“Our NASA accountants say they’ve never seen this ‘color’ of money before. I know for the Antarctic operation, we’re routing money through a private company to hide government involvement.” She frowned. “But the funds to NASA and Los Alamos are also coming from a private company. Our government accountants are having anxiety attacks.”
Katori added, “My key engineers, like Cho, are getting heavy pressure because they’re letting their other programs slide and can’t tell their bosses why. There are some seriously angry program managers out there gunning for us.”
Chandra frowned. “Our team leads are asking why this program remains classified.” She paused. “If the threat is real, why aren’t we involving everyone to increase our resources?”
Meadows asked, “Are you having resource or funding challenges?”
Chandra said, “No. If we need something, we just buy it.”
Katori nodded in agreement.
Meadows said, “So, we have a problem because...?”
Chandra and Katori looked at each other sheepishly.
Josh knew this wasn’t Meadows’ battle. He caught Meadows’ eye, and Meadows gave him a nod.
Josh began slowly, “Ken, Victoria, I understand your team’s concerns. How are you feeling about the project personally?”
Katori smiled. “Don’t worry about me. I’m having a blast. This must be what it was like to be part of the Apollo program.”
Chandra said, “I completely agree. It’s just....”
Josh smiled. “Go ahead.”
“Josh, I’d work on this project if you told me your fairy godmother gave you the tip, but we’re almost a year from its arrival. It should be approaching the orbit of Jupiter. I’ve been keeping a tab on the major observatories. They haven’t detected any new comets. It sure would help our team to have something more concrete.” She looked at Katori. “Particularly, for those under the gun like Cho.”
Josh nodded and made a decision.
“What if I can get you the coordinates and trajectory?”
“That would be fantastic! If it’s 14 months out, we might be able to see it with the big scopes if we’re looking in the right place.”
Meadows asked, “How will you handle the inevitable questions of where the information came from?”
Chandra said, “Most astrophysicists who specialize in asteroids and comets aren’t involved with planetary probes. With my background, they’ll probably assume it came from one of our deep space probes. I doubt they’ll question it as long as it’s coming from me, but I don’t really care what they think as long as we get search time at the big observatories.” She frowned. “Josh, scientists and engineers like numbers. Give us coordinates, and we’re good. When can I get them?”
Davidson had several Middle Eastern operations in progress and a congressional hearing, but he continued to follow the developments in the strange comet program. It was late February before he brought the results back to Buster.
Davidson dropped a surveillance photo on Buster’s desk. “No one knows who Josh Fuze is or where he came from. Most of his team assumes he’s CIA.”
Buster studied the picture. “What do we know about him?”
“He doesn’t have an office anywhere and lives in a small apartment in St. Louis. The only consistent thing we get is that he stays in the background, and everyone, including Meadows, respects him. He’s probably mid-thirties and in excellent physical shape. No accent and knows both engineering and military lingo. We pulled his fingerprints off a glass, but they’ve turned up absolutely nothing. Since 9/11, that’s almost impossible, particularly, for someone in the government or military-industrial complex.”
Buster frowned. “He has to have a government clearance. Can’t we track him through that?”
Davidson shook his head. “He has a Boeing access clearance that should be tied directly to a government clearance, but it dead ends. There’s no background check or history linked to it. The computer system has it tied to some dead military officer. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he’s one of ours.”
“Could he be?”
“We have highly sensitive programs with deep cover agents, but I assure you, I’d know if this guy was on our payroll. I checked with the DNI and FBI. He doesn’t belong to them either. Our informant says the rumors suggest he’s a former SEAL, but it’s probably just because he saved an engineer from falling off a cliff.”
“SEAL Team Six gets involved in some weird stuff.”
Davidson shook his head, “It’s possible his identity was erased, but those programs almost always involve us, and the Navy isn’t claiming him either.”
Buster drummed his fingers on the table. “So you’re telling me we’ve got a bunch of high-level military, engineers and scientists developing a powerful energy-beam weapon, supposedly to protect the world from an impending comet that no one should be able to predict. And one of the key players is a total mystery.”
Davidson shrugged. “That pretty much sums it up.”
Buster looked at his Deputy. “Could there be some super-secret government agency we’re not aware of?”
Davidson said, “Sir, nothing’s impossible, but I’ve been in this business my entire life. I think I would have heard about an agency that could do all this. I suggest we run this by the Administration one more time.”
The President said, “I checked with the last two administrations. No one knows anything about it. How could someone infiltrate our military-industrial complex and create a fake program for God’s sake? Don’t we have security checks and balances to prevent this?”
Buster glanced at Davidson.
Davidson said, “Mr. President, those checks and balances have been working against us. They’re designed to keep information from being extracted ... not inserted. If this thing isn’t real, this guy’s brilliant and knows our system inside out.”
The President shook his head. “Get to the bottom of this, but,” he looked Buster in the eye, “I don’t want any cowboy coups. I want to know what they’re really doing. If this is a genuine program, I want to know who’s behind it. If it’s not, I want to know who’s behind it.”
Buster said, “Yes sir.”
Davidson added, “Sir, they have operations in Antarctica. We’ll need support from the military.”
The President said, “Antarctica? I think that’s under U.S. Pacific Command.”
Davidson nodded. “Yes sir, Admiral Carroll Rea.”
“I’ll tell the Sec Def and Joint Chiefs this is a priority and to support you with whatever you need.”
Buster said, “Thank you.”
As they left the White House, Buster said, “Brian, this becomes the top priority for this agency.”
Davidson nodded, and then said slowly, “Whoever they are, they breached our military-industrial complex.” He paused. “We have to assume they might be able to do the same with other government agencies.”
Buster’s eyes narrowed. “You mean like ours. What are you suggesting?”
“I’d like to run this operation with extremely tight security and as few participants as possible. Use only senior personnel with top-level clearances and full compartmentalization. With your permission, I’ll talk directly to the directors of National Intelligence, Homeland Security and the FBI, and ask them to do the same. I’d even like to have an internal cover story among our agencies and the White House. There’ve been too many leaks in the past with other programs.”
“Good idea.”
Davidson asked, “What do you want to call the operation?”
Buster frowned. “Well, everything points back to this Fuze character.”
Davidson said wryly, “The Jackal’s already taken.”
Buster said, “He’s predicting a comet’s going to clobber the earth, a comet that can’t be seen.” He paused. “We’ll call him the Prophet.”
Davidson sighed. Operation codenames weren’t supposed to describe the operation or subject, that’s why they w
ere codenames, but he needed to pick his battles with Buster carefully.
Davidson set up their first meeting in a special CIA conference room. Everyone on the team was a veteran with the highest security clearance. The internal cover story was a billion-dollar, international drug cartel operating out of southern South America.
Buster started the first official meeting of the Prophet Operations team. “What do we have?”
Davidson, holding up several reports said, “Their Antarctic base is further along than we thought. The structure on the mountain that will house the energy-beam projector is almost finished. At the base of the mountain, the two Russian reactors are in place but aren’t up and running yet.”
Buster said, “Russian reactors!”
Davidson nodded to Dan Chen, the Deputy Director of the CIA’s Science and Technology Directorate.
“They’re small industrial reactors and don’t use weapons-grade uranium,” Chen explained. “It’s an old design. The Russian construction expert, Christoff Bobinski, procured them and is coordinating their installation.”
Buster frowned. “Maybe, but I don’t like Russian involvement, particularly, with anything nuclear. Plus, we’re going to have an international incident on our hands when the world learns Americans are installing nuclear reactors at the South Pole.” He shook his head. “Tell me about this comet deflection beam thing.”
Chen said, “They refer to it as the “Cat Blaster.”
Buster nodded. “Good name. I hate cats.”
“It’s based on the old strategic defense technology. It generates a tightly collimated, extremely high-power, laser beam capable of vaporizing what it hits.”
“So they’ve created a weapon that can destroy anything!”
Chen said, “Sir, the equipment is huge. It’s not portable or effective against ground targets. It really appears to be designed to put a lot of energy on a target in space.”
“Can it shoot down airplanes?”
Chen shrugged. “It’s certainly powerful and accurate enough.” Looking at some notes, he added, “But they don’t have any search or tracking radar.”
The CIA Associate Director for Military Affairs, Lieutenant General Norma Glosson, added, “There isn’t a lot to shoot at near the South Pole, and there are faster, simpler ways to take out aircraft.”
Buster nodded, chewing his gum vigorously. He suddenly said, “My God, they’re going to use it to take out our space station and satellites. They could cripple us by hitting our imaging, GPS and communication. Bastards will probably take out our DirectTV too. We’ll be blind and deaf.”
Chen did a double take, then quickly said, “Sir, this is a laser — a line of sight weapon. If it can’t see it, it can’t hit it. The energy-beam could easily take out satellites above it, but most of our satellites and the Space Station are in low, equatorial orbits. We do have imaging birds in polar orbit they could hit, along with southern hemisphere geosynchronous satellites.”
Chen shuffled through several sheets and found what he was looking for. “However, our engineers say the system runs off capacitors that have to be charged between shots. They designed it for a single powerful shot with several hours of recharge time. They’d only be able to take out one satellite before we nailed them.”
Still animated, Buster said, “I’m telling you, we may not know what the system can really do, and putting it in Antarctica may be a ruse. We need to round these bastards up and sweat the information out of them.”
Davidson jumped in. “Sir, this Cat Blaster is still in a government lab in Los Alamos, and our informant says they’ve got technical problems. We can round the players up and shut them down within hours, but ... we still have no idea who the Prophet reports to. If we slam the door now, we may never know.”
Buster sighed. “OK, but what contingency plan do we have if we guessed wrong?”
Davidson nodded at General Glosson.
“Sir, the pole base is a geographically fixed and unarmored target. We can easily destroy it with a single bomb or missile. The issue is distance. Land-based aircraft would have to fly thousands of miles, but it is within the range of a ship-based Tomahawk cruise missile.”
Buster, still chewing loudly, said, “Yeah. Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
Glosson continued, “They can be launched from a ship or sub off the Antarctic coast. We could blow anything off the top of that mountain within a few hours.”
Buster said, “Norma, the President gave us authorization for full military support.”
She nodded. “I’ll call Admiral Rea and get a Tomahawk shooter assigned.”
Once again, Davidson realized Buster didn’t have the patience for intelligence work. He needed to bring him back from bombs to bugs. “Sir, I think the key to all this lies with the Prophet himself.”
Buster asked, “Have we started surveillance yet?”
The FBI Deputy, Lafferty, said, “We just started. We’re assuming we’re watching an intelligence operative familiar with surveillance techniques. We’re using the most subtle and least intrusive technology we have.”
Buster looked at Davidson. “Let’s use those micro-drone thingies from that ghost surveillance program.”
Frowning, Davidson said, “You mean the Wraith program?”
“Yeah.”
“That technology is still experimental and somewhat dangerous. We’re only supposed to use it outside the U.S.”
Buster shrugged dismissively. “Whatever.”
Josh had to get the comet’s coordinates and trajectory. Based on Chandra and Katori’s comments about their impact on other programs, he suspected — no, he actually sensed — his rogue program was no longer operating under the radar. He might be able to communicate with Jesse without speaking, but it was more comfortable to talk to him out loud, so he went for an early evening run around the park by his apartment.
Setting a steady running pace, he cleared his mind and very softly said, “Jesse, I need to know everything you know about the comet.”
A picture immediately formed in his mind. He had no idea how that was possible, but he should have known Jesse wouldn’t send him a picture on his cell phone. It looked like a potato shaped, charcoal briquette rotating against a black background. Along with the image, he got the dimensions, coordinates and trajectory.
He stumbled and almost fell, yelling, “Fifteen kilometers!”
Another runner coming from the opposite direction, smiled and said, “Fifteen K, way to go!”
Stepping off the trail, Josh leaned over, hands on his knees, to catch his breath. He had assumed the comet was no bigger than the five kilometers of Shoemaker-Levy. Shaking his head, he said softly, “Jesse, a 15-kilometer comet will erase humanity.”
Yes.
37
COMET
Josh called Meadows and asked for an immediate meeting with Chandra, Katori and Lopez.
Meadows asked, “Smith?”
“Sure.”
The six of them gathered around a small table in Meadows’ office.
As soon as Chandra sat down, Josh handed her a piece of paper. She looked at it, and then at him with raised eyebrows.
Josh nodded. “That’s it. That’s the enemy.”
Chandra pulled out her phone. As she typed she said, “Looks like a very long-period comet. I’m passing the coordinates to one of my colleagues at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Do we know its dimensions?”
Josh didn’t say anything.
Chandra finally looked up from her phone.
Josh sighed. “It’s 15 kilometers in diameter.”
Chandra and Katori both said, “Fifteen kilometers!”
Chandra fired back, “Josh, a 15-kilometer comet is a planet killer! It’s bigger than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs and 70 percent of all species on the planet!” She finished softly, “It’ll be the end of most life on Earth, including us.”
Josh said softly, “I know.”
Meadows asked, “Josh, is
it really 15 kilometers?”
He sighed. “Yes, I just found out.”
Chandra said, “I need to go. We need to run some calculations.”
Meadows nodded.
They got up to leave, but Katori remained seated. They all stopped and looked at him questioningly. Katori, staring through the table, said with a flat emotionless voice, “We designed the Blaster to deflect a five-kilometer comet.”
Chandra added, “I’m sorry, Joe, since we didn’t know how big it was, and you guys mentioned Shoemaker-Levy—”
Katori interrupted, “We can’t deflect a 15-kilometer comet.”
Meadows said, “Can’t we scale-up the Blaster or build a couple more?”
Katori shook his head. Looking very tired, he said, “Joe, the diameter is three times larger.” He sighed. “But the volume is the cube of the diameter. That means a 15-kilometer comet has 27 times the mass.” He continued, “Unfortunately, Newton’s law applies. Increase the mass 27 times—”
Meadows whistled softly. “We need 27 Blasters.”
There was silence.
Josh hadn’t considered how much mass was involved, but he’d never intended for this program to be the entire solution. It was supposed to be the pilot program, the pump primer. No, that was an excuse. He never asked Jesse how big it was, partly because he probably didn’t really want to know. The devil was in the details, and he sucked at details. More accurately, he tended to ignore them. Didn’t matter how good you were at seeing the forest, if you drove into a tree. His only solace was that there was no way he could have hidden a program big enough to produce 27 Blasters.
Finally, Meadows said, “We probably don’t need to share this with the rest of the team just yet. We need them thinking clearly.” Turning to Katori, he said gently, “Steve, it’s important to start figuring out what it’ll take to scale up.”
Katori nodded mechanically.
Meadows put both of his hands on the table and said quietly, “Our job is to prove we can hit a comet. Do that, and all the world’s resources will be at our disposal. We’ll be able to build dozens of these things.”
Impact (Fuzed Trilogy Book 1) Page 23