Juan moved a little ways off and pulled a satellite phone from a waterproof pouch. It was time to check in.
“Juan, is that you?” Max Hanley asked after the first ring. He could picture Max sitting in the Oregon’s op center since the mission began, downing cup after cup of coffee and chewing on the stem of his pipe until it was nothing but a gnarled nub.
The phones were so heavily encrypted that there was no chance of them ever being listened in on, so there was no need for code phrases or aliases.
“We got it,” he replied with such weariness it sounded as though he would never recover. “We’re six hours out from waypoint Alpha.”
“I’ll call Lang right away,” Hanley said. “He’s been bugging me every twenty minutes since you started off.”
“There’s one more thing.” Cabrillo’s tone was like ice over the airwaves. “Jerry paid the butcher’s bill on this one.”
There was almost thirty full seconds of silence before Max finally said, “Oh, Jesus. No. How?”
“Does it really matter?” Juan asked back.
“No, I guess it doesn’t,” Max said.
Juan blew a loud breath. “I tell you, buddy, I’m having a real hard time getting my mind around this.”
“Why don’t you and I take off for a few days when you get back? We’ll fly down to Rio, plant our butts on the beach, and ogle a bunch of hard bodies in string bikinis.”
Time off sounded good, though Cabrillo didn’t particularly relish the idea of leering at women half his age. And he knew that after three failed marriages, Max wasn’t really on the prowl either. Then Juan remembered the crashed blimp and Mark’s suggestion to give closure to the families of men who’d perished on her. That was what his soul needed. Not staring at pretty girls but offering a bunch of strangers a little peace of mind after fifty years of wondering.
“I like the concept,” Juan said, “but we need to work on the execution. We’ll talk about arrangements when we get back to the ship. Also, you might as well go into my office. In the file cabinet should be Jerry’s last will. Let’s get that ball rolling right away. He didn’t have too much love for his ex-wife, but he did have a child.”
“A daughter,” Max replied. “I helped him set up a trust for her, and he made me the trustee.”
“Thanks. I owe you. We should be home by dawn tomorrow.”
“I’ll have the coffee waiting.”
Juan replaced the phone into its pouch and sat back against the tree, feeling like he was feeding every mosquito within a fifty-mile radius.
“Hey, Chairman,” Mark called a few minutes later. “Check this out.”
“What have you got,” Juan crawled over to where Mark sat with his legs bent like pretzels.
“You see this here and here?” He pointed to two tiny indentations on the glossy metal surface.
“Yeah.”
“These correspond with two matching holes in the nylon carrying harness. They’re bullet strikes fired up at us from when we took off in the chopper.”
“Those were nine-millimeter from point-blank range,” Juan said. “Barely made a mark. That thing is as tough as NASA boasted.”
“Okay, but look at this.” Mark struggled to turn the seventy-pound cell over so the top was facing up and then pointed at an even deeper pit gouged into the satellite fragment.
Juan gave his weapons expert a questioning look.
“Nothing matches it on the harness. That was put there before we got our hands on it.”
“Something the Argentines did to it?”
Mark shook his head. “We watched them dig it up, and it was out of our sight for only a few minutes before they loaded it into the pickup. I don’t recall hearing a shot. You?”
“No. Could it have happened when the logs slammed into the truck?”
“I don’t think so. I have to do some calculations to be sure, but I don’t think there was enough energy in the collision to cause something like this. And remember, the truck flipped into muddy ground. There wasn’t anything hard enough and small enough to cause such a smooth divot.”
A flash of understanding struck Cabrillo. “It happened when the rocket blew. More than enough energy there, right?”
“That’s the answer,” Mark replied as if he’d known that all along, but there was little triumph in his voice. “The problem is this is the top of the power cell. It would have been protected from the explosion by both the rocket’s vertical speed and the bulk of the cell itself.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not sure. I’d love to do some tests on this back aboard the Oregon, but we’re turning it over to some CIA flack in Asunción. We’ll never get answers.”
“What’s your gut telling you?”
“The satellite was intentionally shot down by a weapon that only two countries in the world possess. Us—”
“And China,” Juan finished.
NINE
HOUSTON, TEXAS
Tom Parker never knew what he was getting himself into when he joined NASA. In his defense, he’d grown up in rural Vermont, and his parents never had a television because the reception on the side of the mountain where they raised dairy cows was terrible.
He knew something was up on his first day at the Johnson Space Center when his secretary placed a beautiful blown-glass bottle on the credenza behind his desk and said it was for Jeannie. He’d asked her to explain, and when she realized he had no clue as to Jeannie’s identity she’d chuckled and said cryptically that he’d soon find out.
Next came a pair of hand-painted bellows delivered anonymously to his office. Again, Parker didn’t know what this meant and asked for an explanation. By now, several other women in the secretarial pool knew of his ignorance, as did his supervisor, an Air Force Colonel who was a deputy director in the astronaut-training program.
The last piece of the puzzle was an autographed picture of a man in his mid- to late fifties, with receding red hair and bright blue eyes. It took Parker a while to figure out that the signature was that of Hayden Rorke. Internet research was at its infancy then, so he had to rely on a local library. This lead him to eventually discover that Rorke was an actor who played a NASA psychiatrist named Alfred Bellows who was continually vexed by astronaut Anthony Nelson and the genie he’d found on a beach.
Dr. Tom Parker was a NASA psychiatrist, and the I Dream of Jeannie jokes never stopped. After almost ten years with the program, Parker had dozens of glass bottles similar to the one Jeannie called home, as well as autographed pictures of most of the cast and several of Sidney Sheldon’s scripts.
He adjusted the webcam on top of his laptop to accommodate the request of Bill Harris, his current patient.
“That’s better,” Harris said from Wilson/George. “I was seeing a picture of Larry Hagman but hearing your voice.”
“He’s better looking at least,” Parker quipped.
“Leave the camera on Barbara Eden and you’ll make my day.”
“So we were talking about the other members of your team. You leave Antarctica in a couple of days. What’s their mood?”
“Disappointed, actually,” the astronaut said. “A front’s closed in on us. The weather boys at McMurdo say it’s only going to last a few days, but we’ve all seen the data. The storm’s covering damned-near all of Antarctica. We’re socked in for a week or more, and then it’ll take a few more days to clear their runway and ours.”
“How do you feel about it?” Parker asked. He and the former test pilot had spoken enough over the past months to have an honest dialogue. He knew Harris wouldn’t sugarcoat his answer.
“Same as everyone else,” Bill said. “It’s tough when a goal gets pushed back on you, but this is what we’re here for, right?”
“Exactly. I especially want to know how this has affected Andy Gangle.”
“Since he can’t wander outside anymore, he’s pretty much stayed in his room. To be honest, I haven’t seen him in twelve or more hours. The last time was in
the rec room. He was just passing through. I asked him how he was, he muttered ‘Fine’ and kept on going.”
“Would you say his antisocial behavior has gotten worse?”
“No,” Bill said. “It’s about the same. He was antisocial when he got here and he’s antisocial now.”
“I know you’ve mentioned you’ve tried to engage him over the last few months. Has anyone else?”
“If someone has, they’ve been shot down. I said before, I think the screeners who allowed him to winter down here made a mistake. He’s not cut out for this kind of isolation, at least not as a functioning part of a team.”
“But, Bill,” Parker said, leaning closer to his laptop camera for emphasis, “what happens if you’re on the space station or halfway to the moon when you realize that the doctors who screened your crewmates made a similar mistake?”
“Are you saying you’re going to screw up?” Harris asked with a chuckle.
“No,” Parker grinned, “but the other members of the screening committee might. So what would you do?”
“Above all else, make sure the person is pulling their weight. If they don’t want to talk much, fine, but they have to do their job.”
“And if they refuse?”
Bill Harris suddenly looked over his shoulder as if he’d heard something.
“What is it?” the psychiatrist asked.
“Sounded like a gunshot,” Harris replied. “I’ll be right back.”
Parker watched the astronaut get up from his chair. He was halfway to the open door of his room on the remote ice station when a sudden blur moved across the threshold. Harris staggered back, and then something hit the webcam, and Parker’s view was completely blocked. He watched for several seconds. Soon the blackness on his laptop took on a faint purplish cast. As more time elapsed, the view turned lighter and lighter, going from the deepest plum to light eggplant, and finally to red.
It took him a moment to realize what had hit the camera was a clot of blood that then oozed off the lens. Parker could make out few details because of the bloody film, but there was no sign of Bill Harris, and the audio feed was picking up the unmistakable wail of a woman screaming.
A full minute elapsed before her voice was cut off abruptly. Parker kept watching, but when something passed the doorway again it was an indistinct blur. It certainly looked like the outline of a man, but it was impossible to know who.
He double-checked that his computer was automatically recording, as he did all sessions with his distant patient. Everything was safely on the hard drive. As a precaution, he e-mailed the first part of the file to himself so he had backup imagery and cc’d his boss.
Leaving his computer recording the now-silent webcam at Wilson /George base, he picked up his phone and dialed his supervisor’s direct line.
“Keith Deaver.”
“Keith, it’s Tom. We’ve got a situation at Wilson/George. Check the e-mail I just sent. Forward through the file until the last five minutes. Call me back when you’re done.”
Six minutes later, Tom snatched up the handset before it had finished its first ring. “What do you think?”
“I know for a fact there aren’t any guns on that station, but I’m positive that was a gunshot.”
“I think so, too,” Parker replied. “To be sure, we need an expert to listen to it, do that stuff like you see on the cop shows. This is bad, Keith. I don’t know if you overheard Bill and I talking, but McMurdo can’t send in a plane for a week or more, not even to do a visual reconnaissance.”
“Who has lead on that place?”
“Penn State is monitoring it full-time, if that’s what you mean.”
“Do you have a contact there?”
“Yes. Ah, I think his name’s Benton. Yeah, that’s it, Steve Benton. He’s a climatologist or something.”
“Call him. See if their telemetry’s still coming through. Also, see if they have other webcams up and running right now. We should get in touch with McMurdo, let them know what’s happening, and see if they really can’t get an aircraft to Wilson/George sooner.”
“I have a contact there, too,” Palmer said, “at the U.S. Antarctic Program. They’re run through the National Science Foundation.”
“Okay. I want hourly updates, and make sure someone’s watching your computer from now on. I’ll send you warm bodies if you need them.”
“I’ll get my secretary in here while I make the calls, but I’ll probably take you up on that offer later in the day.”
AS BUREAUCRACIES GO, the amount of time it took to get things in motion was remarkably short. By the end of the day, a Houston police officer had listened to the audio from the webcam but couldn’t determine if the sound was a gun or not. He gave it a seventy-five percent assurance that it was but wouldn’t say definitively. The tower dispatcher at McMurdo confirmed that all their planes were grounded due to weather, and no emergency was grave enough to risk a flight crew. Conditions were even worse at Palmer Station, the only other American base on the Antarctic Peninsula, so there was no chance of them checking in on Wilson/George. Feelers had gone out to other nations with research centers nearby, but the closest was an Argentine research facility, and, despite the common bonds among the scientific community, they had rebuffed the request in no uncertain terms.
By eight o’clock that evening, the news of the situation had been sent to the President’s National Security Advisor. Because Wilson/George was so close to an Argentine base and there was inconclusive evidence of gunfire, there was the possibility they had been attacked for some reason. Ideas were discussed late into the night, and a request was sent to the National Reconnaissance Office for a satellite to be retasked in order to photograph the isolated research station.
By dawn, the pictures had been analyzed, and even their remarkable optics were defeated by the storm that was savaging half the continent.
And then, like all bureaucracies, the efficiency stopped there. No one knew what to do next. All the information that could be gathered and studied had been. A decision was needed, but no one could be found who was willing to make it. The early surge of activity came to an abrupt end, and the people involved began to take a wait-and-see attitude.
When he arrived at Langley a little past nine, Langston Overholt took a cup of coffee his secretary had ready for him and went into his private office. The view through the bulletproof window behind him caught a copse of trees in full leaf. The wind danced along the branches and made fractal shadows on the lawn below.
His office was spartan. Unlike many other senior officers at the CIA, Overholt didn’t have an ego wall—a collection of photographs of himself and various dignitaries. He had never seen the need to advertise his importance to others. But with his legendary reputation, it really wasn’t necessary. Anyone visiting him here on the seventh floor knew exactly who he was. And while many of his accomplishments remain deeply buried secrets, enough had leaked out over the years to secure his status within the Agency. There were only a few photographs on the wall, mostly portraits done during the holidays as his family grew, and one sepia-toned snapshot of him and a young Asian man. Only an expert would recognize that he was Tibet’s Dalai Lama.
“Well, maybe a little ego,” he said, glancing at the picture.
Overholt read the briefing report given to all senior staffers. It was an even more thorough version than that given to the President, who’d early in his administration made it clear that he didn’t like to bother with details.
There was the usual news from around the world—a bombing in Iraq, oil workers killed in Nigeria, North Korean military posturing along the DMZ. The incident at the Wilson/George Station rated a paragraph on the second-to-last page, just below remarks about the near capture of a Serbian war criminal. Had this taken place at any other Antarctic base, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but the report made it clear that the Argentines had a facility about thirty miles away, and their terse refusal to send out a team to investigate set Over
holt’s sixth sense into high gear. He requested the raw footage from Dr. Palmer’s webcam.
He knew immediately what had to be done.
He checked in with the director of the South American section and was told that Cabrillo had reached Asunción the night before and turned over the power cell to a pair of Agency couriers and it was now on a charter flight nearing the California coast.
Overholt killed the internal call and dialed Houston to speak with Dr. Parker. After that, he placed a call to an overseas exchange.
TEN
After nearly an hour in the shower and a breakfast of eggs, toast, and herbal tea—Maurice, the ship’s steward, refused Cabrillo anything with caffeine—Juan still felt restless. He should go to bed, but his goose-down duvet looked uninviting. He knew sleep would not come easily. Dr. Huxley had recommended something to help him after performing a brief physical, but he’d declined. He wasn’t punishing himself for Jerry’s death, but somehow chemical oblivion didn’t seem fair to his friend’s memory. If thinking about the big Pole was going to keep him awake, then that was the price Cabrillo was willing to pay.
He and the others had arrived aboard the Oregon three hours earlier after a flight back to Brazil from the Paraguayan capital. They’d spent the first hour talking with members of the crew about what had happened and how Jerry had sacrificed himself so they could get away. Already a memorial service was in the works for that evening. The kitchen staff was making traditional Polish food, including pierogi, Kotlet Schabowy, and Sernik, a popular cheese-cake, for dessert.
Cabrillo usually led such a service, but because of their friendship Mike Trono asked if he could have the honor.
Juan left his cabin to do a slow inspection of his ship as she lay at anchor just outside the port of Santos. The tropical sun beat down on the steel decks, but the trade winds that blew through his white linen shirt kept him cool. Even to the most observant eye, the Oregon looked ready for the breaker’s yard. Junk littered the deck, and any areas of paint that weren’t chipped or peeling were applied so haphazardly and in such a myriad of off-putting colors that it almost looked like she wore camouflage. The central white stripe of the Iranian flag hanging over her fantail looked to be the only spot of brightness on the old freighter.
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