Authors: Benjamin Blue
“But you told me to do it! I was just following your orders!” whined Rafael.
“No. I asked you to disable the station, not kill people. That cross is yours to bear. You did it for both the money we paid you and the religious fervor you have for safeguarding the environment.”
Rafael had to admit that shadowy figure was right. He sighed and admitted, “Yes, I did it for money for my parents. But more importantly, I did it for the environment. I’m at least true to my principles.”
The figure held the flashlight’s intense beam steady on Rafael’s face and laughed. “You fool! The environment was just the hook we used to bring you into this. The real reason we’re doing this is to make the United States look bad in the eyes of the rest of world. Our Central American friends will make considerable progress in diminishing the States’ role in the affairs of other countries by showing it had no qualms about trying to use this unproven and dangerous technology.”
The shadowy figure went on, “Our Central American friends are paying us very well for our services. So Rafael, do y’all see? It’s all about the money for my associates and me. The environmental thing is a dog that don’t hunt as far as I’m concerned!”
The figure suddenly leaned away from the counter and stood straight. “It’s time we parted company, Rafael. Y’all aren’t of any value to us any more.”
Rafael heard the report from the gun, saw the muzzle flash and felt a blow strike his chest as if hit by a sledgehammer.
He crumbled to the floor. He couldn’t breathe and his head was spinning. He was totally numb; he felt nothing and couldn’t move his extremities, nor turn his head. He knew he was dying.
The figure approached him and knelt down to inspect his wound. “I must have hit an artery, you’re bleeding heavily. I imagine you’ll bleed out in a couple of minutes.”
The figure moved his head closer to Rafael’s and the flashlight tipped slightly illuminating the figure’s face.
Rafael recognized the murderer’s face and weakly gasped, “You! I can’t believe you’re behind this!” His right hand was lying in the blood pooling from the wound. Rafael willed his hand to move. He lifted his blood-covered index finger to the side of his tunic and moved his finger slowly up and down his side. The motion was so slow that his assailant failed to notice the movement in the dark room. He then blinked his eyes once as his lifeblood gushed away into an increasingly large pool on the floor. His body became limp, his chest rattled with his last breaths, and his eyes glazed over with a milky film.
The figure smiled and used his fingers to close Rafael’s now dead glazed eyes. He rose and stuck the weapon under his belt in the small of his back. He pulled his work tunic down over the gun. Moving the flashlight around the room, he inspected for anything that would point to his identity. Satisfied that nothing incriminating existed in the room, he strode from the closet and walked briskly toward the closest Core City elevator.
The man had failed to notice he had stepped in the blood pooled around Rafael’s body. Two distinct bloody footprints could be seen leading away from the closet.
40
Adam entered his office and sat down at his desk. He punched in the code for Layne’s cell phone. It rang several times.
“Bartlett,” Layne tersely answered.
“Layne? Any change in your status?” Sands asked.
“None. We haven’t found a spare chip. We’re attempting to break into Storm Killer’s SKID controls and try to retract the magnifying film arrays. If that doesn’t work we’ll try to disrupt the position of the magnifying films. If we’re successful, it won’t matter that we’re out of control. The concentrated light beam will either have been turned off, or diminished to a safe level,” Bartlett reported quickly.
“What are your chances of success? And no bullshit, please. I don’t have time for wishful thinking,” Adam replied.
Layne was slow in his response, “I’d say 50-50. The prick locked the SKID system with new passwords. So, we’re trying the known ‘backdoors’ right now. Maybe he didn’t block all of them. Jeff Mattingly, the groundside computer guru, is assisting us remotely.”
Adam knew that every computer system had one or more ‘backdoor’ user entry points to allow service personnel to get around the intricate front-end security mechanisms. He also knew that Mattingly was a world-class computer professional who had led the design team of the SKID control programs. It was likely that if he couldn’t break into the system in time, no one could.
Adam mentally reviewed everything and then said, “You have ten minutes. No more. I’ll tell the President that he should order the immediate destruction of Storm Killer for forty minutes from now, if he hasn’t received a communication to the contrary from me.”
“Got it. Good luck, Adam,” Layne replied.
“You, too, Layne. Do your damnedest to make the deadline,” Adam encouraged him and then pushed the cell phone disconnect. He dialed the phone in the reception area and the constable picked it up on the third ring. “Evacuation area,” he answered.
Adam queried him on the progress of the evacuation. All non-essential personnel were now safely in one of the additional shuttlecraft NASA had dispatched in the last few hours. That was all the fleet they had to send at this time. Japan, Russia, and Great Britain had jointly sent one of their small fleet of shuttles. They were expected in less than fifteen minutes. Because of the tight timeline, there was no time to go through docking and undocking procedures. So, the remaining station residents would have to put on their environmental suits and space walk to their assigned shuttle. Only sixty people remained on the station. Some of these were in involved in the current crisis in some management or support function. The others were scientists and engineers of various nations that were still in Core City. Adam disconnected and reviewed his notes he made during the call.
Adam sat for a moment collecting his thoughts, glanced at his watch, sighed, and pressed the speed dial to the National Security Advisor’s private line. It rang once and was immediately picked up.
“Rose Magruder.”
“Ms. Magruder, its Adam Sand from Storm Killer,” Adam announced himself to her.
“Adam, hang on a second, I need to get Dr. Rosen, he’s our NASA liaison, and will provide technical information to the President based on our assessment,” Rose said.
Adam waited about twenty seconds when Rose came back on the line.
“Adam! I have Dr. Rosen here with me. What’s happening up there? The President is fit to be tied. Several of the resident nations’ staffs on your station have made reports to their governments that sound ominous. He’s being accosted on all sides by these governments for answers. Our television news organizations are running continuous coverage on the situation, and have latched onto these foreign reports. Things are very tense down here!”
“Ms. Magruder, things are bad. I think it’s time for the President to initiate action.” With that lead-in, Adam briefed the National Security Advisor and the NASA representative of the current status.
41
Kim gripped her pistol and moved quickly to the right side of Closet 21’s entrance. Lt. James, holding his weapon close to his body in the classic upright position, slid along the wall to his position on the other side of the entrance. Kim looked into Lt. James’ eyes and with a nod began silently mouthing a countdown, “Three, Two, One, NOW!”
Lt. James, crouching low and leaning forward, did a barrel roll into the pitch-black room. He rolled up onto his feet into a classic hand-weapon-firing position with one knee on the floor with his weapon held level in front of his body as he scanned the darkened room.
Kim stepped through the door by quickly edging around the entrance’s doorframe. She held her flashlight in the classic police stance: at shoulder height and to the far right of her body. If anyone was to take a shot at the flashlight, chances were they would not hit her.
She quickly scanned the room with her flashlight. She was also listening for any sounds. Nothing moved in Closet 21’s interior. It was silent as a tomb. The only thing detected by her senses was a strong coppery smell.
Kim’s flashlight beam swept the floor and stopped when it illuminated the body lying in the pool of blood. Lt. James, alert to any movement, was kneeling on the floor no more than three meters from the pool of blood still slowly oozing from the body. Kim thought.
Well, I know what the coppery smell is. Fresh blood.
The body was turned so the head was hidden from the entrance. All that could be seen was that it appeared to be a male in a NASA standard technician’s garb.
Once they were content that no one was still lurking in the room, they turned their attention to the corpse on the floor. Kim scanned from the dark hole on the back to an area on the wall immediately to the left of the entrance. There on the wall was heavy blood splatter and a mark that could have been where the spent bullet had struck the wall at the end of its murderous flight. She scanned down to the floor under the splatter and to what appeared to be a spent bullet lying at the base of the wall.
Lt. James said in a firm steady voice to the room’s computer support system, “Lights on.” Nothing happened. Lt. James said to Kim, “He must have disabled the light control again.” Lt. James moved cautiously to an emergency light switch on the wall and using his sleeved arm, he pushed the button. The bright light flashing on momentarily blinded the two security officers. They blinked their eyes several times in an attempt to refocus their sight on the body.
As her eyes adjusted to the bright mercury vapor emergency lamps, Kim was able to take in the whole crime scene. Rafael Denuza lay on his back in blood pooled on the left side of his body. His tunic had a red stained bullet hole just below his heart.
Lt. James cautiously moved to the right side of Denuza to avoid the blood pool and kneeled beside the body. He carefully reached out two fingers and felt for the large carotid artery in side of Denuza’s neck. After a moment, Lt. James muttered, “Nothing, he’s gone. Based on the amount of clotting of the blood in the pool, he probably bled out only a few minutes ago.”
Kim surveyed the floor between the body and the doorway. She pointed to a set of bloody footprints going from the pool out through the door. She took her cell from her tunic pocket and snapped several pictures of the footprints. The prints’ tread pattern looked like a red waffle iron pattern. She noted with some disappointment to Lt. James, “These appear to be about size nine. The tread appears to be the standard issue work boot we all have.”
The lieutenant pointed to Rafael’s right side just above the floor. Rafael, using his own blood, had apparently written a single crimson character. It appeared to be the number
8
. “It looks like he was trying to tell us something. See what’s on his index finger? It’s covered in blood. Apparently he wrote this single letter or number on his side before he died. It’s either an 8 or a B. I’m not sure which.”
Lt. James took out his phone and speed dialed Hoch. Hoch answered immediately, “Hoch.”
James quickly described the scene. “Denuza is dead. Shot once thru the chest. And he bled out. If he swallowed that control chip, we are going to have to gut him to get to it. Can you get Dr. Cruz over here fast?”
While Lt. James was talking with Hoch, Kim looked closer at the prints and saw a strange anomaly in the design. Apparently, the owner of the shoes had walked someplace where something very sharp existed. Two of the waffle treads on the right foot had a half-inch piece of tread missing where something had cut them.
Kim snapped several more pictures of the treads, closed up the camera, and put it back in her tunic. As she did so, she mulled over the latest evidence.
Apparently our murderer was at the crystal lab crash site. That’s the only place he could have gotten his shoe soles cut like that. It had to be at the same time we were there! The murderer would have little time since to do this crime. Who was there when we were?
She mentally ticked off the names of the crew she remembered at the crash site.
Christ! Almost all of the station directors were there! Is our murderer one of our own bigwigs?
Now, where does that bloody 8 on Rafael’s side fit in? Kim thought.
42
The President sat at the large, black, executive chair at the head of the mahogany conference table.
His gray-streaked brown hair was neatly in place even though he felt disheveled. He absent-mindedly tapped his fingertips on the table’s polished surface as his senior advisors explained the current situation on Storm Killer.
Rose Magruder was speaking, “And, as you can see, Mr. President, Adam Sand’s latest report isn’t promising.”
Dr. Rosen, the presidential science advisor, added, “We must think about the Lincoln’s precarious position. They don’t believe they can clear the area in time to avoid Storm Killer’s death ray. But this has proved that the Storm Killer technology has military value.”