’ asked Eddie with a mocking snort. ‘Come on, it’s only been a few months. Give us a chance.’
‘I’m enjoying the fact that we haven’t been running around the world being chased and shot at and having everything blow up around us,’ Nina said, with considerable relief. ‘It means I get to do the things I joined the IHA for in the first place. Like being an actual archaeologist, you know? Overseeing digs, research, writing papers . . .’
Eddie yawned theatrically. ‘Yeah, it’s thrilling.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ said the redhead. ‘But it’s amazing how much more productive you can be when you aren’t being attacked by helicopter gunships and hunted by assassins.’
‘And ninjas. Don’t forget the ninjas.’
Don’s eyebrows rose. ‘Babe? You are so not going back to the IHA.’
Lola kissed Gino’s head. ‘This little guy’s going to be my boss for the next few years, don’t worry.’ She looked back at Nina. ‘If things are nice and easy at work, is that giving you more time to plan things at home?’
‘What things?’ Nina asked.
‘You know.’ Lola held up Gino, who let out a little squeak of delight, and kissed him again. ‘Family matters.’
‘Yeah,’ added Don. ‘You’ve been married for, what, two or three years now? I’m surprised you haven’t got kids already.’
Nina found herself feeling surprisingly defensive. ‘My work hasn’t been exactly conducive to it, what with all the . . . ninjas and world-saving.’
The burly firefighter nodded. ‘But now everything’s quieted down, you’re thinking about it, yeah? I mean, you don’t want to leave it too late.’
Eddie huffed. ‘We’re not that old.’ He put on a crotchety old man’s voice. ‘I’m hip to all the popular tunes of today’s young people, you know.’ Lola laughed.
‘You’re past forty, though, right? Me, I’ve just gone thirty and Lola’s coming up on it, and we were worried that might be pushing it—’
‘Donnyyyyy,’ said Lola, singsong, through her teeth. Her husband got the message and clammed up. ‘So, what’s new at the IHA? How’s my replacement working out?’
‘Melinda?’ Nina said. ‘She’s fine, she’s doing a good job.’ Seeing Lola’s face fall ever so slightly, she continued, ‘Nearly as good as you.’ The younger woman brightened. ‘Okay, what else? Al Little got a job with Apple in California, Lucy DeMille got engaged, Bill Schofield got promoted – oh, and we got a new UN liaison after Sebastian Penrose, uh, retired.’ The United Nations official’s departure had been under a cloud, to say the least, but to avoid a media scandal the details were covered up. Nina had been dismayed at that, but the decision was made at far higher political levels than she had influence. ‘A guy called Oswald Seretse.’
Lola searched her memory, then nodded. ‘Oh – his dad’s a d
iplomat too, isn’t he? I met them at the UN once, before I transferred to the IHA.’
‘Yeah, I think so. Anyway, that’s all the big stuff.’
‘You should come round to the office sometime,’ Eddie suggested. ‘There’s a lot of people who’d love to see you and your nipper.’
‘Maybe I will,’ said Lola. She looked down at her son. ‘Would you like to see where Mommy worked before she had you? Would you, little snooky-wooky?’ Gino did not appear enthused by the prospect.
‘Just make sure there aren’t any frickin’ ninjas there that day,’ Don said.
‘There won’t be,’ Eddie assured him. ‘I shot ’em all.’ The firefighter’s expression wavered between amusement and a suspicion that the Englishman was not joking.
‘Everyone would love to see you. And Gino,’ said Nina.
Lola smiled. ‘Then we’ll come.’
‘Good! In the meantime, I think it’s time for some caffeine. What do you want?’
Lola and Don named their choices, then Nina turned to Eddie, only to find him looking at Gino, lost in thought. ‘Eddie?’
He snapped back. ‘Hmm?’
‘You okay?’
‘Yeah, yeah. Just thinking about something, that’s all. What?’
‘Coffee?’
‘I’ll get ’em. What’s everyone having?’
Nina stood. ‘It’s okay, I’ll go. You want your usual?’
‘Yeah, thanks.’
She headed for the counter, looking back to find him again seeming preoccupied before returning to the conversation.
The same look was on his face that evening.
Nina was curled up in an armchair reading a book, ignoring the television. She raised her eyes to see her husband, stretched out on the sofa, paying just as little attention to the events on screen. ‘Earth to Eddie.’
He blinked and lifted his head. ‘What?’
‘You were miles away. Penny for your thoughts?’