by Bova, Ben
So, as he bent over his work and waited for Williamson to join him, he forced his mind to accept the idea that the Earth was below him, down, and he was floating high above it all. He had lost track of time and did not know when he should stop for prayer. Allah would forgive him for that, he felt. This work must be completed. There will be plenty of time for prayer afterward, once the work is completed and we have nothing to do but wait until our oxygen runs out.
That must be South America, he thought, gazing past the straight metal edge of the giant antenna. The Pacific Ocean glittered bright and deeply blue, although there were lighter hues around the islands that were almost directly beneath them. South America darkened the edge of the curving globe, smeared with clouds, creased with mountains that looked like puny wrinkles from this height. Mecca is on the other side of the world, Bouchachi knew. The Holy City can never be seen from this satellite.
He looked up from his work and blinked sweat from his eyes. He felt hot inside his spacesuit, soaked with perspiration, despite the fact that just outside the fabric of the suit the temperature must be close to absolute zero. No air. No life.
I cannot see Mecca from here, he repeated to himself. This giant machine is the work of devils, put into space as far away from the Holy City as the godless Americans could place it. It took an effort to straighten up from his bent posture. Turning his entire weightless body, he looked out at the vast expanse of the power satellite. It stretched for miles, huge, glittering darkly, a mammoth construction of evil. Its very size frightened him; that, and the knowledge that evil men could construct such an infernal machine.
Straining his eyes, he thought he could see the brown bulk of Mexico and the barren gray desert of the southwestern United States. Yes, and farther north, beneath a swirl of clouds, lay Florida. And beyond that, Washington. The capital of the Great Satan. Where their president will make his last speech later this day.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Senator Thornton rode with Senator Quill to Arlington National Cemetery. The Memorial Day service at the Tomb of the Unknowns was an annual observance, a chance for the president to use the emotions of patriotism and sacrifice to further his own political agenda. The president was fighting for his political life, Jane knew; the latest polls showed that Morgan Scanwell was within twelve percentage points of the president, and the national conventions hadn’t even convened yet.
Quill wore a lightweight gray suit with a carefully knotted lavender tie and a jeweled American flag pin in his lapel. Sitting beside him in the rear seat of the limousine, Jane was in a conservative coral pink knee-length sheath. Both senators would accept red poppies from an amputee veteran in a wheelchair when they got out of the limousine. The photo opportunity had been set up by Quill’s publicity aides.
“Where’s Morgan this fine morning?” Quill asked cheerfully.
“In Austin. He’s meeting with the delegation chairmen this morning, and then there’s a big barbecue later this afternoon.”
“He wasn’t invited to Arlington?” Quill teased.
“The president’s going to invite the candidate who’ll oppose him in November? Be real, Bob.”
“Morgan doesn’t have the candidacy sewn up yet. Jackson’s close enough to make a real fight at the convention. Especially if he picks Roswell as his running mate.”
Jane scoffed at the thought. “Liz Roswell would lose more votes than she gains.”
Quill pursed his lips thoughtfully. “You might be right.”
“I know Morgan’s got a lot of work ahead of him,” Jane said, more seriously. “But he’s going into the convention as the leading candidate and we’re going to go for a first-ballot win.”
“Jackson won’t accept the number-two slot.”
“Our people are talking to his people.”
“He won’t go for it.”
Jane let a knowing little smile curve her lips. “Then maybe I will.”
“You?” Quill’s mouth hung open.
Laughing, Jane said, “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you really surprised, Bob.”
“You’re not serious.”
“We’ve talked about it,” Jane said lightly.
“Pillow talk.”
Her smile disappeared. “It’s more than that. We might have a big announcement to make just before the convention opens.”
His composure recovered, Quill leaned back in the limousine’s plush seat and chuckled quietly. “Let me guess.”
“Go right ahead.”
“You’re going to get married.”
Jane smiled again but said nothing. In her mind, though, she wondered how Dan would react to the announcement. Stop that! she commanded herself. Put Dan out of your mind. You’re heading for the White House, that’s the important thing. The nation needs Morgan and nothing’s going to stop us from making him president, not Dan or anything else.
By the time the limousine pulled to a stop in front of the waiting Marine Corps veteran in his wheelchair, Jane had almost succeeded in forgetting about Dan.
Standing at the base of the launchpad, Dan looked over his maintenance crew with a jaundiced eye.
“By damn, you guys look like something the cat dragged in.”
Gerry Adair grinned wryly. “It was your party, boss.”
“Start sucking oxygen,” Dan snapped. “You’ve got to be ready to launch as soon as the spaceplane’s fueled up.”
One of the technicians stared at him. “We’re going up? Now? Today?”
“Damned right,” said Dan.
“But it’s the holiday!”
“You’ll get double pay.”
Shaking his head, the technician said, “It’s not that. We got a picnic planned. My wife’s family came down from Nebraska, for chrissake.”
“We’ve got an emergency on our hands,” Dan said.
“My wife’s gonna kill me.”
Looking at the dark clouds piling up over the Gulf, Dan thought, If Mother Nature doesn’t kill you first.
The director of the FBI’s Houston branch did not appreciate having to come into the office on Memorial Day, especially when she’d been there the day before.
“What’s all this hysteria about?” she snapped as she stormed into her office. She was wearing a loose sweater over a T-shirt and cut-off jeans that exposed her skinny, knobby-kneed legs.
Kelly Eamons was already there, pacing nervously. “April Simmonds isn’t at her apartment.”
“So? It’s a holiday, for god’s sake. Most people spend holidays with their families.”
The director’s acid-dripping irony made no impression on Eamons. “You don’t understand. She said she wasn’t going to France with al-Bashir. But now I can’t find her.”
“Use the tracking beacon.”
“I tried! The guys downstairs claim they can’t find her signal.”
The director slammed down onto her desk chair muttering, “This was a screwball operation from the beginning.”
“She’s out of range of our local equipment,” Kelly said, pacing again.
“I thought you said she’d decided not to go to France with the suspect.”
“She did. Yesterday afternoon. But now …”
Agent Chavez barged into the office, looking distressed. He was wearing shorts too: picnic clothes.
“I got your message,” he said to Eamons. “The guys downstairs still can’t pick up her signal.”
“She’s gone with him after all,” Eamons muttered.
“But you said she’d decided not to,” said the director.
“Something changed her mind.”
“Or somebody,” Chavez chimed in.
“She could be in trouble.”
The director shook her head, glaring at them both. Then she reached for her telephone. “Do you two loose cannons have any idea of the levels of hierarchy I’m gonna have to go through to get the satellite spooks to see if they can pick up her signal?”
Eamons brightened. “She must be in a plane, headin
g for France.”
“Or already there,” said Chavez. “In Marseille.”
“Sit down,” the director said, pecking at her quick-dial keyboard. “This could take hours.”
GEOSYNCHRONOUS ORBIT
Gilly Williamson had killed men before. The first time was when a daft policeman barged in on him in the cellar of the safe house where he was wiring a car bomb. Before he could even think about it, Williamson put four nine-millimeter bullets through the fool’s chest.
He expected to feel guilty about it. He expected it would give him nightmares. But it didn’t. It was him or me, he knew. The damned idiot hesitated and I didn’t. That’s the difference between life and death.
Of course, the bombs he devised killed dozens, perhaps hundreds. He had never kept score. But personal killing, face to face, that was a different matter. There was the informer that was going to rat out the whole cell to the Tommies. He was stupid enough to warn Gilly over pints at a pub in London. Gilly had thanked him from the bottom of his heart and then, after they walked together to the bastard’s car parked back in the alley, Gilly had brained him with the fool’s own electric torch. He’d looked so surprised when the first blow cracked his skull open. In a few seconds you couldn’t recognize his face at all.
That was when Gilly had to leave the United Kingdom, leave his wife and kids and travel to blasted North Africa. Casablanca. Nothing like the movie, he found. Then Oran, another cesspit full of gabbling Arabs. In Tunis he was recruited by The Nine, although he never met any of the mucky-mucks, just their flunkies.
He knew he had cancer, he’d know it since he’d been diagnosed by the Public Health doctors back in London. Cigarettes, they claimed. Bad genes. Bad luck. What difference? He knew he was going to die and the only question was: How could he provide for his wife and kids?
This one-way mission to the satellite was his answer. Williamson had mailed the bank receipt to his wife before he’d gone off to the remote training base in the stark granitegray mountains of northern China.
Now he hung suspended on a tether halfway between the enormous satellite and the transfer craft where Nikolayev waited for them to finish their tasks. Below him glowed the blue and white-flecked Earth. Beyond it he could see a crescent Moon, small and slim like the symbol on Arab flags. There were stars out there, too, but Williamson could only see a few of the brightest through the dark tinting of his helmet visor and he paid no attention to them.
He had finished his wiring task nearly half an hour ago. The satellite was no longer beaming power through its antenna. Once they removed the antenna and attached the new, special one they’d carried up with them, their job would be finished. Then it would be up to the crew on the ground to point that antenna where they wanted it.
But before that could happen, Williamson had one additional task to do. Nikolayev. The Russian was a mercenary, a professional cosmonaut who’d been paid to carry these two men to the power satellite. He didn’t know what they were doing to the powersat and he didn’t care. He expected to wait for them to finish their work, whatever it was, and then fly them back to a landing in Kazakhstan.
But that wouldn’t do. The plan called for no witnesses. The whole point of this operation was to make it look as if the powersat had malfunctioned. Accidentally. Williamson and Bouchachi were even going to reattach the regular antenna once they got word from the ground that they had accomplished their mission. Then they’d fly off into deeper space, where nobody would think to search for them. And die there.
Nikolayev had no inkling of that part of the plan. He expected to return home.
Time to disabuse him of that, Williamson told himself as he made his weightless way hand over hand along the tether that connected to the waiting transfer craft.
“I’m coming in,” he called to Nikolayev through his suit radio.
“Come ahead,” came the cosmonaut’s bored voice. “Hatch is open.”
Everything took an extra effort in zero gravity. Williamson had thought it would all be easy when everything was weightless, but he found that it was hard work even to stretch out his arms. Maybe it’s the bloody suit, he thought. It’s as stiff as a corpse.
Slowly, sweating with the effort, he hooked his boots on the rim of the open hatch, then wormed his way inside the spacecraft. Nikolayev was strapped into the middle seat, sealed up in his suit and fishbowl helmet.
“Close the hatch,” the cosmonaut said, “and we can fill cabin with air again. Take off helmets, relax a while.”
“Not just yet,” Williamson said. He pulled out the knife he’d carried in the pouch on his trouser leg and slipped it out of its sheath. The blade was clean and slim and sharp.
Nikolayev looked puzzled. “What’s that for?”
“For you.”
With a swift slash, Williamson sliced open the chest of the cosmonaut’s suit. Nikolayev’s eyes went so wide Williamson could see white all around the pupils. The suit material was tough, layer upon layer of fabric and plastic. Williamson hacksawed through it, laboring hard. The Russian tried to parry the knife slash, but in the spacesuit he was hopelessly clumsy. And far too late.
“What have you done?” Nikolayev screamed.
Williamson said nothing. The Russian gasped for air, clawed at his helmet with both gloved hands, then suddenly lunged at Williamson. Gilly pushed him off easily and watched him shudder inside his cumbersome suit as the air ran out of it and the fabric decompressed like a punctured balloon. Nikolayev’s screams and flailings faded away and he slumped in the seat, quite dead. Williamson said to himself, I’ve done nothing that I won’t be doing to myself soon enough.
“Sorry, mate,” Williamson whispered. “No witnesses, you know.”
MARSEILLE
The young Asian flight attendant still wore her tan uniform as she led April up the main stairway of the villa and showed her to a wide, airy bedroom. Feeling confused and scared, April asked her, “Where did Mr. al-Bashir go?”
They had driven together from the airport up to this hilltop villa, but al-Bashir had been on the phone almost every moment of the drive, speaking in French and sometimes in what April assumed was Arabic. The uniformed woman sat up front with the liveried chauffeur. Once the limousine had pulled up on the gravel-topped driveway, al-Bashir had smilingly helped April out of the car, then turned her over to the Asian woman.
Ignoring her question, the woman went to the French windows at the far end of the spacious bedroom and threw them open. April saw a sizeable balcony lined with large clay pots filled with thickly blooming red and pink geraniums and, beyond, the tranquil deep blue of the Mediterranean Sea.
“You will be very comfortable here,” said the Asian woman, smiling.
April looked around the room. Tile flooring. Heavy dark furniture. A four-poster king-sized bed.
“But I don’t have any clothes with me,” she said, almost pleading.
“Mr. al-Bashir has already seen to that,” the woman said. She strode to the closet and slid its doors open. April saw a long row of what looked like evening gowns. Or maybe they were nightgowns.
“Why don’t you take a nice shower and get into some fresh clothes? You’ll find makeup and toiletries in the lavatory.”
With a final smile, the Asian woman walked to the door and left the room, leaving April alone.
April slumped down on the bed and fought back an impulse to cry. Am I a guest here, she wondered, or a prisoner?
It had started to rain in Matagorda. Dan could hear the drops drumming heavily against the roof of the blockhouse. Inside, the launch crew were at their consoles, the quiet tension of the countdown starting to notch upward.
“It’s just a squall,” Dan said, peering at the weather radar display in the control center. “It’ll pass in half an hour or so.”
Lynn Van Buren tapped a red-lacquered fingernail against the screen. “There’s more coming in behind it.”
“So we’ll launch in between ’em,” said Dan.
The door
from outside opened, allowing a gust of wet wind to blow through the blockhouse. Dan saw Gerry Adair come in, stooped against the wind, his yellow slicker glistening wet.
“Crew ready?” Dan asked.
Adair’s freckled face looked somber. “Max isn’t going.”
“What?”
“He said you can fire him, but he’s tiot going up today.”
Dan resisted the urged to slam a fist against the nearest console. “Double-damn it, he’s not going to have any family picnic in this weather!”
“I’ve been on the phone with him for the past twenty minutes, boss. He just won’t go. Says his wife’ll divorce him.”
“And rain makes applesauce,” Dan muttered.
“The rest of the crew is ready, pretty much,” said Adair.
“What do you mean, pretty much?”
With a hike of his pale eyebrows, Adair answered, “We don’t know what we’re going up there for, boss.”
“The double-damned power’s off!” Dan shouted. “You’re going up to find out what the hell’s wrong and fix it!”
“Without Max? He’s our structures man.”
“I’ll take his place.”
“You?” Adair and Van Buren said in unison.
“Don’t look so damned stunned,” Dan told them. Jabbing a finger at Adair, “I’ve put more hours in orbit than you have, kid.”
“Yeah, but boss—”
Dan wheeled on Van Buren. “You run the countdown like normal. I’m going to get suited up.”
Van Buren fingered her pearl strand nervously. “Chief, do you think that’s wise?”
“I won’t ask these guys to do anything I won’t do myself,” Dan said. Then he headed for the door. Adair scrambled to catch up with him.
Down in the basement of the hilltop villa, al-Bashir paced nervously along the row of technicians bent over their miscellany of computers. He accidentally kicked a crumpled can of soda; it clattered out of his way. The room looked like a pigpen. Al-Bashir wrinkled his nose in distaste; it smelled like a sty, too.