Calleri didn’t answer. He just stared at Boal.
Boal looked over the technician’s shoulder to the war bird that sat parked on the spotless concrete floor. He couldn’t help but be amazed at the scope of the world’s largest and fastest spy plane. Boal walked past Calleri, ignoring his stare, and approached the aircraft to get a closer look. At ground level and up close, the SR-73 looked far larger and more ominous than from the observation railing. The tires of the aircraft alone were waist high, with a pair of monster Pratt & Whitney turbines more than four feet in diameter on either side of fuselage, each producing an astounding 60,000lb of static thrust. The nose and fuselage of the craft had the same “chine” design of its predecessor, razor sharp edges that gave the aircraft the extra lift necessary at high altitude and high speed. The color of the nose and front half of the fuselage was ash grey, in contrast to the rest of the black fuselage, the discoloration the result of test speeds in excess of Mach 6, or four thousand five hundred and sixty-seven miles per hour. Boal ran his fingers down the length of the craft, looking toward the swept back wings, and eyeing the thick rubber hoses that were the fuel lines, attached like metal suctions cups to the surface mounts of the plane. Fuel consumption rates had been one of the more tricky problems for the aircraft. The previous version, the SR-71, had a tremendous appetite, requiring in flight fueling right after takeoff. Not so with the newly designed fuel-efficient engines of the SR-73. With a pair of small booster rockets that dropped off shortly after takeoff, the SR-73 had enough fuel range for four hours of flight on full afterburner—enough time to circle the globe.
Boal followed the lines of the aircraft to the banks of electronic test systems, a spider web of wires that led to waist high black boxes with view screens and blinking lights laid out in a semi-circle behind the aircraft.
“What do I tell the team when they get back?” Calleri asked.
Boal turned to Calleri. “That it’s a proprietary test run.”
“With live ordinance?”
“Tell them if they do not sign their non-disclosure agreements, they’re fired.”
“David; the flight plan takes us directly over Russian airspace. We’re talking about an international incident here.”
“Not if we don’t get caught. And we won’t. The SR-73 flies too high and too fast for radar. We’ll be home before the dust settles.”
Boal looked at Calleri. “Look, Michael, I understand how this looks. But this comes directly from the CEO of the company. He is privy to intelligence information that we are not, and the Department of Defense relies on him, as does Coalition Properties. We have to trust these relationships. Now this bird needs to be armed and ready to fly within the hour. Now, if that’s a problem and you, or anyone on your team want off—”
“No. It’s not a problem. I just wanted to put it out there. Because if something goes wrong—”
“Nothing will go wrong. Your team is way too good for that.”
“We’ll see. Either way, we’ll be ready by sundown,” Calleri said, before he turned away from Boal and walked toward the aircraft.
Boal was not entirely unsympathetic to Calleri’s concerns. If Coalition Properties CEO James Howe went through with what they were all sworn under penalty of imprisonment to keep secret, a blatant attack on foreign soil, it could cause a major international incident. This wasn’t a drone strike on a bunch of radicalized farmers in the outskirts of the Pakistani mountains. This was a strike on Trans Dniester, which, despite the perception of an independent outlaw state, was still considered a Russian territory. If something went wrong, if the untested aircraft failed in its mission, it would be beyond an international incident. It would be an open act of war.
Boal took a moment to straighten his tie, before leaving the aircraft hangar floor.
In the end, Boal thought, if something goes wrong, it won’t fall on me. If ever questioned, he would toe the corporate line that this was just a test run, and that he was just following orders.
“You’re going to have to give me more time,” Parks said into his cell phone. He had the call on speaker phone as he stood on the balcony of his private suite, in his private castle, watching the sunrise as the first few rays of daylight crept up over the horizon.
“I don’t have to give you anything,” Howe replied, his tone a mixture of anger and desperation. “I want Alex Luthecker dead, and I want you to turn over your business, which includes all of your bank accounts, transaction records, inventory, all of it, in the next sixty minutes. In exchange I will get you your cash, properly washed, along with a seat on the board of directors of Coalition Properties and stock options. That’s the deal. And it’s a very good one for you. The alternative is that I wipe you and everyone you know off the map.”
“And your board of directors will go for this? Are you sure I won’t be labeled as some sort of terrorist?”
“The corporate sector decides who the terrorists are, and we are the largest corporation in the world. If you’re smart, you’ll give me what I want, and in turn for that you’ll stay off the terror list and profit handsomely. As far as the Coalition board, once I have you in the fold, they’ll be too afraid to oppose anything I say. Together we’ll be the most dominant market force in the history of the world. Now I’ve given you an encrypted website for you to upload everything. If I don’t have your business operations in their entirety within the hour, you will be labeled a terrorist, and I will wipe you off the face of the earth. There will be nowhere you can run to, Lucas. There is nowhere you can hide. Not from me. Am I being clear enough for you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I expect you to turn over your assets within the hour.”
Parks carefully pocketed his phone and turned back toward his suite.
“See what we’re up against?” Parks said to Alex Luthecker, who stood inside Parks’ suite, just outside the balcony.
“Us?”
“You heard him. He wants you dead.”
Luthecker looked around Parks’ castle suite. Beyond the scope and opulence, he took note of the small silver box that sat on the edge of the fireplace mantle. Tarnished from time, it was an inexpensive toy for a young child—a music box. Luthecker turned to Parks.
“You still could choose to cooperate. Kill me and become partners with Coalition Properties.”
“Can I trust him?”
Luthecker looked at Parks.
“If I do a deal with James Howe and Coalition Properties, does he honor it? Or does he just kill me anyway, once he has all my assets? Can you see into my future?”
“You’ve already made your choice.”
Parks smiled.“You’re right. I have. I don’t need your perceptive abilities to know exactly what kind of man James Howe is. But can you tell me how it all ends?”
“No.”
“Why not? I thought that’s what you were good at. Knowing exactly what’s going to happen to people before it happens to them. And then you decide whether or not you want to change it.”
Luthecker didn’t answer.
“I think I know why you can’t tell me how it all ends for me. And that’s because it involves you, isn’t it? I’ve intertwined our fates, and that fuzzies up the picture for you, doesn’t it? You being in the picture, that is. It presents that pesky little quantum entanglement problem. Schrodinger’s cat, more or less. Am I dead or alive? The second you step into it, you change it. Or is it something else? Maybe you have already set things in motion, and you and I are simply playing chess.”
Parks stepped from the balcony and into his suite. Then he approached the bar.
“Are you sure I can’t offer you something to drink?” Parks asked, as he poured himself two fingers of vodka on ice.
“I’m not going to give Howe what he wants,” Parks continued. “As you pointed out, I’ve already made my choice. He’ll kill me either way. Something you also probably know. What I am going to do, what I have decided to do, is tie myself to your fate. And I’m going to keep you close and be
t on you to stop him.” Parks turned to Luthecker, drink in hand. “Does that surprise you? Are you capable of being surprised? Is that something that goes away for someone with your condition? Do the punch lines in jokes not work on you?”
“I don’t know that I can save you. I don’t know that I can save either one of us.”
“You don’t? You’ve saved people before, haven’t you, from certain death? And don’t forget; you’ve killed people, too.”
“I’ve never killed anyone.”
“David Two-Good is dead because of the carefully caged monsters that you set free to wreak havoc in his head. Richard Brown is dead for the same reason. And so is David Lloyd. They’re all dead because of you. And me? In comparison? Yes, I’ve killed, but at least I’ve had the moral conviction to look my enemy in the eye before I ended them. And I’ve done a lot of good in this world; more than you, I’d say. I’ve built more hospitals, saved more kids from childhood diseases in small poor, shit-hole communities than I can count. So let me ask you, does the sum of a man’s actions, mine or yours, make them good or bad? What’s the correct ratio to tip the scales to make one a worthy human being in this world? How about yourself? You’ve killed, and you’ve saved, albeit on a much smaller scale than I. But that will change, won’t it? The scale of your impact. Tell me, Alex Luthecker, are you really that much different from me? Other than the fact that you’re afraid to accept the reality of yourself?”
Luthecker took a step back.
“You think I don’t do my homework? You think I don’t know who you are? Everyone else thinks this all started with the torturer you destroyed. But that’s incidental. This is all about when you decided to free the girl. ”
“I’m not like you.”
“Oh, but you will be.” Parks swallowed his vodka in one gulp.“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not mad at you, Alex; I’m very impressed with you. The one thing that you’re missing, I can teach you.”
“And what is that?”
“That anything worth having has blood on it. It’s a zero sum game, the natural order of things. You can’t escape it. Just look at history.” Parks stepped close to Luthecker, and put his hand on his shoulder, like a father would to his son.“You can’t accomplish the things you want to in this world without moving people out of the way. It’s just that simple. You’ve discovered this already, you’ve done this already, but you won’t admit the truth to yourself. It’s the source of torment in your head. And as soon as you accept it, and stop hating yourself for it, there’ll be nothing, or no one, that can stop you. Let me help you be that person.”
Luthecker moved Parks’ hand off his shoulder.“Whatever you think it is that you believe I can do, whatever it is that you think I am, you’re mistaken.”
“Now who’s lying?”
“I can’t change your fate. That path was set in motion long ago.”
“I think you can. Isn’t that exactly what you do? Unlike myself, you choose to hide from your true nature. You do this because you’re afraid, and I think that what you’re afraid of is all the things that you can do to people. You have no idea how far your influence can extend. People are like toys to you. You’re afraid to know just how far you can push them. I think you’re afraid that you won’t be able to handle it. That you’ll become “intoxicated” by the power.”Parks slammed his glass tumbler on the bar and poured himself another shot of vodka.“But I have faith in you. Tremendous faith. I think that somehow, the universe, or God, or whatever, is not going to let you die. You’re too important to the balance of this world. I see that now. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink?”Parks held out a glass.
Luthecker ignored it.
“Take the deal I offered you, Alex Luthecker. You and I could put an end to Coalition Properties. Rather easily, I think. And we could put a stop to any other entity that’s like them. Just think of what we could accomplish together. I’ll let you make the world a better place; all the while I take care of the dirty little remainder that’s always necessary to keep the balance. You wouldn’t even have to watch.”
“And you make an enormous amount of money.”
“That’s inherent by design. Money is power. One cannot enforce an ideal without power.”
“The first pattern I see in someone’s fate is their pattern of self-deception. You’re no different than Howe.”Alex turned away from Parks and stepped onto the balcony.
“I am different than Howe. Because unlike him, I don’t need the lie. And I’m not lying right now; to myself or you. I stand by my offer. Take a good look, Alex. It could all be yours, all of it. The whole fucking world. I can give you the influence and infrastructure you need. I can give you the vertical integration that Jesus Christ never had.” Parks lowered his head and gave the slightest of grins. “You just need to get past the inevitable bloodshed that’s required. All you need to do is let me handle that.”
Luthecker stared over the balcony for several seconds before he turned and faced Parks. “I want to thank you for something.”
“Really? And what would that be for?”
“Clarifying things.”
“What things?”
“What it is that I run from. You’re right about a lot of things that I fear; about myself; about the impact of my influence. But now I understand why I’m here. Why, men like yourself, Richard Brown, and James Howe all inevitably gravitate toward me.”
“And why do we gravitate toward you?”
“Absolution. It’s as you say; the universe seeks balance. The momentum demands it.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Karma. Yours. Mine. The long game of the universe is not indifference; it’s reconciliation. And despite my fears of how I may impact people, I can no longer run from my purpose.”
“And what purpose is that?”
“To restore balance.”
“And how do you suppose you’re going to do that?”
“By stopping men like you.”
Parks chuckled at Luthecker’s words, swirling the ice in his drink.“Yes, well; good luck with that. In the mean time, I need you to stop James Howe before he kills us both.”
“This is unbelievable,” Nikki said when she and the others finished listening to the recorded conversations between Lucas Parks and James Howe. PHOEBE had identified the local cell phone carrier used by Parks to be owned by AT&T, and it had taken the software wraith all of forty-three seconds to break the encryption codes of the carrier’s database. They had all just listened to every conversation James Howe and Lucas Parks had had in the last forty-eight hours. There had been few words, but their meaning was perfectly clear.
“Howe threatened sixty minutes before he kills them both. That was thirty minutes ago. How is he going to do it?” Yaw asked.
“If he’s using Coalition resources, it’s going to be big,” Nikki replied. “And if it’s big, I can find it.”
Nikki turned around and looked at the others.
“You need to go and get Alex, now.”
“You realize this is what Parks wants.” Chris said.
They all looked at Chris.
“We’re stopping Howe for him.”
“We ain’t gotta choice,” Yaw said.
“One of us should stay with Nikki,” Chris said.
“I will,” Winn volunteered.
“No,” Nikki protested. “Alex is going to need all the help he can get. I’ll be fine. Just leave me a pair of sticks.”
“I’m going to stay.”
“But—“
“It has to be this way, Nikki.”
They all looked at Winn. His face indicated that his answer was final.
Yaw put his hand on Nikki’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry, we got this,” Yaw said. “Just get us our out; Chris and I, we’ll bring our boy back. I promise.”
34
Launch
Howe stood at the back of the SR-73 launch room, watching the technicians who remotely operated the scramjet as they worked the co
ntrol systems with a well-rehearsed discipline. To Howe, the workstations were all just a series of black boxes and blinking lights, connected to a wall of monitors at the head of the room. It reminded him of grainy footage he had seen as boy, men with slicked back hair, horn-rimmed glasses and all wearing ties and short sleeved shirts, working the more crude-looking technology of the Apollo missions that had sent man to the moon.
The lighting in the smaller and far-more-sophisticated control room had been dimmed in order to enhance the details on the monitors, which only served to enhance the covert atmosphere of the moment. The current focus of attention was the center monitor, which showed the SR-73 idling on a private airstrip located in the Arizona desert miles away from the operations center. It was after dark where the aircraft waited, and the runway was lined with halogen floodlights, fully illuminating the SR-73 Black Bird as it sat with fuel trucks in the background standing by. Howe’s eyes moved from the runway monitor to the targeting camera monitor of the aircraft itself as the technicians ran the lenses through their test cycle. He watched as the technicians monitored every single detail of the scramjet’s operations. Once airborne, there would be thousands of calculations done every second, all necessary to keep the aircraft at optimum performance levels at all times.
Howe’s eyes settled on the empty seat at the center of the room, a chair larger than the rest that was bolted to the floor. In front of the seat was a joystick, similar to what would be found in the cockpit of a fighter jet. It controlled the manual override of the SR-73 and would only be used to take over flight operations of the aircraft if the computer systems failed.
Howe turned as Dr. Boal approached him.
“The bird is fully operational and ready for flight.”
Howe checked his cell phone. There had been no response from Parks, and no data had been uploaded to the encrypted website. There were only four minutes left until his imposed deadline passed.
Howe began to pace at the back of the room. For the first time, he was nervous.
Rise: Luthecker, #2 Page 28