Steve Worland
Velocity
STEELY-EYED MISSILE MAN
(phrase)
Place Of Origin: Houston, Texas.
Circa: Early 1960s.
Type: NASA slang.
Definition: An astronaut or aerospace engineer who quickly devises an ingenious solution to a life-or-death problem while under extreme pressure.
PROLOGUE
He’s smart and good-looking with a satisfying, desirable job. He has a wonderful girlfriend, is liked and respected at both his place of work and in the wider community, and he drives a DeLorean, his all-time favourite car. Simply, Judson Bell’s life is awesome and he couldn’t be happier about it.
Why, just a moment ago a man randomly high-fived him. A man he didn’t even know. It happened as Judd returned to his office at Johnson Space Center. As NASA’s youngest shuttle pilot he’d been the face of its recent public-relations tour. It had been a rousing success and garnered NASA a boatload of positive press, especially the 60 Minutes piece, hence the random high-five from an enthusiastic coworker.
So thirty-year-old Judd Bell is walking on air. Rhonda Jacolby, his partner, who’s just as smart and good-looking with the same satisfying, desirable job, is right there beside him. Around NASA they are considered the future of the space program and Judd can’t think of a single reason not to agree.
Rhonda glances at her Seiko, turns to Judd. ‘The landing.’
‘Of course.’
‘There’s a monitor in here.’ She directs him to a nearby door, pushes it open.
The television in Conference Room Two is already surrounded by a crowd of back-office staff. Judd and Rhonda stand behind them and watch the big Toshiba widescreen.
On its screen a small white dot followed by an elegant comet tail rips silently across a faultless blue sky. The small white dot pulses, then splits in two.
Judd blinks, to check his eyes aren’t playing tricks, then focuses on the screen again.
Two white dots. No tricks.
‘Christ.’ The grief hits like a fist, overwhelms him. He doubles over, puts his hands on his knees.
A woman within the small crowd says, to no one in particular, ‘Gee, that chase plane is high.’
‘It’s too high to be a chase plane.’
The woman turns to Judd. ‘What is it, then?’
He glances at her security pass. She’s a PR flack. Young, new. He doesn’t answer, just looks at Rhonda beside him. Her elegant face is stricken. She knows.
‘So what is it?’ The young flack’s voice betrays no sense of alarm, no hint that she may not want to hear the answer.
‘Debris.’ Judd says it the only way he knows how to deliver bad news. Simple and direct.
‘Debris?’ She still doesn’t understand.
‘It’s breaking up.’ He can’t believe he’s saying the words.
‘You’re not serious.’ The flack turns back to the screen. One of the white dots pulses again and then there are three. The crowd cries out in anguish.
Judd runs a hand through his cropped hair, his life no longer awesome. Rhonda turns to him, her eyes wet with tears.
After years of training they all knew the risk, but only in the abstract. No matter what they’d been told, or how often, nothing could prepare them for this. For today.
The first of February 2003.
The space shuttle Columbia is lost and Judd Bell’s best friend dead, 60 kilometres above Texas, sixteen minutes from home.
1
Gerhard Krawl draws the long-handled wire-cutters from his backpack and slices into the tall chain-link fence.
As he works he takes in the Boneyard. He’d surveilled the place for months but still found it spectacular. Row after row after row of US military aircraft, over 4000 of them, all resting in the dry desert air of Tucson, Arizona — the perfect place to dump a big lump of metal if you didn’t want it to rust.
The Boneyard, or Aerospace Maintenance And Regeneration Center (AMARC), had been the storage location for military aircraft that were surplus to requirements since the end of World War II. Some were stripped for parts, others sliced up and sold for scrap, but most became home to rattlers and scorpions.
Gerhard carves a large slit in the chain-link, then pulls out his iPhone. He taps the screen, sends a one-word text, then looks south down Kolb Road. The full moon illuminates a Mack truck that rumbles towards him. Headlights off, it tows a long cylindrical tanker. Gerhard points at the hole in the fence and the Mack’s air brakes hiss. It turns off the road, crunches over a small creosote bush and nudges its radiator against the opening.
Gerhard climbs onto the driver’s step and peers into the cabin. The towering Cobbin Wiseman is behind the wheel. Beside him sits the man in charge, 56-year-old Frenchman Henri Leon. Gerhard nods to him. ‘No problems.’
Henri signals Cobbin, who nudges the Mack through the hole in the fence, the jagged wire scraping the length of the tanker’s matte black paint. Gerhard follows it through then leaps back onto the driver’s step and grabs the side-view mirror for balance. Cobbin hits the gas and the Mack kicks up a rooster tail of dust as it accelerates.
Henri takes in Cobbin. Always reliable, he drives the way he does everything: with a single-minded purpose. He’s not subtle, but he gets the job done.
Henri’s eyes move to Gerhard. The jury’s still out on the young Austrian. A new addition to the Frenchman’s crew, he’s willing enough and has performed well in the simulations, but you never could tell a man’s character until you observed him under pressure. Gerhard’s future with the crew will be decided tonight.
Henri’s eyes flick to the horizon and he sees it, allows himself a faint smile, the one his wife called the ‘Mona Lisa smile’.
In an increasingly XS world, the giant C-5 Galaxy is unashamedly XXXL. When released in 1968 it was the biggest aircraft in the world. Still one of the largest today, it has been in service for over four decades, the backbone of the US military. Henri was twelve and playing on a beach in Guam when he first saw one. As he splashed around in the warm clear water early one morning, a Galaxy soared overhead, turning the sea black with shadow. Three minutes later there was another, then another, like clockwork all morning. In the afternoon they were back, approaching from the opposite direction, shaking the beach, searing his ears with their exquisite sound.
It would be many years before he realised those jets had been ferrying men and supplies from Guam’s Andersen Air Force Base to the misguided folly in Vietnam. He wonders if he saw this particular plane as a boy. Henri knows it was one of the first built, delivered to the air force in September 1970, the last of the ‘A’ models to be retired. It landed at the adjacent Davis-Monthan Air Force Base earlier that afternoon, was towed to AMARC and left at this spot. Tomorrow air-force personnel planned to dismantle and inspect it to determine the life expectancy of the remaining fleet.
The Mack pulls up beside the Galaxy’s fuselage and is swallowed by the left wing’s shadow. To the right is a small hangar. No lights on, nobody at home. Protecting thousands of acres of decommissioned aircraft, many in pieces, none airworthy, was not a US military priority. During the day there were dozens of employees at AMARC, but at night only three soldiers guarded the sprawling complex without the aid of video surveillance. Even so, Henri knows there’ll be plenty of security soon enough.
The Frenchman checks his vintage Rolex GMT-Master, a fortieth birthday present from his wife, then turns to Cobbin and Gerhard. ‘Ten minutes.’
They nod, no need for words. They have painstakingly rehearsed exactly what will happen next. They each slip on their two-way radio headsets then climb out of the Mack.