Station Breaker

by Andrew Mayne

  I remember this is also where I left the square...

  I roll through an intersection and see a group of police cars and a crime scene van parked in the RV lot where I hid the Humvee.

  Keep calm.

  The convenience store is just up ahead and the newspaper bin is only a few feet from the street.

  Do I get the square?

  Is it being watched?

  How long before somebody else finds it?

  Damnit. Damnit. Damnit.

  I pull over on the street next to the store. Trying to act relaxed, and failing, I make sure nobody is immediately around me and there are no visible snipers on the roof.

  The square is just ten feet away...

  Don't hesitate. Just do it.

  I get out of the car and walk over to the newspaper machine, pretending I'm calm and collected.

  Hours ago I was dressed in a sweat-stained jacket and shirt, now I'm wearing a dark blue polo and Vaughn's hat and sunglasses. I'm a totally different dude.

  Dressed like this, I look like any of the other spooks on the hunt for me.

  I grab the handle on the front of the bin and pull.

  It doesn't move.

  Waves of panic shoot through my body.

  Of course it doesn't open. I haven't put any change in. It's a fundamental concept of our economy, dumbass.

  I pat down my pockets and come up empty.

  Jesus. This is a horrible idea.

  Do I just leave?

  What if someone already spotted me near the machine? If I take off and come back later, there's no telling if the square is going to be here.

  The square. What the hell is that thing? I'm not sure if I buy Vaughn's explanation that it's some kind of crypto chip. There might be something to that, but I'm sure it's not the whole story.

  Christ. I have to get the thing now. If Tyler wants it, trying to come back here is going to be suicidal.

  I go inside the convenience store. The same girl with red hair and freckles is behind the counter. Renee, I think that was her name.

  I stand in front of the counter looking stupid for a moment.

  "Hi there! Are you with them fellas?" she says, pointing to the back.

  Two men dressed in FBI jackets are standing by the door to a small office with a monitor playing security camera footage.

  Keep.

  Fucking.

  Calm.

  "I'm...with a different agency." I fumble for a pack of gum to set on the counter and pray she doesn't recognize my face from earlier.

  One of the FBI agents turns to look at me.

  I nod my head like I'm one cop saluting another.

  He returns the gesture then goes back to looking at the monitor.

  "Any luck catching that boy so far?" asks Renee.

  "No ma'am, not yet."

  Renee lowers her voice and whispers. "He was right in here. Face to face with me." She shakes her head. "To think that just an hour earlier he'd murdered those poor Mexicans."

  My lips start to move, but I stop myself from saying, "Murdered?"

  Fucking, Vaughn.

  What did they do? Shoot the Mexican army unit?

  Why? What did that accomplish?

  "We'll get him," I say firmly, keeping my eye on the men in back.

  She hands me my change and I head for the door before the FBI men get a good look at me.

  I drop my coins in the slot, reach inside and freeze. It's not there...

  My heart stops and I suddenly get paranoid that I'm about to be surrounded by a dozen cops and a SWAT team.

  Breathe, David. Breathe.

  I exhale, then kneel down and look inside the machine. The square is wedged into a corner. It just fell. That's all.

  I pocket it and return to my car. Paranoid that someone might pay attention to which way I left, I do a U-turn and go back a block, then cut through a side road before getting back to the 10.

  I don't know if it fooled anybody, but if they're watching footage of the security camera and see which way I left, I want them thinking the opposite of where I'm going – even if it just buys me a few extra minutes.

  Finally, with Van Clark in the distance and nothing but scrub brush on either side of me, I take the new phone out of the package and call the number Tyler gave me.

  "Do you have it?" he asks.

  I'm too cagey to trust anyone at this point. "I know where it is."

  49

  RALLY

  TYLER IS STANDING to the side of a grilled cheese truck in the parking lot of the University of Texas at Austin stadium. Board shorts, t-shirt and sunglasses, he blends right in with all the alumni at the rally. What strikes me is how much he resembles his father. I already knew this, having met him before, but the likeness is all the more painful because his dad is now dead.

  He waves me over to a standing table under the shade of a tree.

  "If we have to run, go in different directions," he says under his breath. A police officer walks through the crowd. "That's campus police. Remember the uniform. If you see something different, we quietly go our own separate ways."

  "Tyler..." I don't know where to begin.

  He shakes his head. "Drop it. There's more important stuff to deal with right now."

  More important than the death of his father?

  "I don't want to know if you have the square. Just tell me that it's safe."

  I just nod my head. I placed it under the spare tire next to a can of mace. It was the best I could think of.

  He cautiously looks around. "Okay, I'm going to give you as much of the story as I can, so you understand what's at stake. Got it?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay. Okay. Right. I'm on an intelligence committee in the senate. It's not the senate intelligence one, but another more obscure committee. The reason it exists is because there are so many leaks in the regular senate intelligence committee that the major agencies asked for some other group to take things they didn't want leaked to congressional staffers and all the way back to Moscow and Beijing.

  "You'd be amazed at how idiotic some of the people I work with in the senate are. We had a senior senator giving all of her intelligence briefings to a Chinese foreign exchange student to blow up on a photocopier because she couldn't read the small print. This exchange student's father is a party boss.

  "When we confronted the senator about the breach she insisted that her assistant would never actually read the briefings because quote, 'Her people were honor bound to never do something like that.' Stupid things like that happen all the time.

  "Anyway. A year ago we get a briefing about a possible mole in the intelligence community. A highly placed one. This comes to us from the NRO, you know them, right? Of course. They're concerned that the DIA and possibly another organization has been compromised."

  "I just had a run in with the DIA."

  "Really?" Tyler's eyes widen. "And you got away?"

  "Barely."

  "I need to know more, but hold on to that. So I get this briefing that says there's a Russian agent in the DIA, possibly working with others. Two days later I get a briefing from the DIA telling us that they think the NRO is compromised. Both of them are asking for authority to arrest a senior intelligence official codenamed Silverback.

  "Here I am, I've got two agencies pitted against each other, swearing the other has a leak and wanting permission to investigate the other. Imagine that headache."

  "Is that what this is about?" I ask, trying to follow along.

  "Indirectly. That's what my world looked like before an analyst from the NRO shows up in my office in DC, too afraid to go to his boss, because he's not sure who to trust.

  "His job was to monitor Russian satellites for transmissions. One day he's listening to the K1 and realizes they left an onboard intercom open that was leaking part of their communications. Short-range, but we've got some very good tricks for picking that kind of thing up we modified from Naval Intelligence."

  "You bounce a laser off t
he surface and pick the voices out of the vibrations..." I reply.

  "Uh, yeah? How did you know?"

  "A friend in college worked on that for her masters. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt you."

  "It's okay... Anyway, this NRO analyst shows me the transcript of what's being said. Long story short, the senior commanders of the space station were having a secret conversation away from the other crew about a special payload being sent to them from Roscosmos."

  "What is it?"

  "That's the million-dollar question. The square is the answer. We know what we think it is, but we aren't positive. The analyst was concerned because if he was right and Silverback was real, this would have huge repercussions. The moment word leaked about it, we'd be in a worst case scenario."

  "And what's that?"

  "Right now there's a power struggle in Moscow. If the current president gets reelected he's going to consolidate his power and remove any opposition. His biggest nemesis is Valentin Zhirov."

  "Head of the Russian space agency."

  "Correct. Do you know what he did before that? He was Colonel General of the Russian Air Force. I got a report about an audit that was done after he left. Five nuclear warheads went missing. The Russians won't even acknowledge this audit took place."

  I feel my stomach tightening as everything comes together. "Wait...is that what this is about?"

  "Yes. Essentially. I asked Peterson and my father to risk their lives to find out if it was true."

  "If there was a nuclear weapon onboard the K1?"

  Tyler stops acting casual and stares at me. "Correct. A weapon the Russian government doesn't even know about."

  "Why would he put it there?"

  "At first we thought it was some kind of bargaining chip, then we started getting scattered intelligence about something called the Black Curtain. Zhirov's plan is to detonate this thing in orbit and let the blame fall on Radin.

  "It's not to attack us, although when that goes off, depending on what part of the world it's over, it'll disrupt communications for billions and potentially kill tens of thousands from the aftermath. And bring us to the brink of World War III."

  "Wait...what's the square? Vaughn, the DIA guy, said it was some kind of encryption chip."

  "That's partly true. That's what the Russians think you stole. It's actually the trigger for the bomb."

  "Holy shit." And it's in my rental car right now. "Good thing we got it."

  "Yeah. The problem is they're sending up another."

  50

  SECRET OPS

  TYLER SURVEYS the crowd while I just stand here, leaning on the table, numb. In the past few hours I've had two men tell me stories about what this is about. While Vaughn was working hard to convince me and put me at ease, Tyler just scared the shit out of me.

  I kept hoping all this would be worth it. But I didn't mean like this. A nuclear weapon in Low Earth Orbit would be more than a pretty light show. It would destroy half the satellites in space and send thousands of airplanes dropping from the sky. Not to mention the effect it could have on power grids, causing blackouts and plunging cities into chaos.

  "You okay?" he asks.

  "Still processing."

  "Hell of an info dump. You're here because I asked my father and Peterson to find out if the K1 had a nuclear weapon onboard. And it would appear that it does..."

  "What about Capricorn?"

  "Someone whose job was to make sure you got to ground safely."

  "And the person I was supposed to meet in Brazil?"

  "In the hospital right now. Hit by crossfire at the stadium."

  "Jesus Christ. Maybe if you told me more."

  "Maybe if a lot of things were different."

  I'm alive and he lost his father. "We should tell the world about this."

  He shakes his head. "It's complicated. Zhirov controls the entire Russian space program. If we say this is about a nuclear weapon onboard the K1 the Russians will call us liars and Zhirov will make sure there's nothing to be found if the Russian president somehow gets access."

  "But we could stop him from getting the next trigger."

  "No. If we call Zhirov out on this right now and the Russian President shuts down their next launch, the K1 commanders will be able to improvise a trigger."

  "What good would that do if their president knows that it was Zhirov's plot all long?"

  "Politically? Nothing. But strategically, Zhirov could then resort to using it as a threat. If he detonates the bomb over the US or China, there's going to be hell to pay for Radin."

  "That's insane." What madness is this?

  "That's Russia. Zhirov knows once the shit hits the fan he's a dead man. That's why he's playing this for all he can. He already assumes that if Radin gets reelected and sweeps with his party, he'll be seeing the inside of a Russian prison, no matter what. He's got nothing to lose."

  "Okay. I get it. The Russians are nuts. What's our play?"

  Tyler stares down at his hands on the table. "I don't know. Silverback, the spy, we think he's controlled by Zhirov. And to be honest, there are people in our government who would be okay with this playing out if the detonation happens over a part of the world that doesn't speak English."

  "China?"

  "A Russian EMP could set back their industrial base a few years – at least their telecommunications. While that might be bad for iPhone factories, plenty of people in the Pentagon wouldn't cry over that."

  "It could also start a war."

  "Yes, but the aggrieved party would be severely handicapped. And the moment that bomb goes off, Zhirov or one of his pals will storm into Radin's office, place him under arrest and make peace with the rest of the world before the shooting starts."

  "Christ. How do we fix this?"

  "We're not totally alone. Peterson and my father had some help. I've got a trusted contact in the NRO. A few in the CIA and even a couple friendly Russians."

  "Can I give you the square, so at least I'm out of the picture?"

  "The moment I take possession of that they could come get me."

  "You're a senator."

  "With a husband and kids. Right now there's a black SUV parked at the end of my block. It's been there since the moment you guys docked at the K1 – before dad..." His voice falters for a moment. "I contacted the Secret Service about it and they tell me that they have no idea who it is, but they have government plates."

  "You're being spied on?"

  "I figure that I'm about to be served any moment with a warrant accusing me of espionage. It'll be bullshit. The DIA or somebody else will say I gave secrets to some ex-lover – chances are they've already paid one off. My name won't mean anything."

  I nervously look around, afraid that he may have brought more trouble to me.

  "Relax. I've got some friends with local law enforcement. There's a perimeter here."

  "These guys kill cops."

  "I know. That's why I have to ask you to take it a little further."

  "I'm a wanted man. I might not be the best courier. Why not ask one of your cop friends?"

  "I don't trust anyone that much. I need you to take it to a man who might be able to do something about it."

  "The President?"

  "No. Somebody with real power. His name is Markov."

  "Sounds Russian."

  "It is. But he's one of ours. He defected in the 70's. Since then he's been one of the most sought after analysts in the intelligence community. He's also probably one of the smartest people on the planet."

  "And you trust him?"

  "If Markov wanted to take over the world, I'd defect to his side.

  "When he came over to us the Soviets put his family on a train and sent them off to Siberia to use as a bargaining chip. They died of cholera a month later in a gulag. The Russians fucked up big time on that one. They turned a mildly motivated defector into their worst enemy.

  "Legend has it after the Berlin Wall came down Gorbachev called up Markov and said, 'You w
in.'"

  "And you need me to bring the square to him?"

  "This is a game I don't know how to play. I'm not sure anybody does. Markov is the only one who stands a chance."

  "What the hell? What was your plan? Your dad is dead, so is Peterson. How did you see this playing out?"

  He stares at me for a moment without blinking. "Dixon, go fuck yourself. My dad is dead because he believed in things more important than himself. We didn't have a plan. We had an opportunity we had to take. Dad knew it. Peterson knew it. If we waited, a lot more people were going to die. And they may still...I know this has been a rough..."

  "Rough? You act like this is a fucking road trip."

  "Well, you may see the end of this and live. Dad won't. Peterson won't."

  Christ. "Don't lay that guilt on me. I didn't ask for this. I wasn't even supposed to be on that rocket."

  People turn to look at us as my voice rises.

  Tyler keeps his low. "No. You weren't. Robbie was."

  "This should have been his problem," I say exasperated.

  "It was going to be. Until dad changed his mind."

  "Wait, what?"

  "Robbie was in on it. But dad decided he didn't have what it took to see things through if it went to hell. He called me up and told me he was going to have Robbie back out so you could fly. Dad thought that even though you weren't military, you'd be the man to count on."

  I shake my head. "Well, he chose wrong on that one."

  "Are you kidding?" He stares me in the eye. "Are you seriously kidding me, David? Dad said you were the best pilot he ever met. Dad said you were the quickest thinker in a fix he ever met. Dad thought so much of you, holy shit, I wanted to be you."

  "I never knew." This was a very different side of Bennet than the one I worked with.

  "Of course not. The man could have given stone-face lessons to the Sphinx. You're more like dad than you realize. And you're the only person I trust to get it to Markov."

  "Can't he come to me?"

  "He's older than Yoda."

  "Fuck." I groan. I'm in this too deep. I get it. "Fine. Where does he live?"

  "Well, there's that. It was a condition of his defection. He wanted some place secure but not on government property...it's a private community inside Disney World."