July 15, 1945

General Groves had arisen just after four in the morning, after only four hours of hasty sleep. Zero-hour was scheduled for 9:00 AM, and there was too much that needed to be finalized.

He promptly went across the camp grounds to keep his first appointment of the morning with Oppenheimer. Together, they went over the last of the details that needed attending to.

As Groves made his way over to the jeep that would take him to the South Shelter, he thought for a moment about stopping by Trevor's quarters and telling him he could come by after all. But the Manhattan Project commander quickly pushed the thought out of his mind. He couldn't back down on what he'd said last night. The sooner that whole farce could be forgotten, the better.

Still, as the jeep carried the general and the chief scientist over down the dusty road to the shelter, Oppenheimer chose to speak up.

"Unfortunate thing, last night," he said.

Groves merely nodded.

"I hope the two of them make up," Oppenheimer looked ahead, "They seem like a couple that belongs together."

Groves looked back at Oppenheimer and idly wondered if the chief scientist was desperately trying to find a way to take his mind off of the event that was about to take place.

He hoped to God it wasn't a sign that Oppenheimer would crack.

At zero minus sixty minutes, the last team of men to approach the shot tower arrived. Scientists Kenneth Bainbridge, George Kistiakowsky, and Joe McKibben, first stopped at a control station 900 yards to the tower's west, where they activated the timing relays for the various experiments that would be conducted. Then they turned their attention to the tower.

Standing underneath the tower, Bainbridge unlocked a box and threw a switch inside that completed the first phase of arming Fat Man.

Their work at the tower done, the three scientists got into their jeep and roared off for the South Shelter, where the final arming and firing would take place.

Zero minus thirty minutes. Inside the South Shelter, Bainbridge had opened the box on the control panel that threw the firing switch into the ready position. Fat Man was now fully armed and ready.

Robert Oppenheimer stood at the back of the shelter, clutching the battered sombrero, that in addition to the porkpie hat, had become a trademark of his. At that moment, he wasn't all that sure whether he hoped that the bomb he'd given four years of his life to developing would work, or whether he'd almost be relieved if it would fail.

At another end of the shelter, Groves began to rub his fingers in order to ease the tension.

Twenty miles to the northwest of the shot tower, a large group of Manhattan Project scientists stood atop a spot known as Componia Hill. Among the group that had gathered, was Klaus Fuchs. Though he looked as cool as a cucumber to all his colleagues, inside Fuchs was a basket case. Knowing that Dietrich Bolle was somewhere on the base for some sinister purpose, only made him fear that the worst might happen. That something would go wrong with the test, and that he would be caught up in the inevitable investigation that would follow.

Being a loyal communist, Fuchs was not a religious man. All the same, he found himself uttering a silent prayer that nothing would go wrong.

At zero minus twenty minutes, the booming sound of the national anthem erupted from the sound trucks by all of the shelters. A split second later, the "Star-Spangled Banner" was overshadowed by the voice of scientist Samuel Allison in the South Shelter, the man in charge of announcing the countdown, "It is now zero minus twenty minutes."

The final countdown had begun.

Six miles on each side of the shot tower, there was a burst of human activity in all of the shelters. The square region in between however, was all quiet, with only the instrument packages that would record the effects of Fat Man's explosion dotting the landscape.

But the silent desert that would soon experience a hellish inferno, was not deserted. Not completely.

Inside the ditch, one mile west of the shot tower, Diana stirred slightly as the effects of the gas began to slowly wear off. Her mind was still in a daze. In her subconscious she could hear a dim echoing sound that sounded faintly like the national anthem.

But the drug had yet to fully dissipate, and she collapsed back into the realm of sleep.

The countdown continued. On Componia Hill, the scientists quietly put on their special goggles to shield their eyes from the blast. Slowly, they took their positions on the ground. Their strict instructions were to lie totally prone until two minutes after the explosion, when the shock wave would pass.

Bill Laurence, the New York Times reporter selected to witness the test, grumbled slightly as he got on his stomach. He had long resented the fact that his observation post had been selected for here, twenty miles away from Trinity site, instead of one of the shelters six miles away. Because of that resentment, he had shed very few tears when he'd found out this morning that Wonder Woman would not be here to witness the test from the South Shelter after all.

At that very moment of his silent complaining, he heard one of the scientists behind him say, "Don't worry, you'll see all you need to. We want our chronicler to survive."

"Zero minus ten minutes," Dr. Allison's voice boomed from the speakers.

Bolle had recovered his abandoned rental car and immediately driven back up route 85 toward Albuquerque. Remembering that there was an APB on his car by the Albuquerque police because of the grenade attack three days earlier, he abandoned it again, twenty miles south of the city. The rest of the way, he would hitchhike and walk.

And why not? He didn't have to worry about time any more.

Although he was committed to returning to Santa Fe on the 24th for his final meeting with Fuchs, the safest thing for him to do now, was to return to the safe house in Virginia. He had to let Hauser, Becker and Sturber know what he had accomplished. And maybe then, they'd start to give him the respect he deserved.

And if they gave it to him, he could finally open a new chapter of his life as a committed Soviet operative.

Now that the burdens of the past were gone, Bolle found himself smiling with excitement about the future. Working for the Russians was going to be more satisfying than he'd ever thought.

"Zero minus five minutes."

With that, Allison activated the first of the sirens. A piercing wail that signaled the observers in all of the shelters, and even those watching from trenches back at the base camp, to take their final positions immediately.

A lone MP stumbled from behind a boulder to join his buddies in one of the trenches.

"How do you feel?" one of them asked him as he settled back in.

The MP grimaced, "I'm too damn scared to piss."

The siren picked up in intensity as the countdown continued.

Slowly, the fog inside Diana's mind started to lift. In the distance, the haunting echo of a siren seemed to be penetrating into her subconscious, getting more and more persistent.

She finally opened her eyes and came to a sitting position. Bolle, she thought and rubbed her forehead. What did Bolle do? Where am I?

Still wearing the thin nightgown she'd worn to bed, and half-covered with dirt, she tried to reorient herself.

A ditch? What is this?

She slowly got to her feet and then looked down. And then she gasped in horror, when she saw Steve's limp body, lying face down in the dirt.

"Steve!" she knelt by him and turned his body over. There was a bloody gash in his forehead and he was totally unconscious.

"Steve," she held him in his arms and began to cry softly, "Oh my darling Steve. What's happened to you?"

She quickly took his pulse. He was alive but in serious need of medical help.

Suddenly, Diana became more aware of the siren's echo in the distance.

"Hera help me," she whispered, "The test."

She grabbed Steve's wrist and looked at his watch. 8:57. She had exactly three minutes.

She quickly whirled into her Wonder Woman costume. And then, she braced herself and leapt as high as she could.

Her hands barely grabbed the top of the ditch, and she struggled briefly to pull herself out.

Getting to her feet, Wonder Woman looked around and saw the shot tower over one mile to the west.

For an instant, she frantically waved her arms in the hopes that someone in one of the shelters would notice her and stop the countdown. But that was too much wishful thinking. She had exactly one option if she was to save herself, and Steve.

"I've prayed to you long enough, Aphrodite," she whispered, "Help me now."

Gathering all of her Amazon strength, she began to run toward the distant shot tower. Ten times faster than the swiftest mortal could have run.

In the South Shelter, Groves continued to rub his fingers. Kistiakowsky stood next to Allison, and twitched with excitement. Oppenheimer continued to stand in the doorway of the control room, still clutching his sombrero.

He shot a glance at Major Reynolds, who'd been asked by Groves to keep an eye on the chief scientist. The constant self-doubt that had emanated from Oppenheimer ever since the project had begun, had made the Manhattan Project's commander worry that he might have a breakdown at the very last minute.

The chief scientist smiled weakly at Reynolds, "Lord, these affairs are hard on the heart."

"Zero minus two minutes," Allison intoned.

High above, a lone B-29 patrolled the airspace fifteen miles on the western edge of Trinity site, outfitted with movie cameras to record the explosion, and to take further instrument readings. In the cockpit, two observers, Dr. Luis Alvarez and Navy Captain William Parsons, watched and waited. The two were explosives specialists who had already been designated for assignment on the first atom bomb drop over Japan. For Parsons, it would be to arm the bomb known as 'Little Boy' en route to its target. For Alvarez, it would be to record the bomb's impact.

But for now, the two were to act as observers, and prepare themselves for what was to come three weeks in the future. If the test went off.

As Parsons slipped on his Polaroid glasses, he blinked for just a second. He almost could have sworn he'd seen something moving, down on the desert landscape just in front of the shot tower.

He adjusted his glasses and blinked again. No, it was probably just his nervous imagination.

He looked at his watch. 90 seconds to go.

Wonder Woman reached the base of the shot tower and looked up. The details of the briefing she'd gone through yesterday, came back vividly to her. Fat Man was concealed in an iron shed at the very top, 103 feet up.

Inside, the bomb would be on an oak wood platform, connected by tentacles to a shiny aluminum tank that housed the firing unit.

That was what she had to get to. In just 90 seconds. Could she possibly make it?

Her mind went back over 2000 years of conditioning her strength on Paradise Island. What challenges had she ever faced that were similar to this?

And then, in her mind's eye, the shot tower disappeared. Her mind saw only the seaside cliffs she'd learned to climb as a child on Paradise Island.

Yes, she thought. The cliffs. The two hundred foot cliffs that she'd learned to climb with her bare hands in just sixty seconds. The feat that had made her the most athletically gifted of all the Amazons.

Up the ladders she went, with a swiftness and grace that would have amazed any observer.

"Zero minus eighty seconds."

Allison sucked in his breath and killed the siren. A strange, eerie quiet now came over the men in the South Shelter.

"Minus seventy seconds," his voice began to pick up in tempo.

When Wonder Woman reached the top of the tower, there were still 60 seconds left. With one hand, she ripped the steel door to the shed off its hinges and dashed inside.

For a split second, she froze in horror. Three feet in front of her, lay the horrible weapon of destruction that had been dubbed "Fat Man." A 10,000 pound behemoth, four-and-a-half feet wide and ten-and-a-half feet long. And from its skin ran the tentacles that extended to the aluminum tank.

And with less than 60 seconds to detonation, Fat Man was becoming more and more active. The firing unit in the tank was growing ever hotter.

"Minus forty-five seconds."

At the control panel, Dr. McKibben turned on the switch that activated the automatic timer. The process of energizing the firing unit, had entered its final deadly phase.

The heat began to build inside the shed, and Wonder Woman nearly staggered back. It was rapidly becoming unbearable. But she knew that the heat she felt now would be nothing compared to what would happen in less than forty seconds. At zero hour, the heat at this spot would reach four times the temperature of the sun's core.

No, she thought. She couldn't fail now.

She struggled forward, removed her golden headband, and hurled it at the tentacles that connected Fat Man to the firing unit. With the other hand, she reached for the remaining tentacles and gave them a savage yank with all her strength.

Sparks erupted from the firing unit tank. Wonder Woman felt herself knocked back against the wall of the shed.

The grinding machinery inside suddenly came to a screeching halt, and the heat began to dissipate. Seconds later, the activity inside the shed had returned to a normal quiet.

Shorn from the firing unit, Fat Man had been rendered impotent.

Diana let out an enormous sigh and nearly collapsed under the terrible weight of her emotions. Finally, she let herself go and began to cry in relief. And when she whispered a prayer of relief, it wasn't to the ancient goddesses she'd revered all her life, but to a deity she'd never truly known before.

"Thank you God," she whispered softly, "Thank you."

"Minus thirty seconds."

McKibben's eye was on the four small lights of the voltmeter. Once they all turned red, the voltmeter would swing to the right, and that would mean that the firing unit was fully charged. There would literally be no turning back from that point on.

But the lights did not turn red.

"Holy shit," he whispered.

Without any hesitation, McKibben then pulled the one switch he'd planned on not making. The switch labeled "stop."

"Abort!" Allison screamed into the mike, "We have an abort! I repeat again, we have a systems abort! All systems shut down immediately!"

"What the hell happened?" Groves marched up to the panel.

"Something's happened with the firing systems. Indications are that all links with the firing system are dead."

The Manhattan Project commander sagged in disbelief, "Shit!" he bellowed, "All this preparation, and the systems get fucked up at the last minute!"

At the back of the control room, Robert Oppenheimer resisted the urge not to smile.

"Get some men out there immediately! I want to know what the hell went wrong!" Groves barked. "The sooner we find out, the better!"

On Componia Hill, there was stunned amazement from the scientists gathered there. As they took off their goggles, an anxious buzz began to build.

Klaus Fuchs took a long time taking his off, and when he did, he felt like he was going to throw up.

I don't know anything, he said to himself. I don't know anything. That's all that matters. I don't know anything.

A jeep from the South Shelter quickly got underway in less than a minute after Groves had relayed the order. Kistiakowsky, Bainbridge and Reynolds had volunteered to go find out what had gone wrong with Fat Man.

They had drawn to within a half-mile of the shot tower, when they suddenly detected a figure slowly climbing down the ladder. A figure in a familiar red and gold costume.

"Good God Almighty," Bainbridge exclaimed, "Do you see what I see?"

"Yeah," Kistiakowsky nodded, "I see it, but I don't believe it."

The jeep came to a stop, and Reynolds leapt out, on the verge of brandishing his pistol.

"Wonder Woman!" he angrily shouted, "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?"

She reached the bottom of the tower and slowly made her way up to him.

"I'm sorry Major. It was the only way."

"The only way?" he blurted in disbelief.

"Let me explain," she said calmly.

Moments later, Reynolds and Wonder Woman both leapt back into the jeep.

"Get us over to a ditch one mile west of the tower, pronto! We've got a wounded man there!"

Four hours later, with Wonder Woman sitting by his bedside, and a subdued Groves standing alongside, Steve finally opened his eyes.

"Oh," he moaned slightly, "What happened?"

"It's all right Steve," she smiled and squeezed his hand, "You're in the base infirmary, and you've got a nasty concussion. But you're going to be all right."

Steve opened his eyes and was stunned to see her warm, radiant face smiling at him.

"Diana," he whispered, "What happened to me? Bolle..."

"Your friend Mr. Bolle had some rather sick plans for both you and Wonder Woman," Groves said, "But thank God, she was in time to prevent them. Another thirty seconds, and the two of you would have been the first casualties of the atomic age."

He frowned, "I don't understand."

Diana gently recounted the details of what had happened to them.

"Good Lord," he muttered in disbelief and looked up at Groves, "What's the status of the bomb?"

"No need to worry about that. Wonder Woman had the foresight to merely slice the lines connecting the bomb to its firing units and those are easy to replace since it just means reconnecting new lines to the unit and using the other relays already in place. My men should have Fat Man back to full readiness by tonight. The test is being rescheduled for 5:30 AM tomorrow morning. Which is kind of ironic, because that was the originally scheduled time."

He sank deeper into his pillow, "Thank God for that. I hope it goes off well."

"It will," he said, "And Steve, I think you should know that I owe the two of you the biggest apology imaginable. When I didn't see you this morning, I'd simply assumed that you were staying inside your quarters like I'd told you to, and that Wonder Woman had already gone back to Albuquerque. If I had known better, I would have had the test suspended until you'd both been located."

"General, it's not your fault," Wonder Woman said gently, "None of it is."

"Any word about Bolle?" Steve asked.

"I just spoke to General Blankenship over the phone," Groves said, "All their efforts are going to be concentrated on nabbing him. But he's going to be delicate to handle, given the repercussions of who he's working for."

"He's working as a Russian spy, Steve," Wonder Woman said, "The attempt on our lives was a rouge operation, but his official reason for coming to New Mexico was to get information on the Project."

"The Russians," he looked up at the ceiling. "Incredible."

"Well there's a lot I've got to work on, so I'll leave you two alone for now," Groves made his way to the door, "I'm glad you're all right, Steve. This whole thing's a blessed miracle."

"How right he is," Steve said when they were alone, "And you're the greatest miracle of all."

"Oh Steve," she whispered and squeezed his hand, "Can you ever forgive me?"

He smiled wryly, "For what?"

"For being so cruel to you last night. You opened your heart to me in front of the whole world, and I literally emasculated you in public."

Steve managed to chuckle, "I wouldn't quite put it that way."

His remark managed to break the tension inside her, and she laughed too, "Does your offer still stand?"

"Of course."

"Then I accept," Diana said firmly, "After nearly losing you in the most horrible way imaginable, I don't ever want to let go of you again."

Steve felt the emotion rising inside him, "What about all those fears of the future, and the bomb and all that?"

Diana sighed, "Two things have happened that have made me reassess my views. First, the fact that Bolle is working for the Russians, forces me to admit that your doubts about them are correct. The Russians are no better than the Nazis, they're just more methodical. It's important for America to take a strong stand with them, because they are a country that can't be trusted."

"And the second?"

"It's kind of hard to explain," she said, "but I've been giving a lot more thought to what you've said about your God and the idea of His being in control of the world. The more I think about it, the more I realize that it's a vision I can accept as well. Even in the context of my own religion, the overriding message is that good will ultimately triumph over evil, but only if there are people here to help in that struggle. And that means that I have as much a responsibility to the world in the post-war era as I had during the war. I can't turn my back on it now."

He slowly exhaled, "I don't want to force you, Diana. I know I was wrong to pull that terrible stunt on you last night. It was the act of a selfish coward who wasn't willing to let you work things out as an equal. I need to know that you'd truly be happy by doing this. Don't do any of this just because you pity me."

Wonder Woman detached her lasso from her belt, "Put this thing around me."

He took it and slipped it over her.

"I have to tell the truth now," she squeezed his hand, "I want to marry you because I love you so much, and can't bear the thought of losing you. I want to stay in America because I've finally realized that there's still a lot of important things I can do to help both this country, and the world. And if we ever end up having any quarrels, we'll try to work them out like any other couple in love would do. That's the whole truth from the bottom of my heart, Steve."

Steve reached out and managed to pull her close to him, "My angel," he whispered, "My beautiful, perfect angel. I'm the luckiest man in the world."

Alone, they shared a long passionate kiss. Both of them grateful inside, that they'd managed to find their way back to each other. And knowing in their hearts that nothing short of death, would ever part them again.