Asked about the composition of this fact-finding team — and apparently mindful of the widespread criticisms leveled upon NASA in the wake of Challenger — Yarborough replied that it would include personnel from both inside and outside the organization, and promised more specific information about its makeup within days.
According to the prepared text of the statement, Mr. Gordian will take a “personal role in the probe,” and “see that it includes a top-to-bottom review of safety procedures at his ISS production site in Brazil,” where the station’s components are being manufactured under UpLink’s overall management.
Gordian’s assurance is viewed as a sign that he intends to avoid the divisive, public finger-pointing in which NASA and its contractors engaged after Challenger’s ill-fated launch fifteen years ago….
When Nimec and Megan spotted the police cruiser, it was parked at the gravel shoulder of the road, about a car length behind a red Toyota pickup, its roof racks throwing off circus strobes of light.
The two officers, who had obviously arrived at the scene in it, were scuffling with a third man outside the pickup.
One of the lawmen was fortyish and burly and wore a Hancock County deputy’s uniform and badge. The other was perhaps twenty years younger and forty pounds leaner and wore a State of Maine warden’s uniform and badge. The civilian, a tall, dark-haired man in a green chamois shirt, tan goose-down vest, jeans, and hiking boots, was standing out on the road with his back pressed up against the driver’s door of his truck. The warden was jammed halfway inside the door, his head under the steering column, his body bent across the front seat, his backside sticking almost comically out of the cab. The deputy had the pickup driver’s collar bunched in his fist and was attempting to wrestle him away from the door, but he was putting up a hard fight, shoving the deputy back with one hand, throwing punches at his face and neck with the other. The cop had an open cut below his right eye. A pair of mirrored sunglasses lay on the blacktop near his feet, one lens popped out of the wire frame. He was shouting furiously in the pickup driver’s face, but neither Pete nor Megan could make out what he was saying through the windows of their Chevy.
“What in the world’s going on up there?” she asked, peering out her side of the windshield.
Nimec breathed deeply and slowed the car.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But you see the guy in the green shirt?”
She glanced over at him, reading his face. “Pete, don’t tell me.”
Nimec breathed again.
“Tom Ricci,” he said.
She looked outside again, rolling down her window to try and hear what the shouting was about.
Unable to pry him away from the truck, the thickset deputy had switched tactics and moved in on Ricci, throwing his greater weight against him, getting him in a clinch. Standing his ground, Ricci caught him on the cheek with two quick overhand punches, then followed through with a right uppercut to the jaw. The deputy rocked backward on his heels, breaking his hold, his Smokey the Bear hat sailing off his head to the ground, where it flipped over once and then landed beside the broken sunglasses.
“You crazy son of a flatlander bitch!” he shouted, spitting blood. “I’m tellin’ you, move away from that door or you’re gonna be in deeper shit than you already are!”
Ricci stood there looking at him, hands balled into fists. The warden he’d pinned in the door squirmed a little, and Ricci kicked him in the back of the shin with his heel. A string of curses gushed from inside the cab.
Ricci seemed to pay no attention to them. Nor were any of the men yet paying attention to the Chevrolet that had eased to a halt some ten yards down the road.
“I already explained how it has to work,” Ricci told the deputy. “I get to keep my product, your boy Cobbs gets to pull his ass out of the air. Otherwise we can all stick around here from now till Saint Swithen’s Day.”
The deputy wiped his mouth, glanced at the red-flecked saliva on his hand, and spat again.
“You got balls,” he said, glaring. “Givin’ me orders, expectin’ me to believe some concoction about—”
“The catch is legit, Phipps.”
“Says you. As Cobbs tells it, you ’n’ your crackpot tender were way out past your zone.”
“We can talk about Dex later. You and Cobbs saw my license.”
“But I didn’t see where your boat was, or where you was divin‘, or where you come up, and besides, that’s all his area of respons’bility.” Phipps poked his chin out at the pickup. “You let Cobbs be ’n’ leave us the totes without any more carryin’ on, maybe I let you slide for assaultin’ an officer.”
“Two officers! Don’t you let the wicked fuck forget about me, Phipps!” Cobbs shouted from inside the cab. His head was still wedged beneath the steering wheel. “Don’t you goddamn let him—”
Ricci kicked Cobbs with the heel of his boot again and his sentence ended in a yelp of pain.
Phipps released a heavy sigh.
“Two officers,” he said.
“Two crooked officers.”
Phipps frowned indignantly.
“That’s it, no more crap from you,” he said, dropping his hand to his holster and bringing out his side arm, a.45 Colt automatic.
In the Chevy, Megan turned to Nimec.
“Uh-oh,” she said. “Looks like trouble.”
He nodded and reached for his door handle.
“Sit tight,” he said.
“Pete, you sure it’s wise to—”
“No,” he said. “I’m not.”
And then shouldered open the door, exited the car, and walked toward the pickup over the narrow country road.
That was when Sheriff’s Deputy Phipps seemed to take notice of him — belatedly and for the first time. He cast a quick glance at Nimec, then past him at the parked Chevy, keeping the pistol trained on Ricci… who had also partially turned in Nimec’s direction.
“You blind, mister?” Phipps said. One eye on him, the other on Ricci. “Or did you just happen to miss what’s going on here?”
Nimec shrugged.
“Tourist,” he said. “We’ve been waiting awhile.”
The deputy said nothing. He looked at the Chevy again, this time suspiciously checking out its front tag.
“It’s a rental,” Nimec said. Stalling, trying to cook up some kind of plan that would extricate Ricci, not to mention himself, from the situation.
Whatever the hell the situation was.
“Wife and I are headed for Stonington,” he said. “Figured I’d ask when we might be able to pass.”
Phipps stared at him, vexed and confused.
“You see,” Nimec said, “we’ve got reservations at an inn that they’ll only hold for another half hour. And being that we just drove all the way up from Portland on Route 1—”
“Which is what you’re gonna have to swing back around onto,” Phipps interrupted. “Right this minute.”
Nimec shook his head.
“Sorry,” he said. “Can’t do that.”
Phipps looked incredulous. “What did you say?”
“Can’t do that,” Nimec repeated, knowing he’d really stepped into it now. “There aren’t any other inns open. Being that this is the off-season.”
Phipps flushed. Though he was still pointing his gun at Ricci, his attention had turned fully to Nimec.