Authors: David DeBatto
“Or a person,” DeLuca said.
“Do you think we wouldn’t take Osama Bin Laden out that way if we could find him?” Oswald said. “Biometrics acquisition is
a whole different question. The task range is extremely broad. One of the original applications of Darkstar was to develop
a laser that could be used to destroy asteroids headed for earth, and with sufficient dwell time, it could probably actually
do that. MIRACL was a cover operation. That is, MIRACL is a fully operational ground-based laser, but it was a Darkstar prototype,
firing at the same time, that took out the target. MIRACL was just a big public show to explain what happened.”
“When is Darkstar scheduled for deployment?” DeLuca asked. Oswald and LeDoux again exchanged glances.
“We’ve launched two,” Oswald said. “Prototypes, but operational. Darkstar1 went up dark and Darkstar2 went up lit, but D2
malfunctioned and eventually broke into pieces over the Indian Ocean.”
“What about the other one? D1?” DeLuca said.
“We can’t find it,” LeDoux said. “Maybe the same thing happened to both of them, though they were on opposite sides of the
earth when number two went black. No sunspots or solar flares. We can’t seem to light D1 up, and the backup systems to turn
it on and decloak it have also failed. The likelihood is that it was damaged and is inoperative.”
“Unless it’s not, and it’s up there, fully operative, and we just don’t know where it is,” DeLuca said.
“I’m afraid that’s about the size of it,” Oswald said. “It’s not going to do anything it’s not told to do—there are semiautonomous
systems on it, but it still has to be activated and programmed from ground. Again, we have every reason to believe it’s nonoperational.”
“But?”
“But, two months ago, we had a malfunction on a launch pad at Fort Greely, Alaska. A Titan IV was boosting an NFIRE/KE-ASAT
vehicle as part of Brilliant Pebbles when it blew apart on launch.”
LeDoux clicked his mouse to post a map and then a photograph on the monitor, a picture of a burned rocket casing.
“They’re still putting up kinetic energy vehicles?” DeLuca asked. “Why, if we’ve got Darkstar?”
“The official explanation was that Brilliant Pebbles is ongoing and necessary to knock down Russian or Iranian or North Korean
ICBMs in their booster phases and/or midcourse, which is what it was designed for,” LeDoux said. “The real reason it was being
sent up was to find and destroy the unlit Darkstar before it could be captured and reverse-engineered. Near-Field Infrared
is the best space-based infrared system we have.”
“So you think D1 took out the Titan?”
“We don’t know,” Oswald said. “The sci-fi people are going to see that as Darkstar defending itself, even though it has no
AI capabilities whatsoever. But a study of the debris suggests a possible laser hosing.”
“Then a week later,” LeDoux added, “in a place called Pine Gap, Australia, a mobile PAVE-PAWS radar truck was struck by lightning,
or that’s what it looked like, even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Since then, we’ve lost a Dutch weather satellite,
a British telecom bird, and a twenty-year-old Russian milsat, which they said was due to solar flares, but it was in low earth
orbit and shadow when it happened. You’ll get full reports on all these events.”
“And you think the missing Darkstar is doing this?”
“Not necessarily,” LeDoux said. “It’s entirely possible that someone else has managed to launch a similar satellite. The idea
that someone else could take control of one of our satellites is beyond comprehension, but it wouldn’t be the first supposedly
secured system we’ve seen compromised. We just don’t know.”
“Russians?” DeLuca asked. “Ex-Soviet assets?”
“Possibly,” LeDoux said. “Destroying one of their own birds to throw off suspicion. Our best intelligence says there are at
least nine countries technologically capable of orbiting space-based lasers, though nobody was supposed to be able to do it
for another ten years. How many of them could take it to the level of Darkstar is hard to say, but theoretically, some could.
Darkstar was supposed to be the final deterrent and the balance holding THEL in check—the one weapon that would never fall
into the wrong hands. We’re not saying that it has. We’re just saying that it’s possible. There may be other explanations
for what happened at Greely and at Pine Gap. We have other people looking into those.”
“And how is Cheryl Escavedo connected to any of this?”
“STRATCOM is in charge of Darkstar, run out of Cheyenne Mountain,” LeDoux said. “Apparently some Darkstar data was misfiled
and archived by mistake. Sergeant Escavedo was tasked to correct that mistake, even though she wasn’t supposed to know or
understand the nature of the files she was pulling. We’re concerned that she did understand them.”
“And/or copy them?” DeLuca asked.
“And/or copy them,” LeDoux confirmed. “I’ve already talked to General Koenig about this briefing, and I’ve told him Team Red
is completely read on—he’s fully prepared to help you in any way he can, but he’s also told you most of what he knows about
Cheryl Escavedo. I’m also not sure how necessary it’s going to be for you to tell your team about Darkstar. I understand why
you felt like you were being given the run-around, because you were. I’ll leave it to your discretion as to what you tell
your team and what constitutes need-to-know, but as I’m sure you’ve gathered, the fewer people read on about this, the better.
Just as the fewer people who know we’re having problems, the better.”
“I’m flying back to Albuquerque tonight to brief the team,” DeLuca said. “I’ll give it some thought. I’m not going to put
anybody in danger just to keep them ignorant.”
“I understand,” LeDoux said. “I wouldn’t expect you to. FYI, Darkstar is held up until this gets resolved. We’re talking over
$100 billion. That’s going to come right out of your paycheck if you fuck up.”
“Speaking of funds…”
“Tell Captain Martin what you need.”
He met with his team that evening in his room at the Red Roof Inn, on Mulberry Street, near Kirtland AFB. Walter Ford couldn’t
get away from the criminology classes he taught at Northeastern University’s College of Criminal Justice, still one class
in Research and Evaluation Methods and another in Statistical Analysis, but this year a third course in Computer Crimes had
been added to his course load. Ford said he’d do what he could from home. Ex-cop and Army reservist Sami Jambazian had done
as much work on his charter boat as he could and was twiddling his thumbs until the weather improved—he was glad for the chance
to fly south into a warmer climate. DeLuca’s flight arrived half an hour before Sami’s, so he waited for him and met him at
the gate. Jambazian was in one of his usual sour moods, complaining of how he was never able to strike up a good conversation
on an airplane—what was wrong with people?
“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe it’s you and not them?” DeLuca said.
“I’m the world’s friendliest guy,” he said. “If you’re not friendly to me back, then the hell with you.”
“I rest my case.”
Colleen MacKenzie had flown in earlier from California, where Mack had spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with her family after
leaving Balad and the Sunni triangle behind, which was more than enough time to drive her crazy. She’d escaped by signing
up for a Russian-language refresher course at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, a program she’d cut short when DeLuca
called. Dan Sykes had opted to stay in Washington at his father’s D.C. residence, rather than at the family home in San Francisco,
and arrived on the flight behind DeLuca, who wondered if there was anything to be read into the fact that Sykes and MacKenzie
had been romantically involved during their time in Iraq, but they’d elected to be apart once they were stateside again. “What
happens on deployment stays on deployment” was a slogan in the military long before Las Vegas coopted the concept, and it
was usually a good idea, a really good idea, to let go of such emotional attachments, which rarely survived divorced from
the “Temporary Duty” context in which they were generated. DeLuca just hoped there weren’t any hard feelings between them.
Hoolie—Julio Vasquez—was the last to arrive, driving the 750 miles from Los Angeles to Albuquerque in his personal car, an
immaculately restored candy-apple-red 1974 Cadillac Eldorado convertible, with an in-dash eight-track cassette player and
a box full of Mexican conjunto/Tejano tapes on the floor beside him. It was late by the time the whole team was able to assemble,
and everyone was hungry, so Sykes took orders and made a run to the Burger King up the street.
When he got back, DeLuca briefed the team, stopping short of mentioning, at least for now, anything about Darkstar itself.
He said only that a United States military satellite program had been compromised and that files concerning it had possibly
been stolen, by a girl who was currently missing, as was her roommate, and that the only potential witnesses he’d found so
far were an odd group of UFO cultists. He told Sami it would be his job to infiltrate the Brethren of the Light, but he didn’t
tell the others why. Years ago, Sami had been following a Mafia-owned tanker truck across the state line when he saw a UFO.
He’d made the mistake of telling his story to the poker group, which had not stopped giving him shit about it ever since,
which was why DeLuca didn’t mention it to Team Red. Sami would find out if the little girl was truly missing. Hoolie and Mack
would concentrate on Leon Lev, who, at the moment, was the only human bad guy DeLuca could point his finger at. Dan Sykes
would look for Theresa. Walter Ford could dig into the history and the personality of General Thomas Koenig, as well as that
of Major Brent Huston. DeLuca had a hunch about them and just didn’t trust them, even after he understood the reasons for
their prior deceptiveness.
“I’ll stay on Cheryl Escavedo,” he said, opening his suitcase on the bed and distributing the contents. “Now for the party
favors. In each Ziploc bag, you will find, compliments of Captain Martin, a fully encrypted SATphone for each of you with
built-in GPS, with all your call numbers already added to the contact list, as well as encrypted PDAs for sending files. These
are for secure communications, but keep your cell phones in case we want to make calls we might want others to listen in on.
Spend some time playing with your new toys so we’re all up to speed on how they work.”
As he spoke, the telephone in his kit rang. Hoolie was punching buttons on his own phone through the plastic.
“Phones work,” he said, hanging up.
“You’ll also find some walking-around money and your new government credit cards,” DeLuca continued. “Don’t go crazy, but
get what you need and don’t worry about it. You each have the information we’ve compiled so far in your packets, so read ’em
tonight, and tomorrow, I’ll tell you how to proceed.”
He didn’t tell them about Darkstar because—was he being paranoid? Overcautious? A mobile radar truck in Australia had been
hit by lightning, and Cheryl Escavedo’s Jeep had been hit by lightning. What were the odds of that? Cheryl Escavedo knew about
Darkstar, and she was missing. Theresa knew Cheryl, and now she was missing. Again, what were the odds? Somebody wanted to
keep Darkstar a secret, he suspected, just as he suspected somebody was using satellite technology for his own purposes—somebody
who’d figured out how to access satellite intel. This meant that people who knew about Darkstar were in greater danger than
people who didn’t know. Communications could be intercepted, even from encrypted phones.
After everyone had gone back to their rooms, he stood on the balcony and looked up at the night sky. A refrain from an old
song played in his head:
“Are the stars out tonight? I don’t care if they’re cloudy or bright, ’cause I only have eyes… for you…”
He wondered what eyes were up there, and who was watching from above. Satellites had saved his life, more than once, in Iraq.
He’d never thought of them as a threat before.
He didn’t like it, now that he did.
DELUCA WAS IN THE PARKING LOT BEHIND THE motel the next morning, stretching after his run, when a middle-aged woman stepped
out of her shiny stainless-steel Jet Stream motor home to yawn and squint at the rising sun. The name on the back of the motor
home, painted in an elaborate pink scroll outlined in gold, was “Ms. Kitty.” The woman was dressed in a gray hooded sweatshirt,
shorts that fell well below her knees, flip-flops, and a red plaid flannel bathrobe over it all, untied at the waist. She
was about five-foot-two, with short salt-and-pepper curly hair tumbling in disarray above her ears, square black-rimmed glasses,
and freckles across the bridge of her nose. She had a stainless-steel travel mug in her hand, which she raised in greeting
as she smiled broadly.
“Hello,” she said. “Do they have coffee in the lobby? Or sweet rolls?”
She had an East Coast accent.
“I believe they do, but I think it’s for guests only,” DeLuca said.
“Oh, that’s okay—I always pay slippage for using the parking lot,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
DeLuca didn’t feel obliged to wait for her, but he was nevertheless still there when she returned.
“Good run?” she asked cheerfully, sipping her coffee, a baked good in her other hand and a copy of
USA Today
tucked under her arm. She had a slow and deliberate walk, almost a shuffle, barely lifting her feet as she moved.
“Pretty good,” he said. “I don’t know what the altitude is here, but it feels like I’m not quite acclimated.”
“It’s 5,314 feet,” she said. “Hold on—I’ve got something for you.”
She disappeared into her RV, then returned with a paper bag in her hand, and in the bag, a bottle of beer. DeLuca thanked
her but said it was a little early for drinking beer.
“Look at the label,” she said. “I’m told there are only twelve bottles of this stuff in existence.”
DeLuca did a brief double take. The label read “Herr Totenbrau,” with a crude line drawing of a skeleton passed out in an
alley with a beer in his hand. “Herr Totenbrau” translated as “Mr. Death-Beer,” and it was a homebrew that DeLuca and Phil
LeDoux had made in their off-duty hours, years ago when the two of them were stationed in Germany, manning listening posts
along the East German frontier. Phil still had one sixpack, and DeLuca had the other, with the understanding that some day
when they’d both retired and the world was at peace, they’d get together and have a drink.