Storm Killer (34 page)

Would he have shot a friend and co-conspirator?
Maybe he was trying to tidy up loose ends,
the lieutenant thought. 

Lt. James broached the subject that was still gnawing at him, “Kim, listen, I’ve got a couple of serious questions to pose to you. Please answer them truthfully, because you know I’ll eventually find out if your answers aren’t true.” 

Kim looked into his face and saw his features set in a determined, serious frown.

Kim replied, “You know I could never lie to you. You saved my life. You’re my rock. I’d die before lying to you!”  

He took a deep breath and jumped in, “Okay, I believe you. I reviewed the call logs from Dr. Rosen. As we thought, they showed a clear connection to Greg and from Greg to Brad. The troubling part is that immediately after Dr. Rosen made the call to Greg, he called – you.”

Kim snapped her head around sharply and said in a muddled tone, “Me? Right after he called Greg? I don’t understand.” The effects of the cocaine and the gunshot were taking a toll on her mental facilities and she wasn’t thinking clearly yet.

“What did you two talk about? And why did you call Greg right after the call with Rosen?”

Kim tried to remember the conversation with Dr. Rosen. She had only talked to him once.
When was it? What was said?

It came back to her in a flash and she excitedly replied, “I talked to him once. It was when you were getting the chip out of Rafael. He called to tell me that the president had asked him to phone and offer all the resources of the government to be at my disposal for investigating and stopping the plot on Storm Killer. He asked me to pass on some similar words to Greg. I did.”

“That’s it?” the lieutenant asked.

Kim thought back and replied, “Yes. But now that I think about it, it was almost like he was reading a prepared script. I never gave that any thought until now. I’ll bet I was passing a coded message of some sort on to Greg and didn’t even know it.”

The lieutenant considered Kim’s words and finally said, “Okay, I believe you. I think Dr. Rosen was trying to throw a red herring into the investigation. If he got you implicated, the investigation might have bogged down until things could get sorted out. Thank God things developed so quickly. That phone call surfaced too late to do him any good as a delaying tactic.”

Kim relaxed. “I agree. Hell, I only talked to the man once. My phone records will bear that out. Since he was a senior advisor to the president, any of us would have willingly taken a call from him.”

The lieutenant nodded saying, “Yes, we would have. Don’t sweat it. I’m sure we got it all cleared up. Now, let’s get this chip home and wrap up this whole thing!”

She nodded as they continued their PPU power drive to the control center.   

81

The launch specialist monitoring Tanechka’s progress picked up the ringing phone. It was a direct line from the Russian Missile Defense Command.

“Ya?”

“Corporal Korabek, listen carefully and write this down. Command code is AABB66MM33. Authorization is Delta Omega Tango Delta Tango. Abort code is 1100774455. Repeat 1100774455. Abort the mission.” 

“Abort? Are you crazy? We are on perfect flight path and all systems are functioning well. Why abort?”

“This is not your decision. Abort the missile at once.”

“My Tanechka to be destroyed? She is beautiful and true. I’ll not destroy her!”

“You will follow orders and destroy the missile. At once!”

The corporal was aghast. How could they destroy the beautiful Tanechka when she was performing her job so wonderfully?     

He hesitated for a moment and then remembered a phrase the Missile Security Force Commander had used at their initial briefing on arriving in the Missile Command. He had felt a shiver through his spine when he heard the commander say this phrase.

The commander had said, “You will follow your orders to the letter and immediately. Any dereliction of duty will be considered treason, and both you
and your family
will be dealt with appropriately.”

The gathered military personnel understood what the Commander meant. Both they and their families would be killed if they failed to do their duty.

The corporal shuddered, entered the abort code he had received on his keyboard and pressed the abort button. He then responded to the last order. “Yes, sir. Abort performed.”

Twenty thousand kilometers above the Earth and almost half way around it, Tanechka exploded from twenty-eight kilos of C-4 detonating in the warhead section. The warheads separated and began falling back to Earth. They made a marvelous fireworks display over Hawaii as they burned up re-entering the atmosphere. Four Hawaiian children saw the two shooting stars trailing over their island of paradise and laughed and pointed at the sight. Tanechka’s ending was as glorious as her short life.        

82

Kim jumped from the cart before Lt. James had fully stopped it. She ran with the precious cargo in held tightly in her clinched fist. The computer chip was almost home!

As she entered the control center, she looked from side to side for Layne Bartlett. He wasn’t here! Nobody was in the room. Where was Bartlett? Where were the technicians? Kim was ready to scream in frustration when Layne came walking briskly through the door. He was placing his phone back into his belt loop holder.          

Kim quizzed him, “Where the hell are the technicians? Why is no one in here?”

“I had them suit up and EVA to the Japanese shuttle. It’s still standing off the station waiting to pick up as many of us that can get away before the station is destroyed. The shuttle will back away to a safe distance in a few minutes. Where’s the chip?”

Kim handed him the chip she still had clutched so tightly in her fist. He held it up and inspected it. “It appears okay, but I have to run a set of diagnostics on it,” Layne said as he moved to a card table that had been set up near the sabotaged control computer. 

On the table was what looked like a PC with a silver box cabled to it. He took the chip and plugged it into what appeared to be a printed circuit board mounted to the top of the silver box. A red light on the box blinked off as an adjacent green light flashed on. He swiveled the PC toward him and began touching various keys on the keyboard.  

As Bartlett began his testing, Lt. James arrived. He had stopped to talk to Adam Sand on the phone. Adam had reported his conversation with the president’s advisor. The missile was being aborted!

Sand asked Bartlett to call Rose Magruder when the chip was installed and activated.

The doctor had arrived at Lt. James’ request and bandaged and dressed Kim’s injured shoulder. The bullet had passed all the way through her shoulder. The Doctor said some reconstructive surgery would be required but the bleeding was stopped and the wound was not life threatening.  

The PC screen showed a progress bar as the diagnostics executed. Everyone in the room stared at the screen as the progress bar approached one hundred percent.

The PC beeped, and a new screen popped up reading, “DIAGNOSTICS COMPLETE, NO ERRORS FOUND.”

A collective sigh went up from the assembled group. Layne took the chip from its resting place on the silver box and placed it in its’ slot in the control computer.

The group watched the monitor as it continued displaying new occurrences of the same error message indicating the guidance computer needed updated direction.

“REAL TIME REQUIRES PLAN DATA REFRESH … 5:10 MINUTES REMAINING”

He entered a few commands to the system to indicate the real time computer was now ready to accept new data from the computational computer, and that the computational computer should began feeding new real-time plan data to the control computer.

They held their collective breath and waited for the system responses to Bartlett’s commands. 

83

Senator Gutierrez received word the missile had been ordered aborted. He was livid. His plan was falling apart. He couldn’t reach Rosen. His intelligence said that Rosen had fled.

Rosen had failed him.

He got another email on his screen from his Washington source. It indicated Rosen’s two associates on Storm Killer were in custody and that the chip had been recovered.

The Senator was almost frothing at the mouth. Rosen! That ass has taken a great deal of our money and did not deliver. He would have to be dealt with.

The senator looked for some way to salvage some part of his plan and saw none. He had failed. But not all projects succeeded, better luck next time.

With that, he opened his secret file cabinet within his desk, removed the Storm Killer file and placed each page into his shredder. When he finished, he picked up the phone and dialed a number he knew by heart.

“Carlos? It’s the Senator. I have a job for you. Yes, one last job. Listen carefully.”  

84

The assembled group still held their collective breath as they waited for the systems to respond to the commands that had been entered.

The monitor continued to display the same error message over and over every five seconds:

“REAL TIME REQUIRES PLAN DATA REFRESH … 5:00 MINUTES REMAINING

“REAL TIME REQUIRES PLAN DATA REFRESH … 4:55 MINUTES REMAINING

After what seemed an eternity but was only eight seconds, the monitor displayed a much wished for series of messages.

“REAL TIME READY FOR PLAN DATA.”

“PLAN DATA SESSION ESTABLISHED.”

“PLAN DATA TRANSMISSION RESUMED.”

“CONTROL SYSTEM REFRESHING REAL TIME   CACHE”

“STATION BEING REPOSITIONED TO CURRENT PLAN DATA”

“OPERATIONS NORMAL”

Everyone began applauding at the same time; the station was now under control. 

Kim had not noticed that Lt. James had slipped his hand into hers as they had waited to see if station control would return. She did not try to pull her hand away, but instead gave his hand a slight squeeze.

“We made it!” she said brightly to the lieutenant.

He smiled and nodded, “Yes, we did. And now we can sort out how our prisoners and Rafael orchestrated this with Dr. Rosen. Let’s leave these scientist types to their fun and games with the hurricane while we wrap up our job.” 

Layne overheard their conversation. He stopped them as they started to walk out hand in hand. “Excuse me, but did I hear you use the name of Dr. Rosen?” he asked.

“Yes. We have reason to believe he’s behind this whole plot,” Kim answered.

“I knew him. He’s an egotistical ass. I never liked him, and I don’t think he like me very much,” Layne stated.

“I think Brad thought the world of him. Rosen called Brad one of his best students. I think Greg was also one of Rosen’s teacher’s pets. You’ll have to ask him.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Layne. We plan to ask him lots of questions!” Kim laughed. Then, the lieutenant joined her with a hearty baritone laugh. Layne just stared at them, not knowing that Greg and Brad were in custody for their roles in the Storm Killer plot.

Kim put her arm around the small of the lieutenant’s back and he put his arm lightly around her shoulder avoiding putting pressure anywhere near her bullet wound. They looked at each other, laughed again and walked out of the control center.

85

Storm Killer’s cone of heat was only three kilometers from the Lincoln. But even at that distance the effects of the tremendous heat were becoming apparent. The sea boiled and huge clouds of steam were rising even around the Lincoln.

The four and a half acres of wood flight desk was starting to smoke. Soon, it would burst into flame as the heat continued to rise.

The paint on the side of the ship nearest the heat had started to blister and slough off into the bubbling seawater.

The glass in the bridge windows closest to the heat ray cracked from the tremendous and instantaneous temperature differential.

The crew in the refrigerated coolers were already experiencing temperatures approaching one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Even this far down in the ship in these chilled storage rooms, the temperature would soon rise to over a thousand degrees or higher as the actual heat ray swept over the ship.