“Is he still boxing?”
“More like mixed martial arts,” she added. “He’s actually pretty skilled.”
“Good to know,” Jack said.
Satisfied that the house was clean, they took Dago to the master bathroom, where Angela went straight for the medicine cabinet and changed his bandage, applying generous amounts of antibacterial cream to both sides of the wound.
After leaving him sleeping in Pete’s king-size bed, Jack and Angela retrieved their gear from the truck after parking it in the empty spot in the garage, next to a Porsche 911, a BMW SUV, and a shiny Harley Davidson Fat Boy.
“The Mercedes sedan is missing,” she said.
Jack slowly shook his head at the bike. “The Pete I know never rode a day in his life.”
“I seem to have that influence on my men,” she said.
Jack didn’t like that answer, but shrugged it off, focusing on the gear, which they hauled to the dining room. But instead of picking up where they had left off at Layton’s place the night before, Angela powered up Pete’s home computer.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Jack, do you really think we’re going to stay here without keeping tabs on … what did you call him … oh, yeah, my boyfriend?” She winked at him.
He grinned. “All right, I deserve that one. What are you doing?”
“Scoping things out in my old stomping grounds.”
“You’re hacking into NASA?”
“Well, I don’t have an account.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“Please, Jack. The only reason you’re here is because I … because your wife hacked the descent profile. She did that through a back door into the network that she installed when no one was looking. I did the same thing back in the day.”
He sighed and watched her work. It didn’t take her long, invoking a back door she had programmed eons ago. Suddenly, the screen divided into nine windows, each depicting a different view of the Cape as she accessed the security system.
“There’s Pete’s car,” she said, pointing at a silver Mercedes in the top right window, fed by one of the security cameras from the KSC Headquarters building on NASA Boulevard.
“Where do you think he’s hiding the OSS?”
“Good question. If we run with your theory that he’s playing this one close to his chest, then I’d guess he’s taken the suit to a building that’s not being used at the moment, but where he could still analyze it, perhaps even bring in a handful of his most trusted scientists.”
“The Project Phoenix building was at the intersection of A Avenue and Fifth Street,” Jack said. “In the southwest corner of Industrial Park.”
She looked at him. “That’s the same location we used. When we canceled the project, we stored all of the gear there, including the prototype suits.”
Angela spent just fifteen minutes in the site, browsing through most of the security cameras, peeking inside buildings, in labs, in conference rooms, getting a feeling for the security, counting the number of guard stations, before injecting a link into the security camera covering Pete’s car.
“Now we get an alert the moment that car moves,” she said, getting up and stretching. “Ready to finish your suit?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
They worked from memory, running the tubing and wiring required for thermal control, pressurization, and oxygen delivery, spending the next few hours connecting, sealing, and sewing, before shifting to the Russian suit.
They spent another two hours removing the locking rings for the large helmet and gloves before integrating them into his suit, securing them with plenty of Nomex stitching, running each layer, from the pressure vessel and up into the grooves of the titanium rings, creating airtight seams that Angela believed would hold. Along the way, she was able to harvest additional components from the Russian suit, including wrist gauges for pressure, oxygen, and altitude, which she secured to the left sleeve.
“Time for a pressure test,” she said, connecting the hoses for oxygen, pressure, and thermal control into the anodized receptacles on the front of the suit, before zipping up the empty suit and locking the helmet and gloves in place.
Angela turned on the small pump connected to a pair of car batteries with an inverter to generate the required AC current, delivering pure oxygen under pressure through the hoses.
Jack stood next to Angela and checked the gauges on the suit’s wrist. Had this been the real thing, pressurizing high up in the atmosphere, the suit would have stopped at 4.3 psi—pounds per square inch—or around 0.29 atmospheres, the typical NASA pressure for spacewalks. But since they were at sea level under a normal atmospheric pressure of 14.7 psi, or 1 atmosphere, Angela pressurized the suit to just below 30 psi, before shutting off the pressure pump and looking at her watch.
He kept his eye on the pressure needle, which remained steady at the 30 psi mark for the fifteen-minute test while Angela checked all around the suit, using tailor chalk to mark any areas that were ballooning more than normal, meaning the restraining layer wasn’t holding back the pressure vessel strongly enough. But besides those areas where she might need to add more nylon lanyard to reinforce the container vessel, the suit was holding quite nicely.
“Good job, Angie,” he said as she slowly relieved the pressure, deflating the suit.
If the seams could hold at 30 psi, they shouldn’t have any problem at 4.3 psi up in the stratosphere.
Leaving Dago asleep in the bedroom, Jack got in the truck while Angela jumped on Pete’s Harley. They headed to a large storage facility located just south of the Cape, where NASA stored obsolete equipment.
It was almost midnight by the time they parked a block from the only entrance to the chain-link fenced storage facility protected by a pair of graveyard-shift guards inside a glass booth just beyond the gate.
“You know where to go once we get inside?” he asked.
“Yep.”
Jack surveyed the place again, spotting security cameras covering pretty much every angle of the facility and likely feeding monitors inside the guard station. Beyond it was a windowless building two stories high with a flat roof.
“Ready?” he asked her, donning an empty backpack.
She nodded, starting the Fat Boy, which rumbled to life. “See you on the other side,” she said, driving off in her jeans and a halter top. No helmet.
Jack tested the fence, just eight feet tall and lacking any other security feature, like barbed wire or electricity.
He watched Angela reach the gate and gun the Harley, prompting the guards to look up from whatever they were doing, exchanging glances, before stepping outside.
Lock and load.
Jack went over the fence in ten seconds, landing on his feet and taking off in the direction of the guards, who seemed entertained by Angela’s little biking display, her halter top flapping in the breeze as she winked at them.
The guards never saw him coming, his approach masked by the deafening noise.
He palm-struck their necks almost in unison, shocking their vagus nerves, dropping them in seconds before removing a remote control connected to what he guessed was the facility’s master key. He used it to open the gate for Angela, who drove through before he closed it and dragged the guards back inside the guard station.
Angela went ahead while Jack removed the DVDs from the monitoring system, pocketing them before closing the door and rushing down the short driveway to the building’s main entrance.
He used the master key to get inside, closing the heavy metal door behind them, removing all evidence of their attack from anyone driving by.
“Six minutes left,” Jack said. He had allowed ten minutes for the entire operation and they had already consumed almost four.
The interior of the building was open to the roof, like a classic warehouse, with two-story rows of shelves packed with a variety of gear on wooden pallets.
Angie ran to the rear of one row, stopping
by a set of boxes labeled PROJECT PHOENIX.
She skipped the first three before rummaging through the fourth one and began handing Jack plastic bags filled with cube-shaped reinforced carbon-carbon tiles each roughly an inch square and a quarter of an inch thick.
He placed them in the backpack while she went through five more boxes, finding tubes that he recognized as high-temperature cement as well as cans of a pasty material commonly referred to as gap filler, made of alumina fibers to fill in any apertures between tiles, especially around the leading edges of the shuttle such as the nose cap, windshields, and wings.
“How do you remember where all this stuff was?”
“I just do,” she said, closing all of the boxes and placing them back in their original position. “Some things are hard to forget. Project Phoenix was one of them. I packed this myself shortly before my resignation. Never thought I would need any of it, ever.”
“Time,” he said, tapping his watch.
They made their way back to the door, where she jumped on the bike while he locked the warehouse, opening the gate for her to leave before closing it and dropping the remote and keys inside the guard cage, where the two men lay unconscious.
Jack left the compound in the same way he had gone in, over the fence, landing in a deep crouch by the truck just as Angela pulled up on the Harley.
He thought about driving the stolen truck back to the house and decided he had probably gotten as much use out of it as he should. So they ditched it several blocks away.
Angela donned the backpack and rode in back, hugging Jack from behind while he steered the bike off the curve, accelerating into the night, the breeze sweeping his face as he enjoyed her embrace, the side of her head pressed in between his shoulder blades.
They reached Pete’s house fifteen minutes later, closing the garage door and walking back into the living room.
Dago was still out.
Although it was close to two in the morning, they decided to press on, cementing RCC tiles to the helmet and shoulder pads and using the gap filler to create a continuous surface, finishing the job just before 3:00 A.M.
Angela stood, stretched, and headed into the kitchen, returning with two Coronas, handing one to Jack before they held hands and walked outside, sitting by the pool to look at the stars.
“Are you ready to go back?”
That was one hell of a question, and Jack wasn’t sure he could answer it truthfully. A growing part of him had gotten used to this version of Angela, affectionate, passionate, even a little naughty in the bedroom, or the shower, or even the spa. She was simply adorable, with her long blond hair, her magical chocolate freckles, and her innate ability to leave him at a loss for words, like she’d just done.
Instead, he just hugged her, kissing the top of her head.
“It’s still so surreal,” she added.
Jack raised his eyebrows. That was one word to describe the past week, and he could think of many others that would fit the very, very strange sequence of events since he had jumped from that pod.
“I don’t want to leave you,” he said.
“But you have to,” she completed for him.
“I know.”
“And I understand that, Jack. You need to go back not just for her or for you, but also to stop whatever it is that Hastings is trying to do with this technology. The more I think about it, the more terrifying the scenarios that play out in my mind.”
Jack didn’t need to add anything to that comment. Angela, as usual, was spot on. This technology in the hands of Hastings was nothing but bad news. And Jack could only hope that his wife back home had found a way to at least stay alive long enough for him to return.
Angela’s disposable phone vibrated once.
She looked at it and said, “Layton,” before reading the text message and adding, “He’s confirmed three altitudes. Forty-eight kilometers, sixty kilometers, and seventy-two kilometers. Any of those will hit the right harmonic of twelve.”
“So we’re going to need that high-altitude balloon that Dago’s guys secured after all,” he said, glad that they had narrowed down at least one altitude reachable with a balloon—forty-eight kilometers or around twenty-nine miles, which would make the jump much less complicated than if they had to get him into a rocket.
“And a place to launch it.”
But before they could do that, Jack would need to pay a little visit to his former best friend.
15
REAL FEAR
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt
Pete blinked to clear his sight as he sat in the corner of a warehouse-like room, zip ties securing his limbs to the arms and legs of a heavy wooden chair bolted to the concrete floor, a strip of duct tape over his lips as he was forced to watch the horror show.
Riggs hung naked from his shackled wrists in the middle of the room covered in cuts and bruises as the man who called himself Javier walked around him armed with an X-Acto knife.
A bit shorter than Pete, which made him look even shorter standing by the tall and muscular FBI agent, Javier smoothed his beard, regarding him with indifference, almost as if he was just a pig being slaughtered.
That was the thing that had chilled Pete the moment he first saw the Hispanic man who had ambushed them on the way out of Atlanta: the detachment in his eyes, in his dead stare, almost like the eyes of a shark, dark, lifeless.
Pete tried to control his breathing. Everything had happened too fast. One moment he had been pumping gas at a station outside of Atlanta, and the next, he had a bag over his head and was bouncing inside the trunk of a car with his wrists tied behind his back.
And next thing he knew he woke up right here a moment ago, in this windowless building strapped to this chair while Riggs swung from shackles on a meat hook at the end of a long chain bolted to a rafter, his feet hovering inches from a metal pan on the concrete floor collecting his dripping blood.
Javier slashed his skin, though never too deep, just enough to make him bleed a little, as Riggs tensed, jerked, squirmed, briefly groaning in pain, his tight fists fighting the heavy shackles, before exhaling and going limp again.
Pete sat against a heavy wooden table a few feet from the hanging agent, metal shackles anchored to its rough surface at both ends.
He slowly looked about him, gazing at the disturbing metal objects on shelves, at the furnace in the corner. This was no ordinary building or warehouse, resembling some sort of medieval blacksmith shop.
And what was even more disturbing was the video camera on a tripod angled to capture the table as well as Riggs.
“You and … Hastings can go … fuck yourselves,” Riggs hissed, coughing, his bloody lips twisting in anger.
Javier smiled. “You are so brave, my friend,” he said in his thick accent. “But the only ones getting fucked tonight are you … and your family.”
Riggs’s arm muscles throbbed as they stressed against the iron restraints. “Don’t you dare … fucking bastard … don’t you dare … lay one of your greasy hands on them.”
Javier pressed the tips of his right index finger and thumb against the corners of his mouth and let out a near-deafening whistle.
A door slid open and two large Latinos, as big and muscular as Riggs, dragged Riggs’s wife into the room. She also had duct tape over her lips and had been crying, her cheekbones smeared with mascara. Pete had met the tall and slender brunette, who went by the name of Susan, when they’d arrived at the FBI safe house the day before. But at least she was still dressed and seemed unharmed.
Pete inhaled deeply in relief.
“Leave her … out of this,” Riggs hissed. “This is between Hastings and—”
Javier punched him hard in the solar plexus. The FBI agent gasped for air while swinging from the meat hook.
“Colgarla al lado de él.”
The men shackled Susan’s wrists and hung her from a second meat hook adjacent to Riggs.
�
��Look at that,” Javier said with a grin. “Husband and wife about to die side by side.”
“Okay … wait … I’ll tell you everything.”
Javier rubbed his bearded chin. “Oh, will you, now?”
Riggs looked at Pete who shook his head.
Don’t do it, man! They’ll kill us anyway.
“Yes. Just don’t hurt her. Please,” Riggs said.
“Very well, my friend,” Javier said, pointing at the camera.
Riggs began to talk, telling them how they were supposed to contact Angela after reaching Orlando and setting up his family in a hotel. He even gave them her phone number, told them about Art-Z and Dago, and how they had masterminded the banking transactions.
“You speak the truth, my friend?”
“Yes … I swear it.”
Javier pressed his lips together and nodded solemnly at him. “I believe you.”
As Riggs exhaled slowly, Javier turned to his men and ran the tip of his thumb across his own neck while shifting his gaze to the terrified woman.
“Wait!” Riggs pleaded. “I told you everything that—”
Javier kicked him hard in the groin.
Riggs groaned, twisted, and screamed, before nearly passing out, his eyelids fluttering as one of his men slashed her throat.
Pete watched as she thrashed about, moaning, eyes wide open in shock, the duct tape muffling her screams.
Riggs went crazy, screaming, jerking against the metal restraints, howling at the top of his lungs, cursing, swearing.
Javier laughed before punching him in the gut, sending him swinging again.
Pete closed his eyes, unable to see this, wanting to shout, tugging at the zip ties.
“Bastards … you fucking … bastards. I … told you … everything,” Riggs hissed, his bruised chest expanding and contracting as Susan stopped moving, hanging limp from her restraints, eyes staring into the distance.
The Fall Page 32
