Rock Killer

by S. Evan Townsend

  “No. He didn’t suspect a thing.”

  “Good,” Morgan said. She turned a debit card from the SRI bank over to Karen. Karen went to her computer and checked the balance–it was to her liking.

  Morgan left and Karen went back to her computer. She wondered what the south of France was like this time of year.

  And how many rich men she could find.

  ***

  Democracy had swept through the Middle East like some unstoppable jihad early in the twenty-first century, starting with what was called the “Second Arab Spring” (after the first, in most cases, simply replaced one bastard with a worse bastard). Many countries made their royalty figureheads after the British model, some had a spate of violence as the labor pains of the birth of freedom. Some flirted with radical Islam, but those states soon found their people rising up against them–except those countries where the Baath party held the population in control with tactics developed over 80 years of brutal rule in the now-defunct Soviet Union.

  Unwilling or unable to resist, the West allowed the Baathists to march into country after country, aborting fledgling democracies by preying on their inherent weaknesses. The vacuum left when the United States pulled out of the region needed to be filled, and the Baathists were brutal enough to do it.

  Oil, replaced by hydrogen as the fuel of choice in the wealthy Occident, was still used for internal combustion in the third world, including the Russian Federation. Russia was often called a third-world country with a first-world space program.

  Oil was also used everywhere in the manufacture of plastics, lubricants, and fertilizers. In the West, environmental concerns guaranteed their oil reserves would remain in the ground; the Russians still couldn’t get enough of their petroleum to the surface to even take care of their own needs. So the Baath Party controlled almost all the world’s accessible oil. With that money they bought arms they hoped to eventually use against the Zionist state and the wealthy, greedy West. They also built a space facility with Russian help.

  When their tanks rolled into Muscat, Oman, the Baathists claimed they were invited in by a popular, rebel government that had taken control in a bloody coup. Why the people would overthrow a government they had elected, the Baathists didn’t explain.

  When the rulers in Damascus decided the United Baath Arab States needed space capabilities, it built a space facility at Mirbat in southern Oman. Once it was built, educated men (not women) were needed to operate it. But schools and science were not Baath priorities. Educated men, like many commodities the Baaths couldn’t seem to produce domestically, had to be imported.

  And, like all things imported from the West, these, too, carried unseen dangers.

  Jackson didn’t listen when his friends told him he was making a big mistake. They asked if he noticed the Baaths weren’t hiring women. They asked if he was willing to help the Butchers of Damascus. But he shrugged off their protests. How else could a recent graduate, with less than sterling grades, work on space systems? So Jackson left the U.S. for Oman.

  In Frankfurt he had a long layover. Flights into the United Baath Arab States had to be on their airline and its schedule was sporadic at best.

  He was approached in an airport lounge by an attractive, Asian woman. She said he could make even more money than the Baaths were offering.

  The danger didn’t put him off but rather excited him. He took the job suspecting his new employer was either the Japanese government or Space Resources Incorporated. He was to report on everything he saw and make special reports of anything unusual.

  A few weeks after arriving, he received from his contact, a taxi driver, a coin-sized camera. He’d shoot its 100-frame memory full and exchange it for another.

  One morning the same taxi drove him to work. He’d missed the bus from the dormitories to the facility again.

  “I saw something unusual yesterday,” Jackson said after turning over the camera.

  “What?” the driver asked handing back the new camera. He wondered to himself if this was going to be anything. Given a specific task a few weeks ago this engineer found nothing. It seemed unlikely he’d just stumble on something.

  “They brought something in. It was in large trucks,” Jackson reported. “They were in crates, big crates. They put them in a warehouse and put a guard on them.”

  “Can you get into that warehouse?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Get a picture if you can. We need it today so turn it over to your secondary contact.”

  “I will.”

  The taxi stopped in front of the facility. Jackson left the cab, paid the driver in view of the guard and walked to the gate.

  “Miss the bus again?” the guard asked.

  “Yeah,” Jackson said. “Overslept.” They went through the drill of ID checking and finally Jackson was in the massive compound.

  ***

  William Thorne stared out the window of his apartment over the Saigon River. Hanoi’s capitalist reforms even extended to giving the city back its old name. The view was of row after row of expensive apartment buildings. The area was, before it was decided it had better uses by the free market, pure industrial property. Now it was where the new, rich capitalists lived.

  The glass was actually warm to the touch as the sopping late summer heat broiled those residents unfortunate to be without air conditioning. But those were few as the country’s wealth grew quickly after the liberalization of the economy. Add to that the longest period of continuous peace the land had seen since World War II and Vietnam was quickly catching South Korea as an “Asian Tiger” economy.

  Thorne turned from the window to face Thi, who was staring at him with her fierce, black eyes.

  “You heard me,” she barked. “Don’t come back.”

  Thorne looked at her. She was small, almost frail looking, in a way that suggested prepubescence. But her face was enough to dispel that notion as she glared at him in smoldering anger.

  “Fine,” Thorne said simply. In three months the lease would be up. She could have the apartment until then. After that he didn’t give a damn what she did. She had a good job working at the Toyota plant outside the city.

  She watched as he packed his bags and called the doorman to get a taxi. While waiting for his ride he thought he’d done pretty well. At almost two years, this was his longest relationship, yet.

  “Good-bye, Thi,” he said, walking out the door. She slammed it shut behind him.

  He had the taxi take him to the airport. There, he stood in the lobby, his bags piled around him, wondering what to do. He didn’t really know where he’d go. He had a few days left before he had to return to space. SRI had sent the information about his next trip. He’d be chief of security for the next asteroid under Director Chun. Chun was a good friend and he was looking forward to the trip. In the meantime, he was stuck. He was alone with no place to go.

  He found a public terminal and punched in an address that he couldn’t forget if he wanted to. He wondered if it was still the same. The screen was blank for a long time with “Please Wait” displayed in Vietnamese, English, Chinese, and for recent immigrants, Tagalog.

  The woman that answered had tight, short hair surrounding her hard face. Anachronistically, she wore glasses that were plain, black, horn rims.

  “Yes?” she said automatically. Then her face lost all its color. “Bill?”

  “Hi, Ma. Can I come home?”

  ***

  “So Griffin’s still alive,” Mitchel asked in his office.

  “Apparently he’s on the Rock Skipper,” Rodriguez said on the Moon.

  “Okay, what do you know about these people?”

  In San Francisco a man named Joe Murda looked off screen. “Our data on the GA identifies all but the Cole woman.”

  “From their visas,” Rodriguez said, “Cole lives in a town called Gilroy. Knecht lives in L.A.”

  “I have more bad news,” Murda added. “Knecht was trained in space navigation. She’s undoubtedly operati
ng the Rock Skipper.”

  “Who trained her, where?” Mitchel demanded.

  Murda hesitated. “We did. She’s an ex-employee/trainee.”

  “Damn,” Mitchel spat. “And she was living in L.A.?”

  “According to her visa. L.A. is where the GA operates a safe house,” Murda said. “Gilroy’s a suburb of San Jose and not too far from here. Let me try something.

  “Computer, directory, Gilroy. Cole, C-O-L-E. List all Cole, M.” He looked at the computer display just visible to Mitchel. “I’ve got a Madalyn Cole in Gilroy. Computer, call Madalyn Cole. To my screen only.” A short wait.

  “Hello?” a female voice queried. The new screen read NO VIDEO.

  “Hi,” Murda said in friendly tones. “Is Madalyn there?”

  “No,” the voice replied. Everyone heard her suspicious tone. “She quit her job and moved out a few weeks ago. I’m her roommate; or I was.”

  “She quit her job?” Murda exclaimed with mock shock. “I thought she liked that job.”

  “Are you kidding?” the girl said as if she considered Murda an idiot. “She hated it, but it paid good. Who is this anyway?”

  “A friend from school,” Murda said. “Do you know where she went?”

  “No,” the voice replied. “She just left. I came home from work and she was gone.” Bitterness in that statement.

  “Did you work where she worked?”

  “No. I tried but they wouldn’t hire me. Not enough school.”

  “Yeah, I know what that’s like,” Murda tried.

  This is going nowhere, Mitchel thought.

  “Yeah,” the girl bemoaned. “They’re really jerks at WCMS.”

  “WCMS?” Murda asked.

  “Yeah, you know. West Coast Missile Systems.”

  Oh, damn, Mitchel thought. West Coast was the subcontractor for the missile systems on the Rock Skipper-class ships.

  “Well, I got to go,” Murda said and tapped a button on his computer disconnecting the call.

  “Get over to West Coast and find out what she did,” Mitchel ordered.

  “I sure will.”

  Meyoung broke in just then. “Mr. Mitchel,” she said. “I’ve got a call from Ms. Morgan, Tel Aviv.”

  “Put it in the conference,” Mitchel barked, still unhappy about the news he’d just received.

  Elisa Morgan’s pretty face appeared. “Mitch—oh hi, Rod, Murda. Mitch, the Syrians bought space-to-space missiles from the Frenchman, Philippe Thorez.”

  “How do you know?”

  “One of our contacts in Mirbat sent us some interesting photos. We think they’re Puma space-to-space; the quality was pretty poor. I’m trying to get information from the French but you know how tight lipped they are.

  “But,” she continued, “Thorez, the French arms dealer I told you about, visited Damascus two days ago. We have his computer records. The Syrians are paying him 20million euros to an SRI account. You want the number?”

  “Send it in your report.”

  “Okay. Three months ago he paid eleven and a half million to the Chinese.”

  “And the Chinese,” Mitchel finished for her, “buy Pumas from the French.”

  “Yes,” Morgan said. “He even noted the expenditure as ‘Inventory, space-to-space missiles.’“

  “Good work, Elisa,” Mitchel said with more enthusiasm than he felt. This was adding up in ways he didn’t like.

  ***

  Cole was in the bottom of the Rock Killer, née Rock Skipper.

  Griffin was glad. When Cole was around, she and Knecht heterodyned on each other and Griffin and Trudeau were left watching the escalating pitch of their conversations.

  Griffin walked up behind Knecht as she peered out the large bridge window. He was so close to her shapely back, another few inches and they’d be touching. Because they were conserving water he could smell her: a not altogether unpleasant sensation.

  Either she didn’t notice how close he was or didn’t care.

  “Where are they, Knecht?” he asked her.

  She didn’t move. “I don’t know.”

  “They’re late,” he growled, stating the obvious. “Any radio contact?”

  Trudeau shook his head. Knecht moved toward the window.

  Griffin sensed he was pushing his luck with her and moved away, passing back and forth. He looked at the black sky out the bridge dome window. He’d lost three people stealing this ship and if those camel-jockeys didn’t come through it would be for nothing.

  “You did a good job on the Moon,” Griffin said to Knecht.

  She looked at him and stated, simply, “Thank you.”

  “I’ve got them on radar,” Trudeau reported. “At least I hope it’s them.”

  “Figure the odds of someone else being here,” Griffin replied.

  He hit the intercom button. “Cole, prepare the airlock to dock.”

  “Okay,” she answered.

  Griffin again hit the intercom button. “Prepare for free-fall, Cole.” He turned to Knecht. “Match that ship up with the Janes program.”

  Knecht worked efficiently with the computer. “Janes says it’s a modified, Russian Federation Tsiolkovshy-class, lunar shuttle, versions of which were sold to, among others, Syria, who renamed it the Athwara Bathy or something like that.”

  “Ath-Thawra Baathiya,” Griffin corrected. “It means ‘Baath Revolution.’ Real imaginative, huh?”

  “So, is it them?” Knecht asked with some impatience. “It’s the right kind of ship, but,” and she looked out her window. There was a flashing as if someone was pointing a flashlight out a window–low tech but effective.

  “There’s the light,” Knecht said. “It’s them all right.”

  “Great. Cut the engines,” Griffin ordered. “Let’s see how long it takes them to match velocity.”

  It took a great while. The Russian equipment wasn’t up to SRI standards, but Knecht’s training wasn’t enough to allow her to use the Rock Skipper’s ability to its full extent. But eventually the two ships were mated. A swarthy fellow pushed over through the airlock.

  Griffin greeted the man. “Marhaban sadiqi,” he said. Greetings, friend.

  The visitor smiled sardonically. “Marhabtain.” Two greetings to you.

  Griffin smiled also, although he felt the need to scrape the Arab’s sarcasm off his face. “Do you have the missiles, aqid?” Sir. He didn’t understand the other’s need to humiliate him.

  “Yes, habibi.” My love. The Arab’s continued sarcasm was floating thickly in the air.

  “And are they fully capable?”

  “Of course. How do you plan to mount them?”

  “This ship,” Griffin said, “is used to survey asteroids. In order to determine the composition of the asteroid, it fires a missile very much like these. It releases a projectile, like a sabot round, and they do a spectroscopic analysis on the explosion of the impact.” His voice revealed his low opinion of the method. “These missiles should fit in those tubes with very little modification.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Of course. We have plenty of time to get to the asteroid belt. We are in no hurry. And we have an ace in the hole.”

  The Arab looked as if he didn’t understand the idiom. But he ignored it. “I will send the missiles over. Ma’salamah.” God be with you.

  “Ma’salamah,” Griffin echoed. “We will inform you of our victory.”

  “In sha’allah.” If God is willing.

  ***

  Charlie Jones took a spaceplane from Tokyo to Washington over the North Polar Region. Most of the trip her intestine seemed to be trying to tie itself into a bowline. This job Mitchel had sent her on, into the fiery furnace of the Gaia Alliance, could get her killed. And she’d be all alone, without Frank, Mitchel, or even Grandma to call on for help.

  The spaceplanes didn’t land at National so she had to take a cab from Dulles. She thought about renting a car but it had been ages since she’d driven and she didn’t really have a us
e for one. Plus her license had probably expired.

  With her bag over her shoulder she climbed in one of the taxis lined up outside the front of the terminal.

  “FBI building,” she said closing the door.

  The driver turned in his seat to look at her. He hesitated long enough to rake his eyes over her. “Do you know where that is?” he asked when he was through leering.

  “No,” Charlie replied. “Can’t you punch it up on your computer?”

  “No,” the driver said turning around and starting the car.

  Must be broken, Charlie thought.

  He pulled away from the curb and thumbed a button on his steering wheel. He had an earphone in one ear and a mic tube extended to near his mouth. “Hey, I got a fare here who wants to go to the FBI Building,” he said. “Do you know where that is...? I don’t know.”

  The car picked up speed and they approached the freeway entrance. “Okay, yeah, I got it.”

  “Where?” Charlie asked.

  “Between the White House and the Capital on Pennsylvania,” he said.

  “Good,” Charlie said.

  The drive was long at the maximum speed of the taxi.

  Charlie had to convert the speedometer reading she could see over the driver’s shoulder to kilometers to realize just how slow 55 was.

  It was getting dark when Charlie started recognizing landmarks from pictures. They crossed a bridge and Charlie knew this was the Mall with the Capital at one end and the Washington Monument extending skyward in the middle like some poor, Earthbound, square rocket. Although Charlie considered herself a citizen of space before the U.S.A., she still felt a stirring of pride, if not for what her native land had become, then for what it was before.

  The street signs said they were on Constitution Avenue. She was surprised there weren’t more people. Tourists, she thought, should be crowding the mall although it is getting late.

  Then she saw why there were so few people. Military vehicles were patrolling the streets. They were stopping anyone walking, apparently checking identification and directing them away from the mall. Huge concrete barriers blocked off the streets.

  “We’re too close to the White House,” the driver said. “You don’t want to be around here after curfew.”