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“But you said a week?”

“Yep and then there aren’t any!” she said bewildered.

“What the hell do you mean there aren’t any?!”

“Something about a solar flare. All planes are being grounded for the rest of the week.”

“Jesus, we could take the train to London…”

“No, all flights across the world are being stopped,” she interrupted, realizing she hadn’t explained fully.

“I’ll call Ben,” she offered.

“Would that be the same Ben that gave up the address of where my sister-in-law had been hiding?”

“We don’t know that for sure. Trust me, it’ll be fine.”

“Ben?”

“Rebecca, I’m sorry I don’t have much time, I need to get to a meeting.”

Rebecca quickly explained the predicament. Five minutes later, she received a call back. They had two first class seats on the American Airlines flight leaving at 11.05 am to JFK.

“Excellent,” announced Sam, making his way to the executive lounge. There was just enough time for a shower and a good breakfast before they boarded.

The US Secretary of Transportation had relayed Ben’s request directly to the CEO of American Airlines, despite the late hour. As ever, the request was granted. Two American Airline crew were going to be spending a little more time in Paris than they had thought and two Million Miles members weren’t going to get the free upgrade they had craved and was grudgingly awarded by the airline.

The conversation, despite the unsocial hour, was business-like and as it came to an end, the Secretary expected at least some reference to the upcoming grounding of the aviation industry but it never came. The Secretary of Transportation sat back in his chair and stared at the phone. For days he had sat waiting for the onslaught from the airline chiefs but it had never happened. Four or five days’ grounding of all their flights had hardly elicited a squeak from them, despite the fact he knew they were being lambasted by the public at large. It just didn’t make sense. The volcanic ash debacle had cost him nights of sleep as every transatlantic carrier stormed his office by mail, phone and in person. His own scientists were telling him the chance of any issues occurring as a result of a solar storm were around one in a billion but the papers and all the media were convinced it was a cataclysmic event that would bring planes down. As such, they had no option but to go with the majority and like every other air traffic control network around the world, they had to close their skies.

Was he missing something? Despite the hour, he called the CEO of American Airlines back. He had to know what was going on.

“Chris, I’m sorry to call again.”

“Not at all, Mr Secretary.”

“I just wondered, when the ash thing happened, you were almost camped on my doorstep.”

“Yep, cost us millions!”

“But surely the solar storm is the same?”

“You’re winding me up aren’t you?”

“Absolutely not? Why would you say that?”

The US Secretary listened in disbelief before thanking the CEO profusely and arranging his driver to take him to the White House first thing in the morning.

At 7 am, the Secretary of Transportation waited in the anteroom for the Oval Office for his President. He had been there since 6.30 am and the President had been informed of his arrival.

“Come on in,” he offered as he entered the office.

“Thank you, Mr President.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised to see you, I imagine it’s chaos over at transportation,” said the President offering the Secretary a seat on the sofa across from him.

“That’s why I’m here, Mr President, I’m here because it’s
not
chaos.”

“Sorry?” Russell had lived through the ash storm and as VP with the President’s ear, he had received almost as many calls as the Secretary of Transportation.

“Exactly. However, I got a call from Ben Meir this morning. He needed a couple of seats on a plane. I called the CEO of American and managed to get a couple of seats for him but at no point did the CEO moan about the solar storm. Then it hit me full on, nobody’s moaning about the grounding. Well, a few from some small companies but none of the big boys, American, Delta, United, Continental, not a peep. Not one mention of lost revenue, disaster, bankruptcy, nothing. ”

“None of them?” questioned Russell, having spoken to them all at least three times a day during the ash crisis. He was stunned and the ash crisis had hardly impacted America, mainly just Transatlantic flights.

“Not one. So I called him back and asked the question and you’ll never guess what he said?”

“You’re right I won’t, so tell me!” Russell wasn’t a guessing type of President.

“What did they have to moan about? Their planes were all chartered, they were going to make a killing.”

“Who to?” demanded Russell, sitting up straight in shock as the news.

“Us.”

“Us?”

“As far as he was aware, it was some top secret government thing and we’ve hired all his planes and used this Solar flare nonsense as a cover.”

“What?”

“Yep and he’s over the moon, reckons the profits they’ll make in the next four days will sort out a number of long term issues they’ve had.”

“I’ll contact Defense and see if they know anything about it but I’m sure they would have told me!” said the President, still coming to terms with the news. Although the more he thought about it, the more one thing came to mind but there was no way that they were linked. Shutting down the world’s airline industry was not within their power, surely.

The Secretary of Transportation got up and walked towards the door. His bit was done, it was the President’s problem now.

“Oh, how was Ben?” The President asked as an after-thought.

“Fine, you know Ben, always in a rush”

“Where’s he off to that El Al couldn’t take him?”

“Oh it wasn’t for him, it was two seats from Paris to New York.”

Russell couldn’t believe his luck, instantly making the link. One of those seats would be Sam Baker’s. They had him trapped. He called Johnson. Surely even he would manage to capture an unarmed man on an aircraft.

Ben rushed into the meeting. Of all the meetings he had in his diary, that was the one that he never failed to attend and the one he prayed would deliver more than any other. The Heads of pretty much every security, police and Defense service awaited his arrival.

“Well?” he asked, repeating the same question he asked every morning and evening as these meetings took place.

“No news,” was the subdued response.

There were now only five days until Yom Kippur. Five days until four nuclear weapons would devastate the land of Israel. “Any news on the American one?” he asked again, as he had for every previous meeting.

“Nothing,” offered David Hirsch, the Defense Minister, without hope.

“We have every satellite the Americans have and every one of their military vessels are checking every ship they can see but nothing. Maybe it’s already there.”

“What about Marseille?”

“What about it?” asked Hirsch.

“Any boats leaving there bound for America?”

“We’ve checked them all. They were either going to Africa, staying in Europe, heading to the Far East or South America and we even checked them to make sure they were on course and they are. No boat that is on its way to America has the weapon. It must be a hoax.”

“Well, if it is, the joke is on us. They’ll be five explosions not four!” exclaimed Ben. “Sorry, what was that?” asked Ben not quite catching what one of the analysts had whispered to a colleague under his breath.

“Apologies, Mr Meir, I spoke out of turn,” said by way of apology.

“No, please if you have information, you must share it. Please stand up and enlighten us with whatever you deem so relevant.” Ben was in a particularly foul mood.

The young analyst stood up and when Hirsch spotted who Ben was picking on, he immediately tried to stop him.

“Ben, if you don’t mind, I’ll deal with this less publicly.”

“No David, the young man has something to say!” He was not in the mood to be stopped.

“Sorry, please also give us your credentials,” ordered Ben, keen to see why the young man felt it appropriate to make secret remarks.

David Hirsch sunk further in his seat. Adding the young man’s credentials was just going to exacerbate the disaster.

The young man could hardly be heard as he stammered. “I work for the Defense Department in the nuclear capability team.”

“Ben,” interrupted David Hirsch, the young man’s ultimate boss. “I really must insist you let me deal with this.”

“No, carry on,” ordered Ben firmly.

“My specialty is the likely scenarios and long term impact of nuclear weapons.”

“Oh, OK. So I can certainly understand why you’re here. Now what was so important you had to share it with your colleague but not the rest of us?” pushed Ben.

“I simply said that whether it’s four or five was irrelevant. Israel’s fucked either way.”

Ben looked at the young analyst somewhat surprised at his tone and language.

“Sorry that was what I said, verbatim, Mr Meir, I mean no disrespect,” added the analyst noting Ben’s disapproval.

Ben looked at David. Nothing of this magnitude had ever been relayed to him. Israel being fucked seemed to be a fairly explicit and certainly far worse than the destruction of part of four cities that had previously been cited.

“What exactly do you mean by ‘fucked’ young man?” asked Ben, having calmed down and keen to hear a less edited version of the potential impact.

“With the input of Professor Ilya Kielson, the Soviet scientist, we should assume two things. The nukes are around the 100 kiloton range and will be extremely efficient. He would, I assume, also have advised the Palestinians of placement to ensure maximum damage and impact.”

“Go on,” prompted Ben.

“With this scenario, the projections would obliterate four major cities, wiping out pretty much all their inhabitants.”

“Yes.” Ben was aware of this. “But Israel is much larger than four cities, young man.”

“Sorry, I’m not finished. The radiation and thermal effects would be devastating to a significantly greater area and ultimately I would anticipate that Israel, the West Bank and Gaza would pretty much be unlivable for the next fifty years. I would include a large area of our neighbors’ territories in that category also.”

“Jerusalem?”

“Wasteland, a radioactive nightmare!” The young analyst was on a roll.

Ben Meir, not for the first time, was hoping his heart would keep going. The stress was going to kill him. They had to find those weapons. Ararat depended on Jerusalem.

Sam thought he could get used to this as he pressed the button and for the first time in his life, actually felt comfortable aboard a plane. Two minutes after the stewardess had put out the fasten seat belt signs, he was sleeping soundly. Seven hours and almost 3,000 miles later, he woke up feeling refreshed and energized for the full day that lay ahead. The electronic map told him there was just about an hour to JFK.

He turned to Rebecca and all the pleasant thoughts that had been swirling in his mind stopped. Her face was one of sheer panic and coming from a woman who had faced what she had, he knew something was very wrong.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, looking deeply into her eyes.

“I think Ben’s screwed us and most certainly you,” she whispered, and quickly hissed. “Don’t turn around.”

“You’ve just had a bad dream. We’re in a plane, nobody can touch us up here. Nobody even knows who we are.”

She shook her head firmly. “No, I haven’t slept a wink. Two hours ago the man one seat behind and over to your right was called to the cockpit door and handed the phone by the stewardess. He hasn’t stopped checking on us since then. So just make it look like we’re talking normally, ok?”

“OK,” said Sam, looking calmly into her eyes.

“I can only assume he’s the Sky Marshall. He’s probably been told to assist when we land.”

“OK, I’m going to take a casual look, don’t worry,” instructed Sam as he yawned and nodded to the passenger across the aisle from him. A quick look behind confirmed Rebecca’s worst thoughts. The bulge in his otherwise perfect suit trouser gave him away. The right leg snagged at the sock line, giving away the pistol that would resolve any potential hijackings.

“Yep and he’s good,” confirmed Sam. “Caught me looking!”

“Shit, we’re screwed,” said Rebecca, feeling caught in a guided missile heading straight to Sam’s assassins.

Sam considered all the options which amounted to pretty much none. The cockpit door was locked and would never be opened. He could HALO and HAHO, basically parachute from inner space, either quickly or slowly but that tended to require a parachute which commercial airliners did not carry. Sam didn’t want to get into the whole argument about why somebody had decided to put lifejackets on board a plane instead of parachutes. He’d argue that point when he had more time.