by Tom Clancy
“I must tell you, Siegfried, my single nagging concern about our endeavor is not that we will fail to carry it out, but that success could prove a disappointment to our clients,” DeVane said after a moment. “Compared to what we intend to place aboard the Russian orbital platform, the device you fielded is as a cannonball would be to a precision-guided missile.”
Kuhl shrugged minimally. A taste.
“Havoc does have a far higher performance watershed to meet, yes, and the fact that one proved reliable is no guarantee that the other will do the same,” he said. “Still, the Albanians have paid us up front. As have the cartels. We’ve made clear that their money is ours to keep regardless.”
“I like to take the larger view. Keep our customers satisfied.” DeVane paused again. “It is also my wish to see Roger Gordian’s reputation and influence suffer for all this. UpLink’s growing presence in so many of our pipeline nations arguably represents our greatest threat. The economic and political stability his operations brings to those states is bad for business, and what is bad for business must be eliminated. Think of the trust he stands to lose with his global partners should we deliver on our contracts… and consider the embarrassment to us if we don’t. There are huge dividends at stake on both sides.”
Kuhl nodded once.
“A weapon’s effectiveness cannot be absolutely proven until it is deployed,” he said. “But we know that the engineering difficulties that beset its prototypical antecedents — namely the lack of an adequate, rechargeable energy source, and susceptibility to their own radiation — have been solved. The sun itself will function as an incomparably powerful generator and allow long-range, focused targeting from space. And the exotic metal alloy developed by Ilkanovitch’s team has proven capable of shielding the device’s components from its intense, repetitive production of broad-frequency microwave beams. Ilkanovitch’s documentation of the Russian testing is backed up by the evidence we’ve seen of its potential.”
“You are referring to the railway ‘accident’?”
“And to the crash of the 747 commuter plane in Los Angeles some months back. American investigators attributed its explosion after takeoff to a spark in the conductive wiring inside its center fuel tank. This was true. But the cause of the spark remained undetermined in official reports, and the abrupt retirement of a senior FBI official who publicly speculated that it might have been a microwave pulse was swept under the agency’s very large carpet.” Kuhl paused. “Again, I am convinced beyond doubt that Ilkanovitch’s claim of responsibility is genuine… and Havoc is many, many times more effective than the ground-based device that ignited the fuel tank. Imagine the destruction of not a single plane, but of dozens with the targeting of a major airport’s air traffic control system. Imagine the chaos that would arise from the total disruption of civil electronic systems and communications grids in a city such as New York or London. Havoc will achieve superb results. It will make the entire world hostage to our demands.”
DeVane looked at him.
“Tell me what you’ve learned about Gordian’s proposed reinforcement of the Cosmodrome.”
“It’s as we foresaw. My intelligence is that he’s succeeded in convincing the officials at Baikonur to let him provide additional security. Much of the support is being brought over from the UpLink ground station in Kaliningrad, though he is drawing upon other assets as well… all meant to prevent anything from interfering with the shuttle’s launch.”
“So he is playing into our hands. Without being aware of our true goal, thinking we mean to cripple the ISS program, his security measures will be misdirected.”
“Exactly.”
DeVane looked at him another moment, then nodded.
“Good enough,” he said. “You have sufficient manpower in Kazakhstan to implement our strike?”
“Yes,” Kuhl replied. “With added elements leaving from our base in the Pantanal tomorrow night.”
“Those men will be transporting the device, I take it?”
“Yes.”
“Then let us be expeditious and move within a few days,” DeVane said.
“Yes.”
DeVane turned over his last three cards and nodded with satisfaction, his smile lengthening, his lips parting slightly to show his small, white front teeth.
“Aces, Siegfried,” he said, “We’re all aces.”
* * *
As the sun was setting in Bolivia it was blazing an ascendant track through the Kazakhstan sky halfway around the world, where the latest stream of UpLink helicopters and transport planes had begun to arrive at the military airfield in Leninsk, some twenty miles south of the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
His hand visored over his eyes to shield it from the desert brightness, Yuri Petrov stood looking out at the tarmac as a wide-bellied Lockheed transport made its final approach. He scowled. Perhaps he ought to feel something like gratitude for the assistance he was receiving from UpLink, but instead he felt… what? Outrage was more than he could muster these days, and he had worn indignation on his back for so long it was like an old, threadbare shirt. How could it be otherwise?
He was the director of a Russian Space Agency that was propped up by American loans and subsidies. The Baikonur facility that had been the launch site for every manned space mission Russia had conducted, and the town of Leninsk that had been established as an outpost for its defense and supply, had since 1994 been leased from the sovereign state of Kazakhstan — once part of the Soviet Union — for over a hundred million dollars a year, much of it apportioned from the American hand-outs. And now the Voenno Kosmicheskie Sily, or Military Space Force, that was garrisoned in the town had been subordinated to a private American security contingent under the rubric of “mutual support” at the direct order of President Vladimir Starinov himself, who many believed had become not merely indebted, but indentured, to Roger Gordian after UpLink’s people saved him from assassination the year before — and whose regime had been taking continuous political fire for blatantly kowtowing to American and NATO interests.
Petrov’s scowl deepened. Why bother raising the Russian flag over the installation, emblazoning Russian decals on the spacecraft that launched from it, or stitching Russian patches onto the spacesuits of the cosmonauts that rode into space aboard those craft? Why not confirm what was already all too evident to him and stamp the stars and stripes, or better yet the U.S. dollar sign, onto the brow of every person who worked for an agency that had once been at the forefront of space exploration, sending the first satellite into orbit around the earth, the first unmanned probes to the surface of the moon and Venus, the first human being into space?
Now Petrov watched the Lockheed taxi easily to a stop in an unloading area across the airfield, where ground crews and wheeled freight conveyors were already rolling toward its freight door. He was aware of the almost subliminal drone of more aircraft winging in above the steppes, while above him another transport bearing UpLink insignia entered its landing pattern. The palletized loads of weapons, armored patrol vehicles, and other heavy lift had been arriving along with large complements of operating and service personnel for over forty-eight hours, and would continue to arrive right up until the launch later that week.
Petrov found himself wondering how the American populace would react if their government invited a Russian paramilitary force with tremendous surveillance and fighting capabilities into the heart of their nation, imposed fewer practical restraints upon their use of weapons than the average citizen was asked to accept, then allowed them to usurp control of a military policing operation from indigenous army units. Would that not be seen as compromising America’s internal security? As a threat to the very underpinning of its national sovereignty? Would it be tolerated?
He dropped his eyes and stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets. There could be no greater proof of America’s global hegemony than those planes in the busy sky.
How could he describe how he felt?
He searched his mind for
the right word and finally nodded.
Castrated.
That was it. That was perfect.
Damned fortunate for him that his wife had lost interest in sex some years ago. His head bent, his shoulders slightly stooped, Petrov strode toward the small terminal where he would prop himself up to give a gracious, politic reception to the current batch of newcomers from UpLink.
Welcoming them where they very well might be needed, but were most assuredly not wanted.
* * *
“—don’t know why you keep coming here to visit, Annie. You aren’t around for someone’s time of dying, it isn’t like missing your train or a dentist’s appointment or the early-bird sale at Wal-Mart. There’s late and there’s late, and if you think that puts a heavy load on your shoulders, think of how it felt for me. ”
Annie is back in Room 377 of the hospital, sitting at the bedside of the man in the carrot-red flight/reentry suit. The man with the Vaseline-smudge face who is and isn’t her husband. The room is dark, the lights off, night outside the window behind her. The only illumination is a soft glow coming from the equipment-she’s gotten used to seeing it change from hospital instruments to a space shuttle console to the front panel indicators of an F-16 with almost every glance — on the far side of his bed.
She shakes her head. “I didn’t know, they said there was time—”
“And you had a training session to conduct, ” he interrupts with a chuckle like the sound of someone stamping down on dry twigs and broken glass. “How convenient. ”
“That isn’t fair,” she says, an imploring note in her voice. “I was going to come back in the morning. You knew I was coming back. You knew. And then they called… they phoned me… ”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ve been through this same old song before. Sudden heart attack, smoke in the cabin, with a heave and a ho, they just had to tell you so. ” He produces another brittle expulsion of laughter that dissolves into a chain of hacking coughs. “Might’ve made it easier for my Annie to digest, you know how the Juiceman says to drink your bromelain before bedtime. But to be honest, there’s not much difference from where I’m lying. There’s late and there’s late and you missed our date—”
She shakes her head. “No, don’t say that again—”
“You can’t stand hearing it, lassie, then why not put on your tweed cap and head on over to Erlsberg Castle? That’s got to be better than this here barn hop, ” he says with a mock Scottish brogue. His hand comes up and points in her direction, the burned, sloughy flesh dangling off his finger like strings of half-dried glue. “Or you can always use the ejection seat. Handle’s right in front of you. ”
And it is. It is. Annie thinks she can remember pulling a plain wooden armchair up to the bed, is sure she can, but it suddenly becomes clear she’s mistaken, she is in a McDonnell Douglas ACES II ejection seat, the same type that launched her out of her burning F-16 over Bosnia. She acknowledges this discovery in the same unstartled way as she does the endlessly transforming instrument panels, and the smeary blotch of grease in front of — Mark’s? — face, making it impossible for her to discern its features. She is in an ejection seat, okay, all right, an ejection seat. Belted into the safety harness, the recovery parachute container above the headrest against the back of her neck, the data recorder mounted on the side of the chair to her left over the emergency oxygen bottle…
The yellow ejection handle in front of her.
“Do it, Annie. Bail!” the voice from the bed says in what almost sounds like a dare. “We both know how it works. Catapult will ignite in, what, three tenths of a second? The rocket sustainer less than a tenth of a second after that. Five secs later you’ll be separated from the seat and floating down nice and soft in your ’chute. ”
“No, ” she replies, her own forcefulness catching her off guard. “I won’t do it.”
“Easy enough for you to say now, but just wait. There’s smoke in the cabin! Smoke all around us. ”
Again, Annie is hardly surprised to find that he is right, has actually gotten used to these snap announcements of his, which have begun to remind her of hearing a video jock on MTV or VH-1 introduce the weekly hit list. He knows what’s cuing up, he’s always on top of the game, and if he tells you that there’s smoke, you better believe you’re about smell it.
Just you wait a second.
At first it is white, vaporous, and odorless as it tapers up from underneath her seat, like the sort of dry-ice smoke produced for theatrical effects. But it rapidly darkens and thickens, rising in dirty gray billows that fill her mouth and nose, threatening to overcome her with its choking stench.
“Go on, Annie, what are you waiting for?” the man in the bed asks in his familiar gibing, goading tone. He props himself up on his pillow, thrusts his seared-to-the-bone finger at her through the smoke, and wags it in front of her face. “Reach for the lever and you’re up and out!”
“No!” Annie is even more forceful, more adamant than she had been a second earlier. “I won‘t, you hear me? I won’t!”
“Cut the crap and reach for it, ” he snarls. “Reach—”
“No!” she again shouts back defiantly, and then pushes herself off the seat against the resistance of her buckled harness straps and does reach out — though not for the eject lever. No, not for the lever, but for his hideously burned, reddened hand, taking it between both of her own with careful tenderness. “We’re in this together, and that’s never changed. Not for me.”
The smoke wells blackly around her now, congealing so Annie can no longer see the bed only inches in front of her, or the man lying under its sheets. But she can still feel him, can still feel his hand in hers. And then she realizes with a jolt of surprise — the first she’s experienced in this latest twist on what some small portion of her sleeping mind realizes has become a recurrent nightmare — that he isn’t pulling it away.
“It’s all on the tape, Annie, ” he says.
His voice now clearly that of her husband, but without the sneering, disdainful quality it has had in each previous version of this scene.
“Mark—”
“On the tape,” he repeats.
Kindly.
Gently.
Oh, so heartbreakingly gently from behind the shroud of smoke, reminding her of how he had been before the cancer, how she had come to love him, how much about him she had loved what seems such a very long time ago.
“You already know everything you need to know,” he says, all at once sounding as if he has moved further away from her.
Then Annie realizes that is exactly what is happening. She feels his hand slipping out from between her fingers — feels it slowly, inevitably slipping into the black. Try as she does, struggle as she does, she can’t seem to hold onto it.
Hold onto him.
“Mark, Mark—” She breaks off in a fit of coughing and gasping, her lungs crammed full of smoke. Wishing she could see him in the blinding smoke. Wishing, wishing she could just hold on. “Mark, I—”
Annie awoke with her arm outstretched and her fingers clutching at empty air. Awoke in her darkened bedroom, sweaty, trembling, and breathless, her heart tripping wildly in her chest. The trailing edge of her inarticulate cries — cries that, in her dream, had seemed to take the form of her husband’s name — were still on her lips.
The dream, she thought.
Once again, the dream.
Annie reached over to her nightstand for the glass of water she had brought in from the kitchen before climbing into bed, took a drink, another, a third. She swept the hair back off her forehead, released a long, sighing breath. Thank heaven she hadn’t startled the kids with the noise she must have been making.
She sat there for several minutes, pulling herself together, letting her heartbeat and respiration slow to a normal rate. Then she put down the now-half-drained glass of water and pressed the illuminator button of her Indiglo alarm clock.
3:00 A.M.
She had fallen asleep less than two ho
urs ago after poring over the written transcript of the Orion-to-LCR communications, concentrating on the final transmissions from the flight deck. It was obviously what had precipitated the dream this time around, just as reading the newspaper story about Orion had originally brought it on. Which made, what now, four occurrences in less than a week?
“Shit,” she muttered aloud. “Better find a way to clear your head before hitting the sack or you’re going to burn out fast, Annie. Listen to some music, watch those Seinfeld reruns on TV, anything besides taking your work to bed with—”
Her eyes snapping wide open, her heart pounding again, she straightened with such an abrupt jerk that her headboard struck the wall behind her with a bang.
Mark’s words to her in the dream… those last words.
She could recall them as if they had actually come from his mouth and not her own subconscious mind. As if he were repeating them from beside her in bed at that very instant.
It’s all on the tape, Annie. On the tape. You already know everything you need to know.
She switched on her reading lamp and grabbed up the bound pages of the transcript from where they lay on the nightstand, unaware that she’d barely missed knocking over her water glass in the process.
Everything you need to know.
“Oh, my God,” she said into the pin-drop silence of the room, slapping the transparent binder onto her lap and opening it with a jerky, almost violent flick of her hand. “Oh, my God.”
EIGHTEEN
FLORIDA APRIL 23, 2001
No matter how heavy Annie’s workload at the JSC, she’d routinely driven the kids to school every morning rather than hustle them off with their nursemaid, and she hadn’t wanted that to change while they were in Florida. When the phone rang she was helping them pack their book bags, impatient to get under way, having jumped out of bed, showered, and dressed almost immediately upon awakening from her dream long hours before sunrise.
She motioned for them to keep packing and snatched up the receiver.