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Like all elliptical satellites, Cody would make enlarged, ovalshaped orbits around the earth.

The sky had become a crowded place at the dawn of the 21
^st
century. LEOs or “low earth orbit” satellites circled East to West along the axis of the equator. Because they were only 200 to 500 miles up, they delivered spectacular shots of the globe. To fight the gravitational pull of the earth they moved fast — 17,000 miles per hour – circling the world in 90 minutes. When LEOs broke down or died natural deaths, their remains added to the space graveyard of rockets, frozen sewage and bits of metal that regularly hovers above the earth like cosmic headcheese.

Within the LEO class there were Polar Satellites that circled the earth from north to south, peeling the planet like an orange in order to provide information such as highly accurate weather predictions.

Further out were GEOs, or “geosynchronous equatorial orbit” satellites, which did not circle the earth. They floated in one place over the equator, 22,300 miles up — satellite and earth moving together in unison like a couple dancing. At certain points in the sky, GEOs and elliptical satellites get relatively close to one another.

Since Earth takes 24 hours to circle on its axis, GEOs take a full 24 hours to circle the planet. Because they are so far out in space, GEOs have a broad view of earth. That’s why the Murdochs and Turners of the world use GEOs to send TV signals. But it wasn’t a businessman who first dreamed up GEOs. The reclusive Arthur C. Clarke talked about them in 1945, twenty-five years before the first one went up.

Dotted through various other parts of the sky are spy satellites, mainly Russian and American, which have been circling the earth for more than 35 years. There are also GPS satellites.

The launch team at Baikonor had just finished a breakfast of eggs, peppers, and stewed meat. Cody would go up the following day. They had been busily refurbishing it for more than three months now. All that was left were some last-minute downloads and tests. Once the bird was up, Cheyenne would finally be able to fill in the gaps in its network. The launch team would spend the day at their consoles making one last check that the satellite was correctly affixed and ready to go. It was a tedious but necessary act that would ensure that the satellite settled into its orbit, faced the right direction, and remained secure.

It was now noon in Baikonor. Sergei Gudak, a twenty-six-yearold from Novosibirsk who had escaped the monotony of his timber-hauling hometown, was mindlessly entering software scripts into his computer in the air-conditioned room. He hated this part, close to the end of a satellite launch, the stage where any monkey could tap on keys just as easily as he could.

What he really wished he was doing, though, was working on the international space station in the building just across the compound. That’s where his school friend, Leo, worked. That’s where all the leather jackets worked. He and Leo had come to Baikonor together, but Leo had better skills. Sergei knew he would get on the space station project eventually, but until then he would have to earn his stripes with satellite gigs. Still, as lonely as it sometimes got, it beat hanging around the bars and knocking up girls back home. He ate well, he was paid well, and he was learning a skill. Occasionally, something interesting happened.

“Ok, step thirty-two,” he said, turning to his partner, Vasily, next to him. “Ready?”

“Da.”

Step thirty-two was a particularly tricky set of script, unlike thirty-three and thirty-four, which were a bit like breathing. Pressing a wrong key at thirty-two was more than a temporary setback. Screw it up and you ended up having to rewrite several hundred lines of code. That wasn’t something Sergei relished.

Sergei and Vasily typed deliberately, methodically, mumbling instructions to one another. They scanned the code and log files for error messages. There was a sort of rhythm to the way they inserted the scripts, like riffs on a guitar. An hour later, it was done. Sergei rubbed his eyes, which seemed to have absolutely no water in them.

“I’m going to need glasses soon,” he said.

“No shit. Me, too. Want to move on to thirty-three?” Vasily asked.

“Da. Let’s finish.”

Sergei called out instructions from the manual as Vasily tapped the commands.

“I know what to do,” Vasily said curtly.

In that split second, somewhere beyond the computer screen, two young men in Yemen – Nabil and Hassan – young men about the same age as Sergei and Vasily, but a universe apart — waited for just the right moment.

“Ready?” Nabil said to Hassan.

“Yes.”

“Now!”

Nabil hurriedly entered the software patch as Hassan masked it

with code that wouldn’t raise suspicion at the other end.

Just then, an error message appeared on Sergei’s screen in Baikonor.

“What’s that?” he said.

“What?” asked Vasily.

“I just got an error message.”

“Probably a power surge or something.”

“Maybe. I hope it didn’t affect the script,” Sergei said, pissed off at the prospect. He scanned the lines on the screen with his index finger. “Fine ... fine ... good,” he said, scrolling down. Okay. Good ... hey.”

“What now?” Vasily sighed.

“That’s funny?”

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing. I just hadn’t seen that before.”

“It’s fine, Sergei. Don’t worry about it. I’m getting hungry again.”

“Me, too. And we just ate. What’s the problem with this place?”

“I don’t know. I’m always hungry.”

Nabil and Hassan stared at their screens in Yemen in silence, anxiously waiting for some sign of success, but no immediate sign would come. It was impossible to know if the first patch had taken. It would be impossible to know if the second patch had taken. They wouldn’t know if anything had worked until the satellite was actually in its orbit.

“Patience,” the old man cautioned them. “Do as we discussed. Allah will be with you.”

Patience. It was the prime lesson that Nabil and Hassan had been taught in the training camps. Learning how to kill or hijack or manipulate through fear — all were secondary to patience. It was the ultimate weapon. It was their atom bomb to be dropped on the infidels at a time of their choosing – infidels too busy accumulating material things to notice. These infidels had the attention span of fish. They were like children with beards.

Nabil and Hassan had seen it for themselves when they lived in the States — people flicking through endless television channels, unfinished books discarded on bedside tables, a general anxiety about attaining exactly what they wanted. It was sad to watch such weakness. It would be a joyous experience witnessing its destruction.

Nabil had studied his software programming at Stanford. He also spent six months on an internship at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Wherever he was, he excelled. His classmates expected him to do what everyone else was doing at the time— buy some black clothing and join a dot.com with other like-minded Valley Bolsheviks in hopes of doing an IPO and moving to Maui six months later. His American friends had absolutely no suspicion that he was part of a very different revolution.

It was particularly hard for Nabil in America. He would go for as long as six months without hearing from his contacts. He often wondered if his talents would ever be called into action. He didn’t want to be like the old men back home, losing themselves in the perpetual haze of nostalgia, reminiscing about the one great journey they had made in their lives. He wanted action. And in those moments of despair, he contemplated going to the side of the infidels. Despite their greed, their lust, and their arrogance, he actually liked them.

Yes, patience was difficult. The longer Nabil was away from the ways of Islam, the more assimilated he became to the ways of the West. He liked going to Hollywood movies. He liked Cool Ranch Doritos and Chinese takeout. He liked the women with their white skin and big smiles. In America, most girls were willing to spread their legs for little more than a couple of beers and a sentimental song on a jukebox. Still, Nabil’s soul remained still. He knew he was a soldier in a new jihad, and he looked forward to serving.

The old man understood the frustration of boys like Nabil and Hassan. Patience was always harder for the youth, which was why the boys had been plucked back. These boys were his thoroughbreds; he was their trainer. Too much had been invested. Mr. Bush’s war against Islam would end in his own defeat and humiliation. The old man would be damned if he was going to let all the hard work evaporate. They would all be damned if they failed.

It was now two o’clock in the afternoon, Yemen time. The two Russians, Sergei and Vasily, had been away from their computers for lunch.

“They’re back. Prepare for the second patch,” Nabil said.

“Where are we?” Sergei asked Vasily.

“Just completing forty-two.”

“Good. Let me know when you’re ready to move to forty-three.” Sergei picked at a piece of shredded beef that had tied itself around one of his molars. He had reported the error message on his screen to one of his superiors over lunch, who told him it was probably nothing.

“One moment,” Vasily said. Tap, tap, tap .... “okay” ... tap, tap , tap .... “there.”

Sergei straightened in his chair, cracked his fingers, and jumped back into the river of software script. The air was becoming stale in the room. He hated this point - the point where it all became so mindless that he sometimes forgot where he was or what he was doing. He shook his head to wake himself up and slapped his left cheek.

“What are you doing?” Vasily asked, laughing.

“Don’t worry about it. Okay, step forty-three finished.”

They paused for a moment, then moved on to step forty-four. “They’ve started on forty-four,” Hassan said. “Here we go.”

Same drill. Nabil downloaded the second patch while Hassan wrote masking code. They were like surgeons sewing up a patient — get it right and the scarring would be almost undetectable; get it wrong and it was there for the world to see.

Sanaa pulsed. The old man looked solemnly over the shoulders of Nabil and Hassan as they banged away on their keyboards. It was time again to pray, but prayers would have to wait. After all, they were doing this for him.

Cheyene’s satellite, “Cody,” had settled into its orbit like a baby snuggled in its crib. In order to fully assess the satellite’s capabilities, Peter had set up small test groups of twenty households in landlocked parts of Europe like Krakow, Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. Voice, video, and data were delivered to the groups twenty-four hours

a day.

When interviewed, the participants expressed excitement combined with confusion. They had each become local celebrities overnight. Friends and neighbors crowded their houses to have a look at the device connected to their water system, and at the seemingly endless choice of channels and music.

If there were any complaints from the families, it was about information overload. Many of the families hadn’t even owned a computer let alone high-speed access to the Internet. They had gone from being technology laggards to having the fastest connection times in the world. Local mayors and city officials got their pictures taken with the families. Television crews conducted interviews. Total strangers dropped by for a peek.

Peter felt only slightly guilty about getting these people hooked. Their daily television viewing time had shot up from two hours to six. In the households that previously had computers, Internet connection times went from one hour a day to four. A permanent glow of television sets and computer screens radiated from living rooms, bedrooms and dens. Kids were spending less time playing outside, and were getting fat.

Few families could have paid for the service on their own. Cheyenne was still playing with pricing models, but at a minimum, the service would cost roughly the equivalent of a monthly telephone bill, not including computers or television sets. Getting these families to give this up would be like getting them off crack.

Hayden was with Aaron in Paris for a speech. He was sitting on a leather couch in his hotel room killing time reading one of Braun’s analyst reports about Cheyenne. Finance wasn’t his thing, but he recognized hyperbole when he saw it.

Braun’s reports on Cheyenne had become increasingly, almost embarrassingly, positive.
The least he could do was tone it down a bit
, Hayden thought. Cheyenne had a lot going for it, but he knew the characters enough to know that what he was reading on paper wasn’t necessarily happening in real life. The interesting thing was that none of Braun’s peers forcefully disagreed with his analysis of the company.

And for good reason. Time and again Braun had proven himself to be right. Time and again, he had led the pack in identifying the early technology stars before they were born, before the rest of the slobs on the Street stumbled upon them. And he had the journalists in line.

A reporter friend of Hayden’s in New York who covered the industry, and was a competitor to
The Wall Street Journal,
once explained how it worked. Braun had made a calculated decision to only talk to the
Journal
– no one else. Daily, Braun’s phone mail would fill with requests from reporters clamoring for crumbs of gossip, insight or clarity about what was going on with particular companies. Daily, he would delete the messages. The conventional wisdom among journalists was that if you could quote Braun, your story was made.

Braun’s strategy was to be pervasive in the press without actually talking to many journalists. By getting his name in one of the nation’s largest newspapers, he ensured that others would simply play chase. He also ensured a certain quality control over his messaging. Because he was in such demand, whatever he said in the
Journal
would routinely get re-quoted in other publications across the country by journalists who were being whipped by their editors to match the
Journal
story. It was Braun’s own private syndicate.