34
A small enclosed truck, painted white with no logo or advertising on its sides, rumbled past the terminal of the Jorge Newbery city airport, located within the federal district of Buenos Aires, and came to a stop under the shade of a maintenance hangar. The airport normally served Argentina's domestic airlines, including those that operated out of Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay. None of the flight line workers seemed to take notice of a turquoise executive jet with 'NUMA' boldly outlined on its fuselage, as it landed and taxied to the hangar where the truck was waiting.
Three men and a woman came through the passenger door and stepped down to the concrete, which was heated by the noonday sun. Just as they were about to reach the maintenance office door of the hangar, they veered around the corner and approached the truck. When they were thirty feet away, the rear door opened and four United States Marines in battle gear jumped to the ground and formed a perimeter around the vehicle. The sergeant in command then helped Congresswoman Smith, Admiral Sandecker, Hiram Yaeger, and a third man enter the truck before reclosing the door.
The interior of the truck was a comfortably furnished office and command post. One of fifty constructed specifically for American embassies around the world, it was designed to protect and aid embassy personnel to escape their compound in the event of attack, such as the abduction and hostage situation in Iran during November of 1979.
Pitt stepped forward and embraced Loren Smith, who was shown aboard first. 'You gorgeous creature. I wasn't expecting you.'
Pat O'Connell felt a stab of jealousy at seeing Pitt with his arms around Loren. The congresswoman from Colorado was far more attractive than she had imagined.
'The admiral asked me to come, and there were no pressing votes on the floor, so here I am, even if it is for only a few hours.'
'A pity,' he said sincerely. 'We could have done Buenos Aires.'
'I would have liked that,' she replied in a husky tone. Then she saw Giordino. 'Al, it's good to see you.'
He gave her a peck on the cheek. 'Always a pleasure to see my government at work.'
Sandecker climbed in, followed by Yaeger and the stranger. He merely nodded at Pitt and Giordino. He walked directly to Pat O'Connell. 'You don't know how happy I am to shake your hand again, Doctor.'
'You don't know how happy I am to be here,' she said, kissing him on the forehead, to his obvious embarrassment. 'My daughter and I are in your debt for sending Dirk and Al to rescue us.'
'I didn't have to send them,' he said wryly. 'They would have gone on their own.'
Yaeger greeted his old friends and Pat, who was introduced to Loren for the first time. Then Sandecker introduced Dr. Timothy Friend. 'Tim is an old school pal. He helped me pass algebra in high school. When I went to the Naval Academy, he went to the Colorado School of Mines for a degree in geophysics. Not content with that, he obtained his Ph.D. in astronomy at Stanford, and became one of the country's most respected astronomers and director of the government's Strategic Computing and Simulation Laboratory. Tim is a wizard of innovative visualization techniques.'
Friend's bald head was encircled by wisps of gray hair, like a school of silverfish swimming around a coral dome. A short man, he had to tilt his head back slightly to gaze up at the two women, who were considerably taller. Giordino, who stood five feet four, was the only one he could look straight in the eye. A quiet man among friends, he became outgoing and lively when lecturing before students, directors of corporations, or high government officials. It was easy to tell that he was in his element.
'Would you all care to sit down?' said Pitt, motioning to comfortable leather chairs and sofas spaced in a square in the center of the truck's cargo area. Once they were seated, an embassy staff member served coffee and sandwiches from a small galley behind the cab.
'Loren asked to come along,' said Sandecker, without preamble. 'She and her congressional aides investigated Destiny Enterprises and came up with some intriguing information.'
'What I found in the past two days is quite worrisome,' Loren began. 'Very quietly, under astounding secrecy, the Wolf family and Destiny Enterprises have sold every business, every one of their shares in national and international corporations, every financial holding, all bonds, all stocks, all real estate, including every stick of furniture in their homes. All bank accounts have been cleaned out. Every asset large and small has been liquidated. Billions of dollars were converted into gold bullion that was transported to a secret location-'
'Where it is now stored in the cargo compartments of their fleet of ships,' Pitt finished.
'It's as though the entire family of two hundred members has never existed.'
'These are not stupid people,' Pitt said convincingly. 'I find it inconceivable that they are capable of irrational judgment. So is there a comet coming, or isn't there?'
'The very reason I've asked Tim to come along,' explained Sandecker.
Friend laid out several small piles of papers on a table between the chairs and sofas. He picked up the first one and leafed through it before consulting his notes. 'Before I answer that, let me go back a bit, so you can understand what the Wolfs have been preparing for. I think it best to begin with the comet's impact on earth sometime around seven thousand B.C. Fortunately, this is not an event that occurs on a regular basis. Although Earth is struck daily, it's by small asteroid fragments no larger than a fist that burn up upon entry into the atmosphere. About every century, one approximately a hundred and fifty feet in diameter strikes Earth, such as the one that produced the crater in Window, Arizona, and the other that exploded before impact in Siberia in 1908 that plastered eight hundred square miles. Once every million years, an asteroid half a mile wide strikes with a force equal to detonating every nuclear device on Earth simultaneously. Over two thousand of these big celestial missiles cross our orbit on a regular schedule.'
'Not a pretty picture,' said Pat.
'Don't lose any sleep over it,' Friend said, smiling. 'Your odds of dying from an asteroid are twenty thousand to one during your lifetime. We can't, however, discount the logical possibility that it's only a question of time before our luck runs out.'
Pitt poured a cup of coffee. 'I assume you're talking about a really stupendous bang.'
'Indeed,' said Friend, nodding vigorously. 'Once every one hundred million years, a mammoth asteroid or comet strikes Earth, like the one that smacked into the sea off Yucatan sixty-five million years ago and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. This impact came from an object six miles in diameter that left a crater one hundred and twenty miles wide.'
Friend paused to scan his paperwork before continuing. 'That was smaller than the one that struck nine thousand years ago. Our computer model indicates that it measured nearly ten miles in diameter and plunged into Hudson Bay, Canada. The resulting chain reaction annihilated nearly ninety-nine percent of all plant and animal life on the planet, which is twenty percent more than the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs sixty-five million years earlier.'
Loren stared at Friend with rapt interest. 'A chain reaction comprising what type of disasters?'
'You take an object ten miles in diameter, weighing several billion tons, and then hurl it through a vacuum into a big soft ball at a speed of one hundred and thirty thousand miles an hour, and you're going to have a blast that is gargantuan beyond comprehension. The earth probably rang like a bell, as the shock of impact was transmitted into every corner. Using computer simulation and visualization techniques, which were very complicated and would take me two hours to explain, we determined that the comet came on an angle, punching into the southeastern section of Hudson Bay and blasting out a crater two hundred and thirty miles in diameter, or more than twice the size of the island of Hawaii. The entire mass of water in the bay was vaporized, as the bulk of the now-disintegrating comet plowed into the Earth to a depth of two miles. Astronauts have taken photos that show a perfect sphere where the shoreline circles the remains of the crater.'
'How do you know it was a comet and not an asteroid or meteor?' asked Yaeger.
'An asteroid is a small body or minor planet that wanders the inner solar system and revolves around the sun. Some are rich in carbon. Others contain minerals rich in iron, silicon, and other minerals. Meteorites for the most part, are smaller fragments from asteroids that have collided with one another and broken up. The largest
