by Al Macy
“I’d be able to play the violin.”
“What?” He frowned at me. “No, you’d be dead.”
“Right. Dead. That’s what I meant to say.”
CHAPTER TWO
With some begging, the docs released me after only one day in Walter Reed. I spent the night in my hotel room and planned to go into the “office” the next day. The investigation had momentum, and I wanted to keep it going. And I’d forgotten to tell Hallstrom about Mr. L.L. Bean.
Then I woke up. Ow. Going anywhere? Not going to happen. The worst was the nausea. I was in the five-star Hotel Monaco, on my own dime, but couldn’t appreciate it. My stomach didn’t let me read, eat, watch TV, or surf the internet.
I lay there for five hours without moving—trying not to throw up—and thinking about my life. Did I really want to continue saving the world? Catching bad guys? My introvert tendencies were surfacing. Mary and I were trying to create a kid. When that happened, according to our plan, I’d become a full-time dad—no more commando stuff. Maybe play jazz piano in a seedy bar.
We had the money to do it. My anti-kidnapping books were selling well. I could pass the company on to my veep, Renata Perez, who was doing most of the day-to-day stuff anyway.
Enough thinking. It was time for more Vicodin. Time for the cozy, Christmasy feeling it gave me. My new friend.
Doc Swanson’s note told me to get three days of bed rest. I called Hallstrom and told him I’d be in soon. I’ve never been good at tolerating boredom.
* * *
The next morning, I caught a cab to FBI headquarters.
A few years ago, my niece made me sit at a computer and complete a maze. Not too hard, even for a grownup. Near the end of the maze, a grotesque monster face flashed on the screen and I screamed like a little girl. My niece screamed too when I paid her back by tickling her unmercifully.
Now I was the grotesque monster face.
The entire right side of my head was essentially a black eye. I had stitches on my forehead, and it looked as if Frankenstein had been in a car crash on his way home from a bar fight. Some cuts were still oozing blood.
An aide led me to the conference room, but I asked him not to announce me. I waited until everyone was milling around, then stuck my head in the doorway and said, “Boo!”
I think the short blonde peed in her pants a little. She scowled at me and headed down the hall toward the lady’s room.
Hallstrom was shaking his head. He probably would have been laughing, but this was the first time he’d seen my injuries. Injuries that were partly his fault.
Director Hallstrom had a careless look to him, with the toothy smile found on traveling salesmen and politicians. Pushing fifty, he was broad in the shoulders with a paunch that was under control. Barely.
“Jeez, Jake, you’re a mess. I’m really sorry. We did everything we could to rescue you. You look like … sheesh, shouldn’t you be in the hospital?”
I waved dismissively. Gotta play the tough guy. Too bad the cute blonde didn’t get to see how tough I was. “Hey, I knew the risks. The docs released me when I promised to stay in bed. I was regretting coming here, but it was worth it to see the expressions on your faces. It—” I started to chuckle and doubled over in pain. I tried to take a deep breath, and the pain hit again. I wiped away some tears.
Hallstrom put his hand on my shoulder. Gingerly. “Jake, should I call an ambulance?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m okay. I’ve got three broken ribs. I should have known better than to make myself laugh.” I pictured their faces again—no, stop. “I’m really tired so maybe you can bring me up to speed and let me go home early.”
Miss Petite came back from down the hall. She was strikingly attractive in a miniature way, with straight hair and an oval face that was made to be looked at. She wore a dark, pencil skirt and a silk blouse. Late twenties. She frowned and stared up at my face as she went by, like a highway looky-loo passing the smoking remains of a head-on collision.
Hallstrom gestured to her. “Jake, I’d like you to meet Charlotta Keller. I’ve hired her as my campaign manager—”
“Whoa. So politics finally got you.” Turning to Charlotta, I said, “Nice to meet you, Ms. Keller. I apologize for frightening you. I have an eleven-year-old inside me who takes control of my body whenever he sees an opportunity for a joke.”
“I understand. I have a nephew like that … only he’s six.”
Touché.
She took my hand and smiled. “Please call me Charli.”
Hallstrom sat down. “Charli is as smart as they come and has a science background from MIT, so I’ve asked her to help with this project. She’s been vetted and has a high security clearance. We’ve learned a lot about this McClaren fellow, and Charli will fill us in.”
I eased into my chair like a ninety-year-old with hemorrhoids.
Charli stepped to the front of the room and triggered a slide showing a nerdy guy holding a small object. “This is Lenny McClaren. He completed his college education at Stanford at age seventeen. Soon after, he developed the device you see in his hand. It’s a power transmitter. Put one of these in your living room, and it will charge any compatible electronics device you bring into the house. Wirelessly. He sold the patent for an undisclosed sum, perhaps several hundred million. It will be on the market soon.”
Charli took a sip of water and glanced again at the train wreck that was my face. I thought about how I was going to explain it to my wife without alarming her. “Walked into a door” wouldn’t cut it.
Charli flipped to the next slide. “Here’s McClaren at last year’s IEEE conference, describing his work. Everything was fine until halfway through his speech. That’s when he described an implant that the federal government places in the brains of all newborns. By the end of his talk, everyone knew he had a severe mental illness.”
While she was speaking, a man with thinning Einstein hair and a worn tweed suit jacket tiptoed in and sat down.
Charli clicked off the slide. “Soon after that conference, McClaren disappeared. We believe he’s been radicalized, and based on the information from Mr. Corby, we think he’s aligned himself with anti-government terrorists and is behind the attacks on the satellites.” She sat down.
“Thanks, Charli.” Hallstrom gestured toward the academic-looking man who’d come in late. “Now I’d like to introduce Dr. Seth McGraw, a chief scientist at NASA. He will describe what we know of the satellite attacks. Welcome, Dr. McGraw.”
McGraw ran his fingers through his hair, only making it more unruly. He had a pleasant appearance, like the favorite uncle who takes an interest in your science projects. He ambled to the front of the room. “We’ve lost five satellites so far. They don’t explode or drop out of the sky, they just vanish as if vaporized. One of them was the Hubble telescope.”
No more beautiful photos from deep space for a while.
“I’m very, very sad to see it go, but it was actually lucky that they targeted Hubble,” McGraw said. “Here’s why. Take a look at this video.”
A technician got the video going. It started with a shot of the night sky, deep blue with the branches of a tree in the foreground.
McGraw walked up to the screen. “A Hubble enthusiast filmed this in his back yard, and this dot you see moving slowly across the sky is Hubble. Without this video, we’d have been clueless as to why the satellites were disappearing. Watch what happens.”
The dot continued across the screen. Then a streak, like lightning but straight as a laser beam, appeared for an instant. The dot that had been Hubble blossomed into an orange-white disk. Then it was gone.
McGraw turned back to his audience. “We think this weapon is essentially a wireless power transmitter, with a wide-spectrum burst.”
“Hold on a second,” I said. “Why are they going after satellites? Wouldn’t it be more dramatic to shoot down passenger planes, for example?”
“It would, but it seems that the target must be in the vacuum of space. Otherwise,
we think the charge just bleeds off into the air, and …”
A breathless aide flew into the conference room and turned to Hallstrom, “Sir. There’s a fire on the International Space Station, and the president wants you and Dr. McGraw in the Situation Room immediately.”
* * *
Hallstrom asked me to tag along. I was ready to collapse back into my hotel bed, and my stomach was rebelling against all the drugs the docs had given me, but how often does one get to go to the world-famous Situation Room?
Hallstrom, McGraw, Charli, and I piled into a black SUV, as if heading off on a high-school field trip.
McGraw snapped his cell phone shut. “It’s a bad situation. There are six crew members on the international space station and two Soyuz capsules docked to it. Each Soyuz can carry three astronauts. A fire has cut off access to one of them. This is all apparently caused by a near miss from the terrorists’ power-pulse weapon. That’s all I know right now.”
On the seven-block drive to the White House we passed a Radio Shack with a wide-screen TV in the window. Pedestrians had stopped to watch the coverage, and the tightly-packed crowd filled the sidewalk.
At the White House I got to feel special at the security checkpoint. The metal detectors got all hot and bothered when they discovered the miniature hardware store I have in my ankle, courtesy of a college football accident. I offered to stick my leg into the x-ray machine, but they waved me through. No sense of humor.
Secret Service agents ushered us to the basement of the West Wing. The Situation Room oozed seriousness with deep-blue carpeting and large leather chairs, half of which were occupied.
All eyes were glued to the monitors. No one spoke. The tension felt like a room-filling plasma that induced shallow breathing and strained muscles.
The screens displayed the inside of the Johnson Space Center and several camera views within the space station. Secretary of State Clinton and the others pretty much ignored us, but President Obama stood and shook hands with Seth McGraw.
“I’m glad you’re here, Dr. McGraw,” he whispered. “You can translate the NASA jargon for us.”
Obama turned to me, and I saw that flash of shock I was getting used to. “Mr. Corby, welcome. Thank you for your—”
A transmission to the ISS cut him off. “Station, Houston for Catherine. We’re showing ventilation off and power off in node two, JEM, Destiny and MRM1. Can you confirm?”
“Affirm, Houston. Stand by.” While Catherine spoke, hissing and snapping noises played out in the background.
One screen showed a strange ball of fire with sparks around the edges. It reminded me of the “Great Ball of Fire” that my brother had cooked up with July Fourth sparklers. The smoke came and went. An astronaut with a fire extinguisher was against one wall, gripping equipment with his legs. I guess that kept him from floating away. He sent bursts of foam into the fire.
If I were there, I’d be freaking out, but the voices sounded routine, as they do during spacewalks. Perhaps they were even more focused and business-like than usual. Occasionally, a voice cracked or went up in pitch, but in general, it sounded like business as usual—just another day in space. I guess that comes from hundreds of hours of emergency training. Plus, NASA probably weeds out scaredy-cats like me.
An astronaut I recognized from a YouTube tour of the ISS floated past a camera. Catherine Pettit, the mission’s medical officer, had been smiling and kidding around during the tour, with dark hair that flowed out in all directions as if she were underwater.
There was no joking around now, of course, but also no panic in her voice. No indication that she was in imminent danger of dying a horrible death.
“Station, Houston on two for Catherine. Can you adjust camera hotel-tango-four upwards so we can get eyes on the fire?”
Pettit replied, “Willco, Houston.” After a delay we saw the image in the monitor shift, and she asked, “Better?”
“That’s perfect, Catherine. Can you give me a general status report at this time?” Each transmission was punctuated with the characteristic NASA beep I’ve heard nowhere else.
“Copy. Yuri is behind me preparing the aft Soyuz for evacuation. His vision has improved, but he’s still almost blind. Ray is in Destiny fighting the fire in Node Two. It is burning itself out. Marko is fighting the fire in MRM1 that’s cutting us off from Ray and preventing access to the Soyuz on MRM1. That one is worse. I’m in the Central Post. Satoshi is still—stand by.”
Catherine finished her report. “And Satoshi is still missing.”
The whole world loved Satoshi Takahasi. He’d been a YouTube sensation when he performed a funny rap video with his wife and seven-year-old daughter.
“Houston, Shepard on two. The fire in node two is out, but it’s too hot to go through. Stand by … Satoshi? Satoshi? Damn.”
I’d never heard an astronaut swear during a transmission. After a few seconds Shepard’s deep breaths came to us via his headset.
“Station, Commander Shepard, say status. Do you copy?”
“Houston, go to Comm Seven, please.”
“Copy, station. Stand by.”
McGraw turned to the president. “Comm Seven shuts off public transmission, but we’ll still be able to—”
“Go ahead, Ray.”
“Houston, Satoshi is dead.”
A small gasp came through the speakers, probably from Catherine. She had been on station with Satoshi for four months. They must have been close.
Ray Shepard continued. “I was able to look into the JEM for an instant, in spite of the heat. I saw his body. He’d received severe burns on his upper body and head.”
“Copy, Ray, is there any chance—”
“No, Houston, he’s definitely gone. His head was burned to a … no, he’s gone.”
A shockwave pulsed up from my gut and I winced. I have an ironclad stomach, but I guess the image in my mind was too clear.
Shepard took a breath. “I’m going to work on the Unity fire now.”
“Ray, we’re all very sorry to hear about Satoshi. I have a question.”
“Go ahead, CAPCOM.”
“What is your current prognosis? Will you need to evacuate?”
“Ah, at this point, I don’t think we can save the station. We may get the fire under control, but without attitude control, the remaining solar arrays can’t give us enough power.”
The smoke was getting worse, and the fire was just a glow.
McGraw walked over to a monitor and pointed. “If this wall is breached, there will be a decompression of the ISS.”
I pictured the James Bond scene in which Goldfinger is sucked out the broken window of a jet. Probably worse than that in space.
“Station, Houston on two for Catherine.”
“Go ahead, Houston.”
“We’ve made a decision on the evac. Yuri, Marko, and Sasha are to begin pre-evac immediately.”
I turned to the screen. An astronaut, presumably Marko, shook his head vigorously. He wore a full mask.
Catherine said, “Houston, ah, we’d like you to reconsider that decision.”
“Understood, Catherine. We’ve been discussing it. We have no choice.”
“Houston, the general feeling here is everyone goes or no one goes.”
Difficult decision. I rubbed the back of my neck. Who would want to be known as the astronaut who left his comrades to die? Or worse, the one who abandoned ship only to have it saved. “I was just following orders” wouldn’t cut it.
Marko appeared and disappeared in the smoke like a full moon behind passing clouds. Catherine floated into view, bringing him a fire extinguisher, presumably retrieved from another module. That’s when everything changed.
The image flashed to white for a split second. Marko’s head snapped back. He somersaulted and bounced off a hull wall like a rag doll before disappearing from view. The extinguisher he’d been holding floated slowly toward the camera then hit it, causing the image to shake.
“Houston, M
arko has been injured. Stand by.”
“Copy, Catherine.”
“That didn’t look good,” Clinton said.
The president leaned toward the monitors, and we waited.
“Houston, Marko has … stand by, please ...” Catherine drifted into view pushing Marko against a wall with a medical kit open. A red globule the size of a grapefruit ballooned out from his head but didn’t detach. The strange fire glowed behind them, still sending out sparks. Catherine hunched over the cosmonaut’s head, working furiously, and occasionally grabbed instruments or gauze from the med kit.
She spoke faster now. “Houston. Marko Randova has sustained a traumatic head injury. He is unconscious, and his right pupil is blown and unresponsive. I’ve slowed the bleeding, but I can do nothing more for him here. He won’t survive without a hospital.”
“We copy.”
I rubbed the stitches on my forehead. At least that resolved the issue of heroics. Marko had to evac, so two others had no choice but to go with him.
English with a heavy Russian accent filled the room. “Pre-evac complete. Starting emergency evac. Sasha is helping me get Marko strapped in.”
“Copy, Yuri. Station, say status of fire.”
Shepard’s deep voice boomed from the speakers. “Houston, the fire is out. Stand by.”
After ten minutes, rapid Russian speech was overlaid with a translation in a woman’s voice. “We have physical separation. Undocking confirmed.”
That was quick. It can take me longer than that to leave the house. My stomach gave a lurch, which was weird, because I wasn’t in the Soyuz.
The reply from the Russian craft was slower, in accented English. “We have eyes on Soyuz Two. Is heavily damaged. Instrumentation module has melted and descent module is … is not usable.”
Was this a death sentence for Catherine and Ray? Would they die slowly in a crippled space station while the world watched? I blinked. Someone was strapping me into a gurney. What?
President Obama leaned over me. He wore a small, friendly grin. “Mr. Corby, I would consider it a personal favor if you would be the government’s guest at Walter Reed until they feel you are ready to be released.”
