The Orion Protocol

by Gary Tigerman

  “Good God in heaven.”

  Jake dug out his wallet again and stood up.

  “Anybody have a clean Zip disk? Twenty bucks for a disk!”

  Four hands with blank Zips shot into the air.

  Outside on the street, a black GM sedan had double-parked next to the Navigator. Four men swarmed the truck.

  Peering out Kinko’s storefront glass, Jake could see them. But all he was thinking about was where he had to go now, and the one stop he had to make before he went there. Salvation appeared in the form of an on-duty D.C. cab stopping right at the corner, less than a ten-yard sprint away.

  On the PBS soundstage, Angela and Marvin Epstein were hip-deep in a flood of Fibbies fanning aggressively out through the studio. The brown-shoe bio-invasion was led by a graying, beefy agent-in-charge named Stansfield, waving an official-looking document.

  “We have a federal warrant to search the premises for a Commander Jake Deaver,” Stansfield said, confronting Angela. “And I expect everyone here to cooperate fully or you will be subject to arrest. Turn off these cameras.”

  “No!” Epstein pointed at the camera crew. “Keep going.”

  Marvin thought it curious that the agents didn’t know they’d been knocked off the air. It was going to tape, but that was irrelevant: this was a pissing contest.

  “Keep rolling, keep rolling!” Angela gestured vigorously as Epstein got right in Stansfield’s face.

  “A search warrant does not convey the authority to interfere with or abridge lawful activities. And Agent, uh, Stansfield, here, either knows the law or should know the law.”

  The agent-in-charge looked ready to drop Marvin with the butt end of his gun. Instead, Stansfield just glared, turning away in disgust and raising his voice to include everyone on the soundstage.

  “All right. I’m only going to say this one time. Obstructing justice, harboring a fugitive, or interfering with a federal agent in the exercise of his duty—these are all federal offenses. If anyone here knows the whereabouts of Commander Deaver and does not come forward now, I assure you, you can and will be subject to felony prosecution . . .”

  The staff and crew remained silent, documenting everything on tape as Stansfield’s team of agents straggled back from their search empty-handed.

  “Thank you, Agent Stansfield,” Epstein said. “Now, if your unproductive search of my client’s premises is complete, not to mention your willful attempt to disrupt a public broadcast . . .”

  Stansfield glanced at the red light on top of an RCA camera moving closer toward him. Up on the in-house monitor he could see his own mottled complexion growing unflatteringly larger and larger. Epstein grinned.

  “Lovely. And for twenty-nine ninety-five you can order a copy of this program, along with a transcript, if you like. Just go to ScienceHorizon.org—”

  “Save it for your licensing hearing, jerk-off.”

  Stansfield and his men retreated as swiftly as they had crashed in. Crew and staff broke into cheers and applause.

  “Marvin Epstein . . . Studley Do-Right!” Miriam exclaimed, rushing down from the booth to give him a hug. Angela joined the love-in.

  “Good work!” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

  “Thanks.”

  Epstein looked both pumped and a bit embarrassed as the camera crew huddled around to shake his hand. Miriam’s assistant handed her a phone.

  “Wolf Blitzer and Larry King . . .”

  “Gentlemen!” Miriam was exuberant, almost shouting into the mouthpiece. “We expected a reaction, but shit-canning the Constitution?! What? Oh, no. Oh, shit. Hold on a second. Angie . . . ?”

  “What?” Angela heard the bad news in her partner’s voice.

  “Augie’s at Bethesda Naval Hospital in the ICU.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “What else, guys?” Miriam grimaced, locking eyes with her partner, and repeated the news as she was hearing it. “Emergency bypass . . . It’s not on-air yet . . . How about the crew?”

  “Oh, God. People . . . everybody? Quiet, please.” Angela gestured for everybody to settle down so Miriam could hear.

  “D.C. cops, okay. Do you know which station? Thanks. Who? Yes. Jesus! For what? Okay, thanks, guys. You got it.”

  Miriam hung up.

  “Marvin?!” She called it out at the top of her voice, not realizing he was standing right next to her.

  “Yo.”

  “Sorry. Jimmy and Danny . . .”

  “The video crew?”

  “Right. They’re with the D.C. cops. We don’t know what the charges are, probably resisting or interfering. Try and get it dropped, would ya?”

  “Got it. What about Colonel Blake?”

  “Augie’s in surgery at Bethesda, emergency bypass. We’ll know more in a few hours. Also, Eklund and his buds have been arrested by the FBI for gambling at the Mayfair Hotel. I want to bail them out, too, okay?”

  “Gambling?” Marvin looked puzzled and then hurried out.

  “Angie? CNN wants a stand-up, live, they’re sending a crew—”

  “What else about Augie?”

  “He’s under the knife, kiddo. That’s all we know.”

  “Angie?”

  Angela turned as her secretary began whispering urgently and gesturing toward the back entrance to the studio.

  Jake was waiting at the top level of the parking garage with the taxi running as Angela dashed out the back door and threw herself into the cab, where they held on to each other like reunited refugees. Angela broke it off first.

  “Augie had a heart attack.”

  “Oh, God. How bad is it?”

  “Don’t know. He’s in surgery. And the FBI just left, looking for you. It’s like we hit a beehive with a baseball bat.”

  “Well, hang on, it’s not over. And it’s not just about us.”

  Above them, a helicopter was sweeping past, whipping its harsh white light around. The cabdriver craned his neck up in curiosity and then looked at Jake in his rearview mirror.

  “You got an address for me?” he said, chewing and cracking Nicorette gum in a nervous mechanical rhythm.

  “Sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue.” Deaver looked at Angela and held her hand hard as the taxi took off.

  79

  By the time they arrived at the White House with a black helicopter in pursuit and two cars full of DIA operatives closing from behind, there was only one decision to make: to whom should Deaver surrender.

  Directing the petrified taxi driver to the Marines manning the guard-post entrance, they decided Jake’s best chance was with the Secret Service and Angela insisted on staying with him. Without looking back, they jumped out of the cab and ran as hard as they could past the cement antivehicle barricades and out toward the White House lawn.

  “Hey! Stop!” Triggering a deafening alarm, the Marines at the gate shouted after them and hit the high-powered area floods, turning night into day.

  “Stop! Stop right there!”

  The Defense Intelligence sedans careened up to the post, but were quickly blocked by a Jeep full of heavily armed Marines who didn’t seem all that impressed with their identification.

  Jake and Angela were too occupied with flat-out running to see any of it. After twenty yards there were Secret Service appearing from all directions and more Marines sprinting toward them as the insectoid chopper hovered overhead, rotating around the axis of the searchlight it was painting them with.

  Within sight of the colonnade just off the West Wing offices, Jake wheeled directly toward the Secret Service and grabbed for Angela’s arm.

  “Now!”

  They threw themselves down onto the White House lawn, where they were handcuffed, searched, and then led away laughing like idiots and trying to get their breath as the Treasury agents established their authority.

  80

  The conference room down the hall from the Oval Office was crowded with National Security Council members: the Joint Chiefs represented by the chairman, the secretarie
s of state and defense, the heads of NSA, CIA, and DIA, Sandy Sokoff, and Bob Winston, whose resignation still lay on the President’s desk. Plus special invitees not usually part of the mix: the Attorney General, the Russian ambassador, and Dr. Paula Winnick.

  People talked in small groups, watching muted news coverage on monitors around the room, and the President huddled with Sokoff, letting his chief of staff handle the flood of calls and messages.

  “We’ve had a hundred thousand e-mails,” Sandy said, “and about twenty thousand phone messages. I think people are a bit anxious.”

  “Who’s working on a response? I want a draft.”

  The chief of staff had already put the President’s communications A-team to work.

  “Excuse me, Mr. President.” An aide appeared with a phone. “It’s the Cape.”

  “That’ll be about the long count, sir,” Sandy said.

  At Cape Canaveral the space shuttle that would deliver the last satellite needed to fully deploy Project Orion was being held in launch delay mode on the President’s orders. He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece.

  “Sandy? I need more time.”

  Sokoff looked at his Baume & Mercier chrono, new this Christmas.

  “We have ninety minutes before we start to lose the window.”

  The President nodded, spoke briefly into the phone, and hung up.

  “All right, can we please begin?”

  A White House aide handed him a note and stepped back, waiting for a response. The President used his reading glasses and then looked up.

  “Deaver and Browning?”

  “The Secret Service has them outside, sir.”

  “Good.” The President looked at Attorney General Sorens.

  “We have Deaver.”

  He watched the AG’s face harden. Then the President instructed his aide.

  “Send them in.”

  81

  Discussion dissipated and people turned away from the TV news crawl as the two were brought in, flanked by Treasury agents. Jake and Angela looked sober-faced now, and a bit disheveled.

  Jake saw Dr. Paula Winnick seated at the table, her disapproval palpable. Bob Winston murmured something about Deaver being persona non grata to the AG, who seemed to be mentally consigning Jake and Angela to a purgatory of civil and criminal hells.

  All eyes were on the new arrivals. The President broke the silence.

  “Commander Deaver, Ms. Browning? Please sit down. Attorney General Sorens and I have decided you should see what happens when breaking a story means breaking the law. In your case, the Official Secrets Act.”

  “Mr. President—”

  “Commander, take a seat. Ms. Browning? Please.”

  Chairs were pulled out for them, but Jake remained standing.

  “Mr. President, unprovoked acts of military aggression are being carried out without your knowledge or approval . . .”

  Bob Winston made a nasty noise in his throat.

  “God, haven’t you dishonored yourself enough for one night, Commander? Get this goddamned wacko out of here.” He hitched his chin at a Treasury agent, who took a step forward. Jake stood his ground.

  “This is about Project Orion, Mr. President.”

  “Wait.” The President held a hand up. “What about Orion?”

  “It’s not a defense shield—it’s a strategic space weapons system that is already being tested against nonbelligerent targets. And we can prove it.”

  “Any strategic capability of Orion technology violates the joint-development pact, as Madam Secretary and your government surely know.” The Russian ambassador glowered at Secretary of State Wyman. She shook her head.

  “All testing has been done in strict compliance with our agreements, Alexei. And in concord with the Orion Protocol.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not the case,” Jake said.

  The President studied Deaver for signs of mental imbalance.

  “Prove it, Commander.”

  Jake turned to one of the Secret Service agents, who, with a nod from the President, handed Deaver his confiscated copy of the Orion weapons test.

  “Mr. President, this is completely absurd. It’s ridiculous.” Winston stood and raised his voice, pointing over at Jake. “This man is a known head case, not to mention a fugitive from justice. Deaver belongs in prison or a mental health facility—”

  The President cut him off.

  “Please sit down, Bob. Sandy? Give Commander Deaver a hand.”

  Winston sat. The room then broke up into knots of rumbling, hushed conversations as Jake loaded the disk into Sandy Sokoff’s laptop.

  With the military men conferring and the Russian ambassador joined in close colloquy with Secretary Wyman, Angela had a chance to glance over at Paula Winnick. The Nobel laureate’s patrician features seemed to be a study in judgment, her eyes communicating only that irreparable damage had been done and that Angela shared responsibility for the consequences.

  Angela sighed and looked at a monitor above Winnick’s head, where CNN was rerunning Augie’s dramatic on-camera arrest, and streaming updates at the bottom of the screen reported his medical status at Bethesda Naval Hospital. No news yet.

  Then Jake had the Orion test cued up and everyone gathered around the little computer screen. But the whole of his attention was focused on one person.

  “Mr. President, Colonel Blake has authenticated this video, which was taken a few days ago by a camera on board the space shuttle Atlantis. I believe it shows two things: the first thing is the Orion technology being demonstrated as a strategic weapon.”

  “Go ahead, Commander, let’s see it.”

  On-screen, the photon laser could be seen shooting up from Earth and then being deflected by an orbiting mirror satellite toward a handful of bright star-like lights thousands of miles downrange.

  The capability of the deflected beam was clear: it could be directed not just out into space, but anywhere, in all directions.

  “The range in minutes of arc, in other words, how much the orbiting mirror SAT can rotate, demonstrates that incoming missiles are not the only things that Orion can target.” Jake pointed at the screen and replayed the sequence. “With this kind of flexibility, Mr. President, any city on the planet can be held hostage.”

  Moscow’s most senior man in Washington had seen enough.

  “The Commander is right. This is not a software glitch. The capability of the mirror satellite has been all too clearly engineered. Overengineered. It is plainly flexible by design. We did not agree to this! I am conversant with every paragraph of our agreement. We agreed to build together a defense shield with strict, negotiated limitations. What can we conclude now, except that the American leadership and its partners at TRW have conspired to violate our trust? On behalf of my government and my President, I must formally protest—”

  “Alexei Alexandre,” the Secretary began, but the President took charge.

  “Mr. Ambassador, whatever the technical issues may be, I assure you that Orion will be brought into strict compliance and your concerns will be fully addressed and resolved. In the meantime, I hope that your continuing presence here in the Security Council will be taken as evidence of our good faith.”

  The ambassador seemed hardly mollified, but Jake seized the chance to intervene.

  “Mr. President, there is something else.”

  “Commander?”

  “The targets, sir.”

  Rerunning the digitized video of the Orion test in slow motion, Jake now indicated what looked like a cluster of stars visible just above the horizon line.

  “See these little stars out here? If you watch closely you can see they react to the laser pulse.”

  The President and everyone focused on the star-like lights. In extreme slo-mo replay, they could now see the laser bounce off the mirror satellite and the little lights begin streaking away, disappearing out into space as the pulse was directed toward them.

  “These can only be one of two things,” Jake said. �
��Experimental vehicles of Earth origin. Or intelligently guided extraterrestrial spacecraft.”

  The silence in the room was total.

  “I can assure you we have no such vehicles,” the Russian ambassador said, challenging the Americans to be equally forthcoming. The President was already fairly confident about what the Russians did and didn’t have, but saw no reason to embarrass the proud Muscovite by saying so.

  “Well, that’s a relief.” He turned toward the rest of the table. “At least an act of war has not been committed against the Russian Federation. Well, what about it, gentlemen? Assuming Commander Deaver is not perpetrating a hoax, are we shooting at our own targets?”

  Bob Winston’s furiously impassive expression seemed to be holding both his comments and any further military secrets in abeyance. The NSA and CIA directors shook their heads. The Secretary of Defense cleared his throat.

  “To my knowledge, Mr. President, we have no manned or unmanned spacecraft, even in prototype, with that kind of performance capability.”

  “General Thornton?”

  The President turned to the Defense Intelligence chief.

  “Not at this point in time, sir.”

  “General Henderson?” He turned to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Any relevant projects the Secretary might not be aware of?”

  The chairman, representing all the military services, looked at Bob Winston for a long moment and then responded with simple candor.

  “Even if we had some kind of robotic experimental spacecraft like that, sir, they’d be hugely expensive per unit. We wouldn’t waste them as targets in a weapons test. And for the record, sir, I was not informed of any targeting exercises being part of the Project Orion demonstration.”

  “So, what are we looking at, Bob?”

  The attention in the room shifted almost entirely to Winston. He didn’t flinch.

  “Mr. President, we’re looking at extraterrestrial spacecraft and the first successful human attempt at space-based planetary defense.”