October's Ghost (16 page)

“I’m a neighborhood-watch chairperson, so I try to keep an eye open for strangers,” she explained. “I just wish I’d called the police right then, darn it!”

“I’d like to have my partner talk to you to write down what you’ve told me, if that would be all right?” Art’s head dipped slightly as he finished the request.

“Of course, but would you like this also?” Mrs. Carroll asked, holding a small slip of notepaper out to the FBI agent.

“What is this?” Art asked.

“The license number of the car.”

This time, the rules and all else be damned, Art Jefferson bent forward and gave the senior citizen a much-deserved peck on the cheek.

*  *  *

They were high-tech dispatchers, directing the movement of billions of dollars of equipment thousands of miles from where they sat. When a customer requested a move, the technicians at the Consolidated Space Operations Center in Colorado Springs carried it out through a series of computer commands that were beamed up to a Milstar communications relay satellite that “bounced” the commands to the intended recipient. Sometimes several bounces were required between the ground and two or three relay satellites before the commands could be acted upon.

The customers, almost exclusively the CIA and the DOD, then were free to use their people to control the activities of the newly positioned satellites and to interpret whatever data was retrieved. CSOC’s job was done at that point, until another move from any planned orbital path was required. It was all very routine.

“Goddammit!” the senior watch technician swore, his section’s routine broken by the single flashing light on his console. He switched his intercom to the channel for the Air Force duty officer for his watch, a two-star general.

“What’s the problem?”

“We’ve got a reactive rotation on number 5604,” the technician reported, referring to the twenty-ton KH-12 just beginning its pass over western Cuba. “As soon as NPIC started shootin’ pictures, we got a warning.”

The National Photographic Interpretation Center, a complex of windowless cubes on the grounds of the Washington Navy Yard, was the arm of the CIA and other governmental intelligence agencies that collected and analyzed imagery from the array of reconnaissance satellites orbiting the globe. Their actions this morning, though quite ordinary, had initiated something unexpected. More than that, actually, something was terribly wrong with number 5604.

“How bad?” the major general, located a hundred feet away in a separate section of CSOC’s modest facility, asked.

The technician checked his status panel for the satellite. “Bad. It’s off eighteen degrees on the lateral, and we’re getting indications of an end-to-end shift.”

“Damn.” The KH-12 was now pointed uselessly off to one side, a problem that could have been dealt with had the satellite not also begun a slow end-over-end spin. Though only minute in relative terms—an expected revolution every three hours, the sensors were showing—it effectively put the bird out of commission. “Any ideas on what happened?”

The technician stared furiously at his status panel, which, other than the attitude and motion-warning indicators, gave him not a clue as to why the malfunction had occurred. “Not a light to tell me shit, sir.” A civilian, the technician was a bit more free to color his language around the staff officer. His thirty years of government service didn’t hurt, either. “My best guess is the stabilizer for the real-time sensors. NPIC was starting to shoot some video, doing a half-degree lens sweep, when the bird started to tilt. I’ll bet the dampers failed, and the lens assembly locked up. When it spun, the bird just spun with it.”

“But why no indicator?”

“Ask the boys at Lockheed,” the technician suggested, his morning now screwed up beyond repair.

The major general would be doing precisely that, through accepted channels and otherwise. But first came the necessity to report to his “customers” at Langley that one of his birds, one they had depended heavily upon during the previous weeks, was now out of the show.

*  *  *

It was quiet in the West Wing, the majority of the staff attending a pre-lunch cake party for the departing secretary of the Vice President. Bud DiContino had stopped in quickly to say a farewell before returning to his office to square things away on the military end of the Cuba operation and await word from the Navy on its overdue boomer. It was troublesome, but at least the Russians weren’t letting it become a wrench in the works. Even General Walker seemed to be more in synch with the plan after the test shot. The charm Kurchatov had laid on couldn’t have hurt either, Bud thought.

The NSA had just dropped a stack of files on his desk when the phone buzzed. “DiContino.”

“Bud, it’s Greg.”

“Oh.”

“Not happy to hear from me?” the DDI said playfully.

“Hoping to hear from Granger.” He explained about the
Pennsylvania
.

“And they’re still on board? Wow. I guess there is something to be said for this trust thing. You’ll have to teach me it sometime,” Drummond joked. “We don’t do much of that here.”

“It’s a correspondence course. What can I do you for?”

“We have a little problem.”

The DDI’s voice didn’t betray anything beyond the “little” label in his sentence. “I’m listening.”

“Our satellite tasked to get the intel on Cuba just went down.”

“Down as in malfunctioned?” the NSA asked, hopeful that it wasn’t more like succumbing to gravity and burning up in the atmosphere.
Bye-bye nine hundred million
.

“Yeah. CSOC says it’s a major one.” The DDI took a drink of something on the other end of the line. “Guess there’ll be a shuttle mission for this.”

“Yeah, and who’s gonna pay for it?” The budget battle had stretched to all agencies and departments, choking off contingency funds that had once been earmarked for instances like this. “Greg, we’ve only got two more functioning birds up there, and we can’t pull them off their missions. No way.”

“I know that, but we do have other options.” The DDI let that hang without further exposition. He knew none was necessary.

“You can’t be serious, Greg!” Bud fell back into his chair, pushing the reclining mechanism to its limits. “Do you know what you are really suggesting? I mean, besides the security aspect of it, the cost would be enormous.”

“Look, we could cut back on the amount of imagery we interpret for delivery,” the DDI suggested. “A few passes a day instead of sixteen.”

Bud’s head shook as he leaned forward, his eyes downcast into the hand supporting his forehead. “Greg, this is like asking for the keys to the new ‘vette before I’ve even driven it.”

“Anthony will get them from the President if you don’t hand them over,” the DDI said. “I thought it would be better coming from you. The teamwork thing, remember.”

He was right. Bud’s resistance would only strengthen the DCI’s hand, and give him the opportunity to hear the President say yes to another request. It wasn’t on the far side of smart, but it really wouldn’t be a major undertaking. Not the intended use, for certain, but also not beyond the system’s capabilities. Not much was.

“All right. I’ll clear it with the President. But you’re paying for gas,” Bud informed the DDI, quite seriously despite the euphemism.

A couple million a fill-up. Well, the Agency had wanted the damn gas guzzler in the first place. “Thanks.”

“Just don’t get it shot down,” Bud said. “We’ve lost ‘em there before.”

“Long time ago, Bud. And they ain’t got nothing that can touch this.” It was a partisan boast, but also one quite rooted in fact.

*  *  *

The Japanese technicians had been waiting in the poorly heated housing near the
Voyska PVO’s
headquarters for just over a week. An hour after dark the word to get to work had finally come, much to their delight.

Eight trucks deposited the joint technical group, made up of senior engineers from six major Japanese companies, outside the access building atop the underground command center. The elevators were loaded with the requisite tools in just a few minutes, then, in four trips, the three separate cars descended to the twenty-five-thousand-square-foot facility, which was divided into five operating areas that were all connected to the main access shaft. The joint technical group followed their Russian escorts into the area in which most of the facility’s work was done, yet there were the fewest people there.

The first reaction at seeing the antiquated computers was a collective snicker, then bemused curiosity as the technicians wandered about the room, examining the equipment—much of the designs obviously pirated from American, French, and Japanese systems—and marveling that any of it was still operating. There was even rust on some of the back panels!

“Time to do it,” the leader of the group said.

General Shergin, there because of duty and no more, looked to his aide, hesitated, then nodded. The junior officer walked to a red box on the wall, unlocked it, and swung the large cover downward. Three levers—looking as old as the computers—were attached side by side. The same number of supply cables entered through the top of the box, but only one exited the bottom. Heat radiated off of the center switch from the thousands of volts flowing through it to the equipment.

The first switch disengaged was that of the primary backup power supply, a diesel-powered generator that would kick in automatically in the event of a power failure. The second switch connected a large array of batteries to the system. These were the last resort, for use only after the generator failed. All that remained was the primary switch, which carried electricity from the Moscow central power grid to the computers. The commander’s aide lowered it completely.

The whine of cooling fans ceased, as did the electronic hum associated with older processing equipment. Performance-monitoring screens went blank, and the old reel tape machines ended their constant recording for eternity. “Done.”

“Okay,” the team leader said. “Let’s do it.”

The men who had been trained in the best technical schools in the world, who could perform complex mathematical operations in their heads, moved toward the six rows of machines with pry bars, cable cutters, and mallets. There was no reason to spare anything. The brand-new equipment was waiting a half a mile away in a climate-controlled warehouse. This room would soon have the same humidity and temperature controls installed, as well as the computers and software to bring the SRF into the twenty-first century. What was here was, simply put, scrap.

The first cabinet unit broke free of its corroded moorings and toppled to its side with only two men pushing it. General Shergin watched this with some interest. His position made a man well aware how much easier destruction was than creation.

*  *  *

The convoy of four vehicles pulled through the gate into the complex located on the western shore of the Bay of Cienfuegos. Soldiers exited the two lead cars, their weapons at the ready. Security was quite adequate out to a mile from where they stood but, as General Juan Asunción knew from the events of the past days, the scorpion that struck was often in one’s own bed.

From the third car a small Caucasian man in handcuffs emerged under the forceful grasp of two more soldiers. He was marched quickly to the general, who stood outside the doors that they had together passed through a countless number of times during their acquaintance, a period at one time cordially accepted but now enforced upon one by the fear of a painful demise.

“Welcome,
señor
,” Asunción said. “More work to be done.”

The man looked up. He was in his forties but appeared older about the face. Deep lines and loose folds of pale skin attested to some form of confinement away from a sun that had once tanned the thin body to a leathery brown. That had obviously faded, as apparently had the man’s desire for anything beyond that which he was commanded to do.

“I was here last month, General,” Anatoly Vishkov observed in a voice that was pathetic in its mild attempt at defiance. “A visit every three months was deemed sufficient when—”

“When we agreed to let you live, you miserable little insect!” Asunción brought a hand back to slap the insolent weakling, but the rumble of a distant explosion ended the action before it began. The general noticed the puzzlement on the Russian’s face. “The exercises are close today, it seems.”

Vishkov listened as another blast echoed across the water of the bay to his rear and reverberated through the man-made canyon of buildings and equipment in the complex. The valleys north of Cienfuegos did twist and distort sound quite frequently, a trait common to areas with similar geological and weather conditions. The physicist in him rationalized it as possible.

“If you work quickly, you can be finished by nightfall,” Asunción posited, opting for a different tack to gain compliance without questioning. It was preferable that the Russian be kept blissfully unaware of the troubles just twenty miles distant, lest he be motivated by some sense of humanity to refuse his assigned task. The general thought that quite unlikely, as the onetime honored guest of his nation had proven himself to be quite susceptible to the mere threat of physical violence. Still, to take a chance at this stage would be foolhardy.

“What more work can I do?”

“Make it ready,” Asunción directed.

The Russian hung his head as a tired man did, a smattering of tears already on his cheeks. “It is ready. It is always ready.”

“No,
señor
.” Asunción reached out and lifted the Russian’s head by his chin. “Ready to use.”

The look on Vishkov’s face changed from frustration to horror. “To use? You mean to...”

“
Presidente
Castro wishes a complete readiness test.” It was a lie, one without precedence but one the Russian had little reason to disbelieve.

Another roar rolled in from the water. Vishkov turned his head toward it, then back to his tormentor.
What is happening?

“
Señor
...” The general stood aside and gestured grandly at the entrance as a hotel doorman would for a visitor.