The Fall (18 page)

Still holding his hands, Angela pulled him toward her. “But … that's the thing … he did …
you
did. You made it home, Jack. You still made it home to me. You
found
a way, and that's all that matters.”

“Angie, I—”

She hugged him, and Jack didn't resist. He simply returned the embrace, his body responding when feeling her chest pressed against his.

“When you lose someone you love,” she finally said, still clinging to him, “it doesn't really hit you until later, after the initial shock passes. The military funeral, the shiny uniforms, the volleys of shots fired, the jets flying overhead, and even the damn folded flag and those shell casings … all of that came and went in a flash. But it was later, Jack, when I had to go to bed alone, when I woke up alone, when I ate alone—hell, even when I walked into the garage and saw your bike and had to go riding alone. That's when it hit me, and it kept hitting me as I saw you in everything I did. Even in that orbital suit that I couldn't stomach to look at anymore. And that's why I couldn't stick around NASA. I couldn't breathe in there. It was truly suffocating. I had to get the hell out.”

“Well, that suit's the reason I'm here,” he said.

“No,” she said, walking back to the living room and sitting on the sofa, where she inspected the strange glass token. “Not just the suit.”

Jack took his seat next to her. “What do you think it is?”

“I don't know … but I do know someone who…”

Jack saw the glow from incoming headlights forking through a gap in the drawn living room curtains, and he raised a hand. “Don't make a sound.”

She stared at him as he narrowed his gaze, shifting it to the foyer, listening to a sound that didn't belong. The sound of …

“Something isn't right,” he whispered.

But before she could reply, Jack was already on his feet, killing the lights in the foyer, in the living room, racing toward the curtains, peering through their narrow gap into the darkness beyond, staring at three Humvees driving slowly down the street.

Car doors swung open followed by seven soldiers scrambling over the pavement, taking positions across the street at either side of the house. Pete finally emerged from the center armored vehicle holding a radio to his lips.

What are you up to, buddy?

“What is it?” she hissed from the living room.

“Your boyfriend,” he replied, waving her over. “He's decided to play soldier.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He's brought armed men with him. I don't get the feeling he's here to help us sort things out. I think he's here for
that
.” He pointed at the OSS by the sofa. “And after he gets it…” He ran the tip of his thumb across his neck.

“No way. Something's gotta be wrong, Jack. I know him,” she said, grabbing her mobile phone and speed-dialing him.

A moment later they watched Pete reach for his phone with his free hand and read the screen, obviously realizing it was Angela.

“Hey, I'm on my way,” he answered.

“What's taking so long?” she asked.

“Traffic. I'll be there in a couple of minutes. Hold tight.”

She hung up and said, “Jack … I don't understand what's going on. Why is he lying? What are those soldiers doing across the street?”

“I don't intend to stick around long enough to find out,” Jack said, considering his options, and finally asking, “Angie … my arsenal … did you hang on to any of it?”

She looked at him, understanding flashing in her eyes as she said, “Yes,
all
of it.”

*   *   *

“They're
all
going to have to be modified,” Angela commented, popping the lid of a Red Bull and taking a swig before adding, “Idiots.”

“Here's to trusting The Man,” Art-Z said, also holding a can and tipping it in her direction.

Angela ignored him while she browsed through screen after screen of complex production timelines reminiscent of the space shuttle era, when suppliers from all over the globe provided the primary contractor, Rockwell, with every component required to assemble a shuttle, from the thermal protection system to zero-G toilets.

“Looks like there's quite the operation already underway,” Art-Z added while she read through Project SkyLeap's production schedule for orbital space suits. The Pentagon procurement division had been busy conducting top secret biddings from every possible supplier—many of them companies that she had collaborated with over the years to develop the various prototypes—and had created an assembly line at an undisclosed location.

Angela frowned, realizing that she shouldn't be that surprised. After all, the objective from the very beginning had been to create a weapon, and that meant that at some point in time the military would have to take the OSS from NASA's R&D labs into a production facility just like every other military weapon in operation today.

She'd simply expected to have been part of that process, and not just because of professional pride, but because of precisely what had transpired. The screen glowing with data in front of her indicated that the Pentagon was already producing something that wasn't ready for prime time yet. She had warned Pete on multiple occasions about tempering Washington's enthusiasm for productizing a program of this complexity too soon. Something with this many moving pieces—and most of them state-of-the-art—required careful testing at the component level, followed by the module level, and then through various integration steps.

Crawl. Walk. Run.

Hastings, just like his push for Alpha-B, was definitely running again, and in doing so, he was jeopardizing the entire Project Phoenix. But even when a program was launched successfully, like the original space shuttle, the level of complexity of space operations required careful adherence to scientifically derived rules—rules, which often conflicted with schedule pressures, and which could result in disaster, as was the case with
Challenger
.

But still, nothing that she saw in this Web site so far told her anything new, anything that could explain what had happened to her husband.

“These guys already have over one hundred suits made,” Art-Z said, pointing at the production schedule. “Plus twice as many in various stages of assembly.”

“Yep, they're definitely going to have to modify all those suits—or maybe even scrap them,” she replied. “But what I still don't get is why the hurry to productize this particular suit. The current version of the OSS is only good for suborbital jumps. It can't withstand the stress of a true orbital jump, like from the International Space Station. That version's still in the drawing board and up here.” She touched the tip of her index finger against her temple.

“So what do you think he's trying to do by building so many suits that can't be used from orbit?” asked Dago.

“Not sure. Maybe they've figured out a way to use them … I don't know yet. At the moment it all looks like a huge waste of money.”

“In that case, here's to my tax dollars at work,” Dago replied, lifting his Corona. “At least the beer is free.”

“And we still have no idea how your husband vanished,” Art-Z added.

“Nope,” said Angela.

“So, what do we do now?” asked Dago.

“Now we browse through another section of their Web site. But the more sections we open, the bigger the chance of getting caught,” she answered, before asking Art-Z, “You've got everything you need from the flash card?”

“Not quite,” he replied. “The general used a military version of Invisible Text, so reading his text messages will be a little tricky.”

“What happened?” asked Dago.

“Hastings has a safety feature in his phone that basically deletes text messages after he sends them,” Angela explained. “And it also deletes the ones he receives after he's read them. That, plus the fancy encryption algorithms, keeps the average phone hijacker from reading his private conversations.”

“But we're far from average,” Art-Z said.

“You're certainly far from something,” the biker commented.

“So, Art, can I get in there or not?”

The hacker gave her a thumbs-up before using another finger to reply to Dago.

“See what you can learn, Bonnie,” Art-Z added. “I've replicated the flash content in this machine,” he said, pointing at the third laptop on the table that contained their getaway potion. If something goes wrong, I'll pull the plug and release this bad boy to cover our tracks.”

Angela returned to the Web site's main menu and stared at it again.

TRAINING

SUITS

TECHNOLOGY

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT

If she assumed that an alarm would be triggered by opening another section—meaning she may only get a quick look at it before having to unplug—which should it be?

She felt she had a pretty good idea of the contents in the Suits directory given that she had designed the prototype, and she also felt that Training would reflect what Jack had gone through to get ready for the jump.

Slowly, she ran her finger across the touchpad and brought the cursor over to her original choice, Technology, and clicked on it.

The screen dissolved and changed to a set of menu options that made her blink.

“What's this, Bonnie?”

“I'm not entirely sure,” she said, reading through what looked like more particle collider experiments, though they weren't conducted at CERN.

“I don't get it,” said Art-Z. “I thought that CERN is the big kahuna of particle acceleration and collision.”

“They are … except that these experiments aren't using copper as the conduit, but …
glass
…”

“You lost me there.”

“All right,” she said, recalling her limited knowledge of quantum physics. “A modern accelerator, like the one in CERN, consists of a large number of cavities through which particles, normally electrons, are accelerated by alternating the voltage in the cavities to either repel the electrons with negatively charged cavities or attract them with positively charged cavities. The object is to switch the voltage of a cavity just as an electron passes through it to accelerate it. Each cavity, therefore, injects more energy into the electron, kicking it faster. In the case of CERN, the particles get accelerated through its entire circumference, which has a diameter of around five miles. Higher frequency of voltage flipping, combined with a higher electric field, and smaller cavities packed together one after the other, translates into faster speeds, which in the case of CERN, can get close to ninety-nine percent the speed of light.”

“That's pretty fast,” said Art-Z

“Yeah, but it takes this mammoth of a facility, and a hell of a lot of electricity, to accomplish it. These cavities are surrounded by a conducting metal, which in this case is copper. The problem with copper is that it puts a ceiling on the amount of frequency and electric field levels it can take before melting. Now glass, which last time I checked was still on the drawing boards, has the potential to take the particle-acceleration game to a new level because the alternating electric field can be supplied by light, which is electromagnetic radiation, and that means much higher operating frequencies. While copper can probably handle about one gigahertz, glass allows frequencies in the
thousands
of gigahertz.”

“That's
tera
hertz,” commented Dago.

Angela and Art-Z looked over their shoulders at the large biker calmly nursing his Corona.

“What?” he said. “You don't think Harleys are pretty high-tech these days? I'll have you know I've got an associate's degree in electronics.”

“From where?” Art-Z asked, “Devry?”

“Fuck you, little scooter man.”

Angela smiled and added, “Easy, boys. It's not the size of the bike that matters.”

“Ha!” said Art.

“Right,” Dago replied, taking another sip.

Her eyes went back to the screen. “Another benefit of glass is that the higher the frequency, the smaller the wavelength, which means the shorter the distance the particle has to travel. Now this place, wherever it is, claims to have run particle acceleration experiments using glass. Impressive.”

“It's fifteen minutes outside of Melbourne,” Art-Z said. “I've got the address.”

“What … how do you know that?” Angela said. There's nothing on this Web site that—”

“Please, Bonnie.”

“Very impressive, Art,” she said, leaning back. “So, Hastings had a production operation running just down the road all this time?” she asked.

“Looks that way,” Art-Z said, before looking over at Dago. “Not bad for a little scooter man, huh?”

The biker's goatee shifted up as he grinned and raised his longneck at the hacker, tapping it to his can of Red Bull.

Just like at CERN, Angela dug in, pulling up the results of several experiments, which included particle collision events using gamma rays as the accelerant, which had the highest frequency in the electromagnetic spectrum right at 10
12
hertz.

“That's
twelve
terahertz,” she mumbled to herself, recalling the last set of telemetry from Jack's jump.

What the hell does that—

“Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit!” Art-Z screamed, typing furiously before the SkyLeap site went black.

“What just happened?” Dago asked.

“Bad shit, man. Bad shit just happened,” replied Art-Z.

“Just the opposite,” Angela said. “I think we've just got handed an amazing opportunity.”

She stared at her friends and smiled, her mind converging on a new plan of attack while her former mentor kept cursing while working the keyboard with intensity for a few more seconds, finally releasing what had to be the most virulent piece of code she'd ever seen.