The Krone Experiment
( Krone - 1 )
J. Craig Wheeler
This techno-thriller novel is set at the time of the break-up of the Soviet Union, yet reflects today’s headlines.
Damage to a Russian aircraft carrier leads to a breakdown in the detente with the United States. Star wars erupt as the two countries invoke space-based weapons in a deadly face off in orbit. Robert Issacs, Deputy Director of Scientific Intelligence for the CIA, and his top aide, Dr. Patricia Danielson, connect the carrier damage with a mysterious seismic signal. Thwarted by internal CIA politics, they put their careers at risk to engage in an unauthorized consultation with Jason, the secret group of physicists who consult for the government. Astrophysicist Alex Runyan advances a fantastic theory that triggers a race for the truth before the conflict with Russia can spin out of control. The quest leads to the New Mexico laboratory of Paul Krone. The true danger dwarfs that posed by the international crisis.
Bonus links to historical background material are provided at the end of the book. The Krone saga continues in the sequel, Krone Ascending, also available for Kindle.
J. Craig Wheeler
THE KRONE EXPERIMENT
For my parents, Peggy and G.L.
Chapter 1
Abd Ar-Rahman was the first. The old shepherd leaned on his staff by the trunk of a gnarled thuja pine, trying to find shade. He gazed down the foothills of the Atlas Mountains to the snaking Oued Moulouya in the distance. The half-wild mouflon sheep clustered near the tree, cropping at sparse spring shoots of tough esparto grass. Ar-Rahman had the briefest impression of a noise overhead. As he raised his eyes upward, an unseen hammer blow sprawled him on his back in the dry North African dust. He was conscious of his infirmities and used to stumbling now, but this left him stunned and confused. As he gazed upward, a branch the thickness of his wizened leg cracked and sagged under its own weight like a broken arm. The bleating finally penetrated his stunned senses. He crawled to where one sheep had staggered and collapsed an arm’s span from him, directly beneath the break in the branch. The animal was bleeding copiously from ragged wounds, one along its spine and one in its belly, as if it had been shot through. The old man watched in anguish as the sheep bled its life away.
* * *
Robert Isaacs tried to ignore the message from headquarters. He was enjoying himself and did not relish facing whatever calamity had produced the summons. He kicked his fins and glided along the surface, peering through the sea-churned murk at the occasional brightly colored fish. An old tire caught his eye. He gulped air through the snorkel and plunged the six feet to the bottom. Grasping the outer rim, he tugged upward. The small nurse shark, startled from its resting place in the dark hollow of the tire, dashed for the safety of deeper water.
Isaacs smiled to himself. That’s life, honey, he thought, somebody just kicked my tire, too. Surfacing, he swam to shore. After removing his mask and snorkel he balanced awkwardly, first on one foot, then the other, peeling off his flippers. He toweled himself dry, slipped into thongs, and crossed the narrow strip of beach. A spurt of traffic came along US 1, which separated the beach from Patrick Air Force Base, and he paused to let the cars pass. Immediately across the road was the blunt, brick sprawl of the Air Force Technical Assistance Center, which had been his temporary base of operations. One last time his eye scanned the long line of obsolete missiles that stood sentry before the building. He crossed the road and turned left-towards the clump of visitors’ bungalows, resigned to packing and catching the next flight back to Washington.
A glorious spring morning greeted him the next day as he headed out of town towards Virginia. March was departing the nation’s capital in its finest style, docile, but vibrant with new life. The break in his normal routine fresh in his mind, Isaacs tried to capture the pagan urge to rejoice by foregoing the usual morning radio news and by driving with the window open to the smell of dew-dampened trees. His hands guided the wheel of the compact Mercedes 380 SL semi-automatically as he followed his habitual route. He made the light on Canal Road and swung left onto Chain Bridge across the rocky narrows of the Potomac.
The light at the far end of the bridge stopped him. He glanced back over his shoulder at the distant spires marking Georgetown University. Fragments of breakfast conversation rushed back at him. Damned if I want to foot high tuition to some experimental college to help Isabel find herself, he thought. I can’t expect a high school junior to be completely level-headed, but I don’t understand Muriel’s resistance to a high quality university like Cornell. Hell, it was good enough for us!
The light changed and he turned up Chain Bridge Road. The feel of the accelerating car regenerated his sense of well-being for the moment. Then the tunnel of trees blocked the free blue sky, and the physical ascent towards his destination drew his mind on a parallel course. Unable to focus on the quality of the morning and not wanting to dwell on domestic problems, his thoughts shifted more frequently to the concerns of his job. By the time he made the right turn onto the George Washington Parkway, he was concentrating on his priorities for the day. Top on the list was the emergency meeting at nine o’clock. Bad news, he mused. Scheduled that leave months ago, and they’ve got to haul me back. Whatever it is, the bastard’s going to be an ulcer-buster.
Consciously attempting to quell that unpleasant turn of mind, he admired the fresh tan on the backs of his hands as they gripped the steering wheel. As a Major in the Air Force Reserve he served two weeks’ active duty a year, a welcome relief from the tension in his position with the Central Intelligence Agency, Deputy Director of Scientific Intelligence. He thought back on the past ten days, chuckling to himself, recalling his postman’s holiday. Intelligence officer at a beachfront Florida base, he thought, not a bad perk. The experience resonated with memories of his younger days of patient collection of raw intelligence data. In this case, however, there had been the lure of the beach and ocean and leisurely hours snorkeling to break the tedium. Those pleasant memories buoyed his spirits as he turned off the parkway towards headquarters. He steered up the off-ramp, following it ninety degrees to the left as it crossed back over the parkway. A small jam of cars feeding into the headquarters entryway from the southbound ramp forced him to brake sharply to a halt. At the pause, his glance strayed up the green embankments to blooming stands of redbud and dogwood. The car ahead of him pulled right at the drive leading to the highway department headquarters. As he closed the resulting gap, he recognized the Fiat two-seater in front of him. It belonged to Alice Lavey, who clerked in his analysis section.
The Fiat accelerated through the gate in the high chain link fence and past the guardhouse. Isaacs did the same, receiving a curt nod from the guard on duty who sat scrutinizing the windshield passes. Isaacs detected a small smile on the guard’s face, which he presumed to be a remnant of the passage of the Fiat. Alice had a penchant for low necklines. He steered the car on up the winding drive and into his personal parking space. He grabbed his briefcase, checked the doors, locked the driver’s side with his key, and stepped across the lot as he extracted and attached his photo ID.
“Good morning, Mr Isaacs, welcome back.”
“Good morning, Ralph. And it’s a nice one, isn’t it?”
“Sure enough!”
Ralph had been there on duty for fifteen years and knew virtually everyone in the Agency by sight. Isaacs idly wondered whether rotating the guard to insure ID’s were more carefully examined would be better or worse for security. He crossed the lobby, skirting the great presidential seal embedded in the floor and proceeded down the corridor. He climbed six flights of stairs, eschewing the elevator, pleased with the spring in his step that eluded many at forty-five, his rewa
rd for moderate consumption and frequent handball, not to mention miles of swimming recently. Continuing along the upper hall, Isaacs glanced at his watch and noted with satisfaction that he was right on time.
Whatever the subject of the meeting, as in any gathering of influential people, there was ground to be gained or lost. Isaacs tried to put the welfare of the Agency first and to avoid political infighting, but he had a talent for turning a situation to his advantage and protecting his flank when on the defensive. As he walked, he mentally sorted through the personalities who would be involved and the various hotspots that could be at issue. At 8:59 he stepped through the door of the top floor meeting room.
“You’re late, Isaacs, take a seat!”
Brother! thought Isaacs, welcome back. He moved to an empty chair. The icy greeting had come from Kevin McMasters, the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence. McMasters, Isaacs’s immediate boss, had been with the Agency over thirty years. He bridled at Isaacs’s rapid rise in the organization and even more so at suggestions that Isaacs was a candidate for his position as DCI.
Isaacs sat and glared at his hands clenched before him on the table, peripherally aware of the other principals. Next to McMasters at the head of the table was Howard Drefke, the Director of Central Intelligence. A recent political appointee, Drefke leaned heavily on McMasters in questions of internal affairs and spent most of his time on relations with the President and the National Security Agency. Across from McMasters, to Isaacs’s left, was Vincent Martinelli. Martinelli was Deputy Director for Collection Tasking, responsible for making intelligence gathering assignments throughout the intelligence community. To Isaacs’ right was Art Boswank, whose hearty air belied his clandestine role as Deputy Director for Operations.
A minute passed in silence, which reverberated with McMasters”s reproach to Isaacs. Then Earle Deloach, Deputy Director for Research and Development, hustled in and took the last chair, across from Isaacs, next to McMasters, who nodded to him in greeting. Isaacs felt Martinelli nudge him and looked over to see him pull a quintessentially Italian face and roll his eyes skyward. Isaacs cracked a small smile of camaraderie. They both knew McMasters would overlook Deloach’s transgressions even as he invented imaginary ones for Isaacs.
“Gentlemen,” began Drefke, “I must report to the President. Let’s summarize our situation please.”
Martinelli and Isaacs exchanged another glance, Martinelli giving an abbreviated nod. Drefke was liberal with his references to the President, and Martinelli did a devastating takeoff in which they all came out “mah buddy, the President.” This time Drefke was referring to his Commander-in-Chief.
“Isaacs has been absent for some time,” interjected McMasters dryly, “perhaps you should fill him in.”
You son-of-a-bitch, thought Isaacs, make it sound as if I was out chasing floozies on company time.
Drefke looked blankly at McMasters for a brief moment, his train of thought interrupted, and then turned to Isaacs. “Of course. The Russians went on Yellow Alert yesterday afternoon,” he said curtly. “They activated troops, moved fifteen Backfire bombers to forward holding positions, and uncapped, uh,” he checked the sheet in his hand, “seven missiles.”
“Lordy,” exclaimed Boswank, “they’ve hauled us through these dog and pony shows before. I’ve got the same question I had yesterday. How do we know they’re not just feeling their oats?”
“We’ve just received word they’ve gone public with it, and they don’t like an exposed position without good reason,” replied Drefke. “They’ve walked out of the new disarmament talks in Geneva.”
“Well, what the hell?” blurted Boswank. “They just convened a week ago.”
“Exactly,” said the Director, “it was in their interest, as well as ours, to give a semblance of cooperation to the talks.”
“Why involve the talks?” Isaacs asked quietly. “Why choose that particular vehicle for protest?”
“That’s just the point,” said the Director, addressing himself to Isaacs again. “They now claim we have used some unorthodox new weapon on them. They made veiled references to it in Geneva, and then the whole team just walked out and caught the first Aeroflot back to Moscow. Not the faintest charade of continuing the talks. Caught our people totally by surprise, and the press in Europe was on them like a pack of dogs. That was late morning in Geneva, about four hours ago. The Washington newshounds will be in full howl by now, too.”
“A new weapon?” asked Isaacs.
“Of course, there’s no such thing, so we don’t know what’s caused them to be so upset. That makes the situation damned unstable. I just talked to the President. He had Ambassador Ogarkov in for a quiet evening chat last night. They talked for an hour, but aside from vague threats of retaliation, the President didn’t get very much. Not even a tip about the walkout. We all know the Ambassador can be very cooperative in certain situations. In this case he’s under orders to play a very tight hand. No question but that the Russians are running scared. The only substantive disclosure was that they think one of their carriers was attacked in the Mediterranean. They’re hinting that some form of space-based weapon was directed at the carrier, igniting jet fuel tanks and causing quite a bit of damage.”
“There’s some basis for that,” said Martinelli, leafing through a folder. “After our meeting last night, I put out a general call for possible clues as to what triggered their alert. We’ve got photos of their carrier, the Novorossiisk. One of the four Kiev class Protivo Lodochny Kreyser antisubmarine cruisers. Definitely a fire on board, day before yesterday. Pretty bad, but no reason to think it was anything but someone smoking in the wrong place. Until you mentioned it, I hadn’t given it any particular attention.”
“Why would they think they were attacked?” asked the Director.
“No clue.”
“And what’s this about space?” inquired Isaacs. “What did we have up? Presumably we had no aircraft in the immediate area, and they must know that.”
“As usual, all our aircraft were maintaining a perimeter,” answered Martinelli. “An SR-71 went over for these shots after the fire broke out. We have all sorts of space hardware up, of course, but nothing they don’t know about. I can get that double-checked, but we seem to be clean. In particular, unless Defense has pulled a fast one on everyone, there’s not a beam weapon in the inventory — lasers, particles, what have you — that’s anywhere near ready to orbit. Hell, we all read “Aviation Week”, it’s still years away.”
“That’s very strange then,” Isaacs mused, “from space, in particular, not just from above. I guess that’s why they’re alarmed, given that they believe it. If we did have an operating beam weapon in space, the Russians would have good reason to be frightened. They know how potent those things can be: they invented them.”
“Well, we can’t have the Soviets running around with a panicked finger on the trigger,” declared the Director. “We’ve got to get a handle on this and calm them down. What else, Martinelli?”
“The aircraft have been refueling in mid-air, they’re still up. The best guess is that the missiles are targeted to the eastern seaboard. Boston down to Washington.”
Drefke looked grim. “What about you, Boswank?” The Director looked down the table at him. “Your people turn up anything?”
A veil settled over Boswank’s face, as it did whenever he had to directly discuss his men in the field. “Sir, it takes time to reach our people in deep cover. We should know in a few days what the real view is in Moscow. Our man in the admiralty can be requested to get us the damage report on the carrier. That may give a clue as to why they think they were attacked, and how.”
Drefke was distinctly unhappy at the lack of concrete news. “A few days,” he grunted looking around the table, “we could be dust in a few days. I’ve got to go to the President. What do I tell him we’re doing? Waiting for some Russian turncoat to give us the time of day?”
Boswank winced uncomfortably.
�
��I want to know what the hell we’re doing how!” Drefke demanded.
“There’s the new ultraviolet camera and spectrometer on the FireEye satellite my team launched a week ago,” said Deloach enthusiastically. “We could divert it to have a look at that carrier.”
“We need that satellite where it is, Earle,” said Isaacs, trying to keep the patronizing edge off his voice, “over the new industrial area in Siberia.” Typical Deloach, thought Isaacs to himself: he’d look for the lost nickel under the street lamp where the light’s good. Too bad he doesn’t have the same sense for good intelligence he does for good hardware.
“The fire obliterated anything useful you could have seen on deck,” added Martinelli.
“The satellite ought to be stationed over Tomsk,” McMasters said with a hint of bitterness.
“We’ve learned everything we usefully can at Tomsk,” Isaacs replied patiently. Isaacs was vividly aware that McMasters had developed the targets at Tomsk and that his ego was too tied up in them to grant that their usefulness was played out. He had not made a substantial contribution since. “We’ve been through the arguments in favor of Siberia in detail,” Isaacs said, and you’ve resented every one I made, he finished to himself.
“Dammit, let’s stick to the subject in hand,” Drefke commanded. Isaacs nodded, chagrined at letting McMasters draw him in.
There was silence for a moment, broken by Isaacs.
“Surveillance of the carrier is useless, as Vince points out. The fire will have seen to that. We have to convince them we had nothing to do with it. They’ll want more than Presidential assurances. We must figure out what happened to them, or help them find out for themselves. Nobody on the Novorossiisk itself, Art?”
“The Novorossiisk?” Boswank shook his head. “Sure, a few, but they’re the worst for rapid feedback. We can’t get to them until they return to Russia. We have to go through a Soviet contact: too dangerous for the source otherwise.”
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