The Orion Protocol (34 page)

82

Bethesda Naval Hospital/Maryland

In the ICU at Bethesda, Augie was still benefiting from the anesthetic arts that are a paradoxical part of major surgery: saving one’s life requires taking a chemical walk to the doors of death. On a certain level it was no biggie. He had watched the surgical team from outside his body, floating above the table in the operating theater and observing the actual bypass procedure. From his vantage point near the ceiling, Augie had felt no pain and very little anxiety about the outcome. He had heard the doctors and nurses chatting and joking. He could have recounted most of their comments and gossip, even the music that was playing as the chief surgeon inserted the stents.

If he lived, he thought, maybe he would tell them he had liked the Miles Davis more than the Archangelo Corelli, just to see their expressions. But at the moment it was all Augie could do merely to wake himself up. His eyes were at half-mast when he could finally focus them enough to recognize Jake and Angela sitting in chairs beside the bed.

“Hey.” Jake moved the tubes from the IV tree and took Augie’s hand.

“Hey,” Augie whispered, his throat dry. “Are we in jail yet?”

Angela laughed and helped him sip some bottled water through a straw.

“Bethesda, podnah,” Jake said. “And I think we’re gonna be okay.”

Augie focused on his former partner. Deaver held his hand and nodded.

“We did good, Dog Man.”

Angela flashed Jake a look and leaned down close to Augie, pitching her voice in a conspirator’s whisper.

“Listen . . . you know that Mars photo you sent me? And the Moon picture with ‘Grotsky’ on it? That was you, wasn’t it . . . ?”

Augie settled back into his pillow with an enigmatic smile.

“That’s classified information, darlin’.”

He laughed with them at his own joke, but sounded tired and hoarse. Angela helped Augie drink some more water and eyed Jake: they’d better go.

Deaver then took a fax with a White House header out of his pocket.

“One more thing and then we’ll let you get some sleep.”

He held the faxed document so Augie could see it up close: it was a petition.

“This was sent to the White House, Dog Man. It’s everybody, all the guys from Mercury to Apollo, supporting our statements. Gordo Cooper, Ed Mitchell, Buzz Aldrin, even Neil and John . . .”

Augie grasped what it was and what it meant. He gave a small thumbs-up without lifting his arm, but the drugs were kicking in and he was fading. In a few seconds he was fast asleep.

A Navy nurse came in to signal that time was up. Angela kissed Augie on the cheek and covered his cold, bare hands with the blanket. Jake laid the astronaut petition on the night table and they both slipped out the door.

“Commander Deaver? I’m Augie’s sister, Emily.”

“I remember.”

Jake recognized the uniformed, middle-aged nurse-practitioner as she got up from a chair in the corridor. It had been over ten years since they’d seen each other, but he was still surprised at her gray hair.

They hugged for a moment.

“Emily, this is Angela.”

The two women shook hands. Angela indicated the Bethesda facility.

“Are you working here?”

Emily laughed lightly, recalling her hectic twenties as a Navy nurse.

“No, no. I’m in private practice. Was he still out?”

Deaver shook his head.

“He opened his eyes and stayed with us for four or five minutes and then fell asleep. They said it went well, but didn’t tell us much more.”

Emily made a face that apologized for the harried staff.

“Well, he’s had a mild arrhythmia for some time and kept putting off a cardio exam, like a stubborn mule. So, finally there was a ventricle fib. I understand the crash crew had their hands full getting him into surgery.”

“What’s the prognosis?”

“Too early, still. But this is a high-percentage procedure these days. He’s got a couple of stents in there, keeping things open, but there was muscle damage and damage to the surrounding tissue. I like the chief surgeon here, Dr. Hagar—he’s excellent, he’s the one I wanted Augie to see, but we’re not out of the woods . . . I authorized an implant, a defibrillator as they did with Cheney, so if we can get him through these next few days . . .”

But Angela had stopped listening: two flat-faced men with Treasury Department written all over them were stepping out of the hospital elevator.

“Jake?” She indicated the agents with her eyes.

Deaver turned and felt weary to the soles of his feet.

“What now?”

83

Situation Room/the White House

It was nicer going in the front door at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, without the handcuffs and under their own power, but things were moving too fast to allow any musing about their shift in status.

In the crowded, buzzing, high-tech Situation Room, Jake and Angela sat elbow to elbow with Dr. Paula Winnick, drinking coffee served by a uniformed Marine and observing the proceedings.

A wall-sized high-definition screen dominated the room, showing the real-time positions of
Space Station Alpha
, the newly launched space shuttle
Endeavor
, and all the Project Orion mirror satellites in orbit above the Earth.

Winnick glanced at Deaver and saw that he was keeping his feelings close to his vest, but she had a question for him.

“So, do you assume there is a connection between what’s on the Moon and the artifacts on Mars?”

“And what’s here on Earth.” Jake nodded.

“Meaning
us
,” Angela said, staring straight ahead and sipping some coffee from the presidential china.

Winnick took that in, and a loudspeaker boomed to life as the final Orion mirror SAT was positioned in orbit by Endeavor astronauts.

“This is Houston Control . . . Project Orion, Primary Activation Alpha. We are good and holding the count at T-minus-ten to activation.”

Monitors around the room showed the giant photon cannon at the
Little Cosmodrome in the Ukraine, plus various camera views from the Alpha space station and the
Endeavor
, to which the astronauts were slowly returning.

Winnick sat, enthralled by the spectacle. Jake and Angela held hands and watched: this was it. Like it or not.

The President had asked their opinions about activating Project Orion as a planetary defense. Each one, including Deaver, had said his or her piece and then had been invited to stay and witness the testing of the fully deployed system.

Both Dr. Winnick and Angela had thought Jake’s argument the most passionate, if not the most persuasive.

“Mr. President, I believe these beings have been here and had contact with humans for thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years. We may even be genetically related. Whatever the truth is, I absolutely do not believe we are being militarily threatened. And if we put up the Shield, I think we send exactly the wrong signal. Not just to ‘them,’ but to ourselves: we are demonstrating our fear, we are telling the world to be afraid. And at the very least we could actually be helping to trigger the kind of negative mass reaction Dr. Winnick and others have been most concerned about.”

But the bedrock military argument had prevailed. Across the room now, they could see the President chatting with Sandy Sokoff, Generals Thornton and Henderson, the defense secretary, and the intelligence chiefs. Off to one side, the hard-pressed Secretary of State, Beth Wyman, was whispering to the Russian ambassador, whose expression phased from stoic to skeptical and back again.

A DOD/Space Command controller sat at a console wearing a headset and coordinating communications between NASA and Pentagon satellite teams.

“Houston. This is Sit Room. We show all stations standing by, over.”

“Copy that. Endeavor and Space Station Alpha standing by . . .”

“Cosmodrome, this is Sit Room. Report your current status.”

“Cosmodrome. We are good. Standing by for primary activation . . .”

“Mr. President?” The controller indicated they were ready for him to give the command to initiate activation of the system. “On your mark, sir.”

The Commander in Chief took his place at the console and was just being fitted with a headset mike when the wall screen lit up and a cacophony of excited voices began erupting around the room. Looking up, the President understood why: beams of bright light could already be seen connecting each of the orbiting Orion mirrors.

“What’s happening?”

“I’m not sure, sir.” The Space Command controller stabbed at a panel of touch pads, and tech engineers at similar stations scrambled to determine the problem.

“Uh, Houston Control, this is Sit Room, we are showing activation or a false activation, can you confirm, over?”

The loudspeaker blared the response from the Johnson Space Center.

“Roger that. We’re seeing it, Sit Room, but we do not show the photon laser being lit. Repeat, negatory on laser activation. We show T-minus-ten-and-hold. You’re not running a simulation, are you? Over.”

“Copy that. Negative on the simulation. Over.”

“Cosmodrome? This is Houston. We’re indicating a false positive on activate. Can you confirm? Over . . .”

“Roger, Houston. We are still at standby. Repeat, holding at standby.”

The Space Command controller hit another touch key.

“
Alpha
Station? This is Sit Room. We may have a malfunction. Do you have direct visual contact? Over . . .”

“Uh, copy that, Sit Room.”
The station commander’s voice was slightly delayed, but loud and clear.
“I’m looking out the window, we have direct visual. The Shield appears to be activated,”

“What’s going on?” the President asked as Generals Thornton and Henderson joined him at the console.

“We don’t know yet, sir.” Thornton pointed to the screen. “What’s the Alpha commander’s name?”

“Colonel Lawton, sir,” the controller said. The President got on the mic.

“Colonel Lawton? This is the President. What we see down here onscreen is what looks like a laser beam connecting all our satellites. But the photon cannon in the Ukraine has not been activated. What exactly are you seeing up there?”

“Mr. President, I have direct visual and the mirror SATs appear to be connected by laser transmission, but the source of the laser is not apparent, at least from our position, perhaps the shuttle commander—wait. They’re moving . . .”

All those sitting rose to their feet as the high-def plasma monitor showed the Orion mirror satellites, each still connected by a brilliant beam of light, slowly repositioning themselves like dancers in a zero-g ballet.

“Jesus . . . what’s happening?”

“Good God . . .”

“We’re not making this happen, are we?” the President asked, staring in awe at the display. The generals could only shake their heads.

“No, sir.”

“Definitely not, Mr. President.”

“
They’re
making it happen . . .” Jake said as the mirrors were gradually arranged in a series of primary geometric shapes: a pyramid, a cube, and then a sphere, with laser light playing connect-the-dots.

“Can’t we stop it?” The President looked around as a wave of fear washed through the room and the general officers gave a series of commands in a frantic effort to override the commandeering of the satellites. Nothing worked.

“The satellites are not responding, sir.”

“Mr. President,” Jake said, “this is not aggression, this is communication.”

The Situation Room filled with awed, anxious exclamations as each shape resolved itself, almost like picnickers at a Fourth of July fireworks show. Nobody could imagine the technology needed to produce such a demonstration. It was both impressive and frightening, making a mockery of the martial intent of the weapons system. Whoever was doing it was very advanced, indeed.

“My God, look . . .” Angela pointed as the satellites finally re-formed into something new and more abstract: a constellation. Deaver recognized it, too.

“The Archer: it’s the constellation Orion.”

Fear gave way to wonder as the President saw that Jake was correct.

“Orion. That’s exactly what it is.” The President gave his generals a look.

Then one by one the mirror satellites returned to their former positions in orbit and the laser light connecting them winked out. The show was over.

“Uh, Mr. President?” The controller’s voice broke the silence with as much matter-of-fact professionalism as he could summon. But his hands were trembling.

“Yes.”

“The mirror SATs have returned to initial geosynchronous positions, sir, and all systems appear back on-line.”

All eyes turned to the President. Everyone understood what had just occurred: a formal trans-species communication at the highest level, the fact of it being even more profound than the almost playful technological mastery that had been demonstrated in the process.

“Mr. President, do you wish to resume activation of the Shield?”

The President turned to Jake, Angela and Dr. Winnick, then glanced around at his cabinet, his generals, the Russian ambassador, and finally Sandy Sokoff.

“Only if we can figure out what the hell we want to say.”