parachute back to earth from up to eighty miles high.”
Grant laughed. “You’re kidding. I’m pretty much a badass, but that sounds like an impossible stunt.”
“Maybe not,” Tyler said. “There was a US program called Excelsior in the late fifties. The Air Force was worried about pilots ejecting from the high altitudes that the U-2 flew at, so they designed a multi-stage parachute to prevent fatal spins. Icarus could be a Russian version of the same thing.”
“And you know about Excelsior how?” Jess said.
“My father was in the Air Force. He knows the guy who tested the chute, Joseph Kittinger — probably the gutsiest man in history.”
“Why?” Fay asked. “How did they test it?”
“They put Captain Kittinger, who was wearing a pressure suit, into a gondola attached to an enormous helium balloon, then let it float up to a hundred thousand feet.”
Grant whistled. “Almost twenty miles.”
“For all intents and purposes, he was in space. When he stepped off that ledge, it was like jumping into a satellite photo. He fell for four and a half minutes, still the record for longest parachute freefall.”
“And he lived?” Fay said.
Tyler nodded. “He not only survived, he earned a slew of medals for the mission and eventually became a colonel.”
“Fascinating, but what does this have to do with the Killswitch?” Jess said. “Does Colchev have one of these Icarus parachutes?”
“We don’t know,” Morgan said. “We can’t exactly check with the Russians to see if they’ve lost track of one. Besides, Icarus is a common reference. The boy with wax wings who flew too close to the sun and fell to Earth. You could do a Google search and get a thousand hits.”
“I doubt he’s going up in a balloon.”
“From Wisconsin Ave?” Grant said. “Not likely. Those things are gigantic.”
“If he did get it that high,” Tyler said, “the Killswitch would do a lot more damage.”
“Why?” Jess said.
“Because the EMP effect would be amplified by the magnetic flux in the ionosphere. Military planners have worried for years about a nuclear weapon detonated over the central United States. It could wipe out the entire country’s infrastructure. In an instant every machine in the US would go quiet.”
Jess gasped. “With all the computers and communications systems down, nobody would even know that Armageddon had arrived.”
With a faraway look, Morgan said, “‘And we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.’”
“Who said that?” Grant asked.
“George Eliot.”
“Who’s he?”
Morgan rolled her eyes. “
“Hey, if you had said Curious George—”
“The question is,” Tyler said, trying to get them back on track, “how could Colchev deliver the Killswitch to that altitude?”
“Maybe he found the Roswell spaceship,” Fay said. When she saw the looks the rest of them gave her, she continued, “I’m just saying the Russians designed Icarus to be used with a spaceship, and I saw a spaceship at Roswell. That’s awfully coincidental if you ask me.”
Tyler chuckled. Maybe she wasn’t giving up on her fantasy.
Grant snorted. “Right, instead of a balloon, Colchev has a spaceship taking off from Wisconsin Ave.”
Tyler started to laugh, then stopped himself and sat bolt upright.
He asked for Grant’s laptop and opened the browser.
Grant edged closer. “What did I say?”
“Bedova said Wisconsin Ave, not Wisconsin Avenue, right?”
Grant shrugged. “That’s the way I remember it.”
“What’s the difference?” Morgan asked.
“Either Colchev had been using a code or Bedova interpreted the abbreviation the wrong way. It’s not Wisconsin Ave. It’s pronounced Wisconsin A Vee.”
“What do the letters A and V stand for?” Jess said.
“AirVenture.”
“Wisconsin AirVenture?” Fay said. “What’s that?”
Grant slapped himself in the forehead. “Of course! The EAA.”
“The Experimental Aircraft Association has a huge air show every year,” Tyler said. “It’s in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, smack dab in the middle of the country. Thousands of private aircraft pilots fly their planes to the show. It’s so big that for one week, Oshkosh becomes the busiest airport in the world, with over ten thousand takeoffs and landings. I flew to it a few years ago, but I didn’t make the connection until just now because I always called it the Oshkosh Fly-in.”
Morgan looked at the tablet. “This is tomorrow’s schedule.”
Tyler pointed to the middle of the schedule. “Check out what happens at noon.”
Morgan peered at it, then her eyes went wide. “I’ll call the FBI.” She jumped up and furiously dialed her phone.
“What is it?” Jess said. “What happens tomorrow?”
Tyler put a hand on Fay’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I laughed at you.”
“Why?”
“Because you were right. Tomorrow a company called ExAtmo is making a demonstration flight at noon of their brand new product, the Skyward.”
Grant recognized the name instantly. “Damn! You think Colchev is planning to hijack it?”
Tyler nodded grimly. “He must be planning to fly the Killswitch up to an altitude of seventy miles.”
“I don’t understand,” Jess said. “What’s ExAtmo?”
“They’re a commercial sub-orbital tourism venture. Skyward is their experimental spaceplane.”
SPACE
FIFTY-ONE
From the copilot’s seat of the Cessna 340A, Colchev could see vast rows of planes lined wingtip to wingtip on the grassy field bordering the northern runway of the Oshkosh Whitman Regional Airport. The previous night, he and Zotkin had landed in Calgary, Canada to refuel the Gulfstream, where they were able to sneak off the plane disguised as pilots. Two other men dressed as pilots took their places and the jet continued on its way toward Moscow. Then Colchev and Zotkin drove across the border into Montana using a new set of false passports and boarded the smaller twin-prop six-seater at a tiny airport in Shelby.
To cover his tracks, Colchev planted a small explosive device on the Gulfstream, timed to blow up over the remote Canadian tundra. It would take days to confirm that he and the xenobium were not on board.
Zotkin, who was flying the Cessna, got clearance to land on runway 27, which was closer to their parking spot in the north field than the main 36L runway used for the demonstration flights and daily air shows. They made their final turn, Lake Winnebago glistening just a few miles to the east under the azure sky. Excellent conditions for the launch.
As they came around, Colchev got his first glimpse of the Skyward spaceplane. It was situated in a place of
