Spin (Captain Chase)

by Patricia Cornwell

  00:00:00:00:0

  “YOU DO realize we just landed without our seat belts on,” I say to Dick as we reclaim our baggage on the floor outside the helicopter.

  “I guess we could have buckled up in there,” he considers.

  “I’m not sure how much good that would have done had we gone off-nominal,” and all kidding aside, I don’t know the answer.

  Based on ART’s lack of response in my SPIES or my earpiece, I don’t think he knows either. It’s another one of those brainteasers like Mom used to fire at Carme and me all the time. If a mosquito is buzzing around inside a car going 128 kilometers per hour (80 mph), then what is the mosquito’s airspeed?

  Or in this case, if Dick and Calli are sitting inside a helicopter that’s cargo inside a transporter, what happens in a crash, seat belt or not? Are we a helicopter crash? Are we a helicopter and a plane crash or only the latter? I don’t know why such morbid preoccupations are invading my thoughts.

  But I suspect it’s for the simple fact that any test pilot worth his or her salt knows that the next mission could be the last. People like me aren’t needed unless nobody’s really sure how something will work until it’s driven or flown for real. Deploying Ranger the PONG for the first time is a good example because we hadn’t factored owls into the equation, and we should have.

  Or how about my taking my new Chase Plane into space where neither of us has been, both of us prototypes? No matter what the statistics might say, it’s impossible to foresee every possibility for disappointment, damage and death. Chances are good what I’m about to do may not turn out well.

  “How are you feeling?” Dick asks as we walk across the ramp, headed to the airstrip’s flight office and lounge, the afternoon warm, the sky bright with only a few clouds. “You didn’t sleep a wink on the plane.”

  “I was too busy worrying.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” he holds the door.

  Soldiers inside instantly salute, and I wonder if it ever gets old.

  “It’s just that Neva was at the White House,” I explain. “She wasn’t inside the Situation Room, and shouldn’t know anything that went on in there.”

  “But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t,” Dick says as we emerge from the small building.

  Another black Suburban is awaiting, this one flanked by two Air Force security officers armed to the teeth in full ballistic gear. Our detail for the trip, and we climb in the back of the armored SUV as they take the front. Dick and I buckle up this time, and I send him a text old-fashioned-style, typing it myself, not asking ART’s help.

  Is it ok to talk in front of these guys? I touch send.

  Affirmative, Dick writes back, and we’re communicating remotely while in the same place.

  “You know as well as I do,” I resume out loud, “that Neva must have a legion of snitches. And when you think of all the people in the room this morning, she’s probably friendly with every one of them.”

  “That’s the problem,” Dick agrees. “After we left, she had lunch in the mess hall with the secretary of state. This was after both of them sat in on the meeting with the president of Uganda.”

  “Who’s concerned about investing in a space program when it’s unclear if his satellites would be safe,” I add as we drive through the barracks and hangars. “And they sure as heck wouldn’t be, and we both know that Neva’s probably the reason.”

  The causeway connecting the Air Force Station to Kennedy Space Center is off limits to members of the public unless they’re on a NASA tour bus. And I’m not seeing any of those at the moment as we cross the lagoon called Banana River.

  “Why not deny Neva access to absolutely everything she wants and needs?” I suggest to Dick what I have before as the serious-minded officers up front stare straight ahead, hearing every word. “Why help her hurt us? Why do we make it easier for someone like that? Are we the only ones who see her for what she is?”

  “The problem is as old as time,” Dick says. “A lot of the people she deals with aren’t necessarily any more altruistically motivated than she is, and what she’s managed to do over the years is to join them in order to beat them. She has dirt on people, and they owe her. She’s masterful at creating entanglements and conflicts. In other words, human nature wins.”

  “Maybe not always. And not everything about human nature is as rotten to the core as she is.”

  “It’s always complicated when someone manages to place any number of powerful individuals or groups in compromised positions,” he says, and Kennedy’s main launch viewing area is out my window, a strip of grass with bleachers and a few palm trees along the fence-lined shore.

  Across the lagoon I can see the rocket on its pad pointing up like a bright-white finger against deep blue, 76.2 meters (250 feet) tall. Its twin BE-4 liquefied natural gas–fueled engines are capable of 4,800 kilonewtons (1.08 million pounds) of thrust, almost triple that when you add the 6 solid rocket boosters. All to say that when I’m strapped into my seat, for all practical purposes I’ll be sitting on top of a missile.

  My attention stays out the window, across the alligator-infested water, and I sense Dick looking at me. I wonder if he’s proud of what he’s wrought, grooming someone from the beginning to do exactly as instructed. How must it feel to rewire, and reprogram that person, to play God?

  “You doing okay?” he asks quietly, his sunglasses fixed on me.

  “Sure,” I lie.

  Our tires sing over the metal drawbridge that’s raised when NASA’s covered barge called Pegasus arrives with rocket stages and other huge components after a 900-mile ferry from Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Once on shore at Kennedy, the priceless cargo is hauled by a special carrier to the 50-story Vehicle Assembly Building dominating the flat horizon.

  “Mostly I’m starved,” I add, and that much is true as we enter the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

  I remember from my days here at the NASA Protective Services training academy that you never know what might be crossing the road. But I wouldn’t count on a chicken, more likely an alligator, snake, turtle, maybe a black bear, could be all sorts of critters trying to get to the other side.

  For the next several minutes we encounter endless acres of marshland, giant pines, and old mangroves with thickets of roots exposed in shallow brackish water. Then Kennedy Space Center is in front of us, more industrial than a showplace, miles of white concrete and metal facilities.

  In the distance are the launch pads, water towers and tall lightning-protection masts as far removed from civilization as one can get without tumbling into the Atlantic Ocean. Now that the furlough has ended and the government is back to work, employee parking lots are full, plenty of personnel out and about.

  We take a left on East Avenue at the Space Station Processing Facility. As the name implies, it takes care of everything that goes into building, maintaining and resupplying our orbiting laboratory 408 kilometers (254 miles) above Earth. The next sprawling complex is the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building, actually twin long buildings side by side.

  A narrow lane runs between them, and we follow it to a parking area designated for astronauts confined here prior to launch. The entrance reminds me of a sally port to a jail, except over the steel double doors are crew mission patches and a NASA meatball logo.

  “My home away from home, I’m in and out of here so often,” Dick says as we grab our bags. “But by design it’s not exactly a room with a view, I’ll warn you in advance.”

  His security detail is standing at the ready, and he tells them that will be it for now.

  “I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere else for a while,” he adds, thanking them.

  “We’ll be right out here, sir.”

  “Let us know if you need anything, sir.�
��

  “This area back here is for the walk-outs,” Dick says to me, holding his badge over the scanner by a drab entrance that couldn’t be more thrilling. “When you’ve suited up and are headed out in the astrovan, you’ll walk out these doors,” he opens them, gray metal, scuffed up and windowless. “I’ve done it a few times in my pumpkin suit,” he adds with a trace of a wistful smile.

  I try to imagine how I’m going to feel at oh-dark-hundred when I’m doing the same thing, heading out in a launch-entry pressure suit. Only mine will be blue, not orange, and there won’t be crowds of adoring NASA employees to greet me as I emerge from the building, walking to the awaiting van.

  There won’t be journalists, television news crews or the usual police escorts on the ground and in the air, hardly anyone knowing about the top secret mission before or after the fact.

  39

  DICK KEYS the elevator to the third floor, an open area thoughtfully appointed to put astronauts in the right frame of mind before launch time.

  Walls are filled with big posters of eye-popping space art. There are whiteboards for announcements and other information including which astronaut is assigned to which room. The only names written in Magic Marker are ours, nobody else staying here.

  Dick is in room 1, I’m in 12C, and we head down a long corridor filled with Peanuts comic strip art. Snoopy as the Red Baron encourages All Systems Are Go! Wearing a spacesuit, he has his Eyes on the Stars, and there are the expected group pictures of previous astronaut classes and crews, photos that won’t include me going forward.

  Chances are there won’t be crews of 7 astronauts quarantined in here together as there were during the Space Shuttle’s glory days. As space technologies and travel are increasingly about national security and the survival of our planet, there will be more stealth missions conducted by astronauts untraditionally trained like me to be fighters and spies.

  Passing break rooms, we turn down another hallway where a sign warns to Report All Symptoms of Illness. Where I’m staying is at the end on the right, and Dick opens the door, my quarters reminding me of barracks I’ve lived in before, small but functional and civilized.

  The bed is queen size, neatly made with a creamy spread that has a floral medallion in the center. There’s a bedside table, a built-in desk, and a wood-framed mirror. The carpet and walls are gray, and there are no windows because you’re not supposed to know if it’s morning, noon or night.

  Sleep patterns are shifted depending on the launch window, in my case scheduled at 4:00 a.m., some 12 hours from now. Dropping my bags on the bed, I check out the bathroom. A sink, a toilet and a shower, and on the counter is a water glass, a wrapped bar of soap, bottles of magnesium citrate and a box of enemas.

  “Looks like I have a lot to look forward to,” I comment, returning to the bedroom.

  “Get yourself settled,” Dick is glued to his phone, his jaw muscles clenching the way they do when he doesn’t like what he’s seeing. “Make calls, do what you need,” he heads out the door.

  The gym sounds like a fine idea, I decide, unzipping my duffel bag, changing into sweatpants, a T-shirt, sneakers. Out the door, I head back in the direction of the dining room, following the carpeted corridor with its astronaut art, inspiring photographs and cartoonish whimsy. Inside the gym, I start out in a gentle jog on a treadmill, and ART alerts me that Mom’s on the line.

  “I understand you were impressive this morning,” she says in my earpiece, and I assume she means the White House briefing. “A little birdie told me you held your own just fine in the ladies’ room.”

  Obviously, she’s talking about Neva Rong, and the little birdie would be Dick. He must have filled in Mom about the encounter, and I have a feeling this phone call is about more than her checking on me as I think of the look on his face while leaving my room a few minutes ago.

  “I hope you don’t mind if we talk while I’m on the treadmill,” I increase the incline and the speed. “I thought it a good idea to move around while I can. Since you saw me last, all I’ve been doing is sitting.”

  “I won’t be coy with you,” Mom’s unflappable voice. “Just as it’s very likely she knew you and Dick would be at the briefing this morning, there’s a chance she knows other things,” and she’s talking about Neva.

  “If you’re referring to the launch,” I reply, running faster, “it’s in the news that there’s one in the morning.”

  “Exactly. And the launch time is on the internet if you look, publicized as a new weather satellite that’s supposed to be helpful tracking wildfires.”

  As she tells me this, ART shows me news feeds about it. But nothing hints that there’s anything unusual about the launch, just another private company sending up an expensive satellite in an expensive rocket.

  “It’s not like you can hide it when the rocket is on the pad as big as life,” I tell her over the fast thudding of my shoes on the belt. “Besides, Pandora has a facility here at Kennedy, a huge new building near Blue Origin and Boeing. There’s no way Neva wouldn’t know what’s launching. But she won’t necessarily know the payload is a spaceplane, and there’s no reason she should have a clue I’m here.”

  “Don’t you think something must have crossed her mind when she saw you at the White House?” Mom makes a good point. “Calli, you were attending a briefing in the Situation Room.”

  She’s right that Neva running into us blew our cover even if Dick hasn’t admitted it. I don’t think it’s accidental or a coincidence that she was there this morning to meet with the president of Uganda. Neva was tipped off by someone, maybe the secretary of state whom she had lunch with in the mess hall. It could be anybody, and it makes my blood run cold to consider that she might know exactly what we’re planning.

  “I just wanted you to know I’m thinking about you,” Mom’s voice catches, and there are very few times I’ve known her to cry.

  Usually it was over Carme, most memorably when Dad made friends with a traveling stunt pilot I wish he’d never met. Fortunately, there won’t be the same outcome with Lex. He’s not a bad seed. But he could be if someone like Neva ever got her hooks in him, and I ask Mom if she’s heard how he’s doing.

  “I dropped some of my chili by this morning as promised,” she replies, and I appreciate her doing that for me. “Your sister came along,” she adds to my surprise. “Nonna had the same reaction to her that she apparently had with you. A nosebleed, a spell requiring a space blanket. I have to admit it was a rather strange thing to witness.”

  “And they thought Carme was me,” I steepen the incline and bump up the speed, wiping my face with a towel. “Even Lex thought she was me?”

  “I can barely hear you, dear.”

  “Did Lex think Carme was me?” I don’t know why it matters but it does.

  “She was actually very sweet with him,” and as she’s saying this, I’m startled by Dick suddenly appearing next to my machine, that same look on his face, his jaw muscles clenching.

  “I’ve got to go, Mom.”

  “Don’t forget I love you,” she says, and I end the call as Dick tells me there’s been a change of plans.

  “The launch time has been moved up,” he informs me, and why am I not surprised after what Mom just said?

  “What’s going on?” as I slow down the treadmill, ending the session, mopping myself with the towel.

  “The rogue object moving toward our spy satellite has made an unexpected maneuver as of 10 minutes ago,” he says.

  “Whatever this thing is, it may have greater propulsion capabilities than previously thought,” I reply as we leave the gym, and Neva must have caught wind that we’re coming after her.

  “It’s now calculated to be within range of USA555A in less than 9 hours,” he fills me in as we walk briskly along the hal
lway.

  “What kind of launch window are we talking about?”

  “Factoring in range safety, collision avoidance and all the rest, the most optimal time is going to be a one-hour window beginning at 8:00 p.m.”

  “That’s less than 4 hours from now,” I protest as we reach my room, and I can tell by his face that there’s no choice.

  “Do what you need to do,” Dick says as I think unpleasantly of the magnesium citrate, the enemas by the sink.

  He tells me to stop by the medical clinic in an hour, and from there it’s the suit-up room, and maybe it’s better not having any time to stress myself out. For sure I wouldn’t have slept a wink tonight anyway, would have been pacing the gray carpet, inside my gray windowless walls.

  00:00:00:00:0

  I CLOSE myself inside the bathroom, grabbing the box of enemas. Covering the floor with a towel, I follow the instructions, lying on my side with knees bent, and when I dreamed about being an astronaut, this wasn’t what I had in mind.

  A half hour later, I’m stepping out of the shower, toweling off my hair as I leave the bathroom. I find certain items waiting for me on the bed, including a formfitting skinsuit just like Carme’s. Also, the expected Maximum Absorbency Garment, a MAG, or let’s call it what it is, a super-duper diaper.

  In addition, I’ve been issued underwear, clean room booties, and I pick up the skinsuit, finding it surprisingly lightweight. On close inspection I can see that the smart fabric is woven with fine gold metallic fibers that remind me of the Chase Plane’s conductive skin.

  “What exactly does it do?” I ask ART, noting the unusual front ziplock closure that doesn’t look much sturdier than a sandwich bag’s.

  “The Smart Integrated Skin interfaces with other devices and environments,” he says.