Colchev slapped him on the back and laughed. “Never lose faith, my friend. I will chill the vodka tonight, for tomorrow we will be toasting the downfall of America and the establishment of Russia as the most dominant nation on the planet.”
* * *
While federal operatives on both sides of the border combed the Mexican drug houses and the nondescript office on the American side for evidence, Grant and Morgan gave their reports to the FBI. Separately. Grant had been through enough debriefings to know that wasn’t a good sign.
His interview finished long before Morgan’s, so he tried calling Tyler again from the lobby of the San Diego field office while he waited.
No answer, but he did have a voicemail waiting.
Grant, it’s Tyler. We found the xenobium in a Peruvian pyramid, but Colchev got away with it. It’s about the size of a tennis ball, so it could take out an entire state if it gets reunited with the Killswitch.
Other than a bump on my head, I’m okay, and so are Jess and Fay. Fay said Colchev mentioned something about Washington, but I don’t think that’s the target for a few reasons that I’ll tell you about when we get in to LAX tonight at eleven o’clock.
Tell Morgan to track any incoming private plane flights from South America. That’s the only way he could get a radioactive element through customs.
Whatever he’s planning will happen tomorrow. You’ve got to get the Killswitch back. I hope you have better luck than we did.
The message ended, and Grant clicked the phone off. Great, he thought. The news just keeps getting better and better.
Morgan slammed the door open and stalked past him out of the lobby. He caught up with her outside as she plunked herself in the driver’s seat of the pool car. She opened the passenger window and said, “You coming?”
He got in, and she sped off, merging onto the freeway.
After a minute of nothing from her, Grant said, “That bad?”
“Now that the Killswitch is in the US and a threat to national security, the FBI is taking over the case. I’m put on suspension pending an investigation into my actions of the last four days.”
“That’s idiotic! Why?”
“They had a lot of good reasons.” She held up a fist and flicked it open one finger at a time. “I allowed the Killswitch to be stolen, the Australian xenobium was destroyed, our suspects in Sydney were killed before they could be interrogated, and I failed to stop the weapon from being smuggled back into the US. Oh, and the Air Force lost its two-hundred-million-dollar cargo jet and crew that I convinced them to send to Easter Island.”
Grant grimaced. “When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound good. What do we do now?”
“We don’t do anything. They took my OSI ID and gun. I’m supposed to fly back to Andrews tomorrow morning.”
“Tyler left me a message. He said Colchev has the xenobium. He thinks the attack is going to happen tomorrow.”
“I know. He called our office and left me the same message.”
“What is the FBI doing about it?”
“They disagree with Tyler’s assessment that Washington isn’t the target. The President is being moved to a safe location away from the city, and they’re shutting down Wisconsin Avenue and doing a building-to-building canvass along the street.”
“Colchev’s too smart for that. He’d just move to a different location.”
“The FBI thinks this is the best option,” Morgan said with disgust. She took the exit for Mission Hills. Grant didn’t know San Diego well, but he assumed she was heading for the airport.
“You’re not giving up are you?”
“What else can we do?”
“Tyler gets into LAX in eight hours. I say we meet him there and trade information. Maybe we’ll come up with something.”
“All right,” Morgan said, “but I need to shower and change first.”
“So do I. Motel?”
She pulled to a stop in front of a tidy two-story home and put the car in park.
“My parents’ house. They’re at work right now.”
Grant took the guest bathroom while Morgan used her parents’ master suite.
By the time he was finished with his shower, Grant felt like a new man. After he toweled off, he wrapped it around himself and walked out of the hallway bathroom to find Morgan standing in the guest bedroom doorway wearing only a robe. Her skin radiated a fresh glow, and her damp hair dipped across her shoulder in an alluring flourish.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello,” Grant said, not sure if the vibe he was getting was correct. But he was damned interested to see where this was going. His adrenaline surged more than it had during any of the explosions or firefights of the last few days.
The seconds ticked by as they eyed each other. Grant got the distinct impression that he was being ogled, which didn’t bother him one bit.
Without saying a word, he walked over to Morgan and stopped inches in front of her. Her breath was hot on his chest.
He didn’t care if he was wrong. He swept her into his arms and kissed her.
When she returned the kiss so forcefully that she twisted him around and pushed him backward into the guest bedroom, he knew he was right.
FIFTY
The nine-hour flight from Lima left Tyler, Jess, and Fay exhausted, but at least they made it out of Peru before anyone discovered that they’d had a hand in destroying part of a major Nazca monument. Tyler dozed fitfully during the flight, preoccupied with speculation about where Colchev was headed.
Now that Fay had access to her insulin, she was feeling better, but the experiences of the last few days had drained her. Jess decided to get her a hotel room in LA, so when the plane landed, Tyler texted Grant to meet them at the airport Radisson.
The shuttle dropped them at the hotel lobby, where Tyler saw Grant and Morgan standing awkwardly next to each other.
Tyler clapped his friend on the back and said, “How are you doing?”
“We’re fine,” Grant said. “Well, Morgan’s not … she’s had a rough day. I’m trying to keep her spirits up.”
Tyler raised an eyebrow at Grant, who knew exactly what he was silently asking. Grant’s lightning-fast grin answered the question.
“We should find somewhere to talk,” Morgan said.
“I reserved a suite,” Jess said. “The living room should be big enough for all of us.”
After the quick check-in, they settled into seats around the coffee table. Even Fay stayed, despite Jess’s pleas to get some rest. It took them an hour to swap stories about Sydney, Rapa Nui, Peru, and Tijuana. Although they had whittled away at Colchev’s crew, he had bested them at every turn, and they were nowhere close to catching him.
Tyler ran his hands through his hair in frustration at trying to figure out Colchev’s ultimate goal. The Russian’s original plan had been to steal both the Killswitch and the xenobium in Australia. He not only was going to bring it back to the US, a risky proposition in any case, but he had a timetable to get it into the country in time for an attack to occur on July 25.
“Could this be related to money?” he asked Morgan.
“Anything’s possible,” she said. “If he’s playing the market, he could profit when an attack devastates stock prices.
“But why tomorrow?”
“Maybe he has to short sell by then,” Jess said.
“That means he created the short timeline for himself. That seems ambitious, even for him.”
“But what would be on Wisconsin Avenue?” Grant said.
“It does seem like an odd place to attack,” Morgan said. “I’ve looked over the satellite and street maps in detail. It’s far away from any of the critical government functions.”
“That doesn’t matter. Colchev has a huge amount of xenobium. Not only will the gamma rays kill everyone within miles, the EMP burst could take out every computer all the way to Baltimore, whatever street he detonates it on.”
“It sounds like we’re missing a vit
al piece of the puzzle,” Fay said. “Like when I didn’t know that the phrase the alien told me was Russian. If he was an alien, that is.”
Tyler grinned. That was the first time she conceded that perhaps what she experienced wasn’t a close encounter with a spaceman. He was impressed with her ability to change her mind, even after sixty-five years.
“Fay’s right,” Tyler said. “Bedova asked me if we’d heard the word ‘Icarus’ from Colchev’s men when they were in New Zealand. I bet that’s an important piece.”
“I have one possibility, though it doesn’t make sense,” Morgan said. “I couldn’t tell you before because our knowledge of it is classified. Sorry, but I was bound by law.”
“And now?” Grant said.
The corner of her mouth turned up. “I can’t screw up much more than I already have in the eyes of the OSI. Icarus is a Russian code name for a parachute.”
Jess looked at her dubiously. “A parachute that’s classified?”
“It was developed for their military space program. It allows them to bail out of a sub-orbital spacecraft and parachute back to earth from up to eighty miles high.”
Grant laughed. “You’re kidding. I’m pretty much a badass, but that sounds like an impossible stunt.”
“Maybe not,” Tyler said. “There was a US program called Excelsior in the late fifties. The Air Force was worried about pilots ejecting from the high altitudes that the U-2 flew at, so they designed a multi-stage parachute to prevent fatal spins. Icarus could be a Russian version of the same thing.”
“And you know about Excelsior how?” Jess said.
“My father was in the Air Force. He knows the guy who tested the chute, Joseph Kittinger—probably the gutsiest man in history.”
“Why?” Fay asked. “How did they test it?”
“They put Captain Kittinger, who was wearing a pressure suit, into a gondola attached to an enormous helium balloon, then let it float up to a hundred thousand feet.”
Grant whistled. “Almost twenty miles.”
“For all intents and purposes, he was in space. When he stepped off that ledge, it was like jumping into a satellite photo. He fell for four and a half minutes, still the record for longest parachute freefall.”
“And he lived?” Fay said.
Tyler nodded. “He not only survived, he earned a slew of medals for the mission and eventually became a colonel.”
“Fascinating, but what does this have to do with the Killswitch?” Jess said. “Does Colchev have one of these Icarus parachutes?”
“We don’t know,” Morgan said. “We can’t exactly check with the Russians to see if they’ve lost track of one. Besides, Icarus is a common reference. The boy with wax wings who flew too close to the sun and fell to Earth. You could do a Google search and get a thousand hits.”
“I doubt he’s going up in a balloon.”
“From Wisconsin Ave?” Grant said. “Not likely. Those things are gigantic.”
“If he did get it that high,” Tyler said, “the Killswitch would do a lot more damage.”
“Why?” Jess said.
“Because the EMP effect would be amplified by the magnetic flux in the ionosphere. Military planners have worried for years about a nuclear weapon detonated over the central United States. It could wipe out the entire country’s infrastructure. In an instant every machine in the US would go quiet.”
Jess gasped. “With all the computers and communications systems down, nobody would even know that Armageddon had arrived.”
With a faraway look, Morgan said, “‘And we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.’”
“Who said that?” Grant asked.
“George Eliot.”
“Who’s he?”
Morgan rolled her eyes. “She wrote Middlemarch, you illiterate dolt.”
“Hey, if you had said Curious George—”
“The question is,” Tyler said, trying to get them back on track, “how could Colchev deliver the Killswitch to that altitude?”
“Maybe he found the Roswell spaceship,” Fay said. When she saw the looks the rest of them gave her, she continued, “I’m just saying the Russians designed Icarus to be used with a spaceship, and I saw a spaceship at Roswell. That’s awfully coincidental if you ask me.”
Tyler chuckled. Maybe she wasn’t giving up on her fantasy.
Grant snorted. “Right, instead of a balloon, Colchev has a spaceship taking off from Wisconsin Ave.”
Tyler started to laugh, then stopped himself and sat bolt upright. A spaceship taking off from Wisconsin Ave. Something about that jogged Tyler’s memory.
He asked for Grant’s laptop and opened the browser.
Grant edged closer. “What did I say?”
“Bedova said Wisconsin Ave, not Wisconsin Avenue, right?”
Grant shrugged. “That’s the way I remember it.”
“What’s the difference?” Morgan asked.
“Either Colchev had been using a code or Bedova interpreted the abbreviation the wrong way. It’s not Wisconsin Ave. It’s pronounced Wisconsin A Vee.”
“What do the letters A and V stand for?” Jess said.
“AirVenture.”
“Wisconsin AirVenture?” Fay said. “What’s that?”
Grant slapped himself in the forehead. “Of course! The EAA.”
“The Experimental Aircraft Association has a huge air show every year,” Tyler said. “It’s in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, smack dab in the middle of the country. Thousands of private aircraft pilots fly their planes to the show. It’s so big that for one week, Oshkosh becomes the busiest airport in the world, with over ten thousand takeoffs and landings. I flew to it a few years ago, but I didn’t make the connection until just now because I always called it the Oshkosh Fly-in.”
Morgan looked at the tablet. “This is tomorrow’s schedule.”
Tyler pointed to the middle of the schedule. “Check out what happens at noon.”
Morgan peered at it, then her eyes went wide. “I’ll call the FBI.” She jumped up and furiously dialed her phone.
“What is it?” Jess said. “What happens tomorrow?”
Tyler put a hand on Fay’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I laughed at you.”
“Why?”
“Because you were right. Tomorrow a company called ExAtmo is making a demonstration flight at noon of their brand new product, the Skyward.”
Grant recognized the name instantly. “Damn! You think Colchev is planning to hijack it?”
Tyler nodded grimly. “He must be planning to fly the Killswitch up to an altitude of seventy miles.”
“I don’t understand,” Jess said. “What’s ExAtmo?”
“They’re a commercial sub-orbital tourism venture. Skyward is their experimental spaceplane.”
SPACE
FIFTY-ONE
From the copilot’s seat of the Cessna 340A, Colchev could see vast rows of planes lined wingtip to wingtip on the grassy field bordering the northern runway of the Oshkosh Whitman Regional Airport. The previous night, he and Zotkin had landed in Calgary, Canada to refuel the Gulfstream, where they were able to sneak off the plane disguised as pilots. Two other men dressed as pilots took their places and the jet continued on its way toward Moscow. Then Colchev and Zotkin drove across the border into Montana using a new set of false passports and boarded the smaller twin-prop six-seater at a tiny airport in Shelby.
To cover his tracks, Colchev planted a small explosive device on the Gulfstream, timed to blow up over the remote Canadian tundra. It would take days to confirm that he and the xenobium were not on board.
Zotkin, who was flying the Cessna, got clearance to land on runway 27, which was closer to their parking spot in the north field than the main 36L runway used for the demonstration flights and daily air shows. They made their final turn, Lake Winnebago glistening just a few miles to the east under the azure sky. Excellent conditions for the launch.
As they came around, Colchev got his first glimpse of
the Skyward spaceplane. It was situated in a place of honor at the primary taxiway leading to the main runway. Even from this distance, the vehicle was a technological wonder to behold.
The Skyward was slung underneath its carrier plane, the Lodestar. Like a mother hen, the wing-shaped Lodestar sat atop the spaceplane, which nestled into the curvature of the larger aircraft’s concave underside and was already in place for the launch in two hours.
The most distinctive feature of both the Lodestar and the Skyward was the unusual design of their fuselages. The carbon-fiber bodywork was constructed with criss-crossing struts that seemed to be oriented in a haphazard fashion. The delicate-looking framework was optimized to provide the maximum strength to the spaceplane for its weight, much like the hollow bones of a bird. The spaces in between the struts were filled with state-of-the-art polymer windows that gave intrepid passengers a 180-degree view of the Earth when the spaceplane reached its maximum altitude of seventy miles.
Colchev had been following the news about the Skyward ever since its existence had been made public. By acquiring the rights to use Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipTwo, Richard Branson’s company Virgin Galactic had a huge head start on ExAtmo’s effort to bring spaceflight to the commercial market, so the newer company had to come up with an attention-getting ploy to wrest some of the spotlight away from the pioneer and showcase its own advanced technology. The exhibition flight at the premiere experimental aircraft show in the world was the answer. As soon as Colchev had heard about the planned demonstration six months ago, he knew it would be his best chance to cripple the entire United States in one blow.
Getting information about the Skyward out of the notoriously secretive ExAtmo files had been difficult, but not impossible. One of the gems they’d acquired had been film of a test flight, showing the cockpit operation of both the carrier and spaceplane. With that, they knew their plan was possible.
The flight profile of the spaceplane was straightforward, helpfully sketched out in a CGI video on the ExAtmo website. The Lodestar could take off from any commercial runway. When it reached an altitude of 50,000 feet, the Skyward dropped from the belly. Once it was clear, the Skyward ignited its liquid rocket engine, propelling it to three thousand miles per hour, or mach four, twice the speed of the Concorde. Shooting straight up toward space, the engine disengaged after seventy seconds, giving the six passengers five minutes of weightlessness as the spaceplane was pulled back toward Earth, its fuel spent. Twenty-five minutes later, it glided in for an unpowered landing at the airport just like a Space Shuttle.
The Roswell Conspiracy Page 28
