“We’ll start with the female members of the team,” the announcer said. There was no excitement in her voice. As she named each one, their individual photo filled the screen along with a caption that showed their name, age, profession as well as city and country of origin. “First, there is Hawa Patel, 26, a molecular biologist from Jaipur, India; next is Iolani Keahola, 25, a dentist from Honolulu; and the final female member of the Long-Duration ISS Mission to prepare for a trip to Mars is Isabelle Jenkins, 29, an IT Specialist from Los Angeles. Now, here are the males members: Anatoly Bazhenov, 24, an industrial engineer from Kiev, Russia; next is Abeeku Chiamaka, 28, a surgeon from Johannesburg, South Africa; and finally there is Cheung Dai, 27, a test pilot from Beijing.”
Claire and Herc looked at each other with similar “we-knew-it” expressions.
Herc glanced at Kay who was just completing travel arrangements for Ranjit. “You might want to see this, Kay.”
“Something important?” he asked as he walked over to join his friends who had moved to the sofa in front of the TV.
“NASA’s announcing the members of their so-called ISS long-duration mission,” Herc replied.
“Really!? Are they sending them up now?” Kay asked. “I thought it was at least a week away.”
Herc paused for a second. “They must have gotten word about Claire’s article in the Sentinel. They’re afraid the exposure the article will bring could in some way jeopardize the mission. They must believe they have to get it off the ground before Sunday.”
“It’s just as we suspected,” Kay observed. “All young. All attractive. Very smart and ethnically diverse.”
“Can you imagine the battles the selection committee fought trying to decide who would be on the team,” Claire declared. “They knew they had to somehow include as many ethnic groups, nations, and social classes as possible. Literally, the future of the entire human race was at stake, or so they thought. They wanted as wide a genetic pool as possible combined with essential skills and personal compatibility. And of course they had to make sure that every member was capable of procreation. How they managed to cull the roster down to these six is a miracle!”
Just then the picture switched to a long view of a huge rocket booster sitting on its launch pad. Steam and other condensing, super-cooled gases billowed and streamed from various places. A countdown clock showed less than three minutes until launch.
They all listened as the announcer continued.
“We’re at T-minus two minutes and counting as technicians and engineers at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan standby for the launch of the Progress M-28-L booster with the six-member team for the ISS long-duration mission.”
“Wait a minute! Herc exclaimed. “That’s the L-model! It’s the previous generation of the Progress line of boosters! They must not have had any Ms available! There were at least three incidents that I can remember where they had to scrub the launch of Ls because of last-second glitches with the engines. There was even one explosion on the launch pad!”
“We’re at T-minus twenty seconds and counting.......power and guidance are now on-board.......all systems are in the green.......10-9-8-7-6.....”
They watched as enormous plumes of fire and smoke belched from beneath the booster.
“4-3-2-1.....lift-off! We have liftoff of the Progress booster with the Soyuz MS capsule and the six intrepid astronauts and cosmonauts on their way to the International Space Station!”
The rocket slowly, almost ponderously, rose from the launch pad on top of a 100-foot column of fire, and began to accelerate.
“Come on!” Herc begged.
“Maybe it’s going to be okay!” Claire cried.
Suddenly the rocket began to tilt slightly.
“Oh, no!” Herc groaned.
The tilt angle increased.
“We have an anomalous situation developing with the booster,” the announcer ridiculously, yet solemnly declared.
Herc turned away from the TV. Claire and Kay continued to watch in horror as enormous aerodynamic forces started to tear the booster to pieces. A fraction of a second later it was engulfed in a gigantic fireball.
Chapter 42
‘The stupid fools!’ former FBI Special Agent Quinten Gnash thought as he turned off the radio in his Kia subcompact rental car. News reports of the massive explosion in Kazakstan had said there’d been a failure in one of the high-speed pumps that supplied liquid oxygen to one of the booster’s rocket engines. When it shut down, it started a catastrophic chain-reaction that resulted in the six people in the capsule dying instantly. Nearly fifty technicians and workers on the ground died as well. Unfortunately, the deaths of the ground personnel came much more slowly when the rocket’s flaming debris had rained down on them and support facilities nearby.
Of course he knew the real reason: Russian incompetence. For decades the country’s aerospace engineers and designers had always considered themselves the best and most innovative in the world. They had again been proven catastrophically wrong. But this time their stupidity and criminal negligence was of infinitely greater cost—the last chance for the survival of the human race.
Not that it really mattered to him, of course. It was all nothing more than a mild diversion as he began his next to last—and very personal—operation.
He was parked on a very dark, quiet, tree-lined street in the upscale Washington, D.C. suburb of Falls Church, Virginia. The houses on it were very stately and widely separated from any others; the street lighting subdued—exactly what he needed for cover as he waited for his latest quarry to return home.
He’d spent the last three cold winter days using what resources were available to him—since his sudden and embarrassing departure from the FBI—to track down where its director lived. It had proven to be a daunting task given how carefully the agency guarded the privacy of its employees. Eventually, because of the large volume and variety of top secret federal records he’d stolen over the years, he’d managed to discover her address. His intent was quite simple—dispatch Ms. Gina King from this life as slowly and agonizingly as possible. Although she and everyone else on this doomed planet was going to die in one way or another within the next six months to a year, he would see to it that her exit was spectacularly ugly.
As he considered what he was about to do, one thing felt very different—even strange: He had no concern about getting caught. It had originally been one of his prime motivators as he worked behind the scenes, “suppressing and containing knowledge of the developing international emergency” as his authorization letter from the President had read.
Normally, he would have gone to great lengths to ensure he escaped cleanly from the scene and that he left few—if any—clues that might connect him to what he had done. Now, he really didn’t care! It felt exhilarating, almost liberating! The reason was he had little doubt that within a few weeks at most, utter chaos would break out on the streets of America—and everywhere else in the world for that matter. Governments and law enforcement agencies far and wide would have infinitely greater things to worry about then the murder of a single woman—even if she was the FBI director. He laughed out loud in the car. It was all deliciously ironic! He had become one of the people his bosses had worried about when they’d first discovered the asteroid and considered what its impending impact—literal and figurative—would have on society!
He’d carefully staked out the very comfortable house—still with its Christmas lights up—on the cul-de-sac street for several hours the first night when she came home in her limo. He’d known she would have bodyguards but was surprised when the car pulled in the driveway and three agents he knew exited first, scanned the neighborhood, then opened the passenger door for her to get out. One of them went into the house with her while the other two returned to the limo and left for the night. The latter two would return in the morning to pick her up. The one in the house would stay up all night, making regular rounds of the house and property while his boss slept. He had litt
le doubt they were very good and very professional. He’d have to deal with the one in the house first but knew he’d have little trouble with the man.
After confirming her schedule the second night when she arrived home at the same time with the same agents as bodyguards, he knew what he would do.
The third night he put his plan into action.
The limo arrived a little after 7 p.m., as it had the previous two. The agents exited the vehicle as always and ensured King got into her house safely. The driver quickly returned to the limo and drove away with his partner. As soon as it was out of sight, Gnash leaped out of his car and sprinted for the front door of King’s home. He knew timing—as it usually was in every operation—was critical. He knocked on the door. He had little doubt the bodyguard inside would assume his friends had come back to the house for some unknown reason. The man would open it immediately without checking first to see who was there. As he constantly congratulated himself, he was again right in his pre-op evaluations and planning.
The heavy steel door swung open and the guard said, “So what’d she forget this....Gnash! What are you....?”
Gnash leveled his Ruger 22 target pistol and fired one shot that hit the man squarely between the eyes. The noise was hardly more than an old-fashioned toy cap gun. For a fraction of a second he looked startled then fell over backwards—dead before he hit the hardwood floor. Gnash quickly stepped into the house and closed the door behind him. He looked down at the bodyguard. A small pool of blood was spreading out from beneath his head. He absently thought it wouldn’t get much bigger because the man’s heart had already stopped beating.
From a room toward the rear of the house a woman’s voice that he instantly recognized as King’s call out, “Jake? What’s going on?” He could tell that King was walking toward the front hallway. He walked past the body and came face to face with his 50 year-old, former boss. She stared at him in stunned surprise. “Gnash. What are you.....?” Suddenly she saw the gun in his hand and the bodyguard—now just a body—on the floor. Her expression instantly turned to absolute terror and she turned, desperately looking for something. He could see that she had spotted her cell phone sitting on an island in the large kitchen. She darted away from him, lunged for the phone, and started to punch in some numbers. He took three, long, quick steps and chopped down on her hand holding the phone with the side of his. He could feel bones break as the device clattered to the floor and she let out an animalistic shriek.
“And now, Ms. King,” he malevolently said as she held her mangled hand and whimpered, “you and I are going to have some fun!”
Chapter 43
As their limo driver fought through stop-and-go traffic on the Grand Central Parkway leading to LaGuardia airport, Claire realized with horrifying clarity she had been wrong. Herc, Kay and Ranjit had been wrong. The Sentinel’s board of directors had been wrong. All of them had assumed public reaction to the inbound asteroid would be strong, but not like this! They had assumed people would do the right thing—whatever that was—in their homes, their communities, their states and their countries. She and her friends had been wrong to a degree that she couldn’t begin to comprehend. The huge traffic jam and the wild looks on the other driver’s faces told her all she needed to know.
She looked at her wrist watch. It was a little after 10 a.m.. The weather was a little colder than normal for late December. Light snow flurries had begun earlier that morning, but not enough to coat roadways.
The Sunday edition of the Sentinel—with her article in it—had been delivered to newsstands, homes and businesses throughout the U.S. and other countries a little over an hour ago. The story, of course, was picked up by virtually every news outlet in the world—print, broadcast and internet—within minutes. Hundreds of millions of people were undoubtably reading, listening or watching the breaking news in horrified surprise
The three had left their hotel in Manhattan shortly before the paper was expected to be in the hands of readers. She had guessed—and Kay and Herc had warned her—that since she was an integral part of the story, the mainstream media would ruthlessly hunt her down. They would insist she appear on TV talk shows. They would demand comment at every turn. There would be dozens of cameras and microphones literally in her face from the moment she set foot on the sidewalk in front of her hotel. So they agreed that leaving New York City in advance of the media barrage was the right thing to do. Their destination would be KS Spaceport in Texas where they could more easily weather the impending media storm. They had incorrectly assumed that having the limo pick them up at 8:30 would give them plenty of time to get to the corporate aviation terminal at LaGuardia before the media began trying to find her. They had also assumed they could board Kay’s Gulfstream 150 and easily escape to his spaceport. They’d never imagined that tens of thousands of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans would simply panic; literally drop whatever they were doing and immediately head to the nearest airport to escape to somewhere, anywhere to get away from the expected tsunami that Claire had described. Of course, where “that” was they would have no idea until they got to an airline ticket counter to find out which flights had seats available to “anywhere.”
“I’m really sorry about the traffic, folks,” their driver said in a thick Brooklyn accent. “Never seen anything like it! Been drivin’ limos for goin’ on ten years. Sundays is usually pretty quiet. This is just plain nuts! Must be an accident. Lucky we ain’t got too much further to go.”
Herc and Kay looked at each other then at Claire. She could only guess from their grim expressions they were having similar thoughts about the reason for the near-gridlock conditions.
“Mind if I turn on the radio?” the driver asked. “Maybe there’s somethin’ on the news about what’s causing the jam.”
Before anyone could say anything he turned on the AM radio.
.”........has asked that all New Yorkers stay off the roads unless you have a true emergency! Since the New York Sentinel edition detailing the impending collision of a huge asteroid with the Earth came out, hundreds of thousands of residents of the New York City area are trying to flee coastal areas. This to escape the giant tsunamis that are expected to crash into the city after the asteroid hits the Atlantic ocean between Africa and South America on January 16th! The mass exodus has created immense traffic jams that have brought any movement on interstates and highways to virtual standstills!”
“Sweet Jesus!” the driver uttered. “Did you hear that?!”
“The governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut have threatened to close all highways connecting them to New York City—using National Guard troops if necessary—unless the massive exodus stops immediately. Both the governor’s and mayor’s offices have said they are doing everything they can to control the situation.
Around the world there are similar reports of hundreds of millions of people fleeing low-lying areas or cities near oceans. In Brazil, residents of Rio de Janeiro.......”
The driver switched off the radio.
Claire recalled a Human Psychology class she had taken at USC. Her professor told them when humans become psychologically fully “invested” in anything, they are very likely to subconsciously shut out any thought or evidence that might contradict their position or belief. She could now see she was a classic example. She’d altruistically believed that in the midst of the developing crisis, most people would be more inclined to do the “right” thing rather than the “wrong” thing. It had never occurred to her that the reverse could be true.
Claire could now see more clearly what she, Herc and Kay had discussed before. They’d spoken about what fear did to people. At this moment, untold millions of people worldwide were being driven to make irrational decisions because their rational thought processes were essentially blinded by fear.
Suddenly the limo sped up and swerved off the roadway onto the shoulder, the tires howling on the rumble strips cut into the roadbed.
“Sorry about this guys,” the driver y
elled over the noise. “I ain’t waitin’ for traffic to clear out! I’m gonna take a little detour to get you to your terminal. I’ve got wife and kids at home, ya know! We got to get outta here! Hang on!” He abruptly yanked the steering wheel and the limo started bouncing wildly over the median area of grass and dirt that separated the various access roads leading to the airport terminals. The three passengers had to hang to whatever they could inside to stop themselves from being thrown against the ceiling, doors or each other. He swerved around hillocks and drainage culverts until he came to another road, already clogged with cars and other vehicles. Somehow he managed to weave through the madhouse, nearly constantly leaning on his horn. In return, other motorists leaned on their horns with equal ferocity. Still others leaned out windows and delivered unending streams of obscenities. Within a few minutes he was in front of their terminal. Fortunately, because it was for corporate air travelers only, there was much lighter traffic in front than at the regular commercial terminals; although vastly more than when they had first flown in.
“All right! Everybody out!” the driver shouted above the din of traffic noise and people yelling, crying and screaming. He released the trunk and leaped out, quickly grabbing their bags and unceremoniously throwing them onto the sidewalk. Claire, Herc and Kayode swiftly got out to pick up the scattered luggage. Without saying another word, the driver jumped back in and with tires squealing, tore away, nearly colliding with several other vehicles as he did.
The three rapidly made their way through the terminal toward the passenger boarding areas. Claire saw Kay on his phone, animatedly talking to someone. She guessed he was making sure their 150 was fully fueled and prepped. What was very odd was there were no TSA agents anywhere in sight. Although the terminal was used by corporate and private jets, it was also used by the major airlines for some of their short-haul shuttle aircraft. Consequently, it contained the usual TSA screening checkpoints and equipment. But on this day there wasn’t a single agent, allowing every passenger to simply walk unimpeded to their planes. There was little question the agents had decided to take the day off because of the pandemonium sweeping the airport. No one coming to the airport to escape would put up with the intrusive searches and questioning. It was a terrorist’s dream come true.
Blinding Fear Page 28
