America One - The Launch

by T I WADE

  The second company, the largest diamond company in Antwerp, Belgium, offered him the same for the other half, on the same terms. He accepted and payments were made into a New York bank account. He would have to declare the payments on his tax return, but he wanted to see how much the government still owed him when it came time to pay. On the first load he figured he could still deduct the money owed to him on his taxes. Also, he now had more than enough gas money, and money to pay his team their promised bonuses.

  The 737’s cargo holds were loaded with a third of its maximum load, 80 crates of rocks, weighing in at 7.5 tons from the last two flights.

  He felt good watching both aircraft takeoff to the east, fully fuelled and aiming for Bermuda. He knew that he would never receive all the money due to him. Maybe the diamonds from Europe would be paid one day, but he was only interested in completing the necessary flights into space. From then on money would be one of the least important issues in his life.

  Sunday’s second flight was also another milestone for Ryan. The largest group of workers to date, a mix of forty-one European and American scientists and their families were returning home, their jobs completed. The 737, a passenger aircraft, had twenty-eight scientists aboard, two Russian and twenty-six European; many were accompanied by their families and the promised pay and bonus checks drawn from his New York bank.

  The white Gulfstream with the crates of diamonds, two scientists, three security guards and the loaned equipment being returned to Amsterdam, departed first, twenty minutes before the larger 737.

  Being a Sunday, the expected call took four hours to interrupt the thoughts of Ryan Richmond.

  “Mr. Richmond, Mortimer here, at the Pentagon. You have two aircraft about to leave U.S. airspace. Can you tell me why?”

  “Good afternoon general. It seems you are taking a real interest in my affairs. The Gulfstream IV has a few of my team aboard heading into Amsterdam to keep an eye on my diamond over there. The Boeing 737 is a passenger aircraft. With the successful launch of my third space vehicle, several of my projects are winding down, and the aircraft has scientists and their families returning to Europe. You can tell your colleague at NASA, Hal McNealy, that four of his shuttle designers and builders have been released from contracts with Astermine and are also returning home.”

  “I will send on the information, Mr. Richmond. When are you expecting your next cargo from space?”

  “On my next reentry in five days,” Ryan replied.

  “Congress has given me the authority to fly you into Washington for a hearing with the National Budget Committee, a new committee, next week. We have orders to place a team of customs and excise agents on your field to take stock of any importations of foreign metals, or diamonds from space. As you are well aware, the Senate will pass the new Bill tomorrow, which will allow the United States government to collect taxes on imported goods from space. That means that every one of your flights, from space or from international borders, entering U.S. airspace will need to be searched on arrival.”

  “And if the Bill does not pass the Senate, General Mortimer?” Ryan asked.

  “Oh, it will, Mr. Richmond. Don’t underestimate us here in Washington. Tomorrow or Tuesday the president will sign the bill and we expect our personnel to be given accommodations on your airfield. Don’t even try to appeal this ruling. The ink on this presidential order is already dry. Your hearing with the Congressional National Budget Committee hearing is Thursday, 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time.” The call was ended.

  Both aircraft arrived safely in Bermuda, were refueled and continued on their way towards Europe. Ryan breathed a sigh of relief. All the European and Israeli companies buying his diamonds had agreed not to publicize any information on these new diamonds on the market for a minimum of 90 days. It was in the companies’ own interests to keep diamond prices high. They would have to leak these perfect diamonds into the markets slowly, even over years, and Ryan would be happy if the diamonds were never made public.

  He smiled at the orders barked out from Washington. What should he actually tell them? He decided to fly to Washington to show them photos of the new radioactive shielded container several of his team were working on.

  Even with only 10 percent of his total workforce gone, the town he had built looked emptier than usual. He walked around aimlessly thinking about the next week. He nodded to several employees who said hello to him and he decided to go to the heavily guarded Hangar Seven, which was now empty of all space vehicles. He found his golf cart and first drove to the eastern edge of the runway. Here he surveyed the construction of the new single-story building a team of two dozen air force personnel from Nellis Air Force Base were working on; it was to accommodate the new government officials he knew would arrive before he received Mortimer’s call.

  It was ready-made, 24-hour military housing brought in from Allen Saunders’ supplies contact at Nellis. The outside fence perimeter of the buildings was about to be complete and he was told that several trucks were on the way from Nellis with a couple of septic tanks, a diesel generator, and furniture and military utensils for the bedrooms, kitchen and communal area. It should be complete by Monday afternoon apart from the septic tanks, which would take a week. The new occupants would have to use the delivered outside toilets until then. He returned to Hangar Seven.

  Trucks had arrived in the last week with the last three sets of the cylinders bound for space, the last aluminum items to be brought into the airfield. The trucks had returned to California in the direction of Silicon Valley with the last loads of Hangar Seven’s spacecraft production equipment.

  Each spacecraft had taken $250 million to produce, using over $100 million of purchased and leased equipment to build them. Most of the leased equipment had already been returned, and the last loads were going to several companies that had purchased the nearly new equipment for forty cents on the dollar.

  Much of the equipment consisted of large metal molders and shapers, ovens, vacuum presses and powerful metal panel cutters. All the spacecraft had been built out of the same panels that were already transported up to build the mother ship, AMERICA ONE; even the three shuttles costing $350 million each, and built in Hangar Six.

  Hangar Seven was now a total mess. The enclosed truck that VIN had seen enter had emptied three medium-sized digging machines on loan from a Caterpillar rental firm in Sacramento, California. The hole in the middle of the hangar, where the concrete floor had been was now a muddy mess; water had been used to dampen any dust. The forty-foot wide hole was well over twenty feet deep, and the machines hauling out the underground dirt were transporting it into three dump trucks.

  Very few had noticed the dump trucks that left the hangar twice a night to dump the dirt into a hole near the fuel tanks a hundred yards away. For some unknown reason, there was an open hole between the external tanks. It looked quite natural and now it was being filled in. The dirt had actually been used to make the solid base of the massive apron before the cement was laid.

  Ryan walked over to a man in charge.

  “How long to go Vitalily?” Ryan asked.

  “We should be underneath the apron by tomorrow night,” the man replied. We’ve reached a depth of thirty feet and have had to begin our underground channel to allow the machines to climb out with the loads of dirt.”

  “Good. The first bags of cement, the mixer and the steel frame for the walls, roof and floor should be here by tomorrow afternoon. You will be able to use some of the dirt for the mix, won’t you?” Ryan asked.

  “About a quarter of what we haul out of here,” the man replied.

  “The hole out there is already filling up,” Ryan commented.

  “I’m sure that a small pile of desert dirt will go unnoticed,” replied the Russian. “We will level it out as the trucks dump it there.”

  Satisfied, Ryan left the Hangar by the back door nodded at the guard walking around the hangars and went back to his office. Tomorrow was the Monday run, and he wondered how his astr
onauts would do in their weakened states.

  They didn’t do too badly. Maggie and Jonesy ran together with Allen and Kathy. Thanks to the high gravity levels on the asteroid Jonesy and Maggie were still pretty fit, running in the middle of the pack. Suzi and VIN were up in Ivan, so Ryan ran alone, Allen Saunders and Kathy trying hard to catch him.

  The morning news after dawn wasn’t very good. The war in the Middle East had escalated to where Syria had launched a couple of missiles towards Israel. That country had immediately retaliated by launching two missiles in return, straight into the center of the government buildings in Damascus. Turkey sent in its first Brigade of tanks into Syria and an army of Syrian rebels, excited to see the tanks, was forming around the slow moving tanks.

  “They would make great targets for the remains of the Syrian Air Force,” Ryan thought over breakfast.

  Then the news moved to something that surprised him. “Reports from a Spanish space observatory are showing a large meteor, about the size of a large building, was sighted heading towards earth still over one million miles away,” the television announcer stated. A small pinprick of the rock, no larger than a distant star appeared on screen, and then a graph showed its trajectory; “This small meteor, the Spanish space authorities have stated, is slowly curving into a close path with earth’s orbit around the sun. As of midnight last night, a probable hit has climbed from 27.88 percent to 31.45 percent, a drastic change in the thirty-six hours they have been following this meteor. If this meteor entered our atmosphere, there is little chance of it hitting the ground. At worst it could explode high up in the atmosphere causing little damage. It could be close to earth in two months, during the last week of November.

  “Ryan Richmond, the head of Astermine INC. has been ordered to attend a hearing of the newly formed Congressional National Budget Committee by Congressman Charles Dickens who heads this new Committee. If you remember Congressman Dickens was the only member of Congress who was invited to Astermine’s company headquarters in the Nevada desert to welcome home the first mined rocks from space.

  “It seems that the Senate is once again whole. Several senators on Friday didn’t get into Capitol Hill. There were suggestions made of possible food poisoning from a meal they had in a Washington restaurant Thursday night. On further inspection, the restaurant was cleared by the Washington Health Department and, like the Senate, has reopened for business.”

  To Ryan enjoying freshly made Danish, the news seemed to be about him more and more. The national debt was in the many trillions. His meager little empire was in the billions, yet the soothsayers in Washington wanted his skin. He wondered if there were many other Americans worried about their businesses being taken over by the government. He still couldn’t understand the pettiness of Washington. Even a hundred businesses his size didn’t add up to a trillion dollars.

  By midday the first bill in the Senate was passed. The third bill, the bill that affected Ryan, was passed just before the Senate closed for the day’s business and, the next morning, Tuesday, the president had it signed at exactly nine thirteen a.m. and the first incoming aircraft was heard ten minutes after that.

  Washington wasn’t that quick. It was the returning Boeing 737 with Ryan’s crew who had purchased delicacies from a couple of European airport duty free shops.

  Twenty minutes later the real cowboys arrived in two large military helicopters. Once they landed Ryan found out that one was full of Army Military Police commanded by a captain; several Customs and Excise inspectors got out of the second one. Baggage was unloaded and the helicopters disappeared in the direction they had come.

  “Mr. Richmond, Captain Mike Burns, U.S. Army Military Police. I’m here to provide protection for this group of Customs and Excise personnel from New York Harbor. Captain Joseph Drin is their commander. As of 9:13 a.m. Eastern time they have the authority to inspect any incoming flights into this airfield. This 737, did it arrive after 9:13 a.m. Eastern time today?”

  Ryan acknowledged that it did.

  “Can you tell me its cargo Mr. Richmond?” asked the Customs Officer.

  Yes, one case of Turkish delights, one of my favorites, ten cases of Cadbury’s English Fruit and Nut chocolate, ten cases of duty-free Russian vodka and the same amounts of scotch and gin from Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. These are all orders from my 300 personnel here on base, and one bottle of Single Malt Whiskey for me; an 18-year old bottle of Springbank, if that is of interest to you.

  The captain looked at the team of five Customs and Excise men.

  “Mr. Richmond, your airfield is now designated as an International Airport. Any international flights in or out of the country need to be inspected by my team here,” stated the lead man smiling and shaking Ryan’s hand. He seemed a kind man and Ryan felt guilty about housing them in temporary accommodations at the end of the noisy runway. “I would like to see inside the aircraft and talk to the pilots who brought her in, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course, they are heading our way right now,” Ryan replied kindly seeing Allen Saunders, Bob Mathews and Kathy Pringle approach from freshening up.

  The Gulfstream had flown straight back to San Diego from Amsterdam to pick up a pilot to fly the 737 back. He heard the Gulfstream approaching and on his handheld gave it permission to land.

  “General Saunders, Colonels Pringle and Mathews, United States Air Force. Colonel Pringle was pilot in command for the 737’s return flight,” Ryan said to the new visitors.

  Immediately the army captain saluted. Mr. Drin wasn’t so excited about the high ranks of the pilots, and took Kathy to one side to inspect the aircraft. Its cargo was still on two pallets in the shade underneath the aircraft, which was being refueled.

  Within minutes the man in charge was happy with the small cargo. It was meant for over 300 American citizens after all. “Mr. Richmond, your next incoming space flight, when is that?”

  “On Thursday, Mr. Drin,” Ryan replied. “May I assume that launches into space are not your concern?”

  “No, they don’t come under the rules of international flights yet. I think Washington is working on that one though. No passports are required in space, the craft is not landing in another country on earth, and so departing flights are not under our jurisdiction. Could you show us to our accommodations please?”

  Ryan spoke into the handheld; a security detail approached the group by the 737.

  “Mr. Drin, Captain Burns, you are not entitled to enter any of the buildings on my airfield without a search warrant. You are not allowed to speak or communicate with my white-coated scientists. You are not allowed off base, except with my permission. You are to stay in and around your quarters, unless there is an arrival. Any breaches of protocol here on base and you will be thrown out of the front gate. It’s a long walk to Las Vegas. I don’t care what the government thinks; this is still private property, my property. It is paid for and you will be treated as guests here. Please remember you are not my employees, nor am I, or any of my personnel your staff. Since both you men understand the rule of law, this is my rule of law. I will allow you to do the job you have to do, under law, but my laws here are as strict as the law our government imposed on my business. My security detail will make sure that you do not end up where you are not supposed to be.”

  The tractor with a trailer arrived to take them to the end of the runway.

  “You should have everything you need in your accommodations. If you need anything, please tell Sergeant Myers here. He is now in charge of you, not you of him. There is cable television, radio and you will find your stay with us the best the United States Air Force can provide. One last thing, Mr. Drin, no aircraft may enter my airfield without my authority, and I don’t like visitors, especially from Washington. They are starting to piss me off.”

  On that note Ryan turned and allowed Sergeant Myers to take the visitors to their new home, about as comfortable as forward base military personnel were used to in Iraq. All the housing equipment now within t
hirty yards of the end of the runway had come from there.

  He didn’t see or hear the new visitors until Thursday afternoon, when the shuttle returned that had been lifted off inside the screaming C-5, which flew over the newcomers little town at less than a hundred feet before dawn. Ryan had just returned from Washington late that afternoon in the rented Gulfstream.

  The tractor pulled the shuttle back to the apron, and then while the crew was being helped out of the small side entrance, the tractor picked up the trailer and went to collect the Customs personnel.

  By nightfall the rocks were graded and sorted by the scientists while the five customs men looked on. By midnight the work was finished. They had 2,000 pounds, one ton of rocks, in ten crates ready for shipment. A twin-rotor Sikorsky helicopter came in and landed. Ryan made Mr. Drin sign a memorandum that the government was receiving the documented consignment and then it disappeared into the night sky.

  Ryan needed a drink, and he went back to his bungalow to relax and think about what had happened that day on Capitol Hill.

  Chapter 10

  Capitol Hill

  Ryan left in the Gulfstream IV dressed in his best suit two hours earlier than the C-5 took off, just before dawn. He had still a week left on its rental agreement and Allen Saunders flew him to Washington with Colonel Pringle as co-pilot.

  He certainly didn’t know what to expect at this hearing, but he was sure it wasn’t going to be nice. He called ahead to his friend, the former president, who organized a CBS and NBC news team to be there to interview him as he flew into the private Arrivals building at Reagan International.

  He was met by the media while he was getting into a black government Chevy Suburban waiting to drive him to Capitol Hill.