point you and the colonel are going to have to get your hands dirty. I can order the captain to be moved from the cell area to the prosecutor’s office five floors above. At some point, probably in the basement or the fifth-floor office of the prosecutor, you two will have to lie in wait and… what do you spooky guys say? Oh, yes-bag him. All of this without alerting the large security force inside the building while you’re doing so. I would suggest you do it at this point.”
Jack leaned over and saw where Pete was pointing. He turned from Europa’s blueprint of the headquarters building to face Pete Golding.
“You’ve lost it, Pete. In case you don’t know where your finger is resting, that’s the police officers’ shower and locker room. You know there would more than likely be people called cops inside?”
“I’m banking on it. Europa can order the systems controlling the plumbing in the building to shut down, leaving the officers’ locker room the only viable place for a prisoner to shower before being brought into the prosecutor’s office.” Golding saw the look Collins and Sebastian were giving him. “Look, it’s the only loophole Europa could come up with. Oh, hell, I’ll let her explain it.” Pete reached out and hit the switch that controlled the supercomputer’s voice synthesizer. “Explain your plan to the colonel and major, Europa.”
“Yes, Dr. Golding,” came the Marilyn Monroe-ish voice from the speaker. Sebastian looked at Jack and Collins rolled his eyes in return. “Two Quito police department uniforms have been secured for you at Authority Clothing, located two blocks west of the station, and may be picked up using your standard police IDs supplied by Dr. Golding. You will then proceed directly to the fifth floor of police headquarters. At that time a command will be sent from the prosecutor’s office using the auspices of the Europa system. In that order will be a request from the prosecutor to see prisoner 1962900. The order will include a physical examination for any weapons said prisoner may have secured during his brief stay in his cell. That order will include that the prisoner shower before being brought to the head prosecutor’s office. Once the prisoner is inside the shower and locker room, clandestine elements of the mission will secure the prisoner and abscond with his person through emergency exit 29-b, shown on the monitor. Probability is seventy to thirty against success.”
“What the hell?” Sebastian asked, looking from the monitor to Jack, who shrugged.
“I guess that’s the best she can do,” Jack said as he slapped Pete on the back. “You want to get us some IDs, Doc?”
“Already printed and scanned for the security system inside the building.” Pete turned and looked at Collins and then Sebastian. “It really is all she could come up with, Colonel. If not for this plan, you would have to storm the building, and with the elements of Interpol inside with over seventy on-duty officers that would be disastrous.”
“I didn’t say a word,” Jack said as he looked over at the German. “Look, why don’t you sit this one out. I can go it alone.”
Sebastian looked hurt.
“Are you kidding, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Besides, if we pull this off I want you to introduce me to this Europa woman. Deal?”
Jack had a very hard time keeping a straight face, but he managed, as did Golding.
“Deal,” was all he said.
“Colonel,” Charlie said, as he poked his head into the communications shack. “ Discovery and Endeavour are off. They will achieve orbit in just two minutes.”
Everyone could see the relief in Jack’s face as the realization that the arrest warrants for McCabe and Rawlins probably staved off another attack.
Mission Control had just been handed off Discovery and Endeavour from Vandenberg. They watched and cheered on the Endeavour, the last of the two launches, just as the solid rocket boosters separated from the large centerline external fuel tank. Endeavour climbed, going to full throttle to reach the unforgiving void of space.
Hugh Evans couldn’t remember a more glitch-free launch in his career, much less of four vehicles at almost the same time. The maniacs that put this plan into motion had his respect. The quirky little man who had come up with the outrageous scheme should be the first in line for congratulations. Even the silent boys over at DARPA, who had provided input on splicing all the experimental systems into one mission, had done a job for which they would always be remembered.
“ Endeavour, this is Houston, you have a clean RSB sep, and are clear for low orbit insertion,” CAPCOM said as the blurry, out-of-range image showed the solid rocket boosters falling free of the Endeavour and the twelve astronauts she carried. Some were in her command deck, the others in a small pod that had been loaded into her cargo hold. Evans knew that as soon as Discovery and Endeavour made their low altitude orbit, both shuttles would open their cargo doors to cool off not only the bay itself but the pod carrying the four astronauts that couldn’t fit into the current design of the flight module. For the first time men had been sent aloft in the cargo hold of a space shuttle and the environment capsule had performed magnificently. This design idea had come straight from the drafting boards of DARPA and had worked to perfection.
Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena was reporting that the remote systems onboard Dark Star 1 and Dark Star 2 were functioning at nominal levels. They were now prepared for the command modules to separate from the holds containing the two Altair landers for eventual hookups to both capsules. Then they would remotely rendezvous with the International Space Station for crew pickup. That was when the Moon mission would truly begin.
The small airfield had been constructed in three days with the aid of Iranian engineers. With all evidence of the landing strip designed to disappear in a matter of hours, the plan was to launch the aircraft and then vanish into the mountainous terrain surrounding the small village.
The pilot, an old-time Iranian who had received his training decades before under the regime of the Shah, was ready for a mission that would finally prove his worthiness to the Ayatollah Rahabi and the fanatical president of that country. This would make him a martyr of the state and allow his family the privileges they had for so long been denied since the pilot had fallen from grace when the Shah abdicated so many years before. As he watched the American on the small monitor, he felt shame at what he had to do for the sake of his family. As the ground crew was given the go order, he lowered his head and said a prayer for forgiveness for the evil deed he was about to perpetrate in the name of God and country-even for the sake of his family, the deed may still prove to be too much for his soul.
He nodded his head and the cockpit of the Tomcat-an aircraft left over from the days of the Shah, started to close.
As the F-14 began its rollout from the makeshift cloth hangar, the full Moon struck him as a brilliant reminder of the old days of flying patrol under the Shah. The pilot could feel the weight of the two weapons as they hung from the innermost hard-line points just off the hydraulically controlled wings. The rest of the F-14 had been stripped of anything that would hinder his flight into Kazakhstan. Even the oxygen system had been cut down by 90 percent, and there was no defensive weaponry in the venerable old naval aircraft-even the twenty-millimeter cannon had been removed. In fact, the weight of the two ASATs was double the normal flight load of the Tomcat and there was still some doubt as to whether the aircraft could even gain the altitude needed for launch. The new seeker heads installed by the Iranian military would detect the low-orbiting targets, but it still remained to be seen if the Tomcat could get to the launch point at 65,000 feet. The Tomcat was not designed for the ASM-135 ASAT. It was always launched from the F-15 Eagle and the change had been designed by the best Iranian aerospace people they had.
The Tomcat reached the apron of the hard, earthen-packed runway and was waiting for the go from the radar station thirty-five miles away. The station was monitoring the path of the American shuttles Endeavour and Discovery as they readied to cross over Russian territory on their way to the rendezvous with the International Space Station.
The secret partner of the ayatollah had been working diligently on the plan for the past ten years and the Reverend had come through by supplying the necessary equipment to the one man who could help bring not only America to its knees but the rest of the world’s powers as well. It wasn’t this man who was in partnership with
