Storm Killer (25 page)

Adélaïde and Gérard Simeon were almost finished loading the cable car at the base of Mount Isabel. Gérard’s cousin, Jacques, stood shuffling back and forth from one foot to another as he watched them load his car. “Hurry up, Gérard. The winds are starting to pick up. We were ordered to shut down the system when the winds reached thirty-five kilometers per hour. We’re having gusts to almost that now. So we’ve got to go very soon!
I’ve got to take you up, come back, and get home before the storm hits. So, move it!”

Bernadette lumbered from their family sedan toward the cable car gondola trying to carry a large cooler containing ice and pershiable foods. She would lift the cooler, kind of duck walk it a few meters, and stop to rest. When she stopped, she would drop the cooler with a loud bang.

Gérard went to her aid, and, picking up the cooler, swung it to his shoulder. In a few strides, he had it safely placed in the cable car.

He yelled, “Grégoire! Come here, time to go!” He looked for his son, as he herded his wife and daughter into the waiting car.

Grégoire came running from the door of the public toilet as he zipped up his pants, “Yes, Papa, I’m coming. I had to go.”  
  

As Jacques closed the cable car door,
Gérard inspected the supplies and equipment they’d loaded into the car. He knew in his mind that they had everything because Adélaïde had ticked each item off of the list they had made. Nothing was missing, but he was very uneasy that they might have forgotten something important.

As the gondola left the terminal station and began its steep climb to the top, his wife tried to lighten the moment with a small laugh and said, “
Gérard, we have everything and we’ve done everything we could think of to ready ourselves for this, so please ease up! You’ll give yourself an ulcer with all of your worry.”

He moved close to his wife and embraced her. Together, they stared out the side window of the car as they climbed toward the top. The children were already viewing the scene and the city spread out below them. In the distance was the ocean, but little could be seen of it due to the low, rolling, dark clouds now beginning to stream in from the east.

They were about half way to the top when a gust of wind struck the gondola. The car bucked and swayed far to the side, pulling the cables almost horizontally from the wheeled tracks on each support column. As the cable tried to pull out, tensioned metal safety stops pressed down on the cable, forcing it back into the wheeled track. The gondola bounced back and the cable tension snapped the car straight up for several meters. Then it fell back and bounced a few times, throwing everyone to the floor.

The cable motor had detected the release and then the snapping back of the weight of the car. Its design was to interrupt the power until an operator could inspect the car to see why the cable tension had released so suddenly. The gondola was stopped dead about half way up the peak. 

Jacques contacted the motor station at the top of the peak and explained what happened. The motorman said, “The winds is getting very strong up here. I don’t think I should restart the engine to bring you up. Why don’t you turn around and go back?”

Jacques replied, “We’re coming up. So restart the motor.”

The motor engaged and the gondola made another forty meters before the winds caused the same problem.

This scenario played out four more times before the car finally made it to the top. Jacques pulled open the door and began helping his cousin’s family unload the car. As Gérard moved the last of the supplies to the visitor center, Jacques walked into the motor room. He and the motorman discussed their options in getting back down the mountain.

The motorman suggested, “Look, Jacques, I want off this mountain. I want to be home with my family when this storm hits. I’ll tie off the circuit breakers and remove the cable tension sensor. That should get us back down. I’ll leave my car here since the clouds are already covering the road. You can drive me home. Okay?”

Jacques agreed, “Do it and let’s go. The winds are far higher than I like.”

It took the motorman only a minute to disengage all the safety devices. While he was doing this, Jacques went to talk to Gérard.

“Jacques, it isn’t safe to go back down. Feel the wind? The gusts must be much higher than when we came up. Just stay with us here,” Gérard asked his cousin in an urgent voice. 

“No, no. Thanks, cousin, but I want to be home. You understand, don’t you?”

Jacques stopped as the motorman came up and told him that the motor room was secure and he was ready to go. Jacques grabbed Gérard’s hand and shook it. “Goodbye, cousin. Be safe!”

Jacques and the motorman bolted for the gondola. Just as he closed the switch engaging the mechanical hands that gripped the moving cable, another strong gust of wind hit. The gondola bounced and caromed several times off the side of the terminal building. The cable groaned from the extra load. With the safety devices bypassed, the motor continued moving the cable and the gondola rocketed from the terminal as the cable sprung back into its normal track.

The wind gusts seemed to be increasing in length and intensity by the second. Rain had begun falling and the raindrops felt like small bee stings as they landed on Gérard’s face and hands. He turned and ran to the visitor center as the gondola disappeared over the edge of the terminal that extended out from the top of the mountain. 

As another gust of wind caught the car and pushed it sideways, the occupants of the car began to scream.

The cable twisted and three strands of the ten that made up the cable were cut by the sharp edge of the metal safety stop that had worked loose after months of daily operations of the cable car. The cut part of the cable caught between the turning wheel and the metal stop, resulting in the cable binding into a gnarled mass of useless metal. 

The safety-bypassed motor continued to run, stretching the cable, as the portion caught was jammed tighter and tighter into the support tower’s cable wheel on the downhill side. The tension reached the breaking point and the cable snapped at the damaged section.

The gondola fell, crashing through the trees, bouncing over and over, broken glass and metal leaving a trail of wreckage. It came to rest against a large boulder. Other than the wind, nothing could be heard.    
 

55

Francine had completed the chip removal procedure with the lieutenant. She had divorced her mind from the idea that the procedure was being performed on her brother’s corpse. She had mentally turned it into a medical procedure on an unknown person.

Now that it was over, the actuality of what had happened came flooding back into her mind.

Instead of disconnecting the cell call with the lieutenant, she had simply turned off her PCD. She tossed the device onto the floor and slowly walked into the dispensary.

She opened a locked cabinet, scanned the contents, and removed a bottle. She read the label -
Seconal capsules,
1
.5-grain. Seconal, also known as “reds”, was more than capable of achieving Francine’s immediate goal.
A dozen of the tablets should do it,
she thought,
but to make sure, I’ll take fifteen. I’ll just drift away and be rid of all of this pain.
 

She walked back toward her bedroom and stopped at her desk. She picked up a spiral-ring writing tablet and a pen.      She continued into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed.

She started writing a letter to her parents explaining how she was involved in her brother’s death and the deaths of all those innocent people groundside. She had only written a few sentences that were mostly variations of - “I’m sorry, please forgive me,” when she burst into tears. Sobs racked her body as grief completely overcame her.

She threw herself on the bed and let the tears flow. All she could think about was how she had failed her brother
.

Her mind was in turmoil as she thought, I should’ve been stronger and convinced him to give up his plan for discrediting the Storm Killer project. I could’ve saved him. Now, it’s too late.

Now, I’ll just end my own suffering,
she swore to herself as she reached to the nightstand for the vial of sleeping tablets.

56

The Russian self-propelled mobile missile launcher crew was very efficient. They had the warhead configuration completed in less than three minutes. Only two of the six warheads would be armed. Attachment arms swung out from the side of the launcher housing the missile to remove the other warheads. When the arms attached, automatic releases on the warheads triggered releasing them from the missile. The arms moved straight back and the four extra warheads pulled out of the electrical connections inside the missile’s payload bays. The warheads moved via conveyor belts to a secured storage area at the base of the launcher.

The active warheads had their countermeasures packages activated. These evasion packages were designed to allow the warheads to alter course to evade anti-ballistic missiles. The Russians had programmed these packages to use their course changing ability to provide the final ‘fine tuning’ of the ballistic portion of the one-way trip to Storm Killer. This fine-tuning capability would ensure the warheads exploded within five hundred meters of the station.

The targeting computers had been fed the weight changes from the removal of the extra warheads. The targeting computer had plotted the intercept course and laid the course plan into the missiles’ guidance computer. The guidance computer would command the missile’s powered flight.

After the engine’s shutdown, Sir Isaac Newton would be in charge. The missile would become a ballistic object at the mercy and rules of Newton’s laws of action/reaction and gravity.

The powered part of the flight would last about two minutes. The remaining eighteen minutes of travel to the target would be under Newton’s rules, except for those few seconds when the countermeasure packages fired their small rocket engines to fine-tune the final ballistic trajectory.

The Russian president reported back to the White House situation room. “Mr. President, the missile’s warheads are configured. We are completing the guidance computations and will be ready to launch in a little over two minutes from now.”   

The President sat ramrod straight in his executive chair. He was very unhappy about being backed into this no-win position he found himself in at the moment.

I need some new advisors. This band of idiots failed to consider a scenario like this might occur, the President thought as he waited for the moment to launch the Russian missile. At least I can use these two as scapegoats, his thoughts churned as he eyed his soon-to-be-ex national security and science advisors across the table.   

The President replied to his Russian counterpart, “Thank you, Vladimir. As soon as you are ready, I will give you the go ahead to launch.” 

“Alright, my friend, it will be just a few more moments,” the Russian replied.

The President muted the telephone, looked down at the table and said, “I want both of your resignations on my desk within the hour.” 

The two advisors’ heads snapped up and their eyes focused on the President. Each reacted in a different manner.

Rose Magruder simply sighed and mumbled, “Yes, sir.” 

Dr. Rosen stood up, looked very offended, and in a raised voice declared, “Mr. President, why would you ask for my resignation? I’ve been very upfront with you on my objections to this project from the very beginning. I have done nothing that warrants my resignation!”  

The President stood up and leaned over the table resting his hands on the table. His straight arms and his furrowed brow were the only indications of how irritated he was at the moment. His New England upbringing came to the forefront as he dressed down his ex-science advisor.

“You academics don’t understand how the game is played, Dr Rosen. You serve at the pleasure of the President. And at the moment, the President is not pleased. At the moment, I need to lay the blame for this whole mess on bad advice. And you, Dr. Rosen, have never said not to build the damn thing. You simply said that you thought there were better ways to spend the funds! You never said the thing would never work, or that the thing was too dangerous. So in omission lays your failure. I expect your resignation within the hour.”

With that the President sat down, dropped his eyes to papers in front of him on the table, and he began reading the fax he had received. The Russians had faxed a joint statement worked out between the President’s on-duty communications office staff member and the Russian president’s counterpart. The statement outlined the situation, the request for assistance, and descriptions of several of the agreements made between the United Sates and Russia in exchange for the destruction of Storm Killer. The most important agreements were secret and would not be released for the world’s news consumption.