Dark Side of the Moon

by Alan Jacobson

  “Was it a good move?”

  “Hey, I can’t complain. I loved DEA. But I also loved my time at ATF. It’s a little different, having a ton of guys under me, but like drugs it’s a noble fight, so all’s good in my world. What about you, this case you’re calling about?”

  “Semtex. We had an offender use it and I was hoping to trace it. But my lab guy said that’s not possible.”

  “Well, technically that’s true. But that’s not the whole story. The international community agreed that Semtex should have a detection taggant added to produce a distinctive vapor signature so we could pick it up—like by airport scanners and bomb sniffing canines. Early on ethylene glycol dinitrate was used, but that was replaced with 2,3-dimethyl-2,3-dinitrobutane and then p-mononitrotoluene. Semtex made before 1990 is untagged, but no one knows how much of this stuff is still around. Today’s more sophisticated scanners can detect even the untagged Semtex.”

  “So it can be detected, but the origin can’t be determined.”

  “Right,” Prati said. “But it’s unlikely your offender got the Semtex from an overseas source. It’d be really tough to get into the country without us finding it. Not saying it’s impossible, but it’s difficult.”

  “Then where’d she get it from?”

  Prati chuckled. “Unfortunately, there are recipes available online. Posted anonymously, of course. But google it, you’ll find it. It’s not complicated, but obviously you have to be careful. The two key ingredients are PETN and RDX, which are used in commercial blasting and demolition, and even in certain military applications.”

  “What’s the shelf life?”

  “The older stuff could last ten years. But the Semtex made during the past twenty-five years or so probably won’t last more than five.”

  “So it’s possible the people we’re looking for are current or former military personnel. Or current or former construction workers. That only narrows it down to, what, several million people on the East Coast alone? Unless they cooked it up themselves.”

  “There are no easy answers here, Karen.”

  “What about the components? PETN and RDX?”

  “PETN is a favorite of al-Qaeda because it’s a powder about the consistency of fine salt. It won’t trigger an alarm on a metal detector and it’s chemically stable so it doesn’t give off much vapor. It’s tough to detect by bomb-sniffing dogs and those swabs TSA uses when they rub it over your stuff to look for trace bomb chemicals don’t pick it up well. It’s also easy to hide because it can be mixed with rubber cement or putty. Then you’ve got a rudimentary plastic explosive. A little bit goes a long way. Mold it into something the size of a baseball and it’ll blow a nice hole in the side of an airplane fuselage.”

  “How easy is it to get hold of?”

  “Not hard at all. Got some munitions lying around? You can scrape it from old bombs or strip it out of detonator cord.”

  “Which is used in road construction and mining,” Vail said. “And RDX?”

  “A powerful nitramide explosive, also called cyclonite or T4. It’s a hard, white, crystalline solid that has about 1.5 times the explosive power of TNT per unit weight and about two times TNT per unit volume. It’s sensitive to percussion and is used in construction for blasting caps. It’s often mixed with other substances, like plasticizers, to decrease its volatility.”

  “Obviously the combination of RDX and PETN increases not only the bomb’s stability but also its yield. And it’s not tough to get.”

  “And,” Prati said, “a useful feature is that it makes Semtex shapeable and moldable.”

  “Like C-4. We’re pretty sure our offender concealed it in her vagina.”

  “Ouch,” Prati said, drawing the word out. “I know a few agents who’d have a really good comeback for that. But I’m … uh … of course, not one of them.”

  “So you’re saying our offender didn’t need to bring the Semtex across a border or on a flight because she could’ve gotten hold of the materials here and found a recipe on the internet and whipped it up in her kitchen.”

  Prati laughed. “Not sure that’s what I was saying, but more or less, for someone who knows what they’re doing, yeah. That’s what you’re dealing with.”

  “Terrific.” Vail glanced at Rusakov, who had done a good job of keeping her mouth shut.

  “Thanks, Richard. I appreciate your help. And good luck with your new posting. Does Robby know?”

  “I have an email out to him about getting together for lunch,” Prati said. “Better to tell him over a meal. Maybe I’ll poach him from DEA.”

  “I’m not getting in the middle of that, Richard. But I’ll keep your secret until you’re ready to tell him.”

  “Good luck with your case.”

  We’ll need it.

  42

  Lunar Orbit

  They made orbit without incident—smoothly burning their engine for LOI2, which gently pushed them into their seatbacks at less than one G. For those six minutes, Carson and Stroud intently watched their instrument panels for anomalies as the computer cycled through a myriad of readings.

  Uzi kept an eye on the settings as well, though he had to rely on his colleagues’ interpretation because he had not had time to fully digest all the information he was supposed to be studying during the three-day journey. Rooting out the malware—which he was still concerned about—had eaten up that time like a ravenous hawk devouring a dead carcass.

  All went as anticipated and without a single hiccup—but that did not diminish the accomplishment. If nothing else, they had hit a moving target from a quarter million miles away with extreme precision. While it appeared from Earth that the Moon remained in roughly the same place, during the past few days it had moved almost 200,000 miles from its position at the time of launch. And yet NASA’s Johnson Space Center computers and engineers had accurately computed its path and, with pinpoint accuracy, programmed their navigation system so that it put them right on target with near-zero variance.

  Moments later, they again went into a communications blackout with ground control—only this time the inability to transmit and receive signals was a normal occurrence, as the radio waves were blocked by the Moon as they passed around its far side, which kept its back to Earth at all times.

  “Look at that,” DeSantos said.

  Uzi shifted closer to the port window. “Beyond amazing.”

  The lunar surface, dark gray, light gray, charcoal, and multiple shades in between, was close—very close—and nothing like what was normally seen from Earth or in the iconic photos of the Moon circulated during the past fifty years. Rough with craters and pockmarked with sharp pimples and pointed hills erupting across the entire surface, it was like hardened lava in its irregularity and menacing in its coarseness.

  “Not what I imagined,” DeSantos said.

  “Welcome to the dark side, gentlemen,” Stroud said. “This is where Darth Vader came from.”

  DeSantos chuckled. “Good thing we won’t be landing here. I don’t think there’s a flat plain anywhere to set down.”

  “The more classic surface geography you’re accustomed to is on the near side,” Carson said. “We’ll be coming around in a couple hours or so.”

  Orbiting at a mere sixty miles up, the lack of atmosphere—and thus no clouds, smoke, or fog—brought the finer details of the ground into sharp focus.

  As they circled about to the more customary cratered and smooth plains of the highlands and the darkness of the maria—Latin for “seas” and so named by early astronomers who mistook them for bodies of water—they sat mesmerized by the more familiar sight of the planetary body they had all grown up gazing at as kids.

  “How are the Patriot’s systems?” Bob Maddox asked, interrupting their reverie.

  “Doing well,” Stroud said. “We arrived without incident, completed the second lunar orbit inser
tion burn, and have been admiring the view. All readings are as expected for a change.”

  “Very good, Patriot. If this were a normal Moon shot, you’d go to sleep and prepare for separation from the crew module and descent in the morning. But with that Russian craft on the way, we’re gonna deviate from our plan and push things up, have you initiate landing procedures on the next pass.”

  “Copy,” Stroud said. “Sleep is overrated anyway.”

  “We’ll help you along with all that until you pass behind the dark side again, but when you emerge you’ve gotta be ready to execute.”

  Carson poked at his instrument panel. “We’ll be ready, CAPCOM.”

  “Roger that,” Maddox said. “I know you will.”

  43

  Alexandria, Virginia

  Vail and Rusakov were a few miles from their Springfield, Virginia, destination when Rodman texted them with the results of OPSIG’s review of the Jessie Kerwin surveillance video. Although the camera angle and the proximity of the table blocked their view, it looked like their theories of how things went down, and the location where she hid the Semtex, were accurate.

  And she blitz-attacked the guard very much the way Vail had opined.

  “So that’s not gonna help us,” Rusakov said.

  Vail’s phone vibrated again. “But this might.” She answered Tim Meadows’s call via Bluetooth.

  “Go ahead, Tim,” Vail said as she merged right on the capital beltway.

  “Got a hit on that latent I lifted off the antenna.”

  “Really.”

  “Russian guy, Evgeny Kirilenko, forty-nine. Used to work for a leading cyber security firm in Moscow. But before that, his history is a little shadier. He was with the KGB in its last three years of existence and then spent twelve years in the FSB,” Meadows said, referring to the Russian Federal Security Service, which replaced the KGB.

  Ignoring the Springfield sign, Vail checked over her shoulder at her blind spot as she approached the 170B exit ramp. “Tim, what’s a guy like that doing in the US—and in my garage?”

  “Hard to say, Karen. But that’s more your speed. I just ID the players. You have to figure out how they fit in the game.”

  Vail entered the exit ramp and slowed. “You’re not kid—” Her foot went to the floor and the car continued at sixty-five miles per hour. “What the hell! I’ve got no brakes.”

  “What do you mean?” Rusakov asked, looking at the floorboard.

  The inner loop single lane road took a sharp right a hundred yards ahead. Vail grabbed the gearshift and put it in low to use the transmission to reduce her speed. She felt the engine downshift—before it revved and the odometer passed sixty-five, headed toward seventy. “Shit, I’ve got no control!”

  “Karen,” Meadows said, “are you ok—”

  “Ditch it,” Rusakov said. “Now!”

  “I can’t.” They were approaching an overpass and the massive concrete vertical support struts were just beyond the edge of the asphalt—no way could she go right. And the roadway had already risen about fifteen feet above the interstate, so if she swerved left and ran off the ramp, they would tumble down the sharp embankment and land wheels up atop the fast-moving traffic of I-495.

  “Watch the curve,” Rusakov shouted.

  Vail pulled the wheel right as the hook in the ramp approached—but the car did not respond. They smashed through the steel guardrail lanes and rolled through the tree tops and brush, coming to rest against the metal stanchion supporting the Springfield exit sign.

  44

  Lunar Orbit

  The Raptor separated from the Patriot on schedule and without any hitches. Unlike the Apollo spacecraft, which required a pilot to remain on board while the other two astronauts took the lunar lander to the surface, the Orion/Patriot counterpart was designed to be autonomous, remaining in orbit until needed by the landing party.

  “I have to confess being more than a little nervous leaving the Patriot behind,” Uzi said as he watched the craft move off into the distance. “We can’t get back home without it. If I was a bad actor, I’d screw with the Patriot’s computer so it either leaves orbit for deep space, crashes into the surface, or refuses to dock with us.”

  “I’m glad you aren’t that bad actor, Boychick,” DeSantos said, “because that’d totally suck.”

  “It’d be a death sentence,” Stroud said.

  “I’m confident you got all the malware,” Carson said.

  Uzi looked away. “I wish I shared that degree of confidence.”

  Not lost on any of them was that they were embarking on the next major phase of their mission: the journey down to the Moon in the lunar lander, which had been folded into the rocket fairing below the Patriot crew module.

  Now fully deployed with Raptor’s legs unfurled, they continued orbiting the Moon as the computer controlled their descent with minimal input from Stroud and Carson.

  Since aerodynamics did not matter for this type of craft, it was an ugly, utilitarian conglomeration of fuel tanks, crisscrossing brass-colored pipes and large round white balls, suspended by stick legs capped off by flat landing pods, circles at the bottoms of the struts that would support the vehicle once it hit lunar dirt.

  Their home away from home was a vertically oriented cylindrical habitat that sat atop the structure with an airlock—another improvement over Apollo—that enabled them to keep the main cabin pressurized. It was, essentially, a glorified mudroom that would also keep the sticky black wet-sand-like Moon dust out of the interior—a persistent problem in the Apollo days.

  It was a relatively large craft, towering thirty-two feet in height—about the size of a three-story house—and twenty-five feet in diameter. It weighed in at a hefty forty-seven tons and was equipped with four engines to get them to the surface … but only one to lift them off and rendezvous with the Patriot. A problem with that single rocket engine would strand them on the Moon for eternity—or approximately four days, until their food, water, and oxygen ran out. Unlike all other NASA designs, there was no contingency or redundancy to get them off the Earth’s rocky satellite.

  That was not to say that NASA did not take care to ensure a reliable system to get them home. They designed cryogenic technologies for the descent stages and hypergolic technologies for the ascent stage. Hypergolic fuels were chemicals that combusted on contact with each other, requiring no ignition mechanism. Both systems would be force-fed fuel using high-pressure helium, eliminating the pumps utilized in other, more complicated rockets. That was important, for if there was going to be a malfunction, it would involve those finicky pumps.

  The descent stage contained the majority of the fuel, power supplies, and breathable oxygen for the crew. The ascent stage, which would lift them off the surface when they were ready to leave, housed the astronauts, their life-support equipment, and fuel for the engine and steering rockets that would put them into orbit and enable them to navigate to, and rendezvous with, the Patriot before their return to Earth.

  The Raptor—officially known as the lunar surface access module—was a one-off vehicle. Built as a prototype for testing during the Constellation program before the president terminated the project in favor of the space launch system, or SLS, it was constructed by Aerospace Engineering’s robotics division. But when Congress directed NASA to turn its attention, and budget, to Mars, plans to return to the Moon were shelved. But because the SLS-Orion components were designed to carry out a variety of missions, a Moon shot remained in the playbook.

  Likewise, the Spider multipurpose transport rover, designed to carry the astronauts wherever they needed to go after landing, was retained and both test vehicles were placed in storage. Uzi wrecked one of them.

  “We’ve passed the hundred mile mark,” Stroud said. “Looking good.”

  “Roger that,” Maddox said.

  “You still CAPCOM, Bob?” Cars
on asked. “I figured you’d gone home.”

  “And miss all the fun? No goddamn way. You guys are stuck with me.”

  “CAPCOM, we’ve got nine minutes for you guys to check systems and give us a go for the burn,” Stroud said.

  “Already at work on the checklists, Cowboy. Telemetry shows textbook readings. Because of your troubles, let’s have you go through a few things with us.”

  Maddox read off various settings and Carson confirmed them. Finally, four minutes later, ground control gave them a brief countdown and Carson prepared to fire the descent engines.

  “We are falling out of orbit,” Stroud said, “right on schedule.”

  “Roger that,” Maddox said. “You are go for burn.”

  The rocket was pointed in the direction of descent, parallel to the lunar surface, and they were moving feet first but facedown. It did not matter—there was no sense of up or down other than visual cues, which could make it a bit disorienting if the astronauts were not careful.

  “Passing over the Sculptured Hills,” Stroud said. “Hard to believe these things are over a mile high. Who named these giant mountains ‘hills’?”

  “Coming up on the North Massif,” Uzi said.

  “Tell Ridgid those simulators back home were awesome,” Stroud said. “I see the undulating plains beneath us. The landing site’s approaching in the distance and looks exactly like it did in the sim. Coming up on the highlands that separate the Sea of Tranquility from the Sea of Serenity.”

  “You’re right on target for Taurus-Littrow,” Maddox said. “Prepare to roll Raptor.”

  “Preparing to roll,” Carson said.

  The Moon rotated out of sight of their windows as they came around, still moving parallel to the surface but facing upward, looking into the sunlit black void of space.

  An alarm sounded and Stroud’s voice rose an octave. “Shit. What the hell’s going on? Are we—”

  “We’re off course,” Carson said, “rising out of orbit. Firing steering thrusters to compensate.”