Eric typed in the command, as the rocket motor consumed the last of its fuel and the cyclonic pumps that fed it went quiet. The g-forces that had hammered him into his seat suddenly released him, and the silence left his ears ringing. They had gone weightless. He had often experienced moments of it on roller coasters, and on a few flights with Tiny Gunderson, when they were fooling around, but this felt different.
They were on the very edge of space now, not playing tricks with gravity but almost out of its reach.
In the cockpit, Jack Taggart activated the armatures that raised the entire wing so it was at an angle to the fuselage. The added drag, and the dynamics of the new configuration, kept the plane incredibly stable, as it started its long glide back to the airfield outside of Monahans, Texas.
“What did you think?” he asked.
“Just a moment.”
Taggart thought Eric might be sick and he craned around to look, but Stone was concentrating on his computer. The kid had just been given the ride of his life and he was already working. Taggart admired the dedication, thinking back to his first Shuttle mission. He hadn’t been able to do anything but stare out the window his first hour up here.
“Repeat that, Elton. Over.”
“I said, we’ve got confirmation from the bird’s onboard telemetry. She has fired her maneuvering thrusters and is changing orbit. Targeting computers are online, and it’s going through its prefire checklist.
Congratulations. You did it!”
Eric didn’t know if he wanted shout for joy or cry. In the end, he settled for simple satisfaction that his plan was going to work. He had to give credit to the Russians. When it came to their space program, they knew what they were doing. Where NASA was all about elegant finesse, the Soviets had gone for simplicity and brute force, and, as a result, they built to last. Their Mir space station remained in orbit twice as long as originally planned. Had it not been for lack of funds, it would likely still be up there.
“Roger that. Over and out.”
“Well?” Taggart asked.
“It worked. We now have control of the Russian satellite.”
“I wasn’t asking about that. I want to know what you thought of the flight.”
“Colonel, that was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced,” Eric said, feeling weight slowly returning to his body. His stomach settled back into its normal position.
“I know it won’t go into the books, but, just so you know, we broke the altitude record. We’re going to limit our paying flights to about three hundred and thirty thousand feet, so it’s a record that’ll be around for a while.”
Eric chuckled to himself, thinking how jealous Murph was going to be—and how impressed Janni would be. But, no sooner had the thought crossed his mind, the smile died on his lips, and he once again considered Max Hanley’s fate.
CHAPTER 35
MAX HAD RACKED HIS BRAIN, THINKING OF A WAY OUT of the subterranean fortress, and he had only one solution. On a late-night foray, he had discovered triple guards on the stairwell leading to the garage, and he knew that he wasn’t going to bluff his way past them. Kovac had left his face a swollen mess, and the guards would be suspicious the moment they saw him.
He wasn’t getting out the front door, so he had to sneak out the back.
He left his hiding place in the closet of the executive wing and made his way to the generator room. He made sure to hide his face from the few people he passed in the hallways. He rounded a corner nearest the room where the jet engines spun the turbines that powered the facility and saw that Kovac had ordered a guard to stand watch here as well. Keeping his pace steady and measured, he walked down the corridor. The guard, a kid of about twenty wearing a blue police-style uniform and with a nightstick in his belt, eyed him as he approached.
“How ya doing?” Max called jovially when he was still ten feet away. “Yeah, I know, my face looks like hamburger. A bunch of antiabortion zealots jumped me day before yesterday at a rally in Seattle. I just got here. Hell of a place, huh?”
“This is a restricted area unless you have a clearance badge.” The kid forced authority into his voice by deepening it, but he didn’t seem overly wary.
“Is that so? Only thing I’ve been issued so far are these.” Max pulled his last two bottled waters from the pockets of his overalls. “Here.”
Rather than offer it and give the kid an opportunity to refuse, he tossed a bottle to the guard. He caught it awkwardly and glared at Max. Max grinned stupidly and twisted off the cap of his bottle. He held it up in a salute.
Etiquette and thirst overcame the young guard’s limited security training, and he pried off the lid and returned Max’s salute. He raised the bottle to his lips and tipped his head back to take a swig. Max lunged like an Olympic fencer, ramming the stiffened fingers of his right hand directly into the soft spot at the base of the kid’s throat.
Water spewed from his mouth as his airway swelled closed. He couldn’t cough. He managed a gurgling sound, as his eyes bugged from his head and he clutched for his throat in a desperate attempt to get air.
Max laid the guard out with a haymaker to the side of the jaw and he fell at his feet. He bent to check on his breathing. Now that the guard was unconscious, he stopped hyperventilating and could draw a little air through his damaged larynx. His voice would be a husky whisper for the rest of his life, but he’d live.
“If I were you, I’d ask for a refund from whatever security guard training school you went to.” Max opened the door to the generator room. The control room was deserted, and, by the looks of the displays, only one of the jet engines was making power. Max stuffed the young guard into the kneehole of a metal desk and manacled his wrists to the leg with his FlexiCuffs. He didn’t need to worry about gagging him.
Hanley had already considered the idea of sabotaging the engines and denying the Responsivists the means of transmitting the signal but felt it would be a waste of time. He knew they had a fully charged battery backup in some part of the facility he hadn’t seen, so they would still be able to send it. If he managed to find and somehow disable the batteries, all he would accomplish is a short delay until they could repair the damage. He’d maybe buy a few hours or days while giving away his presence. The reason they hadn’t found him lurking in their headquarters was because they thought he was either dead or eluding them outside. As soon as they knew a saboteur was inside the bunker, the security contingent would comb it inch by inch until they found him.
He could just imagine how painful a death Kovac would have in store for him.
Max was certain Cabrillo had gotten the message and trusted without question that the Chairman had come up with a plan to destroy the transmitter long before Severance sent the signal. So he discounted the idea of sabotage and had dedicated his time to an escape plan.
The four engines were laid out in a row, with fat ducts feeding them air on one end and large exhaust pipes venting the spent gases from the other. Just before the ducts exited the room through the far wall, the four pipes came together in a manifold so that a single large exhaust duct led outside. There was a heat exchanger located just after the pipes came together to cool the gases leaving the facility. The air intake worked the same in reverse, with a single conduit entering the power plant and branching off to the separate turbines. Max would have preferred that route, but the plenums were ten feet off the floor and inaccessible without a scaffolding.
“If it’s good enough for Juan, it’s good enough for me,” he muttered, thinking back to Cabrillo’s escape from the Golden Dawn.