Once Dead

by Richard Phillips

  “Six hours.”

  “That’s tight.” T-minus thirteen had just become T-minus seven.

  It always irritated Rolf when someone bothered to state the obvious. It was especially true when the drivel spouted from the mouth of Nolan Trent or one of his subordinates.

  “True, but this will actually make some things even easier. The only difference is that we’ll be initiating the takeover of the Cosmodrome at midnight instead of just before dawn. I’ve already got my people integrated into all the key launch system, Control Room, and security crews and they’re aware that I’m about to bump the schedule. I’ll send my guys with you to guide you to the link up.

  “We’ll stick to the original plan, with only a slight change in the launch vehicle refueling schedule. At midnight I’ll kill all external communications links, including the link to the Russian Mission Control Center in Korolyov. As soon as that’s done I’ll give you the go signal. Since the actual launch isn’t scheduled until noon, staffing will be minimal. Your teams and my agents on the inside will put the existing Russian Security and local onsite security teams out of commission and will take control of Areas 92, 95, 81, and 200, with most of our attention focused on Building 92A-50 and Launch Pad 24.

  “Once I get word that those and the road leading off-site are secured, then I will use my computer to take over the control center and adjust the countdown clocks to the new schedule. The replacement launch platform crew will take the place of the original launch platform personnel and will then begin fuelling the launch vehicle.

  “One last time, so you are both clear on the schedule, at T-minus six hours, midnight local time, we take over the Cosmodrome.

  “At T-minus five and a half hours, I’ll override the preprogrammed launch trajectory, upload new trajectory and engine burn commands into the navigation computers, and reprogram the telemetry and command channels to our new frequencies. Launch vehicle propellant loading will then commence.

  “At T-minus one we’ll roll back the Mobile Service Tower and go into our final countdown sequence.

  “Everybody knows what happens at T-minus zero. Any last questions?”

  Jacob Knox cleared his throat. “And if The Ripper shows up?”

  “Isn’t that why you’re here?” Rolf let the satisfaction that response gave him creep into his voice. “Take your team and kill him. Just make damn sure you keep him away from Launch Pad 24 and away from the Control Room in Building 92A-50. That’s where I’ll be running the show.”

  The look in the CIA killer’s black eyes wiped the momentary satisfaction from Rolf’s mind. Turning his attention back to Roskov, he clapped his hands.

  “Okay, then. Let’s do this.”

  CHAPTER 92

  Jack moved through the hole in the north wall and into the warehouse, scanning for thermal signatures that indicated life. But except for the hot residue and smoke from the explosion that had destroyed the door, the place bore no trace of hot bodies or equipment. From where he moved along the warehouse wall to the left, he didn’t have a clear view of the steps that led up to the office from which he had heard the gunshots that had answered his C4 detonations. Either the man he’d wounded or someone else still remained alive inside that room.

  In the green IR imagery presented by the night-vision goggles, the large room in which he found himself looked all wrong, with large sections separated by transparent walls and extensive duct work. As Jack moved through it, he passed work benches and equipment he failed to recognize. Reaching a transparent wall, he tapped it with the knuckles of his left hand. Plexiglas.

  “How goes it?” Janet’s digital voice whispered in his ear.

  “Clear so far.”

  “Ready for me to move up?”

  “Not yet. I’ll let you know.”

  Jack stopped beside a Plexiglas door. A large, round gauge mounted on the wall beside it indicated that, when everything was working, this room was kept pressurized. That meant the door probably opened into a chemical or air shower. When he stepped through it, discarded disposable gloves, booties, and masks confirmed his theory.

  He spoke quietly into his mike. “I’m in some sort of clean-room complex on the north half of the warehouse.”

  “Still nothing out here.”

  Letting the assault rifle follow his eyes, Jack stepped out of the air shower. He was standing in a small open space at the bottom of a set of grated steel steps, the twin of the stairway he’d seen in the other half of the warehouse. At the top of those steps a railed steel platform provided access to a closed doorway that had been pock-marked with bullet holes.

  He could feel the presence in the room beyond that door, could sense the man’s pain and terror. Jack reminded himself that there might be more than one man waiting inside the room, but he couldn’t make himself believe it.

  Staying against the wall, Jack stepped onto the stairs, heard the metal creak beneath his weight, and then stepped again. The sound of the gunshot from within the room didn’t surprise him, but the utter silence that followed the lone gunshot did. There was a wrongness to it, something that said that the man on the other side of that door no longer cared if he came through it or not.

  Moving swiftly to the top of the stairs, Jack fired three shots through the locking mechanism. For two seconds, he paused to listen and heard nothing. Leaning back, he hammered the bottom of his boot into the door, just below the handle, sending it crashing open. A quick survey of the room revealed only one occupant. The man lay sprawled on the floor behind a steel-case desk. What was left of his head lay in a spreading puddle of blood, and though the body was still putting off enough heat to stand out in the NVG’s infrared display, there was no need to check for a pulse. This fight was over.

  “I’m in. One dead inside the central office. Come on down.”

  “Be there in a minute.”

  Just to be certain that he hadn’t missed anything, Jack walked across the room and pulled open the south door and surveyed the huge room beyond. Rapidly descending the steps, he swept the south side of the warehouse. Except for the absence of the glow from the now dead thermite grenade, nothing about it had changed since his last look down through the hatch.

  “I’m at the south door,” Janet said.

  “Come on in. Everyone’s dead in here.”

  Janet stepped through the door and walked directly over to where he waited.

  “Except you.”

  “Yeah,” Jack paused. “Except me.”

  Janet walked over to a panel of wall switches and pulled off her goggles. “Might as well see if the lights still work.”

  As Jack removed his goggles, rows of fluorescent bulbs along the high ceiling bathed the room with light, momentarily dazzling his vision.

  “Where the hell did all the others go?” Janet asked.

  “I don’t think they went out the front gate,” Jack said, walking out to a section of the floor where the concrete gave way to a large steel plate. At its eastern edge, tire tracks on the concrete led out onto the steel, but didn’t emerge on the western side.

  “What is it, a lift?” Janet asked.

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t think so. Looks like a ramp.”

  “If it is, someone might be down there waiting for us to open it.”

  “Let’s find out.”

  Jack walked around the west end of the ramp as Janet moved to a panel with a number of switches. “Ready?”

  “When you find the right one, just open it about a foot.”

  On her third attempt, with a rumble, the west end of the ramp began to lower.

  Jack raised his left fist. “That’s good.”

  The ramp stopped. As the rumble subsided, complete silence replaced it.

  “Kill the lights.”

  Janet moved back to the other panel and darkness once again filled the warehouse. Jack didn’t think anyone was down there, but he slid the goggles back into place and switched them on. With the business end of the AK47 pointing the way, he stepp
ed carefully around the corner of the ramp, just far enough so that he had a view into the tunnel. As he had suspected, it was empty for as far as he could see. Moving around to the other side he used the new angle to confirm it.

  “It’s empty,” he said, stepping back. “Turn on the lights and close the ramp.”

  “Damn it! We missed them.”

  As light flooded the room, he snapped the goggles back to his vest, feeling the same frustration that echoed in Janet’s words.

  CHAPTER 93

  Seated in the lobby of the Marriott London County Hall, waiting for his driver to bring the car around, Nolan Trent got Rolf Koenig’s call. Because of Jack Gregory, the launch schedule had been bumped up by six hours. His watch said it was 6:30 p.m.; that meant it was a half-hour until midnight in Baikonur.

  Nolan had been invited to dinner at the home of Sir Ralston Kent, the head of MI6, and though he would have preferred to spend a quiet evening in a local pub, this news made him glad he’d accepted the invitation. In thirty minutes, Rolf would kill all communications channels out of the Cosmodrome and the mutiny would commence. Even though this part of the world wouldn’t find out what was happening there until tomorrow, the fact that Nolan had spent the evening dining with Sir Ralston and his wife would help his CIA cover-up.

  When Rolf’s payload reached its target, it would be evening in Washington, D.C. The nation’s leadership would be dining or enjoying an after-dinner drink, little knowing that hell would be served for dessert. Although most of that leadership, including President Harris, Vice President Gordon, and Nolan’s own boss, Frank Rheiner, would probably survive, they would be stuck like bugs on fly paper, trapped in the nation’s capital with no means of communication or transportation.

  But they would be the lucky ones. Eventually help would be sent from distant parts of the United States, where things still worked. The leadership would get priority in these rescue efforts. The common people who lived in the northeastern states would suffer the most. With police and first responders unable to do more than walk about, the people would quickly find themselves at the mercy of marauding gangs. And though they would eventually band together to protect themselves, except in rural areas, they would find themselves unarmed, outmatched, and lucky to survive long enough to starve.

  The vision tore at Nolan’s heart. More than his own life, he loved his country and its people. It was a true shame that it had come to the point where America’s only chance of salvation lay in such severe punishment.

  Seeing the limousine pull to a stop and his driver step out, Nolan stood up, walked out, and slid into the back seat. Shrugging aside the melancholy that had settled over his shoulders, he turned his thoughts to dinner and a lovely evening of conversation with Sir Ralston and Mrs. Kent. He would savor this slowly, the last evening that the United States of America would reign as the world’s superpower.

  CHAPTER 94

  Janet’s frustration continued to mount, along with the feeling that they were rapidly running out of time. The question was, time to do what? She could see, from the urgency with which he moved, that the same feeling was eating at Jack. A thorough search of the bodies strewn around the southern half of the warehouse had revealed nothing of importance.

  They’d opened the ramp and gone into the tunnel, finding nothing except tire marks that formed convincing evidence that several vehicles had used it to leave the compound. Janet had no idea where the tunnel ended, but after a hundred meters it turned southwest. Given the isolation of the warehouse compound, the tunnel exit was probably inside a building several kilometers away. While the thing had probably been constructed for the Russian mafia’s smuggling operations, the presence of the clean-room complex that filled the north half of the warehouse told her that something far more important than drugs or guns had recently made that trip.

  Once Jack had turned on the lights in the north half of the warehouse, they’d noticed something interesting. A ceiling-mounted crane system with electric winches and pulleys ran through a large rectangular hole in the wall that divided the northern half from the southern. It seemed highly likely that it had been used to move a large piece of equipment from the clean room to the shipping area, where it had been loaded onto a truck and shipped out through the tunnel. But what it was and where it had gone, they had no idea.

  Now they’d just come up empty in the office. Not completely. They’d recovered the dead man’s cell phone, but it was encrypted and, even if the decoders at the NSA could overcome that, it would take time that they didn’t have. She’d pulled open all of the drawers in the gray steel-case desk and found nothing. Whatever files had once been here were gone.

  With her booted right foot, she kicked the bottom-right file drawer closed, started to turn away, and then stopped. Despite the excessive force she’d applied to that kick, it hadn’t closed all the way.

  Seeing her kneel down to examine it, Jack leaned in.

  “Got something?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Janet pushed, but the drawer had wedged on something and it took a strong pull to get it free. Reaching down, she pressed the twin release catches on the slide rails, pulled the drawer free of the desk and set it aside. When she looked into the vacant compartment, she saw something that elevated her heart-rate ever so slightly. A green file folder had fallen behind the drawer and now lay at the bottom of the compartment.

  Janet grabbed it and set it on top of the desk, mentally crossed her fingers, and opened it. With Jack leaning over the desk beside her, she spread the contents across its surface. Five sheets of engineering drawings. Although she couldn’t tell what piece of equipment these represented, she did recognize part of the label at the top of page one.

  XLRMV-1 Power Supply Schematic.

  Jack’s low whistle brought her eyes up to lock with his.

  “What the hell is this doing here?”

  Janet shook her head. It made no sense, whatsoever, for these drawings to be inside one of Vladimir Roskov’s warehouses. Then again, the clean-room setup made no sense either. But taken together, they just might.

  Janet returned her gaze to the topmost diagram.

  “We need to set up the satcom gear and talk to Admiral Riles.”

  Jack straightened. “I’ll go get the SUV, throw the gear we left behind in the back, and drive it back here.”

  “Okay. Leave the south garage door open on your way out. Might as well drive inside when you get back. In the meantime, I’ll take a closer look at these schematics.”

  Jack opened the door and stepped out, the sound of his rapidly descending footfalls ringing the steel grating in his wake.

  Janet pulled up the office chair, seated herself, and began slowly flipping through the pages, one key question forming in her mind, a question that the NSA should be able to answer. In the past few days, had any part of Rolf Koenig’s experimental payload been repaired or replaced? And since the launch was scheduled for noon tomorrow, the sooner she got that answer to that question, the better.

  CHAPTER 95

  Rolf didn’t return to the Control Room in Building 92A-50. Roskov’s men would take him and Rachel there soon enough. Instead, he had his driver take him directly to the Hotel Polyot in Area 95, conveniently located between Building 92A-50 and Launch Pad 24. Although this hotel wasn’t nearly as nice as the one he’d stayed in until last night, this one was on-site and it was where he had always planned on staying for the last two nights leading up to the launch.

  Carrying the case with his laptop and portable satellite communications gear, he stepped out of the sedan, through the door held open by one of his security detail, and into the lobby. A minute later he walked out of the elevator and entered his room. Across from the plain wooden desk, Rachel lay dreaming, courtesy of the prescription dose of Eszopiclone that had been administered earlier this evening. She would cause no trouble.

  With practiced ease, Rolf arranged and connected the equipment, and then powered it on. Satisfied wi
th the signal strength to the nearest of his communications satellites, Rolf looked at the digital clock display: 23:57.

  In three minutes he would initiate the program that would trigger the shutdown of all external communications from the Cosmodrome. This included the old land line communications, the cell phone links, and all satellite links except those that were routed through his satellite network.

  It wouldn’t hurt anything to go ahead and trigger it now, but Rolf was a man who demanded precision in all things. So he would wait for it.

  When the numbers changed to 00:00, he clicked the button that launched those special programs he had surreptitiously injected into the various networks and computation systems throughout the Cosmodrome. There were no explosions, nor was there any sign at all, except in the Control Room, that the Cosmodrome now stood isolated from the outside world. Even there, it would go unnoticed unless the night shift attempted to check in with the Russian Mission Control Center in Korolyov. Even if they did, periodic communications outages occasionally happened, and were usually corrected within a few minutes.

  Having accomplished that part of tonight’s agenda, he dialed the number that connected him to Vladimir Roskov.

  The rasp in the mobster’s voice showed his excitement. “Da?”

  “Communications are down. Proceed.”

  The distant sound of gunfire echoed outside the building as Rolf set the phone down. Within the hotel, he heard the sound of running footsteps, hoarse shouts, and then more shots as Roskov’s paid traitors inside the Russian security forces turned on their comrades and then began rounding up the small international press contingent staying in the hotel.

  Packing his equipment, Rolf waited for their arrival, knowing that similar actions were taking place at Area 92, Area 81, and Area 200, as the Russian crime boss demonstrated his organization’s power and reach.

  The sound of his hotel room door being kicked in did not disturb him. Rolf maintained his seat as three heavily armed, stocking-masked men stormed into his room. Within seconds they secured Rolf and his groggy wife, cuffing their hands with plastic ties and taping their mouths shut. Then, as one of the men grabbed the bag with Rolf’s equipment, the other two dragged him and Rachel out into the hallway, past a handful of similarly bound reporters, and down the stairs to one of the waiting cars.