Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (18 page)

DeMarko had read Shapiro’s assessment that the DHS systems had been hacked, but seeing it as a reality was disturbing. He reached for the phone and punched the button.

“Schimmel, what’s up?” he said, once the connection went through. The wallscreen behind Colton dissolved into an image of the interior of the surveillance truck. Shock played across Shapiro’s face for an instant.

“We’re watching
Brady Bunch
reruns out here. It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.” The speakers in the room carried the voice of Schimmel loud enough that DeMarko looked up. “Every sensor we’ve got just went offline, and this is on every frequency."

“Shut up a minute, Schimmel. We’ve got a problem,” DeMarko said, his composure shredding. “I’m sitting inside Stormhaven looking at the camera in the truck there with you."

Schimmel looked up at the camera, pointing. “That one?"

“Yeah, that’d be it.”

“Not possible. We’re encrypted and we’ve got a tight-beam, line-of-site straight up. Unless they’ve got a hack on the satellite...” He grabbed another phone and started punching in to make a call to the agency.

“Tell him not to bother,” Cole said. “Until we release the system, that bird is ours.”

“Schimmel, they say you’re offline until they give it back.” He nodded his head confirming that the phone was offline.

“Ok, Mr. Taylor, I’m ready to concede you might have us bent over at the moment.” Shapiro sat back and glared.

“What do you want me to do?” Schimmel asked, looking at the camera.

“Tell him to jerk the wires out of that camera and stand by,” Shapiro said.

“Roger I heard him, we’re on it.” Schimmel poked Watkins in the shoulder and making scissoring motions with his finger, gestured for her to cut the wires on the camera.

“We’ll get back to you with instructions.” DeMarko snapped the phone off, sliding it across the table.

“So now that you see you don’t have the hand you expected to play, perhaps you’re willing to consider our offer to negotiate,” Tom said.

“You might be able to surprise us with a couple fancy tricks, but the holes you’ve just exploited aren’t going to be there tomorrow, and then balance will return,” Shapiro said, although his face showed he wasn’t sure he could guarantee his words to be true.

“Possibly, but you need to understand something. The information you’re trying to protect has already gotten out. We’re offering to help you to keep it under control,” Tom said, opening the folder and pushing it in front of the agent.

“This file is on the servers of at least a dozen observatories, and probably several hundred news agencies.” The papers looked like a press release, but were far more technical. “We pulled this off the internet this morning, and decrypted it. It was set up to automatically open on a certain date.”

“I suppose this is something you’ve done?” DeMarko challenged studying the file.

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s out there, and if we don’t keep it locked down, you’re going to have a real problem.” Cole looked genuinely concerned.

“Look, let’s cut the crap shall we? You’re making sure we know that it’s not a transient situation.” Shapiro was starting to look sick. “We get it. Now what do you want from us?”

“We’ve been trying to tell you for the last day-and-a-half that we wanted to help. You’ve refused to listen.” Cole grinned at him. “But now that you mention it, there’s something we want, and you might be able to help us get it."

“Certainly it can’t be money,” DeMarko said.

“We need access to space,” Tom said, pushing another file folder across the table.

“You’ve obviously already got access to the satellites,” DeMarko said.

“We want permission to make manned flights into space,” Tom said.

“You can’t possibly be claiming to have a space ship out here in the desert somewhere?“ DeMarko said.

Shapiro nodded. “They might.”

“In fact, we have several of them,” Cole said, as the wall behind him changed into a view of the fabrication shop. The
Dancing Star
stood at the hangar door, with several people working under her massive belly. “We’re planning to launch next week.”

“You’re not serious,” Shapiro said.

“We’ve sent out the announcements,” Tom said. “Every news bureau in the world has been invited to attend."

“There’s no chance we’re going to give you permission to do anything that might interfere with the United States’ plans.”

“We have no intention of interfering. We just want to test the ship, and then we’ve got our own goals.” Cole indicated the folder. “Read it. Our expectations are in there.”

***

Washington:

John Herman sat at his desk staring at the report from Steve Axelrod. The Damascus conference was officially starting this evening and things were falling apart before they’d even begun. The Palestinian Alliance had publicly released their opening statement. They were accusing the Israelis of using a Tactical Enhanced Radiation Device in their recent attack on a Gaza refugee camp.

John knew the accusation was absurd because the Israelis had been trying to buy the technology from the United States for more than a decade. They didn’t have one in their arsenal. That fact wasn’t widely proliferated even among his staff, because for the PA to have realized that they were trying to obtain one would have been almost as bad as if the US had sold it to them.

John looked at his watch and calculated the time difference. Maybe if he hurried he’d be able to get a message to Steve before they actually sat down at the table. If they could throw them a cookie, then maybe they could get the Palestinians to back off. At least there might be a slim hope that something good could still come out of the conference. If not then this was going to be a hanging point they’d never get past.

He reached for the phone, and his intercom beeped just as he touched the headset. “Ambassador Kozin is here to see you,” his secretary said.

“In person?” he asked.

“Yes sir, she’s asking to see you immediately,” she said. “Should I show her in?”

He glanced at his watch again. Temptation to make the Russian ambassador wait flashed through his mind.

“Mr. Secretary?” she said, lowering her voice. “She looks angry and she says it’s important.”

“Send her in,” he said.

His door burst open. “She’s on her way—"

“I see that,” he said. “Hold my calls."

Tatianna Kozin was an imposing woman even when she wasn’t charging through the door looking for blood. She was tall and beautiful, a daughter of the new Russian Renaissance, but she carried herself with the determination of the old school diplomats. She could be polished, but this time she was just pissed.

“What are you trying to do?” she asked, her English as perfect as his own.

He blinked in surprise. He’d expected a reaction from the Russians but this looked personal.

“Excuse me?” he said, stepping around his desk.

“The launches,” she said. “Why weren’t we informed?”

“You don’t check your messages very often do you?” he said.

“I do,” she said. “I know you have called several times, but there are procedures for giving notice of your intent to launch. These protocols are especially important when the missiles depart from military facilities."

“If I’m not mistaken,” John said, leaning against the front of his desk and crossing his arms in front of him, “the launches were from Vandenberg and White Sands. Neither of these are active military bases and you know it.”

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked at its display. “Mister Secretary,” she said, drawing herself up to her full height. “You have five minutes to explain your intent, otherwise my government is prepared to destroy these unauthorized satellites.”

“Secretary Herman,” his secretary interrupted.

“I said no calls,” he barked, reaching out to cut her off.

“I told Secretary Reynolds that you were not to be disturbed,” she said, “but he said to tell you,
Hammerthrow One is about to be intercepted by the Russians.
”

“Tell him I know, Amanda,” he said, punching the button and turning back to face her.

“Now that we’ve got your attention,” John said, spinning his desk monitor around so that she could see the screen. “Watch this.” He called up the information on the asteroid and pushed a chair behind her. “You might want to sit down.”

***

Outside Stormhaven:

“What the hell happened?” Watkins said as DeMarko stepped out of the truck. “You guys look like you’ve been pole axed.”

“Close,” he said, walking over to stare at the fire. “They’ve got us humped.”

“The entire government?” Abrams snorted.

“At least for now they do,” Shapiro said.

“Hey folks, I don’t know what’s going on, but we’ve got company coming up the road,” Schimmel hollered. “It’s a satellite truck for GNS.”

***

Between the Lines

Washington:

The room smelled of stress, but that wasn’t unusual when Secretary Anderson called a conference. He caused stress. It poured from his public persona like the sticky stench of something unclean. Nichole Thompson hated to be in the same city with the man, let alone trapped in the same room with him while surrounded by a crowd of journalists.

She held her arms wrapped in front of her, leaning away from the jostling shoulders of the others, watching as they bumped and wiggled their way through the seats, trying to squeeze fat asses into chairs that were intentionally too narrow, and put in rows too close together. She knew there had to be some reason the Washington press corps put up with being treated like dirt, but she couldn’t figure it out.

These people were here because they liked the taste of power, clinging to the leftover scraps of rumor and innuendo that fed the ego of civilization.

Her beat was science, and the nice, clean, sanitary world of technology. She lived there because she understood the way things worked but today she was stuck in the slums of the sycophant. She had no choice but to slog through the detritus hoping to pull a pearl from the trash tossed down from the ivory tower.

“Five’ll get you ten he blames it on terrorists,” the man sitting beside her said. “Same bullshit, different weekend.” He smiled, trying to start a conversation, but she wasn’t going to give him the opportunity. She nodded, fishing the cell phone out of her pocket and punching in the number for her manicurist. Not that she needed one, it just gave her an excuse to not interact. He was one of the rodents that drank from the slime pool, and she refused to be pulled into it with him.

Before the call connected, the crowded room fell silent and a dazzling stroboscopic explosion set the whole scene into a surrealistic pantomime of reality. There he was, standing like a peacock on the little box they set behind the podium, mugging for the camera in an unabashed pirouette of self-indulgence. If power made a person important, then he was nearly at the top of the world, and she was sure he couldn’t smell the foul stench that his existence left in his passing.

Holding his hands up, he slipped into a mask of artificial gravity. “Thank you for coming. As many of you have suspected, the United States faces a grave challenge today. Intelligence sources have uncovered a reliable, but non-specific, threat against the interests of our government."

Another round of flashing began and the man once again leaned toward her, saying, “Look at these fools eat this shit up. You’d think they never heard it before.” He clicked off his recorder and yawned, politely covering his mouth. “I’ll just pull out the file from the last time he gave this speech and use that one."

She smiled, not wanting to encourage him, but amused by his cynical edge. “I know you, don’t I?” he asked, looking at her for several seconds. “You’re Nichole Thompson. You do science, don’t you?” She nodded again, looking at him. “So what brings you down to the sewer with the rest of us?”

“Just lucky I guess,” she whispered, shrugging. He seemed in tune with her opinion of the Washington scene, and she felt herself being drawn in even against her better judgment.

“What I can say about this threat,” Secretary Anderson continued, “is that it has made it necessary to elevate the security condition of the country to the highest threat preparedness level.” The stranger cocked his head to listen. “This decision to raise our nation’s security level by two is not without precedent."

The sudden change in the room was suffocating as every reporter struggled to remember what restrictions the additional security protocols might impose. The country had only been at the top level once in the last decade, so whatever it was had to be serious.

“Therefore, effective immediately, we will be restricting access to government facilities by the public, and press, without special permission. Such permission will be contingent upon a specific case-by-case background investigation and will be requisite for all journalists."