Dark Side of the Moon

by Alan Jacobson

  Vail switched to Knox and immediately informed him they were not on a secure line.

  “Understood. Something you need to be aware of. You’re going to see some breaking news very shortly that a certain person has been reported missing.”

  “Reported missing by whom?”

  “Doesn’t matter. This is a problem no matter who or where it came from.”

  “Sir, the media won’t know what to do with it because they don’t understand the connections.”

  “That won’t last long. They know who he is, a national hero. He’s been in the news because of the medal ceremony in a few days. And as soon as the press realizes this is more than just a missing persons case—which is bad enough—”

  “Our response should be that the—that you’re looking into it. At the moment it’s nothing more than a missing persons case. There are no known motives at present and no reason for us to believe it’s anything more than that.”

  “You don’t think his captors will push the envelope?”

  “Think of their motive, sir. They want to make sure our friend hears his father is missing. He’ll know what’s going on. He won’t need the media to spell it out.”

  “What if we plant a false story? He’s on a trip overseas, can’t be disclosed because of his previous military career.”

  “We could piss off his … hosts,” Vail said. “Like sticking our thumbs in their eyes. They could release a video of him there. We don’t know what they’ve done to him, what stuff they’ve got on him. Either way, we shouldn’t underestimate them.”

  “We’d just deny it, call it a fake. No way my friend would cooperate with that kind of dog and pony show.”

  Vail stopped and turned to face the field. “If this were a court of law, it’d be sufficient. But this is the court of public opinion. An image would be implanted in the public’s mind. Even if we claim it was fake footage, they couldn’t unsee it. It’s like instructing a jury not to pay attention to what they just heard. It’s not possible.”

  “Fine,” Knox said, frustration evident in his voice. “I hear you.”

  “I’ll keep you posted on what we’re doing here. I hope to have something in the next couple of hours.”

  “I’m gonna hold you to that.”

  20

  Fbi Headquarters

  Washington, DC

  Douglas Knox took the phone call from Secretary McNamara in his office.

  Knox switched to a private, secure line and McNamara proceeded to lay out what they had just discovered in southern California.

  “A note in Hector’s bed, under his top sheet.”

  Knox began pacing behind his desk. “What kind of note? What’d it say?”

  “We’ve got your father. We need to communicate with you. Write down the best way to do this and stick it in the envelope. Leave it in your bed. We’ll get it.”

  “And Hector has not seen it?”

  “No. Those cameras Vail suggested tipped us off to an entry into their room at 3:10 PM. Hector’s in training all day.”

  “You had Klaus intercept it, I take it.”

  “Yes. He immediately reviewed the digital file and they think they’ve got an idea who left it.”

  Knox stopped in front of his window. “Who?”

  “He didn’t say. Until he makes a positive ID he wanted to keep it close to the vest.”

  Knox rubbed his right temple, where a pulsing headache was beginning to gnaw at him. “Have your men noted any unusual behavior or unauthorized contact with Hector?”

  “Nothing,” McNamara said. “I think our system worked. Hector’s doing his thing and according to Klaus, things are progressing well, more or less on schedule. They’ve picked everything up exceptionally fast.”

  “Overall assessment?”

  There was a long pause. “I have confidence in our men. Carson and Stroud are ready. Hector and Uzi will be fine in their supporting roles. I don’t want them piloting the spacecraft or trying to land the damn thing, but that’s not why they’re here. If we find ourselves in that situation, we’ve got a problem.”

  “I wish we had more time to prep them.”

  “The Chinese have pushed our hand. Just know that there’s risk in sending up four highly seasoned, highly trained astronauts. So keep it in perspective.”

  “I don’t want perspective. We need results.”

  “I know it. I think we’ll be okay, Douglas.”

  Knox stretched his head forward, the sore muscles in the back of his neck going taut. “When does Klaus think he’ll have an answer for us?”

  “I told him we needed something ASAP.”

  Knox closed his eyes. “Keep me posted.”

  21

  Astronaut Training

  Vandenberg Air Force Base

  Uzi sat beside Gavin Stroud in the front seat of the lunar rover. The sun was tracking downward in a lazy winter descent, orange hues and lengthening shadows blanketing the desert-like terrain.

  Before Uzi and DeSantos got into the vehicle, Kirmani gave them a three-hour orientation on the twelve-wheel explorer, a significantly upgraded version of the one that flew on the last three Apollo missions.

  In addition to transporting the astronauts across the lunar surface, it gave them the ability to attach modular equipment depending on the task that needed to be completed, as well as work inside a pressurized cabin without the encumbrance of bulky suits and clunky gloves.

  “NASA only built a couple of prototypes of the SPR, or small pressurized rover. This is one of them. It’s nearly identical to the one you’ll be using on the Moon.”

  Their exercise this afternoon was to practice emergency recovery procedures. They were in a secluded area of southern California that provided a hard-packed, rolling terrain designed to approximate that of the Moon.

  DeSantos was on the “lunar surface,” with an injured Digger Carson lying supine, suffering from a fractured leg.

  Uzi had gotten the distress call and was driving the rover, nicknamed Spider—a mix of its abbreviation and appearance: from the exterior, it looked more like an insect than an interplanetary SUV. They were in an encapsulated cabin, in a cantilevered cockpit that sat a few feet above the wheelbase, with two large rectangular windows across the top and three smaller windows by their knees and feet.

  Uzi maneuvered through a deep valley that was chock-full of NASA-constructed craters and gullies. “Hang in there, Digger, we’re en route.”

  Stroud consulted the controller panel in front of him. “ETA seven minutes.”

  “Seven minutes?” DeSantos said incredulously. “You’re not that far away.”

  “Spider only goes six miles an hour,” Uzi said as he negotiated a boulder. “We’re not exactly driving your ’vette here.”

  Stroud pointed ahead. “Watch that crater. They landscaped this test bed to mimic the lunar surface where we’ll be landing. It’s like an obstacle course.”

  “I noticed.” In circumnavigating the crater, Uzi swung wide around a deep dip, then headed back toward DeSantos’s position.

  “That one you could’ve driven through. The six wheel/twelve tire setup gives you a lot of flexibility. It can handle shallower undulations and smaller-size rocks. The wheels pivot and can move vertically three inches to avoid—”

  They hit a sharp depression in the terrain and the rover dove to the right and tumbled into a crater, rolled onto its side, and stopped in a cloud of dust.

  “Jesus,” Stroud said. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. You?”

  “What happened?” Carson asked over the radio.

  “Not sure, b—” Before Uzi could finish his thought, a loud pop interrupted him and black vapor started filling the cabin. “Get the hell out!”

  But Spider was not designed for quick ingress and egress. In fact, just the oppo
site: on a planet with an inhospitable “atmosphere,” engineers did not want a means of quickly exposing the astronauts, who were not protected by pressure suits, to immediate death.

  They started feeling their way through the dense smoke for the access door into the pressure lock.

  Uzi could not hold his breath any longer as acrid smelling, chemical-laced gas choked off his lungs. He yanked open the panel—and came face-to-face with a hot wall of fire.

  Two hands grabbed his uniform and yanked him backward, through the opening in the top right of the vehicle—which was now wedged against the rocky ground.

  Three men surrounded Uzi and Stroud, lifting them by their armpits and dragging them clear of the crash site.

  Trying to suck in as much clean air as possible—a challenge in southern California smog—Uzi and Stroud coughed violently as their heels dragged through the dry dirt.

  Firefighters ran in the opposite direction, toward the upended rover, as firefighters are wont to do: head into a danger zone while civilians run out.

  Having reached the designated distance, the men sat Uzi and Stroud on the ground, pulled an oxygen mask over their noses and mouths and yanked stethoscopes from their cargo pants.

  “You guys all right?” one asked.

  “Yes,” Uzi mumbled under the clear plastic face piece.

  The medics listened a moment, did a quick examination, then told them they might be coughing for a while but were going to be fine: their exposure to the smoke appeared to be minimal because they had been extracted so quickly.

  “What the hell happened?”

  Kirmani’s voice. Uzi squinted into the low afternoon sun and saw Ridgid and Klaus Eisenbach standing over them.

  Uzi pulled off the mask. “My fault, sir.”

  “Seriously?” Kirmani asked. “You’d better get your act together or we’re gonna scrub this mission. And I don’t have to tell you the damage that’ll cause.”

  “Uzi’s only trying to protect me,” Stroud said. “And I don’t need protecting,” he said, looking sternly at Uzi. “I can stand on my own.” He got to his feet and faced Kirmani. “I thought he was taking too long to get to Digger, so I pulled the wheel over and I guess I misjudged the proximity of the crater’s edge.”

  Kirmani and Eisenbach shared a look of consternation.

  “Well that’s just terrific,” Kirmani said. “Because you’ve totaled it and it takes three months and millions of dollars to build one of these things. We’ve only got one Spider left—and it’s already packed in the fairing.”

  “One will be fine,” Stroud said.

  “It better be.”

  Uzi turned and watched as the crew continued to battle the flames, which did not want to die. “Lithium ion fires are tough to put out. The liquid electrolyte burns when it’s exposed to air and other oxidants inside the battery. They fuel the fire from within and the cells stay really hot, continuously releasing more electrolyte in the vapor and feeding itself. So all you can do is keep the thing under control until the reactants burn up.”

  Kirmani frowned. “Why don’t you go over there and tell the firefighters how to do their job?” He muttered something under his breath and walked off.

  “Get your gear and get on the bus,” Eisenbach said. “Rover’s destroyed. We’re done here. And we don’t have time to waste.”

  When Eisenbach was out of earshot, Uzi turned to Stroud. “Why’d you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  Uzi frowned. “Cover for me. I appreciate it, but I don’t need that kind of help.”

  “In this case you did.”

  Uzi tilted his head. “Come again?”

  “Shit happens. To all of us. Did you hit the crater? Yeah. So what. Ridgid knows people aren’t perfect—but he expects us to be. Thing is, this mission needs to launch on time. He knows that too. They’ve got another two guys going through the same regimen in another area of the base. But I don’t want them replacing you.”

  “A backup.”

  Stroud chuckled as he headed in the direction of the bus, which was driving toward them, its headlights on. “You’re the backup team. This is the backup to the backup. And I don’t have to spell it out for you but I will anyway: this isn’t just another mission. Beyond the obvious of going to the fuckin’ Moon. What’s at stake is something that threatens America’s ability to maintain its qualitative military advantage. Not because we’re the mighty USA, but because we’re a benevolent country committed to doing the right thing around the world.”

  “C’mon, Cowboy, we’ve done some shitty things—and some boneheaded things—in our history.”

  “But never out of malice. Huge difference. We don’t plot to take over the world. We don’t invade or bully other countries, we don’t claim or steal others’ land or resources. Some countries, they don’t have such benevolent goals. They want to dominate world affairs—or seize territory that’s not theirs. China, Russia, Iran—you know the players. Not to mention the ones that wreak havoc through their proxies—one of which sits on the verge of being a nuclear power. In a matter of years, they throw the switch, and they’re in the nuclear warhead business.”

  “They also happen to be the top sponsor of terror in the world.”

  “Then there’s North Korea.” Stroud stopped walking and waited as the bus approached. “This mission is designed to prevent any of that from happening.”

  “I get it.”

  “So that’s why I took the blame for the crash.” Stroud swung around and glanced at the still-billowing plume of dense black smoke. “If the bosses thought the other two guys were the best ones for the mission, they’d be here. Not you and Hector. So I’d rather have you watching my six than them.”

  “So the truth comes out. Forget that bullshit about qualitative military advantage. You did it for selfish purposes.”

  Stroud laughed. “You know it.” He stopped walking and the smile left his lips. “It’s just going to be the four of us up there. We have to depend on one another. And I do think you two give us the best chance at getting back home again.”

  The small bus pulled in front of them. DeSantos and Carson were already inside.

  “We’ll get back,” Uzi said.

  Stroud stepped up to the door. “You know this?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, you know the intricacies of lithium ion fires. If you remember useless shit like that, you’ll probably do well with stuff you have to know in order to survive.”

  “Just keep me away from the edges of craters.”

  “Oh, no worries about that. You won’t be operating the rover after we land. As mission commander, I just revoked your driving privileges.”

  22

  Vandenberg Air Force Base

  Eisenbach and Kirmani entered the common area where the four astronauts had just sat down to dinner.

  “How are things going?” Eisenbach asked.

  DeSantos glanced at Eisenbach and Kirmani, attempting to read their expressions. Both of them suddenly showing up at a meal meant that something unusual was going down.

  “Good,” Uzi said. “Real good. We’re slightly ahead of schedule, despite the rover … mishap.”

  “Mishap,” Kirmani said with a frown that looked like he had bitten into a chunk of raw garlic. “Not my choice of words.”

  “Things are going very well,” Carson said. “Why? What’s going on?”

  “We’ve decided to push the mission up,” Eisenbach said. “And the launch.”

  The four men looked at one another.

  “Why?” Stroud asked.

  “Because,” Kirmani said, “we can take advantage of the three days of travel to the Moon, when there’ll be little for Uzi and Hector to do. The past week, we’ve been training mostly on simulators. The rest is book and classroom learning, with regular exams to ensure you’re
absorbing the material. All that can be done on your tablets while en route.”

  “When do we leave?” Uzi asked.

  “Tomorrow morning,” Eisenbach said.

  “All due respect,” Uzi said, “seems to me this has been your plan all along. You can’t just turn the ignition on and leave. A rocket like this has to be prepped and tested.”

  “To answer your question,” Kirmani said, “which I’m not obligated to do, yes, it was always our plan to launch tomorrow. Hercules and Orion were rolled out to the launch pad several weeks ago. Couple of days before you arrived, Carson and Stroud went out there to do a terminal countdown demonstration test, worked with the launch team, and practiced the countdown in their flight suits, strapped inside Orion just like they’ll be doing tomorrow morning.”

  “But,” Eisenbach said, “the actual launch date was dependent on several factors, some of which had to do with intel we were getting on the Chang’e 5 and some on how you two were progressing.”

  “I haven’t been very pleased with Uzi’s performance at times,” Kirmani said, giving Stroud a long look—signaling he knew the truth about the rover—“but I think he’s ready. And so do Cowboy and Digger.”

  A buzzer sounded and the door to the room opened. A portly man wheeled in a cart with their dinner.

  “What happened to Bernie?” DeSantos asked.

  “Family emergency,” Kirmani said. “Had to fly back to Kansas.”

  DeSantos eyed Uzi, suspicion evident in his raised brow.

  Kirmani and Eisenbach turned and started for the door.

  “Soon as you finish eating,” Kirmani said, “I suggest you get to bed. The transport that’ll take you to the launch pad will be here at 0500. Wake up alarm will be at 0400. Van will depart here at 05:05.” He stopped and faced them. “It won’t be late. And neither will you.”

  23

  Citi Field

  Flushing, New York

  Vail located Jason Lansford. She spoke with a few of the ushers until she found the one who knew where the Aerospace Engineering box was located. It was in the Hyundai Club, slightly up the third base line but extremely close to home plate.