Cloudburst (15 page)
* * *
Michael Alton held his wife’s hand as it lay across the armrest and touched his knee. Sandra’s fingers ran gentle, yet nervous figure eights on his jeans. He could sense her fear, though she would not show it. They had both seen the man, but Michael was one of the few passengers to recognize what he was carrying pressed against his side as a weapon. The couple looked at each other incredulously after the captain announced that they had been hijacked. This sort of thing happened only on the news, or in the movies—not to them.
Several of the flight attendants were doing their best to calm the upset passengers. The number of them was amazingly small. Michael figured it was because most people, like him, half believed it would all just suddenly end, like a dream when one wakes up. Probably the most unsettling thing was the very young stewardess who was beyond hysterical. Two of her co-workers had escorted her down from the upper deck with a group of passengers just before the captain’s announcement. One of them had her in the forward galley.
The other stood at the base of the stairs, glancing at the passengers with a feeble smile at times, but mostly her eyes were fixed upward.
Michael felt his wife squeeze his fingers in her palm. Sandy was his life, his reason for living. Their children were precious and more important to him than anything, except her. At least they were home safe with her parents. If they didn’t make it home the kids would be taken care of. If they did make it out of this, Michael swore that he would listen to his wife the next time they planned a vacation. She had wanted to go to Maui.
* * *
The aircraft circled once at his direction and was now entering the empty landing pattern for a visual approach. Hadad checked his watch. It would be happening now, he knew, and the smile again came to his face.
London
The noise from the traffic two blocks away was momentarily masked by the sharp crack of an explosion. There was little flash visible on Winslow—the blast originated farther back in the second-floor flat—but the sound and visible effect at the front of the three-story stone-faced structure were pronounced. Shards of wood, stone, and glass rained down upon the empty street and sidewalk. A groaning came from the building as the initial roar of the blast subsided. The horizontal support members between the first and second, and second and third, floors were breached, and the upper stories settled downward, pushing the ground floor into the basement. Surprisingly, there was no fire following the collapse, only a panicked scream from someone inside the devastated structure.
Less than four hundred meters away a young Irishman dialed the Scotland Yard operator and delivered a message that he recited verbatim from memory. The operator passed the information to the inspector on duty at the Domestic Terrorism desk. He received it at the same time the first calls came in on the explosion. He immediately notified the explosive ordnance detail and left for number 316 Chatham, where the caller said another bomb would be found.
Five
SAINTS AND SINNERS
Los Angeles
The door slammed. It must have. He heard the sound of wood on wood and the rattle of the latch, but it should have been louder. Shouldn’t it? Who was it? Who? Who?
“Art,” the familiar female voice called to him.
Art’s eyes flickered open. He reached up, rubbing the sleepiness away as best he could. There was a heavy aroma of fresh coffee … and vanilla. But… “Carol?”
She was there, with the coffee only she could brew. Not that packaged foofoo crap that smelled like cake. It was her recipe. Art used to laugh at that: She had a
recipe
for coffee. “
Your
pot was cold, Arthur. Jerry tells me there’s a report to get ready.”
He pulled himself up, first on his elbows and then to a head-hanging sitting position. His shirt back was wet and his mouth was heavy with a filmy taste. “Guess I dozed off for a while.”
“A while?” Carol set the glass pot on the desk blotter. “You, young man, did more than doze off—it’s almost two A.M.”
“What?”
Her hands found their familiar position on her hips, which, along with the twisted look, signaled her displeasure. She was gruff and caring, much like Art’s grandma. “Listen.” A single finger aimed at his nose. “You were asleep. Jerry looked in and saw you and decided to call me. He thought you might need some help, so don’t start fussing.”
“Jesus, Carol.”
“Don’t ‘Jesus’ me, young man.”
Young man, hah!
Only in comparison, though her sixty-three years had been kind to her. He would tell her, and she thought jokingly, that she didn’t look an hour past fifty.
“Now drink your coffee.” She poured the first cup and handed it to him. “Jerry’s already gone home and Eddie’s taking a nap at the Hilton. I spoke to him about ten and he said he’d call and wake you if the information came in. I typed up what you already had—and corrected your spelling—so you can just pick up where you left off.”
“Ehh!” Art coughed. The vanilla coffee was hot. And it did give him that kick he needed. Getting to his feet was easy after four sips.
“I’ll be at my desk—awake—when you need me,” she said, giving Art a wink as she pulled the door.
Art took stock of himself. “I must look like shit,” he mumbled aloud. A quick check of the pedestal mirror behind his desk confirmed the suspicion. He had left the file drawer half open before pausing. Why change shirts now, he wondered. Before him, neatly arranged, were the typed pages of the report and a fresh legal pad. He smiled and softly chuckled.
“Okay, Arthur,” he said aloud, “from the top.”
Fort Belvoir
Number 8601 had raced across the sky at eight thousand miles per hour to a point over the North African coast where the Gulf of Sidra reached its farthest point inland, roughly above the town of Al-Uqaylah. Along its path it gradually dove from its previous altitude of 450 miles to a position in near earth orbit—108 miles above sea level. The position was practically perfect for photoreconnaissance, weather permitting, but uncomfortably close to the dense atmosphere closer to the earth. Already sensors on the surface of the KH-12 ENCAP—Enhanced Capability—had detected a rise in temperature as the huge satellite skirted the upper reaches of significantly measurable atmosphere. The friction with the heavy—compared to the vacuum of space—gases created heat. Several pumps were alerted to the buildup of heat and began sending additional amounts of cryogenic coolant to the heat-sensitive photoreceptors—the infrared eyes of the spacecraft.
When it reached its destination it was slowed, then stabilized, by tiny but powerful hydrazine rockets that aligned the “barrel” of the satellite at a predetermined reference point. Controllers at the Consolidated Space Operations Center in Colorado Springs then passed control of the KH-12 ENCAP, the first in its series, to the technicians at Fort Belvoir. In one relatively small room in the windowless cube-shaped structure that was the Keyhole ground station, two technicians sat at their control consoles. They were in control of the ‘bird,’ as they called it, though any maneuvering would still need to be done from CSOC.
“How long?” one of the National Security Agency officials asked. He was actually an Army colonel. His companion was a civilian officer of the NSA.
The senior technician did not look at the two ‘suits’ who sat behind. He was moving a computer mouse, directing a cursor as it danced across a secondary CRT, which was dwarfed by the wall-mounted seventy-inch monitor. “A minute, sir.”
Sir!
These guys expected a bird to do a speed run, slam on the brakes, and start transmitting wedding portraits. And
they
wore the suits.
A tunnel view of atmospheric haze and distant ground clutter filled the high-resolution monitor. The two NSA officials sat slightly higher than the technicians, bleacher style, giving them a comparable view. The room was much like a large closet in size. One wall was covered by the large viewing screen, below which was the instrumentation that controlled the sensors aboard the satellite. The walls, ceiling, and the single door to the room were covered with an indigo-colored fabric paper to eliminate glare and reflected light, enemies in a room where visual acuity was required for proper analysis.
“Okay, Chief,” the junior technician said. “I show a pos on the RPL. That’s a catch!”
“Stability?”
A look at another section of his display. “Set.”
The chief let out a breath. This rushed shit, especially the altitude dives, made him nervous, considering the bird was one of a kind. There were three of the originally planned four KH-12s in orbit, the fourth having suffered a rocket motor explosion as it climbed to its 550-mile area observation altitude. Right now it was tumbling away from earth. An expensive piece of space junk. One KH-12 ENCAP, three standard KH-12s, plus a handful of the older, less capable KH-11s in orbit was stretching the thin minimum needed. And none of the 11s or 12s had the capabilities of the 12 ENCAP, whose most important feature was its ability to ‘hover’ over the same point in low earth orbit, giving continuous surveillance of that spot.
“Hmm,” the bearded suit grunted. “Fuzzy.”
Just hang on.
“It’ll clear up. We’re focusing down slowly. Got to, otherwise the lens motor might cause gyrorotation.”
“I see,” the suit lied. He had no idea what it meant.
Hurry.
“Chet, start VDI and recorders. Do you guys need one copy or two?” the chief asked, turning to see the single finger in response from the colonel.
“VDI up and nominal. Recorders nominal. Running…now.” The junior technician engaged the two high-resolution recording devices. The Video Data Interface was another story. As the signal came down from a Milstar relay satellite in geosynchronous orbit it was broken down into microseconds of digitized information. These bits of imagery were then stored on computer disk for later enhancement and retrieval. It was basically a high-tech file cabinet, though the pictures could be pulled up on the data terminals, in their original form, at will.
The picture began to twist and roll as the optics oriented themselves and began to focus down. The ‘target’ was Benina International Airport, miles outside of Benghazi. It would be a low oblique shot from the south, approximately forty-three degrees above the horizon—not an ideal angle of view, but one necessitated by the moist air directly over the target.
“We have visual definition,” the junior tech announced. The picture became clearer. Objects took on a somewhat familiar appearance, at least to the techs: They were accustomed to overhead views.
“Okay, Chet, float the op-pac and sync with a three-point burst. Do you reconfirm reference lock with VDI?”
“Yep. Ready to synchronize.”
“Do it.” The chief saw the picture flutter, then appear to lock down solid. The optical package, a fancy name for the lens array, was ‘floating’ in a gel-encased bearing ring and was stabilized against minor shaking by a short burst of narrow radar beams directed at three points around the airport. The beams, fired every two seconds, gave precise information as to the satellite’s position in relation to the target, allowing the gyrostabilizer to precisely calibrate itself with the optics and compensate for unwanted motion.
“We have capture. Solid.” The young tech, thirty years the junior of his chief, always got excited at this point. “Ready for focus down.”
“Good. Take it down to a three-mile start.”
Now the NSA men were able to make out details, the most prominent being the ten-thousand-foot east/west runway. At the extreme west end, on the picture’s left, were the buildings and spacious surrounding tarmac. But…
The chief saw it, too, or rather didn’t see it. He shifted the glasses on his nose, scrunching his face in a conscious effort to better his vision. “Simple grid.”
A white line grid system overlay appeared on the screen, angled to the perspective of the lens and parallel with the ground features. Letters denoted columns; numbers were rows.
“Center on G-twelve,” the chief directed.
The junior tech placed a light dot on the grid and the lens moved smoothly, centering on that area.
“Grid off.” It disappeared. “Zoom down three-oh. No more.”
“Right.” The picture grew, and for the first time the aircraft they were looking for was visible, roughly in the screen’s center. “Strange, Chief. No other planes…anywhere.”
There was no response. The chief didn’t analyze like his young partner. It had been too many times early on that he’d spoken out of turn, or the wrong thing. Times were different then. Openness was supposedly promoted now, from what he’d heard.
“Okay, let’s move on in.” He was all business now. “Align west, Chet, say, point-five, and take it down another ten.”
“Right.” The picture went down farther. Now the aircraft filled half the screen, the tail at the left (west) and the nose at the right (east). A hundred feet or so to the front of the 747 was a building. Shadows from it were becoming shorter as the sun rose higher in the sky.
“Chet, what’s that structure?”
“Just a sec.” He typed something on his keyboard, calling up the data catalog on Benina from the VDI. The airfield had received a great deal of attention before the 1986 raid, resulting in over ten thousand stored views. The junior tech scrolled through the data, cross-referencing the known landmarks with the view before him. “Warehouse. Spares and stuff.”
The civilian NSA man scratched his beard. “Damn, that’s clear.”
“This? This is a wide view, mister. Snapshot stuff.” The junior tech was beaming. “Hell, we can take it down and look in a window, especially at this angle. We might get some glare, but that’s no prob. Minor adjustments.”
“Label those buildings,” the colonel said. “But don’t obscure anything.”
“Right.”
Like I’m an idiot, suit.
The hint of sarcasm was apparent to the chief, who flashed his partner a warning look.
“Movement,” the junior tech announced. “We have movement.”