Fatal Orbit

by Tom Grace

  “Our experts believe that Liberty was destroyed by a fragment of orbital debris,” Kilkenny said in a carefully measured tone. “I cannot speculate on any hypothetical scenarios that may differ from that line of inquiry.”

  Fydorov listened carefully to Kilkenny’s words, then remembered that the young man’s fiancée was currently aboard the International Space Station. Kilkenny wasn’t simply looking, he was hunting.

  “I understand. Do not concern yourself about this incident with the motorcycle—it never happened. Full dossiers on the men you killed will be delivered to the embassy before you leave the country, including any past and present associations. We will continue investigating the attack on you and Zadkine and will relay everything we uncover. I wish you success in your inquiry.”

  Kilkenny was relieved Fydorov didn’t press any harder. In their past two encounters, the FSB chief had shown himself to be a trustworthy man, and it bothered Kilkenny to leave him out of the loop.

  “Would it be possible to get the final telemetry on Mir’s reentry, as well?”

  “I will see to it.”

  Both men stood, and Kilkenny walked around the table and extended his hand. Fydorov accepted, then clapped his other bearlike paw on Kilkenny’s shoulder and looked him in the eye.

  “I swear to you, Nolan Seanovich, my country is not involved with the destruction of Liberty.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Near midnight, on what had been an exceedingly long day, a marine guard escorted Kilkenny to the secure conference room in the basement of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Tao was there waiting for him.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  Kilkenny slumped in one of the high-backed chairs. “Whipped, but nothing a day or two of rest won’t cure. You?”

  “Same. I tried to get some sleep, but I still see Zadkine dying in my arms. I have too many images like that in my head.”

  Kilkenny said nothing, but nodded his understanding. They both carried scarred memories of things they would prefer to have never known.

  “Satellite feed coming in now,” a voice announced through an overhead speaker.

  The large monitor covering the end wall of the room switched on, first with a blue test screen. Two windows then split the long screen into equal halves. Legend strips along the bottom of the screen showed the transmission feeding the window on the left originated in Langley, while the one on the right came from Pearl Harbor. A moment later, life-size images of Jackson Barnett and Grin filled the windows. Kilkenny smiled at the sight of Barnett, nattily attired in a suit and tie, juxtaposed with Grin in his cut-off jeans, sandals, and a floral print shirt loud enough to make a blind Hawaiian squint.

  “You appear in rather good spirits for someone who just spent several hours in a Russian jail,” Barnett commented.

  Kilkenny tried sobering his expression. “Just glad to be alive, sir.”

  “Morning all,” Grin said warmly despite his evident fatigue. “How are things on the other side of the world?”

  “Dark,” Tao replied.

  “Burning the midnight oil?” Kilkenny asked.

  “By the barrel,” Grin replied. “But it’s nothing a little caffeine and the right mood music can’t handle.”

  “How was your conversation with Zadkine?” Barnett asked.

  “Brief,” Tao answered. “As Heshel told you, something happened during Mir’s final orbit that caused it to go into an uncontrolled spin. Mission Control, then headed by Zadkine, lost control of the station. Since it still ended up in the ocean, the deorbit was publicly deemed a success. The unpleasant part was swept under the rug and Zadkine lost his job.”

  “Doesn’t sound too fair,” Grin opined.

  “It wasn’t,” Kilkenny agreed. “Zadkine’s an engineer. He understood how an object like Mir moves in space—basic laws of motion stuff. He studied the telemetry and worked out some likely trajectories for collisions that could have caused what happened.”

  “Were you able to get his data?” Grin asked.

  “No. It was probably in his house, which was burned to the ground.”

  “Too bad. I would have liked to compare notes with the man.”

  “You would have liked him,” Kilkenny said. “A Charlie Parker fan.”

  “Cool.”

  “Mr. Grinelli,” Barnett said, reasserting control over this meeting, “would you care to bring Roxanne and Nolan up to date on your efforts?”

  “Sure thing. I worked over the data you two sent me pretty much like we discussed and came up with a lot of possibles. For example, both hits took place over the Eastern Hemisphere, so everything in geostationary orbit over that side of the world is a suspect.”

  “I get the idea,” Kilkenny said. “The list is long.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a start. I then took what you and Roxanne picked up at Lloyd’s and repeated the process for every satellite whose failure could not be determined with 100 percent certainty. You’d be surprised at how many have just blinked off one day without any prior hint of trouble. Sunspots and micrometeoroids seem to be the favored causes of sudden death.”

  “And did that narrow your list?” Tao asked.

  Grin nodded. “To zero.”

  “Zero?” Kilkenny repeated, surprised.

  “Yep. There’s not one satellite in orbit that could’ve taken out all the thers.”

  “Could there be more than one?” Tao asked.

  “I thought of that and ran a few different combinations just to see what might pop up. I got a few groups of two or three that fit the profile, except they belong to different countries. I kind of have my doubts that China and Taiwan are in cahoots to zap our spy satellites.”

  “An international conspiracy of this nature does seem rather unlikely,” Barnett agreed.

  “Exactly, but I checked the background on these satellites just for kicks, and all of ’em look legit. A couple even went up on American-built rockets.”

  “Maybe we’re looking at too broad a time frame,” Kilkenny suggested.

  “That’s why I like you,” Grin said. “Great minds think alike.”

  Tao rolled her eyes. “Such humility.”

  “And handsome, too,” Grin added. “I reran my analysis, but in discrete increments of time, starting from Liberty and stepping back to each previous satellite failure.”

  Grin paused, a broad, self-satisfied smile twinkling inside his goatee.

  “He’s got that ain’t I brilliant look on his face again,” Kilkenny said.

  “You found it?” Tao asked.

  “No. A few steps back from Liberty and the list of possibilities again drops to zero. What I found is the time period that our killer sat has been operating, and it’s all because of your astute suggestion, Roxanne, that someone with a new weapon would do a little target practice before using it for real.”

  “Care to explain that?” Barnett asked, “Preferably in English.”

  “Looking at all these dead satellites over time, I realized that the number that die each year has been increasing.”

  “Yeah,” Kilkenny said, “but the number of satellites in orbit has gone up, too.”

  “But not as fast,” Grin countered. “I’ve got enough historical data, thanks to you two, to statistically model the birth and death rate of our orbiting population of satellites. Up until a few years ago, both rates were fairly steady, just as you’d expect. Then the rate of satellite death spiked, and it has been up ever since.”

  “And if you exclude the government satellites,” Kilkenny hypothesized, “the rate drops back to normal?”

  “That’s the thing. Oculus is the first noncommercial satellite to go down in a couple years. And nearly all the others died, as expected, of old age. The spike in the death rate is totally a result of commercial satellite failures.”

  Kilkenny slumped back in the chair, arms crossed tightly over his chest, puzzled by the results of Grin’s analysis.

  “So what you’re saying,” Barnett summarized, “is
that whoever is behind all this is using commercial satellites as skeet, to warm up for downing our satellite. Is that essentially it?”

  “No,” Grin replied. “What the data suggest is that our initial premise is totally wrong. When I was first briefed on this, I was told only a handful of people knew Liberty was carrying a spy satellite, and the assumption was that security for that satellite had been compromised. What if that security had instead held?”

  “Then whoever did this would had to have believed that Oculus was a commercial satellite,” Tao replied.

  “Which fits very nicely into the rest of my data.”

  “Commercial satellites,” Kilkenny mused. “What is this, some kind of insurance scam?”

  “If it is, it’s the loopiest one I’ve ever seen,” Grin replied.

  “Commercial satellites are a very big business,” Barnett offered. “There’s well over $100 billion in hardware circling the globe at this moment and, as Grin pointed out, that number is on the rise. The world has become quite dependent on this technology.”

  Kilkenny thought about his pager, the GPS in his SUV, the Internet, even this three-way conversation—all of it reliant on satellites. “Can you pinpoint a start date on these attacks?”

  “Based on the data I have, it looks like Mir was the first,” Grin replied. “I think that one was Roxanne’s target practice.”

  “An intriguing piece of analysis,” Barnett said.

  “Yes,” Tao agreed, “but how do we proceed? We still don’t know where the weapon is.”

  “We haven’t found it yet because we aren’t looking in the right place,” Kilkenny said. “Grin, I’ve got a change in tactics for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Take a look at all the launches preceding the attack on Mir.”

  “How far back?”

  “As far as the data you have, but I’d focus on the two years previous. Cross-ref the launches against the payloads—I want to know what’s still up there.”

  “But we already know what’s up there, and there were no winners in it.”

  “Which is exactly why I want you to look at the launches, too. We all know there’s a weapon up there, but for some reason we can’t see it. That means somebody has found a way to hide a satellite. But unless I’m mistaken, no one has come up with a way to hide a launch.”

  Barnett nodded. “We have satellites that do nothing but launch detection. If it’s big enough to reach orbit, we know about it.”

  “Somewhere in those launches is a payload that’s not on the books anymore. I’m betting that’s where we’ll find out who’s behind all this.”

  “I’ll arrange to get you that launch data,” Barnett said as he jotted some notes on a legal pad. Then he looked at Kilkenny and Tao. “When do you two think you’ll be heading back?”

  “We’re not sure. Nolan and I have another stop to make,” Tao replied, “this one to collect some hard evidence.”

  “What hard evidence?” Barnett asked.

  “Mir,” Kilkenny replied.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Deep inside the compound off Druzhby Ulitsa, Peng sat in a room almost identical to the one in the Washington embassy where he’d received his orders to shadow Kilkenny and Tao. He was alone, sipping a cup of tea in front of a dark flat-screen display after what had been a long day of unexpected developments. He thought about the report he’d submitted and wondered about the reaction of his superiors. Peng expected nothing short of a reprimand for his role in the shootout.

  “Secure connection with Xiyuan established,” a voice announced through the speaker on the table.

  The screen instantly glowed with the life-sized image of Directorate Chief Huang Zhanfu.

  “Chief Huang,” Peng said with a polite nod.

  “Peng, I have been going over your report,” Huang began.

  And in light of your actions, Peng mentally finished the sentence, your next assignment will consist of ten years’ hard labor at a work camp in the western provinces.

  “What do you know about the man who was killed, this Zadkine?” Huang asked.

  “Oh,” Peng blurted, focusing his thoughts. “Just what I’ve read in the files here at the embassy. He was a senior engineer with the Russian space program, currently retired.”

  “He was sacked. Zadkine was in charge of bringing the Russian Mir space station back to Earth. Something happened and Mir fell way off target.”

  “And Zadkine was found responsible?”

  Huang nodded. “Unofficially, no definitive cause was found, though the possibility of an impact was seriously considered. So, now we have three spacecraft, from three nations, all possible victims of an impact in orbit. Most curious, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes. Has the man I first spotted in London been identified?”

  “A search of all known foreign intelligence personnel has failed to uncover a match. The technical staff is widening their search to include military and commercial security services and passport controls.”

  “And my orders?” Peng asked.

  “You are to continue your surveillance, follow this wherever it leads.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA

  Owen Moug was driving down Ocean Boulevard in a red Hummer H3, the breeze ruffling his dark-brown hair, when Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” chimed out of his cell phone. It took a second longer for the call to connect—when it did, the red LED light glowed, indicating the call was secure.

  “Yeah,” he answered.

  “It’s Unger.”

  “Did you terminate that line of inquiry?”

  “No, too many complications.”

  “What am I paying you for?“

  “Fuck you!” Unger growled. “I got shot trying to do this job. Do you know what a Moscow doctor who doesn’t ask questions costs? Those morons our mutual friend loaned us fucked the whole thing. I’m lucky not to be dead or in jail right now.”

  “Calm down, Ernst. We both understand the fog of war. What do you have to report?”

  “Zadkine is dead, along with two of the men I brought with me. I don’t know what he told them, but any data he had in his home has been destroyed. Kilkenny and Tao spent the rest of their stay safely behind the walls of the U.S. Embassy. A short while ago, they were escorted to Sheremetyevo and put aboard a plane.”

  “Back to the U.S.?”

  “No, their end destination is Chile. You still want me to keep an eye on them?”

  “Yeah. Send me their itinerary as well, so I can cover any layovers.”

  “Understood.”

  Moug ended the call, his mind mulling over Unger’s report. As he continued down the highway, the former Air Force officer tried to extrapolate the line of the government’s investigation.

  Thirty minutes later, he pulled through the main gate of Skye Aerospace’s Long Beach complex. Most of the buildings dated to the 1930s, when the Skye Tool Corporation launched a marine division. Decried by the critics of the day as starkly modern with their long low silhouettes of glass accented with piers of masonry and sculpted concrete, the historic buildings were now viewed as prime examples of modern industrial architecture.

  The Long Beach facility fell into neglect during the seventies and eighties, when the marine division exited the shipbuilding business, but was revived in the nineties and now served as the home port for Skye Aerospace’s oceanic launch system, Aequatus.

  “You are expected, sir,” Skye’s executive assistant said as Moug arrived at the CEO’s suite. “Go right in.”

  “Good evening, Owen,” Skye said, looking up from a financial report as he entered.

  Moug nodded respectfully. “C. J.”

  “You look like a man who could use a drink.”

  “I’m fine. There was a problem in Moscow.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “The messy kind, but nothing that can be tied back to us. The two government investigators are unfortunately still aliv
e.”

  “Did they speak with Zadkine?”

  Moug nodded. “Briefly. He’s dead along with a pair of hired Russians.”

  “The mess, I presume.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are Kilkenny and Tao now?”

  “In transit. They’re traveling to Chile, though I don’t know why.”

  “Hmmm,” Skye mused, then it hit her. “They’re going after Mir.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. Whatever’s left of that station is resting on the bottom of the Pacific.”

  “Only because no one has had a good enough reason to go look for it. Now, it appears I’ve given them one.”

  “Don’t second guess yourself, C. J.”

  Skye glared back at him. “The final decision to fire on the shuttle was mine.”

  “I agree that taking down Liberty was a shitty thing to do, but we had no choice,” Moug hammered the last words like a drumbeat. “They were going after that ZetaComm satellite. If enough of it was left to make it worth retrieving, then the odds are pretty strong they would’ve discovered what really happened to it.”

  “I know why it had to be done,” Skye snapped back, “and rehashing it’ll just give me a headache. The blood of those astronauts is on my hands.”

  “All I’m saying is we did the smart thing.”

  “Not if they’re looking for Mir.”

  “Even if they are, you’re assuming there’s enough of it left to be found, and that what is left can tell them something.”

  “What if that crucial piece of evidence does exist and they do find it?”

  “Are you asking for my advice?”

  “That is what I pay you for.”

  “We don’t know that they’re looking for Mir. If they are, then steps should be taken to make sure they don’t find it.”

  “Another tragic accident?”

  “If that’s what it takes to protect this company, yes.”

  Skye turned from Moug and stared out her window at the empty pier. A few days earlier, Argo and Aequatus had departed, bound for the equator. In Argo’s hold was the next step in her company’s future.