“I’m going to ram Colchev. It’s our only hope.”
According to the online literature, the Skyward had tiny gas thrusters for attitude control in zero gravity so that the pilot could orient the spaceplane for optimal passenger viewing, important when they were spending the price of a condo on the trip.
With no airflow over the wings, the control stick wouldn’t be able to affect the orientation of the spaceplane. Tyler searched the panel and saw a dual-joystick control. That had to be it.
He toggled the left joystick and the nose slewed around. Tyler had put too much into it, so he compensated in the other direction. The sticks had been modeled on a video game controller. It took Tyler only a few seconds to understand how they functioned. They couldn’t move the vehicle sideways, so he would need to line himself up precisely to hit his target.
A quarter-mile ahead, Colchev made his own course corrections using the fire extinguisher as a crude thruster. He was closing on the Killswitch.
It was now or never.
“Hang on!”
With one hand on the thrusters, Tyler hit the button for the rocket.
The Skyward blasted forward. Tyler kept his fingers on the sticks, making tiny adjustments as the spaceplane shot at Colchev.
The one advantage he had was that the roar of the engine wouldn’t be heard by Colchev in the vacuum of space.
But something tipped him off that he was being pursued. Perhaps the light of the flame reflected on the inside of his helmet. Whatever it was, he twisted around and raised the fire extinguisher to blast out of the way just as the spaceplane reached him.
Time seemed to slow. As he passed, Tyler saw Colchev’s horrified expression glaring at him. He knew his own face was obscured by his darkened ExAtmo helmet, so Colchev couldn’t see the look of satisfaction as the leading edge of the Skyward’s wing clipped the fire extinguisher, sending it tumbling away. He hadn’t killed Colchev, but the spy wouldn’t reach the Killswitch either.
Tyler switched off the rocket. At this point, even if he thought a second pass would be needed, the engine didn’t have enough fuel for it.
“Did you get him?” Jess said. “Please tell me you got him.”
“I think so. We’ll know in a few minutes.”
Tyler stretched his torso to look behind him, but he couldn’t see anything. The freefalling weapon and the thief who’d brought it to this desolate location had already faded into the indigo blue.
SIXTY
The Killswitch taunted Colchev. Only a few meters away, it might as well have been a thousand. Without the fire extinguisher to fine-tune his path, he couldn’t get close enough to push the arming button.
Even if he could reach it, he might not have been able to press the button anyway. When the extinguisher had been ripped from his hands, the wrist seals on his gloves had been damaged to the point that they were bleeding air. The leak wasn’t fast enough for him to lose consciousness, but the cold seeping in chilled his hands to the point of numbness. At least he’d been able to deploy his drogue chute before they were completely frozen.
As they fell together, Colchev could only glower at the impotent Killswitch. He’d come so far to be denied his success by a few arm’s lengths. When he landed, he could guarantee one thing. He’d follow through on his promise to Fay. If Tyler and Jess somehow survived their landing, he would find them and erase them from this earth.
The air resistance gradually began to increase, and the Killswitch, which lacked the stabilization of the drogue, started to spin as it plummeted toward Lake Michigan at over six hundred miles an hour. The thickening air would diminish its velocity, and the eventual impact wouldn’t be strong enough to detonate the unarmed weapon before it sank. The sturdy casing would likely even keep the xenobium from irradiating the water. Colchev, who was slowed by the small parachute, could only watch as the Killswitch disappeared from view.
The agony from his frozen hands was excruciating, forcing tears of pain to dribble down his face. But he would not cry out. That was for the weak. The defeated. He held his rock-hard hands to his body.
For seven minutes the ground rushed toward him, and he used the increasing air resistance to angle away from Lake Michigan toward the Wisconsin shoreline. During that time he realized that he would still be hailed as a hero of the Motherland. He would survive the longest freefall in history. He would bring back crucial evidence of a top-secret American weapon. And he would boast of the success of destroying a threat to his country’s national security.
Despite the torture of his immobile hands, Colchev greeted the howling air rushing past his helmet as a sign that he was nearly through the worst of it. Tyler Locke had won the battle, but Colchev would come out of the situation unbowed.
He checked the wrist altimeter, which read eight thousand meters. At five thousand meters the parachute would automatically deploy. He was now over green pastureland, and upon landing he would have to formulate a plan for exiting the country.
But five thousand meters came and went without the sudden jerk of the chute opening. Colchev realized in horror that in the mayhem of his fight with Tyler, he hadn’t switched on the automated chute deployment mechanism.
He scrabbled at the manual ripcord, but his rigid hands would not grasp the metal ring. In a panic he pummeled his chest. No matter what he did, the rung stubbornly stayed in place.
As Colchev stared at the verdant countryside, he could make out the shape of cows grazing. Though it looked lush and soft, the approaching meadow would be as lethal as concrete. His destiny was no longer to be a hero. Instead of devastating America, he would be nothing more than a stain on it.
The thought of such a humiliating fate was too much for Colchev. Terror finally seized him. His last ninety seconds were an eternity of fear, and the sound of screams echoed through his helmet until he slammed into the grassy field.
* * *
While the Skyward plummeted during its freefall descent, Tyler was able to make contact with flight control and get a crash course on guiding the unpowered spaceplane in for a landing. He just hoped the term wasn’t literal in this case.
They had been far over Lake Michigan, so once the Skyward reached enough air resistance for the wings to have some lift, Tyler had to steer the craft back toward Wisconsin, aiming for Oshkosh thirty miles to the west.
It wasn’t until the Skyward was halfway from the shore to the airfield that the controller informed Tyler he didn’t have enough altitude to make it. Ditching in Lake Winnebago seemed like a bad idea, so he asked them for the closest runway and was told that, if he turned, he might make it to the Sheboygan County Memorial Airport. They had cleared a runway for his landing.
He made the turn and realized he’d bled too much altitude.
“Damn it!”
“How are you doing up there?” Jess said nervously.
“Why don’t you help me look for a nice straight piece of highway to land on.”
“Are you serious?”
“Time’s a-wasting.”
“Can’t you use the rocket motor?”
“Only if you want to crash more quickly.” Tyler thumbed the switch for the fuel-dump valve.
“This is the last time I go up in a spaceship with you.”
They looked for a landing spot. Tyler could try setting the spaceplane down in a field, but that was a tricky proposition. The Skyward could snag on a rock or depression and roll, potentially igniting the remaining rocket fuel vapors.
“There!” Jess cried out. He looked where she was pointing and saw a road curving away from a small town before it straightened for a two-mile stretch. He immediately recognized the ribbon of asphalt next to it. As a racing fan, he knew Elkhart Lake Raceway well. Even from this distance he could see the stands packed with spectators. Cars buzzed around the track.
“We have a winner,” he said and banked toward the highway. The spaceplane wasn’t much larger than a private plane, and roadway landings weren’t unprecedented and were oft
en successful. He just had to hope that anyone driving on that stretch of highway would see him in time to get out of the way.
It wasn’t until he was committed to his approach from the north that he saw an unfortunate obstacle.
The highway was under construction. Orange cones dotted the pavement, and yellow pavers and backhoes littered the road.
He had one other choice. The straightaway at Elkhart was just barely long enough.
Tyler nudged the stick sideways until he was lined up with the track.
Jess realized what he was attempting. “Are you insane? We can’t land there!”
Tyler grimaced as he concentrated on the narrow strip of straightaway. “If you have a better idea, tell me three minutes ago.”
“You haven’t even lowered the landing gear!”
“Our speed’s too hot. This will only work as a belly landing. As long as the racecars stay out of my way.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Hold on.”
The track’s final turn flashed below him, and he could see that the racers were vintage sports cars. Then he saw the pedestrian bridge that marked the beginning of the flat straightaway. Miraculously, the segment of the track in front of him was devoid of cars.
As the spaceplane flew over the bridge, he could make out the faces of amazed race fans craning their necks to watch him come in.
Tyler pulled the nose up and the Skyward settled toward the tarmac as gently as if it were falling onto a bed of hay. Then the peaceful landing was interrupted by a grinding din as the pavement tore at the spaceplane’s belly with a vibration that rattled Tyler’s seat.
As the craft slid down the straightaway, Tyler’s control was gone. He was as much a spectator as the dumbfounded people sitting in the stands on either side. The first turn came up fast, but the end of Elkhart’s front straightaway was bordered by a spacious run-off area instead of a catch fence. The Skyward plowed into it, sending a tsunami of sand to either side, and came to a halt.
The sudden silence was deafening. Tyler got out of his chair and went over to Jess.
“Are you all right?”
Jess nodded and unhooked her belt. She stood, shaking. But when she removed her helmet, Tyler could see it wasn’t because she was terrified.
“After that, bungee jumping just won’t have the same rush,” she said with a huge smile. “You think my company can offer this as a ride?”
* * *
The rest of the day was a blur for Tyler. The police took him and Jess to the Milwaukee FBI office for interrogation before the phalanx of journalists that had descended upon Wisconsin could start hounding them for information. It had been quickly verified that the Killswitch had been on board the spaceplane because of the container found in the Weeks hangar with the spaceplane’s gagged original crew, all of whom attested that Tyler and Jess had also been hostages of Colchev and Zotkin.
Tyler told the FBI that the spaceplane had been over the lake when the weapon was tossed out, so they’d have to plumb its depths if they ever wanted to retrieve the Killswitch. A search for it began immediately.
Colchev’s bloody mess of a corpse was found by a rancher on a property near Lake Michigan. His two accomplices, the ones that Morgan and Grant subdued at the air show, had regained consciousness and were spirited away to an undisclosed location.
It wasn’t until that evening that Fay and Grant, who had endured their own questioning, were allowed to see them. While Jess and Fay talked, Tyler went into one of the conference rooms where he found Grant staring at the table. Tyler put his hand on his friend’s shoulder and sat next to him.
The agents had told Tyler about Morgan’s sacrifice with the T-38. He saw that Grant was mourning more than just the loss of a colleague, but now wasn’t the time to go into it. Tyler recalled when people tried to console him after his wife’s death. Words of sympathy rang hollow, but they were appreciated all the same.
“I’m so sorry about Morgan,” Tyler said.
Grant swallowed hard. “She tricked me into ejecting before she rammed the Lodestar. Stupid. She promised.”
“She’s a hero,” Tyler said. “Without her, Jess and I would be at the bottom of Lake Michigan, and Colchev would be celebrating the ruination of the United States.”
Grant flashed a joyless smile, then changed the subject. “Do you think they’ll ever find the Killswitch?”
Tyler sighed. “Possibly. The search area is going to be huge, and the weapon was probably destroyed on impact, but the xenobium will be intact. If they can find the radiation signature in all the muck at the bottom, they’ll get it. Maybe they’ll even restart the program, although that may be difficult without Kessler’s expertise.”
“One thing’s for sure,” Grant said. “If they do find it, we’ll never know about it.”
Tyler nodded, and he silently pondered what other secrets the government had kept quiet for the last sixty-five years.
EPILOGUE
One month later
The lush grass of Roswell’s South Park Cemetery defied the blazing August sun. Tyler wiped his brow in the sweltering heat and admired the landscapers’ efforts to keep the lawn watered. It was a pleasant setting, shaded by the occasional oak tree, and he could see why Ivan Dombrovski had chosen it for his wife’s grave. Tyler and Jess continued their search for Catherine’s headstone.
Though Jess and Fay weren’t allowed to leave the country until the inquiries into the events in Wisconsin had come to a conclusion, a personal trip to New Mexico was allowed. At least that’s what the FBI thought it was.
Tyler had been intrigued by what Colchev had told them: that Dombrovski had visited his wife’s grave every day during his final year and that the Soviets never knew to which island the wood engraving’s map had been referring.
It was only when Tyler put it together with Fay’s Roswell encounter that he made the connection.
The dying alien Fay said she met had drawn a K, a backward E, and a T inside an upright rectangle. In the Latin alphabet, they were puzzling, but not if the word he was writing had been Russian. In the Cyrillic alphabet, the first three letters translated to C, A, and T. It was the start of the word “Кэтрин”.
The alien had been trying to spell Catherine in his native tongue.
“Here!” Jess called out.
Tyler found her standing in front of a modest granite headstone. It read, “Catherine Dombrovski. Beloved wife. 1890–1946.”
“I wish Nana were here to see this,” Jess said with a tear in her eye.
Tyler put an arm around her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Me too. But she insisted we come without her.”
He knelt in front of the headstone and inspected the granite without seeing any obvious seams on either side. He ran his fingers over its surface, feeling for a hidden latch or button.
When his index finger ran over the dot of the raised “i” in “Catherine,” he felt it give slightly. That had to be it. He pressed it, and the entire outline around her name popped open like a door hinged on the bottom, confirming his suspicion for the reason that Dombrovski had been such a devoted visitor.
Even in his most distraught days after Karen’s death, Tyler didn’t visit her grave daily so he was sure there had to be another explanation for why Dombrovski had come so often. Tyler thought it was because the scientist knew his lab had been compromised, so he’d needed somewhere to stash his most crucial files. The headstone was the perfect hiding place.
Tyler carefully tilted the compartment open and peered inside. The watertight gasket was still intact, preserving the contents perfectly.
The first item he removed was an ancient unmarked film reel. He gave it to Jess.
“We’ll see if we can find a projector for that in town,” he said.
The other item was a thick file folder containing a raft of yellowed documents.
He smiled when he saw the file’s title and showed it to Jess.
It was labeled Project Caelus.
*
* *
It took some effort, but they finally found a teacher at a local high school willing to loan them a compatible film projector from their store room. After they put the antiquated device in the trunk, Jess drove down a street lined with buildings like the International UFO Museum and the Roswell Space Center while Tyler flipped through Dombrovski’s files. It took only a few minutes to appreciate the significance of their find.
By the time Jess turned into the driveway of the Roswell Regional Hospital, he had enough information about Caelus to understand what Fay had experienced all those years ago.
They parked and carried the projection equipment to the hospital’s third floor. In room 308 they found Fay dozing.
Although she’d received chemotherapy treatment, the cancer had ravaged her over the past month. Despite her weakened condition, she had elected to make the trip to Roswell with Tyler and Jess, her intense need for closure before death evident. But upon arrival at the airport, she’d collapsed and they’d rushed her to the hospital. Jess had wanted to stay with her, but Fay prodded her to go to the cemetery with Tyler to find out if his theory was true.
Tyler set up the projector, and while they waited for Fay to wake up, he walked Jess through the files. An hour later Fay blinked her eyes to see the two of them at her bedside.
“Well?” she said, her voice wavering. “I don’t have much time for suspense.”
“We found it,” Jess said. “Catherine Dombrovski’s headstone. There was a compartment hidden inside.”
“It wasn’t an alien, was it? I know that now. I just want answers, whatever they are.”
Tyler sighed. He didn’t want to disappoint her, but she deserved the truth. “I think you should see this.”
He turned down the lights and flicked on the projector. While the silent film played on the wall opposite Fay’s bed, he narrated what they were watching.
The first shot was of a smiling bald man in a white lab coat. He had his arm around a beautiful white-haired woman.
“Dombrovski and his second wife. They were the scientists who conceived of Project Caelus. Dombrovski was a physicist and Catherine was an aeronautical engineer originally from the Ukraine. Both of them defected from Communist Russia. She died of influenza in 1946.”
The Roswell Conspiracy Page 33
