Kurt knew something about the NSA’s space operations. “X-37,” he said, referring to the well-known NSA craft that was launched on a rocket and returned to Earth by gliding back down similar to the space shuttle.
“No,” Gowdy said. “A vehicle we call the Nighthawk. Its official designation is VXA-01. It’s the first of its kind. In a way, the X-37B was a prototype, a test bed used to develop certain technologies. The new craft is twice the size of the X-37 and far more capable.”
“I’m impressed,” Kurt said. “I’ve never heard of it. Not even a rumor.”
“We’ve done our work keeping it quiet,” Gowdy admitted. “By flying the X-37 under mysterious circumstances, we’ve been able to occupy the public’s attention and give them something to be suspicious about. In the meantime, we’ve built Nighthawk and had it up in space for over three years. Unfortunately, it went off course on reentry and failed to answer commands.”
“So . . . are we worried about losing the warp technology to the Klingons?” Kurt asked.
Gowdy sat in stony silence before answering. “There are no warp drives,” Gowdy said without a trace of humor, “but the Nighthawk is the most advanced aircraft ever built. It was constructed with materials and technology that are two generations beyond anything the European, Chinese or Russian space agencies are using. It’s a revolutionary aircraft. I say aircraft because it looks like a plane, but, make no mistake, it is a spacecraft, capable of maneuvering in orbit, acting autonomously and completing missions the shuttle never dreamed of. And while it doesn’t have a warp drive, it does possess a revolutionary ion propulsion system that could be used for Earth–Moon travel and cut our transit time to Mars in half.”
Kurt nodded. “And you want us to look for it.”
“You’ll be part of a team responsible for a specific sector in the search zone. Naval assets from Pearl and San Diego will be working close by.”
As Gowdy spoke, Rudi Gunn unlocked a briefcase, pulled out a file and passed it to Kurt.
Using the edge of his palm, Kurt broke the imprinted seal. Inside, he found information about the Nighthawk: trajectory data, time sequencing and a map.
“As you can see,” Gowdy continued, “we lost track of it halfway between French Polynesia and the South American coastline. Based on the last telemetry response, and the vehicle’s speed and altitude, we believe it came down somewhere east of the Galápagos Islands.”
Kurt studied a satellite photo with red lines overlaid upon it. The lines showed a widening cone of probability that began just east of the Galápagos. It stretched and widened in a sideways V toward Ecuador and Peru. A scale suggested the calculated odds of the Nighthawk coming down in any particular section.
“Does it have an emergency beacon?” Kurt asked, still studying the map.
“Yes,” Gowdy replied, “but we’re not receiving a signal.”
“So we’ll be looking for debris,” Kurt concluded.
“No,” Gowdy said firmly.
Kurt looked up.
“We have reason to believe the Nighthawk landed intact,” Gowdy said.
Gowdy went on to explain the autoland system and how the internal processors would take over the flight controls once commands from the base at Vandenberg were cut off. He mentioned the word confidence at least three times but never gave a reason why the autoland system should be working when so many other systems on board had failed.
Kurt let it go. “What resources do we have for the job?”
At this point, Gunn took over the conversation. “Everything we could get our hands on,” he said. “NUMA has three vessels in the area. One coming up from the Chilean coast and two coming through the Panama Canal from the Gulf of Mexico.”
Another sheet of paper came Kurt’s way. It listed the various ships.
“Paul and Gamay Trout are already on the Catalina,” Gunn said, referring to two of the most trusted members of NUMA’s Special Projects team. “They were down off the coast of Chile doing an ecological study. They’ll be within range in about fifteen hours.”
“That’s fortunate,” Kurt said.
Rudi nodded. “The Jonestown and the Condor will transit the canal and arrive thirty-six hours later.”
“Thirty-six hours sounds a little optimistic,” Kurt said, looking at the relative positions of the ships. “It’s nearly thirty hours’ sailing time and the canal looks like a freeway at rush hour this time of year. Ships can wait as long as two days to transit.”
“They’re getting a priority hall pass,” Rudi said. “Since NUMA helped prevent the destruction of the canal a few years ago, we’ve had a gold star status anytime we stop by.”
“Ah,” Kurt said, recalling hearing about the operation from Dirk Pitt himself. The fact that NUMA’s Director had been personally involved in thwarting the destruction paid dividends to them all.
Gowdy broke in. “NUMA will be in charge of the southern and eastern patrol areas. In three days, a salvage fleet from the Navy’s 131st Salvage Squadron will arrive from San Diego to search the western half of the target zone, while additional vessels from the Pacific Fleet will cover the western edge of the search area.”
Kurt was looking at the list of vessels. Aside from two auxiliary ships out of San Diego, they were all warships. Destroyers and frigates. “What’s with all the firepower?”
“Unintentional consequence of logistics,” Gowdy said. “This section of the Pacific is a long way from everywhere. Forty-five hundred miles from Pearl. Twenty-nine hundred miles from San Diego. These were the closest, fastest ships equipped to search for underwater targets. Additional salvage vessels are following, but they can’t keep up and are being left behind. In addition, P-3 Orion and P-8A aircraft are crisscrossing the search zone, dropping sonobuoys and other autonomous units to assist the search.”
There was some logic to that, but it suggested panic. “That’s a large fleet,” Kurt said. “Are you sure that’s the best way to do this?”
“What do you mean?”
Kurt closed the folder and leaned back in his chair. “I have to assume you want to keep this quiet. A dozen American ships and a swarm of aircraft surrounding the Galápagos Islands might be tipping your hand. The tortoises might think we’re invading.”
Gowdy nodded appreciatively on-screen.
Kurt made a suggestion. “We could always publish a story that NUMA’s doing an ecological study. Put that out in the press and no one would think twice about a few extra research vessels moving into the area. Once they’re on station, we could deploy their helicopters and survey boats and search to our hearts’ content. All without drawing any attention to ourselves.”
“Not a bad idea,” Gowdy said. “Except we think the Chinese and Russian intelligence services are already clued in. Within hours of the Nighthawk’s vanishing, we noted course changes from several vessels belonging to each country. We’re tracking them. I think you can figure out where they’re headed.”
“The Galápagos Islands,” Kurt said.
“Exactly,” Gowdy replied. “Right for the heart of our search area.”
That suggested other complications. “Do you think they’ll interfere?”
Gowdy shrugged. “I’ve given up trying to predict what our Chinese and Russian friends will do. My job is to keep them from doing it. But after that mess in Ukraine and all the problems in the South China Sea, I don’t put anything past anyone. And once you understand how badly they want what we have, you’ll come to the same conclusion. According to our studies, the Russians have fallen so far behind in technology that they’re in danger of getting lapped. The Chinese are a little better off because they have an army of engineers over there and more spies than you can shake a stick at—but they still operate without much ingenuity and are probably a full decade behind our latest designs. Add in the fact that both countries prefer to catch up by stealing what we have
rather than coming up with their own ideas and you can imagine them licking their chops.”
Kurt understood that concept quite well. Spying and stealing have always been a big part of Russian and Chinese research efforts. “There’s a reason the Russian space shuttle Buran looks exactly like the one we designed. A reason their Blackjack bomber is almost indistinguishable from the B-1.”
“Yes there is,” Gowdy said. “In a way, I can’t blame them. In their shoes, I’d do the same thing. But we’re not in their shoes and there are no circumstances under which they’re going to be allowed to get their hands on this vehicle.”
“What if they find it first?” Kurt asked, wondering if Gowdy was talking about a shooting war.
“No circumstances,” he repeated.
The words were cold and unyielding and Gowdy didn’t bat an eye as he spoke them, but that brought to mind another question.
“So why didn’t you just blow it up?” Kurt said, putting the folder away. “Prevent any chance of them finding more than a fragment of the hull?”
Gowdy looked stricken.
“I have to assume it had a self-destruct mechanism?” Kurt asked. “Why not blow it to pieces and avoid all this?”
“We tried,” Gowdy croaked. “The self-destruct command failed. A review of the telemetry data shows a complete loss of communications just before the command was initiated.”
“A game of inches,” Rudi Gunn added. “Or fractions of a second.”
Gowdy nodded.
Kurt turned his attention back to the effort. “How many ships are the Chinese and Russians sending?”
“We count nine Russian vessels, including a few warships. Twelve Chinese ships. All military. Including their newly built aircraft carrier.”
“Thirty ships, from three different countries,” Kurt noted. “All desperately looking for the same thing in a fairly restricted area. What could possibly go wrong?”
“Anything and everything,” Gowdy grunted. “We’re in a race against time. Every day that craft is missing, the danger increases.”
Something in Gowdy’s tone struck Kurt oddly, as did the stony silence of the Air Force officer, who hadn’t said a single word.
“We’re the closest,” Gunn said, jumping in. “NUMA will be on scene days before anyone else. I’ll bet you a bottle of Don Julio tequila that NUMA locates the Nighthawk before either our Navy or the Russian and Chinese fleets.”
Gowdy nodded appreciatively. “I’ll see your bottle of Don Julio and raise you a box of Cuban cigars if you can find it before our adversaries arrive.”
Kurt was listening and thinking at the same time. With only three ships, two of which wouldn’t be there until at least a day after his own arrival, chances of success were slim. But then, Kurt had spent a lifetime figuring out ways to change the odds. As he studied the map, an idea jumped out at him, a way to up his chances and deal a blow to the Russian and Chinese fleets all at the same time.
He looked up with a roguish grin on his face. “In that case, someone better call Fidel and ask him to start picking out the best tobacco leaves on the island. Because if the Nighthawk is out there, I’m going to find it for you. And I’m going to do it before we see any foreign flags on the horizon.”
Gowdy looked on blankly, probably considering Kurt’s boast nothing more than a false bravado. But Kurt had an ace up his sleeve. An ace and an elephant.
4
Beijing, China
Constantin Davidov sat in the back of an American-made sedan as it moved along a crowded Chinese highway through a canyon of high-rise office towers built from Brazilian steel, Korean glass and cement imported from Australia.
Throngs of people moved along the sidewalks. Armies of them massed at each intersection like opposing battalions. They surged toward each other at the changing of a light but mixed and meshed and passed on through without incident as they traveled to a hundred different destinations.
Street vendors and shops by the hundreds catered to them with food brought in from the countryside. Construction engineers dug up the road to bury new pipelines that would feed the city’s ever-growing need for water and natural gas, while smog from exhaust pipes and coal-fired power plants choked the air, blotting out the light of the noonday sun.
“How can you stand it?” Davidov muttered to himself.
A Chinese man sitting beside him overheard and looked appropriately offended. Li Ying was a liaison officer in the People’s Liberation Army, a captain in a pea-green uniform with gold stars on his shoulder boards and a smattering of ribbons above his breast pocket. “This is globalism,” Ying said. “The engine that drives the Chinese economy.”
A look of disgust settled on Davidov’s face. As far as he could tell, globalism and the interlinking of the world’s economies was nothing but a disaster in the making, a disease slowly infecting the cells of the world’s collective body. Everything, everywhere, all the time. At least that seemed to be the motto. Personally, he longed for simpler days.
The Chinese officer continued. “China has transformed in a single generation from a backwater land to a global powerhouse. We’re very proud of what we’ve built.”
“Pride goeth before the fall,” Davidov said.
The sentiment was lost on his host. And why not? Why should Ling worry? He was twenty-eight. A captain in the army of an ascending nation. Like his country, Ling was bold and brash at this point in his life, undaunted by decades of work that might lead nowhere.
“At least we move forward,” Ling said. “Russia seems to do nothing but regress these days.”
Davidov couldn’t argue with that. Forty years prior, he’d come to China with a group of Soviet officials. They found no cars on the street, few working phones and nowhere decent to stay—even by Moscow standards, which at the time were dreadfully low.
Back then, the Chinese bought Russian MiGs and patrol boats with borrowed rubles. Back then, Russian oil, coal and financial aid were a lifeline for Mao’s hermit kingdom, but now . . . Now, even a pitiful, junior-grade officer could be rude to a Russian emissary.
The sedan pulled up to a modern, angular building. Walls of gray cement, broken by narrow, vertical bands of glass. The design was dramatic; it brought to mind a medieval castle, complete with slits in the wall for archers to fire through.
A white-gloved soldier stepped forward and opened the door. He stood at rigid attention as Ling climbed out and Davidov followed.
“This way,” Ling said.
“I know where to go,” Davidov said. “Stay with the car.”
“Excuse me?”
“Trust me. This won’t take long,” Davidov said. “You can even keep the engine running,” he suggested, glancing up to the brownish sky. “Add to your precious globalism.”
A minute later, Davidov was inside the building, his shoes making distinctive clicks on the cultured granite floor of the Ministry building. He was ushered into a conference room. The man he’d come to see waited for him.
“You’re free to speak in here,” General Zhang, of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, insisted.
“Thank you for the reassurance,” Davidov said. He was quite certain the room was bugged. It didn’t matter. He had no intention of disclosing anything General Zhang didn’t already know. “We have word on the American space plane,” he announced. “Confirmation.”
“And?” Zhang said excitedly. “What happened? Did the Americans regain control?”
“They tried,” Davidov said. “But our transmission was closer and more powerful than theirs. We overrode their commands. Unfortunately, it becomes difficult to ascertain what happened after that.”
“Difficult?” Zhang crossed his arms. “Did the Nighthawk reach California or not?”
Davidov offered a subtle smile. “You know the answer to that as well as I do, Zhang: the craft did not make it home. But our
team was unsuccessful in tracking it to a final location.”
The two men stood quietly. The tall, lean Russian on one side, his shorter, stockier host on the other.
Davidov was a horseman whose ancestors had ridden the frozen tundra. He had long, flowing limbs and preferred speed and stealth over massed strength—a cavalryman at heart.
Zhang was shorter, stockier. His muscular build, thick neck and heavy hands creating the look of a powerhouse who could break down walls. A bulldog who moved with the grace of a tank, slowly but inexorably, grinding and pulverizing anything in its path.
Neither was superior or inferior to the other, but they were so different as to be opposites, unable to mix for long without combustion. It made everything tense.
“You expect me to believe that?” Zhang said, a practiced edge in his voice.
Davidov sat down. “Not really. Though it is the truth. You had ships on the flight path. Spy trawlers in the area. You know as well as I do that the Nighthawk is invisible to radar.”
“You must have some data,” Zhang proposed, trying to pry anything out of the Russian. “Some suggestion to the ultimate outcome.”
Davidov shrugged. “Perhaps. But if there is anything else, the men in Moscow have not seen fit to share it with me.”
“Then why have you come?”
“To inform you that our partnership is over.”
This time, Zhang seemed surprised. Score one for the swiftness of the cavalry.
“The mission has failed,” Davidov added. “All our efforts have been for naught. So, I’ve been sent to officially dissolve our joint enterprise.”
“Surely we don’t need to part ways so quickly,” Zhang said. “We could talk some more. Smooth out our differences. Over dinner, perhaps.”
“I would enjoy that,” Davidov said. “Except that, as we speak, your salvage vessels continue at flank speed toward the possible crash site.”