Red Sky

by Chris Goff

  “There are no watchmen, just cameras.”

  Finally, some good news, thought Kozachenko. “Can you disable them?”

  “Can a cat eat fish?”

  “Do it, then,” Barkov said.

  “Wait!” Kozachenko ordered. “Is it possible to position the truck without it being seen by the cameras?”

  “Da,” Yolkin said. “If you pull forward to the far side of the transformers, you can back it in next to the fence without being picked up by the lens.”

  Kozachenko was pleased. Even though they’d have to cut the camera feeds when the men went over the fence, by positioning the truck beforehand, they bought more time to slip in and out undetected.

  Barkov pointed at the substation. “Do you see the enclosed metal structure in the center between the incoming lines and coils?”

  Kozachenko nodded.

  “That’s the target. Back the truck along the chain link fence and stop when the tailgate is even with the panel box.” Barkov opened the passenger-side door and swung down to the ground. “I’ll signal you from the back.”

  Once Barkov was clear of the truck, Kozachenko pulled forward. Then, cranking the steering column hard to the left, he backed up on the narrow road. The front end of the rig swung wide as he maneuvered into position, the right front tire creasing the edge of the ditch. When he finally straightened out the wheels, he saw Barkov dead center in his passenger mirror waving him back.

  Kozachenko popped the clutch and slowly reversed.

  “Keep coming,” Barkov shouted. “Just a little more.” When he raised his fist, Kozachenko stopped, put the truck into park, and climbed out of the cab to watch the men work.

  The men swarmed the truck, unfastening the tarp and exposing the gun. Spreading four long electrical lines on the ground, they bundled one end together and attached it to the compulsator.

  Barkov turned to Kozachenko. “Are we ready? Once we cut the camera feeds, we are on the clock. This station supplies power to the north, so everything between here and Elblag will go dark.”

  “How long will this take?”

  Barkov grinned. “If we used standard precautions, forty minutes. Doing it our way, we should be in and out in fewer than twenty.”

  Kozachenko hesitated. He wasn’t much concerned about triggering a power outage. A short disruption of power shouldn’t draw undue attention. Power outages were common in Poland, especially away from the cities. And even if someone were dispatched from the power company, their headquarters was fifty kilometers away. It would take an hour or more for anyone to get out here. No, his concern was that once the power company realized their cameras had been tampered with, they would dispatch the local police.

  But they needed the weapon ready to fire, so what choice did they have? He nodded at Barkov. “Go.”

  Barkov cut the wires to the camera feeds while the men scrambled over the chain link fence. Two men dragged the ends of the lines to the panel box, while a third jimmied open the panel doors with a knife.

  “Ready to rock and roll?”

  Kozachenko recognized the speaker as Yolkin. He stood on this side of the fence. “Do exactly what I tell you.”

  Following Yolkin’s directions, one man threw the first breaker, killing all the lights in town, then he cranked out the lug to the stationary line, repeating the process three more times. As each lug was detached, another man came behind and secured the taps to the temporary lines. Once the lines were all attached, Yolkin instructed them to move back down the panel box, flipping on the breakers.

  Barkov switched on the compulsator. In what seemed like no time, the charge light turned from red to green.

  “Done,” he shouted.

  At Barkov’s signal, Yolkin signaled the men to move back down the row and reverse the process. This time, when they flipped the breakers open, the lights in town flared back on. Before the last man was over the fence, the gear was stowed and the tarp refastened.

  “Eighteen minutes,” Barkov said. “It must be a record.”

  Kozachenko scrambled up into the truck. “Celebrate later. We have to go!”

  Chapter 41

  Zhen refused to cooperate, insisting that if they wanted his help, they would have to grant him immunity from prosecution on the espionage charge. The one thing none of them could facilitate. Jordan understood his motivation, but they didn’t have time for it.

  “Listen to me,” Jordan said. “Do you remember when you said that just because there wasn’t a command guidance system in the projectiles didn’t mean they couldn’t be controlled? I need you to explain what you meant.”

  “Do I have a deal?”

  “How many times do I have to say it?” Lory asked. “No one here can negotiate terms of an agreement. It’s out of our hands.”

  “Then you’re shit out of luck. My memory is a little fogged up.”

  Jordan made another plea, appealing to his conscience. “Zhen, what’s about to happen will be on you. Step up and I’m sure the government will take it into consideration.”

  Zhen feigned boredom. The kid showed a stubborn streak wider than her own.

  Having exhausted his repertoire of diplomatic skills, Lory resorted to threats. “Kid, do you want to spend the rest of your life in Gitmo? You’ve been charged with hacking military secrets. If you don’t—”

  “Can you prove that I stole them?”

  “We know you did.”

  “But can you prove it?”

  “We don’t have to prove it to detain you.”

  Lory was right. They could hold Zhen on the espionage charge under the Patriot Act, but that wouldn’t help them in the moment. Jordan cut in. “Guys, we don’t have time for this.”

  The two withdrew to their respective corners, but not without Zhen landing a parting shot. “You can’t prove anything. I know it for a fact.”

  He knew because he’d helped Jordan destroy the evidence, the government didn’t want to admit that the plans to their new billion-dollar weapon had been compromised, and Ellis Quinn was standing by Quinn Industries’ hack-free record. Who could blame her? She was one of the Navy’s top defense contractors. It would be bad for business to admit that an eighteen-year-old kid fresh out of high school had cracked their firewall.

  Davis slid his chair around to face Zhen. “Forget all of them.”

  “Stay out of this, Davis.” Lory’s face was red. Jordan poured him some water.

  Davis ignored the RSO and leaned forward conspiratorially. “You can’t really hack the guidance system and take control of the projectile, can you? It’s all theory, isn’t it? I mean, you’re smart, but are you smart enough to figure out something like that?”

  “It’s not rocket science.”

  Close enough, thought Jordan, stifling a laugh. Davis shot her a look suggesting she tread lightly, then turned back to Zhen.

  “If you could, and I’m not saying I believe you can, what kind of stuff would you need in order to build a gizmo that can capture the signal?”

  “It would help to see a copy of the specs.” Zhen was talking directly to Davis now. Jordan was holding her breath.

  “We don’t have a copy,” Lory blurted, shattering the connection.

  Jordan stood up and leaned with her hands on the table, trying to help diffuse the tense situation. “Maybe we can arrange to get a set?”

  Lory nodded and pushed himself up from his chair. “Let me see what I can do.”

  He left the room, and while they waited for the verdict to come in, the three of them ordered room service. Neither Jordan nor Davis had slept in twenty-four hours, and they hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before. They were scarfing down cheeseburgers when Lory came back.

  “I’m gone ten minutes and you throw a party?”

  Jordan decided not to point out he’d been gone for twenty and pushed a burger in his direction. “We ordered you one, too.”

  Lory sat down and pulled the plate toward him. “It’s been arranged. Someone from Quinn Industri
es is going to Skype in on a secure server so we can pull the plans up on the monitor. Anyone know how to operate the system?”

  Zhen grabbed the remote off the table. A few clicks, two bites of burger, a six-thousand-mile bounce off of a U.S. spy satellite, and the specs for the guidance system came up on display.

  Zhen zoomed in. “First I had to alter the basic hardware design of the guidance system in order to make it work.”

  “Is he for real?” Lory asked.

  “Keep going, Zhen,” Jordan said.

  “Just for the record, I started taking college IT classes when I was eleven.” Zhen directed his speech toward Lory. “The Navy design definitely needs some tweaking, and the software program sucks. If the Navy ever wants to control these projectiles with a command guidance system similar to the one in the Patriot missiles, they’re going to have to build something with the same specs as the railgun’s self-guided system.”

  “What makes it so different?” Lory asked.

  “There’s a whole punch list. First it’s smaller and lighter, otherwise it would throw off the projectile’s center of gravity. It’s able to withstand higher temperatures and strong enough to withstand higher speeds. And it’s radiation hardened to withstand the exo-atmospheric flight.”

  Lory swiveled his chair to look at Zhen. “Are you saying this gun can shoot things up through the atmosphere?”

  “Come on, dude.”

  Jordan pulled a slide up on Davis’s tablet showing the trajectory of a railgun projectile and set it in front of Lory.

  “Last, its power consumption is under eight watts, and its battery is designed to last a minimum of five minutes from the time of launch.” Zhen leaned back in his chair and put his shoes up on the conference table. “So far they haven’t come close to a command GS design, but what they don’t realize is that they don’t have to make it internal. All they have to do is design a back door.”

  “Get your feet off the table,” Lory said.

  “I don’t understand,” Jordan interjected. Not that it was important. The important thing was that he could actually do what he said.

  Zhen pulled his feet back and spoke in a tone that indicated he thought he was speaking to morons. “Basically all we need to know are the approximate GPS coordinates of where the gun is fired and where it’s headed. I can create a device that allows me to locate the signal. You just have to understand how GPS works. Anyone have a piece of paper and a pencil?”

  Davis found some in the conference room credenza.

  Zhen set the paper on the table in front of him and drew a large circle in the middle. “Our GPS system works off of Navstar, the global positioning system run by the U.S. Department of Defense. While we have the Global Navigation Satellite System, or GNSS, the Russians have a system called GLONASS, China has COMPASS, the EU has GALILEO, and so on.”

  “Which means the Russians will be using GLONASS,” Jordan said. “Can your device access their system?”

  Zhen looked up and grinned. “It can access any system in a matter of seconds.” Looking back down, he started making dots around the circle, which Jordan figured stood for the earth. Then he drew a crude map inside the surface, with four lines from four of the dots to a point she assumed was Gdánsk.

  “It takes twenty-four satellites to have a fully operational system. Your receiver sends out a signal, and then, based on the time it takes four of the satellites to receive the signal, the system locks in your location. After that, you program in the coordinates of where you want to go and the system will calculate time and distance based on your current position.”

  “How does that help us?” Jordan asked.

  “Basically my device filters the incoming signals.” Zhen kicked back in his chair. “If we know the approximate location of the weapon when the gun discharges, I can read the coordinates of where they’re sending the projectile off the satellite. Once we have the exact end destination, then all I have to do is set my device and boost my signal so the projectile locks onto it.”

  “How does that help us neutralize the damn thing?” Lory asked.

  “Once it’s locked on, I can throw that signal wherever I want.”

  “You can send the projectile anywhere?” Jordan asked.

  “Well, anywhere we have time to send it. We have to stay within the projectile’s range and within the window of time it will stay in the air.”

  Lory frowned. “I thought you said you’d be in control.”

  “Dude!” Zhen pointed to the tablet and the drawing of the railgun trajectory. “There’s only so much I can do. A railgun sends a projectile up through the atmosphere at Mach 7 and it comes back to Earth at Mach 5. You point the gun toward a target on the horizon and it takes about six seconds to impact. You shoot it through the exoatmosphere and you have maybe six minutes.”

  Lory stared at Jordan. “This is our plan B?”

  “It’s better than having no plan.”

  “Are you sure we can’t make a final appeal to the ambassador?” Davis asked.

  “I tried, then I tried going over his head. The director, the secretary of state, the president, they’re all in agreement. Not one of them is willing to pull the plug on the signing of this agreement. They fear the repercussions. They’ve been watching the intel. There’s been no chatter. China’s been dark, Russia’s been dark, and the IIC is moving closer to publicly declaring that PR Flight 91 went down as the result of engine failure. Ellis Quinn denies any breach. It would appear that the cover-up is complete.”

  Jordan studied Lory for a moment. She wondered what he would say if she shared her conspiracy theory with him. Better to leave that for another day.

  “Then we’re counting on you, Zhen,” she said. “Tell us what you need to build the diverter.”

  “A gaming device and a drone so I can test the thing. Oh, and I’ll need a couple more things.” He rattled off a short list that included needle nose pliers and a soldering gun. Agents were dispatched to collect the items.

  “Let me ask you another question, young man. How do you know you’re hacking the right system? For all you know, you could be commandeering Grandma’s new Audi.”

  “The software handles it. The algorithms will run through every known operating system to choose the correct one and then search out the exact coordinates. We can have control in four minutes. In this case maybe faster, since we know they’re bouncing it off Russian satellites.” Zhen looked around the table. “I’m telling you, it’ll work.”

  “Have you done this before?” Davis asked.

  “I wrote the program for my honor’s thesis. To prove it worked, I hijacked a drone from the Berkeley parking lot.”

  “Works for me,” Jordan said. “How long will it take you to build it?”

  “A few hours. First I have to get into my mother’s computer to snag my old software program. Once I modify it, I can install it into the gaming device.”

  “I’ve got a question,” Davis said. “How are we going to know when and from where the weapon is fired? Six minutes isn’t much time.”

  Everyone looked to Jordan. She closed her eyes and thought for a moment. “Okay, let’s start with what we do know. We know the signing is scheduled for sixteen hundred hours. Striking at that precise moment will be a symbolic gesture.”

  Zhen bounced in his chair. “We know they’ll use a Russian satellite, and we know the GPS coordinates for the town hall. I can start scanning for a signal a few minutes ahead of time. It’s possible I can snag it.”

  “Let’s not forget one thing,” Jordan said. “We haven’t given up on finding the Russians.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, the four of them made their way to the beach with what still looked to Jordan like a gaming console with a wireless controller and a sophisticated camera drone.

  “You really think this will work?” Lory asked. Standing in his bare feet with his pant legs rolled up, he placed the drone on the sand.

  “Positive. Tell me where you’
re sending it.”

  Jordan stared out at the Baltic Sea. Night still blended the water and the horizon, but she could see a cruise ship bobbing on the water in the far distance. “How about somewhere in the middle of the Gulf of Danzig?”

  “Have you got the coordinates?”

  Before she could answer, Davis whipped out his cell phone, opened the GPS app, and rattled off some numbers.

  Zhen typed them into the device. “Okay, all set. Now give me the coordinates of where you placed the drone, and I’ll show you how this baby works.” Zhen gripped his gaming device in both hands.

  Lory fired up the drone and input the destination. Using the drone’s control device, he lifted it into the air and flew it on a straight trajectory down the beach and out over the water.

  “Here we go.” Zhen flipped on his own device, and Jordan clicked the stopwatch on her phone. As he worked, the drone got harder and harder to see, until it suddenly banked to the right and started heading back.

  Jordan looked at Lory. He held the drone’s controls flat in his hand.

  Zhen had taken control.

  She clicked the stopwatch. “Two minutes.”

  There still might be a chance.

  * * *

  Dawn broke as they stood on the beach. It was almost time to meet Captain Adamski. The light brightening the sky meant their time was running out, and she couldn’t get Davis’s question about knowing when and from where the danger was coming out of her mind. As the sun broke the horizon, the streetlamps flickered on and off like warning signals against the day.

  On and off. “That’s it!”

  “What are you yelling about, Jordan?” Lory perched on the sea wall, unrolling his pant legs.

  “I think I may know how to find the Russians, at least to find out where they’ve been.”

  “How?” Davis asked.

  “When the gun is fired, it uses a lot of power, right?”

  “So?” Zhen said.

  “They need power to fire the weapon. If they already fired the weapon once, they’ll need to recharge the battery.”