Siege of Lightning

by R. J. Pineiro

  Kessler shrugged. Somehow that answer didn’t surprise him. NASA had been putting less and less emphasis on tile repair kits since the early days of the shuttle, when tiles were falling off left and right during tests due to poor adhesives. Since then, better compounds had been developed that greatly improved the reliability of the thermal shield to the point that not one single shuttle mission had had the need to repair or replace tiles in space. For that reason, Kessler doubted that the epoxy foam that came with Lightning’s tile repair kit would be enough to fill a dozen holes, most of which were six inches square by five inches deep.

  “Say, Michael, when was the last time you slept more than a few hours?”

  “The day before the launch.”

  “Get some rest. We’ll wake you in a few hours.”

  “Roger, Houston.”

  Kessler reached for the orbiter medical system. The three-part medical kit, designed to handle simple illness or injuries, had some medications to stabilize severely injured crew members. He cleaned Jones’s head wound and bandaged it. That was the easy part. The ribs were different. He played cautiously and decided to leave them alone for now. As long as Jones didn’t move much, the broken ribs shouldn’t affect his lungs.

  Kessler brought Jones to one of three horizontal rigid sleep stations and unzipped the sleeping bag attached to the padded board. The station was over six feet long and thirty inches wide. Kessler easily guided Jones into it and zipped it up. In weightlessness the sleeping bag would hold Jones against the padded board with enough pressure to create the illusion of sleeping on a comfortable bed. Kessler wanted to do more for his friend, but was afraid that in doing so he could cause more harm than good.

  “Sweet dreams, CJ.”

  Kessler crawled onto another horizontal station and tried to fall asleep but couldn’t. Too many questions preyed on his mind. Too many things had gone wrong. First the number-one SSME had blown up, then the OMS engines had malfunctioned, and now a faulty MMU. He exhaled. Inspection of the SSME and OMS engines would have to wait until they returned to Earth, but the MMU…

  Kessler bolted out of bed, floated inside the air lock, and donned a space suit. He closed the internal hatch, depressurized the chamber, and opened the external hatch. He had left Jones’s MMU tied to the side wall on the other side of the payload bay. Kessler gently pushed himself in that direction without regard for a safety clip until he reached the MMU. He then clipped one end of a woven line hanging from his suit to the side wall.

  The nitrogen jets of the MMU had somehow remained open, sending Jones tumbling out of control. Kessler was only partially familiar with the MMU design, but he had an engineering degree and felt somewhat confident enough to open the rear panel door where the nitrogen tanks for the jet thrusters were located. He pulled back a square panel and exposed a section of the tanks along with an array of wires coming from the hand controls. The wires were connected to mini-valves that controlled the flow of nitrogen through a number of tubes coming out of the tanks.

  That made sense, Kessler decided. Each tube went to a specific jet. The opening and closing of a valve was in reality what controlled the flow of compressed nitrogen to a jet. The wires went through a translation circuit that converted the hand-control commands into valve commands, which in turn regulated the flow of nitrogen to a particular jet. The conversion was needed because the joystick-type hand controls provided digital pulses which then needed to be amplified and converted into an electric current capable of driving the small valves. The design was simple but reliable. Then again, Kessler thought, the reliability of the system was not any better than the reliability of the individual components.

  The MMU had twenty-four separate jets. Twelve primary jets and twelve for backup. That meant twenty-four tubes coming out of the nitrogen tanks, controlled by twenty-four valves. The way Jones had gone out of control told Kessler that there had to be more than just one jet misfiring; otherwise Jones would have had plenty of working jets to counter a malfunctioning jet. Also, Jones’s nitrogen supply, designed to last for several hours in “normal” operation, had lasted but a minute. These two facts told Kessler that something had overridden the hand controls and commanded the valves to open and close at random, quickly depleting the load of compressed nitrogen in the MMU tanks. There was no other explanation. Either that or several valves had malfunctioned at the same time. Kessler could accept one or two valves going bad at once, but more than that? He couldn’t buy it. Something had overridden the hand controls.

  Kessler shifted his gaze to a point to the right of the array of wires, where all the wires converged before going in a number of directions to their appropriate valves.

  What the hell?

  Kessler blinked twice and refocused his vision on what appeared to be a small timer attached to the circuitry that translated the digital pulses from the hand controls into the electric current that drove the valves.

  A timer? Why? Then he understood, and the revelation sent chills through his body. The small timer, its tiny display showing 0:00:00, had two wires coming out of the front. The wires were connected so that they would short-circuit the translator circuitry of both the primary and the backup jets. That meant that the moment the timer went off, the translator circuitry got roasted and the valves received random electric surges.

  Jesus Christ!

  Kessler inhaled deeply, held it, and then slowly exhaled. He spoke into his voice-activated headset.

  “Houston? Lightning.”

  “Ah . . . Michael? You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

  “Houston, I’m afraid I’ve got pretty bad news for all of us, particularly for us two up here.”

  “What’s that, Lightning?”

  “Someone sabotaged Jones’s MMU.” Kessler closed the MMU back panel and secured it. He unclipped his safety line and gently pushed himself toward the front of the payload bay.

  “What? Say again, Lightning.”

  “Sabotage, Houston. I have found a tampering device in the translator circuit of Jones’s MMU. I’m in the process of checking mine.” He reached his MMU and quickly opened the back panel. His eyes now knew what to look for. Nothing. His MMU had not been tampered with, at least as far as the translator circuit was concerned. “Mine appears clean. Houston. I think it would be best if we head back down to Earth as soon as possible.”

  “That’s our thinkning down here as well, Lightning, especially in light of what you just found out. We should have an answer on the missing tile situation within the next few hours. In the meantime get some rest. You’ll need it.”

  “Roger, Houston.”

  “Now, get some sleep. That’s an order. We’ll wake you up in five hours.”

  Kessler considered that as he floated into the air lock. Sleep was about the furthest thing from his mind at the moment.

  KOUROU, FRENCH GUIANA

  Vanderhoff threw the copy of The New York Times against the wall. His initial plan had failed. Lightning had somehow reached orbit, but although the press did not mention any problems, he knew the orbiter was wounded. It had to be. The main engine sabotage was fool proof. It had to work. NASA was doing a superb job of covering it up. Vanderhoff was also certain that the contingent sabotage of the OMS engines had left the orbiter almost stranded.

  He got up from the leather couch and walked toward the windows behind his desk. He rubbed his eyes and checked his watch. It was two-thirty in the afternoon.

  He stared at the Athena V rocket nearly ready for launch. That would be the final nail in NASA’s coffin.

  He nodded as he visualized the headlines in the Times. Lightning, the failure of the decade, right behind the Endeavour disaster and the Hubble telescope. The entire world will finally realize, he reflected, that NASA just doesn’t have what it takes to prevent accidents from happening. No one will suspect sabotage as long as Lightning is destroyed. Vanderhoff felt certain that i
f NASA scientists ever got their hands on Lightning, they would discover the sabotage, but that, he decided as his lips curved upward, would not happen. Lightning would never make it back to Earth.

  He turned around and stared at the Athena rocket once more. Nine hours, he reflected. Nine hours and it will all be over.

  He frowned. There was still the issue of Higgins. The CIA official was in trouble. His phone call the night before had been distressful. The Head of Clandestine Services was after him, and Vanderhoff knew that if captured, Higgins could directly incriminate the network. The chain reaction that would follow such exposure would be devastating. A decade’s worth of planning and investing to position Europe as the world superpower by the end of the century would go astray the moment European leaders discovered such a conspiracy right under their noses. No, Higgins had become a liability—the reason Vanderhoff had made an additional phone call after he’d hung up with Higgins. It had to be done. Nothing personal, he thought. The EEC’s plans for the future of Europe in space came first.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Higgins walked toward the rendezvous point, where Vanderhoff’s people would be waiting to pull him out. A death would be staged. No one would look for a dead person. The idea had been Higgins’s and Vanderhoff had loved it. Clean, professional, safe. A body would be planted in Higgins’s place. A mutilated, charred body with no chance of physical identification. Higgins’s personal items would be with the body. Care would be taken in making sure no one could trace the body for dental records. Beyond that, Higgins had no special body markings that would lead anyone to believe the planted body wasn’t his.

  What had amazed Higgins the most had been the fact that Vanderhoff would be able to pull it off on such short notice. Higgins had indeed underestimated the German’s resources. But it didn’t matter. In less than twenty-four hours he would be enjoying life in one of Vanderhoff’s South American estates surrounded by as many luxuries as he desired. That was the reward for putting his neck on the line for the EEC and Athena. The EEC leaders would take care of him.

  He approached a worn-down, abandoned red-brick building located in one of the worst neighborhoods in Washington, the warehouse where Vanderhoff’s local contact had instructed him to go.

  Wearing a gray jogging outfit and tennis shoes, Higgins walked through a large opening in the front, where a sliding gate once stood. He carried a briefcase with him containing the few personal items he couldn’t leave behind. He’d left all his bank accounts alone. With Vanderhoff, money would be unnecessary. Besides, that way no one would notice anything out of the ordinary. A simple disappearance and then a body found in one of the city’s worst areas. Higgins’s body. He had no family, no wife, no kids. A clean break, simple, elegant. He’d left nothing behind that he would miss, yet plenty would be waiting for him with Vanderhoff.

  He squinted and stared at the single light bulb on the far right side of the dark and humid cavernous room. It illuminated a small table. He frowned and walked toward it. He carried no weapons—another request from Vanderhoff. Higgins understood his logic. Do nothing that would arouse suspicion.

  Higgins spotted some barrels on the left side of the otherwise empty warehouse, which was probably used by the homeless for refuge during the winter months. He noticed a briefcase on the table.

  Strange, he thought. He reached the edge of the table and looked in every direction. Nothing. He shifted his gaze back to the black leather briefcase and the note taped to the front of it. It said to check for instructions inside while a surveillance team made sure nobody was following him.

  “Hmm…” He decided that Vanderhoff could be extremely careful when he wanted to be. He pressed the side levers on the front of the briefcase. Both latches snapped open at once. Higgins opened the briefcase.

  His senses registered the loud explosion, accompanied by a split-second vision of fire. Then he could not see or hear anything, be he felt agonizing pain. He tried to move his arms and turn around but couldn’t. His legs buckled and he tried to put his arms out to stop the fall but they were no longer there. The heat intensified. Blissfully, he began to lose consciousness. An excruciating burning pain engulfed him as the flames consumed him.

  SOMEWHERE OVER THE CARIBBEAN

  Dizzy and tense, Pruett surrendered himself one again to the humiliating agony of nausea over the small aluminum toilet in the lavatory of the VIP transport plane.

  “Oh, God,” he mumbled as his stomach forced nothing but bile up his throat. He didn’t try to resist, and let it all out. His eyes watered as the overwhelming odor nauseated him even more.

  Cameron knocked on the door. “You okay, Tom?”

  “Ah…yes…I’m fine…it happens all the…oh, shit!”

  Cameron heard Pruett’s guttural noises and decided to leave him to his privacy. He walked back to his seat, next to Marie.

  “Is he all right?” she asked.

  “Looks like his stomach can’t handle airplane flights anymore. His ulcers are eating him alive.”

  “Oh, God. How terrible. He should go see a doctor.”

  Cameron smiled. “Not the Tom Pruett I used to know. He’d rather die than go see a doctor.”

  Cameron heard the rest-room door opening. “You all right?” he asked Pruett.

  “Fucking planes…pardon the language, Marie,” Pruett murmured as he eased into a seat a few rows ahead of them. The rest of the plane was empty. They were the only passengers.

  Cameron shook his head and stared at Marie’s bloodshot eyes. “You better get some sleep while you can.”

  She nodded, lifted the armrest in between them, leaned her head against his shoulder, and closed her eyes. A minute later, Cameron felt her breathing steadying. Marie. The only person that knew about his past, and to this moment Cameron still didn’t know what had compelled him to tell her. Maybe trying to ease my pain by bringing it out in the open? By sharing it with someone who would understand? Someone who seemed to care?

  He simply stared at the clear sky as they flew over the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico, he thought. In spite of what most people said about their large neighbor to the south, Cameron had enjoyed his years there, certainly more than the years in Vietnam, in hell, everyone trapped in his own world, not knowing who to trust and struggling not to make any friendships.

  It seemed that in Vietnam death hid behind every corner, behind every bush. American forces became good at handling the dead. All properly body-bagged and tagged for their silent return. So many of his friends returned home that way.

  Cameron checked his watch. One more hour before they arrived at Howard Air Force Base in Panama, where a Special Forces team would be waiting for Pruett’s briefing.

  Cameron sighed and continued gazing out at the blue sky as his thoughts drifted back to Marie, the beautiful stranger who had so abruptly come into his life and literally turned it upside down. He hadn’t felt so comfortable in someone else’s presence since Lan-Anh. There was definitely a chemistry between them. She understood the way he felt. That Claude Guilloux had been a lucky man indeed.

  The thought faded away the moment Cameron closed his eyes. His past haunted him again. Marie’s face was replaced by the face of Skergan. The pleading eyes cut through his soul. Go, Cameron…

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MAMBO

  Discipline is the soul of the army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak and esteem to all.

  —George Washington

  CANAL ZONE, PANAMA

  The day was warm and humid, the sky clear. Firmly clutching a modified Colt Commando submachine gun, First Sergeant Francisco Ortiz moved through the dense forest slowly and warily. Every calculated step was preceded by a careful scan of the heavy foliage around him as he checked for anything that did not belong in the woods. An irregular noise, boot prints, branches broken at an unnatural angle.

  Nothing.
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br />   Satisfied, he moved once more in a deep crouch, softly feeling the terrain with the tip of his boot before setting it down. The strain on his slim but muscular legs was enormous but still bearable. Ortiz belonged to the 7th U.S. Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta, one of the elite squadrons made out of volunteers from the Green Berets, the 82nd Airborne, and the Rangers, trained specifically for tropical jungle warfare. The squadron of over a hundred men was divided into easily deployable platoons.

  Ortiz’s platoon followed his footsteps fifty feet behind. Fourteen others depended on how well he did his job. Ortiz was the eyes and ears of his platoon, code-named Mambo.

  Ortiz sensed something foreign, but wasn’t sure what it was. He stopped, raised his left hand in a fist, and silently dropped to the ground.

  Which of his senses had detected it? Had he seen, heard, or smelled something? Ortiz wasn’t sure, but he felt certain that there was something out there that didn’t belong. He waited a few more seconds before slowly, almost imperceptibly, rising back up to a deep crouch.

  There it was again. This time he decided it was a sound, almost masked by the swaying branches of a nearby rosewood tree. Ortiz smiled. Whoever was out there was good, but not good enough to get by trained ears. Ortiz had worked hard at developing each of his senses to levels of equal sensitivity. Most jungle warriors had one sense they depended on more than the others. The problem with that, Ortiz knew, was that it imposed limitations on their abilities to adapt to different battle conditions. At night, even though he wore night-vision goggles, Ortiz could also rely on sounds and smells. An enemy standing still at night in the forest would be very difficult to spot, even with the Sopelen TN2-1 goggles Ortiz would be wearing. But the enemy could make a slight noise, or his body give out an odor that could be detected by Ortiz’s nostrils. Ortiz tried his best to avoid becoming too attached to mechanical enhancements constantly used by other point men because, in the end, he knew one day he could find himself in a situation where it was just him, his hunting knife, and the forest against the enemy. No fancy electronic gear to protect him. Ortiz knew he would be prepared if the day ever came. In his mind there was no other way. A true jungle warrior could use the forest alone to stalk, attack, and retreat totally undetected, leaving the enemy wondering how it had all happened.