“Veshevo’s an old, abandoned cold war–era airfield. Last I heard, the runways and military buildings were crumbling, overgrown with foliage.”
“Good place to bring a prisoner, to hold him without anyone knowing,” McNamara said. “You sure about that info?”
“Confirmed with CIA and Air Force satellites,” Rusakov said. “The plane landed in Leningrad Oblast. That’s where the old abandoned air base is located.”
“Give us a minute,” McNamara said. He muted the mic, then huddled with Knox, Tasset, and Eisenbach.
A moment later, Knox lifted a phone handset while McNamara pressed the audio button. “Hot Rod, you and Alexandra will go with Team 4 and bring back General DeSantos. Flight leaves Andrews in thirty minutes. Chopper will be hot on the roof in ten.”
Rodman rose from his chair. “Yes sir.”
“Alive,” McNamara said. “We want him back alive. The men holding him … don’t afford them the same luxury.”
THE SPECIALLY OUTFITTED stealth Black Hawks, long rumored to exist—called “unicorns” by some because they had never been seen—accidentally made their appearance on the world stage when one crashed during the covert SEAL mission that disposed of Osama bin Laden.
Its newer-generation cousin, boasting high-tech absorbent material to lower its radar signature and sound-suppressing technology to quiet the rotor noise, left Finland air space traveling at its top speed of 151 knots. It traversed Lake Ladoga using very low-altitude nap-of-the-earth flying to minimize detection by ground-based radar, enemy aircraft, and surveillance and control systems. Nine men and one woman fast-roped into a clearing in the dark without incident and began a three-mile hike from the landing zone to their target area.
Two hours ago, a Global Hawk aerial surveillance drone equipped with infrared imagers flew above the Veshevo air base at nearly 60,000 feet. Before returning to Finland to avoid detection—which would tip off the Russians that the US knew where the general was being held—it showed six human signatures moving amongst the structures.
An hour after touching down, the ten OPSIG operators cut through the links of a barbed wire fence and entered the compound. It was overgrown with dense tree cover and poorly maintained—if it was maintained at all.
They advanced through the base systematically, moving toward the location where satellite imagery showed the buildings that were most likely to contain the general and his captors. According to their intel, there were officer houses and apartments, hostels for staff, and administration buildings.
An hour later, they were closing on a crumbling two-story white brick structure painted with green blotches that looked like crude attempts at camouflage. They surrounded it and looked for signs of activity. There was nothing—no interior lights, no voices.
Rodman inserted an optical camera and looked around. The room was empty. He repeated this at regular intervals until he had covered the entire first floor.
He reported his findings, then said, “We’re going in. Ready to breach front door on my mark.”
They planned to use a stealth approach, since there were other buildings nearby. If they took a bull in a china shop approach, and their tangos were in the adjacent structures, things would escalate quickly—something they very much wanted to avoid.
They rapidly infiltrated the space. A minute later they had cleared the floor and half the team headed up the stairs.
Their SITREP: nothing. It did not look like anyone had been in there in years.
“On to the next building,” Rusakov whispered into her mic.
72
Approach to Earth
DeSantos opened a floor panel and grabbed one of the compact rucksacks to stow it away—but the bag had more weight than expected. “Digger, what’ve you got in here?”
“Food, Dopp kit, underwear, medical gear, mission checklists from the first leg. Why?”
“Feels heavier than it should. Obviously we’re weightless, so it’s not heavy per se, but—”
“I know what you mean.”
Carson floated over, unzipped it, and peered inside. “What the hell’s this?” He reached in and pulled out a flat metal container.
“Looks like a small safe deposit box,” Uzi said. “Hang on. That’s—that’s about the same size and shape as the one that was taken from Cowboy’s pocket when he was killed.”
DeSantos flipped the four latches around its perimeter and lifted the lid.
They all leaned forward for a look.
“Is that what I think it is?” Carson asked. He felt the sides of the thick box. “It’s heavy, so to speak, because it’s lead-lined.”
Uzi quickly shut the cover. He pulled open another panel, removed his own rucksack, and rooted out a portable Geiger counter. He switched it on and shared a look with each of them. “Caesarium. Digger, what the hell?”
“Don’t look at me. I didn’t put it there. How would I have gotten hold of it anyway? Cowboy was the only one using the mining equipment.”
“So he must’ve stuck it in your backpack,” DeSantos said. “Why?”
“To deflect suspicion from Cowboy to Digger in case it was found,” Uzi said.
“Deniability,” Carson said. “I get that. But why’d he take it in the first place? We were only supposed to run a battery of tests. We were specifically ordered not to bring it back with us. Cowboy, he just wouldn’t disregard orders like that.”
“First thought,” Uzi said, “is that he was going to sell it to Russia or China. Or North Korea or Iran.”
“He was a decorated spec ops soldier,” Carson said. “A SEAL. The best of the best. No way would he have done something like that.”
“Option two,” Uzi said, “is that he was working for someone else.”
Carson slammed his hand on the bulkhead. “No fucking way. I’m telling you. I knew the guy real well. I mean, you work with an operator, you know him on the battlefield. What he’s made of, how he thinks. But you socialize with him, you hang out together, you get to know his family … you know who he is. At his core, what’s in his heart. Follow me?”
“I do,” DeSantos said. “And I agree. A guy like that, no way would he sell out his country. For any amount of money.”
Uzi kept his gaze out the windows, where there was nothing but stars and the Earth: a stark, high contrast ball of color set against a background of blackness. “Okay, then not a foreign country. Not an enemy. What about the CIA?”
They looked at one another.
DeSantos cleared his throat. “Regardless of who he was working for, we’ve got caesarium on board. And we have to deal with it.”
Carson laughed. “Deal with it? We’ll be splashing down in forty-five minutes. What do you suggest we do?”
“Dump it,” DeSantos said. “Soon as we hit the water, we’ll open the hatch and drop it in the ocean. It’s heavy, it’ll sink.”
“And how long till we get a leak of radioactive material in the water?” Carson said. “It’s shielded but probably not water tight—certainly not at higher pressures. We should turn it over to OPSIG and let them dispose of it responsibly.”
“We all know what’ll happen,” DeSantos said. “We’d be handing the Department of Defense the ability to build the most powerful weapon of all time. It’ll be deemed too valuable to get rid of. The best of intentions don’t guarantee the best results.”
“We can dump it here, now,” Uzi said.
“Boychick, we’re traveling 25,000 miles per hour. We can’t just open the window and toss it out.”
“Actually, we can. We make sure everything’s secured—which we’re doing anyway for reentry. We get our gloves and helmets on and pressurize the pumpkin suits, then depressurize the cabin. Open the hatch, dump it out, seal her up again and repressurize.”
DeSantos turned to Carson. “Is he right? Can we do that?”
“It’s been done before,” Carson said. “Apollo did this during the last few missions. On the way back to Earth, they did an EVA outside the command module to retrieve film and data records from compartments in the service module.”
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Uzi said. “Let’s do it.”
“There is risk,” Carson said. “Apollo didn’t do it anywhere near this close to Earth. If we can’t get the hatch closed, it jams, whatever—we’ll be incinerated as soon as we hit the atmosphere.”
“Now there’s a lovely image,” DeSantos said. “Barbecued ribs. And breasts. And thighs, and—”
“But it’s got another advantage,” Uzi said. “Momentum will carry the box into the atmosphere and it’ll burn up. No radioactive space waste. Plus, if it’s just floating around in space, it could potentially be retrieved. This way, it’s history.”
“Might not be that simple,” Carson said. “Assuming it’s like standard fission material—uranium or plutonium—it’d need to be assembled and compressed to cause an explosion. Obviously this won’t happen when it burns up in the atmosphere, but it could spread lots of radioactive material around.”
“You mean like a dirty bomb,” DeSantos said.
“Potentially. But there’s not that much of it, so … there’s that. Worse case, exposure will be minimal.”
“There’s no perfect solution,” Uzi said, looking down at the box. “Just one that’s not as bad as the others.”
“If that’s our decision,” DeSantos said, “we’d better hurry.”
They quickly went about getting their helmets and gloves locked in place and the suits pressurized—and made sure everything was secured.
“We’ve got two minutes to get this done,” Carson said.
By design, the crew module was coming in “blunt end forward,” meaning the convex, wider undersurface of the vehicle was going to hit the atmosphere first. The ablative heat shield, built to absorb and deflect the intense frictional 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit heat by charring, melting, and expelling dangerous gases, was only located on the bottom of the spacecraft.
“We’re ass forward, heading toward the fire. Hurry up and get that thing open.”
DeSantos moved to the forward hatch, the one at the nose of the Orion crew module where they had docked with the Raptor, and through which they had climbed after docking. He worked the gears, unlocked it, and swung the door open into space.
Uzi handed him the box and DeSantos pushed it out into the black void. It tumbled wildly end over end, following the Patriot down toward Earth.
“Close it up!” Uzi said.
“Hey Hector.” Carson was at his console, working the touch screen—a more difficult task with the gloves on. “You sure you keyed in the correct command?”
“Positive. Hash-65, ENTER, ENGAGE. Command up.” DeSantos pulled the hatch closed but it bounced open. “Shit. Uzi, give me a hand. I can’t seat it.”
Uzi propelled himself alongside DeSantos, grabbed hold of the bulkhead, and reopened the door. He swung it shut again and it struck the coupling lip but did not engage. He grunted, repeated the procedure, and cursed.
“Get that thing closed,” Carson said. “Entering outer atmosphere in ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven.”
Despite the cooling air coming through his suit, DeSantos was perspiring profusely.
Uzi went through the process again and it clicked into place.
“Four. Three.”
“Try it now.”
DeSantos cranked the hatch mechanism. “Done! Locked down.”
Uzi let go and floated backward. “Thank God.”
“And not a second too soon,” Carson said. “Get your belts on.”
The noise level rose dramatically and a colorful light show began outside the windows: a central flare of orange-yellow gave way to outer tinges of purples and blue-greens. Against the black of space, the flames were dramatic.
“Why’d you ask me about the code I entered?” DeSantos said as he turned away from the brilliant display of colors to engage his restraint.
“Because we’re not coming down in the Atlantic. Our entry corridor’s now the Pacific. And if this data is right—which is obviously a big ‘if’—we’ll be splashing down not in US waters but in international waters, pretty damn close to China. And Russia’s Red Banner Pacific fleet in Vladivostok.”
“I’m sure this is part of the training I never got to,” DeSantos said, “but why can’t we just correct our trajectory back to the Atlantic?”
“We’ve got eight reaction control system pods on the Patriot,” Carson said. “But they’re for making all the critical maneuvers before we enter the atmosphere, so we hit it at just the right angle. It helps us stay right in the center of our entry corridor, an angle of 6.5 degrees below the horizon. Too shallow, off by tenths of a degree, and we’d skip off the atmosphere. Too steep and we’d burn up.”
“So the pods have already fired,” Uzi said.
“Right. They’ve done their job. Our trajectory was set 30,000 miles ago. Too late now. Laws of physics.”
“So the command I entered. It got changed? More malware?”
“Looks like it,” Uzi said. “It was designed to take the data input—an Atlantic Ocean landing—and change it to a Pacific splashdown, as far north of the equator as possible. Close to China and Russia.”
“You think they’re coming for us?” DeSantos asked.
“I’d bet one of them is, Santa. And since Russia’s the one that developed the malware, my money’s on them.”
“Oleg was convinced we were bringing caesarium back with us.”
“So they think we’ve got caesarium on board. Since their Moon mission failed, they see this as another shot at getting it.”
“That’s just terrific,” Carson said. “Let’s hope the Navy and Air Force know that.”
73
Space Flight Operations Facility
Vandenberg Air Force Base
Although the Navy and Air Force had been out of communication with the Patriot, they were tracking its progress utilizing every bit of data they could collect from multiple sources—and there were a lot of them spread across the globe.
Assets that had been deployed to the Atlantic were recalled to base and West Coast vessels were set in motion.
Since the Navy, Air Force, and NASA had practiced the Orion recovery many times in the Pacific during the spacecraft’s development, they had perfected the procedure. But what they had not trained for was having to ramp up at a moment’s notice. And they had never anticipated having to simultaneously engage, and fend off, the Chinese and/or Russian military.
Fortunately, the United States had run drills every year as part of its war games and strategic readiness for potential incursions by an enemy force.
But as the situation unfolded, it became clear that the Russians—because they had created the malware that sent Patriot off course—knew where the capsule was headed and where it would splash down.
“Status,” Eisenbach said as he entered the ops center, which occupied a large, low-lit room adjacent to the Space Flight Operations facility. His gaze immediately found the humongous wall-size display mounted at the front of the room, which showed real-time satellite imagery of the Pacific Ocean.
The Air Force major kept his eyes on his dual-monitor readout. “Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is now 166 nautical miles from the revised splashdown site, North 8 03.00 by East 159 51.00. The Kuznetsov just launched four Su-33 Flanker fighter jets, which should be on station in seventeen minutes.”
Eisenbach leaned forward to get a better look at the major’s screen. “Go on.”
“We’ve sent the Reagan Task Force from Johnston Atoll. At 171 miles out, they launched an MV-22 Osprey with divers on board to secure the Patriot. Four F-18s took off three minutes ago and will arrive exactl
y when the Su-33s arrive. That 4-ship will secure the skies over and around the splashdown site and remain on station above the target for ten to fifteen minutes. Another four F-18s are due to leave the deck in twelve minutes. That second 4-ship will relieve the first and allow retrograde back to the carrier.”
Eisenbach rocked back on his heels. “And that’ll give the Osprey at least fifteen minutes to drop the divers, orbit/hover over the Patriot while the divers extract the crew, and then egress back to the fleet.”
“Yes sir. A third and fourth 4-ship will launch fifteen minutes apart. All four teams will rotate at regular intervals to secure the vacant Patriot crew module until the Reagan arrives on station in six and a half hours. The USS Anchorage, which is specially outfitted for towing the crew module into his well deck, is approximately 190 nautical miles out. Seven and a half hours at top speed.”
“So we’re gonna have a shootout,” Kirmani said, coming up behind Eisenbach.
“Looks that way. But why the Russians are so interested in the Patriot escapes me. Retribution? Are they gonna launch missiles? Or do they think we brought back caesarium?”
“We have to be prepared for either scenario,” Kirmani said.
“No worries,” Eisenbach said, not taking his eyes off the screen. “We are.”
74
Over the Pacific Ocean
When the Patriot burst through the other side of the atmosphere, the bright flares of protoplasmic light outside the windows disappeared. The crew module got quiet again—or as quiet as it could be traveling at hundreds of miles per hour.
Carson armed the mortars and controllers for the forward bay cover parachutes at 50,000 feet and deployed them at 26,500. DeSantos heard a muffled pop as the pyrobolts fired and the chutes rushed out with a loud whoosh.
Next up were the drogues, accompanied by the same pop and whoosh as they billowed out and dropped the Patriot’s velocity to 242 miles per hour.
At 9,500 feet and 130 miles per hour, the pilot parachutes lifted the red-and-white striped main chutes from the forward bay and reduced the crew module’s descent rate to a more manageable thirty feet per second.
Dark Side of the Moon Page 38