Trying to relocate the two missing asteroids in the vastness of space using the narrow focal range of their telescopes was like trying to find a speeding needle scanning the sky through a drinking straw. NASA knew there was no chance of an accidental impact with Earth based on the last telemetry readings before they lost contact. Both asteroids were on a harmless trajectory out into space beyond the solar system, because that is where they were last seen.
But in fact, control had been taken by the telecommand and telemetry station that was now up and running in the jungles of the Yucatan.
Construction of this facility had been financed by Middle Eastern powers that were now awash in oil money. It had taken place during a period when the Mexican government was distracted and under a virtual state of siege by the drug cartels. Mexico was ripe for the plucking, and adversaries of the United States, the Great Satan, were well aware of this.
For thirty million dollars, the Mexican government was happy to lease two thousand acres of useless jungle to a telecommunications research lab financed by petro dollars from abroad. The promise of future jobs and potential revenue left the Mexican government to pay little attention given the other crisis they were now facing. The few Mexican officials who sought entry to the burgeoning facility in the jungle were either paid off or disappeared. Despite U.S. concerns, not all of the problems confronting them from Mexico were on their immediate southern border.
The earth survived in a veritable shooting gallery of rocks streaming through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Some of these objects were the size of large cities. A few were the size of states. Conservative estimates placed the number of possible extinction-level objects in near-Earth orbit at more than one thousand, of which to date scientists had located and identified only a small percentage.
The potential for destruction was catastrophic. Major collisions with large asteroids were known to have caused extinction-level events in the planet’s history. It was, in fact, an irony to Leffort that the antenna array erected in the Yucatan jungle and the building from which he was now working sat less than a hundred miles from the center of one of the largest asteroid strikes in global history.
Sixty-five million years ago, the Chicxulub asteroid, estimated to be six miles in diameter, slammed into the western Caribbean just a few miles off the Yucatan coast. It created a crater one hundred and ten miles in diameter, believed to be the largest impact structure on the face of the earth. The heat generated by the collision vaporized entire forests. It ejected mountains of material into space. Much of this would have ignited into incandescence upon reentry into the atmosphere, superheating the air and setting off monumental wildfires around the globe.
The Chicxulub impactor was believed to have buried itself in the earth’s crust in less than a second, creating seismic sea waves thousands of feet high. It is also believed that it was the effects of this asteroid striking the earth that spelled extinction for the dinosaurs.
It was only natural that nations would deploy their science to find ways of warding off such future threats to man’s survival. Soon a proliferation of acronyms abounded-NEAR, NEAT, NEOSSat, and NEOwise and the Torino Scale-all created for measuring the size and potential for impact of each threat.
From there it was but a question of time before some enterprising soul saw the potential for arresting the threat only to transform it into history’s ultimate weapon. Harness an asteroid of the right size and composition, temper its velocity and guide it with precision, and your enemy could be wiped from the face of the earth as if swatted by the hand of God.
Leffort mused at the constantly changing state of the world and the narrow-minded vision of its “leaders” with their rigid timeworn concepts of geopolitics.
Decades earlier the United States had studied and dismissed the use of NEOs as potential weapons of mass destruction. The studies concluded that the kinetic energy stored in these missiles of nature far surpassed the destructive power of anything man-made, including the most devastating nuclear warheads. Yet they waddled in their own ignorance. They dismissed NEOs on grounds that they couldn’t be fashioned to fit the prevailing stratagem of the moment, the Cold War concept of MAD-Mutually Assured Destruction.
The defense experts operated on the assumption that the time needed to harness and hurl meteors and asteroids at selected targets on the surface of the earth, while scientifically possible, would cost too much and take too long to be a feasible and effective deterrent to those adversaries that already possessed nuclear arms.
They put the studies on the shelf to collect dust and waited. Since then the world had been turned upside down by the concept of asymmetrical warfare.
Acts of insurgency now used methods of attack and civilian terror no longer confined to conventional battlefields. The dread of nuclear-tipped missiles over Manhattan was replaced by the threat of dirty bombs or nuclear devices smuggled in the hold of a ship or on the back of a truck. The use of subnationals as proxies of terror to mask acts of war by sponsoring states became the norm. Rules of restraint based on deterrence, the old fear of massive retaliation, had gone the way of the goony bird.
In such a world, the veiled promise of nature’s own instruments of destruction could not go unnoticed for long. DARPA and the Defense Department dredged up the old studies and dusted them off. Suddenly they realized the risk. The science of steering objects in space was a known technology mastered by a growing number of states. Streaking fire across the sky, an iron asteroid sufficiently large to survive Earth’s atmosphere, whether by cataclysmic impact with Earth or by atmospheric burst, would deliver more death and destruction in a moment of time than any preemptive nuclear strike. And in the sign of the times, all of this could be carried out under cover of an unfathomable act of nature.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Surprise came from the first large steel container up forward in the belly of the C-130. As the plane lifted off from the runway and began to climb out over the Atlantic, a hatch up on top suddenly popped open. Sarah heard it and looked up, but she didn’t see anything.
They were crouched on the floor against the side of the plane-Sarah, Herman, Bugsy, and Adin. A few seconds later a man appeared, looking down at them from over the edge of the container.
Bugsy barked at him and lunged to the end of his leash as Sarah struggled to hold him.
“Easy,” said Adin. He petted the dog and looked up. “It’s only Teo. I was hoping it would be you.” He glanced up at the man. “You can eat him later,” Adin told Bugsy.
“Who else would it be?” said the man.
“I could think of at least a half-dozen colonels, all of them younger than you,” said Adin.
“Yes, but none of them as good. It’s getting a little warm inside,” said the man. “Do you mind if we join you?”
“What if I said yes?” Adin smiled up at him.
“Then to hell with you.” Wearing military fatigues and combat boots, the man looked considerably older than Adin, maybe in his late forties or early fifties. He climbed down using the red cargo netting suspended from the inside wall of the plane. Regardless of his age he was quite fit, short, and stocky, his face tanned as if he’d lived his life on a golf course in Palm Springs. His balding forehead was etched with craggy lines and deep furrows. His most memorable feature was his beaming smile. “This the young lady you were telling me about?”
“What has he been saying?” said Sarah.
“Allow me to introduce you. Sarah Madriani, this old man is Teo Ben Rabin. Colonel Ben Rabin to some. But you can just call him Uncle Ben,” said Adin.
“Only behind my back,” said Ben Rabin.
“And do yourself a favor,” said Adin. “Don’t believe anything he says.”
“Nice to meet you.” Sarah smiled, nodded, and shook his hand.
“Teo, I’d like you to meet Herman Diggs.”
Ben Rabin stepped gingerly around the dog, keeping a little distance. “I like to keep all my fingers,” he said.<
br />
“Mr. Diggs is our navigator for this trip,” said Adin. “By force of character, you might say. He refused to tell us where we were going unless we took him along.”
“A man after my own heart,” said Ben Rabin. “Shalom. Welcome aboard.”
Herman nodded and shook his hand.
“Are you feeling all right?” said Ben Rabin. He was looking at Herman.
“I’m not great in airplanes,” said Herman. “Specially with the fuel tank and the fumes, sittin’ sideways like this.”
“You’re looking a little green around the gills,” said Ben Rabin. “You want, I will find you a seat up top with the flight crew. The air up there is a little better.”
“Might take you up on that,” said Herman.
“Give me a minute.”
Herman nodded.
“I take it he’s not really your uncle.” Sarah looked at Adin.
“Only in spirit,” he told her. “The colonel is a man with many nephews.”
Ben Rabin pounded on the side of the steel container. “You can come out now!” He yelled at the top of his voice. “The rest of my relatives.” He looked at Sarah and smiled. “We were beginning to wonder how long it was going to take before we got airborne. It is damn hot in there.”
“Makes you wonder what it was like in the Trojan Horse?” said Adin.
“Something like that.”
A few seconds later, men began to crawl out over the edge of the steel container, all in camo-green battle fatigues and heavy boots.
“How many did you bring?” said Adin.
“One platoon,” said Ben Rabin. “Eighteen was all we could fit. Like sardines in a can.”
“What about the other container?” said Adin.
“Equipment. Ground transport, one Desert Raider with a mounted 105-millimeter recoilless rifle, and one equipment trailer. The trailer will have to do double duty,” said Ben Rabin. “Transport both men and equipment. Do we know how far we’re going to have to go once we hit the ground?”
“I don’t know anything yet. We’ll have to talk to Mr. Diggs.” Adin turned and looked at Herman.
“What are you expecting, World War III?” said Herman.
“Could very well be,” said Ben Rabin. “Do you have any idea what we’re going to be dealing with when we get down there?”
“Not a clue,” said Herman.
“You do know where we’re going?” said Adin.
“A general idea,” said Herman.
Adin gave Ben Rabin a look as if to say “the blind leading the blind.”
By now the soldiers were wandering up and down inside the belly of the plane, working on the two containers, pulling out equipment and arms, loaded backpacks, staging it all in the narrow aisle between the large fuel tank and the two metal containers. Most of the men appeared to be slightly older than the usual soldier, in their late twenties or early thirties, some of them sporting longer hair. Ben Rabin turned his attention to give them a hand.
“Who are they?” asked Herman.
“What do you mean? Oh, them. Just Israeli Defense Forces,” said Adin.
“Yeah, and I’m the Pied Piper,” said Herman.
“Wouldn’t mean anything to you if I told you,” said Adin.
“Try me.”
“Special forces,” said Adin.
“S-13?” said Herman.
Adin gave him a look. “How would you know about that?”
“Lucky guess,” said Herman. That and the shoulder patch of the Shayetet 13, the anchor, sword, and shield emblazoned over the bat wings.
“What is S-13?” asked Sarah.
“If your dad is where these people are going, I’d say he’s in some serious trouble,” said Herman. Then he leaned into her ear and whispered. “Shayetet 13 are naval commandos, cross between the Seals and Delta Force. They don’t usually show up for a party unless somebody’s gonna get shot.”
The news settled on Sarah like ether, but Bugsy wanted to join the soldiers. Seeing all the movement and commotions excited him. He was like a kid who wanted to join the activity. Every once in a while one of the soldiers would lean in and pet him. He didn’t seem to mind.
“You can let him go,” said Adin. “It’s better if he gets their scent.”
Sarah let loose of the leash. Adin unclipped it from the dog’s collar and let him run.
“You and I need to go up forward and look at some maps,” he told Herman. They got to their feet and went toward the ladder leading up to the flight deck. Sarah followed.
“When we get on the ground, I’m going to ask both of you to stay onboard the plane,” said Adin.
“We’ll have to talk about that,” said Herman.
“This is not negotiable,” said Adin. “Depending on where we land, we may not have much time. We’ll offload the vehicle and a stacked trailer from the other container. That’s ground transport for the men and their equipment. Once we’re on the ground we’ll get going in less than a minute. You’re just going to be in the way. It’s very likely that the plane is going to have to take off again.”
“Why’s that?” said Herman.
“Because we won’t be landing at an airport with customs and immigrations,” said Adin. “It will be an unimproved field. We won’t know precisely where until you give us your information. Your background indicates you worked in Mexico…”
“How do you know that?” said Herman.
“Never mind,” said Adin. “The point is, you know as well as I do what an unimproved field in Mexico means.”
“Drugs,” said Herman.
Adin nodded. “The pilot is going to want to turn it around and get back in the air as fast as he can.”
“Understood,” said Herman.
“Good,” said Adin. “Stay right here.” Adin climbed the ladder up toward the flight cabin. He knocked on the metal door, and someone inside opened it.
Neither Sarah nor Herman could hear what was being said up in the flight cabin over the din of the four large engines.
A few seconds later, Adin came back down the ladder with a handful of maps. “What’s the name of the place we’re going?”
“Coba,” said Herman. “South of Cancun in the jungle. Twenty miles or so from the town of Tulum on the Caribbean side.”
They huddled over the map with Sarah looking on until Herman circled an area with his finger. Coba didn’t show up on the flight chart, but an unimproved landing strip off the main highway some distance to the east did. Adin marked it with a pen.
“That’s a ways. I was hoping for something closer.” Adin’s concern was not only the cartels but the Mexican military. Driving a distance on open roads with military hardware was likely to draw attention. The last thing they needed was a firefight at a roadblock with the Mexican army. “Do you know where her father is?”
“In the area somewhere,” said Herman.
“Any way to reach him?” asked Adin.
Herman shook his head. “No cell number that I know of.”
“Not much to go on,” said Adin.
“According to Paul, there’s supposed to be some kind of a large antenna array. Somewhere near Coba in the jungle.” He pointed to the area on the map once more. “If it’s big enough, it should be visible from the air.”
Adin nodded.
“Give me a second,” said Sarah. “I might have something.” She walked back over to the area where they had been sitting and found her purse. Inside was a folded piece of paper. She opened it and looked at it. It was a printout of one of the early e-mail messages sent to her by her father through the FBI. At the top was Joselyn’s e-mail address. She handed it to Adin.
He looked at it. “We’ll try it and see.” He headed back up the ladder toward the flight deck. This time he disappeared inside with the door closed.
“Listen to me!” Herman took her to one side. “When the plane lands, get over there behind that metal container and sit tight. Stay away from that fuel tank,” he told her, “in case there’s
shooting.”
“Where are you going to be?”
“I’m gonna be goin’ for a ride,” he told her.
“You told Adin you would stay on board.”
“I told him I understood. I didn’t tell him I’d do it.” Herman already had his eye on one of the packs lying in the aisle. On top of the backpack was a TAR-21, a Tavor assault rifle, a shortened bull-pup design manufactured by the Israelis and used for both close-quarters combat and longer open field fire.
Physically, Herman was not yet a hundred percent. He was still recovering from the wounds Liquida had inflicted. But a gun would go a long way toward giving him a leg up. No more wrestling with knives, at least not for now.
Herman had seen the short TAR-21s but only in photographs and online. He wondered how a country that was so small could develop such cutting-edge weapons. It looked like a space gun. It fired the same round as the American M16 and was accurate out to the same range, roughly three hundred meters. But the rifle was only half the length of the M16. The Israelis knew that in tight urban combat, in a building where you had to swing the muzzle to fire, short barrels provided the shooter with a lethal edge.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Liquida had no intention of unpacking his bags. Two days in the jungle facility and he was ready to leave. What he wanted was his money. “My job was to get Leffort and his information here, and to do it on time. I have done that. Now I want to be paid.”
“I understand. So do I. We both want payment. Believe me when I tell you, I am as anxious as you are to go, to leave this place.” Bruno cast a wary eye, as if the walls in Liquida’s sterile room had ears. “But as I have explained to you, we are not yet finished.” He was stalling.
“We are as far as I am concerned.” Camped in a building with a huge electronic dish over the top of it was to Liquida like placing a neon crosshairs on your roof. He had no desire to look out his window and come nose to nose with a cruise missile.
Whatever was going out or coming in through the gigantic saucer sticking up in the middle of the jungle was none of his business. All Liquida knew was that he wanted no part of it. That and the heavy machine guns, the concertina-wired fences, and the starched military uniforms being worn by some of the people in the building gave him the willies. He had seen prisons with less security. Dying for someone else’s cause was not high on Liquida’s list of priorities. Bruno had described the facility as a Garden of Eden, swimming pools and guest bungalows. If so, they were hiding them well. What the place really needed was a good bomb shelter.
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