Holdout: A Novel

by Jeffrey Kluger

  “No, no,” she demanded. “I’ll walk.” One of the doctors began to hush her, actually raising a finger to his lips. She snapped at him, “I will walk!”

  They put her down, and she stood up unsteadily, allowing them at least to support her as she began walking to the helicopter. The men from the FSB stepped forward.

  “The lieutenant commander is to be taken into custody,” one of them said. He spoke first in Russian and then in English. The English was for Beckwith’s benefit, but they still referred to her in the third person.

  “The lieutenant commander needs to be taken to the hospital,” the lead doctor said.

  The FSB man nodded. “Yes. But in government custody.”

  Beckwith addressed them both. “Just take me to the hospital and get me to a phone,” she said. She began to try to translate that into Russian, but they waved her off.

  “Da, da,” one of the doctors said. “Understand.”

  More rotor noise now roared over the field, and two of the remaining three choppers, the ones that had been sent east, landed with the final one in close pursuit. The FSB man’s walkie-talkie crackled to life and he answered it. He muttered for a moment, nodded once, and then turned to Beckwith and the others.

  “One minute,” he said. “We wait.”

  The doors of the new helicopters opened and more government officers hopped out; these appeared to be members of the Russian state police. Following them were Lance Copper and three other members of NASA’s Moscow delegation. Beckwith had little regard for Copper, but she felt an unexpected relief at seeing him. She waved her hand and called out.

  “Over here!” she said. Her voice was weak, the choppers were deafening, and her head exploded at the effort. Copper and the others, not hearing her, trotted over anyway.

  The NASA delegation, with the exception of Copper, gathered her in a collective embrace. The two women in the group—heedless of Beckwith’s very real infectiousness—kissed her cheek. Copper merely shook her hand, but Beckwith could read his face and he was relieved, happy, to see her.

  “It is very good to have you home, Walli,” he said.

  “It’s good to be here, Lance.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “How do I look?”

  He allowed himself a small laugh and then gestured to the doctors. “They’ll fix you up,” he said.

  “What happened in Washington?” Beckwith asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve had other things to contend with today, and I had no phone reception on that thing anyway.” He inclined his head toward the helicopter. “And you’ve got bigger matters to think about.” He looked toward the FSB men and the Russian police.

  They took a step closer to her and the medical team straightened up, forming as much of a protective buffer around her as they could.

  “I’m an American,” Beckwith said to the lead FSB man.

  “She’s an American,” Copper echoed.

  “Yes, but on Kazakh soil,” the Russian responded, “which in this case is the same as Russian soil.”

  “Our government will allow this?” Beckwith asked Copper.

  “Our government doesn’t have a choice,” he said. “Our authorities are in touch with their authorities, but the Russians won’t budge on the arrest.”

  At that moment Copper’s phone rang. He jumped slightly and looked at it in surprise. After a few minutes of sniffing around on the steppe, the phone had finally found a signal.

  Copper answered it. Beckwith could hear a faint voice on the other end speaking loudly, quickly. “She’s . . .” Copper began to say, but was cut off by the voice. “I can’t . . .” he resumed, but was cut off again. Finally he gave up and extended the phone toward her. “It’s for you,” he said. “From Houston.”

  She took the phone. “Beckwith,” she said.

  “Walli Bee!” shouted the voice of Lee Jasper, so loudly that even at the remove of 6,900 miles from Texas to Kazakhstan she had to hold the phone slightly away from her ear. “You did it!”

  “Did what?” she asked.

  “The vote,” he screamed. “The Senate! The opposition folded like a bad tent!”

  Beckwith clapped her hand over her mouth, and tears sprang to her eyes. “Tell me, Jasper, tell me, tell me, tell me,” she said, her breath catching.

  “Seventy-one to twenty-nine!” he shouted. “Seventy-one to twenty-nine! Not even close!”

  “More . . .” was all Beckwith could get out, crying and laughing at once. “Tell me more . . .”

  “Two more of those boys who were getting leaned on by their voters cracked. Then your friend from Arizona . . .”

  “Oro . . . ?”

  “Oro, yeah. Oro voted yes, and the wheels just came off the opponents.”

  Beckwith’s knees gave out under her, the doctors caught her, and one of them tried to take the phone. She pulled it back but then dropped it, as she felt herself slipping into a near-unconsciousness that was equal parts sickness and painkiller and joy and fatigue.

  Had she been able to take it all in, Jasper would have told her more—about the global coverage of her reentry and the calls and emails that began pouring into the senators’ phones and mailboxes opposing the Consolidation, supporting Beckwith and demanding that what could be the final wish of an American hero be honored, especially after the release of Sonia’s video revealed the truth. Once Oro flipped, the stampede began, with most of the Senate scrambling to get on the right side of the day’s events—and the history that would be made. Word was that within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, forces under the direction of the United States and the banner of the Organization of American States would be mobilizing to stop the burnings.

  Now, though, Beckwith could process none of that. She was helped back to her feet as a doctor took hold of one arm and an FSB man took the other, and she didn’t much care who was helping her as long as they both stayed where they were. The little scrum approached one of the helicopters. and through the open door, Beckwith could see it had been equipped with a hospital cot and more medical supplies and she gave the cot a longing look.

  One last time, however, the noise of engines washed over the field and the final helicopter landed. Even before it touched the ground, its side door slid open and two men jumped out and trotted toward her. Beckwith could not remotely make out their faces through her doubled vision and at such a distance. But she recognized their gaits—both of them—which is what happens when you train with people for more than two years and fly with them for nearly two months and get to know every little thing there is to know about them.

  “Vasily!” she called as best she could. “Yuli!”

  It was indeed Zhirov and Lebedev, who had bolted straight from Mission Control for a Roscosmos flight to Zhezkazgan and then caught the last chopper out to the steppe. They reached her and half collided with her, collecting her into a bear hug and leaving the doctors and the FSB man no choice but to back away. Zhirov, to Beckwith’s amazement, had tears in his eyes, which he wiped away roughly on his sleeve. Then he gathered her back in. At last, the FSB man—actually two FSB men now—approached them, with the police officers close by.

  “It is time, Colonel,” one of the men said to Zhirov.

  “Time for what?” he asked.

  “The lieutenant commander is being taken into custody.”

  “She is under my command and I forbid it,” Zhirov said.

  “She is on Kazakh soil. Her mission is over. Your command has ended.”

  Zhirov thought. “Then take me into custody too.”

  “No, Vasily,” Beckwith said.

  “And me as well,” Lebedev said.

  “No, Yuli,” Beckwith pleaded.

  “I conspired with her,” Lebedev said to the FSB officer.

  “And they both acted under my orders,” Zhirov said.


  “Colonel, that is not true,” the FSB man said, straining for reasonableness.

  “If you’re right, then Captain Lebedev and I are both lying to a government official during a police action,” Zhirov said. “For that too you must detain us.”

  “It was all my idea,” Beckwith said. “Do not believe them.” She turned to Zhirov. “Vasily, don’t be gallant.”

  Zhirov turned to the FSB man and shrugged. “American,” he said. “I would not trust her.” He then addressed the group at large. “This is my crew. We flew together, we worked together, and we will take any punishment together.”

  The FSB men, who were here to do a job, who wanted to get off the freezing steppe as much as they wanted anything else in the world, looked at each other and shrugged. They looked at Copper, who looked away. Then the doctors closed around Beckwith, and the FSB and police gathered around them all, and Beckwith, Zhirov, and Lebedev were loaded into the helicopter. The blades began to whir, the helicopter took off, and the three crew members who had been in space and who were so briefly back on the ground together were in flight once again.

  EPILOGUE

  The peacekeeping, lifesaving mission known officially as the Military Pacification of Contested Regions in and Around the Amazon Basin in Cooperation with Partner Nations, and unofficially simply as the Intervention, got underway with a speed, efficiency, and pitiless purpose that belied its meandering formal name. The Department of Defense had always pushed back at the canard that it was forever spoiling for war—which it wasn’t. But it didn’t mind a bit if people believed it was always ready for war—which it was—because being ready for a war is the only way to win a war.

  No sooner had Walli Beckwith made her stand and the September 18 Coalition formed than the Pentagon, anticipating the action that might be coming, began back-channel talks with thirty-three of the other thirty-four members of the Organization of American States, excluding Brazil. Every single one of the nations—including tiny Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Guyana—agreed to be part of an intervention, with the ones capable of providing soldiers and weapons of war doing so and the rest offering food, doctors, engineers, and, in one case, fabric and seamstresses to replace and repair uniforms and tents.

  Within twenty-four hours of the congressional votes, the president of the United States appeared on TV and announced that he was approving action that would “save lives, protect the environment, and bring peace to a troubled part of our hemisphere.” The USS Eisenhower, which had been last seen lingering in Pensacola, wheeled into position near the coast of Brazil for tactical air strikes, just as many had predicted it would.

  The Fort Bragg and Fort Campbell 82nd Airborne and Screaming Eagles swept into the fight they’d been rumored to be training for, joined by the Night Stalkers of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, making targeted strikes on Consolidation forces, pre-scouted by drone surveillance, often intercepting the attackers just as they were moving into position for an attack on a tribe or patch of jungle. Additional Marine and Navy paratroopers descended daily into the jungle to separate the hostiles from the tribes. In places they were too commingled, nonlethal weapons—Tasers, acoustic attack devices, stun grenades, and more—were used. Nevertheless, some innocents were killed. Their names would be taken, records would be kept, and the OAS would compensate their families and their tribes.

  Within twenty-one days—two weeks shorter than the celebrated 1991 Gulf War, which had long been seen as the modern-day model of a clean, complex, surgically perfect intervention—the Consolidation was crushed, its make-believe flag hauled down from poles, stripped off of uniforms, and painted over on helicopters. More than five thousand doctors and aid workers were immediately dispatched to the four relocation camps to begin the long and grueling job of treating the sick and wounded, burying the dead, accounting for the missing, reuniting families, and slowly—in a job that would easily take years—moving the survivors back to what was left of the lands that had been taken from them.

  Polls conducted of the Brazilian public showed that more than 82 percent of them favored impeaching the president—a popular groundswell that might have had more effect if the Brazilian constitution allowed for impeachment, which it didn’t. The country’s federal legal system did, however, allow indictments for serious crimes such as murder, and Bobo-deCorte was given a choice of serving out his term and promptly being charged once he was a private citizen again or stepping down immediately and being allowed to flee to Saudi Arabia, which offered him refuge. He chose resignation and flight. His Multi-Nacional Gigante was seized and nationalized and, after a popular contest to pick a new name, was relaunched as O Gigante do Povo—the People’s Giant.

  Unlike Bobo-deCorte, who ducked imprisonment, Walli Beckwith was headed for jail. She would be the first astronaut ever so disgraced, and it ought to have been something of a humbling experience, but the fact was, she rather enjoyed her time there.

  It helped that the jail—to the extent that it was one—was neither in Russia nor in Kazakhstan. Beckwith and her two crewmates had most decidedly been arrested—hustled straight from the Kazakh Steppe to a Kazakh airport and from there to Kubinka Air Base just outside of Moscow, where all three were placed in state custody. Beckwith was taken to a hospital wing, where military doctors finely skilled in bacteriology and neurology took her in hand, and military police—equally skilled at keeping prisoners confined and looking menacing while they were doing so—kept her under guard. Zhirov and Lebedev were held in similar confinement, without the doctors, in officers’ quarters on the base.

  The course that Beckwith’s treatment would follow was well established—antibiotics, steroids, hydration, spinal taps to check for infection levels, and brain scans to look for swelling or tissue damage. And she would be prescribed rest—a great deal of rest. The course of any prosecution for all three of the crew members was another matter.

  For all its myriad departments, the Kremlin never had much of a public relations shop, but that didn’t mean the people who ran the place were insensible to popular opinion—and there was no mistaking the Russian people’s opinion of the latest crew to return from the International Space Station. Lebedev was a wounded hero—the cosmic equivalent of every Russian soldier who had ever slogged through snow, fought while injured, and come home brave, muddy, and bloody. Mess with Lebedev and you mess with all that.

  Beckwith was nothing short of a cult figure. She was American—which made her exotic and, much more important, made the mere act of admiring her faintly subversive. It didn’t hurt either that she had bested an American president whom most Russians loathed. The fact that she had done so was also a bracing reminder to the Russian people and a sobering one to the Kremlin of what an aroused populace led by a charismatic figure could do. The longer she remained in Russia, the more her message of rebellion would be sent.

  And as for Zhirov—Zhirov was untouchable. Even before the recent drama, he was a national icon. After this mission, he was, if possible, even more adored. The icon was now also a cowboy—riding home to Earth with a wounded crewmate, commanding a spacecraft without even having to be in space, and choppering off the steppe at the end of it all with the glamorous American woman on his arm. Beckwith had not remotely been on Zhirov’s arm, and if she had been, it would only have been to keep from falling down. But what had actually happened and what it felt like had happened were two different things, and the Russians knew which version they preferred.

  Kremlin representatives thus visited Zhirov early in his confinement at Kubinka to see if a deal might be struck. They reminded him that should he be tried and convicted, he not only would be imprisoned but also, worse from Zhirov’s perspective, would never fly in space again. They then began with their lowest bid—dropping all charges against him and letting him walk free that very day.

  “And Yulian and Walli?” Zhirov asked.

  “We will consider making simi
lar allowances for Captain Lebedev,” came the answer.

  “And Walli?”

  “For now, Lieutenant Commander Beckwith must stay.”

  “Then so will I,” Zhirov said.

  Moscow might still have pressured Zhirov. The security forces were not above raising the specter of investigating loved ones and friends for corruption, influence peddling, or other vaguely defined crimes, but that would lead to a popular backlash of its own. Ultimately, the Kremlin dispensed with the entire matter with a brief statement:

  “Colonel Zhirov and Captain Lebedev performed heroically during their recent mission. After they have completed a short period of rest and debriefing at Kubinka Air Base, they will be resuming their work advancing the nation’s ambitions in space. Lieutenant Commander Belka Beckwith is continuing to receive medical attention and when she is strong enough to travel will be free to leave Russia.”

  “Free to leave,” of course, meant required to leave—but the open question was where she would go. The European Union could seek extradition for a range of offenses, but the twenty-seven nations that made up the alliance were also reluctant to tangle with Beckwith and her global popularity. A few hard-line members—Hungary, Italy, and Poland especially—very much wanted to prosecute. Others were either opposed or undecided. The EU thus settled on its own face-saving deal: They would not seek custody of Beckwith while they sent the question to be decided by the European Commission in Brussels. The commission was famous for needing years to settle matters as minor as import duties on livestock or permissible fat levels in cross-border cheeses, and absolutely no one expected any decision on the Beckwith matter for a long, long time.