Josh released Greg’s parachute fittings, bent over, loosened his shoe and felt his ankle. “Don’t think it’s broken, but it’s probably badly sprained. Ride will be here soon.” Greg was shivering violently so he wrapped Greg in the chute and sat down next to him with his arm around Greg’s shoulder.
A couple minutes later, the snowcat pulled up and a man climbed out. It was hard to identify anyone in arctic gear. Without saying a word, he came over and helped Josh get Greg on his feet. As they put Greg in the back seat, Josh saw it was Tim Smith. Josh climbed in the front with Smith. Turning around, he asked Greg how he was doing.
Greg, still shivering violently, said, “Wwwwicked! My fffirst ride in a fighter, first ejection and fffirst parachute landing! Now we’re going to fffire the bbbaddest laser in the world!”
Josh knew Greg’s adrenaline was still pumping. There was nothing like facing death and winning. Smiling, he turned back and saw Smith looking at him seriously. He had worked with Smith for almost a year, but Smith had been a CIA operative. Josh felt stupid. Still another detail he hadn’t really thought through. His only chance was if they hadn’t contacted Smith.
48
MOLE
As soon as they got inside, all eyes were on him. They also had a video link with the mountaintop. Josh knew it was time for the proverbial “locker room talk” before the big game. Before he could start, one of the young engineers asked, “Did you really fly a fighter here?”
Before he could answer, Greg jumped in. “Yeah! It was awesome!”
“Where is it?”
Greg said, “Dude, it totally blew up.”
“Sweet!”
Chandra, overhearing it on the video feed, just shook her head.
Josh, trying to put his serious face back on, said, “OK, this is it. This is what we’ve all been working for. We have to do it a lot faster than planned but we have the chance to save thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of lives. As you know, we also have another challenge. Our program’s been compromised.”
The same young engineer asked, “By who?”
“It’s complicated, but there are elements in our own government,” he thought, minor elements like the CIA and military, “who want to shut us down.”
Major Crow asked, “Why on earth would anyone want to do that?”
Josh shook his head. “I’m really not sure.” His intuition told him. “Somehow someone got the idea we’re going to use the Blaster to shoot down satellites. All I am sure of is that they’re very serious and probably on their way. With the meteoroid inbound, we don’t have time to unravel the insanity. We have to prove this thing does exactly what it’s supposed to do. But to do that, we have to fire it the second the capacitors are charged. We won’t have a second chance.” He paused. “We’re going to prove it works and save a city at the same time.”
He shook his head again. “If we’re visited, it will be by U.S. commandos with guns. Don’t try to be a hero. They don’t understand and probably won’t want to hear your explanations.”
“How do we know they’re not terrorists?”
He thought to himself, Define “terrorist,” but said, “You’ll have to trust me on this one. They’re from the government. Do whatever you can to give us a chance to take out that meteoroid, but don’t get yourself killed. Do you understand?”
Most of them gave nervous nods.
“OK, what’s the status?”
Bobinski appeared very relaxed. Josh knew he was an adrenaline junky and worked best under pressure. “Reactors coming up to full power and charging capacitors. One reactor is being cranky, but we’ll fix it. We’re three hours from full charge.”
With a skeptical look, Wooldridge said calmly, “Our biggest challenge is that we haven’t been able to locate the comet fragment.”
Katori on the video link said, “We also have an issue with the integration software between the tracking and the beam aiming system.”
Josh said, “Meaning?”
“We’re dead in the water unless we can get the software talking to the targeting servos.”
Josh, looked at Greg, “Can you fix it?”
“Yeah, but I have to be at the control console on the mountaintop.”
“Then let’s get you up there ASAP.”
Crow said, “One of the helicopters is up there idling. I’ll call them down to pick you up.”
Josh nodded. “Can someone help Greg? He needs some warmer clothes and boots, and he’s got a sprained ankle.”
To the rest he said, “Show time!”
As Lanier, the young optics engineer, helped Greg hobble out the door, Josh heard her quietly ask, “James Bond flies fighters, too?”
Greg said, “Totally! But,” he glanced back at Josh and added quietly, “not sure he knows how to land them.”
Smiling, Josh put on a borrowed jacket and sat down on a stool to put on boots.
As everyone bundled up and left, he realized he was alone in the Quonset hut with Smith. Smith remained seated in a chair eight feet away, facing him. As Josh looked up, he saw Smith was watching him again. He also noticed the Iridium satellite phone attached to his belt. Josh raised his eyebrows and gave him a questioning look, as he slipped on a boot.
Smith said softly, with no emotion, “The program was bound to be compromised ... eventually.”
Josh just nodded as sweat began to run down his back.
In the same calm voice, Smith said, “If you don’t mind my asking, how do you know the things you know?”
Josh quickly assessed his options. Despite his enhanced reflexes and martial arts training, his seated position and distance from Smith made him a sitting duck. A physical confrontation represented a low probability of his survival. It would be his last resort. He went through a series of possible responses. Too late, he realized he’d come to depend too much on his premonitions. They had totally failed him here.
He needed to know what Smith knew. As he finished fastening one boot, he said, “The agency contacted you, didn’t they?”
Smith nodded.
“They’re having trouble figuring out who I’m working for.”
Smith nodded again.
“They don’t understand or believe in what we’re doing.”
Smith said softly, “That would be an understatement.”
He noticed Smith was sitting with his right hand in his lap near the holster.
Josh sighed. Starting slowly, he said, “Tim, I—” Before he could finish, he heard the door open behind him and glanced back. He had never been so happy to see the scowling face of Winston Shepherd. Behind Shepherd was Drake Wooldridge.
Shepherd said, “Josh, the helicopter’s landing now.”
Josh hoped Smith wouldn’t shoot him in front of Shepherd and Wooldridge. Standing up, with one boot still unfastened, he looked back at Smith ... and saw him holding a nine-millimeter pistol. Checkmate. At least from a standing position with his boots on, he had a tiny chance.
As he was preparing to make his move, he heard from behind him, the unmistakable metallic double click of a slide drawn back on an automatic pistol. Slowly looking over his shoulder, he saw Shepherd scowling, but his arms were at his side and he was looking sideways at Wooldridge. Wooldridge held a 45 automatic pointed directly at Josh.
Shepherd said to Wooldridge, “You can’t be serious.”
Without looking at Shepherd, Wooldridge said, “Shut up, Shepherd, you’re a moron.” To Josh he said, “I am one of the world’s leading experts in comets. Did you really think you could pull the wool over my eyes?” Wooldridge smiled smugly. “I’ve been working with the authorities for over two months now, and I’m putting an end to this charade.” He gestured toward Smith, “We’ve been offered a very nice bonus for bringing you to justice, dead or alive.”
Josh’s heart sank. He didn’t see this coming and there was no way he could take both of them. How stupid could he be? The hints had been there with Wooldridge. And Smith ... Smith worked for the CIA! He h
ad to come up with a plan, but he was drawing a complete blank.
Smith stood up and casually walked around Josh toward Wooldridge. He kept his distance with his nine millimeter in front of him.
Josh slowly rotated to continue facing Smith as he moved to Wooldridge’s side. Totally blindsided, his ‘visions’ were nothing more than dreams after all.
Stopping next to a smug Wooldridge, Smith said quietly to Josh, “You were saying?”
49
BLASTER
Josh sighed and said, “Tim, the meteoroid is real and—”
Before he finished, Smith knocked the barrel of Wooldridge’s pistol up and away from Josh, and with an amazing flick of the wrist, snatched Wooldridge’s gun, saying, “Give me that before you accidently shoot yourself.”
A startled Wooldridge said, “I captured him. He’s mine and so is the bonus, no one is going to—”
With the same calm voice, Smith interrupted, “And shut up before I accidentally shoot you.” Smith popped the clip out of Wooldridge’s gun and handed it back to him.
Wooldridge looked at the clip with confusion. “It’s empty.”
Smith winked at Shepherd and said, “Thanks for the heads up.”
Josh wasn’t sure what transpired behind the scenes but it was the first time he’d ever seen Shepherd smile.
Smith holstered his pistol and said to Josh, “You’ve got a helicopter to catch. I’ll join you in a second. Shepherd and I are going to introduce Wooldridge to duct tape.”
Josh realized he’d been holding his breath. As he released it, he gave Smith a questioning look.
Smith shrugged. “I’m retiring anyway.”
Speechless, Josh headed to the helicopter.
He strapped in next to Greg. Smith joined them a minute later. Bundled up, they sat three across on a web seat. The helicopter had heat but it couldn’t keep out the Antarctic cold. As the H-60 lifted off, he saw Greg’s head bobbing in time to the helicopter’s vibration.
Reviewing what had just happened, he had a lightbulb moment. He never had a premonition about the confrontation with Smith because it never was. As he closed his eyes to think through the next step, he had another prescient moment. He saw a flash but it wasn’t the Blaster, it was a muzzle flash. He opened his eyes just as the helicopter made its approach to the mountaintop, landing pad.
Josh had seen pictures, but he’d never been to the finished facility. There were two structures: a control room and a dome housing the Blaster. The control room looked like a cross between a doublewide mobile home and one of his childhood Lego creations. Anchored to the ground with steel cables, it was 25 feet wide by 50 feet long with modular seams every 10 feet. An umbilical cord, thicker than his waist, stretched between the control room and the giant dome. The 40-foot-wide aluminum dome was open on one side with a little light coming from inside.
After they landed, the helicopter copilot caught Josh’s eye and winked. It was Elton Musk! Of course, Musk, the adrenaline junky, angel investor and pilot, wasn’t going to miss the first firing. Josh just shook his head as he got out of the helicopter.
He walked toward the control room, but stopped to peer inside the dome. Open to the cold night air, the Blaster had to be at ambient temperature.
He’d seen pictures of all the Blaster’s components, but never assembled. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting — probably Marvin the Martian’s giant Disintegrator — but the reality was a bit different. The first thing he noticed was the noise. Right next to the entrance were several refrigerator-sized heat pumps. He knew they kept the mercury-cuprate superconductors at an Antarctic-embarrassing, minus 170 degrees. Following the thick metal hoses to the Blaster, he saw a cylindrical aluminum core, 15 feet in diameter and 15 feet tall. Pointed at the sky, it looked like it had beer kegs strapped around the perimeter. Thin metal cooling fins sprouted from the bottom and sides like a bad haircut. Attached to it with metal struts, was a large optical telescope with a video feed. They had bolted all of it to a massive, but rather standard-looking, telescope mount. He knew the mount could rotate the Blaster 360 degrees and elevate it in hair-thin, 10-thousandth-of-a-degree increments. The whole thing looked more like a giant, mutant hair dryer on life support, rather than the salvation of humanity, but to Josh, it was a thing of beauty.
He also saw someone in a parka crouched over a giant metal box with dozens of wrist-sized wires coming out of it. Although impossible to see a face, from the size, he was sure it was Cho.
They entered the control room through the only door. Josh immediately saw several giant computer monitors mounted on one wall. Facing the monitors were two rows of plastic folding tables and chairs; the kind you rent for a wedding reception. On the tables, sat a dozen laptops that controlled all the Blaster’s many systems. Katori and Chandra were working intently on two of them. Cables went everywhere. The room was on the dim side to make the monitors easier to see. There were no windows except a small porthole in the door. It looked more like a laptop repair shop than a control center.
The back of the room had a massive metal wall that looked armored. On the other side, he knew, sat two dozen giant capacitors. The size of washing machines, they were being charged by the nuclear reactors at the foot of the mountain. Each could hold the equivalent of a lightning bolt worth of energy. More importantly, they could release all of that power to the Blaster in milliseconds.
The control room had a constant background noise. It was a combination of laptop fans, electric heaters, intercom static and a high-pitched hum from the capacitors on the other side of the wall. He also noticed the aroma of hot electronics mixed with stale coffee and a dash of “wet dog.”
Katori and Chandra looked up as they entered.
Josh raised his eyebrows in question.
Chandra shook her head. “I’m sorry, Josh, we haven’t been able to find anything at those coordinates.”
Josh felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. It had all come down to this moment. There were only two possibilities. Their equipment wasn’t capable of seeing the fragment. Or ... there wasn’t one. If there wasn’t one, he might be nothing more than a puppet in a much bigger game. He had lied to these people and put them in mortal danger so they would create the most powerful weapon in the world ... for what? Maybe he really was public enemy number one.
With all eyes on him, Josh said, “I’m ... I’m sorry. I—”
Chandra interrupted, “Wait a minute.” Looking from her laptop to the main display at the front of the room, she said to herself, “What do we have here?”
Squinting, Josh tried to make something out on the screen. He saw nothing but dark shapes and an occasional glint among the static.
Looking back at the data on her laptop, Chandra tilted her head and then clapped her hands together. “By Jove, I think we found the little sucker!” She looked up at Josh. “It’s right where you said it would be.”
Josh’s knees were weak as he let out a lungful of air.
Chandra added, “Dang thing looks like a lump of coal. It’s so dark, I can’t keep the tracking scope locked. We’ll have to wait until it gets closer.”
Musk, looking at the digital clock on the wall, said, “It’s going to enter the atmosphere in less than six hours.”
Chandra rubbed her eyes. “I know, I know, but you have to understand, this thing won’t even cross the moon’s orbit for another four hours.”
Katori said to Josh, “One of the reactors kicked an over-temperature fault and dropped offline. So we’re not charging as fast as we should. The capacitors are up to about 70 percent, but at this rate, it could take three more hours.”
Josh asked, “Can we fire it with less than 100 percent charge?”
Katori said, “Yes, but—”
Chandra interrupted. “We’d have to fire it more than once. We don’t have time.”
Katori shook his head. “We’ll be very lucky if it fires once.”
Chandra added, “We need every erg of energy we’ve g
ot. With each minute that passes, the chances of deflecting it get smaller.”
Josh looked back at Katori. “Can we override the over-temp shutoff on the reactor?”
Katori looked up. “Maybe, but if the warning is real, the reactor could go critical and melt down.”
Josh just looked at him.
Katori nodded. “Yeah, right ... London.” Katori got Bobinski on the intercom. “Chris, we won’t have enough power to pull this off unless we can keep that second reactor online.”
“Dah, we will take off all failsafes and overrides.”
Katori shook his head at Bobinski’s comment, but then looked back at Josh. “And, the software interface between the tracking system and the aiming servos is still out of commission. Without that, we can’t point the Blaster.”
Greg, already on a laptop, said, “I’m on it.”
Without looking up, Katori added, “Cho’s outside getting frostbite. He’s trying to align the Blaster to the tracking system and check the power circuit continuity.”
Josh asked, “How much time until we can fire it?”
Katori ticked off on his fingers, “If we get the tracking system working, Chandra can hold a visual lock, and the second reactor comes back online, the capacitors should be up to full power in one hour.”
“Can we do anything to speed that up?”
Katori shook his head. “Sorry, Josh, we’re still limited by the laws of physics.”
Josh didn’t say anything but couldn’t help think, yes, but which laws of physics?
Chandra said, “Let’s do everything we can so that the second we’re charged, we can fire.”
Katori nodded. “I’m overriding all the safety interlocks and transferring control to the main panel over there.” He pointed at a metal console near the front of the room, under the display screens. Looking at the wall display, Josh saw it was broken into three “windows” with various graphs and indicator boxes. They were all red.
Impact (Fuzed Trilogy Book 1) Page 31