Velocity Read online

  Severson flicks the switch on his comms box. ‘Jake, it’s the launch director. How’s it going down there?’

  A voice buzzes in his headset. ‘Still working it.’

  ‘What’s the time frame?’

  ‘We’ll get back to you.’

  What Severson wants to say is: ‘Hurry up, dickhead! You’re making me look bad!’ What he actually says is: ‘Sooner rather than later, please.’ He knows it won’t go down as one of history’s great inspirational radio communiqués, but he also knows that losing his temper never looks cool.

  **

  ‘Turn the lights back on but don’t show them video yet.’

  The words are distant and soft, like they’re tumbling down a long tunnel coated with molasses. Tam finds it relaxing, soothing. His eyes flutter closed and his head nods forward ...

  ‘Tam, Gerald! Do you read?’ The voice again. Louder. Insistent. Familiar. Henri.

  Tam’s eyes blink open and his unbitten hand moves across the keyboard, types two letters.

  O N

  **

  The White Room’s lights blink on.

  ‘We’re back.’ Judd can hear Severson’s relieved voice over his headset. ‘We don’t have video yet but let’s continue as planned.’

  Sam speaks into his headset’s microphone: ‘Roger that.’ He turns to the others. ‘Okay, we haven’t got all night. Let’s get ‘em on board.’ Speaking into the mic again, he says: ‘Rick, we need you back here now.’

  There’s no response. Sam breathes out, shakes his head, mumbles something that begins with ‘f’, tries again. ‘Rick? You there?’

  No response. He turns to Judd. ‘Find him, please.’

  Judd nods and steps through the White Room’s door onto the crew access arm. Judd’s never been a huge fan of 48-year-old Rick Calvin. When he moved to Houston after recruitment, the New Jersey native adopted a southern twang and came over all evangelical to curry favour with a couple of influential people within the program’s hierarchy who leaned that way, faith-wise. It wasn’t so much the shameless act of stunt religiosity that annoyed Judd, but that the strategy had worked so brilliantly. This was Rick’s third flight aboard the shuttle.

  ‘Come on, Rick, time to work.’

  He’s not there. The narrow crew access arm is dark and empty. At the far end, where it connects to the Fixed Service Structure, a shadow moves. Annoyed, Judd pads down the access arm, which is covered overhead but open on both sides from waist height. ‘Tell me, Rick, is your religion the one where Jesus and the Devil are brothers? Or is it the one where everyone used to ride dinosaurs to church?’

  There’s no answer.

  ‘Rick, where are you, buddy?’ Judd turns the corner towards the elevator. It’s open and Rick stands in front of it, right hand covering the left side of his chest like he’s pledging allegiance to the flag. ‘Be - be - be - ‘

  Judd stares at him. ‘What are you doing, man?’ Then he sees blood smeared under Rick’s right hand. ‘What the hell —?’

  ‘Be - be - behind you.’

  ‘What?’ Judd turns. A figure stands in the shadows, a silenced pistol raised.

  Judd runs, tackles Rick as the weapon spits. Judd’s right hip burns with a bright pain as they crash into the open elevator.

  Rick slumps on top of Judd, a dark-red bullet wound where his left eye once was. ‘Oh Jesus!’ He’s dead. Horrified, Judd turns, watches the figure with the pistol step out of the shadows and stride towards him. It’s a blond man, tall, in his late forties, his face somehow familiar.

  ‘Big Arena.’ Judd says it without thinking.

  The man pauses, shocked.

  ‘You cut down the tree.’

  The man’s expression morphs from shock to anger and he raises the pistol. Judd gets behind Rick’s body, pushes it up. The pistol spits. Bullets slam into Rick’s back. Judd drives the body out of the elevator. It slumps onto the man, knocks him back a step.

  Judd jams his right thumb against the elevator’s CLOSE button. The door slides shut as the man pushes Rick’s body aside and fires through the narrowing gap. Judd pivots behind the closing door as the bullet thunks into the back of the elevator.

  The door judders to a stop, five centimetres from closing. Judd looks down. Rick’s left foot blocks it. Judd reaches to push it clear, feels a bullet pass his hand, sees the hole it leaves in the elevator’s floor. He pulls back, keeps his thumb mashed against the CLOSE button, tries to work out what to do next.

  The pistol slides through the gap. Its lone eye swings towards Judd. He turns side on as it fires and the bullet slams into the wall behind him. He steps forward, brings a fist down and a knee up on the man’s wrist, hard as he can.

  The man cries out and the pistol is jarred from his hand. Judd catches it and the man yanks his hand out of the elevator.

  Judd bends, flips out Rick’s foot in one sharp movement and the door clunks shut. He jams his thumb against the DOWN button and the elevator descends.

  ‘Christ.’ Judd sucks air, arms tingling from adrenaline. He tries to process the last twenty seconds. Rick Calvin is dead. Dead. A blond man tried to kill him, a man he’s sure was once the lead singer of the German pop group Big Arena.

  The adrenaline eases and Judd notices the pain at his hip. He inspects the bloodied wound where his comms box once hung. It’s not so bad, more a graze with delusions of grandeur than anything serious. Not like poor Rick Calvin. Shit.

  How in hell did this happen? How did that guy get up there? It doesn’t matter how, what matters is that he’s still up there. With Rhonda. Any relief Judd feels at his escape vanishes. He must get to her. Now.

  He hits the STOP button. The elevator jolts to a halt. He hits the UP button. The elevator rises. He studies the pistol in his hand, feels its weight. Even though he’s never held a gun before he’s sure it gives him the advantage.

  A loud thud from the elevator’s roof. Judd looks up at the ceiling. He’s not sure he still has the advantage.

  **

  Dirk watches the elevator rise. While researching this mission Dirk had heard all the stories about astronaut Judson Bell. Apparently when Columbia broke up he pussied out. Yet here he is, rising towards the danger, doing the exact opposite of ‘pussied out’.

  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 rea
ches 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 i
t 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 —?’