Power had been restored to the square as the bodies from the attack were placed along sidewalks and lined against building walls. The protests had ceased as most Germans had come together, waiting for the right moment to start speculating on who could have perpetrated such a cowardly act. Jack, Everett, Ellenshaw, and Golding were exhausted as they leaned against a shattered wall and caught their breath. A public announcement board and video screen flickered to life above them in the square as dusk settled in.
“I think it’s time to get out of here, Jack,” Everett said. He stepped up to a broken water main and stuck his hands in the spray of water. He ran a soaking hand over his soot-covered face.
Collins shook his head without really looking up.
“I hate leaving here without any answers,” he said, taking a deep breath.
“Colonel, may I remind you of the fact that we found you in handcuffs? I’m sure the police will recover much faster from this terror attack than we think. They could come looking for you again. I think we’ve done about all we can do here to help these people. It’s time we look to ourselves.”
Jack placed his hand on Professor Ellenshaw’s shoulder and nodded. “Okay, Doc, let’s go home.”
As they started gathering themselves, the large announcement board sprang to life. A public service message flashed across the thirty-foot screen with a warning tone that demanded the attention of those watching. Most people continued their duties in helping the EMS teams who were treating the wounded and attending the dead. Policemen were everywhere as they tried desperately to get evidence of the most dastardly crime in modern German history. Collins wasn’t paying any attention to the announcement as he washed his own face in the shattered water main on the battered curb.
“Am I seeing this?” Pete Golding asked from behind Jack.
“Oh, shit,” Everett said, tapping Collins on the shoulder. “Keep your face down, Jack, and head back toward the building.”
“What now?” he asked. He did as Carl said, keeping his hands over his face.
“Take a quick look and then head down the alley. My German isn’t that good, but I think the police are announcing they have a suspect in the terror attack.”
As Collins chanced a quick look up at the announcement screen, he was greeted by a 1997 U.S. Army photo of himself taken at Fort Bragg. Beneath the picture it said he was wanted for questioning in the day’s events.
“I’ve always hated that picture,” he said. He allowed Everett to pull him deeper into the alley as Golding and Ellenshaw followed, blocking any further view.
“We may be too late, gentlemen,” Ellenshaw said, “I think the proper words are, we’ve been ratted out.”
Everett looked up and saw a tall, beautiful blonde pointing them out to blood-soaked and dirty policemen. The officer looked up and Ellenshaw couldn’t think of anything to do other than give a quick wave of his hand as he backed into the alley. When the police officer looked closer he was stunned to see four men suddenly sprint down the open alleyway. He gave pursuit, alone and unarmed, shouting for the men to halt.
The blond-haired woman watched the pursuit and then turned to her companion. They both walked away.
“Imagine, all of those mines exploding at once and this man Collins escapes without so much as a scratch,” she said, looking into the face of the Mechanic as they walked and tried to avoid the damaged areas of the street and the small puddles of blood. “It seems he’s a domino that’s hard to topple.”
The Mechanic looked up at the video board with the photo of Jack Collins still on it. After seeing Jack and the others on the street he had to react fast, so he contacted McCabe and came up with a quickly thought out alternative. He offered the U.S. Army photo of the colonel to the German authorities.
“Sometimes the domino takes a while to fall, miss, that’s all. And I suspect this particular domino we are after will continue his pursuit of the men imprisoned together after the war. That is the key for him and we’ll be waiting.”
As the two walked away into the gathering night, the sounds of sirens and shouting still filled the air of downtown Berlin.
7
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON, TEXAS
The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s center for human space flight activities and home to the astronaut corps.
Sarah McIntire, Will Mendenhall, and Jason Ryan had just gone through a battery of tests that would have strained the patience of a saint. Will complained that his right arm and butt cheek were about to fall off from a series of shots they had endured in the accelerated astronaut training phase.
Sarah was so sore she was having a hard time zipping up her blue coveralls. Ryan walked over and helped with the zipper.
“Thanks,” she said. “Remind me to send a pipe bomb to Director Compton for doing this to us.”
“I’ll supply the postage,” Ryan said as he slapped Sarah on the back, making her wince.
“All of this with only a five percent chance we’ll be going,” Mendenhall said. “I mean, we’re the backup to the backup, which is backing up the first team.” He gingerly sat on the locker room bench beside Sarah. “That means two teams have to fail to make it to the space station in order for us to even suit up.”
Sarah wasn’t listening. She was watching a group of trainees, several high-ranking officers among them, looking up at a television monitor just inside the lounge. Sarah stood, moving her aching shoulders as she approached the men and women watching.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Someone just blew the hell out of an anti-Moon demonstration in Berlin. There’s a whole bunch of fundamentalists dead,” answered a woman who had been chosen for the first flight team of Operation Dark Star. She was a geologist like Sarah, but while not quite as knowledgeable she was a better astronaut.
Sarah watched the taped footage of the aftermath as Jason and Will stepped up behind her.
“This isn’t good,” Ryan said, looking on as one of the men in the front reached out and turned the volume up:
“… as the crowded streets became overrun with more serious elements of the discontented protesters. It was only moments after the violence broke out that a series of explosions rocked the downtown area of Berlin. The number of devices detonated has not yet been determined.” The scene switched to the Atlanta studio. “The police have announced a lead in identifying a man caught on videotape the night before, possibly planting the devices. On the video he is clearly wearing the uniform of a German army officer. The man, seen here in a United States Army photo, has been identified as Colonel Jack Collins. His whereabouts are unknown at this time.”
Sarah, Will, and Jason couldn’t move as they saw the picture of Collins flash onto the screen. The other astronauts watched with growing uneasiness as an American was named as a person that may have been directly responsible for the horrible act they were seeing.
“… the suspect’s military history is one of black operations in the Middle East and he has been known to be a rogue, even being brought before the congressional committee investigating failures in the war in Afghanistan.”
As the men and women cursed the face of Collins, Sarah turned away, wanting to shout at the trainees around her to be quiet, that they didn’t know the man like she did. Instead she walked back into the locker room and sat once more on the wooden bench, where she was joined by Mendenhall and Ryan.
“Damn, obviously a frame job if I ever saw one,” Ryan said as he sat next to Sarah.
“Yeah, they said he’s a suspect, but that he’s not in custody.” Will placed a hand on Sarah’s shoulder.
“Ryan, McIntire, Mendenhall, let’s go. You’ve got six hours of flight simulation scheduled with your flight leader. Let’s move it!”
Sarah looked up at the Air Force master sergeant who stood in the doorway of the locker room.
“Come on, the president has just pushed Dark Star up by seventy-two hours because of this maniac’s ac
tions in Germany.”
Sarah looked as if she were about to attack the sergeant, but Will and Ryan gently placed their hands on her and turned her away.
“Comin’, Sarge,” Will quickly answered.
Sarah calmed and then tried to smile. “Thanks.”
“Well, let’s go keep ourselves busy, and hope the colonel and the others get their asses out of Germany without getting them shot completely off.”
Sarah looked at Ryan and then nodded.
“Come on, let’s go simulate crash-landing on the Moon,” Mendenhall joked. “Jason hasn’t done that in a few hours. I’m getting to where I like it. It’s so much better than the always boring landing upright thing.”
As Ryan complained how hard the lunar lander simulators were for the hundredth time that day, Sarah could only think about Collins and wonder just what he had gotten himself into.
“Jack, I swear to God, I can’t take my eyes off of you for five damn minutes without you getting into some kind of bullshit!” she hissed as she followed Jason and Will out of the locker room.
BERLIN, GERMANY
Everett had the policeman’s gun. The man was unconscious and lying by the back doorway to a Chinese restaurant. Carl ejected the clip from the nine-millimeter and then ejected the chambered round. He thought briefly about keeping it, but knew the man would probably be in enough trouble for being disarmed by a suspect. Besides, he knew he couldn’t use it against law enforcement.
Jack stood beside Carl and nodded, then he reached up and pounded on the back door of the restaurant. It was opened by a startled Chinese man who stood stock-still when he saw the large blond man and the police officer.
“English?” Jack asked.
The small man just shook his head negatively, so Everett eased the cop inside the door and lay him down gently.
“Die Polizei,” Jack said, as he pulled Carl away from the door. Everett reached out and handed the Chinese man the weapon, then turned and ran into the darkness of the alley.
Jack and Carl reached the end of the long alley and looked out onto a far quieter street. They spied Ellenshaw and Golding, secluded inside a small Audi. In the illumination of the overhead street lamp, they saw Ellenshaw raise his head on the front seat of the car and then duck back down. Jack shook his head at the suspicious way the two scientists were going about trying to steal a car. Suddenly the motor sprang to life and Ellenshaw sat up. He and Pete exchanged high fives.
“We don’t give these guys enough credit,” Everett said as he and Jack cautiously and slowly left the alley.
“Good work, guys,” Collins said and ducked into the backseat with Everett pulling the two professors out of the way.
“Get in, I’ll drive,” he said to a stunned Ellenshaw, who instead of arguing ran around to the far side and got in the front seat. His hair was a mess as usual as he looked over at Carl.
“Where’s that young policeman?” he asked, looking around the darkened street nervously.
“He went for Chinese,” Everett replied as he threw the car in gear and sped off.
“What’s the plan?” Golding asked, scanning the dark outside the rear window.
“First off, you two should stop looking like you’re on the run,” Jack said. He reached out and stilled the turning head of the computer genius.
“Oh, sorry,” Pete said. He settled in and closed his eyes. Then a thought struck him. “Did we come away with nothing?”
“Nothing but a familiar face in an old photo,” Jack said. “Right now, let’s just hope our aircraft hasn’t been compromised and that Mr. Everett here can find a back way into Tempelhof.”
“Yeah, I think it’s time to retreat from Germany,” Everett said, taking a corner faster than he wanted to.
“Where to now?” Ellenshaw asked, actually enjoying the intrigue.
“Jack?” Carl looked in the rearview mirror.
“We’re not leaving,” was Collins’s surprise answer.
“Uh, Jack, in case you didn’t notice, you’re probably the most wanted man in the Western world at the moment.” Everett grimaced at the thought of staying.
“Yeah, but we need to get to the records at Spandau.”
“We can do that through Europa,” Pete said. “And if memory serves, Spandau was demolished in 1987.”
“If the plane’s been compromised we can’t use Europa. We just can’t take the chance we’ll run into an ambush. Someone gave the authorities my picture and only one name keeps coming into my head.”
“Your old friend McCabe?” Carl asked.
“You bet. We need to know who that guy was in the photo at Zinsser’s apartment. I have a gut feeling everything here is connected somehow.” He looked to his left at Golding. “And you’re right, Pete. Spandau was demolished, but the Germans, being as honest about the Nazis as they can to the general public, have a small museum dedicated to it.”
“If we’re staying, I would feel better with a gun, and preferably not a policeman’s weapon.”
“Well, we better get some,” Collins said in answer to Everett’s suggestion. “I know a man here. But first we have to hole up somewhere and get some rest. We’ll let my celebrity cool down for a day or two, at least until I can make a few local telephone calls.”
“What about this?” Pete said, holding out his cell phone.
Jack watched the buildings of Berlin slide by his darkened window, so Pete could only see Jack’s reflection and the set of his features.
“They can trace that signal, Doc. No cell phones.”
Golding swallowed and then pulled the phone away from Collins. He nodded his head and then turned and saw his own scared reflection in the glass.
Ellenshaw turned around in the front seat and looked at Pete Golding.
“I told you, Doctor. Now isn’t this better than being stuck inside the complex all the time?”
Pete didn’t say anything as Everett sped sharply around a corner, almost bringing the vehicle up on two wheels.
For a man who had never left Nevada on a field assignment, Pete Golding was taking the adventure rather stoically, but still wide-eyed and excited, feeling alive for the first time in years as the Audi sped into the night.
EVENT GROUP COMPLEX, NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA
Niles was examining the Moon rocks that had been couriered over from the National Geographic Society. There were two of them and they had the identical properties of those seen in the video from Paul the Beatle on the Moon’s surface. The CIA had donated them to the National Geographic Society when they were discovered in their archives back when the CIA went by another name-the OSS. Not knowing what else to do with the stones, they emptied their files of the only specimens that had survived Operation Columbus all those years before.
“As far as our records are concerned, there are only twelve such examples in the world like those. We estimate that of all the meteorites discovered in history, these are the rarest.”
“Where are the rest of the meteorites?” the president asked from over two thousand miles away in Washington.
“Several that we know of found their way to China and France after the war. The OSS was sketchy on the details of something called Operation Columbus.”
“Well, that kind of sums it up, doesn’t it? These two countries know firsthand the properties of the mineral, thus their lust for it and their massive expenditures to get to the Moon to recover more.”
Niles was silent as he listened to the president excuse the director of the CIA. A moment later the president’s face came into full view, after the selling job and acting class 101 let out.
“Niles, how is everyone taking to the fact that I advanced the timetable for launch?”
“Everyone here in Houston and Florida is worried that we’re lagging in safety precautions, and I agree.” Niles held up his hand for the president to see, halting him from saying anything. “However, I also agree with your new timetable and have explained it to the parties involved.”
�
��Things are getting out of hand fast, Niles. The religious fanatics are killing us in the press, and their coordinated antigovernment protests in every city in the world aren’t helping matters.”
“I don’t understand. The mainstream religious communities are lying low on this one. Only the fringe element is rearing its head. Fundamentalism may be creating some strange new bedfellows.”
“Speaking of which, have you heard from the colonel?”
“Not a word since he and Captain Everett flew out.”
“We’ve got quite a mess on our hands in Berlin. I hope he knows what he’s doing over there. I want you to understand, Niles, that if he’s caught we can help him. The German government will assist in getting him out of there quietly, but if he’s shot while on the run it will be a purely legal act.”
“I assume Jack knows that. If he’s staying in place, it’s because he has a lead on Columbus and its backers. I just assume if he comes up with something here on earth that will stop us from sending men and women into space, that you’re prepared to do something about it.”
“Short of war, I’ll do anything, Niles.”
Compton didn’t question the statement. He just looked into the monitor.
“What is it?”
“I was just wondering what the difference was between a shooting war on the Moon and one that starts right here.”
The president didn’t answer for the briefest of moments. Then he reached out and for a second his hand paused over the off button on his laptop.
“About six billion eight hundred million people-give or take a couple of kids.”
Niles smiled as his eyes widened in mock surprise. “You do have your moments of clarity don’t you, Mr. President?”
“Once every few years, Mr. Director, I get lucky.”
Niles had one of the most important meetings in his life scheduled in just ten minutes.
The U.S. Navy signalman was already preparing the camera for the linkup with Houston, Florida, Jet Propulsion Lab, and Washington. He was about to hand over control of the mission to the more experienced arm of NASA. His coordinating and planning days were now over.
Legacy eg-6 Page 23