Once Dead

by Richard Phillips

  Then, as Levi’s yell of exaltation was echoed by the NSA director and his chief computer scientist, the data on all the displays froze.

  CHAPTER 119

  “No!”

  The utter despair in Rolf Koenig’s horrified scream failed to pull Jack’s gaze from the laptop display. All of the telemetry numbers remained frozen, the flashing red light indicating loss of link.

  Jack felt the stress in Janet’s voice as she spoke loudly into the cell phone, trying to make herself heard over the noise from the NSA end.

  “Admiral Riles. We’re showing a total loss of link with the spacecraft. I’m hoping that’s good.”

  When the admiral spoke his voice had miraculously reacquired its normal authoritative tone.

  “Damn right it’s good. Whatever that payload was supposed to do over D.C., it just did over frozen tundra. I want to congratulate you and Sergei. Our nation owes you a tremendous debt.”

  Jack laughed. No shit.

  Beside him, Janet stayed focused. “We’d settle for an extraction point.”

  There was a pause as Admiral Riles discussed the matter with Levi Elias.

  “Get your ass back to Zhaniya. We’ll have something hooked up by the time you link up with her.”

  “Roger. Elena out.”

  As Janet ended the call, Rolf Koenig’s voice turned Jack toward the bound billionaire.

  “Prison or not, money like mine has a long reach. You’ll regret making an enemy of me.”

  “I doubt it.”

  Jack pulled the trigger, noting the irony of the moment. Rolf Koenig had just passed his vast wealth and its long reach to the wife his men had tried to kill. Stepping around the body, he turned to meet Janet’s brown-eyed gaze, glad to see there was no judgment in that look.

  With a slight nod of recognition, he turned toward the door.

  “Let’s go get Rachel and get the hell away from here, before the local good guys come riding in to complicate our lives.”

  “Right beside you.”

  CHAPTER 120

  The drive that would have taken two hours at rush hour took his driver fifty-six minutes. When he stepped out of the black sedan, Jonathan Riles paused to look across the Washington Mall at the nation’s Capitol and monuments, silhouetted against the aurora-lit night sky. As he stared up at the beautiful, dancing light show, Riles wondered what the view looked like much farther north.

  Thanks to the work of two magnificent young Americans, the United States remained the great power that so many had sacrificed to make it. It was a tragedy that only he and a couple of his trusted lieutenants would ever know what Janet Price and Jack Gregory had accomplished this night.

  Black Ops was a thankless business. And although Jack Gregory wasn’t technically a part of the Black Ops community, in his private contractor capacity, he had certainly played a key role on this operation. Riles admitted to himself that he was still hopeful Janet could bring Gregory onto the team on a full-time basis. Those two made one hell of a pair.

  When he stepped into the White House, Admiral Riles was met by Bob Adams, the president’s lanky national security advisor, and escorted down to the Situation Room. Having had the farthest to travel, he was the last to arrive. As he walked into the room, Vice President Gordon clapped his big hands and the uncharacteristic applause spread throughout the room. Even Frank Rheiner joined in, although somewhat less enthusiastically than the others around the table.

  President Harris stood up and stepped forward to meet him, hand extended.

  “I’ve got to say, Jonny,” the president said as they gripped hands, “your NSA team pulled our asses out of the fire tonight.”

  Admiral Riles smiled. “Dr. Kurtz and his cyber-attack team deserve the credit. I just told them what we needed.”

  “I’ll arrange to thank them personally.”

  Admiral Riles shifted to the meeting topic. “I understand you have received initial data on the impact of the attack.”

  “Have a seat. I’ll let Bob give us the latest update.”

  For the next hour, Bob Adams presented the latest Pentagon analysis of the size and type of weapon involved and its area of impact. It was very clear that this was an extremely sophisticated EMP weapon of a type none of the experts that had looked at the early data had seen before. While it would take weeks to conduct a thorough analysis, scientists at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories had made initial estimates that a multi-stage weapon had been able to burn through the EMP conduction layer, possibly generating ground-level voltages in excess of fifty-thousand volts per meter.

  Despite the fact that the space burst had occurred over a very sparsely populated region of northern Canada, the strength of the pulse had knocked out an entire section of air defense radar systems and had disabled electronic systems for thousands, possibly millions of square miles. Communications losses had been reported for two U.S. icebreakers and numerous foreign seagoing vessels, as well as over large swaths of Greenland. In addition, three communications satellites had shut down, and it was unclear the level of damage they had suffered.

  The electron flux had been captured by the earth’s magnetic field, producing incredible aurora borealis displays as far south as North Carolina and echoed in Antarctica as the electrons spiraled around the magnetic field lines connecting the North and South Poles. Though it was much too early to accurately estimate the weapon’s effects had it reached its target over the northeast U.S. coast, there was no doubt that it would have produced catastrophic damage.

  As Bob Adams concluded his overview briefing, the president turned to CIA Director Frank Rheiner, the tone of his voice just short of accusing.

  “Frank. Would you care to tell me how the CIA got this so wrong?”

  To Rheiner’s credit, the graying ex-senator from Wisconsin showed no hint of the emotional stress that Riles knew he must be feeling right now.

  “Mr. President, I have no excuse. I take full responsibility for my agency’s failure to properly advise you in this matter. I readily admit that, from the start, Admiral Riles has been right about this and we have been wrong. I offer my resignation, effective immediately.”

  President Harris slapped his palm angrily on the table. “Bullshit. You screwed up. I don’t need a new DCI. I need you to find out where this screw-up happened and fix it. I’m quite certain that there is nobody I could appoint who wants those answers more than you do.”

  As Admiral Riles stared at Frank Rheiner’s tightly controlled expression, he knew that the president was correct. Nobody at CIA would be sleeping until those responsible for badly advising the DCI were identified and staked to the side of some barn for buzzards to pick their carcasses clean. A quick glance over at Vice President George Gordon, his old Naval Academy roommate, told Riles that he was thinking the same thing.

  “Okay, everybody,” President Harris continued. “We can stall for a few hours, but then I’ll have to go to the briefing room and issue a statement. Our job, between now and then, is to develop some plausible cover story that doesn’t involve an attempted nuclear attack on the United States. I don’t care whether we blame Koenig’s robot’s nuclear power supply crashing back into the atmosphere, global warming, or a giant solar ejaculation.”

  Bob Adams leaned forward. “Mr. President, if we blame Koenig’s nuclear power supply for this, we could compromise our ability to launch future nuclear-powered spacecraft.”

  “I don’t care. So long as our story is good enough to convince fifty-one percent of the American public, I’ll be fine with it.”

  President Harris turned to his chief of staff.

  “Andy, get my press secretary down here, ASAP. She’s going to need to have her story straight before I go public. And order some pizza. Gentlemen, it’s going to be a long night.”

  CHAPTER 121

  Nolan Trent woke from a short and restless sleep, a dimly remembered dream crawling through his head. The alarm clock beside his bed displayed the time: 6:00 a.m
. That meant it was 1:00 a.m. in Washington, D.C. Last night, in the capital of the United States of America, the American government hadn’t collapsed. That meant Rolf Koenig had failed. It meant he and his team had failed, something that Frank Rheiner had not been shy about shouting into his ear over the telephone.

  As unpleasant as that phone call had been, today was going to be worse. The DCI had relied upon Nolan’s information and had made a fool of himself in front of the president and his national security staff. Now, a very pissed-off Frank Rheiner wanted answers. He’d get them, too. Rheiner wasn’t stupid. The trust that Nolan had worked years to cultivate had been wiped away in an instant and wouldn’t be coming back.

  Standing in the shower, hoping the hot water and steam would clear his head, Nolan couldn’t come up with a workable scenario in which he kept his job. Worse, he could only think of two that would keep him off of death row, and neither of those alternatives was particularly pleasant. The first, he ruled out immediately. Suicide was a loser’s way out.

  Option two wouldn’t be available until 8:45 a.m. That gave him time to get himself properly cleaned up, properly dressed, and properly fed, before making his way to Kensington Palace Gardens 13 for his morning appointment with the Russian ambassador.

  Although Nolan had told Frank Rheiner about this meeting, he’d lied about the purpose. The DCI thought he would be grilling Ambassador Volkov about Russia’s failure to notify the United States government when they had first learned that something was seriously wrong at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. But Nolan knew that, when he walked into the Ambassador’s residence, he would become the highest-ranking CIA defector in U.S. history.

  After shaving and combing his hair, Nolan put on a freshly-pressed, herringbone suit, noting how the dark color matched his mood. Washing his blood-pressure medication down with a swallow of water, he stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. No one had ever loved his country more than Nolan did. It was a truth that made his imminent defection all the more tragic.

  But America’s loss would be Russia’s great gain.

  CHAPTER 122

  Levi Elias settled onto his couch, savoring the feel of the soft Italian leather. Remote control in one hand, a glass of cabernet sauvignon in the other, he turned on his sixty-inch TV, tuned to CNN, and muted the volume. It had been a hell of a thirty-six-hour workday. Now the media was busy doing what they did best, beating the story to death. And this story was the gift that kept on giving.

  When the Kazakh special forces had arrived at the Cosmodrome, they’d found a slaughterhouse. Most of the original security force had been rounded up and executed by a military arm of the Russian mafia. According to news reports, some of the Baikonur security forces managed to mount a counterattack to retake the Cosmodrome, killing Vladimir Roskov and most of his terrorists.

  Unfortunately they had been unable to stop the launch of the rocket that had been retargeted at the United States. And if that attack had not been thwarted by the U.S. ballistic missile defense system, it would have formed a dirty-bomb that would have had disastrous consequences for the heavily populated northeast corridor. What a complete load of bullshit. Levi had to smile. The government propaganda machine was in full-throated cry and the press was eating up everything it dished out.

  Somehow, in the backwaters of Kazakhstan, Janet Price and Jack Gregory had kicked the shit out of dozens of badass Russian mobsters and a serious CIA killer named Jacob Knox. They’d nailed the hides of Vladimir Roskov and Rolf Koenig to the wall and had given the NSA’s hackers a backdoor into Koenig’s super-EMP device.

  Several hours later, Nolan Trent had paid a scheduled visit to the Russian ambassador and had not reappeared. There was only one conclusion that could be drawn from that. He’d defected. That action had resulted in a formal protest by the United States government, followed by the arrest of Craig Faragut and Christie Parson, two key members of Nolan Trent’s team.

  Levi took a slow sip of his wine, letting the full-bodied flavor thoroughly infuse his taste buds. As he felt the red wine send a warm glow through his stomach and into his head, a new headline scrolled across the breaking news banner on the muted TV.

  “Defense programmer arrested in Virginia. Suspect, Daniel Jones, accused of murder and of inserting a computer worm into a crucial missile defense radar system.”

  However reluctantly, Levi had to give Rolf Koenig credit. The man had constructed an incredibly intricate plan involving the Russian mafia and the intelligence agencies of multiple countries, just so he could launch an EMP attack on the industrial heart of the United States. The big question was why? Since Jack Gregory had cut Koenig’s ears off and shot him in the head, it was unlikely they would ever know. Rachel Koenig was clearly a victim and if she knew anything, she wasn’t talking.

  Lifting his glass in a virtual toast, Levi imagined the ghostly image of Pamela Kromly settle on the couch beside him. Smiling, she held her ethereal glass out to clink against his, her lovely, light-hearted voice exactly as he remembered it.

  “To Janet and Jack.”

  With tears welling in his eyes, Levi held his glass high.

  “To Janet and Jack.”

  CHAPTER 123

  In the two weeks since Rolf had been killed during the hijacking of his Baikonur rocket launch, back at home in Königsberg, Rachel had been busy healing. These last few days, with her left arm in a sling, she’d also been busy with lawyers.

  As with all things Rolf had commissioned, his prenuptial agreement with Rachel was ironclad. It clearly specified that, if they, for any reason, divorced, Rachel was to receive a lump-sum payment of one hundred million euros and nothing else. It also specified that, in the event his death preceded hers, Rolf’s estate, minus the same one hundred million euros, was to pass to his children. The one thing that Rolf had failed to anticipate or to accept was the possibility that he would die prior to producing any children.

  It wasn’t that they hadn’t tried; it had been one of Rolf’s many obsessions. Unfortunately, although Rachel was fertile, Rolf wasn’t. When sex hadn’t produced offspring, they’d tried to fertilize Rachel’s eggs with Rolf’s sperm. Convinced that it was his duty to bring about the continuation of the Koenig bloodline, Rolf had gone so far as to have his doctors attempt to fertilize donor eggs with his sperm. In Rolf’s mind, this was just a manufacturing problem, and all manufacturing problems could be resolved. But nothing had worked.

  What that now meant to Rachel was that she was the sole heir to the vast Koenig estate, with all its corporate holdings, real estate, and large bank accounts. As hard as it was for her to believe, she was now the single richest woman on the planet.

  One of her first directives to the Koenig army of lawyers was to ensure the protection of the Koenig name. Jack Gregory had refused to tell her the details of how Rolf had died, but she’d seen her husband dragged off by Roskov’s men. Clearly, he’d been tortured and forced to override his own spacecraft’s controls prior to being shot in the head by those same thugs. Rolf Koenig had lived for his vision of proving that robotic off-world mining operations were both viable and profitable. He had resisted while the Russian mafia had cut off both his ears, before finally succumbing to their torture.

  Since nobody had come forward to dispute the evidence that supported that scenario, the Koenig legal and political machine had gone after anyone who proposed a different version of events, both legally and in the press.

  Her thoughts turned to Jack Gregory. He’d saved her life. For that Rachel had just completed the transfer of a mid-seven-figure bonus into three separate Cayman Island accounts. Considering the tens of billions of euros she was now worth, she’d considered an eight-figure bonus.

  Then again, Jack had shot her and her plastic surgeon said it would leave scars.

  Turning her attention back to her new office, she looked around. The giant screen across from her desk was fine, but those other white walls would definitely have to go. Yes, a little paint, some fine art, good furniture,
and a couple of throw rugs might make this room livable after all.

  CHAPTER 124

  The seaside cafés of Heraklion, Crete, had a certain whiteness to them. Whether it was the deep blue of the Mediterranean lapping up against the shore or the beautiful sight of Rocca al Mare, the Venetian fortress that protected the inner harbor, Janet couldn’t deny the ambiance or its effect on her.

  For the last two weeks, she and Jack Gregory had stayed at the Galaxy Hotel Iraklio, making love and recovering, both mentally and physically. She had no doubt that, like her, Jack was a damaged soul. He contained an internal force that defied logical analysis. Janet wanted to understand it, but she didn’t.

  When she looked into Jack’s deep brown eyes, she felt . . . something . . . something she couldn’t put her finger on. But in the heat of their passion, she saw in those eyes a flame that reflected the lust in her soul. Jack’s inner fire didn’t scare her. When she saw the red in his pupils, she just wanted to share the passion that consumed him.

  Sipping cappuccino at the seaside café as she stared across the table at him, Janet knew that the time had come to ask him the question. She suspected she already knew his answer.

  “Jack, you know Jonny Riles wants you on his team?”

  “Yes.”

  “You and I are good together.”

  Seeing him raise an eyebrow, Janet laughed.

  “Not just that way, but good together. You could lead the team. Totally off the grid. That’s the admiral’s offer.”

  Jack smiled a gorgeous, happy-sad smile, stood up, then leaned over to kiss her lips one last time. His soft whisper confirmed her fear.

  “Believe me. Long term, you don’t want me anywhere around you.”

  When he turned to walk away along the inner harbor, the tail of his white cotton shirt flapping over his loose-fitting cotton pants, the wind ruffling his brown hair, Janet was certain of one thing.