Siege of Lightning

by R. J. Pineiro

  “Hate doing spiral climbs and simulated dead-stick landings,” Mission Pilot Captain Clayton Jones complained from the copilot seat. “Can you spell BORING?”

  Kessler smiled. Jones, an old friend from the days when Kessler was stationed aboard U.S.S. Constitution in the Persian Gulf, was Air Force, but Kessler didn’t mind that. He considered Jones the last of the down-to-earth American officers. “I doubt you’d say that during the real thing, CJ. Based on what I’ve been told, Earth re-entry is hardly child’s play and--”

  “Blah, blah, blah. Haven’t been afraid of anything all my life, Mike. Not about to start now.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Ten minutes later Kessler eyed the altimeter as it reached thirty-five thousand feet.

  “X-ray Six Eight, STA. Starting our approach.”

  “Roger STA.”

  With Florida coast behind him, Kessler dropped the main landing gear and placed both engines on reverse thrust to create that “falling brick” feeling of a returning orbiter after reentering the atmosphere.

  The reverse thrust pushed both astronauts forward against their restraint harnesses. The feeling was similar to what passengers experienced aboard a commercial jet when landing.

  Jones suddenly perked up in his seat.

  “Still bored, CJ?”

  Jones didn’t reply as he scanned the instruments and the picture beyond the windscreen.

  The STA reached the 180-degree position, meaning its left wingtip pointed straight towards the touchdown point on the runway at precisely twenty-eight thousand feet. He maintained that heading until the altimeter read twenty thousand feet. Then he made a 90-degree left turn and held that course until reaching twelve thousand feet. A final 90-degree left turn, and Kessler rolled wings-level on final approach six miles from his touchdown point. He checked the control panel. Speed, 220 knots. Kessler adjusted with slight backward pressure on the control stick. The hydraulically powered elevators in the T-tail responded by forcing the tail down and the nose up. Kessler watched the airspeed decrease. From the time the dead-stick approach began, changing speed could only be achieved by adjusting the rate of descent, not by working the throttle.

  “Looks like you got it down,” Jones commented.

  “Sure hope so. Once we’re in Lightning, if I fuck up the approach I won’t be able to correct with power.”

  “Well, so far so good. Runway’s five miles straight ahead. Nine thousand at two-one-five knots. Looking good.”

  Kessler nodded then said into the mike, “X-ray Six Eight, STA inbound for 33. Five mile final.”

  “STA, X-ray Six Eight, you’re cleared for a straight-in approach Runaway 33. Winds zero four zero at eight. Altimeter two-niner-niner-seven.”

  Kessler read back the instructions as the runway grew in the distance.

  “Four miles, six thousand feet, holding at two-one-five knots. Not bad for a Navy boy,” Jones said.

  Kessler grinned. “Just getting warmed up.”

  Kessler’s left hand lightly held the control stick. His fine adjustments in heading and speed kept the Gulfstream on the specified, and also quite steep, glide path.

  “One mile, two thousand feet,” Jones said.

  Kessler pulled back lightly on the stick. Airspeed decreased to 190 knots.

  “Fifteen hundred feet, half mile.”

  Kessler lowered the nose landing gear while keeping the speed glued to 190 knots.

  The trainer approached the end of the runway. The light crosswind pushed the STA toward the grass to the left of the runway. Kessler nudged the stick to the right. At the same time, he pressed the left rudder pedal to compensate for the crosswind. That had the effect of tilting the wings by a few degrees, giving the impression that the jet was turning into the wind. Kessler let it turn a few degrees before the left rudder forced the Gulfstream in a straight path, bringing the nose in line with the approaching center of the runway and holding it there.

  “A little low, Buddy,” Jones said. “Pull up.”

  Kessler calmly adjusted the control stick toward him. He eyed the attitude indicator. Twenty-three degrees…twenty-one…twenty. He then checked the altimeter. Two hundred feet. The runway came up to meet him as the jet gracefully glided over the patch of grass at the end of the tarmac. With his concentration now at a climax, Kessler kept his eyes fixed on the center line and continued to make final adjustments.

  “Twenty feet…ten feet…five…three…touchdown.”

  Kessler felt a slight vibration as the rear wheels came in contact with the runway. He held the stick back and let the nose drop by itself as the airspeed decreased below one hundred knots.

  “STA, taxi to the ramp.”

  “Roger.”

  “Had enough of this?” asked Jones.

  Kessler exhaled. “Yep.”

  “Good. I’m starving.”

  Kessler rolled his eyes. “I guess you have a piece of red meat in mind, huh?”

  “Not just any red meat, partner. Sixteen-ounce rib eye medium rare. There’s no substitute.”

  That drew a laugh from Kessler. “Whatever you say, pal. It’s your body you’re polluting with all that cholesterol and nicotine.” Jones was also a light smoker.

  “And what a happy body it is.”

  Kessler shook his head. “Fine. I guess rib eyes it is.”

  Jones nodded and headed aft. Kessler smiled. Jones was a true Texan.

  * * *

  Five minutes later they were in the Astrovan and headed for the briefing room. With a press conference scheduled for the day before the launch, NASA administrators wanted to ensure that both astronauts were prepared to respond to questions from reporters.

  On the way, the astronauts sat in silence. Through the tinted windows Kessler stared at the octagonally shaped launchpad, which covered roughly a quarter of a square mile.

  The actual launchpad section had two major components. The fixed service structure, located on the west side of the hardstand where the space shuttle assembly rested, consisted of an impressive 247-foot-tall tower with connecting arms to the orbiter crew hatch. The rotating service structure pivoted one-third of a circle, from a retracted position well away from the shuttle to the point where its payload change-out room doors met and matched with Lightning’s payload bay doors. Besides being useful for installation and service of the payload, the rotating structure also supported the weather-protection system that shielded Lightning from rain and hail while on the pad.

  Kessler inhaled deeply and shifted his gaze toward the beach. The sea. Kessler sighed as he stared at the vivid blue hue that outlined the coast. His thoughts drifted to his years with the Navy, Kessler’s family and home for most of his life. Memories of fellow pilots flashed through his mind: the friendships, the laughter…the supersonic nightmares. Kessler knew they would always be with him filling a special chamber of his soul. He knew he belonged to a special breed: naval aviators. Not Air Force pilots. Navy pilots. Aviators for whom the end of a mission came only after jockeying a thirty-ton jet going two hundred knots onto the heaving flight deck of a carrier. No room for mistakes. No room for exhausted pilots, he thought.

  From the day he got his private pilot’s license at seventeen, Kessler had decided to make a career out of flying. Going against his father’s wishes that he become an electrical engineer, Kessler earned an aeronautical engineering degree from Florida Tech while continuing to log hours as a flight instructor. Upon graduation, he applied and was admitted to Primary Flight School (PriFly) at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, followed by more training at NAS Corpus Christi in Texas. Then he continued to Advanced Flight Training (AFT) at NAS Kingsville, also in Texas, for fighter training. There, he quickly distinguished himself from the rest of his classmates with his aggressive style of flying.

  Kessler never flew slow if he could fly fast. Nobody would ever
catch him going for a shallow turn or climb. He always pushed; always took his aircraft to the outer limits of the manufacturer’s specifications. He had a simple logic: Either I push my jet and win the dogfight or the enemy will. If I bank at forty-five degrees and the enemy banks at sixty, I’ll lose. If I fly one-point-five Mach and the enemy flies Mach two, I’ll lose. Kessler knew only two kinds of pilots: “the quick” and “the dead.” Throughout his career he fought hard to make sure he was always “the quick.” His engineering degree gave him knowledge of aerodynamics that enabled him to comprehend the manufacturer’s specifications better than any of his classmates. He knew about so-called safety margins in aircraft designs, like how much additional stress an air surface could really take beyond a specified number of Gs without sustaining structural damage. That allowed Kessler to “safely” push his jet for maximum performance, gaining an edge over his classmates.

  After graduation, Lieutenant Kessler got the commission of his dreams: flying F-14 Tomcats from the carrier U.S.S. Constitution, where it didn’t take him long to earn the respect of his fellow pilots during Operation Desert Storm. He shot down two Iraqi MiG-23s using guns and a single Sidewinder a few months after his arrival, during a time when everyone still considered him a “newcomer.” That episode plus several others during his years with the Navy gave him a national visibility that led NASA to recruit him later on.

  NASA. Kessler glanced over his left shoulder at the Solid Rocket Booster refurbishment and subassembly facility as the Astrovan continued down Kennedy Parkway North on its way to the KSC’s Industrial Area. The facility could turn SRBs around in under six months from the time of recovery 140 miles off the eastern coast of Florida to the time of integration with an External Tank and an orbiter.

  Kessler looked at Jones, who had his eyes closed and his head leaning against the side window glass. The Air Force captain continued to maintain an ice-cold attitude about the entire ordeal—something that Kessler could not understand. Especially with the launch less than forty-eight hours away.

  The driver turned left on NASA Causeway East, and made another left on C Avenue. The Astrovan came to a stop on the side of building M6-339, the KSC’s Headquarters.

  “Wake up, CJ.”

  Jones abruptly opened his eyes and took a deep breath. Kessler reached for the side door and slid it back.

  They walked into the briefing room a few minutes later.

  PARIS, FRANCE

  The light late afternoon breeze blew gently, giving motion to the branches of a nearby tree layered with a colorful assortment of flowers that seemed to bring life to the mellow tunes of the young saxophone player performing beneath it. A hat lying by his feet displayed the generosity of the day’s crowd. To his right, a street vendor held up short sticks of French bread to pedestrians, who appeared more interested in watching a child learn to ride a bicycle on a patch of grass to the left of the saxophone player.

  “Francois! Francois! Faites attention, Francois!” Cameron Stone heard the child’s mother scream at her accelerating youngster, who was apparently making a last-ditch effort to get the basics down before the day ended. The nervous woman finally caught up with him on the other side of the small park, and shouted something Cameron could not understand. Cameron smiled as he inhaled the cool, invigorating air. It felt good to be in Paris again.

  He had left the American Embassy and stepped into one of the most relaxed cities in the world. Definitely a change of scenery from the depressing streets of Mexico City, where he’d spent most of the past five years.

  He checked his watch and proceeded to the Metro station by the Place de la Concorde, the east end of the long avenue next to the gardens behind the Louvre. Cameron quickened his pace; he only had thirty minutes to make it to the Left Bank before seven o’clock that evening. He crossed the rue Royale and reached the steps leading down to the Metro hall.

  After purchasing a ticket from one of the automatic ticket machines, Cameron followed the signs down an oval-shaped concourse layered with white brick.

  He made his way across the crowded platform, and managed to squeeze his slim but muscular body into an already packed second-class car, leaving barely an inch between his face and the closing doors. He grabbed the overhead railing with his left hand and kept his right hand under his coat, firmly holding his holstered Beretta 92F, more to prevent a pickpocket from snatching it than out of fear of needing it. Cameron didn’t feel like having to explain to his new CIA case officer that he had had his weapon stolen, especially during his first day under the man’s jurisdiction.

  As the crowd pressed against him, Cameron could feel the three small manila envelopes inside a waterproof pouch in his coat liner. One contained three fake passports and matching driver’s licenses, the other two his emergency money. Cameron never went anywhere without them…and his Beretta.

  The rocky ride lasted two minutes. Then Cameron switched to a southbound train, which turned out to be just as crowded.

  Cameron’s current assignment, given to him by his case officer that morning, was to meet the widow of a French rocket scientist killed in an auto accident the day before. The widow had contacted the Agency and requested the meeting. Ordinarily, such a seemingly unimportant request would have been dismissed by the CIA or, at most, passed on to the French authorities. But the widow had used a CIA emergency code—albeit an outdated one—when contacting the embassy, and that fact alone had had a few CIA officials concerned enough to activate a field operative.

  Cameron got out at the Saint Michel exit, went up to the street, and turned left at rue de Cujas.

  An unusual street, he reflected as he stared at the two- and three-story stone buildings, some probably dating back to the seventeenth century. The widow had asked for the meeting at an out-of-the-way location.

  Cameron walked up the narrow street on the left side. The sun was setting, and the street was already dark. He eyed the vertical sign of the Grand Hotel Saint Michel opposite him. The hotel could not have been any wider than thirty feet, but someone had thought it large enough to have “Grand” preceding the name. An odd place to meet, he thought, considering that her late husband, the famed French rocket scientist Claude Guilloux, had been among the most respected and wealthiest men in Paris. Claude Guilloux had also been one of the leading scientists of the European space agency Athena, the pride of the European Economic Community.

  Athena. Now, there’s a big corporation, Cameron thought. Athena had been around for years, he recalled from the file his case officer had given him that morning, but the agency hadn’t become the corporate giant of today until after the Challenger explosion several years back. Within days of the NASA disaster, communications companies and weather agencies from large and small countries alike had flooded the European space agency with satellite-deployment requests because of NASA’s inability to perform. Backed by the EEC, Athena had grown from less than five hundred employees to over fifteen thousand, and from a few launches every year to a tight weekly schedule engineered to cope with the world’s increasing demand for its services. Athena, now a very powerful and wealthy agency, had a brand-new state-of-the-art launching facility operating in the coastal city of Kourou, French Guiana, and had recently announced plans for a European space shuttle and permanent space station. With Guilloux’s death, Marie Guilloux, also a noted scientist, a main contributor to the development of the guidance system in the reliable Athena V rocket, would inherit most of her late husband’s fortune.

  Cameron exhaled. The secrecy and strange meeting place didn’t make sense. Nevertheless, he crossed the street and pushed open the single glass door of the hotel.

  Right away, the strong cigar smell sickened him. It came from the other end of the long and narrow entrance hall. He noticed a sitting room to his right, through a pair of double glass doors. He walked in and spotted a couple of sofas and chairs scattered around the small square room. Cameron slipped back to the n
arrow entrance hall, and walked along the hardwood floors to the other end, where he saw a small elevator to his left and what had to be the hotel’s front counter off to the right.

  He approached the counter and saw an old woman lying on a small bed behind it. A cigar burned on a metallic ashtray next to the bed.

  “Pardon, madame.”

  The old lady opened her eyes, grunted, and slowly got up. She snatched the cigar and let it hang off the edge of her mouth. Cameron detected a foul body odor; at first hidden by the cigar smoke, it became much more noticeable as she got closer.

  “Oui?” she responded in a voice as coarse and unfriendly as her appearance. Her sunken eyes studied Cameron through the smoke.

  “Bon soir, madame. Quelle est la chamber de Madame Guilloux?”

  “Un moment.” The woman put on a pair of glasses and flipped through the hotel’s registry.

  “Madame Guilloux n’est pas ici.” The woman turned away.

  “Ah…pardon, madame…”

  The woman ignored him and walked back to her bed.

  “Madame?”

  “Madame Guilloux n’est pas, ici! Fiche-moi la paix!”

  Cameron still remembered enough French to realize that the old woman had just told him to shut up. He clenched his teeth in response to the rude remark, and was about to cut loose with the worst of his French when he noticed someone to his left.

  “You’re five minutes late,” said a deep feminine voice in flawless English. Cameron turned his head and saw the tall, trim figure of Marie Guilloux across the hall. She wore a pair of tight-fitting blue jeans and a San Francisco Hard Rock Cafe sweatshirt, and was holding the elevator door open.

  “Are you just going to stand here, Mister…?”

  Cameron walked in her direction. “Name’s Cameron Stone and I’m still a few minutes early, Mrs. Guilloux.”

  “Marie, please. I never liked being called that even when my husband was alive. Come, let’s go upstairs before someone spots us.” Cameron stepped into the tiny elevator, barely big enough for the both of them. Marie closed the door. With his body almost pressed against hers, Cameron heard the old elevator make a few worrisome noises before it finally started moving upward. He just stood there, uncomfortably still, his face only inches away from hers. He kept his eyes trained on a spot on the wall, but felt Marie’s eyes on him. She studied him.