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Authors: Ben Bova

BOOK: Powersat (The Grand Tour)
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W
illiamson saw the American in his snow-white spacesuit racing like a lunatic toward the control station. But the bugger’s too late, Williamson told himself. He and Bouchachi reached the hatch of the domed enclosure well ahead of the Yank.
“You stay at the hatch and hold him off,” Williamson told Bouchachi. “I’ll go in and knock out the controls so they can’t turn the power off.”
“Hold him off?” Bouchachi asked, his voice little more than a squeak in Williamson’s earphones. “How? With what?”
Williamson considered giving the Algerian the knife he’d used on the cosmonaut, but thought better of it. Better save it in case
I
need it, he said to himself. Tapping the array of wrenches and other tools attached to Bouchachi’s belt, he said, “Whack him on the helmet hard enough to crack it open.”
“But the others!” Bouchachi pointed to the half-dozen other Americans making their way slowly, hand over hand, toward them.
“By the time they get here it’ll be too late.”
“But they’ll kill us!”
“We’re goin’ to die anyway, right? In another little while you’ll be in Paradise, chum, with your seventy-two virgins.”
Williamson ducked through the hatch, into the control station. Bouchachi turned and saw that the American was only a bare few meters away. He fumbled at his waist for the biggest wrench he had.
Too late. The American launched himself like a missile at Bouchachi. The two spacesuited men collided soundlessly. Bouchachi felt the wind knocked out of his lungs. He grappled with the American, trying to keep him away from the hatch, and they both went sailing, tumbling head over heels, across the broad expanse of the powersat.
Dan wrenched one arm free of his opponent and grabbed a cleat. He felt his shoulder pop from the sudden strain; a streak of agony ran along his whole right side. The other guy was hanging on to him with both arms, their helmets bumping. Dan could see that the guy was some sort of Arab.
With his free left hand Dan reached behind the guy’s helmet and pawed at the strap holding the man’s life-support backpack. The guy’s eyes went frantic and he pushed away from Dan. Still hanging onto the cleat despite the pain in his
shoulder, Dan pulled up both his booted feet and kicked the bastard in the gut as hard as he could. The man went spinning away, arms and legs flailing as he tumbled off into space, dwindling rapidly in the distance.
With his usable left hand, Dan made his way from cleat to cleat until he was at the hatch of the control station.
The other intruder was inside the dome, his boots hooked into foot loops on the floor, his body half bent in the simian crouch that people unconsciously assume in zero gravity. The only light inside the dome was from the control board’s colored display screens and lighted gauges. Dan saw it reflecting off the intruder’s helmet. He was poring over the board, Dan realized, trying to figure out how to disable the controls. Then he pulled a sizable wrench from the tool set at his belt.
He’s going to smash everything! Dan saw.
With a roar that the intruder couldn’t hear Dan launched himself at the man headfirst, banging into him and sending the two of them bouncing off the curving wall of the tight little control dome. Fresh agonies of pain shot through Dan’s right shoulder. Where the hell’s the rest of my gang? he wondered as he recoiled away from the intruder.
The bastard still had the wrench in his fist, and he pushed off the wall to fly straight at Dan.
With a grim smile, Dan realized that this bozo didn’t know shit about fighting in zero-
g
. Flicking his boots against the loops studding the floor, Dan edged sideways and his attacker sailed right past him and into the other side of the dome. He bounced away, turned an inadvertent somersault, then righted himself and faced Dan again.
By now Dan had moved to the control panel, standing in front of it. “You want to wreck the controls,” he said, knowing the other couldn’t hear him, “you’ll have to get past me first.”
The intruder hesitated, hanging weightlessly a few inches above the floor. He threw the wrench at Dan, sending himself into a hopeless spin. Dan caught the wrench in his good
hand and hefted it menacingly. “Thanks, pal. Now come on over here so I can give it back to you.”
But there was a knife in the man’s gloved hand now. Dan saw its slim blade glint in the faint light from the control screens.
Anchoring one boot in a foot loop, Dan hurled the wrench back at the intruder. The man ducked in reflex action, and the motion started him tumbling again. Dan glided out from the foot loop and slipped behind the flailing intruder, locking his legs around the guy’s waist and grabbing his knife hand. The two of them bucked and banged off the control board and the dome’s curving wall for what seemed like an hour to Dan.
At last he heard Adair’s voice, “What’s going on here, a rodeo?”
“Ride him, boss!”
“Christ, the sumbitch’s got a knife!”
All six of Dan’s crew jammed into the dome and overpowered Williamson. One of the women ended up with the knife.
“Why don’t we just stick this up his ass?” she snarled. Dan was already at the controls, shutting down the magnetrons. “Uh-uh. We want him alive and able to answer questions.”
One by one, in swift succession, Dan turned off the magnetrons, poking at the control board with his left hand. A string of red lights sprang across the control board. His right shoulder was flaming with pain now, as the adrenaline ebbed out of his blood.
“Radio Van Buren and verify that we’ve turned off the power,” Dan said, suddenly so tired and hurting that he wanted to curl up and go to sleep.
T
he president was livid.
“They tried to kill me!” he kept repeating, shouting almost, as he paced furiously back and forth behind his huge ornate desk. “Some motherfucking bastards tried to kill me!”
The director of homeland security had never seen the president so enraged. “It wasn’t just you, Mr. President. More than six hundred people have died—”
“I don’t give a shit! They were after
me!
”
The secretary of defense—an old friend and a veteran of many private tirades—just sat on the plush little sofa by the empty fireplace and bided his time. Sitting across from him in the Oval Office were the secretary of state and the president’s national security advisor.
“We’re getting information on what happened,” the national security advisor said, trying to calm down his president. “Apparently a terrorist group took control of that power satellite up in space—”
“Blow it out of the sky!” the president snarled, turning to the defense secretary. “We’ve got missiles! Blast that sonofabitch to hell!”
The defense secretary hiked his eyebrows. “It’s owned by an American corporation, Mr. President.”
“I don’t care! That damned thing is
dangerous!
Blow it up!”
The secretary of state, very aware that she was the only woman in the room, decided she had to say something. “Mr. President, wouldn’t it be better—”
But the president ignored her. Pointing at his chief of staff, he said, “Get the Air Force on the line. I’ll give the order myself.”
The chief of staff glanced nervously at the others, then
walked slowly across the carpet that bore the Great Seal of the United States, heading for the president’s desk and his telephone console.
“There’s a team of Americans aboard the satellite,” said the director of homeland defense.
“Americans?” the president snapped.
“They went up there and grabbed the terrorists. They’ve shut down the satellite. It’s not beaming power anywhere now.”
The defense secretary asked, “How’d they get up there so quick?”
The homeland defense director smiled knowingly. “Better than that, we know where the terrorist base is. The ground control base where they directed the satellite.”
The Oval Office went silent for several moments. Then the secretary of state asked, “So soon? It’s been less than an hour.”
Almost smugly, the homeland defense director pulled a photograph from his inside jacket pocket, walked over to the desk and placed it in front of the president.
“It looks like a house,” the president said, settling slowly into his desk chair.
“It’s a villa outside Marseille.”
“That’s where the terrorists are?”
“There were two on the satellite itself. The American team from Astro Corporation got them.” Tapping a finger on the photo, the homeland defense director went on, “But this is where the radio signals that controlled the satellite came from.”
“You’re certain of this?” the president’s chief of staff asked.
“Dead certain.”
The president looked up from the photo. “Are they still in there?”
“We’ve got three different satellites watching. None of the cars parked in that photo have left yet.”
“It hasn’t even been an hour.”
“They’re probably dismantling their equipment and getting set to skeedaddle,” said the homeland defense director.
The president shifted his red-rimmed eyes to the defense secretary. “Can you put a smart bomb on that villa?”
The defense secretary smiled tightly. “Which window would you like it to go through?”
The national security advisor said, “But that’s in France! Sovereign French territory!”
“How quickly can you get it done?” the president asked the defense secretary.
“We have a carrier group in the Med. No more than an hour. Maybe a little less.”
“Do it.”
The secretary of state shot to her feet. “Mr. President! You can’t bomb a building inside a sovereign nation! France, for god’s sake!”
“We have an antiterrorism agreement with them, don’t we?”
“Yes, but—”
“You get the French ambassador on the phone and explain it to him.”
“Lord knows where he is this afternoon,” she said. “It’ll take more than an hour to track him down.”
“Good. Take your time. And when you get him, explain this to him slowly.”
 
 
D
an had expected to be angry, to be in a killing rage as he heard from Van Buren what had happened at Arlington National Cemetery. But once he learned that Jane hadn’t been harmed, all the fury leaked out of him. I’m coming down from an adrenaline high, he told himself. But a voice in his head kept repeating, Jane’s all right. You saved her. She’s all right.
He sat in the last row of the spaceplane, his shoulder throbbing painfully, as Adair went through the checklist preparing to break orbit and fly back to Matagorda. In the cushioned seat next to him sat Gilly Williamson, looking exhausted, grimy, totally spent.
Like the six others in the cabin, Dan and Williamson were still in their spacesuits, although they had removed their helmets.
Makes a big difference, Dan thought, when you can rub your eyes or scratch your nose.
Williamson scratched his stubbly chin and stared straight ahead, his eyes focused on some inner demons.
“Sorry we couldn’t pick up your buddy,” Dan said, keeping his voice low. “He was too far out for us to risk chasing him with the OTV.”
Williamson turned his head toward Dan slightly. “It’s okay. He wanted to be a holy martyr, anyway.”
“And you?” Dan asked. “You wanted to be a martyr, too?”
“I already am one, mate.”
Dan pondered that for all of a second or two. “You’re not Moslem.”
“Not bloody likely.”
“Then what’s the suicide bit all about?”
“I’m already dead, pal. Cancer. It’s just a matter of time.”
“So you wanted to go out in a blaze of glory? Is that it?” Williamson smirked at him. “I’ve got a wife and kids to support. This was my pension plan.”
Comprehension dawned on Dan. “Pension? Really? Tell me more.”
“Why the fuck should I?”
Dan beamed his brightest grin. “Because I’m a greedy Yank capitalist, and whatever they promised you, I’ll double.”
A
s the massive aircraft carrier plowed across the Mediterranean Sea, her skipper and his flight operations officer huddled over a display table with the commander of the carrier’s attack squadron, their faces underlit by the light coming from the table’s electronic screen. It showed a satellite
picture of the hilltop villa outside Marseille. The squadron commander was in his olive green flight suit; the other two officers in tropical tan uniforms.
“This comes from the SecDef himself,” the skipper was saying. “Ultra Top Secret. Only the three of us are in on it.”
“What about my GIB?” the squadron commander asked.
“Your weapons man sits in that back seat and does his job,” the flight operations officer said sternly. “He doesn’t have to know where the missile’s going.”
“As far as your guy in back is concerned, this is just a weapons test. Nothing more,” said the skipper. “You are not to fly within twenty miles of French airspace.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll keep her on the wavetops, under their radar.”
“You’ve got half an hour to get to the release point,” said the flight operations officer. “Maintain radio silence, but keep your receiver open in case there’s a recall order.”
“Satellite navigation all the way?” asked the squadron commander.
“That’s right. No contact with the ship once you’ve been launched,” the flight operations officer said.
“And the missile will follow satellite guidance once it’s launched?”
“It better.”
The three men straightened up. The squadron commander grinned tightly. “Holy Mother of God, the frogs are going to go apeshit over this.”
The skipper was not amused. “If we carry this off properly, the French will believe a group of terrorists were attacked by a rival group. At least, that’s the cover story our people will put out.”
“I hope it works,” the squadron commander said.
“You just do your job,” said the flight operations officer. “Let the politicians in Washington worry about the rest.”
“Yes, sir.” The squadron commander saluted smartly, then turned and started for his plane, already warmed up and in place on the carrier’s forward catapult.
 
 
A
s al-Bashir poured champagne into the two fluted glasses, April heard a timid knock on the bedroom door.
Looking annoyed, al-Bashir slammed the champagne bottle back into its bucket and strode to the door. He opened it only a crack. April glimpsed a round-faced, bald man out in the corridor. He looked upset. The two men spoke rapidly—in Arabic, April guessed.
Al-Bashir’s face was dark as he closed the door and turned back to April.
“It appears that your president escaped with his life,” he said, scowling. “But more than a thousand Americans have been killed. And the power satellite has been shut down completely.”
“You did this?” April asked, still sitting on the bed. She felt breathless, weak.
“Yes,” said al-Bashir. Then he smiled again. “With a little help from my friends, as your Beatles sang.”
“And Dan?”
“Randolph? He’ll be blamed for the disaster, of course. His power satellite will be cursed by everyone. No one will know that we engineered it.”
“You engineered all this?”
His smile widened. “Yes, I did. And you’re not returning to the United States. You’re going to Tunis, with me.”
“But I don’t want—”
“What you want is of no consequence. I promised myself a little reward when this operation with the satellite was finished, and you are my reward.”
He held out one of the glasses of champagne to her.
April stared at him for a long, wordless moment. He’s smiling, she thought. He’s just killed a thousand or so people and he’s smiling about it. He’s ruined Dan, destroyed the very idea of the powersat, and it makes him smile.
She got to her feet, surprised that she had the strength to stand without trembling. Without a word, she stepped toward al-Bashir and accepted the champagne.
“You’ll enjoy my home in Tunis. You’ll have every luxury, so long as you behave yourself properly.”
“Every luxury except freedom,” April murmured.
He made a disappointed cluck of his tongue. “You Americans always talk about freedom.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Enjoy life, lovely one. With me you will live far better than you ever could in miserable Texas.”
April sipped at the champagne, her mind whirling. I’m his prize for destroying Dan. I’m his reward. He’s captured me and I’ll have to do whatever he wants.
Al-Bashir put his glass down on the damask-covered cart and began uncovering the dishes. “Ah, you see? A steak dinner, just as you would have in Texas. All the comforts of home.”
 
 
T
he spaceplane was starting to rattle as Adair jinked it through the first of several high-altitude turns aimed at killing speed before it. could come in for a landing. At least the worst part of reentry is over, Dan thought. Everybody sat tight in their seats as the craft blazed back into the atmosphere, leaving a brilliant flaming meteor trail behind it.
Dan had to put his bubble helmet on again to use the radio link to Matagorda. Williamson still sat beside him, looking less surly than he had before Dan began promising him the best medical care in America and a whopping insurance policy for his family—in exchange for his telling the FBI what he knew.
Van Buren’s voice sounded close to tears. “Hundreds have been killed, Dan. Roasted alive. The TV’s full of it.”
“What about Senator Thornton?” he asked.
“I don’t know. They haven’t mentioned her name. The president’s okay, though.”
“Can you contact her by phone?”
“I talked with her when this all started, but then all the phone links went down,” Van Buren answered.
Double damn it to hell and back, Dan grumbled to himself.
Jane must be okay. If they didn’t get the president they didn’t get the VIPs around him. She’s all right. They didn’t kill her. She’s okay.
He wished he were certain of that.

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