Colleen had called to say that she had been editing a story on Camilla Jackson's involvement with a charity and had discovered that the Jacksons were planning to visit family in Virginia for the coming weekend. The Jacksons would leave for the visit on Saturday morning, July 11, and return late on the Sunday—it would be an excellent time to set up the equipment. Jake and Mitch had already discussed what equipment would be required, planning to do the job on the Saturday evening, following the Jackson's departure.
That Saturday afternoon as he sat in the old office chair Jake could feel the sensation of an overactive nervous system starting to gnaw at his body. The sensation bit deep into his flesh and a feeling of paranoia enveloped him. It was time for his cocaine injection! At 3.00 p.m. he left the office and returned to the apartment for a rest. A busy night awaited him.
At 10:00 p.m. a clear night sky and a full moon provided enough light for Jake and Mitch to see their way through the back garden of the Jackson property. The two men crept silently toward the back door of the huge premises and Mitch began tracing the alarm system.
He was well acquainted with the alarm systems in the area, having installed most of them while working for a local alarm company. He was still associated with the alarm company but instead of doing installations he now sold them surveillance equipment instead. Mitch had a low regard for the law and was often involved in questionable deals but Jake never judged him—that was Mitch's business.
It took Mitch two minutes to disable the alarm before they could work on the back door lock. The door was easily opened giving them entrance to a lavish kitchen with all the modern appliances one could desire. Jake had decided to place the small spyware cameras in places where the Jacksons would most likely entertain others and, most importantly, where the Senator would entertain privately for business purposes.
They decided the most likely place for the latter would be Jackson's den. Football jerseys in glass cases displaying prominent numbers, adorned two of the walls, a trophy case showing off half a dozen silver and gold trophies took up the entire length of the far wall. A huge mahogany desk with executive chair was positioned in the center of the room, files and document trays were festooned all over the desktop.
Jake checked the office drawers while Mitch positioned the spyware in appropriate places for a view of the whole room. In the third drawer on the right side Jake discovered a brown folder. In the folder were a bunch of papers, forms, and a press clipping. The clipping was a short journalistic rendition with a photo of two men facing each other. The bigger man was Arthur Jackson and the other man, older and a little shorter, was Tony Underwood.
Jake believed it had to be something important, so he took out his phone and took a photo. Under impulse he took photos of the remaining papers before replacing the file in the drawer.
The men worked for another hour, placing mini-cameras in the main entrance and the dining room, the main bedroom upstairs, and the garage. Finally, Mitch set up the signal unit in the ceiling and they left the premises.
Back at Jake's office the TV monitors and receiver were installed and tested. All were working efficiently. A secondary receiver was then placed in Jake's living room at the apartment so that he could monitor the Jackson's home after working hours. Mitch and Jake slapped a high-five, agreeing on a job well done. It was up to Jake to monitor the residence until he overheard something important. It was going to require a little patience.
The following day, Jake had another opportunity to visit with Colleen and Kenny. The family spent the afternoon checking out Howard County's newest and largest shopping mall but by 5:00 p.m. they were tired of window shopping, so Jake drove the family back to the family home. With the day over, he returned to his apartment for some dinner and then sat down to turn on the laptop.
Tuning into the surveillance system he reversed the video to the beginning and watched as the Jacksons returned from their family visit. The Senator had gone straight to his den to fire up his laptop and appeared to be checking mail. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening so Jake turned off the monitors in favor of watching some TV.
While watching the 8:00 p.m. news broadcast, he felt a wave of tiredness coming over him and was about to nod off when a breaking news story was excitedly announced by the broadcaster. Jake shook the cobwebs from his head and listened.
It had to do with the Helium-3 mining project on the moon. It appeared that Mission Control at the Kennedy Space Center had lost all contact with the Lunar Base. The broadcaster went on to explain some details about the project, all of which Jake already knew. The project was a well-known venture financed by the G8 countries but had many people wondering how the world economy would fair under such a short transition to the new energy source.
He was intrigued by this new development and thought it strange. Looking up at a calendar, hanging on the wall, he noticed that the date was July 12, 2026—something deep in his memory was stirred. The date bothered him. He had seen it written somewhere very recently. Then he remembered the documents he had photographed in Jackson's office.
Fishing out his phone, he surfed to the file containing the photos and looked through them. The first two appeared to be official documents dating back to 2018. The third document jumped out at him. It looked like the copy of a communication between two people:
E.
As per Condor's instructions Valkyrie is a going concern for the date as planned. Initiate proceedings on the Project as early as July 12, 2026.
AJ.
The cogs of Jake's mind began to turn in the lubricant of this latest information. If the communication was meant for someone on the moon, then some sort of sabotage was planned for the Project, starting with a break in the communication between the Lunar Base and Earth Mission Control. The million-dollar question inevitably popped into Jake's mind—how was Jackson involved with an attempt to sabotage the Lunar Project?
He continued to surf through the photos of the paperwork until another document caught his eye. It appeared to be a rough pencil drawing of a company chart. At the top, joined together by single lines were four rectangles, each containing a name. The four names were probably companies and were named after the moons of Jupiter: Calisto, Ganymede, Europa and Io. Below, in another rectangle, was a single company called GEI and then below that another company, GICC. Thin penciled lines were connecting the companies presenting them in the form of a chart. Jake recognized the last company's acronym—it stood for "Global Investigation for Climate Change".
The GICC was the largest environmental monitoring company in the United States, with several branches abroad. The company performed a high standard of climate monitoring. Its results were influential in the shaping of world environmental policy.
Another document with penciled figures also suggested an interesting idea to Jake. There were four figures of large denominations, each preceded by an arrow, emanating from the four circled letters C, G, E, I, ending up in the GEI rectangle. Another arrow pointed to a circle below the GEI rectangle with the letters UAF. The final arrow drawn was to a rectangle at the bottom of the chart containing the letters GICC.
Putting two and two together Jake realized he was looking at a rough chart that resembled a flow of money between companies. If the final company was the Global Investigation for Climate Change, it would mean that a very large amount of money was reaching its coffers, or the pockets of certain members. If this was true, then something fishy had to be going on since the GICC was funded by federal grants.
There were no dollar signs preceding the figures, but he was sure the figures represented USD. Several of the other documents were official slips, showing some huge deposits on various dates, into an account at the Washington, D.C. branch of Chase Bank. The name on the account was Union Air Filters Ltd.
The company name was not known to Jake so he googled it and was not surprised to see that the owner was Robert C. Jackson, the Senator's brother. Was "Big Oil" paying off members of the GICC to fake climate rep
orts? If it was true, another nail had just been knocked into Arthur Jackson's coffin.
After a few minutes he turned on the surveillance cameras again and rewound to where he had been watching. Something interesting had just taken place.
He could see Jackson still sitting at his desk, looking a little agitated, evident by the constant checking of his watch. Then the Senator's cell phone rang. The caller appeared to be someone named Condor. Jake leaned forward in his chair, hoping to glean something from Jackson's side of the conversation. He remembered that the name Condor had appeared on a short message he had found with certain documents in Jackson's drawer.
The conversation was short with Condor doing most of the talking. Jake was ready with a pen and pad, hoping to record anything new that might further his understanding. It appeared from Jackson's conversation that he was being told to tone down the lobby process. The lobbying of congressional members, supported by the use of environmental reports had apparently been important in facilitating Phase One of Valkyrie, which according to the conversation, was about to end. Condor wanted to know if all things were in place.
Another name came to the fore—Sammy Binks. By Jackson's conversation Jake concluded that Condor wanted to know if Sammy "had things in place." Jackson assured Condor that he would find out from Wolverine.
Jackson also confirmed that a meeting between himself and Wolverine was to take place the following day
∞∞
Chapter Eight
Mining the Moon
Saturday, July 11
1700 hours
The surface temperature of the Moon was rising. Dr. Jethro Goodman gave the head-up-display (HUD) on the inside of his visor a cursory glance and noted that the temperature had reached 105°C. The huge orb of the sun hung high in the dark sky, indicating that the moon was in the waning gibbous phase to North American viewers on Earth. The HUD chronometer showed present earth time to be 1700 hours EST—time for Jethro, or Jet as he was more commonly known, to head back to the Lunar Base.
Gathering up the various samples which he had carefully stored in portable titanium canisters, Jet turned and began the slow, bounding skip back toward the 'Beast.' The Beast was one of four lunar terrain vehicles (LTV's) used for general transport around the Sea of Tranquility landscape. These versatile, all-terrain vehicles were also used to collect samples from the various lunar mining dig-sites.
Although the LTV had a manual system for driving it, the astronauts always used the auto-drive system. A simple command could be keyed into the computer and the vehicle drove itself to the chosen destination. The on-board, auto-drive navigation used a GPS system situated on the Space Platform orbiting above the Moon in a geosynchronous circuit, and the signal could be received by any device that had line-of-sight to the Platform.
The ride back was uneventful. Forty minutes later he could see the domed roofs of the Lunar Base appearing on the curved terrain ahead, making uncharacteristic mounds in the flat, barren landscape.
The base had been built almost entirely with local materials mined from the moon's regolith. Buildings were constructed of special concrete made from lunar dust, using a liquid sulfur bonding agent, in a waterless process. The benefit of using local building materials was a huge cost reduction for the project. The average cost to transport payloads from the Earth to the Moon was $30,000.00 per lb.
The entire base was recessed six feet into the Moon's surface so that only the domed roof of each structure could be seen at ground level. The walls were protected with the ground exerting a stabilizing force to the internal pressure of the rooms. The complex housed the twelve astronaut-miners comfortably and included a gymnasium. The staff spent several hours working out every day, the daily exercise regime ensuring their health and physical sustainability, during the long six-month work cycle. The weekly work schedule was six shifts on, followed by one shift off, and every four weeks each person was granted 3 shifts off; two groups of twelve miners alternated every six months. Miners who had finished a six-month stint on the Moon were returned to Earth by shuttle to spend six weeks of rehabilitation and acclimatization, before resuming duties at the Earth Base.
The Beast parked itself directly outside the entrance of the Lunar Base. Jet clambered down, taking care not to lose his footing on the metal steps. In the moon's one-sixth gravity it took time to adapt to normal movements and every step had to be planned in advance until experience finally made walking second nature again. This was Jet's second six-month term and he pretty much had a handle on getting around; however, long-term living under moon conditions was not easy.
He grabbed the sample canisters and headed for the outside airlock door. The green LED on the activation panel indicated that no one was in the airlock. He jabbed a gloved finger at the door activation button and the outer door opened silently, giving him entrance. He stepped into the airlock and waited while the door closed. A muffled hiss of compressed air accompanied the re-pressurization of the airlock which then led through to another door sealing off the suit storage area between the airlock and the main foyer of the Base. Jet set the canisters down on the floor and quickly removed his helmet and CCA. The CCA, or Snoopy Cap, contained the ear phones and microphones for communication. Then he began removing his suit.
Modern spacesuits were handled with greater ease than their predecessors had been. Each astronaut was able to be personally responsible for suiting up or removing the suit. The LCVG (Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment), an inner-suit, was usually removed in the sleeping quarters and stored in the Astronaut's personal locker.
Glad to be free of the cumbersome suit he watched the pressure gauge rise to one atmosphere, the pressure in the main habitable area. The initial pressurization of the airlock was to equalize the pressure with the suit, before removal of the suit took place. Spacesuits were pressurized to 4.3 lbs. per square inch, much lower than the normal habitable pressure of 14.7 lbs.
Picking up the canisters, he made his way through to the foyer to the sample storage locker. The door hissed loudly, as it closed behind him. The sample storage locker was adjacent to the laboratory and had shelves that could be accessed from inside the lab.
Jet deposited the samples on a shelf and closed the storage doors. Then he made his way to the self-serve canteen down the hallway.
The buildings were all semi-concave structures with flat, horizontal floors, rounded walls and roofs. A central corridor ran down the middle of the complex to service each area of habitation of which the control room was the largest. This was followed by the laboratory and storage, the canteen, the gym, the infirmary, the recreation room, and finally the sleeping quarters.
The Oxygen Storage and Blending Unit was located next to the lab, where oxygen, separated from the soil at the two large soil processors was stored and combined with nitrogen, to form the breathable air used in the base facility. There had to be a ready supply of pure oxygen for the astronauts to use when they were working outdoors. Ice had also been discovered beneath the ground at the bottom of several craters spawning an excavation process to mine this most valuable of resources. A thousand-gallon water tank provided a limited potable water supply for the miners' personal use.
This was all part of Jet's responsibility as the Project Resources Specialist. He oversaw the process of separating the oxygen, which bonded chemically with iron in the lunar minerals. The oxygen-bearing iron is heated and exposed to an excess of hydrogen, causing it to give off water vapor and iron. He was also responsible for the capture process of Helium-3 from the regolith, its storage, and its ultimate transport to Earth.
Jet had not eaten anything since his shift began and he was famished. Catching his reflection in the stainless steel door of the freezer, it appeared he had lost some weight since his arrival two months prior. His waistline appeared a little narrower than before the recent deployment back to lunar duties. He had enjoyed the time spent with his family in Toronto, Canada, but his mother had spoiled him rotten. He was still single
at forty-three and the family, in no uncertain terms, never let him forget it. He didn't blame them; it was just that he had struggled to form any close relationships since Christina had died.
Christina had been the love of his life and they had planned to marry in the fall of 2013. Jet had just completed his Ph.D. in Materials, Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto in June of 2013. In the fall of the same year, just weeks before the wedding, Christina had been visiting a friend and was on the way to their apartment in Oakville, when she was fatally injured in a car accident. In those days cars were not driven by on-board computers and lacked the built-in safety features of modern vehicles.
Jet had been working in the Alberta oil patch as an Environmental Chemist, and had not been able to get home in time to share the final moments of her passing. His life was suddenly put on hold as he desperately tried to make sense of the accident. Eventually after three years he made an effort to move on with his life and joined the Canadian Space Agency, ending up on the Helium-3 Project.
Jet couldn't resist another glance at his reflection. Crease-lined, hazel eyes stared back at him. He noticed the touch of grey at his temples, highlighting his dark, brown wavy hair and a sudden sense of loneliness engulfed him. It wasn't a feeling of despair, but a pang of deep melancholy, a need to be free from those moments of depression that often came upon him. The mind, however, can be a tricky enterprise of conflicting thoughts, often master to no one.
He viewed all the neatly packed rows of food cartons, reading the labels for something that would start his digestive juices flowing and finally saw his favorite: Pot roast and vegetables.
At that moment a shadow fell across the freezer door. Jet turned to find Beth Eaton standing behind him, a hint of a smile lighting up her pleasant facial features. Beth was the Habitat Economics Specialist as well as the Medical Doctor for the project. She oversaw the team's dietary considerations, fitness program, and medical concerns.
The Helium-3 Conspiracy Page 6