“A futuristic concept, only the future got here a lot quicker than we thought,” Dick says, and what I’m hearing in my headset is getting more surreal by the second.
It comes as no surprise that Sierra Nevada Corporation would help NASA and the military develop some top secret new spacecraft or even more than one of them. But I never imagined I might be an important component beyond any ideas I might come up with.
ART lets me know without asking that we’re three minutes out from our destination, and collecting my coat from an empty seat, I’m reminded with a sinking feeling that I’m not in my usual tactical clothes. I look nerdy Howdy Doody, maybe a little plainclothes detective-ish, doing my best to follow Dick’s texted instructions to “dress civilian but look professional.”
I’m not sure I fit the bill in my black suit from a Banana Republic outlet store and my best ankle boots that I buffed in a hurry on my way out the door. Slowing down and going lower, we’re flying smack in the middle of the most restricted airspace in the country. I watch out my window as we slalom around the drab fortress of the Pentagon, and I think of Fort Monroe.
Arlington Cemetery’s perfect rows of white headstones bring to mind Chiclets candy-coated gum, the Lincoln Memorial stolid and proud. The Washington Monument seems to stand up straighter as we thunder over, and Dick has no worries about being late for good reason. Rush hour and gridlock traffic are of no concern if you follow roads from the air but don’t need to drive on them.
The White House is off our nose, a big American flag waving on the roof where snipers stand sentry like statues overseeing an ancient city.
“They expecting company?” I indicate the rooftop detail as we hover-taxi over the South Lawn’s fountain . . .
The tennis court tucked in trees on my left . . .
Big magnolias and a guard booth . . .
“The president of Uganda is meeting with ours,” Dick says. “Security is stepped up for a number of reasons,” including us, I infer as we close in on three metal plates that have been set down in the snow, one for each wheel of the landing gear.
The White House has no helipad, the landing zone precisely located. One wouldn’t want rotor wash to blow down the Rose Garden or damage trees planted with gold shovels by presidents and first ladies throughout time and from all around the world. The South Portico with its twin staircases and Greek columns is out my window, snow billowing in a whiteout as we set down as soft as a feather.
Engines are cut to flight idle, and we wait to shut down as Secret Service agents in earpieces and ballistic gear stand watch. Dick and I take off our harnesses, and after a quick cooldown, the engines are turned off, the main rotor braked to a halt, and we put on our coats. He hands me my backpack but says to leave everything else.
The helicopter is going to wait, and will drop us off back at the Langley hangar, he adds to my confusion. If I’m going home after this, then why did he have me pack for several days? But I’m not going to ask what might sound unseemly and too personal.
35
THE WEST WING is off to our left, and I would have thought someone might have shoveled a path.
The snow is deep in places, seeping into my boots. When we reach the pavement, my socks are wet, and soon enough my feet will start to itch. I hope I don’t start making squishy sounds next, and of all times to have a wardrobe failure.
“I don’t know why you couldn’t have mentioned this,” I finally speak my mind to Dick, walking with purpose past huge boxwoods, tall black lampposts, and I have no doubt there are cameras and microphones monitoring everything. “I’m not a kid anymore. I’m not someone you and Mom are supposed to keep secrets from,” and it sounds weird as I say it, as if he’s my father.
“You’re told what you need to know, and when it’s appropriate, Calli,” he says, end of story, and I don’t appreciate it.
But it’s probably not a good idea to squabble in front of the West Wing’s white awning with the presidential seal, the entrance guarded by Secret Service police in tactical gear, ready with assault rifles. Landing on the lawn, we didn’t go through the usual layers of checkpoints, and once inside we produce our creds to an agent in a dark suit sitting at a desk.
There’s no x-ray screening once you’ve gotten this far but our backpacks are gone through, and we’re checked with a handheld scanner. All the while this is going on, I’m nervously expecting my SIN to be detected. No matter what Dick claims about my invisibility cloak, I’m not convinced. But if I’m sending out questionable signals, there’s no sign of it based on the demeanor of everyone we encounter.
Beyond the security desk is a sitting area of blue carpet, blue upholstered furniture, and big oil paintings where the president of Uganda sits with his detail, all of them in suits. They don’t look at us, and we don’t look at them as Dick leads me to the sofa. I’m surprised what a bustling place this is, like a busy corporation in an elegant antique setting with a constant traffic of fast-walking people.
A lot of them are in uniform, the West Wing run by the White House Military Office, WHMO, pronounced whamo. Everyone is dressed a lot better than I am. So far, I’m the only woman not in a skirt, and I feel self-conscious in my simple suit, and shiny lace-up boots that look a little more combat-like than I thought when I first put them on this morning.
“We’re early, so if you need to freshen up, you’ve got exactly 6 minutes,” Dick says as I stare hard at the familiar painting hanging behind his head, recognizing Washington Crossing the Delaware, and it’s not a print.
Emanuel Leutze, 1851, I’m informed in my lenses. On loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I’m sure the White House can borrow anything it wants. I look around at the large gilt clock with a rampant eagle on top, the mahogany bookcase, other American-themed oil paintings of Yosemite Park and Old Faithful.
People come and go nonstop, some have scarves around their necks but no coats, and as I take mine off I wish I’d left it in the helicopter. I wish even more that my wool socks weren’t soaked, my feet beginning to itch as I predicted, and I ask Dick where the ladies’ room might be. Behind us off a short hallway, he points as I catch a flash of blood-red out of the corner of my eye.
I look up in time to see Neva Rong in a fitted red skirt suit and matching heels as high as stilts. She’s walking away from the security desk without a glance in our direction but I sense the monster sees us. If nothing else she had to hear our helicopter coming in, and she takes the same short hallway Dick just pointed out. Headed to the ladies’ room, no doubt, and I wonder what the hell-o she’s doing here!
“You might want to wait a minute,” Dick watches me carefully.
“You saw her, right?”
“She’s a regular. I’ve run into her before. Sometimes she’s cloyingly nice. Other times like now she pretends she doesn’t see me.”
“She’d better not be sitting in on our meeting,” as if I have any say about it.
And I don’t, none at all, let’s be honest. Barely an hour ago I didn’t even know I would be here.
“No, she’s definitely not,” Dick answers in no uncertain terms, and I get up from the couch. “You might want to wait,” he repeats.
Meanwhile the clock is ticking, and I can’t be late but need to deal with my itchy feet among other necessities. I have a right to the White House ladies’ room just as much as Neva does. And I head there, following the short passageway, the walls arranged with poster-size photographs of the First Couple boarding Air Force One, entertaining royalty, visiting disaster sites.
I reach the ladies’ room as Neva opens its mahogany door, and we almost run right into each other.
“It’s a onesie,” she says, screwing the lid back on her gold jar of lip balm, tucking it in her black eel-skin bag.
Behind her is a stand-al
one white porcelain sink, a toilet, more artwork and a lot of gold.
“What brings you here on an early Monday?” not smiling, I ask as if this is routine for me, and more to the point. “Because you certainly seem to pop up all over the place. Including your late sister’s apartment and the morgue,” I’m not pulling any punches.
“You know, life doesn’t have to be so difficult and dreary,” Neva says, stepping into the hallway, paying no attention to people moving past, everyone intense and in a hurry.
“I’m sorry about Vera,” I taunt her with a subject I know she doesn’t like while trying not to be distracted by my feet itching like I have poison ivy. “I’m sure you must feel terrible, having just spent time with her before heading off to Wallops Island for the ill-fated rocket launch and everything else that went wrong,” and I can tell by the angry flash in her eyes that she gets the message and the pun.
“You’d be so much better served if you would think of the big picture instead of constantly tilting at windmills, Calli,” she says. “Look around you. Look where you are. Isn’t this what everything’s about?”
“Not for me and the people I come from.”
“Yes, you and your people,” her face hardens into a mask of condescension, and for an instant I see the beast inside her. “Should you ever tire of working endlessly for nothing and decide to venture out into the private sector where everything’s headed, do give me a call,” she adds disgustingly.
“That would be nev-a,” I mock her name again.
“Now if you’ll excuse me,” she smiles icily. “I have a meeting with two presidents and don’t want to be late.”
00:00:00:00:0
INSIDE the ladies’ room, I lock the door, freshening up, sitting on top of the toilet lid to pull off my boots. I peel off my wet socks, at a loss as to what to do with them, trying to calm myself, my hands shaking slightly.
“Oh, what the heck!” I drop my socks in the trash, feeling even tackier.
When I return to the sitting area, I find Dick has been joined by Conn. And if he can wear his flight suit to a meeting at the White House, I don’t know why I had to dress smart casual.
“Everything all right?” Dick asks quietly, and maybe I won’t take fashion tips from him anymore. “You seem agitated,” and I remember I’m transmitting data that he and certain others are constantly downloading.
“She basically just offered me a job,” I answer.
“I’m sure she did,” he says as a Secret Service agent appears to take us to the Situation Room.
Beyond the sitting area and down carpeted steps, we follow toward the mess hall run by the Navy, busy at this hour with the breakfast crowd. As we move past, I hungrily smell bacon, catching glimpses of blue carpet, paintings of naval scenes, and important-looking people sitting around blue-cloth-covered tables. Another short hallway, and this one dead-ends at a heavy oak door, a red phone receiver on the paneled wall.
The agent scans us into an installation of offices and workstations where the most sensitive information on the planet is exchanged. At the reception desk we’re given keys to store our computers, phones, and other electronic devices in lockers. I left my PEEPS in the helicopter but still have on my SPIES and CUFF, and no one seems the wiser.
I recognize the Situation Room from photos I’ve seen, a big conference table surrounded by black leather chairs. The walls are lit up with flat-screens showing live feeds. The International Space Station. The Baikonur Cosmodrome, Russia’s launch facility in Kazakhstan. Images of China from space. Plus, maps of satellites and junk orbiting the Earth like countless electrons spinning around an atom.
Dick avoids the empty chair at the head of the table, and the one to the right of it. He sits down, and Conn and I take seats on either side of him. Most officials I recognize as I look around a sea of paperwork, water bottles, dark suits, white shirts and ties. ART takes it upon himself to inform me in my SPIES who everybody is in case I grew up in a barn.
But then again, I sort of did, and it feels that way as I sit here sockless in my fire-sale suit surrounded by Mount Olympus. The secretary of state, and directors of the expected agencies. NASA. DARPA. The Secret Service. The National Security Agency (NSA). The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).
Everybody is a lot more important than I am, to say the least, and I feel shadings of what Lex must feel when he visits a food pantry and rides the bus. I turn toward the door at the sound of footsteps as the president and vice president of the United States walk in, taking their chairs, paper rustling, people greeting each other and making small talk.
“Mr. President, Mr. Vice President,” Dick gets started, acknowledging everyone.
He slides over an electronic tablet, the remote control for the data walls, and I can tell he’s been through this routine many times before.
“I think you know from the materials in front of you that last week we had one of the most serious cyberattacks to date,” he begins, and the president raises a finger the way he does when he’s about to interrupt.
“We’re in a cyber war,” he says, not known for beating around the bush. “An armed space race,” unscrewing the cap from his water bottle. “I don’t know what it’s going to take to make the public understand that. It’s not an eventuality, it’s right now,” taking a drink. “We’ve been suffering attacks on our satellites, serious ones for months, and it’s going to stop. That’s why we’re here today. Because it’s going to stop now,” and I must be imagining it when he looks straight at me.
“We assume they’re attacks,” says the CIA. “What we know for a fact is something is causing incorrect data.”
“The most dangerous thing of all,” the vice president concurs.
“I’d rather have a dead satellite than a brain-damaged one,” the NSA agrees, as does the DIA, the Secret Service, NASA and the Pentagon, everybody nodding their heads, flipping pages and jotting notes.
“I’m going to show you an example,” Dick picks up the tablet. “An incident in Syria last summer involving one of our prototypes,” and I wonder who he means. “Incorrect GPS satellite coordinates were given to a Delta Force, and it ended up exactly where it shouldn’t have been. Just watch.”
All eyes are on the data walls as a video begins to play, accompanied by the subwoofer racket of heavy metal, diesel engines and blowing sand in the muddy lime green of infrared. Refugees with haunted faces stare out from the gouged sockets of bombed doorways and windows.
I recognize sacred ruins, the battered province of Raqqa as a helicopter gunship churns in bone-shaking low and slow. A Blackhawk MH-60L Direct Action Penetrator (DAP) flies over at 91.5 meters (300 feet) or less, tricked out with air-to-air missiles and rocket pods, chain guns under the belly, mini-Gatling guns on the wing stubs, and Hellfires.
Peeling off to the Euphrates River, it skims over water, graceful as a predatory bird, and next we’re taken inside the glass cockpit. Radio chatter peppered by gunfire, and there she is, Carme on the flight deck in a combat helmet, flying solo from the right seat, crowded by a stockpile of ammunition amid a dazzling array of technical information and flight data in LCDs.
My sister shrieks into hairpin turns, the instrument readings straining toward the red, our Delta troops surrounded on the ground and about to get slaughtered. Radio exchanges are frantic, the situation critical on the ground.
“Kilo 1-5, our position is compromised. Request immediate Q-R-F!”
“Negative on Q-R-F, Kilo 1-5.”
“Kilo 1-5, request speedball immediately.”
“Negative on the speedball.”
“Then air assist, scramble some F-18s over here now . . . !”
I can see Carme’s CUFF and the unusual sensor-embedded f
abric of her flight suit as her black-gloved finger presses the mic trigger on the cyclic.
“Kilo 1-5, be advised in from the north, danger close, three miles,” her voice over the radio just like mine, banking hard to the right, thudding lower.
“Denied. You’re not cleared hot. Do not engage. Repeat. Denied. Do not engage.”
“A little late for that,” Carme comes back.
My heart pounds as I watch her descend into the firefight from hell. Lower and slower, settling into an audacious rock-hard hover, eye to eye with enemy rebels on the ground.
The burping of Gatling guns. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM . . . ! Hellfires streaking. BLAM! BLAM . . . ! Scorched earth, and in the distance the massive up-lit Tabqa Dam . . . , then Dick pauses the video.
“Erroneous information that created a catastrophic situation as you may have gathered,” Dick says, “and the pilot happened to be in the area when all this went down,” he doesn’t mention that the pilot is my twin. “And she disobeyed orders not to intervene, not necessarily what we encourage in the military but in this case effective.”
There’s a lot of discussion around the table about other incidents I’ve not heard about until now. The result is any number of near disasters from erroneous information that caused the wrong decisions to be made as was the case with the Delta Force my sister saved.
“Brain damage,” I speak up, may as well, I’m sitting here. “Far worse to compromise key satellites than to take them out. Bad data is worse than none at all.”
“That’s the point,” Dick agrees.
As the president lifts his finger again, not looking up from his note taking, “Are we concerned that someone’s launched a weapon we don’t know about?”
“Very much so,” Dick says, zooming in on a time lapse of what’s assumed to be a satellite.
Spin (Captain Chase) Page 29
