Smith clutched the radio remote control in his hand. It looked like something better suited to a video game than dropping a thermonuclear weapon, but it was the best the mechanics back at Kadena had been able to come up with. If it worked the way they said it would, Ito’s weapon would theoretically be annihilated. The blast radius of the weapon was relatively small—no more than five hundred yards, with radiation strong enough to destroy the nanotech extending out another two miles. What could go wrong? Pretty much everything. The makeshift bomb release mechanism could jam. The antique weapon could fail to detonate. They could simply miss the crash site. Worst, though, was the possibility that a few of Ito’s bots could be blown clear with enough velocity to survive the radiation zone.

Smith flipped the cover off the remote’s button. His stomach felt like it was trying to escape through his throat, and he knew it wasn’t just the speed of their descent unnerving him. It was the knowledge that millions of lives depended on a single movement of his thumb.

“Now!” the pilot said and Smith depressed the button.

There was a brief grinding sound and then the right side of the plane sprang upward as the weight beneath it disappeared.

“It’s away!” the pilot said as he yanked back on the stick. Smith felt his G suit inflate, working to keep the blood from draining from his head with the force of the climb. His vision began to blur as the view transformed from the brown of the dead landscape to the unbroken blue of the sky.

The flash was followed by a roar that drowned out the sound of the two Pratt & Whitney engines. The plane bucked violently in the turbulence and the sensation changed from one of flying to one of being thrown through the sky. Warning alarms that didn’t mean anything to Smith sounded as the pilot fought for control. The tail end of the aircraft pulled left, then right, and a moment later they were flipping end over end. The pilot continued to strain the engines, but they were useless in the air blast from the weapon. The g-forces subsided, as did the roar of the hot wind around them, but that was all Smith could be sure of as they continued to tumble.

New alarms were added to the ones already sounding as more of the plane’s systems failed. Finally, the engines sputtered out. In that moment everything went strangely silent. There was nothing but the world spinning around them and the rhythmic thud of his own heartbeat.

“We’re not going to make it,” the pilot said with admirable calm. “Good luck, sir.”