“Who would we contact so that we can erase the data input from Borosky?”
“Well, I suppose Chad Cummings. He heads up the data services division.”
“Do you realize that you have violated the US Secrets Act?”
Huart’s left arm began to tingle. Then it felt like someone was pushing with all their strength down on his chest. His eyes became unfocused, then darkness.
“Are you telling me that the guy dropped dead right in front of you?” Jeffers asked.
“Yes sir.”
“What about the data?”
“Removed with no trace sir.”
“Okay, good job and stay alert; Macklin is still bouncing around there also.”
“I will sir, and thank you.”
Kolna strolled into the major case squad office and was met by the lead investigator, Detective Vasily Kernoff.
“Sergeant Kolna what I am about to tell you is to stay within this room. You are to consider this a state secret. We found Anna Kinova’s laptop computer under her bed. It seems she kept a daily diary of her life on the laptop. Day before yesterday she made this entry into her diary.”
He gave Kolna a printout to read. The more he read the faster his pulse became, and by the time he finished he felt he was going to hyperventilate. What he told him next stirred Kolna to anger.
“They checked Borosky’s telephone records and found an outgoing call the day before his death that mysteriously dead-ended at a phone hub in London, England. Yet at Cal Tech, in Pasadena, California, Professor Huart died suddenly of a heart attack yesterday. The data transmissions she mentions being sent to Huart has also mysteriously vanished with no record of its having been sent or received. Although Anna entered the exact time it was sent in her diary. Both of their offices at the institute have been burglarized, files have been taken and their computers wiped totally clean. We don’t have any clue what they were working on that was so important Borosky would contact Huart for help. Finally, this morning they pulled Anna’s body out of the river. She had been bound and gagged and thrown off of the damn walkway down onto the spillway.”
“Goddamn it, this is the CIA and you and I both know it,” Kolna was furious.
“Yes sergeant, I’m certain it was their involvement, and that is why it is out of our hands and in the big black building. It’s FSB business now.”
“CIA.” Kolna could barely say it, he was so furious.
Ted Jeffers and Don Cray were having lunch, when a man came up to them and sat down unannounced Jeffers recoiled but Don Cray just smiled.
“Don your people really fucked up in St Petersburg, the Kremlin is getting involved and it’s going to the very top of both governments.” The man got up and walked away.
“Don, who the hell was that?”
“I don’t know his real name. Someone on the Russian side.” Ted don’t get your panties all in a wad. Eat your lunch. In the old days we called it flushing out the quail. You ever hunt Ted?”
“No, I’m a fisherman.”
“When you go quail hunting they usually huddle in a covey under a tree or in the underbrush. What you do is shoot in their general direction and see what flies out. That’s what the Russians are doing; they want something to fly out. They’re pissed off because we pulled off a major operation right under their noses. They’ll get over it. And if they don’t, well, in a few years it’s going to be moot, isn’t it?”
Unknown to Cray at that time was the fact that the Kremlin was more than just a little miffed at the CIA pulling off a caper on their soil… the Russians were deeply suspicious of US motives.
Chapter 4
Find A Hole and Climb In
“Gentleman, please be seated.” The President waved his people back into their seats. Around the situation room table were the best and brightest minds in the country. If anyone could do anything about this threat, it would be them.
“Gentleman, we are here today to discuss strategies on how best to defend this world against what appears to be a potential catastrophic event coming this way in the summer of 2017. I now open the meeting by having Professor Conley discuss the threat we face.”
“Thank you Mr. President.” Professor Andrew Conley, MIT and Cal State, rose and cleared his throat. Our latest data show the mass of asteroids still on track for an orbital coincidence in July 2017. Here is the main issue that you need to consider. Imagine if you will a 3-D image of a box drawn into outer space, this box is approximately 22,000 by 16,000 miles in cross section and 1.9 million miles long. Asteroids of varying sizes are dispersed throughout this box. Some are tumbling at a slow rate and others at a high rate of speed. Many are in free spin with no discernible orbit structure around any of the other asteroids.”
Conley discussed trajectory analysis, asteroid composition, and impact scenarios both in space and on earth. It was frightening stuff, but the most frightening thing was that, given the number of asteroids and their motion relative to one another, it was impossible to predict precisely where any one of them would hit.
Eric Karinsky, head of new technology development at JPL then rose.
“Mr. President, let me get to my points right away. Our strategies must fall into two categories, delaying and object destruction. Destruction, despite what you’ve seen in the movies, is not practical, as it leaves a debris cloud still heading toward earth. A delaying strategy relies on the fact that the earth moves one planetary diameter every seven minutes. If we can delay, or alter an object’s trajectory slightly, we could cause it to miss the earth entirely. The vector and the velocity of the incoming object must be calculated correctly to implement such a strategy, which is within our capabilities. But the action to be taken must be done far enough away from the earth for the effect to be realized. On this question, I defer to my colleague.
NASA Chief Tom Benson stood and addressed the group, whose anxiety seemed to grow by the minute.
“Our part of this mission is to provide the delivery platform to implement whatever strategy is finally agreed upon. Mr. President, with the global financial meltdown and our own economy under such duress these past years, our new orbital and deep space craft development programs were left unfunded and essentially mothballed. For us to resurrect this program and bring it to fruition would take three years at a minimum, well past the event date. We are therefore left with the three space shuttles that are currently in storage. Crew must be trained, the shuttles themselves, the Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavor, must be thoroughly gone through, new systems and any modifications necessary will take us perilously close to impact time. We must develop the strategy quickly and adopt an aggressive timeline; otherwise we are courting disaster before the impact itself.”
“If I may, Mr. President,” Ted Jeffers said. “If we were to ramp up our space program that aggressively while pleading poverty as the reason for pulling our troops back, there would be no way to maintain secrecy, the media would be all over us.”
“Good point Ted; let’s say we have decided to embark on a commercial endeavor that will drive revenue to the treasury, instead of draining it. How’s that sound?”
“Well, Mr. President if you can sell it we can protect it from early disclosure.”
“Good man.”
“General Pontius,” Admiral Torrance asked. “How’s the rail-gun project progressed?”
“We have had success in disabling satellites; the system itself is reliable and accurate. The problem Admiral is that these are smaller objects than the majority of the asteroids coming in at us. They weren’t moving at a high rate of speed and none of them were tumbling as