Landfall

by John McWilliams

  “Sure they do. And this is the same company whose day-to-day operation you have nothing to do with, or so you told us.”

  “I don’t.” He smiled. “Seriously. I just work with their security. I train them in hand-to-hand combat.”

  “The university professor who teaches mercenaries hand-to-hand combat?” Lauren laughed.

  “Well, I—”

  Lauren fired two shots at the door at the far end of the room.

  “Holy shit.” Stephen covered his ears—but too late. “What’s the matter with you?”

  Ellis, rifle leveled, moved between Lauren and Stephen.

  The door inched open and, in that instant, Stephen spun around and kicked Ellis’s rifle. Anyone else would have lost the weapon. Ellis didn’t. He just looked at Stephen in disbelief. Then he tossed the rifle into the dirt.

  “Don’t shoot. It’s just us,” came a whimpering voice from the doorway. It was George and Mr. Abrams.

  “Well, get in and shut the door,” Lauren demanded.

  “You could have killed us,” George said.

  “You mean I should have killed you. Ellis? What are you doing? We don’t have time for this.”

  Ellis and Stephen circled each other, staying clear of the windows.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Stephen asked.

  “I know you’d like nothing better than to eat up more of our time,” Ellis told him. “But this shouldn’t take long.”

  “I wouldn’t get my hopes up—”

  Ellis whipped around with the heel of his foot, nearly taking Stephen’s head off. From there a blindingly fast series of hand and foot movements ensued, capped off by Stephen sidestepping Ellis’s right cross and flipping him onto the dirt.

  Lauren could feel the seismic tremor in her feet.

  Ellis rolled and got up, but within view of one of the windows. A shot was fired.

  Without hesitation, Lauren spun in front of the window and fired off four rounds.

  Above her sights she had found four snipers in prone position and in full body armor. She had known just where to hit them.

  “Hold your fire!” Stephen hollered at his men.

  “Oh, they’ll be holding their fire all right,” Ellis said. “You see, my partner’s very economical about her bullets.”

  Stephen looked at Ellis curiously, then attacked with a barrage of kicks and punches that yielded at least two solid hits.

  Lauren didn’t want to have to shoot Stephen, but if it came down to it, she’d put a bullet between his eyes.

  She glanced over at Mr. Abrams and George, who both seemed happy enough to remain on the other side of the room. Witnesses. But that could be remedied by friendly fire. Hey, it had almost happened anyway.

  Ellis and Stephen attacked and parried. Both fast; Stephen faster. But Ellis had mass and strength on his side. His blocks were as devastating as Stephen’s hits.

  Ellis swept Stephen’s feet, taking him to the floor. Stephen got up, but not before Ellis managed to get him in a chokehold. Stephen, his thumbs jammed under Ellis’s arm, tried desperately to keep from blacking out.

  “All right, Ellis,” Lauren said. “I think you made your point.”

  She turned as an old, gas-engine Jeep nearly plowed into the building. A plume of dust and exhaust filtered in with the sunlight as the man who had been on the passenger side stepped through the window. The man was old, had a scar on his left cheek, and was wearing loose-fitting khakis and a wide-brimmed hat. He had a salt and pepper beard and he was Asian.

  Lauren nearly forgot she had a gun in her hand when the man effortlessly disarmed her and tossed the weapon to his driver, who had just stepped inside.

  “Enough!” the man in khakis demanded, turning to Ellis and Stephen. He set his hat on the floor.

  Stephen, still trying to wrestle free of Ellis’s chokehold, and Ellis, still trying to subdue his smaller, though highly-skilled, opponent, ignored the command.

  With that, the man leapt into the air and kicked Ellis in the upper back so hard that the two men flew apart like billiard balls.

  “Jesus.” Lauren stepped back.

  Ellis regained his composure and started toward his new attacker.

  Stephen, rubbing his neck, started for Ellis.

  The man in khakis waved Stephen off. Stephen complied.

  “Now hold on, hold on.” The driver, a handsome silver-haired man, stepped in. He approached Ellis with his hands up and patted him cautiously on the shoulder. “You’re a big guy, but trust me, the last thing you want to do is get this man riled up.”

  Ellis stared at the man in khakis. He blinked. After a moment, his facial muscles relaxed and he lowered his fists.

  The man in khakis nodded at the silver-haired man, picked up his hat, and dusted it off. “And I think we’ve had enough gunfire for one day,” he said, tilting his head toward Lauren.

  The silver-haired man returned her weapon to her.

  She holstered it.

  “You all right?” the man in khakis asked Stephen, resting a hand on the back of his neck.

  “I’m fine. I’ll tell you, though, for his size, he’s incredibly fast. Hits like a ton of—” Stephen’s attention was drawn to something across the room.

  Back by the door, George’s face was lit in the bluish glow of a computer tablet.

  “It’s too late!” George shouted as Stephen came running at him. “I sent it. Now the whole world knows.”

  Stephen ripped the tablet out of George’s hands.

  “You can kill me—you can do whatever you want—but it’s too late.”

  “Where’d you get this?” Stephen demanded.

  “From Mr. Abrams’s desk.”

  “That’s my new tablet,” Mr. Abrams said. “I haven’t even set it up yet.”

  “It has your network credentials.” Stephen showed him the screen.

  “It came from IT that way.”

  “Great, less than three hours to go, and now this.” Stephen handed the tablet to the man in khakis. “It looks like he sent three pictures and this text to four news networks.”

  Lauren thought the man in khakis might throw the tablet against the stone wall. But he didn’t. He scratched his scarred cheek and turned to George. In a deliberate, calm voice he said, “You’d better pray nobody posts this story.”

  “Sorry,” George muttered. He wrapped his hands around his knees and leaned against the door.

  Lauren rested her hand on her Glock as three guards stepped in through the window. They were unarmed.

  “Sir,” one of the men said. “I thought you’d like to see this.”

  They laid out four bulletproof vests in the sunlight as Lauren and the others walked over. The man in khakis knelt to examine them. Each vest had a bullet lodged precisely in its right shoulder protector. He stood and smiled grimly at Lauren.

  “Special Agent Madison,” he said, “I see everything I’ve heard about you is true.”

  “Dr. Lee,” Lauren replied. “I see there’s at least one thing I’ve heard about you that is not.”

  Chapter 26

  Helios is drifting away from the space station.

  Jan looks at the C4 on the seat next to him. With the internal pressure and the vacuum of space, it really won’t matter where he places it—Helios will burst like a balloon. But since the priority here is the absolute destruction of the Advanced Wave Experiment, he’ll place it in the cargo area—along with himself.

  Lisa and Stephen break into his thoughts, and his heart aches. He clears his mind and focuses on his breathing. He regains control. Lose that battle, and you’ve lost the war.

  “Dimitry—” Jan moves his mic closer to his lips. “I’m coming up on my initial burn. Ready to disengage laser guides.”

  Jan looks out his starboard window as Node 3 slips from view.

  A moment passes.

  “Dimitry? You there?”

  “Jan—Yes, I am here, but something very strange is going on. Everything is gone.”<
br />
  “What are you talking about?”

  “Jan?” Oren cuts in on another channel.

  “Go ahead, Oren. What’s up?”

  “You need to return to the space station immediately.”

  “Why? What’s happening?”

  “Hang on.” Oren says something to someone else and returns. “Jan, can you mute Dimitry’s channel?”

  “Muted,” Jan says. “What’s going on?”

  “Care to switch to door number two?” Nate asks enthusiastically.

  “Nate?” Jan says. Oren must have patched in his satellite phone.

  “Bring up NASA’s tracking and data relay screen,” Nate says.

  “You have to bring up JLA’s tracking window first,” Oren interjects, “then you’ll see the option for NASA’s feed at the top.”

  “I see it. Holy shit, everything’s gone.”

  “That’s right,” Nate says. “NASA’s completely blind.”

  “Nate just blew up their Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System at White Sands,” Oren explains. “He used the rest of the C4 to blow up their primary and backup hubs.”

  “But I don’t have much time here,” Nate says. “This satellite phone’s about to die, and for some reason there’re a bunch of cops outside that aren’t too happy with me.

  “Listen Jan, Oren came up with this idea. He figured that, since the Russians were already having problems with their Luch satellite system, if we could somehow take out NASA’s TDRSS, you could return undetected.”

  “But we only have an hour at most,” Oren says, “before NASA figures out a workaround.”

  “Okay, but there’s no way I can get back in an hour. And why do I need to return to the space station?”

  “Shit,” Nate says. “I’ve got company. Oren, you tell him. Good luck—both of you. And, Jan… sorry about your plane.” Nate’s connection is gone.

  “Jan,” Oren says. “First, get Dimitry to remote you back in. And do it now. Trust me.”

  Jan contacts Dimitry, who grants his request without question. A loss of telemetry is probably as good a reason as any to abort one’s return to Earth. Jan hears the thrusters fire and, moments later, Helios is retracing its path.

  “Okay,” Oren says, once Jan assures him that Dimitry’s channel is once again muted. “You’re going to need to blow up the space station.”

  “Oren, say again.”

  “You’re going to need to blow up the space station.”

  “Blow up? As in destroy?”

  “Yes. You wanted a way to get home undetected and presumed dead. This is it. Get the crew into the two remaining Soyuz capsules. Tell them that JLA’s system is showing a space junk collision warning—or whatever. Once their hatches are sealed, tell them you intend to blow up the space station and that they need to be at least five thousand meters away to be safe. You’ll have to warn off the other Soyuz capsule and GalactiTrek, too.

  “Then I’ll instruct you on where to place the C4 and how to get Helios out to two hundred meters, where you can hit the detonator and the abort button simultaneously. It’s possible that at that range you could be hit by debris, but all in all, I think the odds of that are pretty slim.

  “Of course, by that point, NASA’s telemetry and communication channels should be back online, but with three Soyuz capsules and GalactiTrek to manage, I doubt anyone’s going to waste much time tracking pieces of the space station.”

  “And Helios will look like just another piece of the space station,” Jan says.

  “Exactly. I’m thinking that we’ll bring you down somewhere over British Columbia. But there’ll be no one there to greet you, Jan. You’ll have to hike out of that wilderness on your own.”

  Jan stares at the instrument panel and chuckles.

  “A hike sounds a hell of a lot better than what I had planned.”

  Chapter 27

  “Welcome back, Jan,” Dimitry says as Jan opens Helios’s hatch. “Sorry, but I need to get back to radio,” he adds, and hurries off.

  Jan floats out of Helios, then makes his way through the Harmony module and into Destiny—and chaos. Commander Peters is trying to restore communications with NASA, Donna is talking with the GalactiTrek crew, Dimitry is telling Dernov and Yegor that he, Dimitry, does not have permission to allow them to return, and André is trying to establish contact with Roscosmos.

  “I need you all to stop what you’re doing,” Jan says.

  But it’s as if he’s a ghost.

  “If you would—” Jan remembers that he still has the handgun from the Soyuz’s survival kit. He removes it from his flight suit’s thigh pocket.

  “Stop what you’re doing! I have a gun!”

  Donna tells GalactiTrek to standby; Dimitry tells Dernov and Yegor the same; André and Commander Peters, both on OpsLAN-connected IBM ThinkPads, turn from their respective screens.

  “Okay, listen,” Jan says, deciding against Oren’s idea of essentially yelling “fire.” These people have helped get him this far. He’ll try reasoning with them. “I don’t have much time, and, well, hopefully you’ll agree with me about what needs to happen here.” He stuffs the gun back into his pocket. “You all know that my Advanced Wave Experiment is at the center of this maelstrom. You all know the extremes our two nations have gone to to get their hands on it. And you all know what will happen if either side does.

  “So, given those facts, it’s become obvious to me that blowing up the AWX apparatus in space is too big of a risk. Dernov and GalactiTrek are both capable of maneuvering to any place I can get to, and they could quite easily snatch the apparatus right out of my hands.” Jan pauses. “Which is why I need to do it here.”

  Sure, it wasn’t the whole truth, but at least this would allow them to know generally what was about to happen.

  “What do you mean by here?” Donna asks, looking confused.

  “You mean set off an explosion inside the ISS?” Commander Peters scratches the back of his bald head.

  “It’s the only way to have absolute control,” Jan tells them. “And quite frankly, we—and I do mean we—are out of time. Unless you want to refuse to let GalactiTrek dock.”

  “Them and Commander Dernov’s crew,” Dimitry says. “They have started back.”

  “Jesus,” Donna exclaims. “But blow up the space station? What if we help you with the EVA—”

  “We have no time,” Jan tells her. “Look, you either cooperate or you don’t. My mind’s made up.”

  “And what about you?” Dimitry asks. “Did you find a way home?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Meaning you intend to blow yourself up as well?” Commander Peters asks.

  “It’s my mess, and it’s the only way to be sure. And it’s not open for debate.”

  “But we fight to win,” Dimitry says meekly.

  “Yes,” Jan replies, “but we must also accept that we will eventually lose.”

  Dimitry reluctantly nods.

  “Well, this is a goddamned nightmare.” Commander Peters turns to the others. “But he’s right. It’s already become a battlefield up here. And I, for one, am not going to help these idiots start World War Three. Jan, if you’re willing to die for this, then the least I can do is head home a month early. What about the rest of you?” He looks at Donna.

  “I’m in,” she says. “Except for the part about Jan staying behind. I don’t find that acceptable in the least.”

  “Me neither,” Commander Peters says, “but if he does go back, his very presence will ignite a war. He has no choice.” Commander Peters looks at Dimitry and André. “What about you two? We sure can’t do this without our Soyuz pilots.”

  “We will be crucified,” André says, looking at Dimitry.

  “Not if we swear crazy man with gun forced us to comply,” Dimitry tells him.

  Jan removes the gun from his pocket and points it at André.

  “Okay, okay.” André puts his hands up. “I agree.”

  “Good.”
Jan glances at his watch. “Now pretend we just got an imminent collision warning. You have two minutes.”

  “Two minutes?” Donna says.

  “Go,” Jan tells them.

  Commander Peters, Donna, and André rush off to gather their gear. Dimitry floats over to Jan, then looks to see that the others are out of earshot. “This telemetry and communication breakdown is no accident, yes? Fight with your eyes open, you always say. My eyes are open, Jan. Contact me when you are ready. I want to help with the Message.” Dimitry embraces his friend.

  “You’d better get your stuff,” Jan tells him without inflection.

  Dimitry turns to go.

  “Wait…” Jan sighs. “It may be years.”

  “I knew it!” Dimitry throws his arms around Jan. “I will wait for you to contact me.”

  “All right, all right. Now, go get your stuff.”

  Minutes later, inside the Zvezda service module, Jan closes and seals the Soyuz hatches, radioing his goodbyes and good lucks to both crews. Then the capsules depart, forgoing the usual practice of not using their thrusters until twenty meters out.

  Over the comm channels, Jan listens to André and Dimitry warning Dernov of the imminent destruction of the space station. Commander Peters radios GalactiTrek with the same warning.

  Jan returns to the American side of the space station, finding a pencil and tearing a couple of pages out of a manifest transfer binder along the way. He floats into Helios and puts on his headset.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Oren complains. “Don’t answer that. Hopefully, we can still make your return window.”

  Oren instructs Jan on how to rig the bomb and reprogram the space station’s attitude controls system so that, once the bomb goes off, the station’s own thrusters will help tear it apart.

  “Once you’re back inside Helios,” Oren says, as Jan switches to another scrap of paper, “you’ll need to get two hundred meters out and, at precisely 8:21:07 GMT—that’s the center of your return window—you’ll need to hit the RET EL button, switch LB1 and LB2 to off, and, just before you hit enter, hit the detonator button. That’s the detonator, then enter. Got it?”

  “Got it.”