“Well, if it’s gonna take a long time, I’ll head back,” said the American.
“Catch up with you at the hangar.” Adin smiled.
As soon at the guy walked away, Adin looked at the other Israeli and under his breath said, “I’ve got some passengers.”
“So have we,” said the Israeli.
They spoke for a second, and Adin pulled the van around, backed up to the foot of the ramp, and told his passengers in the back to hang on. He hit the gas and backed up the ramp until the rear of the van edged into the open belly of the plane. He stopped, put the van in park, and jumped out.
By then the other Israeli was already at the back of the van. Adin unlocked the two back doors and they swung open. Except for a few feet exposed under the two open doors at the side, Sarah, Herman, and the dog were completely shielded from view by anyone outside the plane.
Adin pulled the tarp off them and Bugsy jumped. His eyes immediately fixed on the other Israeli. Adin grabbed him as he lunged, snagged his collar. “Easy! Easy! Heel!” He struggled to calm the dog and hold him in the van. He grabbed him by the muzzle to keep him from barking as Adin peeked through the crack at the hinge of the rear van door.
The American airman had turned around to see what the commotion was. He stopped for a second and looked. When he didn’t see anything, he turned again and headed once more toward the hangar.
Adin watched him go. “Now!” he told Sarah. “Move.”
Quickly she stepped down from the van and up into the plane. Herman followed her. Adin took the dog by the leash. Once inside he gave Bugsy to Sarah. “Hang on to him and don’t let him bark.”
“How do I stop him?”
“Just like this.” Adin took Bugsy’s muzzle with his hand and held it firmly but gently.
“He’ll let me do that?”
“Yeah, if you show him who’s boss,” said Adin. He smiled at her.
She took the dog up the ramp and was immediately confronted with what was in front of her.
It wasn’t until then that Adin noticed the configuration inside the plane. The twin fuel tanks weren’t there. He turned to the other Israeli. “Where are the tanks?”
“It’s all right. We have a single tank up front, centered under the wings. We’ll have enough range. Besides, you’re going to need what’s in those other containers.” There were two large metal boxes balancing the load, one of them the size of a double shipping container but not quite as high. It had a drop-down door facing the open ramp.
Chapter Fifty
Back at the airport in Playa del Carmen, I question the pilot as to exactly what he saw during his single flyover of the facility.
It has been several months, and he can’t recall all the details with precision. From what he remembered seeing, the area was fenced off and there appeared to be some fixed guns, though he can’t recall their precise location. He was scared, trying to maneuver the small ultralight to dodge the bullets.
What he remembers most was the large satellite dish. “I almost flew into it,” he tells me. “It was very big. Bigger than this building.” He is talking about the hangar in which we are standing.
“Excuse me?”
“No, I swear it,” he says.
Harry is looking at him as if it’s a fish story.
“It saved my life.”
“Why do you say that?” says Harry.
“Because when I flew toward it, they stopped firing. I realized they didn’t want to hit it. So I kept going. But sooner or later I had to go around it or over it. That’s when I realized how big it was. It sat on top of its own building,” he says.
“That would have to be a commercial broadcasting dish,” says Harry. “What would they be doing with that?”
“I don’t know.”
We decide to stay the night at a motel on the coast in Playa del Carmen. We now know how far the distance is to the location of the facility. As the crow flies not far, by car perhaps an hour.
“So what do we do?” says Harry. “Let’s assume your man is right, that what he says is up that road is there. I’d say we’re at an end.” Over dinner at a small restaurant overlooking the beach we talk.
“I think we need to know for sure,” I tell him.
“When are you going to know for sure, when they shoot you?” says Harry.
“What if we call Thorpe and try and get him to bring in the Mexican police and all they find is some narco lab, or worse, what if it’s a Mexican government facility? It could be a prison for all we know.”
“With that kind of a dish,” says Harry, “I doubt it.”
“Maybe it’s a defense facility of some kind. What then? They’ll scoop us up and send us home and that’s the end of it. Liquida will be gone until he comes back to hunt us on his own terms. Everything we’ve done to this point will have been for nothing.”
“You heard what the man said,” says Harry. “They fired at him with antiaircraft weapons.”
“The Mexican government might do that if you overfly an area that’s restricted. The pilot has no idea what it was. He was assuming it had to do with one of the cartels. He may be right.”
“I’m sorry, but I think we ought to call Thorpe,” says Harry. “How about you?” He looks to Joselyn for a second.
“I don’t know. I don’t mind admitting I’m scared.”
“There. See?” says Harry.
“But Paul’s right about one thing. We’re only going to get one bite at this. I think we need to be sure of our information before we call Thorpe.”
“How do we do that, walk up and knock on the front door?” says Harry.
“I think if we can get in close enough, we’ll know. How big would you say that hangar was we were standing in?” I ask him.
“I don’t know,” says Harry.
“It had to be at least a hundred feet wide and almost as deep.”
“Bigger than that,” says Joselyn.
“If he’s right, that’s one hell of a satellite dish,” I tell Harry.
“Let’s call Thorpe and tell him about it,” says Harry.
“Not until we see it,” I tell him.
“It would be good if we could send him a picture,” says Joselyn. “Tell him the location. He would have access to satellite intelligence. A good analyst with high-quality photographs might be able to tell what that dish is for.”
“See, women are smarter than men,” I tell Harry.
“Not if survival counts for anything,” he says.
“Have another glass of wine,” she tells him.
“What do you mean, they’re gone?” Thorpe shouted into the phone.
The agent on the other end swallowed hard. “We rang the bell and nobody answered. We got the front desk to let us in and the unit’s empty. They left some of their clothes, but the girl and the one you wanted us to talk to, this Herman Diggs, both gone.”
“You checked the building?” said Thorpe.
“Top to bottom.”
“What about the security cameras?”
“We looked. There’s nothing. They didn’t leave by the front door. We know that. Video of the back door shows no movement. According to our notes, there was supposed to be a dog. It’s gone as well.”
“Where’s the kid?” asked Thorpe.
“Don’t know,” said the agent.
Thorpe cupped his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and looked at Bill Britain, who was seated across the desk from him. “Where’s Hirst?”
Britain shook his head.
“Find out if he showed up for work today,” said Thorpe.
Britain plucked his cell phone from his belt and headed out into the other room.
“Listen,” Thorpe said as he went back to the agent on the phone. “Get a key and check Hirst’s apartment. Do you have a cell number for him?”
“Yeah.”
“Give it to me,” said Thorpe.
The agent gave it to him, and Thorpe jotted it down on the notepad on his desk. “Call me the minute you get into
his apartment.” Thorpe hung up. He immediately dialed the cell phone number written on the pad. It rang three times and the insipid voice came over the phone. “This is Adin. I’m away from my phone. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.” Thorpe slammed the receiver down on the phone.
Two seconds later Britain came back in the room. He was shaking his head. “Hirst was supposed to be in a meeting at ten this morning. He never showed up,” said Britain.
“Damn it,” said Thorpe. “I knew it. We should have taken him down when we had the chance.”
“We wanted to net his handler,” said Britain.
“What happens when you get greedy,” said Thorpe.
The FBI had been aware almost from the beginning that Hirst was a plant. They knew he was no trainee. Some footwork on the part of one of the CIA’s own moles inside Israeli intelligence identified Hirst as a thirty-two-year-old Mossad agent named Yoni Shahar. He had spent eight years in the Israeli Defense Forces as a member of the elite S-13, Israel’s counterpart to America’s Delta Force. Shahar had been recruited to the Mossad and had performed a number of overseas missions. One in particular had resulted in the assassination of a high-level Iranian scientist, a nuclear physicist reputed to be working on Iran’s atomic bomb project.
“You think he knew we were onto him?” said Britain.
“Yes.”
“You think he’s got Diggs and the girl?”
“They all disappear on the same day.” Thorpe looked at him. “What do you think?” He had promised Madriani that his daughter would be safe. Now she was gone.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But he’s been hanging out at their apartment. Took her to the range. Cozied up to the dog. He wanted something. The question is, what?”
“Maybe he was lonely,” said Britain.
“Man like that doesn’t get lonely. And he doesn’t get distracted. He lives for his work.”
“It’s possible he was after the same thing we are,” said Britain.
Thorpe looked at him.
“Liquida,” said Britain. “It’s possible.”
“Why?”
“Liquida gets around. Maybe he killed a high-level Israeli. A contract on some VIP. The Israelis aren’t as forgiving as we are. They have a long history of tit for tat,” said Britain.
“It’s possible.” Thorpe thought for a moment. “Or maybe you’re right.”
“What?”
“Maybe he is after the same thing we are,” said Thorpe.
“What do you mean?”
“Project Thor.”
“What. You think…?”
“Sure. Fowler and the administration have blinded us. We don’t know what Thor is about because Fowler won’t tell us. Hirst shows up on our doorstep when-a few weeks before I get the phone call to go over to the White House. I get there, they want to play liar’s dice. What if the Israelis already knew about Thor?”
“If they already knew about it, why would they send Hirst?”
“Because they knew something we don’t. Maybe there was a piece they were missing and they thought they could get it here. Something we were supposed to know, if we were inside the loop, which we weren’t. The people who sent Hirst must have been mightily disappointed,” said Thorpe. “Because we don’t know shit.”
“If so, he picked up the threads pretty fast,” said Britain. “Hirst or Shahar or whatever the hell his name is, he’s on a better trajectory than we are. If he’s got Diggs and the girl, and Diggs knows where Madriani is. Madriani’s got a line on Liquida, and Liquida’s with Bruno. Hirst is gonna have a front-row seat to whatever is playing.”
“And we’re going to be sitting here picking our noses,” said Thorpe.
“You think he might have killed them? The girl and Diggs, I mean?” said Britain.
“No. If he extracted the information, he’d just leave them. No reason to harm them. They all left together. The girl wanted out of here anyway. She wouldn’t have been hard to convince. Madriani’s tracking Liquida. Now Hirst has his daughter. That gives him a trump card,” said Thorpe. “Madriani’s in Mexico. The question is, where? That’s where they’ll be going.”
“Let me check the airports.” Britain started to get up from his chair.
“Do it… No! On second thought, don’t.”
“Why not?” said Britain.
“Because he wouldn’t go out that way. He’s got the dog.” Thorpe looked at him. “Unless he shot him. And if he did that, he may as well shoot the girl, in which case he’ll never get anything out of Diggs. I know the man. No, if Hirst took the dog, it was because he had a way to get him out.”
“What do you mean?”
Thorpe thought about it for a moment. A boat was too slow. The only other aircraft… “Check El Al,” said Thorpe. The Israeli national airline had been known to cut corners for their government on sensitive military and political matters in the past. “Otherwise check for any MATS flights. Military air transport. Not ours, theirs,” said Thorpe. “See if there were any Israeli military flights in or out of the area around Washington since last night. If they’re still on the ground, hold them. All flights. If they’re in the air, see if the air force can pick them up on radar. If they’re over U.S. airspace, see if we can scramble fighters to bring them back.”
Britain was headed for the door.
Thorpe stood up. “And see if any of the MATS filed flight plans.” Thorpe knew it was a long shot. Hirst would never leave a flight plan behind, but maybe his pilot did. Sarah Madriani was gone. He pounded the top of his desk with a closed fist. At the moment he could have killed Fowler with his bare hands. “What in the hell is Project Thor?”
Chapter Fifty-One
Joseph-Louis Lagrange was an eighteenth-century French mathematician who determined that two large orbiting bodies in space could create gravitational pockets in which a third object, smaller than the first two, could become trapped and held in place.
According to Lagrange’s mathematical formulas, five such Lagrange points were created by the gravitational pull of the sun and the earth. Another five such points existed as a result of the competing tug of gravity caused by the earth and the moon.
All of this, of course, was mere theory until American and Russian scientists, during the early years of space exploration, verified that all five of the solar and lunar Lagrange points actually existed. Some were stable. Some were not. Those with stability have proven useful over the years as places to park geosynchronous satellites where they can be held in place with little or no maintenance.
Lunar Lagrange Point Two, or L2, was one of the less stable of these points. In order to hold an object at lunar L2, regular periodic maintenance is required. Without such maintenance the object in question will either be spun off into space or crash into the moon. For this as well as other reasons, lunar L2 is generally not deemed useful as a location for parking satellites.
However, for Larry Leffort and Project Thor, L2 offered immense advantages that far outweighed its gravitational instability. L2 is located on the back side of the moon. An object placed in an elliptical halo orbit at L2 could be maintained as if in a raceway at intense velocity. It would be visible from the earth for only short periods each day at the outer edge of its elliptical flight pattern, during which time maintenance could be performed to hold it in place. During the rest of the time, an object at lunar L2 would be completely concealed from the earth by the face of the moon. Unless someone was looking for it or knew it was there, the chances of observing it were not great, especially if it was held in this pattern for only a short time.
Leffort smiled as he settled in behind the control desk in the jungle enclave north of Coba. He looked at the array of four large computer screens in front of him to check the progress made since his departure from his office at NASA’s Caltech facility in California. In less than ten days, the scientists at Coba had done a fine job. But then the software and classified information that Leffort had given them was spot-o
n.
Leffort had delivered to them access and complete control over two test weapons.
These Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) had been carefully selected and harvested by NASA from among the hundreds that had been identified in the last decade as possible earth impactors and therefore potential hazards. They had been further whittled down based on size, composition, and velocity. In the end they had settled on two relatively small iron-core asteroids, each one approximately twice the size of a school bus.
During the initial trial phase, tractor rocket motors had been attached to each of the asteroids and tested. The results far exceeded anything NASA could have expected. In less than a year, each of the asteroids had been nudged and guided into a pattern in the inner solar system that made it clear to NASA that maneuvering the objects with precision in space was entirely feasible.
Beyond this, the telecommand and telemetry software that would allow the asteroids to be parked at the L2 location behind the moon had been computer tested with a high level of reliability and assurance. NASA was confident this could be done.
The space agency was about to move the objects back out and dispose of them in a collision course with the sun when suddenly they lost control of both impactors.
Leffort had introduced a virus into the JPL computers that controlled the rockets and the experimental gravity tractors. The software controlling the telecommands was the key to the kingdom. Leffort notified Bruno that the scientists in Mexico, using the software Leffort had supplied to them, now had control of the system.
At first NASA didn’t know what was happening. They knew it was a software failure, but they couldn’t be sure of the cause. And while it ran a wrinkle through their experiment, the test was largely concluded. There was no real reason to pursue it. Over the next several months they would have time to find it and fix it. But there was no real urgency.
The two asteroids were moving at speeds incomprehensible to the average person, in excess of forty thousand miles per hour. This was more than twenty times the speed of the fastest rifle bullet on Earth and more than twice as fast as the manned missions to the moon.
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