Dark Side of the Moon

by Alan Jacobson

  Without waiting for an objection, he led the way to the front door and whipped it open in one swift motion. The cool air brushed against Vail’s face.

  “Thanks for inviting us in,” Rusakov said.

  “Yeah. And what was your name? Other than ‘her partner.’”

  “Viktoria Hawkins.” She pulled out her creds and held them up for Patrone to see.

  And with that, they left, trudging along the gravel path toward their car.

  “You weren’t really interested in seeing the paintings in the guest house,” Rusakov said.

  “I am a student of art history. But no. Something’s not right with that place. Couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I realized all the windows are shuttered. The place is buttoned up.”

  “So? Maybe he likes his privacy.”

  “The wall of windows had no shades, drapes, blinds, coverings of any kind. A guy like that, if he’s not gonna worry about people looking in on his main house, why would he do the opposite for a guest house?”

  “Because it’s a mess.” She held up a hand to keep Vail from responding. “Just kidding. Okay, so what do you want to do about this mysterious house that has all its curtains drawn?”

  “You’re mocking me.”

  “Maybe a little bit.”

  “I think he’s hiding something.”

  “Like what?”

  Vail pulled out her keys as they reached the SUV. “Don’t know. Lukas DeSantos? He lied at least once that we know of. I’m betting there’s more. He’s very polished.”

  Rusakov opened the door and sat down on the cold seat.

  “We need a warrant.”

  “Whoa,” Rusakov said with a laugh. “Okay.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t realize we had enough to get a warrant.”

  Vail chuckled. “We don’t. I’m surprised you know about that stuff.”

  “Saw it on TV.”

  Did she just say that?

  Rusakov spread her hands. “So if we don’t have enough to get a warrant, why’d you say we needed one?”

  “If we were following police procedure, we’d need a warrant. I didn’t say we’d actually get one.”

  Rusakov motioned for Vail to finish the sentence. “But …”

  “But we’re not here as police officers. We’re here as non-law-abiding covert operatives.”

  Rusakov buckled her belt. “See? You’re getting the hang of this.”

  60

  Taurus-Littrow Valley

  They spent the night sleeping in four-hour shifts, guarding the Raptor with two men posted on the outside and two on the inside. This used up their oxygen supply faster, but they did not have a choice.

  The Russians had already proven that they had no compunction about entering their lander. At least inside, without their gloves and pressure suits on, the OPSIG operators would be able to use their pistols. But if the cosmonauts got that far where they had penetrated the exterior perimeter, two of their team would have already perished.

  The Apollo 17 food was worse than they anticipated. The bars were not only tasteless but hard as concrete. They resorted to soaking them in water to rehydrate them to the point they were at least chewable. How much nutritional value there was left was unknown, but they satiated their hunger and provided some calories, allowing them to continue working.

  They each had an energy bar in their pressure suit pocket, and two in the Spider. They rationed these out as well, and supplemented their cement foodstuffs to give them at least some fiber, nutrients, and protein.

  The mission was originally drawn up to last three days, a maximum of four if need be. With their food gone, however, and consuming oxygen at a greater rate, the only commodity they had in sufficient quantity was water. But on a hostile planetary body, all three resources were essential. Remove one part of that equation and life was not sustainable for any significant amount of time.

  Bottom line, they estimated that tomorrow “night” they would need to leave the Moon, which meant that they would have to have the 3D printed parts finished and usable, the fuel offloaded from the Chang’e into the Raptor, the Russians neutralized, and the tests run on the caesarium.

  They all knew the odds were not with them, but they chose to remain focused on their tasks.

  When the time came to get back to work, they drafted a course of action: Uzi and Carson finished removing the fuel tank from the Apollo 17 descent stage and prepared it for transport to the Chang’e 5 as soon as the pump and coupling parts were finished printing. They would then use the Spider to tow it over to the Chang’e, load the vessel with fuel, and haul it back to the Raptor with the LRV.

  As soon as Uzi and Carson completed their task, Uzi dropped him at the Raptor and picked up DeSantos. They drove the LRV to the Resurs and parked fifty yards away.

  “Close enough to let them know we’re watching, but not so close that we’re a threat,” DeSantos said.

  Uzi shifted his bulky suit in the rover’s barebones seat. “This has got to be the strangest stakeout I’ve ever done.”

  “We should take turns sleeping. No reason for us both to stare into space. So to speak.”

  “Nah, I’m okay.”

  “Bullshit. You didn’t get a whole lot on the flight out here because you were reading endless lines of computer code. We take the z’s where and when we can. I’ve got the first shift. Promise to wake you if the cosmonauts all of a sudden start dancing the jig.”

  DeSantos sat there a moment watching the Russian lander, replaying that video loop Oleg showed him inside the cabin. He couldn’t stop thinking about his father, picturing his beaten face, the proud general reduced to a drooling prisoner. Humiliated. “Have you talked with your dad since we went to visit him?”

  “Nope.”

  “Boychick. You should.”

  Uzi swung his helmet, and the top of his torso, toward DeSantos. “Why? I mean, I know why. But why are you bringing it up?”

  “My mind started to wander. I remember playing football with my dad at an Army base in Germany. We lived there for a couple of years. Pretty fun, actually. Got in some good skiing. He taught me how to ski without breaking my neck.” DeSantos laughed. “It was one of the only times when I didn’t feel like I had to live up to his standards. He wasn’t a very good skier. He knew how, but he just wasn’t very coordinated. I think he had a hard time with the concept of being out of control, sliding on slick, hard-packed snow down a mountainside, without brakes. He’s a control guy. There aren’t many things that humble him. But that was one of them.”

  “You never told me much about him. Just that he was career military.”

  DeSantos sat there in silence for a long moment. “I’ve spent my life trying to live up to his legend. He was a highly decorated general.”

  Uzi processed that for a moment, then shifted his body to fully face his friend. “Wait. Your dad’s not General Lukas DeSantos.”

  “Now you know why I haven’t mentioned him.”

  “That’s something to be proud of. He served his country with distinction.”

  “So did your dad.”

  Uzi turned away. “You got me there.”

  “I’ve had … issues trying to live up to his reputation, trying to be what he wanted me to be. Not sure that makes much sense—I mean, I guess it does, but it’s not really rational.”

  “C’mon. That’s normal, Santa. We all—well, lots of boys look up to their fathers. That’s why it’s tough for a kid to grow up without a male influence—a father figure, if not a father. That doesn’t mean everyone’s relationship is always healthy. Some have better experiences than others. Mine was pretty good growing up. He always had my back. I knew I could count on him. Do you guys have a good relationship?”

  “Not sure how to answer that.” DeSantos chewed on it a moment. “Yes. But no.
It’s artificial, almost like he says and does things he thinks a father’s supposed to say and do.” He thought of a million examples, but none were the kind he wanted to get into. Besides, he needed to keep focused on the Russians. “We haven’t talked a whole lot the past few years. I don’t think he respects what I do because there’s no military decorum. No uniform, no conventional chain of command, little discipline.”

  Uzi yawned. “Did he tell you that?”

  “Just a feeling I have. I know he was disappointed when I left the Army. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps. I think he’d used some capital with the brain trust to pave the way for me. But I didn’t want that.”

  “You wanted to do it on your own. Earn it.”

  “It wasn’t that. I don’t have a problem taking gifts, because something may be given to you but you have to run with it. The quarterback can shove the ball in your stomach during a handoff. It’s what you do with the rock in that split second that defines you—not that he gave you the ball. So that wasn’t the problem. I didn’t want to be an administrator. I wanted to save lives, do things few people can. Make a difference. When I told him that, I think I inadvertently insulted him.”

  “But you are making a difference. And saving lives. Remember? You have to add, ‘On the Moon.’”

  DeSantos laughed. “On the Moon.”

  Uzi yawned again. “See, it works.”

  DeSantos fell silent a long minute. “I used to look up at the Moon when I was a kid and wonder what it was like up here.”

  “But now you’re actually here,” Uzi said, his voice getting slower, almost as if he was buzzed. “Only twelve walked the surface before we got here …”

  “I do feel privileged. But there’s no time for that, you know?”

  Uzi did not reply. DeSantos heard his breathing over the radio and realized his friend had fallen asleep. He stared out at the Resurs and tried to clear his mind … but all he could think about was skiing in the Alps with his father.

  His father.

  He wondered what the Russians were doing to him this very moment.

  61

  Potomac, Maryland

  It was dark in the neighborhood where Dirk Patrone lived. OPSIG had put a bird in the air with infrared surveillance to monitor his movements and make sure he did not enter the guest house. If he did, Vail and Rusakov, who were parked half a mile down the road off a side street, would intervene. They now had reason to believe the general was not in the residence, but they did not want Patrone erasing any evidence if it did, in fact, have any relevance to Lukas’s disappearance.

  An hour after the sun set, Patrone drove off in his Bentley and the OPSIG team, wearing black tactical uniforms, moved in silently and breached the guest house front door. Vail and Rusakov trailed behind Troy Rodman, Zheng Wei, and six other operators skilled in covert entries.

  Vail was there to look for evidence—not for prosecution but for clues that could give them an indication as to what happened to the general and where he was being kept.

  They cleared the residence as Vail wandered the main floor. She had followed the team as they went through their infrared-goggled incursion, but once they declared a room safe, she went to work.

  Vail had covered almost the entire downstairs when her boot caught on a wood plank as she left the study. She knelt down and shined her flashlight across the floor and determined it was an artificially created seam. “Got something,” she said in her mic.

  Zheng and Rusakov were first in the room.

  “Looks like there may be a lower level here. But you guys are gonna have to lift this.”

  Zheng pulled out a tactical knife and pried the flooring up. He and Rusakov grabbed the edge and swung the large trap door back against the wall.

  “Lights,” Vail said.

  They illuminated the opening and shared a look. A wooden ladder led down. Weapon drawn, Zheng descended the steps.

  Fifteen seconds passed. “All clear,” he said over the radio.

  Vail went down, followed by Rodman, who had just entered the study, and Rusakov.

  “Looks like our mercenary has a torture chamber all his own, right in his backyard,” Zheng said.

  Vail crouched in front of a knife that had been tossed to the floor. “I see bloodstains.”

  “On this too,” Rusakov said, holding up a saw.

  “Gross.” Vail recoiled. “I don’t want to know what he did with that. But we do need to know who he did it to. We need an evidence response team here to test for DNA. I’m sure we can get an exemplar on the general. And if not, I know where Hector lives. That’ll give us a close enough match if there’s a match to be had.”

  “I’m on it,” Rusakov said. She pulled out her encrypted radio and went back up the ladder.

  “So how do we handle this?” Vail asked. “We’ve got no idea when Patrone will be back.”

  “Actually, we do. He was booked on a flight to Houston due to leave in—” Rodman consulted his watch—“one hour. We had agents follow him to Dulles. He’s at the gate. Once we know for sure he’s boarded and the jet’s gone wheels up, we’ll be fine. We’ve got a quiet presence posted at the mouth of the street, the only access point to this property. Anyone goes past him, the team will be notified and we’ll deal with it.”

  Very efficient. I should’ve expected nothing less.

  “Meantime, keep looking around, see if anything else looks out of the ordinary.”

  “Down here? Nothing is in the ordinary.”

  Rodman gave her a stern look.

  “Right,” Vail said. “I’ll get back to it.”

  62

  Taurus-Littrow Valley

  DeSantos gave Uzi’s shoulder a nudge. “Time to wake up.”

  Uzi opened his eyes and appeared disoriented for a second until his brain registered and identified the interior of his helmet. “Right. The Moon.” He sat up. “I was dreaming. Dena and Maya.”

  “Sorry Boychick. I know that wound never heals.”

  “It scars over.” Uzi stretched his arms out as far as he could with the suit on. “But the pain remains.”

  “At least the memories are still there.”

  “I may’ve lost my girls, but I’ll never lose the memories.” He figured that at some point he would have told Maya about this mission. How could a dad not tell his little girl that he walked on the Moon, that bright disk in the sky that appeared nearly every night—unlike her father, who was off working missions instead of being at home for family dinners.

  And his wife … could he keep such a secret from her? Would Dena believe him? “Hey, you think you’ll ever tell Maggie you went to the Moon?”

  “That’s a rhetorical question, right?”

  “Right.” Uzi’s empty stomach rumbled, contracting hard. “I’m so friggin’ hungry.”

  DeSantos chuckled. “We’ve got some delicious blocks of concrete waiting for you at the Raptor.”

  “Can’t wait.” He looked out at the Resurs. “How’s everything been?”

  “Quiet. Too quiet. Two of them returned to the lander without their rover, which might mean you were right. Their drill is built into the rover like the Spider. But whether or not they’ve found caesarium yet … no way of knowing.”

  “We need to get closer so that the Geiger counter can pick up the caesarium if they get hold of it.”

  “And how close is that?”

  Uzi shrugged. “Pretty close. We’ve gotta figure out a way to plant one of our handheld Geiger counters on their spacecraft so that when they return with it, if they find it, the sensor will set off an alarm remotely. I think I can rig something up.”

  “We also need a contingency plan for what we’re going to do if they do find it.”

  “Hang on.” Uzi raised Carson and Stroud on the radio and said, “We’ve all had time to think. We need to make
some decisions.”

  “No way around it,” Stroud said. “The Russians can’t leave here with caesarium. Digger and I have run it through the scenarios and the only option is to blow up their ship. Our ascent stage can’t lift eight men—even if we could fit everyone, which I don’t think we can. But we’re pushing the weight limit for four. Even if we dump equipment so it’s just a shell with a flight computer and engine, there’s no way we can clear another eight hundred pounds. And that’s assuming the fuel transfer works.”

  “So if we destroy their ship,” Uzi said, “we’re essentially stranding the Russians here. We’re killing them.”

  They were silent.

  Carson cleared his throat. “It’s us or them. I don’t think they’d hesitate if the situation were reversed. In fact, we should check the Raptor, make sure they didn’t plant an IED when they took our food. I’ll get right on that.”

  “If we do blow their ship,” DeSantos said, “won’t the explosion be detected on Earth?”

  “Doubt it,” Carson said. “The Apollo astronauts placed seismometers at their landing sites around the Moon. The instruments radioed data back to Earth until they were switched off in ’77.”

  “Switched off,” Uzi said. “So our answer is probably not.”

  “I think that’s fairly safe to say.”

  “Probably and fairly,” DeSantos said. “Not confidence-inducing assessments.”

  “Our mission is to stop them,” Stroud said. “If the Russians find out what happened, which they may anyway, it’s not our job to figure out what to do about it. The Pentagon will be cleaning up the mess back on Earth.”

  “Fine,” DeSantos said. “So how do we stop them? How do we blow up the Resurs?”

  Stroud chortled. “Space vehicles are incredibly fragile things, since they need to be very light. So a C-4 charge should easily do the job, even if it doesn’t ignite the fuel. Remember the SpaceX explosion that happened while they were just fueling on the pad? No bombs necessary.”