by James Codlin
Hawk Leader vaporized in mid-air.
“North Star, this is Hawk Two, Hawk Leader is splashed. Missiles blew on the rails. I’m going in.”
Hawk Two, piloted by Lieutenant Marco Otaki Albuquerque of Recife, Brazil, watched the Ariane 6 rocket rise toward the flight level of his R-5 Relâmpago fighter. The jets had been delivered only one month before from the São Paulo plant of EMOSA, a joint venture of Embraer, the Brazilian national aircraft company, and Moto Aviation of Japan. The fighter was the newest and best in the world, combining aircraft and avionics design that Moto Electric and Moto Aviation had acquired in a joint venture with American aircraft companies, and which had then been further refined by Moto, working in concert with other Japanese electronics companies.
Otaki had watched Hawk Leader’s rockets explode on the rails and suspected a fault in the computerized missile arm and launch system. He focused on the flame of the armed nuclear rocket, and his targeting system automatically locked on, using the latest Moto Electric ocular target acquisition system, commanded by the pilot’s eyes. The attack computer calculated the rapidly closing distance between the fighter and the Ariane 6.
The canopy displayed the intercept speed and the necessary heading data flashed to the flight control system. The five stage afterburners automatically went to attack power. The sleek fighter rolled and smoothly accelerated. Lieutenant Otaki scanned the status board and saw that his fighter would arrive within firing range in five seconds and the air-to-air missiles mounted on his aircraft were armed, locked on target, and ready to launch. He thought about Major Vega and switched off the computer, maneuvering for a manual intercept.
*
A cloud of cigarette smoke hung at eye level in the darkened room at Moto Electric headquarters outside of Tokyo. Tightly controlled voices spoke in clipped sentences and eyes were glued to high-definition tactical displays and radar repeater screens. To one side was an exact replica of the cockpit of the EMOSA Relâmpago fighter, its interior dark and occupied by a single pilot whose displays duplicated those of the fighter diving after the Ariane 6 rocket.
A man in a gray jacket sat at a console overlooking the simulator.
The simulator pilot’s voice came over the commander’s headset saying, “Intercept alignment valid.” The commander knew this meant Flight Lieutenant Otaki, half a world away, was closing on the Ariane 6 rocket, perfectly aligned to destroy it.
“Terminate Hawk Two,” the controller said.
The pilot in the simulator transmitted back to the controller, “Executing dive.” As he spoke, he shoved the control stick full forward. Repeater gauges and instruments in the simulator confirmed that the aircraft was diving with its nose straight down, the vertical velocity indicator pegged at the maximum, the altitude scroll unwinding in an unreadable blur.
Then all gauges zeroed.
The simulator pilot stood and bowed toward the master technician. “Hawk Two terminated,” he said.
*
General Roble on the North Star airborne command post heard his pilots yell “Holy shit!” over the intercom.
“Pilot, Command, what happened?”
“The Relâmpago went into a vertical dive with full burners and crashed!” he cried. “The missile’s still flying, passing fourteen thousand feet!”
“How are we gonna stop that bastard?” Roble demanded over the intercom. As he asked the question, he already knew they were out of answers.
*
Captain Fujiwara, piloting President Ishikawa’s 737 aircraft, pulled one earphone muff aside. “The two fighters are down,” he said to President Ishikawa. “I can see the flames of the rising missile.”
“Do it, then,” Ishikawa said.
“Yes, sir,” Fujiwara responded, shoving the throttles forward and dropping the nose.
*
The darkened radarscopes suddenly lit up and images appeared.
“Give me the picture,” General Roble called to the airman beside him.
“Sir, I confirm two fighters down. Missile is climbing through seventeen thousand feet. Shall I call for more fighters, sir?”
“No time. Any armaments on this aircraft? Anything at all?”
“Negative, sir, and—what the hell?”
“What?” Roble demanded.
The airman was concentrating on his radar screen. “Skin paint on an unknown aircraft passing flight level two-one-zero, rate of descent five thousand feet per minute, heading vector… straight for the Ariane rocket!”
Roble stared at his repeater scope, watching the blip with disbelief. The radar computer painted a vector based on the aircraft’s heading, a glowing arrow straight to the image of the rocket.
“Range two thousand meters, closing fast.”
Roble keyed his microphone. “Aircraft descending, passing flight level two-zero-zero, heading zero-eight-zero, say identity and intentions.”
He released the key and listened.
Nothing.
“Unknown aircraft, say identity,” Roble radioed again.
The blip crept closer and closer to the missile’s image.
“Who are you, and what are you doing?” Roble demanded, dispensing with radio procedure.
“One thousand meters, closing,” the airman said.
Through his headset, the general heard only static.
“Five hundred meters.”
“Turn, turn away!” Roble broadcast.
He heard transmission feedback, followed by a quiet voice saying, “With this, I restore my honor.”
The image of the unknown aircraft and the missile merged on the radar screen.
*
Waro Moto frowned fiercely as he pressed the headset muff to his ear. He had listened to the calls to and from Hawk Leader and Hawk Two until each of them had fallen silent. Now he listened to North Star repeatedly transmitting to the unknown aircraft. There was no response. After two minutes, Moto heard, “This is North Star transmitting in the blind to anyone listening—the Ariane 6 missile has been destroyed. It was intercepted in midair by what we have now identified as Latino Union One… we believe the president was on board.”
Moto put the headset down and flexed his large hands open and closed. King Carlos and the pope watched him closely.
“Ishikawa’s dead. Unfortunately, the missile will not strike San Juan Diego. The government is still viable, but it’s headless. We have to move quickly.”
Moto rose from his seat and went forward to the cockpit. He talked to the pilots for a moment and came back to his seat. “I’m going to make a broadcast,” he said, pulling on his headset. “My communications center is making sure I will be heard on all radio and television stations in the Latino Union with a simultaneous translation into Spanish and Portuguese.”
Moto adjusted the microphone as King Carlos also pulled on a headset to listen. The industrialist composed himself and pushed the transmit key.
“Ladies and gentlemen, all citizens of the Latino Union, this is an official announcement from your government. A very serious threat to the security of our member countries has just been averted, thanks to the courage and decisiveness of one man: King Carlos of Spain. In brief, a group of revolutionaries commandeered a missile in Guiana—a missile that they then modified by attaching and arming a nuclear warhead. That missile was launched with the intention of destroying the city of San Juan Diego and the Latino Union government.
“President Ishikawa, head of state of the Latino Union and commander in chief of the armed forces, became incapacitated by the stress of the crisis and committed suicide. King Carlos, backed by the rock of moral courage, Pope Pius, stepped into the leadership vacuum, and in the face of disloyal factions of the military, made the difficult decisions and caused the missile to be destroyed.
“These two great leaders saved the Latino Union, prevented the loss of millions of civilian lives, and took leadership from Ishikawa, a cowardly incompetent.
“A cabal led by General Manuel Roble and Colonel Celso
Kobe, and abetted by Ms. Gina Ishikawa, the president’s daughter, and other foreign elements, is now brazenly attempting to assert control over the Latino Union through a military coup. I appeal to the disloyal officers and their followers to lay down their arms, and for General Mello, a loyal officer and head of the joint chiefs of staff, to secure the airfield so we may bring King Carlos to San Juan Diego where we will beg him to accept the scepter of state for the Latino Union, with the full support and backing of the pope and the Catholic Church.
“I urge all citizens of the Union to remain calm, to be vigilant for the disloyal cabal, and to help us bring them into custody. Please support our leaders until Carlos’s benevolent rule is assured. To all citizens, good night.”
*
Dennis, Gina, Martín, Alejandra, and Lenin sat in stunned silence as static crackled from the communication center speakers.
The door opened and Colonel Kobe quickly walked in.
“Did you hear that?” he asked. They nodded.
“What about your constitution?” Lenin asked. “What’s supposed to be the succession?”
“The vice president,” Kobe said. He unhooked a military radio from his web belt, keyed it and said, “Task Force Echo, this is Echo Lead. Form up and we’re headed for Daisy on the double. Move out!” He looked at Gina’s group. “You all better stay put—there could be some shooting.”
“What’s ‘Daisy,’?” Lenin asked.
“Vice President Saavedra,” he said. “The VP residence is just across the compound from here, and we need to protect her. Sounds like Mello’s going to try to keep her from taking over. The door into this comm center’s heavy and should protect you. I’ll try to keep you up to speed by radio.”
They watched as the colonel closed the door behind him.
Gina sat with her arms tightly wrapped around herself, tears forming in her eyes. “My father,” she said. Martín held her closely to him.
“Gina, we have no idea if anything he said is true,” Alejandra said.
“I know. But in the meantime, we can’t just sit here.”
“I agree,” Lenin said. “Although it’s still sooner than I would like, I think it’s time for our own broadcast. We need to counter the propaganda immediately.”
That made Dennis perk up. “Watch my dust, Doc.”
*
Dennis had two television cameras set up and adjusted to capture Alejandra, Lenin, and Gina. As he attached small microphones to their shirts, he said, “The control panel has a network override to tie big-time visitors into the Latin American television network, preempting normal broadcasts. It all goes through the Moto Electric communications satellites, so I figure we’ll have five minutes, ten tops, before Moto reprograms the transponders on the satellites to block us. I’m counting on a few of the bigs like CNN and Star to pick up the story by the time we’re cut off so that we can keep broadcasting through one of their birds. I’ll also be streaming this over the internet, but I’m also worried about that link staying active, given Moto’s fingerprints are all over the whole goddamned system here. Get your best points across early.”
Lenin nodded.
Dennis moved back behind the cameras, checked the console setting, and counted them down with his fingers from five to zero.
Lenin saw the red light on the camera illuminate. “Citizens of the Latino Union, good morning. I am Teodoro Lenin, professor emeritus from the University of Buenos Aires, and most recently, the University of Miami. I am considered an authority on Latin American history and government. With me this morning is Ms. Gina Ishikawa, daughter of the late president of the Latino Union, and Ms. Alejandra Rojas Deza, a law student and legal assistant whose importance in our story will become clear in a few minutes. We are here to talk to you about an injustice that is about to be perpetrated on all of you.
“About fifteen minutes ago there was a radio broadcast that has since been rebroadcast every few minutes claiming that president Ishikawa was a coward, King Carlos is a hero, and asking all of you to accept the king of Spain as your leader. All of this is contrary to the truth and tramples on the constitution that all of you voted upon and that protects your rights. What that broadcast is proposing is nothing more than turning the clock back two hundred years and making the Latino Union a colony of Spain.”
Dennis watched the signals from the satellite, which was still receiving and retransmitting his broadcast.
“It was further stated in that broadcast that ‘disloyal’ elements of the Latino Union, Ms. Ishikawa included, were trying to usurp the Latino Union’s proper line of succession,” Lenin continued. “This is also a lie, and I intend to prove it in the next few minutes. Colonel Celso Kobe is trying to protect your rights and your constitution as I speak. The man you heard pronouncing all these lies is Waro Moto, a Japanese citizen whose industrial empire is part of the conspiracy to make you the subjects of foreign powers.”
*
Waro Moto put the headset on when the pilot motioned from the cockpit door that Moto needed to hear something. Moto heard a man’s voice, calm and reasonable, talking in a conversational voice about the Fourth Angel document and the underlying conspiracy.
He ripped off the headset. “Get my control room on the radio!”
When the supervisor was on, Moto ordered, “Reprogram those transponders right now!” He picked up his plane’s phone and dialed the Latino Union Military command post.
“Mello,” he demanded, “get your troops over to that studio and shut it down!”
General Mello sounded strained. “Mr. Moto, Colonel Kobe has set up a perimeter around the compound. He has my troops pinned down. We’re moving up armor, but it will take some time.”
“For god’s sake, you idiot, call in an air strike!” Moto exclaimed.
“Mr. Moto, there are some air force units siding with Kobe, and they’re flying combat air patrol overhead.”
“Get them off the air!” Moto shouted. “Blow up the power lines to the complex!”
*
Dennis’s eyes never left the signal monitoring equipment that tracked the strength of the satellite uplink. The stack meters glowed brightly, rising and falling with variations of the transmission. Suddenly they all collapsed to zero.
“He cut us,” Dennis called out. “Hold up a minute until another network picks us up.”
He watched the dedicated phone lines marked with the names of various well-known networks. “Come on, come on,” he muttered, “Pick up the goddamned story of the century.”
The light for the BBC lit and blinked. Dennis snatched up the phone.
“Prinn here.”
“Dennis?” asked the voice with a plum British accent. “What’s going on there?”
“You want the story?” Dennis asked.
“If it’s for real.”
“It’s fair dinkum, mate. Give me your code and coordinates.”
Dennis wrote down the numbers the man gave him. He hung up, attacked his computer keyboard, slewing the dish antenna around to new coordinates and entering the transponder code. He threw a bank of switches and stared at the signal monitors. Suddenly they jumped and filled the readout blocks.
“We’re up again,” he called to Lenin and Ishikawa. Lenin began ticking points off from his fingers, citing the deaths of persons who had been caught up in the net of the conspiracy, beginning with Father Croix in France.
*
“They’re broadcasting again, on the fucking BBC,” Moto shouted. His voice had roughened considerably over the day.
“We have the signal corps looking into it,” General Mello said, “trying to cut—”
“The antenna, you imbecile, take out the antenna! It’s up on the roof of that residence compound.”
*
“When did you first meet David Broch’s employer?” Lenin asked Alejandra.
“It was during the second week of David’s research in Sevilla. The man’s name was Julio Vargas, and he showed me his identification cards that said h
e was an official of the crown, the Office of Special Projects.”
“Did you ever see Mr. Vargas with Mr. Waro Moto?” Lenin asked.
“Yes. I came to Vargas’s office with David because David didn’t speak Spanish and Vargas spoke very little English. As we were waiting in the reception area, a secretary came out, and while the door was open, I saw Mr. Moto sitting in the chair in front of Mr. Vargas’s desk.”
“Do you have documents signed by King Carlos, proving it was he who commissioned Mr. Broch’s work on Latin American sovereignty?”
“Yes, I do.”
Alejandra clicked the remote in her hand, Dennis punched buttons on his console, and the screen filled with an electronic scan of the retention letter between Broch and the king. Carlos VII’s dynamic signature was unmistakable.
“Do you have documents signed by King Carlos and Mr. Waro Moto proving that they worked together?”
“Yes, I do.”
Alejandra clicked the remote again, and the presentation she put together flicked to the next slide.
*
“General, I do not understand,” Waro Moto said into his airborne telephone. “You have given orders for your air force to bomb the presidential compound, but your orders have not been carried out?”
“Units closest to San Juan Diego have refused to carry out the order,” Mello responded. “And they have launched aircraft to intercept other units that are willing to carry it out.”
“It sounds to me like you have a mutiny on your hands. And the penalty for mutiny is death.”
“Yes, Mr. Moto, that’s true—but you have to have soldiers willing to carry out the order.”