The Fall (2 page)

Really, dude? Right now?

The Pentagon had decided to place the entire operation—just twelve damned hours before the jump—under the direct command of General George Hastings, a senior member of the DOD overseeing committee who had never set foot at the Cape before. Jack had nearly lost it when he'd arrived at Kennedy Space Center last night to find an entourage of dark SUVs packed with a small army of soldiers and a couple of scientists from Los Alamos. Then an hour later, as NASA technicians were going through the process of getting him inside the multiple modules and layers of the OSS, Hastings made his appearance and had gone straight into a discussion about changing the descent profile, in direct conflict with Angela's instructions. A heated exchange followed between Hastings, Jack, and Angela.

No offense, General, but she's got the MIT Ph.D., not you,
Jack had finally told him, prompting the general to storm out of the suit-up room to call the Pentagon. But in spite of clashing personalities, there was simply too much at stake, and there was no one else skilled enough—and perhaps crazy enough—to make this jump. So after a ten-minute conference call between the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the White House Chief of Staff, Hastings, and Pete, it was decided that the jump would go on as planned but with the reprogrammed descent profile requested by Hastings, and that Pete would find a way to keep Jack on a leash.

“General?” Jack finally said.

“Jack, you must accept the reprogrammed Alpha-B profile when you reenter the atmosphere. It is critical that…”

Jack tuned the general out while watching the Earth below him, leaning forward into the abyss, freeing his boots from the Velcro straps on the floor while still holding on to the exit handles, trying to listen to his suit rather than to Hastings. His mind focused on the job ahead, letting the general continue to rattle off the same garbage he had spewed back in the suit-up room.

This is the precise reason why so many well-planned military operations turn to shit, General.

But Jack held his tongue, trusting his wife, deciding to accept whatever descent profile appeared in his display.

Instead, he gazed at the nearly surreal view beyond the capsule as he waited for the timer to start the jump countdown sequence. It was one thing to view the world painted on his faceplate display by exterior cameras. It was an entirely different animal to actually see it from this altitude with his own eyes. No camera could capture the incredible depth and colors of planet Earth as he swung forward as much as he could while still holding on to the handles, projecting half of his body beyond the opening, milking the moment for as long as he could.

Even Claudette looked amazing from this altitude, its angered clouds alive with pulsating lightning resembling balls of light arcing across its twisting mass, trembling wildly in a rainbow of colors contrasting sharply with the bluish hues of the Gulf of Mexico as it slowly turned east towards the middle of the Florida peninsula.

Although seldom easily impressed, Jack took it all in, enjoying his very own fireworks show, filling his lungs, savoring the moment before his jump window opened, listening to his suit, to the droning pumps keeping the OSS's internal temperature at 70 degrees Fahrenheit, to the light beeps made by the master computer system as it ran yet another diagnostic, and even to the sound of his own breathing as he became nearly hypnotized by the view.

Somewhere in the background, Hastings was still talking, still dispensing orders.

Jack continued to ignore him, his eyes scanning his faceplate displays, confirming proper operation of all his systems, before returning to the cloud-to-cloud lightning, framed by the ocean and the Florida peninsula. Beyond it a sea of stars outlined Earth's delicate curvature, countless points glittering against the darkness of space.

A green numeral 20, projected in the middle of his faceplate, disrupted his cosmic sightseeing.

Lock and load time,
he thought.

As the timer turned red and began the critical twenty-second countdown before the jump window closed, Jack remembered Alan Shepard in
Freedom 7,
recalled what later became known as Shepard's Prayer in the aviator's community thanks to the movie
The Right Stuff.

“Dear God, please don't let me fuck up,” he said, interrupting Hastings's monologue.

Then Jack lowered the heat shield over his visor and jumped into the abyss.

*   *   *

“He'd better know what in the
fuck
he's doing, Flaherty!” hissed George Hastings, the oversized Army general, while standing next to Pete at the CapCom station in the relatively modest Mission Control Room, occupying the second floor of an old space shuttle–era building recently refurbished for Project Phoenix in Launch Complex 39. In this windowless room, eighteen mission specialists sitting in three rows of six monitored every aspect of the launch. If successful, the next Pentagon grant would allow Pete to expand this Mission Control Room, add a second one at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and add an OSS Launch Module to the International Space Station, where America could house its first platoon of orbital jumpers ready to be deployed to any location on the globe.

“I thought you were going to keep him on a leash, dammit!” the general snarled before stepping back and crossing his massive arms while looking at the large displays monopolizing the entire front of the room.

Dr. Angela Taylor, sitting at the far end of the last row, shook her head while sipping her third energy drink in two hours, finishing it, and tossing it over her head and directly into a waste basket just five feet from the growling general with the blazing orange hair and freckles. The can banged loudly against the other two she had previously deposited in the same trash can.

That's another three-pointer, Grumpy.

Angela felt his stare on her as she loudly popped the lid of a fourth drink while glancing at her short fingernails, painted black to match her lipstick, before shifting her gaze between Jack's vitals, the descent profile display, and the suit's hundreds of internal monitors—telemetry that was broadcast through two passing satellites and one in geosynchronous orbit right above the jump as backup. In addition, the pod's final task was to shoot off in a parallel descent path to Jack's while providing them with high-resolution imagery for the first few minutes of the jump, before it burned up on reentry at around mile thirty. Then the cameras aboard a dozen high-altitude balloons parked along his planned route would pick up his epic fall right up to his final chute deployment, when ground cameras and several spotting helicopters would be waiting to record the final descent.

Everyone in that room—with the exception of Hastings and his annoying crew—had a specific task to handle, from managing the capsule's trajectory and tracking satellites, to the incoming weather system, the high-altitude balloons, distance to all other orbiting objects, and even working real-time with central Florida's air traffic controllers to create a twenty-mile-wide temporary flight restriction around Jack's planned descent path, also known as the “pipe.”

On top of all that, the Air Force had a dozen fighter jets hauling high-frequency transmitters meant to keep all birds away from the pipe. The stakes were high, and the last thing NASA and the Pentagon needed was for Jack to hit a chunk of space debris or a damned seagull on his way down. But even the finest rocket-scientist minds couldn't anticipate every possible thing that could go wrong with a project of this complexity, and that very, very small—but still very, very real—probability of something going wrong kept Angela's heart rate high and her throat dry.

Come home to me, Jack,
she thought, feeling immense pressure building up in her chest, just to realize she had stopped breathing.

Slowly inhaling through her nostrils and exhaling through her mouth, Angela took a sip of her drink and tried to control her growing heart rate, for a moment feeling ashamed that Jack's was actually lower than hers. But then again, Jack had always been in superb physical shape, which over the years meant that Angela also got in shape to keep up with him, from long runs, mountain climbing, and ocean kayaking to becoming his official self-defense training partner at home, an activity that typically ended in the bedroom. In return, Angela taught Jack to ride Triumph motorcycles and even got him to get a tattoo to match hers.

She grinned, glancing at the burning Triumph Bonneville T140 flanked by American and British flags on her right forearm, half covered by her lab coat.

The knowledge that Jack had one just like it up there somehow helped her steady her breathing.

You are some smooth operator,
she thought, amazed that he could calm her down even from outer space.

But just as Jack could calm her down, he could also really push her buttons, bringing out the worst in her.

Their relationship hadn't been easy the past two years, with Jack signing up for every high-adrenaline military mission while she developed space suits for NASA.

What happened to us?
she pondered as the countdown sequence ticked down in the upper left corner of her display. The glimmer in his brown eyes last night, as they shared homemade pasta while reviewing the various phases of his descent and last-minute adjustments to his space suit, had reawakened long-dormant feelings in Angela.

But you came along, you little fucker,
she thought, glaring at Claudette in one of the large screens at the front of the room, remembering the cell phone vibrating on the dinner table, Pete informing them that an incoming weather system had moved up the jump. A car was already on the way to get them both to the Cape.

Angela sighed, recalling the feelings rekindled during their interrupted dinner—feelings long absent in their busy lives.

Two damn years, Jack,
she thought, frowning. That's how long it had been since they'd really connected, since the fire of their initial years of marriage was quenched by the realities of their almost separate lives, driving a deep wedge between them, resulting in Jack sleeping more often on the couch than in their bedroom.

But there had been something there last night, a spark of years past, and a part of Angela was hoping to pick up where they had left off.

But first you need to do this jump,
she thought, as Jack separated from the pod and instantly assumed the planned initial descent profile, opening his arms and legs as if he were flying, stretching the titanium alloy webbing from his waist to his elbows and in between his thighs. The idea, which had earned her another patent, came to Angela by watching sugar gliders jump from tree to tree.

“Phoenix, KSC. Jump plus five seconds. Looking good. All systems nominal. Pod ignition started. Ten seconds to drone deployment,” Pete said while sitting back down at his station in the middle row as General Hastings stepped aside to confer with the pair of Los Alamos physicists he had brought down with him along with a dozen military personnel, which he called his “security detail.”

“Roger that. Phoenix's good up here.”

Hastings said something to his head of security, Captain Riggs, a steroids-enhanced brute who had come close to attacking Jack after last night's heated exchange with Hastings.

My money would have been on Jack,
she thought with a grin, taking a sip while sizing up Riggs, who looked as if he ate rocks in his morning cereal. The man was certainly solid, with tight muscles visibly pressing against his dark uniform.

In fact, he looks too perfect,
she thought, with his closely cropped blond hair, hard-edged features, and very fair skin—certainly a fine specimen of Aryan descent. And interestingly enough, all of Hastings's men had that look. Some had dark hair. One was Asian. Another black. But they all looked as if they were grown in the same place, like little toy soldiers, seldom making eye contact, and not one of them ever looked in her direction.

Maybe they're gay,
she thought.

Or maybe the good general cuts off their balls like they used to do in the old days.

Riggs saluted the general, did a perfect about-face, and proceeded to direct his team of eunuchs to cover all entrances to Mission Control before approaching NASA's press coordinator in the back of the room.

She exhaled slowly, reminding herself that the brass was footing the bill. But if NASA could pull this off, perhaps Hastings, his pit bulls, and his pair of gurus would crawl back to whatever shithole they had come out of and let the real pros continue to drive this program.

She gave the Alamo scientists a furtive glance while biting her lower lip. The male one was in his sixties, bald, and a bit hunched over, with round glasses perched at the edge of his thin nose. The female was much younger, perhaps in her forties, rail thin, with ash-blond hair, light-colored eyes behind thick glasses, and a pasty complexion that suggested she probably didn't get outside much.

Maybe Hastings is doing her,
she thought with another grin, finishing off her drink and executing another perfectly loud three-pointer.

She had never seen either one of them before last night, when she caught them in the suit-up room with their noses deep in the electronic guts of her baby, the product of nearly six years of painful design and redesign. Jack had to literally restrain her when Angela had instinctively reverted to her biker upbringing, turning into a junkyard dog about to mangle the visiting physicists, who scrambled out of the room.

She hoped she wouldn't see them ever again after today.

Angela had no clue yet, why there was a need for a pair of tablet-armed nerds sticking their noses in her project and scrubbing through the OSS computer network but she intended to find out. An alarm in the back of her head told her that the Pentagon brass didn't pull last-minute stunts like this one without a powerful motive.