Aleta shook her head and slipped him a five-quetzale note, the equivalent of about sixty cents. The ayudante smiled and helped Aleta onto the bus with her bag. Not that she needed to have tipped him to ensure they could take their bags on. She had to ease her way down the aisle of the already crowded bus past two pigs, a large sack of carrots, three sacks of potatoes and a caged rooster. O’Connor stacked the backpacks containing the precious figurines in the luggage rack above them, and they took an empty bench seat in front of a woman in traje, the traditional dress of her village: a colourful handwoven huipil blouse, and the long corte skirt secured with a woven belt – the whole a kaleidoscope of tangerines, purples, aquamarines, scarlets and mustard yellows.
Twenty minutes later, the chicken bus pulled out of Puerta de Hierro, leaving a cloud of black smoke in its wake.
49
A gentle swell broke over a darkened Point Sal on the Californian coast, to the north of Santa Barbara. Two hours behind Guatemala City, the Point Sal beach was deserted. The security guards had cleared and secured the area just before dusk. Further south, a huge eighteen-metre-high LGM-30 Minuteman nuclear missile stood ready in test-launch silo Lima Foxtrot-26 at the northern end of Vandenberg Air Force Base. The heavy concrete slab on top of the silo was still closed; the gleaming missile beneath it weighing thirty tonnes. The missile’s range of 13 000 kilometres was more than enough to hit any target in Russia, China, Korea or the Middle East; and on the few occasions that a target might be out of reach, the US Navy’s Ohio-class nuclear-powered submarines were on continuous deployment, equipped with Trident nuclear missiles, which could be launched from beneath the surface of the ocean. America had the world well covered, and although this morning’s launch would not include a nuclear warhead, the experiment being directed out of Gakona would serve to boost America’s position as the dominant world power. A short distance away, in a heavily guarded hangar, technicians were already working on another Minuteman missile, the casing of which would act as a lens to deflect the high-powered ELF beam into Iran.
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Dan Williams checked the digital clock in the control centre. He knew this was no normal test, and the tall lanky commander of the 576th Flight Test Squadron could feel the tension in the room. The 5.15 a.m. test flight was shrouded in secrecy, not least because the missile track would take it over populated areas of the United States and Canada, across Alaska and out to the north of Siberia. Williams glanced at the tracking screen above the array of consoles and computer screens that monitored every aspect of the launch. All going well, a powerful burst of electromagnetic radiation from the base in Gakona would deflect the missile back into the Arctic Ocean, to the north of the Beaufort Sea. Williams turned to Captain Chavez, the young electronics whiz who’d been assigned as the missile-test launch director.
‘Pass to Gakona: ready for launch.’
Chavez acknowledged the command and Williams reached for the secure handset that would connect him to Looking Glass, the modified 707 Boeing E6-Mercury command and control aircraft cruising at 29 000 feet above the launch silo. Tonight, in addition to its crew of twenty-two, Looking Glass was carrying a two-star admiral as the Airborne Emergency Action Officer, or AEAO. Should an attack on the United States knock out nuclear ground- control stations in the Pentagon, Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, and Site ‘R’ on Raven Rock Mountain in Pennsylvania, the AEAO on the ‘doomsday plane’ would be in position to assume the role of mission control.
‘ Looking Glass, this is launch director, over.’
‘Launch director, this is Looking Glass; loud and clear, over.’ The airborne launch colonel and captain were strapped into their seats at the command console, a suite of computer screens and control dials located behind the cockpit. It was just one of the many consoles in an E6-B cabin jammed with avionics that enabled the aircraft crew to monitor communications from super-high frequencies down to the very low frequencies critical for maintaining contact with nuclear-armed submarines. Each officer was entrusted with a separate key, both of which were required to execute a nuclear strike.
‘ Looking Glass, activate launch command on my mark: five, four, three two, one, mark.’ The launch colonel and captain nodded to one another and turned their keys. A high-speed burst transmission activated the control computers on the ground.
‘Launch director, this is Looking Glass; transmission complete, over.’
Four ballistic gas actuators fired and the 110-tonne reinforced-concrete silo cover slid forward on its rails, revealing the gleaming missile below.
‘Roger, Looking Glass; we have ignition, out.’ The first of the three solid-stage motors erupted in a roar of flame and smoke, and the thirty-tonne missile rose majestically from its underground silo and up into the early- morning sky.
Four thousand kilometres further north, Curtis O’Connor’s old colleague, Tyler Jackson, was monitoring the control screens in the Gakona command centre, watching events unfold with a growing sense of foreboding.
‘One point five miles in altitude, one nautical mile down range, travelling at 900 miles per hour… all systems green.’ Captain Chavez’s voice sounded excited as he watched the live footage. The huge Thiokol TU-122 first-stage motor generated 200 000 pounds of thrust as it powered the missile towards the ionosphere above, leaving a long fiery exhaust trail.
‘Mach one… we’re now supersonic… first-stage engine operating normally… first stage jettisoned… second- stage engine ignition… fifty nautical miles altitude… all systems green.’
Heavy flakes of snow were falling outside the Gakona control centre, and the big diesels that powered the thirty transmitter shelters were at full capacity. Each shelter contained twelve transmitters, each in turn generating 10 000 watts of radio-frequency power. Every one of the 360 transmitters had been switched to the high-frequency dipole antennae, all of which were at the maximum end of the ten megahertz range. Tyler Jackson watched as Gakona’s mission controller vectored a staggering three billion watts of electromagnetic energy into the ionosphere and into the path of the massive missile, now travelling at over 16 000 kilometres per hour. Sixty nautical miles above Gakona, the sensitive ionospheric layer heated to 40 000 degrees Celsius, creating a boiling plasma plume of electrons. The powerful transmitter lifted thirty square kilometres of the earth’s protective shield into the path of the missile.
‘All stations, this is launch director. We’ve lost communications with the missile at this time… missile not responding… missile is now sixty degrees off course… computed bearing one two zero degrees.’
Tyler Jackson stifled a gasp. The one-tonne nose cone was headed for North Korea.
50
T he cell phone rang out inside the taxi on the wharf at Puerto Quetzal. Rodriguez pursed her lips, exasperated at Wiley’s insistence on organising the asset in Puerto Quetzal from Washington. She had been dialling the secure cell phone since 4 a.m. without success, and there was no word on either O’Connor or Weizman. Langley was an hour ahead of Guatemala City and Rodriguez knew it wouldn’t be long before Wiley would be on the secure line demanding answers. She dialled the number again. This time a sleepy voice answered.
‘? Si?’
‘? Que esta pasando? What’s happening? Is there anything to report?’
‘? Como?’
Rodriguez took a deep breath. ‘Tutankhamen. Nefertiti?’
‘Ah. Si… They not come,’ the taxi driver replied in halting English.
Five minutes later, Rodriguez put down the phone, convinced that Fawlty Towers’ Manuel and Langley’s asset had a lot in common.
At CIA’s headquarters, Howard Wiley scanned the latest intelligence report from Cardinal Felici at the
