Vital Force (4 page)

“When you told the Agency you were asked to observe the launch, I was sent from our consulate in Vladivostok to keep an eye on you. We had rumblings about a possible disruption from a few other countries in the area.”

“Like?”

“I'm not—”

“At liberty. I know, but I just had an encounter with a few pissed-off Chinese.”

Turner thought for a moment. “You sure they weren't North Korean?”

“It was dark. Could have been. I got a pretty good look at the woman, though.”

That revelation made Turner twist his head toward Jake and then slowly turn back to the road. “Woman?”

“Yeah, and movie-star gorgeous.”

“Shit!”

“What?”

“Can't be sure. I saw the two of them head into your hotel. But, like you said, it was dark. She looked familiar from a distance. If it was the agent we've been briefed on, you're lucky to be alive.”

“Thanks for the confidence boost.”

“No offense, but you've been out of the game for a while. A little too long.”

“Any reason they wanted to pick me up?”

“What'd they say?”

Jake shrugged. “Just wanted to know about the missile launch.”

“That's it?”

“I left in a hurry. They might have wanted to know about the gross national product of Finland.”

“Okay, but they probably know that's a hundred and thirty billion.”

Jake stared at the guy.

“Economics major.”

“Ah. So, back to the two Chinese who interrupted my sleep. You just let them take me?”

The Agency officer thought for a long while as he stopped the car at a red light on the outskirts of the city. As he pulled away, he said, “I called it in. They wanted me to hold back. See what they wanted with you.”

“And if they had killed me?”

“They didn't. And we had no reason to think they would. Besides, I was right behind you all the way.”

“I didn't know that.”

“True. Anyway, they wanted to know about the missile. What'd you tell them.”

“The truth.”

“What?”

“That the missile malfunctioned. What else is there?”

“Right.”

This was not going well. The Agency officer was giving him nothing. “Listen. If you want my help, you better start telling the truth.”

Turner lifted his hands from the steering wheel in protest. “What?”

“Like how the U.S. shot the missile down with its new Airborne Laser.”

The officer's face twisted somewhat, and Turner tried to recover before he said, “Who told you that?”

Not exactly a denial. “Colonel Pushkina.”

“Shit!”

“You think the government would keep it from him?”

“That's not it. Pushkina is missing.”

“Taken like me?”

“Don't know.”

Without saying another word, Turner pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number. He waited and then said, “Boone, One Seven Three Four.” Listening for a few seconds, Turner finally said, “Got him here.”

Two minutes passed as they traveled along the road that finally became familiar to Jake. They stopped and pulled over to the curb a half a block down from the Shevchenko Hotel.

Turner said into his phone, “Yes, sir,” and then he flipped the phone shut and returned it to his jacket pocket.

“Well?”

“I was told to get you out of Russia.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that,” Turner repeated. “We're only twenty-five kilometers from China.”

“China? Why the hell would I go there?”

Turner, more serious than ever, said, “Because your country needs you.”

Jake had heard that before more than he would have liked to admit. How the hell had it come to this? Fly to Russia, Yuri had said. Watch the missile and drink some vodka. B.S. about the old days. Great. Now they were asking him to go to China. Just like the Air Force and the old CIA, this was obviously government voluntary. Do it or something nefarious will happen. It was always something, Jake knew.

●

Huddled in the Volkswagen Santana, the heater working overtime, Li felt the cold reality of failure for the first time in years. Part of her wanted to rush back to Khabarovsk, find that bastard American, and the person who had picked him up on the road half naked, and do to him like she did to the man in San Francisco two months ago. The other part of her, the part that had been sexually excited by his skill at escaping, wanted to do things to him that was illegal in most countries.

Laughing Dragon put the car in gear and pulled away into the night. He pushed a tape into the player on the dash and The Beatles “The Fool on the Hill” broke the silence.

“That me,” he said. “Just a Fool on the Hill.” He laughed uncontrollably.

When he was done, she thought about their instructions, wondering if they could continue. “We have failed,” she said softly, her eyes diverting toward the few stars she could see as the clouds parted.

He reached across her to the glove box and pulled out a silenced automatic pistol. Pointing it at her head, he said, “Then I shoot you. Send you to Hell.”

She closed her eyes. Part of her wanted him to pull the trigger. She heard the hammer click back. Then her family would be free. They would no longer have this man and others hanging over them, waiting for failure like this, waiting for leverage to force her to do what she knew in her mind had to be done.

The hammer clicked loudly.

Opening her eyes, she turned to see the barrel a few inches from her face. “You sick bastard.”

He lowered the gun and giggled like a little girl. “You get like me you play this game long enough.”

Maybe so, she thought. Maybe she was already there and didn't know it. “We failed,” she said again.

“No, no, no,” Laughing Dragon said. “Everything happen for reason.”

She was confused. “We didn't get the information from Adams. We should have killed him.”

The car came to a stop at the end of the frozen road, and the driver paused there for a moment.

He shook his head as he said, “You don't know everything, Li. That always on purpose. In case you get caught.”

“Are you saying we didn't need anything from Jake Adams?”

He smiled. “I bet he pissed off now.” He hesitated, as if trying to search his brain to see how much he could tell her. “We know what happen to missile. American laser shoot it down.”

With that revelation, her brows rose. “The laser from San Francisco?”

“That's why you go there now,” he said. “We need the software.”

She thought about the man she was running there. How she wasn't sure if he would deliver. Glancing at the gun, she knew what she had to do. The laser worked. “I understand,” she finally said.

“Good. Now, about that Beatles album. You find first edition Abby Road, perfect condition. . . I'm very happy.”

He cackled as he turned the car left toward Khabarovsk and slowly pulled out onto the roughly paved road.

Eareckson Air Station
Shemya, Alaska

Wind whipped across the frozen Earth and stirred up clouds of snow on the remote island at the western edge of the Aleutian Islands. Visibility at the nearby airport was at zero, which matched the temperature before the wind chill. Adding the thirty mile an hour gusts, it felt like closer to thirty below zero.

Eareckson had been Shemya Air Base until a few years ago, first inhabited by the U.S. military in 1943 after kicking the Japanese off the island, and continuously since then with a peak of some 1,500 personnel in the 1970s. Now there were only 85 people on the two-mile by four-mile rock; mostly government contractors there to help with re-fueling military aircraft on the long flights from stateside bases to Asia. But that would soon change.

Standing outside a brick building built in the mid-80s, trying desperately to keep his cigar lit, was the future commander, Colonel Tim Powers. In the old days, the colonel could have simply lit up in his office and enjoyed this vice without losing an appendage to frostbite. Now, though, because of Air Force-wide regulations, the little pleasure he got from the cigar was hardly worth the effort.

Only hours ago they had landed in their modified Boeing 747, which now sat huddled comfortably in a hardened hangar, technicians combing over the craft and ensuring all was well with the advanced Airborne Laser, with its high-energy Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) system.

The door opened and a man in a parka approached the colonel.

“Sir, nothing's going in or out of the airport for at least the next twelve hours.” The voice was Senior Master Sergeant Gary Isham, the future squadron's first sergeant. Future, because the squadron would not be completely manned and operational for another six months.

“Thanks, Gary. I had a feeling. The pilot said we were lucky to land.”

“What'll the fallout be from your shot?”

The colonel thought about that. He had been placed in charge of converting this old air base, used during the Cold War to pick up a first strike by the Soviets by both ICBM missiles and Sub-launched Ballistic Missiles, into a sophisticated testing facility for the new airborne laser interceptor technology. The older Cobra Dane phased array radar had served well to track and collect data on Soviet and Russian test launches to the Kamchatka impact area and the broader impact area of the northern Pacific Ocean in compliance with the START, START II and INF treaties. The radar had variously been used by NORAD, Air Force Space Command and the Air Intelligence Agency. But now, still under construction, was the follow-on to Cobra Dane, which would track missile launches and relay that information to laser sites in central Alaska, which would then shoot down any missile fired from Russia, China, or, more likely, North Korea.

In the past six months, Colonel Powers had been in charge of construction of this new radar, and, as far as the U.S. was concerned, their mission had gone unnoticed, he was sure. In fact, he was equally sure that the Russians had no idea they had re-opened this facility. From any satellite shot, the base looked deserted.

“The politicians can worry about that shit,” the colonel said, sucking on his cigar and bringing it to a glowing orange.

“You got another one of those, Sir?”

“Jane doesn't want you smokin' these nasty things,” the commander said. He smiled at his first sergeant, and then said, “Screw her if she can't take a joke.” He reached inside his coat and pulled out another cigar, handing it to the sergeant.

“You took the words outta my mouth, Sir.” He accepted the cigar and then lit it from the commander's, drawing in as hard as he could to keep it lit.

The commander had come to depend on his first sergeant ever since they were first stationed together in Germany years ago. They had both returned to the States around the same time, picking up assignments with Space Command in Colorado Springs. Six months ago, Colonel Powers had requested Senior Master Sergeant Isham by name to help lead his troops in Alaska. In fact, almost everyone in the unit had worked with the colonel at some point in their career. The mission was so important he only wanted those he knew for this assignment. If the colonel didn't know them personally, then the first sergeant had known them at some time in his career.

“Sounds like the old software worked as advertised, Sir. Why the need for new software?”

The colonel raised his head and let out a stream of smoke. “They're always upgrading, Gary. We had the advantage with this first strike. We knew when they would launch, where they would launch from, and the trajectory was predictable. The new software will help with the land-based system while the missiles are out over the arctic and are on a less predictable flight pattern. We're talkin' about concentrating a beam of light the width of a Dodge on an object flying at over twenty-five thousand kilometers per hour.”

“Damn.”

“Damn right,” the colonel said. “That's one helluva project in vector calculus and physics.”

“We gonna make our operational deadline, Colonel?”

Failure was a prospect the colonel couldn't fathom. He had never failed at anything in his life, and this would be no exception.

“The Russians now know we can shoot down their missiles, Gary. They gotta be shitin' their pants right about now.”

They both sucked on their cigars in unison.

The colonel only wished his group was as far along as everyone thought.

Palo Alto, California

Fog shrouded the entire Bay Area, despite the fact that it was early afternoon. Soon rush hour traffic would clog California 101 to a near standstill.

Clifford Johansen sat at his desk on the third floor of the Brightstar International industrial complex. He looked out at the parking lot, spotted his ten year old Toyota Camry sitting in a sea of BMWs and Mercedes, and knew that what he was about to do was the right thing. It had to be.

He swiveled his slight frame around in his chair, shifting his black-framed glasses askew on his narrow nose. With his middle finger he shoved the glasses back into place-a reaction that had almost gotten him beat up in high school. He laughed to himself thinking about how many people he had, supposedly through an inadvertent reaction, flipped off over the years. His clueless colleagues at Brightstar never seemed to get the point.

Rising above the cubicle wall and seeing the normal afternoon shuffle of workers trying to appear busy, Cliff turned to his computer, clicked through security, and found the files he had hidden days before. He had marked them with innocuous file names that would not catch anyone's eye, and then compressed and zipped them. He should have saved them to a DVD, but he could be checked at the security post on his departure. As he knew with all computers and with all software, there was always another way. Always a way to make things work.