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 it 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 —?’
A short, stout, balding man in his early fifties rises through the opening. He is not Sam. Rhonda stares at him. ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘If you speak again you die.’ The man has a French accent and holds a silenced pistol in his right hand.
Rhonda’s first thought is that it’s a prank, a bad one, something Sam and the White Room boys had cooked up for her because she could be a pain-in-the-arse hardarse.
‘We haven’t got time for this —’
The pistol spits.
Henri turns to Nico and gestures at the two remaining crew members. ‘Tie them down then get started.’ Nico nods and moves into the flight deck.
The Frenchman triggers his walkie and speaks into it: ‘Tam, show them.’ He then pulls a black ski mask from his pocket and slides it on.
Tam is slumped on his side, eyes closed, breathing shallow. The cottonmouth’s poison has all but completed its assignment. All he wants to do is rest but he can’t until he completes one final task. He slowly moves his hand across the MacBook’s keyboard and types three letters.
V I D
Now he can sleep.
The video monitors in Firing Room Four blink out of grey hash and all 180 people gasp as one.
Severson steps forward and studies the monitor. It shows a high, wide-angle image of the crew access arm. Two men stand, wearing black ski masks and holding silenced pistols. On their knees in front of them are astronaut Nigel Dunderfield, Sam ‘the Walrus’ and technician Baz Kay. Their wrists and ankles are bound together with thick zip ties and their mouths are taped shut. To Nigel’s left, lying face down, is Rick Calvin. Severson can see he’s dead.
The White Room’s door judders open. A third man, also wearing a ski mask, backs out onto the crew access arm. He’s short and stout and drags something behind him. Severson can’t see what it is — then he can.