Chapter 19: Zero Hour, Part One
Chapter 19: Zero Hour, Part One
Fifteen minutes later the plane finally boarded, starting with the flight crew—Gus noticed that the captain had a far-off look and a completely blank expression. After about ten minutes, the Russian general, his handlers, and a few other special cases were allowed to board, followed shortly afterwards by Delver’s party and the rest of the First Class passengers. Gus entered the plane through a door just forward of the wings. Immediately in front of them upon entering was a spiral staircase. From experience, Gus knew that at the top of those stairs was the crew flight deck (to the fore) and the First Class lounge (to the aft). This upper floor was what gave Boeing 747 airplanes their distinctive forward “humps”. Instead of going up, Gus turned left, walking into the nose of the plane where half of the First Class seats were. Behind the staircase was the First Class restroom, and behind that were the rest of the First Class seats. Beyond that was the velvet curtain that separated First Class from Business Class and Economy, where passengers had to squeeze into sections of three or four tightly-packed seats.
Unlike those cramped sections, First Class seats were arranged in widely-spaced pairs. Gus and Gwen sat together, with Delver sitting by himself, and Gnosi and Meridiem sitting behind him. On the other side of the cabin sat Marshall Ustinov and his handlers. Ustinov was already chatting up a stewardess in hopes of being allowed to sit next to Delver and talk more about Markism.
An hour into the flight, Gus Guiseman was trying to catch up on some sleep when he was suddenly shaken by Gwen. One look at her deathly pallor told him that she had a very good reason for awakening him.
Gwen pulled the modified radio out from under her blanket. Just as before, it had been tuned to the cockpit’s frequency. She then pulled out the headphone plug so that he could hear.
“I will say nothing more until I hear from the Commander in Chief.” It was the voice of the captain, recognizable from his pre-flight speech.
A few seconds passed. The next voice that Gus heard was that of President Far Shooter. He was trying to be pleasant, but there was an obvious undertone of annoyance in his voice. “This is Far Shooter. I’m impressed that you would go this far just to hear my voice. I’m sorry that I can’t get you my autograph or any—”
“Listen very carefully, Mr. President,” the captain cut in. “I will not repeat this message.”
Gus looked carefully over at his wife. All of this was odd, but hardly worth waking him for. He suspected that something had happened earlier in the conversation to make her this worried. He noticed that several other passengers were leaning their way to overhear the conversation, some asking each other what was going on.
There was a faint hiss then in the radio’s speakers—Gus supposed that the captain had started playing a portable tape player into his microphone. “Good morning, Mr. Shooter. You are hearing the recorded voice of Muammar Gaddafi. I have employed Captain Bridges here to administer a test. A test of your competence to rule the most powerful of the Western nations.”
There was pandemonium then, both in the First Class cabin that the Guisemans were in, as well as by the crew surrounding the President.
One of the passengers in Flight 103 peering out the window suddenly pointed. “Is that Air Force One?” Others turned to their windows to try and confirm this statement.
Gaddafi had left a pause in the tape, anticipating some kind of reaction. “By now,” he continued under a lot of audio interference, “the good captain has activated the remote control to remove the lead shielding. You see, there is a nuclear warhead in the baggage compartment of this plane. With the shielding removed, you can easily confirm that I am in fact telling the truth.”
After another calculated pause, Gaddafi resumed his speech, which was still competing with a loud hiss to be heard. “At this point you have three choices. Choice Number One is to send your fighter bomber escort to destroy this plane. You will survive, but not only will you kill all 250 passengers and crew of Captain Bridge’s plane, but you will also almost certainly detonate the bomb, and as you are right now flying over Glasgow, that will also claim the lives of 1.5 million people. By this choice, you will have proved to the world how easily a ‘tin-pot dictator’, as you once called me, was able to egg you into a deadly rage. You may try to claim afterwards that you stood me down, that you would ‘never agree to the demands of a terrorist’. But will you be able to live with yourself afterwards?
“Choice Number Two: You run away, like the yellow-bellied pig-dog that you are. The bomb will automatically go off at precisely 7 am, killing the same number of people as before. But this time, you will be revealed to the world as a coward, and your days as a respected leader will be over.
“Or you could decide on Choice Number Three, thereby proving that you are the hero that you always say that you are. This means that you will allow Captain Bridges to follow you out to the North Atlantic, so that when the bomb goes off at 7 am, the only lives lost will be those in two planes: this one, and yours.
“I have spoken my piece. Now make your decision, and may your worthless female creator have mercy on your soul.”
“Captain Bridges, let’s fly west while I think this over,” the President spoke in a steely voice. “In the meantime, might I ask what drives a decent man to such a despicable act?”
“I’m dying, Mr. President,” the voice of the Captain answered. “And there’s nothing anybody can do about it. I’ve gambled away all the money I have, so this is my only way of taking care of my family after I die.”
“And what about the lives that you are condemning by your actions?”
“I learned a long time ago that the only lives that matter are the ones that belong to me,” the Captain answered, in a voice devoid of compassion. “Besides, what has America ever done for me? I say let every other country in the world go to Hell for all I care.” There was a click as he turned off the radio.
The thinner of the two men in black was now huddled next to the Guisemans. “That hiss,” he said in a low but insistent voice, “does it mean…”
Gus finished making a quick adjustment to the guts of the portable radio, causing it to start pinging instead of hissing “Yes, that hiss means that there is a nuclear bomb on board this aircraft.” He swung the antenna around, until the pings sped up just a bit. “And it’s located right under the flooring, halfway between this point and the tail of the plane.”
The First Class passengers began to panic.
Marshal Ustinov rose to his feet, a solid figure of confidence, and the crowd hushed. “We have an advantage right now,” he told them. “We alone have the power to stop this, but only if we have the element of surprise.”
The two men in black finally introduced themselves: the larger man was Agent Gamble, and the smaller one was Agent Proctor.
“It’s 6:45,” said Agent Gamble. “I propose we break into the cabin, take down the captain, and find out if he has some kind of control for disabling the bomb. Professor Guiseman—”
“You did recognize me!”
“Hush!” (That was Gwen.)
“You will use your improvised device to find the bomb. There should be a door under the carpet in the stewardess’ compartment behind the First Class restroom—it leads to the only part of the baggage section accessible during flight. If you can find and disable the bomb yourself, that’s great. Otherwise, wait for me. Everyone else put on your seatbelts. Things will probably get bumpy in here until we’re able to activate the autopilot.”
Father Delver stood up. “I should inform the other passengers.”
“We don’t have that much time,” the man in black warned.
“You go ahead with your daring plan, gentlemen. I can take care of myself.”
Gnosi looked over at Meridiem. “There are so many ways this could go wrong.”
Meridiem, who had been holding her hands to her temples for several minutes now, looked up at him crossly. “Well, if you can talk Professor Guiseman into converting his radio into a miniature Solarium, maybe I could do something! But until I have enough power, I’m helpless!”
The two government men made their way up the stairs to the lounge, which appeared to be deserted. Gus was right behind them with his radio turned off and Gwen, rather insistently, was right behind Gus. And Ustinov was behind Gwen.
It was a miracle that the entire First Class wasn’t on that staircase, Gus reflected wryly.
“It’s not locked,” Agent Proctor whispered, pointing at the door to the flight deck.
Just then, they heard the sound of a soft moan behind them. A flight attendant was lying down in a corner, her arms clutched around her stomach.
Agent Gamble knelt down beside her. “Are you alright?” he whispered.
“I…I think the Captain poisoned me. Poisoned all of us. He handed out these little bottles when the flight began. Said…it was his anniversary.”
Gus signaled to Gwen to take a look at the stewardess. “There are probably four of five more somewhere on board,” he explained. He saw the two agents preparing to ram the door. “Hold on! I think I can help.” Popping the radio back open, he returned it to its previous configuration.
“Flight 103? I have made my decision,” said the voice of President Far Shooter on the radio.
“And that is?” answered Captain Bridges.
“Air Force One will follow you out to the North Atlantic. Only, does it have to be the North Atlantic? We’re still closer to the east coast of Scotland than the west—why can’t we fly over the North Sea instead? There’s less chance of anyone on the ground being hurt if—”
“No change in plan. If Gaddafi wants us to fly to the North Atlantic, then the North Atlantic it will be. Continue on your present coordinates until—”
Gus held up a couple of wires. “Now!” He pressed them together the same time the two men rushed the door. An audible screech could be heard from within.
The Captain cried out in pain and threw away his headset. Seconds later, he had been pinned by the larger of the two agents. The brief struggle had caused the plane to pitch down, causing screams to reverberate up and down the entire plane before Agent Proctor succeeded in engaging the autopilot. It took a long twenty seconds for the plane to right itself. During this time Agent Proctor had put on the captain’s former headset to inform first Air Force One and then the local air traffic control about what had just happened.
Entering the cockpit, Marshal Ustinov took a moment to look at the unconscious bodies of the first officer, flight engineer and a second flight attendant. They had been tied up with packing twine by Captain Bridges, just in case one of them woke up. Ustinov untied one of them and gave the twine to Agent Gamble, who used it to immobilize Captain Bridges. Ustinov then sat down in the first officer’s seat so he could speak with the Captain. “We heard quite a bit of what you had to say to the American President,” he told him. “And I’m afraid you will not be able to keep your family safe if the bomb in this plane detonates.”
“What do you mean?” the captain asked, doubtful.
“Because of my mistakes, the next atomic explosion that occurs will start World War III.”
“A likely story! And even if it were true, I have Colonel Gaddafi’s word, ‘as reward to one who turned away from the faithless land of his birth’, that my family has been hidden in a Scottish village so remote, no bomb will ever reach them.”
Agent Proctor finished consulting the flight maps. “And does the name of this little remote village happen to be Lockerbie?”
“H…how did you know?”
“You obviously haven’t flown this route before,” the agent said, pointing at the town right below them, “because that is Lockerbie, Scotland.”
Immediately after seeing that his trick had worked, Gus went back downstairs and to the location Agent Proctor had told him about. He found the edge of a carpet fragment and removed it, revealing the door in the floor. He opened it and descended a ladder into the chamber below. On the way down he heard the Captain scream a string of very inventive profanities.
“Stacy, is that you?” a voice weakly floated up from below.
“No, I’m one of the passengers,” Gus explained. “The Captain’s kind of lost his head.” At the bottom of the ladder he found a young man with curly hair, his arms wrapped around his knees. He looked like he had been drugged.
“Really?” the man asked. “I mean, that bottle he gave me made me throw up, but I didn’t think that made him crazy or anything.”
Gus looked around. The chamber down here was big, but he figured it was still less than a third of the total baggage space in the plane. From the numerous animal sounds, he assumed that this section was for keeping any baggage that had to be monitored, and that the drugged man’s job was to watch it. As he reconfigured the radio as a radiation direction finder again, he asked, “Did you happen to see or hear anything odd in the past five minutes?”
“Yeah, that casket over there popped open. That’s when the headache started—don’t get too close.”
Gus picked up a crowbar, a grim look on his face. “Go upstairs,” he instructed the baggage handler. “And warn anybody that wants to come down that it’s going to be rather ‘hot’ for the next few minutes.” Backing up his statement was the fact that the animals closest to the casket weren’t making a sound—they were all laying down in their carriers, trying to summon enough strength to keep breathing.
With every step towards the casket, Gus became more and more disoriented, but he forced himself to keep going. When he finally reached it, he flipped the lid open.
That’s when he blacked out.
& & &
He woke up near the stairs leading up, 15 meters away from the casket. He was lying face up on the floor, with Agent Gamble looking down at him.
“Are you alright?”
Gus put a hand to his head as he slowly rose to his feet. “I’ll recover. So, what happened with the Captain? Did he agree to cooperate?”
“Oh he definitely wanted to cooperate,” Agent Gamble explained, “but other than a one-button remote control to remove the shielding, he wasn’t given any other way of controlling the bomb. Speaking of which…” He squared his shoulders and pulled out a pair of wire cutters.
“Be careful!” Gus cried. “That thing is giving out a dangerous amount of radiation.”
“Dangerous is my job,” Agent Gamble assured him. “What were you planning to do, anyway? Assuming you didn’t black out?”
“Cut every single wire at the same time?”
The agent sighed. “You’ve done plenty, Professor Guiseman. Now go back to your wife.”
Gus spent a moment trying to think of any way he could assist, any way that he could actually do something for once against one of the devices he considered his ill-begotten children. And then with a sigh he turned and began slowly climbing the ladder.
Agent Gamble circled around and approached the casket from the side where the lead-lined lid could act to partially shield him from the radiation. He looked over at a nearby wall clock to see how much time he had. He gave a sigh of relief that it was about to turn from 6:49 to 6:50 am.
Muammar Gaddafi promised that the bomb wouldn’t go off until 7 am.
He lied.
At 6:50 am precisely, the entire plane suddenly lurched downwards as the bomb exploded, causing Gus to fly upwards until he slammed into the ceiling of the First Class cabin. Luckily for him, he didn’t slam into the ceiling head-first. Unfortunately for him, his bent-over posture at the moment the bomb detonated meant that he hit it hard on his left hip.
This was followed by a seeming eternity of darkness.
Stats
Page generated in 0.02 seconds
Total duration
616 users online
1,056,681 hits today, 2,151,698 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Proctor and Gamble? Really?
That aside, this is a wide variety of not good. Not least because this likely just tripped a very stupid automated system, to say nothing of the plane likely still being in British airspace. I truly have no idea what will happen next.
Well...fuck.
I'm guessing Kadafi has either gone even madder than in OTL, or simply doesn't care if he lives or dies. Because if WWIII breaks out he dies: if it doesn't, Russia probably disavows his actions. Lockerbie in OTL was a much more deniable act of war. I don't see any plausible likelihood of Kadafi surviving in the ATL.
For some reason, I misread that as "the plane finally exploded."
9158735 Anticipating things, are we?