Shadow Watch pp-3 Read online

  Annie saw Nimec holding back his irritation at being patronized.

  “As Jeremy said,” she broke in, “the SSMEs operate with a high level of efficiency. That’s in part because the propellants are used for multiple purposes. To remain in a liquid state hydrogen has to be kept super-cold… to give you an idea of how cold, bear in mind that it vaporizes at any temperature above minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit. As a solution to the problem of critical engine overheating, the designers of the SSMEs found a means to divert some of the liquid hydrogen fuel throughout the engine with a system of ducts before it finally makes its way to the preburners. There’s a pair in each of the main engines, and their function is to ignite the very hot hydrogen vapors that result from the combustion process before they can accumulate and ignite in the engine bell. If you ever watch a video of a liftoff in slow motion, you’d can see the preburners shooting the gas out below the bells as thousands of tiny fireballs.”

  Nimec looked at her. “So you’re telling me that a significant dropoff in LH2 pressure would have caused the engine to overheat and the preburners to fail… leading to an explosion of the free hydrogen vapors in the engine bell.”

  “That’s what Jim was telling us. Or trying to. He would have known where in the engine the liquid hydrogen pressure had critically decreased just by looking at a gauge on his instrument panel. But with everything happening so fast… the cabin filling with smoke…”

  “He never finished saying what he wanted to.”

  “Which was that the LH2 pressure was dropping in the preburner ducts.”

  Their gazes met. Nimec saw the moist, overbright look in her eyes, realized she was fighting back tears, and found himself on the verge of reaching out with a comforting hand. Instead he stiffened, caught wholly off guard by the impulse.

  Turning to Jeremy, he said, “When we were on the tram you mentioned the difference between knowing what happens given a certain set of conditions, and understanding why it happens.”

  Jeremy visibly wavered.

  “I was talking about snowflakes,” he said.

  “Then talk to me now about explosions,” Nimec said. “What do you think made the LH2 pressure drop? And if it occurred in Engine Number Three, why are there fused cooling ducts in Number One? How could the identical problem simultaneously occur in at least two of the three separate engines?”

  Jeremy looked to Annie, still hesitant. He was waiting to see how much she wanted to share, and would say nothing more without her okay. Nimec decided he liked him a little better for it.

  “The other night I came here after everyone else was gone, just to do some thinking,” Annie offered at length. “I’d had a tough day wrestling with the press and needed to get my head straight….” She trailed off a moment, then shook her head. “But that doesn’t matter. What does matter is I stayed a long time. Much longer than I expected, in fact. Walking around, looking over the pieces of wreckage we’d started to assemble. When I saw this engine, I noticed that the internal damage seemed far greater than the damage to the exterior of the housing. And started ask to ask myself the same things you just asked Jeremy.” She paused again, exhaled. “I’ve requested assistance from the Forensic Science Center in San Francisco. It’s at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, I don’t know whether you’re familiar with them—”

  “They did evidence analysis on the Unabomber case, the Times Square and World Trade Center bombings in New York, probably hundreds of other investigations,” Nimec said. “UpLink’s had a relationship with them for years, and I’ve worked with them personally. The LLNL’s the best group of crime detection and national security experts in the business.”

  She nodded. “They’re sending a team of analysts with an ion-store/time-of-flight mass spectrometry instrument.”

  “Which means you’re looking for residual by-products of a blasting material,” he said. “IS/TOF-MS allows the trace-particles analysis to be done right here in this building… avoids deterioration that can take place by transporting the sample to a lab.”

  “Yes.”

  Nimec mulled that over for a while.

  “In acts of sabotage, you have to work quickly and on the sly and that’s how errors are sometimes made,” he said. “If you’re good at destruction, you know that the way to take the possibility of a foul-up into account… to anticipate and keep it from happening… is to be redundant. Get your hands into three engines, though all you need is one to go bad. If I’m reading you right, then whatever made Engine Three — and maybe Engine Two — overheat was supposed to have done the same with Engine One, but didn’t. Or at least not to the extent intended.”

  “That’s a reasonable explanation, yes, if we assume a deliberate and successful effort was made to destroy Orion.” Annie breathed. “We’ll see what the mass spectrometry and FSC analysts give us. Meanwhile, Jeremy believes it likely there was such an effort.”

  “More than likely,” Jeremy said. “I’d bet anything on it.”

  Nimec looked at him.

  “What makes you sound so definite?”

  “Remember a second ago, when I was talking snowflakes, and you wanted to talk explosions?”

  Nimec had already gotten enough of a feel for Jeremy to realize the question wasn’t rhetorical.

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  “Well, it happens we were already on the same page. An offshoot of my work in thermodynamic crystal geometry, which involves various types of controlled explosions, has been an interest in blast geometry.”

  “Somehow,” Nimec said. “I had an inkling.”

  “I know you did.”

  Nimec gave him a nod.

  “Tell me what you’ve got, Jeremy,” he said. “Why so definite?”

  “In simple language,” Jeremy said, “a certain type of chemical reaction equals an explosion equals a pattern. And to me the splay, burn, and scoring patterns in this engine had to have been made by tiny thermal charges — could’ve been something like noncommercial RDX — that were meant to destroy the hydrogen fuel turbo-pumps, but only partially did the job.”

  Nimec considered that a second and nodded again.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “S’okay.” Jeremy put his hand on the ruined engine, peering at Nimec through the lenses of his wire glasses. “You want to come around this side, I’ll show you what I mean.”

  A comradely overture.

  “Yeah,” Nimec said. “That’d be good.”

  * * *

  “There’s something I kept to myself at the VAB,” Nimec told Annie half an hour later. “Wasn’t sure how much to say in front of Jeremy.”

  They were having coffee in the KSC commissary, his offer of lunch scaled down because of her packed schedule, Jeremy now on his way back to Orlando.

  She watched him intensely over her cup.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “In some instances terrorists will want to leave a footprint of sabotage without taking credit for the act. It’s been an increasing trend over the last decade. Lets them have it both ways — they put the fear into you without bringing heat down on themselves.”

  Annie kept her eyes on him.

  “You think Main Engine One wasn’t meant to be destroyed? That the attempt was just supposed to look as if it were botched?”

  “I think it’s a distinct possibility.”

  She was silent awhile. Then a pale little smile touched the comer of her lips. “That must have occurred to Jeremy too. My guess is he wasn’t sure what to say in front of you.”

  “Could be.” Nimec noticed himself noticing her smile and redirected his eyes toward the tabletop. What was with him? They were colleagues and these were inappropriate circumstances for such things. Weren’t they? He was looking at her again before he knew it. “He’s certainly smart enough.”

  Annie quietly drank some more coffee.

  “Two questions,” she said. “Would UpLink find it acceptable if I inform the press that we are now cautiously progressing a
long a line of inquiry that may link Orion to the incident in Brazil?”

  “We wouldn’t have a problem with that,” he said.

  “Next question,” she said. “If it was sabotage, do you have any idea who may be responsible?”

  He thought a moment, then made a decision.

  “I think we could very soon,” he said. “Our outfit has a small satellite ground station in Pensacola. I’m getting flown there from Orlando by a corporate jet at four o’clock this afternoon. We’re conducting an operation you may want to observe.”

  She chewed her lower lip contemplatively, holding the coffee cup, steam floating up in front of her face.

  “I need to get home to the kids.”

  “It’s a short trip,” he said. “I’ll arrange for the plane to take you back soon as we’re finished.”

  Silence.

  Annie took another drink from her cup, then lowered it onto the saucer.

  “Count me in,” she said.

  NINETEEN

  VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 23/24, 2001

  It was 2:00 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, April twenty-third, in San Jose, California.

  It was 5:00 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time in Pensacola, Florida.

  It was 6:00 P.M. Brazilian Daylight Time in the central Pantanal.

  It was 3:00 A.M. the following day, April twenty-fourth, in Kazakhstan.

  The variations in dates and time zones made no difference to UpLink International’s Hawkeye-I and — II hyperspectral high-resolution imaging satellites, nor to the relaying and data-processing equipment used to establish a real-time downlink to receiving stations in each locale — these only being machines, as Rollie Thibodeau readily pointed out to Megan Breen from behind a notebook computer on his hospital tray.

  To the people involved in this synchronized monitoring operation, on the other hand, the whole process of coordination was a howling, troublesome bitch.

  As Rollie was also free and quick to note.

  Tom Ricci rubbed his eyes. Had it really been less than seventy-two hours since he’d left Maine, its deepwater urchin beds, and the reclusive life he had cultivated for over two years behind? Something like that, he guessed. So much mental and physical distance had been covered between then and now, it was hard to keep track. There had been the flight to San Jose, his meeting with Roger Gordian, the formal offer from Gordian to join UpLink in what had to his surprise become a position — its official title being Global Field Supervisor, Security Operations — that he would hold jointly with a guy named Rollie Thibodeau, who, if memory served, was the other candidate for the job mentioned to him by the high-and-mighty Megan Breen back in Stonington. There had been his acceptance of the offer despite reservations about working in partnership with Thibodeau, someone he’d never met, someone very much liked and preferred by Breen, a woman toward whom Ricci had taken an automatic dislike, which impression had seemed in his eyes to be a two-way street filled with bumps, potholes, and inevitable collisions. Only Ricci’s fidelity to the commitment he’d given Pete Nimec had overcome his second thoughts about agreeing to the modified proposition in Gordian’s office.

  All of which had preceded his express shipment to Kazakhstan, a severe, inhospitable place populated with equally severe, inhospitable Russian military and scientific personnel whose antagonism toward him was more than a little reminiscent of his old friend Cobbs. They were indignant about his having taken command of site protection at their Baikonur Cosmodrome prior to the space launch. They had bristled at his front-line deployment of Sword patrol units and defensive systems. They viewed his assistance as gross interference, and had let him know it at every possible turn.

  He wondered how much worse his reception would have been if they’d known this was, more or less, his first day on the job.

  Fatigued and out of joint, his biological clock in jagged contention with the time displayed on his wristwatch, Ricci sat at an onboard vehicle computer in the trailer that was his mobile command center and logged onto UpLink’s secure intranet server via cellular modem, waiting for pictures from space that his instincts told him were about to reveal complications that would make every problem he’d encountered since his arrival in Central Asia — if not since his farewell urchin run with Dex — seem piddling by comparison.

  Soon after the transmission began, those instincts proved themselves to be right on the money.

  * * *

  “This ground station’s part of our Geographic Information Service division,” Nimec was explaining to Annie. “Our clients include real estate developers, urban planners, map and atlas publishers, companies involved in oil, natural gas, and mineral resource exploration… a whole range of businesses that can benefit from high-res topographic imaging data. Essentially, though, the profits we earn from those contracts go toward defraying expenses the GIS piles up doing gratis work to satisfy Gord’s altruistic drives.”

  They were alone in the first of several rows of theater-style seats climbing toward the rear of what could have been mistaken for a small movie screening room, but for the technical staffers at horseshoe-shaped computer workstations to their left and right. A large flat-screen display covered most of the wall in front of them.

  “Spy-eye time as a charitable donation,” she said. “That’s a new one to me.”

  Nimec looked at her.

  “You remember that child abduction in Yellowstone about six months ago? The little girl, Maureen Block, got snatched out of her parents’ camper? The guy who did it was some survivalist nutcase, held her in a lean-to made of timber and leaves. She was found by park rangers after sweeps from Hawkeye-I penetrated his camouflage, captured infrared images of the girl and her kidnapper while they were in the shelter.”

  Annie put her hand up to her forehead.

  “I think,” she said, “I’ve just embarrassed myself.”

  “No reason you should feel that way,” Nimec said. “Our involvement was never disclosed. We’ve worked with local police departments, the FBI, NSA, you name it. This isn’t quite classified information, but it is for the most part held confidential by the various agencies.”

  “At whose preference?”

  “Everybody’s,” Nimec said. “It’s pretty well known how competitive law-enforcement organizations can be. They like taking their pats on the back for closing cases, and we’re glad to let them. It tends to eliminate any inclination they might have to see us as sticking our nose in where it doesn’t belong and reject our assistance. It also has the fringe benefit of keeping the bad guys off guard.” He paused, quietly watching the techs key up for the satellite feed. “There’s a whole range of other situations we help out with, besides. The birds can detect toxic chemical concentrations in soil runoff, plot out the extent of oil spills, pinpoint the specific types of mineral depletion in agricultural areas to give farmers a heads-up on potential crop failure… it goes on and on.”

  She looked impressed. “If I may ask, just what are your satellites’ capabilities?”

  “Confidentially?”

  She nodded, and gave him a faint smile. “If not quite classified.”

  “Hawkeye can zoom in on objects less than five centimeters across and scan on over three hundred spectral bands, which matches anything the spooks at the National Reconnaissance Office have at their disposal. Same goes for the speed and accuracy of our analysis — and we hope to have moving real-time pictures within a couple of years. Also, the telemetry images we’re about to see here are going out over our corporate intranet to be viewed by members of our security team on three continents and examined by photo interpreters in San Jose.” He gestured toward the headsets jacked into the armrests of his seats. “These provide an audio link for anyone who’s got a request for the analysts, or wants a particular area enlarged, enhanced, or identified. You may want to listen in.”

  Annie got a quick flash of herself playing host to Roger Gordian and Megan Breen in the LCC firing room at Canaveral what seemed an eternity ago, pointing to the lightweight
phones on her console.

  “When the event timer starts again you’ll want to put them on and eavesdrop on the dialogue between the cockpit and ground operators. ”

  A chill ran down her spine.

  Nimec noticed her far-off look. “Anything wrong?”

  “No,” she said. “Just kind of dazzled by the scope of this operation.”

  Nimec knew she was lying, but dropped it, although he couldn’t dismiss his peculiar interest in what was on her mind.

  Then, from one of the techies, a wave.

  “Get ready,” he said. “Show’s about to start.”

  * * *

  Some 2,500 miles northwest as the crow flies, Roger Gordian was in a room identical to the one in which Pete Nimec and Annie Caulfield were seated, watching, as they were, the first satellite images stream down from Hawkeye-I above Brazil. Filling the row to either side of him was the group of satellite recon specialists Nimec had mentioned to Annie, most former employees of the NRS and its PHOTINT section, the National Photographic Interpretation Center.

  Over the previous twenty-four hours, Hawkeye-I had made a series of low-resolution passes over an area describing a radius of about three hundred klicks around the ISS installation in Matto Grosso do Sul, its field of reconnaissance determined by the results of a computerized vector analysis seeking those areas of highest probability from which the raid of April 17th might have been staged. Entered into these calculations were wind conditions on the night of the attack, approximations of the HAHO team’s point of descent into the compound, estimates of their maximum range of travel, flight controller logs from known airfields, likely sites for concealed airfields, intelligence about regional criminal and political extremist enclaves, and a galaxy of other data deemed pertinent by Sword’s electronic surveillance experts.

  After reviewing the computer analysis and initial flyby imagery, the photo interpreters had systematically narrowed their interest to two geographic areas: the alluvial plains and savannah of the Pantanal, and an overlying region of rocky, semiarid escarpments called Chapada dos Guimaraes.