The last thing the German needs tonight is some guy running around the Launch Complex screwing things up, so ten seconds ago he wrenched open the shaft’s outer door, ripped the pin out of a frag grenade and dropped it onto the roof of the descending elevator. Problem solved.
Except the grenade landed on top of the elevator as it began to rise. The fuse is set to twenty seconds. Dirk wanted it to be near the ground floor when it detonated to minimise any chances of damaging the shuttle. Now it’ll be right beside where he currently stands. ‘
Scheisse
.’ He lets the outer door slide shut and takes cover.
**
Judd jams the pistol into his suit pocket, braces his left foot on the handrail that rings the elevator at waist level and drives himself upwards, right fist extended.
He punches the hatch in the ceiling with everything he’s got. It’s made of light alloy and flips open. He jams his foot down on the handrail and launches himself through the hole, pulls himself onto the roof.
A grenade lies on the roof in front of him, just as he thought. He bats it away with his left hand and it thumps into the shaft’s metal wall.
It detonates and the shaft flashes vivid orange. The explosion is massive, amplified in the enclosed space. The elevator convulses and its roof gives way. Judd’s ears ring as he grabs the cable in front of him, cool and slick with grease.
A fireball rolls past as the elevator drops. Judd hangs in space, 35 metres above the ground - then he doesn’t. The cable is yanked upwards, attached to the elevator via a pulley system at the top of the shaft. Judd’s on an express ride to the roof.
He glances down as the burning elevator hits ground level and blows apart. He looks up as he reaches the shaft’s metal ceiling, slams into it. It knocks the wind out of him and his hands slide off the greasy cable.
He tumbles down the shaft, throws out his hands to grab something, anything . . .
He jolts to a stop. The three middle fingers of his left hand are hooked into the lattice of a grille in the shaft’s wall. The grille covers an air-conditioning duct two metres below the elevator’s outer door. The lattice is sharp, slices into his fingers. It hurts like hell but he doesn’t care. He’s alive.
He reaches up, grabs the grille with his right hand to alleviate the pressure on his left. The grille strains within the duct, Judd’s 85 kilograms a weight it was never designed to bear. His left foot thumps against the shaft’s metal skin and the sound reverberates.
‘Tango in Berlin’! That was the name of the German’s song. Details flood back to Judd. The lyrics, phrased in a stilted, English-as-a-second-language cadence. The lead singer, the guy who just tried to kill him, with his shrill tweeter-in-woofer’s-clothing falsetto. And the snare. For some reason Judd remembers the snare drum. It had the sonic power of a face slap. Judd loved the song despite its shortcomings and even bought
Tango Time,
Big Arena’s one and only album. He remembers being upset when the lead singer squashed the keyboard player with a tree.
A sliver of light cuts across his arm. He looks up. Above him is the elevator’s outer door, buckled from the explosion. Hydraulics protest as it is forced open. The shaft of light grows wider. He’s going to need a plan and quick.
The grille pops out of the duct and Judd thumps against the side of the shaft. It is only held to the bottom of the duct by two implausibly small hinges.
The forced opening of the door becomes more urgent. Judd realises he needs to get
out
of this shaft asap. His hands are under the grille. He works his left hand around to the top, then does the same with the right, carefully climbs it like it’s a very small ladder, makes sure not to twist it and snap the hinges that secure it to the duct.
The pistol sags in his suit’s pocket, the weapon too heavy for the flimsy material. It rolls out, thumps down the shaft. Instinctively Judd turns to watch it fall.
Bad idea. The shift in weight twists the grille and the hinges snap.
**
Dirk hears the noise and jams his left knee into the gap, uses it to bully the door open. Did the astronaut live through the explosion? No one has recognised the German in three years. Before that, maybe three people in the last decade had identified who he was. But that astronaut knew him instantly.
Another reverberation echoes from the elevator shaft. It’s unmistakable. The astronaut’s alive. Dirk draws his backup Glock from inside his jacket then pushes his head and arm through the gap and looks down.
No astronaut. He’s sure he heard him. Then he takes in the elevator’s smouldering wreckage below. It must have been the metal shaft contracting after the heat of the explosion.
A sound behind him. He swivels, pistol raised.
It’s Henri. He glances at the dead body. ‘I heard an explosion. Everything okay?’
Dirk nods, lowers the Glock. ‘There was trouble. It’s been dealt with.’
‘It wasn’t the woman —’
‘No. Where are the others?’
‘Finishing their sweep.’ The Frenchman glances at his Rolex. ‘They’ll be one minute.’
**
Judd lies dead still. As the hinges gave way he caught the edge of the air-conditioning duct with his hands. It was the chin-up from hell but he pulled himself inside without, he hopes, being seen or heard. He now waits and listens to the voices above him. There are two. A German, he presumes Mister Tango in Berlin, and someone who sounds French.
In movies air-conditioning ducts are spacious and clean and well lit and Bruce Willis has no trouble quickly navigating them. The reality is quite different. It’s cramped and dark and filled with a thick layer of dust that’s easily disturbed and makes Judd’s nose itch. It is, however, better than lying dead at the bottom of the elevator shaft —
He sneezes. The voices above him stop abruptly.
Christ!
A goddamn dust mite flew up his nose. He holds his breath and waits for a volley of bullets to strafe the duct.
The voices resume. There’s no volley, no strafing. He exhales. He knows the duct runs the length of the crew access arm all the way to the White Room. If he can get there and find a way inside then he’ll be right beside the shuttle - and Rhonda. He quietly eases himself forward, moves as quickly as he can.
**
Henri and Dirk hear a sound and swing their pistols towards the stairway beside the elevator shaft. Nico and Cobbin emerge, weapons raised. They all grin, lower their pistols.
‘How’d it go?’
Nico answers the Frenchman. ‘All clear. Two guards. They’ve been dealt with.’
‘Good.’ Henri knew security would be less stringent during a test. What the NASA hierarchy thought made its launch complex so secure, its remote location at the edge of Cape Canaveral, hadn’t been difficult to overcome with their Red Bull-inspired wings.
Henri looks at his GMT-Master. ‘It’s time.’ Together they move down the crew access arm towards the White Room. Henri speaks into his headset’s microphone: ‘Tam, stop the tanking.’
**
Tam’s heartbeat has slowed dramatically, the poison from the cottonmouth hammering his respiratory system into submission. He’s crashing and there’s nothing he can do about it.
His eyes flicker open and he speaks into his headset’s microphone: ‘Roger that.’ He slowly types on the keyboard.
T A N K
**
11
To Rhonda it’s a symphony. A symphony that feeds her soul and makes her forget about any troubles she may have. It is the symphony of the shuttle.
The symphony’s bottom layer is the hiss and gurgle of super-cooled liquid hydrogen and oxygen as they are pumped from their vast reservoirs beyond the pad then circulated through the shuttle’s engines until they are deposited in the external tank. The central layer is the hum and whine of the shuttle’s flight deck and its processors and hard drives and cooling systems. The top layer is the chit and chat of Launch Control and the White Room boys and her crew, all filtered through her digital headset.
This symphony, and the fact she is its conductor, make the shuttle Rhonda’s favourite place to be. That she’s strapped sideways to the explosive power of a one-kilotonne bomb never enters her mind.
Rhonda looks up through the cockpit’s windscreen at the beanie cap that sits atop the external tank. Normally she doesn’t give it much thought. The device prevents the supercold oxygen vapours that exit the tank from condensing water vapour in the surrounding air into ice that could strike the shuttle at lift-off. It’s always in place when the external tank is being fueled and only retracts moments before lift-off, when tanking has ended.
So why’s it moving now? Tonight’s simulated launch is still a good hour away. She’s about to ask someone when she notices that the bottom layer of her symphony, the hiss and gurgle, and the top layer, the chit and chat, have both disappeared. Her headset is again filled with a low static. ‘Launch Control, do you copy, over?’
No response.
‘Severson, do you copy?’
Nothing.
‘Sam? Can you hear me?’
He doesn’t respond. Rhonda turns to Martie Burnett and Mission Specialist Dean Steinhower, both strapped into their seats behind her. ‘You got white noise in the cans?’
Martie nods. ‘Must be the electricals again.’
Rhonda looks back at the beanie cap, which continues to retract from the external tank. ‘Beanie’s on the move.’
‘We’re going to be here all night.’ Steinhower makes it clear he’s anything but impressed with the latest stuff-up. ‘Anyone seen my pen?’ Annoyed, he searches his flight suit’s pockets and then the surrounding area for any sign of the ballpoint. ‘It’s silver. A Fisher. My daughter gave it to me.’ Both Rhonda and Martie shake their heads.
Rhonda turns to the square opening in the flight deck’s floor behind her. A ladder leads from it down to the mid-deck where the hatch is located. She shouts into it: ‘Sam, we have no comms again. And why’s the beanie moving?’
Someone scales the ladder to the flight deck. It’ll be Sam. She lets him have it before she even sees him: ‘What on earth is going on —?’
A short, stout, balding man in his early fifties rises through the opening. He is not Sam. Rhonda stares at him. ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘If you speak again you die.’ The man has a French accent and holds a silenced pistol in his right hand.
Rhonda’s first thought is that it’s a prank, a bad one, something Sam and the White Room boys had cooked up for her because she could be a pain-in-the-arse hardarse.
‘We haven’t got time for this —’
The pistol spits.
Henri turns to Nico and gestures at the two remaining crew members. ‘Tie them down then get started.’ Nico nods and moves into the flight deck.
The Frenchman triggers his walkie and speaks into it: ‘Tam, show them.’ He then pulls a black ski mask from his pocket and slides it on.
**
Tam is slumped on his side, eyes closed, breathing shallow. The cottonmouth’s poison has all but completed its assignment. All he wants to do is rest but he can’t until he completes one final task. He slowly moves his hand across the MacBook’s keyboard and types three letters.
V I D
Now he can sleep.
**
The video monitors in Firing Room Four blink out of grey hash and all 180 people gasp as one.
Severson steps forward and studies the monitor. It shows a high, wide-angle image of the crew access arm. Two men stand, wearing black ski masks and holding silenced pistols. On their knees in front of them are astronaut Nigel Dunderfield, Sam ‘the Walrus’ and technician Baz Kay. Their wrists and ankles are bound together with thick zip ties and their mouths are taped shut. To Nigel’s left, lying face down, is Rick Calvin. Severson can see he’s dead.
The White Room’s door judders open. A third man, also wearing a ski mask, backs out onto the crew access arm. He’s short and stout and drags something behind him. Severson can’t see what it is - then he can.
Another body. One of the shuttle crew.
Christ, it’s Rhonda.
No, Steinhower. It’s Steinhower. Severson is horrified. The poor bastard. Steinhower could be an annoying whiner but no one deserves that - a bullet in the chest, from the look of it. The short guy deposits the body next to Calvin’s.
Severson rubs at his face, horrified by what’s happening, any thought of being cool a distant memory.
The short man takes the comms box and headset from Steinhower’s body, pulls them on, triggers the switch and talks directly into the security camera. ‘Mr Burke, I am now the commander of
Atlantis
and its remaining crew.’
‘Who the hell is this?’ Severson tries to invest the question with authority. It doesn’t work. His voice cracks and flutters like a nervous fourteen-year-old who’s thrown caution to the wind and asked out the prom queen in front of her quarterback boyfriend.
‘I’m sure you remember the
Challenger
fiasco in 1986 and the
Columbia
disaster in 2003. They will seem like minor footnotes in the history of this space program unless you obey my every word.’
Severson’s sure the accent is French. The man gestures to the hostages kneeling on the catwalk. ‘Do not speak unless you are answering a question. For each command you disobey one of these men will die. Is this clear?’