Shadow Watch

“Roger Gordian.” She smiled. “Our program’s foremost civilian standard bearer. And just ’Annie’ would be fine.”

“First names all around then.” He nodded toward the woman on his opposite side, a striking auburn brunette in a crisp business suit. “Let me introduce you to my Vice President of Special Projects, Megan Breen. One way or another, she’s generally behind whatever good things our company manages to accomplish.”

Megan reached over to shake Annie’s hand.

“I hope you’ll attest to hearing Roger say that when it’s time for me to renegotiate my salary,” she said.

Gordian gave Annie a wink. “Poor Megan’s still got a lot to learn about the unshakeable loyalties between former warbird pilots.”

All at once, Annie’s smile became overlaid by something other than humor.

“You were downed over Vietnam, weren’t you?” she said.

Gordian nodded. “By a Soviet SA-3 while on a lowalt sortie over Khe Sanh.” He paused. “I’d been flying with the 355th out of Laos for about a year, and spent the next five on the ground at Hoa Lo Prison.”

“The Hanoi Hilton. My God, that’s right. I’ve read how its inmates were treated. About its star chambers…”

She let her voice trail off. These had been rooms eighteen and nineteen of what American POWs called the Heartbreak Area, known as the Meathook and Knobby Rooms, the former for reasons that were self-explanatory, the latter because of the clumps of plaster that covered the walls to dampen the screams of the tortured. Say what you wished about the French, who had left Hoa Lo as a legacy of their colonization of the region — just as the notorious penal colony on Devil’s Island was a historic testament to their rule of Guiana in South America — they had to be respected for having built escape-proof prisons that could impose behavioral modifications on the most hardened incorrigibles, the brutal inhumanity of those facilities notwithstanding. And quick studies that they were, the North Vietnamese had made full practical use of their inheritance.

“I’ve likewise heard about your exploits,” Gordian said. “Six days evading enemy soldiers in the Bosnian countryside after an E&E from an F-16 at twenty-seven thousand feet.” He shook his head. “Thank heaven you were rescued.”

“Heaven, my survival manual, my radio beacon, and an iron stomach I’ve been razzed about my whole life, but that’s uniquely suited to the consumption of grubs and insects,” she said. “These days, with the GAPSFREE recon and guidance systems you designed available on almost every fighter plane, it’s less likely a pilot’s going to be blindsided the way I was.”

Gordian looked a bit uncomfortable.

“You give me too much credit, and yourself too little,” he said, and then gestured around the room. “Though I’d bet we agree that this is really remarkable.”

Annie nodded. Unless her judgment had gone totally awry, she’d just gotten a flash of genuine modesty from Gordian — a rare trait for someone of his stature, as working around powerful men had taught her, often through lessons of a highly unpleasant nature.

“This your first launch?” she asked.

“Other than as a tourist, yes,” he said. “When our kids were, well, kids, my wife Ashley and I got a car pass and took them to see an Endeavor takeoff from the public viewing site. That was spectacular enough, but to be inside an actual firing room…”

“Makes your fingertips tingle and your heart go pitterpat,” Annie said.

He smiled. “Guess I can assume you haven’t gotten blase about it yet.”

“And I never will,” Annie said, smiling back at him.

A moment later Gordian rose as NASA Administrator Charles Dorset arrived, clasped his hand, and bore him off to meet a group of officials in one of the adjacent rooms.

“So what’s next?” Megan asked Annie, leaning across Gordian’s vacated chair. “With so much going on at once it’s hard to absorb everything.”

“Don’t sweat it. Sending human beings into space is a complicated process,” Annie said. “Even the astronauts can’t remember all their tasks without cue cards, and that’s after years of training and a full dress rehearsal.”

“Are you serious? About the cards, I mean.”

“They stick ’em right on the instrument panel,” Annie said. “One small step for man, a giant step for Velcro.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “To give you a sense of where we stand, there’s about an hour left till takeoff, and everything seems to be looking good. The closeout team’s already secured the side hatch, and in a little while they’ll be leaving the pad for the fallback area. Prelaunch checks started hours ago and are automatically sequenced by the computers, but there are a lot of switches aboard that spacecraft, and right about now the crew’s going to be making sure they’re in the correct positions.”

“The number of personnel jammed into this room comes as a revelation,” Megan said. “I’ve watched launches on television and expected we’d have plenty of company… but there have to be, what, two hundred people at the consoles?”

“Good guess,” Annie said. “Actually, the total’s a little higher, maybe around two hundred fifty. That’s half as many as there were back in the days of Apollo, and a third less than were needed just a few years ago. The new CLCS — that’s Checkout and Launch Control System — hardware and software we’ve been adding have consolidated most launch operations.”

Gordian was working his way back from the aisle. “Sorry to have left in the middle of our conversation, but Chuck wanted me to meet some of his deputies.”

Chuck to you, Mr. Dorset to me, Annie thought. In the future, she would remember trying to conceal her amusement out of concern Gordian might take offense. I suppose it really is first names all around for some of us.

Megan had turned to Gordian. “I wasted no time picking Annie’s brain while you were gone. It’s been quite an education.”

“I hope one more eager pupil won’t be too much trouble then,” he said, taking his seat.

Annie smiled. “Not at all. As long as we keep our voices down, you can both ask any questions you’d like.”

Which was precisely what they did for the next fifty minutes or so. Then, at T minus nine minutes, a hold was put on the countdown and a waiting hush fell over the firing room. For the most part, the ground controllers sat at their stations in silent readiness. Across the room, however, the Mission Management Team — a group of key NASA officials and project engineers — began having quiet, serious discussions, a few reaching for telephones on their consoles.

Annie noticed her new acquaintances looking intently over at them.

“The hold’s altogether routine,” she explained in a low voice. “Gives the astronauts and ground personnel a chance to play catch-up with their task list and see if any last-minute corrections are necessary. It’s also when the managers make their final assessments. Some of them will want to teleconference with engineers in Houston before committing to the launch. Once they arrive at their individual determinations, they’ll take a poll, see whether there’s a consensus that it’s okay to proceed.” She motioned toward the lightweight headphones on her console, then at two additional sets in front of Gordian and Megan. “When the event timer starts again, you’ll want to put them on and eavesdrop on the dialogue between the cockpit and ground operators.”

“The polling you mentioned,” Megan said. “Does it take very long?”

“Depends on the weather, technical snags that might have cropped up along the way, a bunch of factors. If one of the managers gets uneasy over something in his daily horoscope, he could theoretically force a postponement,” Annie said. “Though I’ve never heard of that happening, there have been some oddball occurrences. Five, six years ago, for example, a Discovery launch was tabled for over a month, thanks to a pair of northern flickers.”

Gordian looked at her. “Woodpeckers?”

“You know your birds.” Annie grinned. “Unfortunately, these two were pecking at the external fuel tank’s insulation covering instead of tree trunks. After it was repaired, an ornithologist was called in to scare off the little pests. I think he wound up hanging owl decoys around the pad area.”

“Incredible.” Gordian shook his head. “I don’t remember hearing anything about it.”

“Tales of the Cape. I can tell more of them than you’d ever want to hear.” Annie chuckled. “But have no fear.