Storm Killer (26 page)

This press announcement would be released at the moment Storm Killer’s destruction was confirmed.

That official confirmation would come from the small 18 inch Schmidt telescope on Mt. Palomar in California. The scope, along with two others, had been requisitioned months before to take a series of photos of Storm Killer as it began its first live mission. Due to the position of the sun, this single scope would have the best view of Storm Killer at the time of the warhead’s arrival. 

Dr. Rosen was irate. How dare this weak-kneed excuse for a world leader fire me!
   

He rose from his chair, looked again at the President, shook his head, and walked to the small office adjacent to the situation room that was assigned to the senior advisors. It was a sparse space with two desks and the normal mandatory workstations. Rows of briefing books were stacked in a neat row above each desk.

He dropped into the first empty chair he came to and stared at the empty desktop in front of him. As he sat considering his options, Rose Magruder entered and took a seat at the other desk in the small office. 

She pulled the keyboard toward her and started logging on the workstation. She entered her user id and password and waited for the system to prompt for her identity verification.

The words popped on the workstation screen:

She stopped, as she was about to press her thumb into the fingerprint scanner. She looked at Dr. Rosen huddled in his chair and quietly asked, “Dr. Rosen? Are you going to prepare your resignation, or would you like me to type one for you?”

The man turned toward her with a look that shocked Rose. “No. I’ll do it myself. I’ve got a few words for that idiot that I need to formulate properly as part of my letter.”

Rose did not reply. Rosen was obviously very upset and would probably do or say something that would just exacerbate the situation. Rose finished her log on and opening the word processing application, began typing the resignation letter the President had demanded
. Christ, I’m a forty-two year old woman with no family and no job,
she said to herself.

The tears in her eyes made it difficult to type and focus on the words forming on the screen. She had given up her personal life to advance her career.

This job had been the zenith of that career.

She had divorced a wonderful man five years ago because he had refused to accept being a lower priority in her life than her career.

She remembered it like it was yesterday. She had just returned home from a three-week tour of non-operative Russian nuclear materials production reactors. This was part of the United Nations inspection team tasked with verification that defunct facilities were truly defunct. She had come through the front door, dropped her bags, and fallen into her favorite overstuffed chair in their comfortable family room.  

He had walked in and handed her a whisky on the rocks. He had simply remarked, “We have to talk.”

He sat in his easy chair, his eyes boring into Rose’s. He said, in a matter of fact manner as he swirled the ice in his glass with his index finger, “I want a divorce. I’ve found someone new who loves me more than anything else. She doesn’t put her career ahead of her family. I want to be with her and she wants to be me. I mean really be with me, twenty-four seven, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.” He stopped and looked down at the ice in his drink glass.

Rose had cried, yelled, plead, cajoled, ranted, raved, and, eventually, relented. She knew he was right. She wanted to be king of the hill in her chosen career. She had wanted power. She had wanted no encumbrances to achieving her goal.           

She had even given up raising her two children because their needs interfered with the needs of her career. They lived full-time with her ex-husband and his new wife. She saw them for two weeks during their schools’ summer vacations and for a week at Christmas every other year. She sent the mandatory birthday presents and made the mandatory phone calls to them on those days.

Now, it was all over. She had reached the giddy heights of power. The President was right. He needed a scapegoat. She would do nicely as one of the sacrificial lambs.

Who would hire someone whose decisions had helped lead to such chaos?
She asked herself as she mentally shrugged her shoulders. She finished the resignation letter, printed it out, signed it, and put it in an envelope. She stuffed it in her purse and planned to hand it to the President as soon as confirmation came in that the Russian missile had destroyed Storm Killer.   

She turned off the workstation and headed from the room. She turned and looked at Dr. Rosen. He had started working on his letter of resignation with a none-too-happy expression on his face. She gave him no further thought and left to prepare her for own future.

Dr. Rosen had reached some conclusions in his anger. He would not say anything in the letter of resignation other than he was resigning. But he would get even with this presidential idiot. His orders from Mexico City were to destroy the project. He would do that for the money. But, he could ensure that the station was destroyed with a compliment of crew still onboard. He would do that in personal vengeance on the President. He mentally laughed.
The President would find his political career totally in ruins when these unnecessary deaths were added on top of the rest of this debacle.

“Too bad,” Dr Rosen mumbled, “but I’ll have to sacrifice my favorite students.”

57

Yvon
Latortue
and her two youngest children were settled in their apartment. The picture window that looked out on the ocean was covered with plywood from the inside. She could find no one to help her cover the window from the outside. 

Yvon had laid in extra water and some canned foods. She hoped it would be enough once the storm passed. She’d spent all of her cash obtaining the meager supplies she had been able to get. The merchants had tripled and even quadrupled their prices in anticipation of the storm causing high public demand for their goods. 

She was now nestled on her sofa with her two youngest children. Henri, her oldest child, had run off the night before and had not returned. Yvon had put on a brave face for her two other children, but inside she was crushed that Henri had abandoned her and his siblings.

She and the children were watching the Dominican TV station that was now constantly broadcasting storm-related information. She listened over the sound of the TV to the angry wind that had risen in the last half hour. The eye of the storm was still hours away, yet the sounds made by the storm were already menacing. 

She prayed that they would survive the storm.

After he left his mother’s apartment, Henri took shelter with two local petty criminals simply known as Pablo and Pancho. They lived on the top floor of a decrepit apartment building in the oldest part of the city near the warehouses on the docks. There was no electrical power in the building, so the effects of the storm would be minimal on their lifestyle. They lived by candlelight and flashlight at night. The flashlights were only used when they went on what they called their “shopping trips.”  These trips were made three or four times a week and usually always resulted in someone’s store or home being burglarized.

Pablo and Pancho were seventeen-year-old twins from a broken home. Their father, a large man who worked as a longshoreman, left them five years earlier after finding his wife in bed with another man. He’d beaten her so badly that she had been hospitalized for several weeks. He had beaten the man to death with his bare hands. He was now serving a twenty-year to life prison sentence for the beating and the death. Their mother had become a prostitute simply to survive and provide money to feed and clothe herself and her sons. 

Pablo went to the corner bar and bought three cases of Cerveza Presidente beer, a loaf of bread and a gallon of rice with sweet corn. Pancho found some flashlights and batteries.

Henri was given the job of finding enough cooked chicken to share between the three of them. He failed to procure this, but as he passed an army truck parked next to the local police station, he glanced into the back and saw something promising. Quickly looking around and seeing no one about, he stepped into the back of the truck and raised a tarp that lay over some boxes. The boxes were all marked,
United States
Army – MRE.
 

MRE, or Meal Ready to Eat, was an
individual ration issued by the United States military for its service-members in combat where field kitchens weren’t available.  The Dominican government was moving cases of these to areas they felt would be hardest hit. 

Henri grabbed a case and carried and dragged it back to the brothers’ lodgings in the abandoned apartment building.

He presented the case to the brothers and stood back as they opened it with a crowbar they used for their night time “shopping.” As they opened the case, Henri explained where he had found it. 

The case contained one hundred and forty-four MRE packages of chicken breast dinners.

Henri succeeded beyond his wildest dreams! The brothers clapped him on the back and congratulated him on his “shopping skills.” Pablo handed him a warm beer and pointed to the tattered sofa. 

Henri was then accepted as a resident of the brothers’ home.  

They prepared for the storm by moving the sofa into the elevator lobby in the center of the building. At least then maybe they would stay dry.  

58

Lt. James entered Francine’s quarters. He found her sitting on her bed with a writing tablet. An unopened bottle of sleeping tablets lay next to her leg. She had been writing in the tablet when he entered. She looked up sharply at him and snarled, “What the hell you do want? Can’t you just leave me alone?”

He picked up the bottle of pills and read the label, “You planning on taking a long nap?”

She reached up and attempted to grab the bottle away from him. He moved a step backward and shook his head. “No, Francine. This isn’t the right way to deal with what’s happened.”

She broke down in tears. “My brother’s dead. My career is over. My family will hate me for what’s happened.”

The lieutenant grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her gently. “You’re right. Your life, as you knew it, is over. You will serve some time in prison for your part in this mess, but yours’ is a minor role. The more you do to assist us now, the better it will look to the judge when you face the music.”            

She stared at him and cautiously asked, “What do you want?”

“Hoch has been shot. I need you to get your emergency pack and come with me. He’s still alive. Kim is watching him. Please, help us. Help him!”

Francine waved him away, “I can’t. I’m done. You know what I was doing when you came in? I was writing a letter to my folks trying to explain what happened. I was also saying goodbye. I just want to die. Please, just let me---.”

“You’re still a doctor, act like one,” he yelled at her. He picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.

“Damn you, do your professional duty! Save Hoch’s life, and then, if you still want to commit suicide, I’ll help you do yourself in,” he yelled as he placed her in passenger seat of the emergency medical cart. He ran around to the other side and, holding her wrist with one hand, started the cart and began driving back to Hoch with the other.

59

Two aides had brought the latest FBI, CIA, and NSA progress reports on finding the Storm Killer plotters to the doors of the situation room and handed them to Rose. She scanned them quickly and then took them to the President. She placed them on his right side near his hand. He looked up from the call he was taking and nodded as he began scanning the first report’s executive briefing page. He hung up the phone and continued reading. He finished the first report and sighed thinking,
another three hundred-word FBI executive summary that boils down to saying nothing new.

The President had been on another line with NASA engineers getting the timeline required to ensure the station’s crew could be evacuated to safety before the warhead arrived. 

The telephone in front of the President came to life with the sound of the un-muting of the phone at the other end of the line.