The Omega Command (11 page)

McCracken rose to his feet. “Then who …”

As if both men had realized the answer simultaneously, they rushed toward the door together, linked by the terrible certainty that they were going to be too late. They bolted up the stairs with a set of befuddled guards right behind them and had reached the deck when the explosion came, shattering the stillness of the night. Heat singed the air and buckled Blaine’s flesh an instant before the world was yanked from under him. He reached out to grab something, anything, but it was all floating away.

Blackness came mercifully before impact, so it seemed he was still floating into a tunnel up ahead, and he tumbled into it falling, falling …

Chapter 8

WHEN CAPTAIN ALAN COGLAN
first saw Sandy Lister enter the restaurant, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. It came as quite a surprise when she approached his table.

“Captain Coglan, I’m Sandy Lister.”

Coglan rose to greet her. “Yes, I know,” he said, starting to feel suspicious now.

“Please sit down, Captain. I’ll try not to take up too much of your time and I’m sorry if I interrupted your dinner.”

T.J. Brown had learned that Coglan ate dinner regularly at this small Italian restaurant near his station post, and Sandy had come with the intention of prying more information from him. Rarely did she take advantage of her celebrity status. It was great for avoiding long waits in restaurants or airports, but generally it was a burden to be shrugged off. Often during interviews her mere presence made people eager to please and under those circumstances they often revealed more than they intended. She was hoping for similar results tonight.

Coglan hadn’t quite settled himself back in his chair when Sandy spoke again.

“T.J. Brown works for me, Captain.”

Coglan’s face stiffened. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea that we speak, Miss Lister.”

“What’s an orbital flight plan, Captain?”

Coglan leaned across the table. “Miss Lister, please. By all rights I should have reported that T.J. had the disk in his possession, but for some reason I didn’t. Your questions might force me to change my mind.”

“I don’t think so, Captain, because then you would have to explain why you waited so long. Your people might also somehow learn that you had dinner here with me, a television reporter. I doubt very much they’d appreciate the timing of that,” Sandy warned, her threat spoken gently.

“Miss Lister, the information you’re asking for is top secret.”

“Not anymore, Captain. The disk was passed on to me by a civilian who died for the effort. Murdered, more specifically.”

Coglan hesitated. “Everything I say will be considered off the record?”

“Absolutely.”

“And you’ll forget about this meeting ever taking place?”

“It never happened.”

Coglan pulled his chair farther under the table and lowered his voice to a whisper. “The shuttle program is not my field, but I do know some basics. To begin with, the onboard crew under normal conditions has little control over the shuttle once it attains orbit. Everything is controlled and monitored by computers in Houston talking to computers one hundred and eighty miles above Earth. Through disks, Miss Lister. The disk T.J. brought me was one of the most important of all because it contained the preprogrammed space orbit
Adventurer
was to follow: when and where the shuttle would be at every instant of its orbit, barring malfunction, of course.”

“And did any malfunction occur on the flight?”

Coglan shook his head. “No. Everything was running green.”

“Just like
Challenger
…”

“No,” Coglan said defensively, “not like
Challenger
at all. The final transmission …” His voice trailed off.

Sandy’s eyebrows rose. No final transmission had been released to the press. “What transmission?”

Coglan backed off. “Miss Lister—”

“The shuttle was deliberately destroyed by someone, wasn’t it?”

Coglan hedged, then nodded slowly. “Or something. It’s been sealed tight under something called a Space-Stat alert, the space equivalent to a situation of war.”

“What happened up there, Captain?”

“All investigations have been sealed, as I said.”

“But there must be talk. There’s always talk.”

“Just rumors.”

“I’d like to hear them.”

“Off the record, right?” Coglan asked, needing the reassurance.

Sandy’s nod left no doubt.

Coglan sighed. “Drone satellites have just returned with pieces of the wreckage. It’s like nothing anyone’s seen before. The shuttle wasn’t just blown up, parts of it were totally vaporized.”

“Jesus …”

“The real anomaly lies in the fact that Houston’s radar board showed green the whole time
Adventurer’s
sensors were screaming bloody murder. Even when … whatever it was came into view of the astronauts, there was no evidence of it on any board back on Earth.”

“That doesn’t seem possible.”

“There are plenty of scientists with million-dollar salaries claiming the same thing. A few are actually theorizing the attack came from outer space, as if we finally had strayed too far into someone else’s territory.”

“You believe that, Captain?”

“Absolutely not. I’m a military man, Miss Lister, and I don’t buy passing off every unexplainable occurrence to some empire’s death star. A human finger pushed the button that destroyed
Adventurer
, and I’ve got a feeling whoever owns that finger isn’t finished yet.”

“A mess!” the President raged. “A goddamn raging, stinking mess!” He turned from the window of the Oval Office and faced Andrew Stimson. “Permission for you to use McCracken was revoked after the Paris incident. What in hell gave you the right to call him in on your own?”

Stimson found himself wishing fewer lights were on in the Oval Office so the fury on the President’s face wouldn’t be so obvious.

“Tom Easton gave me the right, sir,” he said plainly. “He was my man and somebody sliced him to bits. McCracken was my best bet, my only bet, to find out who did it and why. I felt his skills were the ones that were needed.”

“Skills that have brought the French to the verge of breaking off intelligence relations with us after his little escapade in Paris,” Barton McCall snapped.

“What about the three dead terrorists? Or doesn’t that count for anything?”

“Oh, it counts for plenty when the shooting was done on foreign soil by an agent who hasn’t had kill clearance for five years.” McCall paused, then raised his voice. “Plenty of embarrassment! And if that weren’t enough, he pulls a repeat performance on the streets of New York this afternoon.
The streets of New York
, Andy! If only that explosion had killed him once and for all …”

“What was McCracken doing on that boat in the first place?” the President asked.

“I explained that. Sebastian was connected with Madame Rosa. He set up Easton.”

“Then you knowingly let McCracken intrude on a Bureau operation?”

“I had to. There was no choice.” Stimson’s eyes flashed between the President and McCall, finding no support from either.

“The Bureau doesn’t share your view,” the President told him. “They’re steaming over this. Six months of surveillance and investigative work went down the drain.”

“Thanks to the bomb, not McCracken.”

McCall lit his pipe. “And what about this famous microfiche McCrackenballs miraculously discovered? Has it yielded anything yet?”

“It will,” Stimson said, not sounding as sure as he had tried to.

McCall puffed away. “You know, Andy, we could have avoided all this if you had kept closer tabs on the personal … tastes of your agents. Twins, Andy? I mean, really.”

“And what about Chen, Barton? Or is it routine for you to station your men in whorehouses to murder madams?”

McCall yanked the pipe from his mouth and held it out like a gun. “I had no knowledge concerning this man Chen until you informed me of his involvement this afternoon.”

“Maybe it’s
you
who should keep closer tabs on your agents.”

“Chen was freelance. On retainer with the Company but he filled plenty of other orders as well.”

“Enough, gentlemen!” the President broke in. “I’ll accept what’s happened because I have to. The question now is, how do we pick up the pieces? What’s McCracken’s condition, Andy?”

“He’s been slipping in and out of consciousness since the explosion. Moderate concussion and numerous bruises and lacerations. Nothing broken though. He’ll be duty-fit within a few days.”

“Then he’ll also be fit enough to be pulled out,” the President said flatly. “He’s become too much of a liability. As soon as he’s ready to travel, Andy, I want him brought down here to face a proper board of inquiry on the fiasco over in Paris so a determination can be made about his future.”

“Retirement, sir?” Stimson asked, his meaning clear.

“
Normal
retirement. I want him buried so deep he’ll never become a thorn in our side again.

“In a desk job, sir, or a casket?”

Sandy Lister met with T.J. Brown in his office first thing Thursday morning. She began stripping off her coat as he looked up from his computer terminal.

“Benjamin Kelno is clean as driven snow, boss,” he reported, punching up the results of his labors on the monitor screen.

Disappointed, Sandy sat down before it. She had hoped something in Kelno’s background would offer some clue as to where he came into possession of the orbital flight plan he died planting on her.

“He spent the last twelve years of his life with the COM-U-TECH division of Krayman Industries,” T.J. began, highlighting the information displayed on the monitor, “in the research and development areas. He was instrumental in creating The Krayman Chip, but as so often is the case in these matters, he received no credit.”

“Disgruntled?”

“Not openly. His salary was six figures, he was promoted four times, and he left a loving wife and family. As near as I can tell, he turned down numerous offers from Krayman competitors in Silicon Valley, but there’s no evidence he ever even interviewed with any of them.” T.J. stopped and leaned back. “Now it’s your turn. How’d it go with Coglan?”

Sandy moved away from the monitor screen. “
Adventurer’s
destruction was no accident, that much is for sure. And whoever blew it out of the sky would have needed to know its orbital flight plan.”

“Kelno’s disk,” T.J. muttered. “Krayman Industries …”

“I’m not ready to make that connection yet.”

“Sure, boss. But if it’s true, and they killed Kelno because he tried to bring the story to you, it’s not hard to figure who they’ll be going after next.”

“Calm down. Your own research doesn’t show a damn thing that supports that conclusion. Krayman Industries is after control of the media. Destroying space shuttles doesn’t fit there anywhere I can see. Who knows what Kelno might have been up to in his spare time?”

“We going to Shay with this yet?”

“Give me a couple more days.”

“For what?”

“You’re the one who said Krayman Industries and Randall Krayman were one and the same. My first interview is scheduled for tomorrow with a man who’s got good reason to drag mud through the Krayman Tower. If something’s going on there, he just might know what it is.”

Chapter 9

FRANCIS DOLORMAN LOOKED
nothing like the stereotype of the chief executive officer of a multi-billion-dollar consortium. As the man who succeeded the great Krayman upon his withdrawal five years before, he craved little attention and received even less. Anyone passing his small, thin figure on the street would never give him a second look and barely even a first.

Though Francis Dolorman was powerful and prominent, he did not throw lavish parties. He did not wine and dine political officials. He did not dream of his picture on the cover of
Time, Newsweek
, or
People
, and would have refused such a request if it were ever made of him. He preferred to lurk in relative obscurity. Public invisibility was a godsend because it permitted movement.

Dolorman had lived by that credo for the five years he had managed Krayman Industries and for many years previously. That such a seemingly meek, almost shy man could have risen to such a position would have been impossible if not for the calculating soul that lurked within. For as long as he could remember, Dolorman had thrived on others’ underestimation of him. To be able to surpass a rival before he even considers you a threat is a great gift, especially in the world of business. Dolorman took tremendous pride in that advantage and saw no reason to change things at so late a stage in his life and career.

Similarly, he took pleasure in the fact that he could enter the Krayman Tower in Houston and move to his private elevator without drawing so much as a glance from his own employees. Only those who saw him arrive in his limousine, the one luxury he allowed himself, might gawk briefly or stammer out a greeting. Dolorman would smile back but never stop for a hello or, God forbid, a conversation. The less people knew about him, the better.

The limousine pulled to a halt before the main entrance of the Krayman Tower Thursday morning and Dolorman eased himself gingerly out. He had been on a destroyer sunk by a Japanese kamikaze in World War II and his back had suffered the brunt of the damage. The pain seldom let up, and like everything else in life, it was just something you got used to.

Because Dolorman could swallow his emotions as deftly as his pain, the anxiety he felt this morning showed not the slightest trace on his features. His skin was conspicuously pale, as usual, and his white hair cropped close enough to resemble a solid sheath. He made a straight, solitary path toward his private elevator and rode it to his office on the fifty-third and top floor. His mind recited the various management facilities of Krayman holdings as he passed them floor by floor with the flashing of different numbered lights.

His secretary eyed him subserviently as he moved lightly from the elevator. The pain in his back made Dolorman’s steps seem a glide rather than a walk.

“Mr. Wells and Mr. Verasco are waiting in your office as instructed, sir.”