by Baker, Adam
Amanda sagged with exhaustion.
‘It’s all right, baby,’ murmured Lucy. ‘We made it. We made it home.’
TOP SECRET SPECIAL HANDLING NO FORM
Central Intelligence Agency
Directorate of Operations, Near East Division
Doc ID: 58h
Page 01/1
10/25/05
Partial transcript of hostage video released by an unknown Sadrist/Shia insurgent group thought to be linked to the Mahdi Army. Digital footage is poor quality, but appears to show Field Officer Robert Koell. Koell is wearing a red boiler suit. He is clean shaven. He has a dirt mark or bruise on his right temple. He sits in front of a white sheet backdrop and reads a prepared statement to camera. He speaks in a monotone. He appears disoriented, possibly sedated.
‘. . . The New Crusades have exposed the ugly face of the infidel West and its apostate agents in our Islamic region. This pact is led by the empire of evil and criminality, America. Their criminality has manifested itself in atrocities committed against our Islamic peoples in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine . . .
‘. . . We swear by Allah the Magnificent, who raised the sky without pillars, that neither America nor those who live in America shall have peace until all infidel armies have left the land of Muhammad, peace and prayers of Allah be upon him . . .’
BURN NOTICE IMMEDIATE ACTION
Central Intelligence Agency
Office of Director, Washington DC, 20506
Doc ID: 67bd
Page 01/1
12/19/05
MEMORANDUM TO: Special Adviser, Office of Director
SUBJECT: Spektr
Sir,
We have concluded the sterilisation of the Spektr station in Baghdad. All cryptographic coms equipment has been secured and all relevant documentation shipped red-bag to Andrews Airforce Base aboard our Suisse GeoTech Gulfstream.
Staff stationed at the staging base Sharjah have been ordered to stand down and relocate.
The body of Colonel Drew has been repatriated. The standard KIA notice has been issued to his family.
Officer Robert Koell remains officially MIA while we await identification of the headless body found by scavengers in a refrigerator at the garbage dump in Kasrah Waatash, a residential area northeast of Baghdad. However the West Point cadet ring recovered by our informant suggests the remains are indeed those of Robert Koell.
The Spektr project may be regarded as closed.
J.Lawrence
Senior Regional Coord.
Office of Director, Qatar Station
PRESENT DAY
Eyewitnesses report fireball in night sky
—Spokane Daily Record
A fireball lit up the sky last night, prompting panic calls to emergency services across the county.
Eyewitnesses described a blinding white light passing above the clouds, accompanied by a high whistling sound.
The dash camera of a police car involved in a traffic stop near Airway Heights caught blurred images of a flickering white light that, for a few moments, lit the sky bright as day.
Trentwood Police Dept, Spokane, released the recording of a call from gas station attendant Dwayne Mothersbaugh, who took a series of pictures of a white fireball passing behind trees.
DM: Some kind of meteor. It’s burning. It’s moving fast. And there’s a whistling sound, like a plane in a steep dive. Can you hear it? If I hold up my phone, can you hear the noise? It’s high. Hard to judge, but I think it’s high altitude. A fireball moving unbelievably fast. Seems to be coming down quick. It’s big, whatever it is. Big like a passenger jet. It’s passed behind trees.
DISPATCHER: Sir, am I to understand a civilian airliner has crashed into the woods?
DM: No. I mean I don’t know. It didn’t look like a plane. It was big. The object was big. I couldn’t make out detail. It was like a comet, a big ball of fire.
DISPATCHER: Has there been an explosion? Can you see flames?
DM: I heard a bang. Could be a sonic boom. It came down north, over towards Green Bluff. I can’t see flames.
Police are reluctant to discuss the matter further, but we understand an aerial survey of woodland near Green Bluff conducted by helicopter at first light located what appeared to be a large impact crater and small brushfires.
A police spokesperson refused to discuss rumours the impact site contained an item of scorched space debris. However, unconfirmed eyewitness accounts describe a large cylinder, possibly a fuel tank, at the bottom of the crater. Press speculate the wreckage might by the third-stage booster of a military rocket or the habitation module of a Soyuz spacecraft.
We understand an exclusion zone has been declared around the site.
‘Federal authorities have advised local law enforcement not to approach the impact site at this time,’ said a PD spokesperson. ‘A specialist military recovery team has been dispatched and will be on site within twenty-four hours.’
Laure Pernette, lead scientist at the Orbital Debris Programme Office attached to the Johnson Space Centre, confirmed that NASA has, for several weeks, been tracking a large debris field caught in a decaying orbit.
‘Mass and alignment suggest the wreckage of an orbital installation akin to Mir or Skylab. This loose aggregation of debris is beginning to re-enter the atmosphere. We are currently liaising with our counterparts in the Russian Space Agency to see if this object is a relic of their Soyuz programme.’
Items of space detritus, such as rocket boosters and redundant satellites, frequently re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. These objects usually reach velocities twenty times the speed of sound and burn up during re-entry. Those objects that survive the ablation of uncontrolled descent usually fall into the ocean or land in remote, unpopulated areas.
The Johnson Space Centre currently tracks over twelve thousand substantial astral objects using radar arrays in Goldstone, California and Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
‘We estimate several more large items from this debris field may re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere in the coming days and weeks,’ said Pernette. ‘Data supplied by NORAD suggests a series of re-entries over North America and the Atlantic. We understand wreckage may also be scattered over Northern Europe and the Arctic Circle.
‘The Federal Aviation Authority has issued a bulletin to US pilots warning a potential debris hazard may exist for the next couple of weeks. Our international partners have also been informed and are taking appropriate steps.
‘I understand some news agencies are attempting to link the impact on Sunday night with a series of emergency admissions to the trauma department of Providence Medical Centre. We do not believe these two situations are in any way connected.
‘We certainly advise the public not to approach anything they believe may be an item of space wreckage. Some older communications satellites were powered by plutonium power cells. Booster rockets that have fallen to earth may still contain carcinogenic traces of hydrazine propellant. However, we understand the current CDC level-four quarantine at Providence relates to a viral pandemic alert described as a ‘contagious haemorrhagic pathogen’, and is therefore very unlikely to be associated with the wreckage that fell in remote woodland near Green Bluff.
‘There will be further re-entries in the coming weeks. We look forward to a spectacular light show.
There is no reason to be alarmed.’
Acknowledgements
Illustrations by Noel Baker.
I would like to thank Charles Walker at United Agents and Oliver Johnson at Hodder.
Five years have passed. Five years in which the plague has spread across the world leaving only tiny enclaves of survivors . . .
OUTPOST
They took the job to escape the world.
They didn’t expect the world to end.
Kasker Rampart: a derelict refinery platform moored in the Arctic Ocean. A skeleton crew of fifteen fight boredom and despair as they wait for a relief ship to take them home.
But the world bey
ond their frozen wasteland has gone to hell. Cities lie ravaged by a global pandemic. One by one TV channels die, replaced by silent wavebands.
The Rampart crew are marooned. They must survive the long Arctic winter, then make their way home alone. They battle starvation and hypothermia, unaware that the deadly contagion that has devastated the world is heading their way . . .