Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01 (23 page)

 
          
The
hum he heard in the receiver was deafening, but someone was still trying to use
it. “Intel section. Do you read me? Intel section—”

 
          
“Intel,
Markham here,” he shouted into the phone. “Bridge, this is
Markham
. How do you hear?”

 
          
“Very
weak,” replied the voice—Lieutenant Commander Christopher Watanabe, the first
officer,
Markham
guessed. “Damage report.”

 
          
“No
structural damage noted yet, Chris,”
Markham
said. “All our power is out. All our
equipment is shut down.”

           
“Understand no structural damage,” Watanabe
reported back. “Could not copy the rest. Send a runner forward with a report on
the double. The ship is on Condition Yellow. Repeat, Condition Yellow.”

 
          
“Copy.”
Markham
dropped the phone back on its hook. “All
right, now hear this,” he called out into the pitch-dark intel section. “The
ship is on Condition Yellow. Everyone, one more check of your area for damage
and sing out. Kelly!”

 
          
“Yes
. . . yes, sir?” came the broken, timid voice again.

 
          
“You
wanna leave so fast, here’s your chance. Get up here.” The young seaman ran
forward. “You’re the runner for our section. You don’t go topside without a
parka, arctic mittens, life vest, and a lifeline—and this time use the damn
thing.”
Markham
pushed the youngster aside and peered into
the gloom of his now-impotent electronic stateroom. “Listen up. Any damage?
Water? Cracks? Gas? Strange sounds? Sing out.”

 
          
No
reply. “Move out, Kelly. Tell Watanabe no damage. Tell him I’ll give a report
on operational status myself later.” Kelly nodded and disappeared through the
useless magnetic-lock security door and into the storm beyond.

 
          
Markham
started to make his way aft through his
dark, dead multimillion dollar intelligence section. “Anything?” he asked no
one in particular. “
Battery
backups? Printer buffers? Anything?”

 
          
“I’ve
got nothing,” one operator said. “That entire battery backup system we had
installed is dead. It doesn’t work for shit.”

 
          
“What
the hell hit us?” someone else asked. “All my sensors and screens flared, like
a huge power surge. Then—
poof.
”

 
          
“All
right, all right,”
Markham
said, pulling on an orange life vest. “If you don’t have anything
recoverable, forget it. Pair up and start collecting your hard copy printouts.
You’ll have to use the hand-crank shredders if Engineering can’t get the power
back on. If that doesn’t work, or if you start to backlog, we’ll bag the
printouts and start a bonfire in the dumpster on deck. Masters, Lee, suit up
and get that dumpster now. No sense in waiting until the Russians start
boarding us.”

 
          
The
two men hurried off.

 
          
“Printer
ribbons, handwritten notes, logbooks, memos, scribbles,”
Markham
recited as he began to pace the aisle,
monitoring the destruction preparations. “Astleman, goddamnit, put that life
vest on!”
Markham
made his way over to Garrity’s station and
knelt down to face the veteran intelligence man.

 
          
“What
was it, Garrity?”

 
          
Garrity
ripped the cover off his computer printer’s ribbon cartridge and wadded up the
ribbon. When he turned toward
Markham
, there was genuine fear in his eyes.

 
          
“I
could see it coinin’,” he whispered. “It was like . . . like a wave of energy.
It kept on building up, then everything went dark.”

           
“Kavaznya?”
Markham
whispered. “Did it come from Kavaznya?”
Garrity nodded, wiping a carbon-blackened hand across his sweating forehead.
“Whatever the Russians got out there, Commander, if it didn’t blow us out of
the Pacific, it at least tagged somethin’ else for sure ...”

 
          
“
Where the hell is he?” Curtis asked
Jack Pledgeman, the President’s press secretary, who was trying to ignore the
four-star general.

           
“He’s late,” Curtis said, loud
enough for everyone in the White House Conference Room to hear. Fortunately,
the only ones who paid any attention were members of the President’s immediate
staff and Cabinet who were quite accustomed to Curtis’ outbursts. The two dozen
cameramen and technicians, putting in final touches to their extensive camera
and lighting gear, were too intent on their work to notice. And the members of
the White House press corps and other correspondents were outside, hoping to
corral the President in the hallway for one-on-one questions before the
scheduled morning Cabinet photo session.

 
          
Curtis
punched a palm in irritation. “When he hears what—”

           
“Dammit, General, keep it down,”
Pledgeman interrupted. “Those tapes are rolling over there.”

           
“They won’t be—”

 
          
“I
asked you to—”

 
          
Pledgeman
didn’t get to finish. At that instant, the President strode quickly into the
room. The men and women at the large oblong conference table rose to their
feet. The President was followed closely by a tight knot of reporters and
correspondents. Cameras and lights clicked on and filled the room with a buzz.

 
          
The
President brushed deep, thick brown hair from his forehead and waved toward the
seats. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, take your seats.” Nobody sat down
until the President had stepped over the yards of sound and light cables taped
to the rich carpeting and reached his executive’s chair.

           
A bright floodlight snapped on
directly in front of the President, right over the Secretary of Health and
Human Services’ head. “If you don’t mind?” the President said, scowling at the
light. “You’re going to fry one of my people.” The light was immediately
extinguished. The President nodded his thanks, removed his half-lens Ben
Franklin glasses, and wiped them with a handkerchief. Pledgeman quietly
admonished the photographer and pointed to a twelve-inch-square opening in a
distant corner where he could set up his camera.

 
          
“Quite
a crowd today, eh, Jack?” the President said to his press secretary. Pledgeman
nodded. The President replaced his glasses on his nose and looked over his
agenda for the meeting, a shortened and mostly staged version of a formal
Cabinet meeting.

 
          
A
network television anchorwoman, microphone in hand, was stepping quickly into
the place vacated by the cameraman. General Curtis steered himself around her,
maneuvered around the backs of the chairs occupied by the Secretary of State
and the Secretary of Defense, and finally made his way to the President’s side.
He arrived just as the anchorwoman took one last glance at her notes and smiled
at the President. She, not Curtis, had the President’s full attention.

 
          
“Mr.
President, before we get started, I’d like to ask you—”

 
          
Simultaneously,
Curtis bent down between the Secretary of Defense, Thomas Preston, and the
President. He said in a half-whisper, “Mr. President, I have some important
developments that can’t wait.”

 
          
The
President, eyes drawn to the attractive Oriental newswoman, scarcely noticed
Curtis. The general’s deep voice interrupted the woman’s question.

 
          
Pledgeman,
on the alert for this sort of embarrassing scene, stepped between the newswoman
and the Secretary of Agriculture at the conference table.

 
          
“Problem,
General?” Pledgeman asked quietly.

 
          
General
Curtis leaned closer to the President. “Sir, I must speak with you immediately.
There are new developments at that. . . power facility we talked about.”

 
          
“After
the Cabinet meeting,” Pledgeman
said.

 
          
Curtis
hesitated.

 
          
“Wilbur,
it has to wait,” the President finally said. “Is it an
immediate
emergency?”

 
          
Everyone
watched Curtis. No one knew exactly what an “immediate” emergency was, but it
would be plastered all over page one of every newspaper in the country if he
said “yes.” Coming directly from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the
classification “immediate emergency” would mean only one thing. He’d have some
tough explaining to do.

 
          
“It’ll
have to wait, General,” Pledgeman said, repeating the President’s words. “We
must get started here.”

 
          
“I’ll
be in my office as soon as I’m through here, General,” the President said as
Curtis was ushered out by one of Pledgeman’s associates.

 
          
As
the door to the conference room slammed behind him, Curtis turned on his aide.

 
          
“Colonel
Wyatt, you will stand here and wait for the President. The instant he comes out
of that room, you are to confront him and remind him that I am waiting for him
in the Oval Office. Tell him that it is now a matter of national security.
Don’t speak with anyone else but the President. If Pledgeman or anyone else
tells you differently, you have a direct order from me to bust him in the
chops. All clear?”

 
          
Wyatt,
amazed at his boss’ behavior, nodded and watched as the general marched down
the corridor.

 
          
“It’s
incredible. Absolutely incredible.”

 
          
The
President of the
United States
stared out the window of the White House
Oval Office, making the announcement to the gently falling flakes of snow
outside. General Wilbur Curtis collected the sheaves of notes and computer
printouts, glanced at the Secretary of Defense, Thomas Preston, and sat down.
Secretary of State Marshall Brent stood at the opposite side of the President’s
cherry desk, looking over copies of the intelligence analysis Kenneth Mitchell,
the CIA director, had shown the President. United Nations Ambassador Gregory
Adams sat on a couch, seething as he thought of Karmarov’s apparent duplicity
at the Security Council session.

 
          
“Merry
goddamn Christmas,” the President muttered.

 
          
For
the first time in months, Curtis felt a huge weight lift off his shoulders.
He’s finally beginning to believe me, Curtis thought. It had taken the deaths
of twelve men and women and the loss of a billion dollars worth of military
hardware, plus the new evidence in hand.

 
          
“But
how can we be sure that this is an orbiting mirror, General?” the President
asked over his shoulder, not bothering to turn away from the window. He was
holding an eleven-by-fourteen black-and-white enlargement of a large,
rectangular object. The object was silvery and slightly curved, with a surface
resembling a reflective quilted blanket. A thin web of girders surrounded it,
along with several oblong tanks and other vessels. “Mr. President, the evidence
indicates that—”

 
          
“The
President asked you a specific question, General,” Tom Preston interrupted.
“How can we be
sure?”

 
          
“We
can’t be
sure,
Mr. President,” Curtis
said. “That photo
could
be various
things—solar collection panels, solar shielding . . . but look at the facts:
Our RC-315 recon plane records massive energy discharge frm the Kavaznya
facility. Simultaneously, we record the destruction of a geosynchronous
satellite directly over the complex in space. I believe the RC-153 was
destroyed by another energy blast to keep it from reporting the data it was
gathering.

 
          
“Less
than two weeks later, the
Lawrence
intelligence vessel we sent over there to
monitor the site records another massive energy blast from the Kavaznya site.
Seconds later, the third stage of our Midgetman missile prematurely ignites and
we are forced to destroy it. Information from the
Lawrence
exactly matches the data on the blast that
we received from the RC-153 before we lost contact—”

 
          
Secretary
of Defense Preston interrupted. “So how does that prove there’s an orbiting
mirror, General Curtis?”

 
          
“Before
the energy blast, the
Lawrence
reported unusual data signals being
transmitted from the Kavaznya radar,” Curtis went on. “Their information is
still being analyzed, but the experts on the
Lawrence
have described data transmissions between
the radar at Kavaznya and two Soviet satellites in Earth orbit.

 
          
“They
believe the first satellite was furnishing position data to Kavaznya during the
time that the Midgetman missile was in the boost phase. The Kavaznya radar was
tracking a second satellite and was also furnishing steering signals to it.
Such sophisticated steering signals could be used to align a mirror on the
missile.

 
          
“After
the destruction of the
Javelin
missile was reported, I ordered a simple backtrack. Assuming a lesser blast
from Kavaznya—which we didn’t know at first since the
Lawrence
's report hadn’t reached us yet— and again assuming an
orbiting mirror, we computed all the possible points where a mirror would have
to be placed to hit the
Javelin,
and
used our Spacetrack optical space tracking telescope at Pulmosan, South Korea
to photograph those sections of the sky.

 
          
“You
have the result, sir,” Curtis said, forcing down his anger. To be fair, he told
himself, it wasn’t that the President did
not
believe him—he didn’t
want
to believe
him. “The mirror is one hundred and fifty feet long, seventy feet wide. It is
attached to the underside of Salyut Nineteen, which has been in orbit for
almost a year. The satellite has docking bays, large fuel tanks, and small crew
quarters although we do not believe it’s manned.”

 
          
Marshall
Brent motioned to the President, who passed the photograph to him. He examined
it quickly.

 
          
“I
assume your experts analyzed this photo for you, General?” Brent asked.

 
          
“Yes.
Why?”

 
          
“Because
to the untrained layman’s eyes, this could be a photograph of anything,” Brent
said. “Any satellite. An aircraft.”

 
          
“But
it’s not—”

 
          
“It
could even be faked?” Brent was testing, which he considered his job.

 
          
“Do
you want me to send a Shuttle full of U.N. members up with Brownies to take
snapshots?”

 
          
Brent
started to reply but was cut off by the President. “General, I think I believe
your analysis,” the President said unhappily. “But who is going to believe such
a thing exists? And we risk much by accusing the
Soviet Union
of murder ...”

 
          
The
President turned to Kenneth Mitchell. “Kenneth, you said you had information on
that site. Can you give it to me now?”

 
          
“Yes,
sir.” The Director of the CIA nodded to an aide, who stood nervously and faced
the President.

 
          
“Analysis
of data from the missing RC-135 aircraft as well as information obtained from
the
Lawrence
has been completed. Much of it is still
speculative, sir.”

 
          
“Go
on,
” the President said irritably.