Nordstrum looked thoughtful.
“Gord, you may be sold,” he said. “But the currency of trust NASA built up with the public during its Mercury and Apollo years is almost depleted. Selling them is going to be a problem.”
“You aren’t sounding very sanguine.”
Norstrum expelled a breath. “The accident creates uncertainty even for those of us who believe in space research. And long before Orion, a great many taxpayers, maybe a majority, considered the program a wasteful frittering away of their money. For its critics, a forty-billion-dollar international space station, with hundreds of millions going to bail out the Russians—who couldn’t pay for their end despite Starinov’s pledges to the contrary—is emblematic of that waste. They haven’t seen any practical value in it and nobody’s done an adequate job of making them feel otherwise. And now, with the death of Colonel Rowland ...” He spread his hands. “I wish I could be more optimistic.”
Gordian leaned further across the desk.
“Okay,” he said. “What do we do?”
Nordstrum sat quietly for several moments before answering.
“I’m not your paid consultant anymore. Not a newspaper columnist. I can only speak to you now as someone who sees the workings of government and big industry as countless other people in this country do, from the outside through shaded windows, and maybe that’s a good place to come at this from, maybe it makes it easier to be their voice.” He paused. “Convince them, convince me, that the Orion investigation is going to be completely aboveboard. I don’t want to hear about its progress from some evasive media spokesman who believes his primary responsibilities are to spin the facts and keep me mollified while those in the know go about their work in secrecy. I’m sick of those types and am going to hit the clicker the instant they show their faces on my TV screen. When something surfaces that hurts, let it hurt. For once, just once, I want the truth straight up. And I want it from someone I can trust.”
He fell silent, studying the brawny shoulder of Mount Hamilton through the window.
The silence lasted awhile.
At last Gordian unfolded his arms, lifted them off the desk, and reclined in his chair so slowly Nordstrum could hear every creak of its burnished leather as a separate and distinct sound.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes.” Nordstrum checked his watch. “Don’t let another news cycle go by without a statement to the media. There’s still time to put one out before the end of the business day. And before the six-thirty network broadcasts.”
Gordian smiled a little.
“Hell of a mouthful,” he said. “Just like the old days.”
“The sole difference being,” Nordstrum said, “that in the old days I got handsomely compensated.”
Their insertion technique highly modem, their means of delivery an airborne relic, the twelve HAHO jumpers vaulted from a blacked-out DC-3 that had carried Allied troops on missions of liberation during World War II.
This was a very different sort of mission, plotted by men with very different objectives.
The propeller-driven transport had flown from a hidden airstrip in the Pantanal, a sprawling wetlands in central Brazil, to within a dozen miles of their drop zone outside the frontier city of Cuiabá. While a traditional parachute jump might have occurred at an altitude of three thousand feet, they were ten times that distance from the ground when they exited the plane. It was a height at which the atmosphere was too thin to support human life and where, even in the tropics, the extreme cold could damage the flesh and freeze the eyelids shut.
Survival for the high-altitude-high-opening team therefore hinged upon specialized equipment. Oxygen canisters rigged to their jumpsuits made it possible for them to breathe. Protective goggles allowed them to keep their eyes open in the frigid, lashing wind. Pullover face masks and thermal gloves offered insulation against the worst effects of exposure.
Free fall through the moonlit sky was brief. Their airfoil-shaped chutes released moments after they jumped, unfolding front to back, then from the middle out to the stabilizer edges—a sequence that checked their deployment until they were just below the backwash of the props, reducing the opening shock.
Their canopies filled with air, hands on their steering toggles, the jumpers descended at an initial rate of about eighteen feet per second, passing through a high layer of cirrocumulus clouds composed of supercooled water and ice. Fastened to their harness saddles, the bags containing their assault weapons doubled as seats that helped distribute their weight and compensate for drag.
The lead jumper was a man who had gone by many names in the past, and presently chose to be called Manuel. He snatched a glance down at the altimeter atop his reserve chute, checked his GPS chest pack unit for his current position, and then signaled the HAHO team to form up in a crescent around him. He wore a small, glowing blue phosphorous marker on his back, as did three of the other jumpers. Another four had orange markers, the remaining four yellow ones. The colored markers would allow them to maintain close formation as they glided through the inky darkness, and provide easy identification when they broke off into separate groups on the ground.
For now, however, it was vital that they stay together through their long cross-country flight, silently riding the night wind, sweeping down and down toward their target like winged, malicious angels of death.
THREE
VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 17, 2001
FROM AN ASSOCIATED PRESS BULLETIN:
Space Agency and UpLink International Pledge to Keep ISS on Track Despite Shuttle Disaster
Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral-In a joint statement released late this afternoon through NASA press spokesman Craig Yarborough, agency officials and Roger Gordian, whose firm, UpLink International, is chief contractor of the ISS project, have declared their undivided commitment to resuming assembly of the orbital station as soon as possible. “We will reach beyond loss and grief,” Yarborough said in his opening remarks, and then went on to announce the formation of an investigative task force to determine the cause of the blast, which has reawakened grim memories of the 1986 Challenger accident that claimed the lives of seven astronauts and nearly crippled America’s space program.
Asked about the composition of this fact-finding team—and apparently mindful of the widespread criticisms leveled upon NASA in the wake of Challenger—Yarborough replied that it would include personnel from both inside and outside the organization, and promised more specific information about its makeup within days.
According to the prepared text of the statement, Mr. Gordian will take a “personal role in the probe,” and “see that it includes a top-to-bottom review of safety procedures at his ISS production site in Brazil,” where the station’s components are being manufactured under UpLink’s overall management.
Gordian’s assurance is viewed as a sign that he intends to avoid the divisive, public finger-pointing in which NASA and its contractors engaged after Challenger’s ill-fated launch fifteen years ago....
When Nimec and Megan spotted the police cruiser, it was parked at the gravel shoulder of the road, about a car length behind a red Toyota pickup, its roof racks throwing off circus strobes of light.
The two officers, who had obviously arrived at the scene in it, were scuffling with a third man outside the pickup.
One of the lawmen was fortyish and burly and wore a Hancock County deputy’s uniform and badge. The other was perhaps twenty years younger and forty pounds leaner and wore a State of Maine warden’s uniform and badge. The civilian, a tall, dark-haired man in a green chamois shirt, tan goose-down vest, jeans, and hiking boots, was standing out on the road with his back pressed up against the driver’s door of his truck. The warden was jammed halfway inside the door, his head under the steering column, his body bent across the front seat, his backside sticking almost comically out of the cab. The deputy had the pickup driver’s collar bunched in his fist and was attempting to wrestle him away from
the door, but he was putting up a hard fight, shoving the deputy back with one hand, throwing punches at his face and neck with the other. The cop had an open cut below his right eye. A pair of mirrored sunglasses lay on the blacktop near his feet, one lens popped out of the wire frame. He was shouting furiously in the pickup driver’s face, but neither Pete nor Megan could make out what he was saying through the windows of their Chevy.
“What in the world’s going on up there?” she asked, peering out her side of the windshield.
Nimec breathed deeply and slowed the car.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But you see the guy in the green shirt?”
She glanced over at him, reading his face. “Pete, don’t tell me.”
Nimec breathed again.
“Tom Ricci,” he said.
She looked outside again, rolling down her window to try and hear what the shouting was about.
Unable to pry him away from the truck, the thickset deputy had switched tactics and moved in on Ricci, throwing his greater weight against him, getting him in a clinch. Standing his ground, Ricci caught him on the cheek with two quick overhand punches, then followed through with a right uppercut to the jaw. The deputy rocked backward on his heels, breaking his hold, his Smokey the Bear hat sailing off his head to the ground, where it flipped over once and then landed beside the broken sunglasses.
“You crazy son of a flatlander bitch!” he shouted, spitting blood. “I’m tellin’ you, move away from that door or you’re gonna be in deeper shit than you already are!”
Ricci stood there looking at him, hands balled into fists. The warden he’d pinned in the door squirmed a little, and Ricci kicked him in the back of the shin with his heel. A string of curses gushed from inside the cab.
Ricci seemed to pay no attention to them. Nor were any of the men yet paying attention to the Chevrolet that had eased to a halt some ten yards down the road.
“I already explained how it has to work,” Ricci told the deputy. “I get to keep my product, your boy Cobbs gets to pull his ass out of the air. Otherwise we can all stick around here from now till Saint Swithen’s Day.”
The deputy wiped his mouth, glanced at the red-flecked saliva on his hand, and spat again.
“You got balls,” he said, glaring. “Givin’ me orders, expectin’ me to believe some concoction about—”
“The catch is legit, Phipps.”
“Says you. As Cobbs tells it, you ’n’ your crackpot tender were way out past your zone.”
“We can talk about Dex later. You and Cobbs saw my license.”
“But I didn’t see where your boat was, or where you was divin‘, or where you come up, and besides, that’s all his area of respons’bility.” Phipps poked his chin out at the pickup. “You let Cobbs be ’n’ leave us the totes without any more carryin’ on, maybe I let you slide for assaultin’ an officer.”
“Two officers! Don’t you let the wicked fuck forget about me, Phipps!” Cobbs shouted from inside the cab. His head was still wedged beneath the steering wheel. “Don’t you goddamn let him—”
Ricci kicked Cobbs with the heel of his boot again and his sentence ended in a yelp of pain.
Phipps released a heavy sigh.
“Two officers,” he said.
“Two crooked officers.”
Phipps frowned indignantly.
“That’s it, no more crap from you,” he said, dropping his hand to his holster and bringing out his side arm, a .45 Colt automatic.
In the Chevy, Megan turned to Nimec.
“Uh-oh,” she said. “Looks like trouble.”
He nodded and reached for his door handle.
“Sit tight,” he said.
“Pete, you sure it’s wise to—”
“No,” he said. “I’m not.”
And then shouldered open the door, exited the car, and walked toward the pickup over the narrow country road.
That was when Sheriff’s Deputy Phipps seemed to take notice of him—belatedly and for the first time. He cast a quick glance at Nimec, then past him at the parked Chevy, keeping the pistol trained on Ricci ... who had also partially turned in Nimec’s direction.
“You blind, mister?” Phipps said. One eye on him, the other on Ricci. “Or did you just happen to miss what’s going on here?”
Nimec shrugged.
“Tourist,” he said. “We’ve been waiting awhile.”
The deputy said nothing. He looked at the Chevy again, this time suspiciously checking out its front tag.
“It’s a rental,” Nimec said. Stalling, trying to cook up some kind of plan that would extricate Ricci, not to mention himself, from the situation.
Whatever the hell the situation was.
“Wife and I are headed for Stonington,” he said. “Figured I’d ask when we might be able to pass.”
Phipps stared at him, vexed and confused.
“You see,” Nimec said, “we’ve got reservations at an inn that they’ll only hold for another half hour. And being that we just drove all the way up from Portland on Route 1—”
“Which is what you’re gonna have to swing back around onto,” Phipps interrupted. “Right this minute.”
Nimec shook his head.
“Sorry,” he said. “Can’t do that.”
Phipps looked incredulous. “What did you say?”
“Can’t do that,” Nimec repeated, knowing he’d really stepped into it now. “There aren’t any other inns open. Being that this is the off-season.”
Phipps flushed. Though he was still pointing his gun at Ricci, his attention had turned fully to Nimec.
“Another fuckin’ flatlander, why the fuck we let them people into the fuckin’ state of Maine?” Cobb screamed from inside the truck, his voice only slightly muffled. “You better arrest the whole queer bunch of them, Phipps, ’cause my back’s gonna snap like a twig I stay stooped over like this!”
Phipps eyed Nimec with a kind of hostile exasperation, unconsciously wagging his head, looking uncertain about what to do next.
An instant later Ricci made the decision for him. Taking advantage of Phipps’s distraction, he suddenly stepped away from the door of the pickup, caught hold of his outstretched gun hand at the wrist, and bent it sharply backward, simultaneously turning sideways and snatching the pistol with his free hand.
Phipps released a cry of pain and surprise as the pistol was torn from his grasp. He was still gaping in disbelief when Ricci’s leg snapped forward and up in a powerful front kick, the ball of his foot striking him in the broad, chunky stretch of his stomach. The air whoofing out of him, he stumbled backward and landed hard on his bottom, his legs wishboned in front of him.
Cobbs, meanwhile, had pulled his head out of the pickup’s open door and come charging at Ricci from behind. But before he had gotten more than a couple of feet, Ricci spun in a smooth circle on his left leg, his right leg swinging parallel to the ground and thrusting out at the knee, catching Cobbs in the groin with a roundhouse kick. He flew back against the side of the car and doubled over, groaning, his hands between his thighs.
Ricci ejected the Colt’s magazine and tossed it into the spindling roadside brush, then shoved the gun into his vest pocket. Nodding at him, Nimec rushed over to Cobb and took his pistol from its holster. Its clip joined the one that was already in the bushes.
Ricci knelt over Phipps and patted down the bottom of his trouser legs.
“Nothing there to say peekaboo?” he said.
Phipps glared and shook his head.
“Okay,” Ricci told him, stepping back. “Here’s how it goes. We’re all driving off, me with my catch, you two without your guns, our friendly tourist with his nice wife and rental car. You forget about this thing, maybe I don’t report the little scam you and Cobbs tried running on me to Fish and Game or the attorney general’s office down in Augusta. You really behave yourselves, maybe I won’t tell anybody in town how I kicked both your asses and disarmed you barehanded. In two seconds flat.”
&nb
sp; Phipps continued glaring at him in baleful silence for another moment, then slowly nodded.
“Good,” Ricci said. “Stay right where you are until I’m gone. Ground needs thawing anyway.”
Phipps snorted, hawked over his shoulder, and looked back up at him. “How the hell am I supposed to explain losing my gun?”
Ricci shrugged.
“Your problem,” he said.
Behind them, Cobbs was still leaning against the pickup, moaning and clutching himself. Ricci turned, strode over to him, grabbed his shoulder, and shoved him roughly away from the truck. Cobbs tripped and fell on his side, drawing his knees toward his chest.
Ricci looked at Nimec, then moved up close to him.
“Poor bastard should’ve kept his hands off my ignition keys,” he said in a voice too low for the others to hear. “Welcome to Vacationland, Pete. Better get back in your car and follow along behind me. I’ll explain everything once we’re at my place.”
They had come in from the rugged plateau country of Chapada dos Guimarães, a convoy of four dusty jeeps bumping along the unpaved track in the deepening dusk, traversing the seventy kilometers to their destination with arduous slowness. After many long hours of riding shotgun in the forward car, Kuhl had finally seen the compound through a break in the overhanging foliage, and then ordered their headlights dimmed and their vehicles pulled off the road.
Once under cover of the trees, he turned to his driver. “Que horas são?”
The driver showed him the luminous dial of his wristwatch.
Kuhl studied it a moment without comment. Then he glanced over his seat rest and nodded to the man behind him.
“Vaya aqui, Antonio.”
Antonio returned the nod. He was dressed entirely in black and had a Barrett M82A1 sniper’s rifle across his lap. Accurate to a range exceeding a mile, it utilized the same self-loading, armor-piercing .50-caliber ammunition normally fired by heavy machine guns—bullets capable of pounding through an inch or more of solid steel armor. The weapon’s incredible firepower and semiautomatic action were its notable advantages over other sniper guns. On the negative side, it was weighty, long-barreled, and would kick back with a recoil matching its destructive performance. But Antonio’s targets would be shielded, and he would need to penetrate that shield at a considerable distance.
Shadow Watch (1999) Page 4
