The Roswell Conspiracy (39 page)

Morgan informed the tower to clear all air traffic because she was taking off no matter what the controller said. A minute later the T-38 screamed down the runway, and Grant wondered if he’d ever touch the ground again.

FIFTY-SIX

Although the Lodestar carrier plane shaded the sun, Tyler had an expansive view of the horizon for 180 degrees around him thanks to the unorthodox window design. If he were prone to acrophobia, he’d be catatonic by now.

Tyler explored the limits of his restraints, but it was no use. The bungees were too tight to get any leverage against the belts. Zotkin had been very thorough, taking everything Tyler had on him, including his Leatherman.

He breathed in the smell of the Skyward’s interior through the slit in his helmet, a scent that smelled oddly like a car fresh off the factory floor, no doubt due to the newly installed upholstery. The tiny hole kept him from suffocating, but it did nothing to cool him down. He was already drenched with sweat.

Judging by their climb angle, he guessed they would hit the fifty-thousand-foot launch altitude in another five minutes.

“You okay?” Tyler whispered to Jess so that he wouldn’t be heard over the muted engine noise. He could see her struggling to no avail.

She gave him a plaintive look. “We’re going to die, aren’t we?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“What can we do? I’m trussed up like a turkey. Can you get out?”

“I’m trying.” He pulled again. This time he was able to move his arms up just a little. He tried twice more, but he’d reached his maximum range of motion. Unless he could figure out a way to loosen the belts, he was stuck.

Colchev had stripped out of his original flight suit and was now getting into the Icarus suit. It was somewhat bulkier because of the attached parachute and small oxygen tank. If Tyler could somehow break free, he’d at least have the advantage in mobility.

In situations like this, Tyler had one rule: doing something was better than doing nothing. He’d start by talking. He found it helped to get inside the mind of his enemy.

“I know what you’re planning to do, Colchev. You’re going to leave the Killswitch on here and jump out. Won’t work. We’ll both be in freefall. You’ll just float next to us outside the spaceplane until the bomb explodes.”

“Wrong.” He didn’t elaborate, but Tyler didn’t really think he was that stupid. Colchev was probably going to do it the other way around, dumping the Killswitch overboard once the timer was set, then using the rocket to put some distance between him and the explosion before bailing out.

At least that’s how Tyler would do it.

“Are you sure Icarus even works?” he asked.

“It was designed by top Russian engineers.”

“That’s what I mean.”

Colchev smirked at him. “Don’t forget that we were the first country into space. First satellite. First cosmonaut. First space walk. And now America rides on Russian rockets to the space station. I trust this parachute more than I trust this spaceplane.”

Tyler tried a different angle. “You can’t shoot us in here, you know. The bullets might rip through us and penetrate the hull.”

“True. If you’re worried about how you’re going to die, I’m planning to make it easy for you. Instead of letting you scream in terror as the disabled Skyward plummets back to Earth, I’ll just leave your suits unplugged from the environmental system. When I decompress the ship, you’ll fall unconscious and simply fade away. Much more pleasant.”

‘That’s very kind of you.”

“I’m not a monster.”

“Even though you’ve killed a dozen people already and you’re planning to kill thousands more?” Jess said.

“Soldiers are given medals for killing men while trying to take some godforsaken hill somewhere. I killed men on the way to resetting the global order. Which is more justified?”

“Yeah, you’re a regular hero.”

“One country’s villain is another’s hero. George Washington may be a hero in America, but to the British he was a vile traitor. If the colonies had lost the war, the city of Washington would be named Kingsville. It will be the same with me in Russia.”

“Colchevgrad?” Tyler said. “Not very catchy. There’s one other thing I’ve been wondering. How did you know about the cave on Easter Island? You didn’t have Fay’s relic to guide you there, but somehow you ambushed us.”

Colchev looked at them in amazement. “You really don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“About Dombrovski.”

“I know Dombrovski was the one who made the connection to the Nazca lines.”

Colchev shook his head and chuckled. “You Americans
can
keep secrets. Dombrovski was the one who originally brought the xenobium from Tunguska to the United States in exchange for asylum. He’s the one who created Project Caelus for the US Air Force. That’s why he was trying to find another source of xenobium.”

“Project Caelus?” So Colchev had additional information about Dombrovski’s secret project that Kessler hadn’t shared with them. Colchev must have had access to the records that the Soviets stole.

“It’s funny how we know more about it than you do,” Colchev said. “Dombrovski was obsessed with two things: Project Caelus and his second wife, Catherine. I suppose she became his fixation after the death of his first wife and daughter in Russia, but then Catherine died as well. Every morning he would visit her grave and then go straight to his lab.”

“Was Dombrovski a Russian spy?”

“No, he hated the communists. But we had someone in his lab who was sympathetic to our cause. That’s how we got possession of his notes. We’re the ones who torched his laboratory. We sabotaged his plane. We thought we had everything, including a photo of the xenobium in its Nazca hiding place. Dombrovski documented its existence but didn’t attempt to remove it because he hadn’t figured out how to do it without the chamber collapsing.”

“He planned to return to retrieve it,” Tyler said, “but the Soviets killed him before that happened.”

“We were going to complete his task,” Colchev said. “The old Soviet files had photos of the wood engraving, but Dombrovski died before we could find out the location the map was referring to. All we knew was that the xenobium was at Nazca. Then when I saw the video of Fay and heard her say, ‘Rapa Nui leads to xenobium,’ I thought she possessed the Nazca specimen. When I realized that wasn’t the case, I went to Easter Island to claim whatever clues were there for myself. You just happened to beat me to it. I set off the other Killswitch to keep you from following me.”

Tyler pulled at his restraints. “And yet here we are.”

Colchev strapped up the final piece of the Icarus suit. “At least you’ll die for your country. Maybe they’ll even name a monument after you. I know they will name one after me in my country.”

Colchev put his hand to his ear and nodded.

“We’re nearing our departure point, lady and gentleman. You’ll be dead in a few minutes, so I’ll bid you farewell. As for me, destiny awaits.”

He walked back to the pilot’s seat and buckled in.

As Tyler continued trying to stretch his seat belts, he made one promise to himself.

He wasn’t going to die sitting on his ass.

FIFTY-SEVEN

Morgan had stopped talking, and that’s what worried Grant the most as he kept his hand on the T-38’s control stick. Being a trainer, the jet was easy to fly, but all he could do was follow a straight line or make minor adjustments in their heading. He needed Morgan for anything more complex, and the two-minute vertical ride to thirty thousand feet had brought on a fierce bout of her vertigo.

He thought she was okay until they nosed over and leveled off. It was bad enough for him, the blood pooling in his head from the negative g’s, but for her it must have been overwhelming. She told him to keep hold of the stick and then went silent.

Thanks to chatter on the radio, they had enough info to vector in on the Lodestar. It was fifteen miles away climbing at two thousand feet per minute. At their closing speed of mach 1.2, the T-38 would rendezvous with it before the Skyward was in position for launch.

Ground control continued to try to raise the Lodestar on the radio without success, so they had requested the Air Force to scramble two F-16s to intercept it. Their ETA was another fifteen minutes, far too late to do any good. The T-38 was the only plane in range to intervene. Although ground control was also trying to reach Morgan and Grant, they maintained radio silence.

The situation reconfirmed for Grant that the Killswitch was on the Skyward. If there had simply been a communications malfunction, the pilot would have returned to Oshkosh. The only explanation was that Colchev was making his attempt to detonate the weapon in the ionosphere, causing a doomsday scenario for the American infrastructure.

Grant was sick at the thought of being responsible for Tyler and Jess’s deaths. He wracked his brain for any other option, but he kept coming up empty. If they simply made a warning pass or attempted radio contact with the Lodestar pilot to threaten him, Colchev might launch before the T-38 could intercept even if the Skyward weren’t at the optimal altitude. They’d only get one pass at bringing the carrier down. This had to be a sneak attack.

Grant tried to console himself with the thought that Tyler would agree he had no choice. The good of the country came first. Tyler had been an officer in the Army, with responsibility for ordering men into harm’s way. But Jess was an innocent victim. She’d never made the pact that you would give your life for the greater good.

Both military veterans, Grant and Morgan
had
made that bargain. It didn’t need to be said between them that they were willing to die to keep the spaceplane from launching.

“Morgan, talk to me.”

After a few seconds, he heard, “I’m here.”

“How are you doing?”

“I was able to hold down my lunch. My vision’s a little blurry, but it’s clearing up.”

“And the vertigo?”

“Better. I can handle the stick now.”

Grant let go and she put the plane into a steady climb on the intercept heading. She seemed to be doing okay.

“We’re going to come up from below and behind them. Even if they’re aware of us from listening to ground control, they won’t be able to see us until we’re almost upon them. When we’re close, I’ll slow to a one-hundred-knot closing speed so that I make sure not to miss. At that velocity we’ll still do enough damage to destroy the plane.”

“And ours.”

“That’s why we’re going to eject just before impact. Under each of your armrests is a trigger. Feel for them but don’t pull them.”

Grant touched them. “Got ’em.”

“When the time comes, you’ll pull both armrests straight up and squeeze the triggers. The canopy will blow off and a rocket will eject the seat. Sit up straight to minimize the possibility of fracturing your spine. The wind will slam into you. Your mask should stay on, but if it doesn’t you’ll pass out before you reach twenty thousand feet. The parachute will open automatically.”

“How will that affect the flight path of the plane?”

“At the speed we’ll be going, the plane will be like a missile. The inertia will keep it steady for a few seconds.”

“We pull at the same time?”

“No, pulling the handle will eject both of us, one after the other.”

Morgan was the expert, so Grant had to take her word that all this would work.

“I still expect that afternoon together,” he said.

“I promise. I’ll be there.”

A distant white speck caught Grant’s attention.

“Target dead ahead,” he announced to Morgan.

In seconds he could see the bone-white Lodestar, its enormous wingspan cleaving the blue sky. They were coming up directly behind the carrier, which grew in size rapidly.

“I’ve got it,” Morgan said. “Are you ready?”

“Just tell me when.”

“I’ll count down. Throttling back.”

Grant’s chest strained against the safety straps as the afterburners cut off. They were now doing a stately six hundred knots. Ejecting at this speed and altitude was dicey at best, especially because he wasn’t wearing a flight suit. If he didn’t die of hypoxia, he might freeze to death before he got to a lower altitude.

The Lodestar was now close enough that Grant could make out the Skyward below it.

Tyler and Jess had no clue what was coming. Grant rationalized that they would die anyway if the Killswitch were detonated, but the taste of guilt was too strong to ignore. If he could trade places with them, Grant would do it in an instant.

“I’m sorry, guys,” he said under his breath. “So sorry.” He silently prayed for them.

“It’s time, Grant,” Morgan said. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Can’t wait.”

The Lodestar loomed in the windscreen. Morgan was aiming dead center. The T-38 would tear through the middle of the fuselage. Grant hoped that Tyler and Jess would never know what happened.

Morgan began her countdown.

“Pull on one. Five.”

Grant wrapped his fingers around the armrests and triggers.

“Four.”

Morgan’s voice sounded strangely at peace.

“Three.”

Like she knew this was a moment to be savored.

“Two.”

Like she was finally back where she belonged.

“One. Bail out, bail out, bail out!”

Grant jerked the armrests up, and his world became a rush of sensation. The sound of the explosive bolts blowing the canopy off. The intense cold of the air lashing his arms. The crushing force of the seat catapulting him out of the plane. The coppery taste of blood as he bit his lip. The tunneling of vision from sudden deceleration as the air dragged him to a stop.

As he tumbled through the air, a drogue chute deployed to halt the spin, and that’s when he saw that she had overestimated their closing speed. He’d ejected when they were still hundreds of yards from the Lodestar.

But Grant couldn’t see Morgan’s chute anywhere. She hadn’t bailed out.

For an instant Grant thought something had gone wrong with the ejection mechanism. But then he realized she’d tricked him into ejecting. Morgan was staying with her plane until the end.