Orbital Disruption Read online

  “Yes, boss?” he said, catching his breath.

  “I’ve got another special job for you, Bobby. My friends need to find a sailboat that’s gone missing. I need you to help them find it. Are the survey drones being used today?”

  “I think Jose was planning to use them at Port Elizabeth,” Bobby replied.

  “Tell Jose that will need to wait,” Maggie instructed. “We need to do this first and I need you to handle it, Bobby. I’m doing it as a personal favor for my friends so don’t bill it to any of the projects - just log it as a test.”

  “Understood, Ms Chan,” Bobby nodded. “Let me grab the iPad.”

  Bobby walked quickly up the steps to the trailer, entered, and returned a moment later carrying a small tablet computer.

  He turned to Anna and Sergey.

  “Can you describe the sailboat you’re looking for?”

  “It’s an Oceanis 45,” Anna replied. “The hull is white and the name is Blue Orchid. The registration is NJ 3717 ZW.”

  Bobby tapped an icon on the tablet, typed a few words, scrolled down and then handed the tablet to Anna.

  “Is this the model you’re talking about?”

  Anna looked at the screen and saw a browser window with www.beneteau.com in the address bar. The French sailboat manufacturer’s website listed several models including the Oceanis 45.

  “Yes,” Anna said as she handed the tablet back to Bobby. “That’s the one.”

  Bobby selected an image of the Oceanis 45, copied it, opened another app, and pasted the image into it. He typed the name Blue Orchid and checked a few boxes.

  “Where was the boat last seen?” Bobby asked.

  “It was at a marina in Jersey City last night,” Anna answered.

  On the next screen Bobby opened a map of the region centered on their current location in Secaucus, New Jersey. With his finger he drew a complex geometric shape that encapsulated the waters of New York harbor, lower New York Bay, the Hudson River and Long Island Sound.

  “I’ll start with the nearby areas around New York City. We should be able to cover that in a couple hours. If we don’t find it, I’ll expand the search up and down the coast.”

  “That sounds great, Bobby,” Anna said. “Thank you.”

  “Sure thing, ma’am.” Bobby replied and then turned to Maggie. “I better call Jose now. He’s going to be wondering why the drones are deploying early.”

  “Ok, Bobby,” Maggie said. “There will be an extra something for you in this month’s paycheck if you find it by noon.”

  Bobby smiled and said, “Thank you, boss!” before trotting up the stairs and into the trailer.

  As soon as Bobby had closed the door, Sergey reached into his pocket and retrieved a small mobile phone. He handed it to Maggie.

  “You can reach Anna with the first number in the contact list,” he explained.

  “And how do I reach you?” she asked Sergey.

  Sergey just chuckled and looked at Anna.

  “Thank you so much, Maggie,” Anna said. “You can consider your favor repaid.”

  “Oh, I’ll always owe you, “ Maggie replied. “But I’ll be happy to let you buy me dinner if you bring your brother along, too.”

  Anna laughed and shook Maggie’s hand. “Ok, deal!”

  Sergey shook hands with Maggie as well. He noted that she held on for just a moment before letting go.

  “I’m looking forward to it!” Maggie said and winked again.

  “As am I,” Sergey replied and smiled.

  Maggie returned to the trailer as Anna and Sergey climbed into their car. As Sergey started the engine he remarked, “You have an interesting friend, Anna. Can we trust her?”

  “Oh, Maggie is trustworthy. She’s aggressive about getting what she wants and she bends the rules as much as anyone in the construction business around here. But she knows the value of loyalty.”

  “She owes you for something big, doesn’t she.”

  Sergey didn’t state it as a question. Anna paused before answering.

  “A few years ago a contractor tried to cheat her on a deal. When she demanded payment they sent a few thugs to rough her up. A few bruises and a warning about the perils of being a woman in a man’s business. We had a friend in common who asked me to help. So I helped.”

  Sergey raised his eyebrows a bit. “I guess this involved something more than a stern scolding?”

  Anna looked out the window. The endless procession of warehouses, data centers and factory outlet stores was occasionally broken by a patch of reed-covered marsh.

  “The old Italian mobsters were right, you know. The meadowlands are an excellent place to get rid of a few bodies.”

  Sergey glanced over at his sister and she looked at him.

  “Like Maggie said, we ladies need to stick together.”

  Twenty-Three

  The cry of a seagull woke Dennis. He was still sitting in a low slouch on a padded bench seat, his back against the gently curved hull of the Blue Orchid. The boat swayed gently from side to side. Dennis glanced out the porthole and saw water stretching for many miles and a thin strip of land on the horizon. It was clear that they weren’t moving, though.

  Tabitha sat on the other side of the table from him, a laptop open, her face engrossed in the screen. There was nobody else in the main room of the Blue Orchid’s modest cabin but the hatch to the deck was open. A seagull perched on the combing and looking down at Dennis. The gull cried again, loudly.

  Dennis sat up and the bird flew away.

  “Good morning, Tab.”

  Tabitha grunted but didn’t answer.

  Dennis’s back ached from sleeping in an awkward position so he stood up, narrowly avoided hitting his head and climbed the steps up through the hatch.

  Upon stepping onto the deck of the Blue Orchid, Dennis stretched, yawned and looked around. On one side of the sailboat the shore was just a few hundred yards away and it appeared they were anchored in a bay of some sort. In the other direction the shore was much farther. Judging by the height of the sun above the water, Dennis guessed it that was still fairly early in the morning. That meant that the sun would be in the east or southeast and that the nearby shore was to the south.

  “How did you sleep?”

  Dennis turned around. Esteban was sitting on the deck above the main cabin, leaning onto the lifelines, his legs hanging over the side and his face in the sun.

  “I’ve had worse,” Dennis replied. He stepped up onto the deck that wrapped around the edge of the boat and then sat down next to Esteban. “Where are we?”

  “We’re in Long Island Sound. In Smithtown Bay to be precise. That’s Long Island there,” Esteban said, pointing south away from the boat. “Connecticut is over there to the north,” Esteban gestured behind him toward the more distant shore.

  “We should be able to anchor here for a while,” he continued. “Tab can access decent WiFi signals from some of the houses over there on the shore. As long as she’s careful it’s pretty unlikely anyone will notice her or be able to trace her back here. We’ll move to a new location once or twice each day just to avoid drawing any attention. Lots of sailboats coming and going through here in the summer, though, so I doubt anyone will notice us.”

  “Sounds like a good plan for now,” Dennis nodded.

  “We’ll need to dock somewhere to pick up supplies tonight. I don’t have a lot of food aboard at the moment for the four of us. But aside from needing to occasionally stop for food, fresh water, and fuel we can stay off the grid more or less indefinitely.”

  “Is that something you need to do very often?”

  Esteban chuckled.

  “I don’t know what Tab told you about me but no, I don’t generally find myself harboring fugitives.”

  “Actually, she never mentioned you before last night. She doesn’t really talk about her past at all. I gather that she used to work for the government and that she left under difficult circumstances but she never told me much about it. A
nd I didn’t ask.”

  “Difficult circumstances,” Esteban repeated and smiled. “Yeah, I guess you could call it that.”

  “I was told by a mutual friend that it was something I’d have approved of. So I didn’t think much of it. But that was before one friend got blown up and two people got shot in my office. And before I was on the run from the law in the sailboat of someone I’ve never met before last night. So, yeah. I’m a little more interested in Tab’s background now. And yours.”

  Esteban turned and looked at Dennis. He paused for a long moment before making a decision.

  “I’m a linguist and Tab’s a communications specialist. We’d been working with local translators on a mission in… a place that the US government isn’t officially doing things in.”

  Dennis nodded.

  “Tab and I were stationed at an air force base in a neighboring country but we talked to these translators every day. We got to know them. People who were putting their lives on the line to help our guys on the ground. People who had regular jobs and families and everything. But they believed in what we were doing. They thought we were the good guys so they took incredible risks.”

  Esteban looked away from Dennis.

  “We fucked them. The situation on the ground got dicey, there was a change in priorities and someone higher up decided to end the mission. They pulled our people out but they didn’t do a damn thing for the locals who had helped us. They’d been promised that if things got bad, we’d get them and their families out. Bring them to the States. But when the time came the decision was made to just cut them all loose.”

  “That’s awful,” Dennis said. Esteban was still looking out over the small waves toward the shore.

  “I was pissed off and complained to our boss and to the next couple bosses up the chain of command. That didn’t accomplish much. Tab was beyond pissed off, though. She took matters into her own hands.”

  Esteban turned to face Dennis. There was a hint of a smile on his face.

  “She called up our contacts and told them to get out of town and that we’d provide air cover.”

  “Air cover?”

  “Yeah, that was the best part. Tab ‘borrowed’ an MQ-9 Reaper. An armed military drone.”

  “Holy fuck,” Dennis said softly.

  “Yeah. She hacked the schedule in operations so that there was an extra drone in the air that day. And then she reprogrammed it to fly a different route. She had our contacts - our friends - gather up their families into a few vehicles and drive as a convoy to the border. Then she tasked the Reaper to patrol overhead. The local government and tribal warlords knew we had drones in country even though we’d officially been denying it. We’d taken out several targets just that month. All unofficially, of course. But everyone knew to fear those drones. So when our friends got to the border crossing the guys running the checkpoint looked up and saw an armed American drone buzzing overhead. Needless to say they decided to let them through.”

  “Holy fuck,” Dennis swore again.

  “Our friends made it out with their lives and their families. And Tab didn’t actually drop a Hellfire on anyone. Unfortunately someone caught on that there’d been an extra drone in the air that day and they figured out pretty quickly what she’d done.”

  “Shit.”

  “Well, it could have gone very badly but in the end, the higher ups decided that prosecuting Tab would make the whole sorry operation - and their own incompetence - public so instead they declared that her actions had been part of the official mission all along. They moved the translators and their families back to the US and they gave Tab a medal.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup. And then they very quietly revoked her security clearances and very firmly suggested that she should resign and never, ever, work for the government again. That medal is somewhere on the bottom of the Potomac River still.”

  Dennis looked at Esteban and then shook his head.

  “Jesus. That’s intense. But I can kind of see Tab doing something like that.”

  Esteban turned his gaze back out to the water.

  “Yeah, she’s mellowed out over the years but deep down she still cares a lot. A lot more than she probably should. More than I ever could, at least.”

  Dennis sighed.

  “Oh, and Dennis,” Esteban said, looking at him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t tell Tab I told you that story, ok?”

  “I won’t.”

  “Thanks.”

  Dennis was about to ask what they should eat for breakfast when he heard a shout from inside the Blue Orchid.

  “Oh, fuck no!”

  Esteban was somehow already on his feet, had leapt over Dennis and was moving down the steep stairs into the main cabin before Dennis could even stand up. By the time Dennis got down the stairs he saw Tabitha and Esteban staring at Tabitha’s laptop. Tabitha’s fists were clenched and her face was red.

  “What the hell?” Molly asked as she stepped out of the forward stateroom. Her hair was a frazzled mess, obviously she’d just woken up.

  “Yeah, what’s going on, Tab?” Dennis asked as he joined Tabitha and Esteban at the laptop.

  Several windows were open. Dennis recognized one of the windows as Wireshark, a utility for analyzing network traffic. The other windows appeared to be code editors but Dennis didn’t recognize the language immediately.

  “That fucker beat us,” Tabitha said, unclenching her fists and then clenching them again. “Ruben St. James switched off the receiver on the second asteroid.”

  “Second asteroid?” Dennis asked. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Tabitha replied, unclenching her fists again and laying her palms flat on the table. She took a deep breath.

  “Like I said yesterday, I could see that Excelsior was using the communications ship at asteroid 207302 as a relay to transmit messages to another location. But I couldn’t tell where they were being transmitted or what they contained without the private key carried by their ships. We got that key yesterday and I’d started to decrypt traffic before Anna Ivanov came in and started shooting.”

  “Yeah, I remember that part,” Dennis said and shuddered slightly.

  “This morning I finished the decryption and based on destination addresses I realized they don’t just have a few extra ships out there. They have fifteen extra ships. Even more than they had at the asteroid we captured.”

  “Oh shit,” Molly muttered.

  “I was thinking that the first thing we should do would be to change the private key on the second asteroid since we still have the ability to contact it via the relay we captured. So I sent that message out this morning and got no response. I then checked the most recently intercepted messages that Excelsior is broadcasting. We’ve reprogrammed the craft we captured to ignore them, of course. That was the first thing we did after we captured their asteroid. But we still log them and send them back so that we can see what they're up to. And late last night - about two hours after Anna shot up our office, Excelsior broadcast instructions via their secret checksums channel telling all of their ships to turn off their receivers.”

  “But how could the message have gotten to the second asteroid if the relay we captured at the first asteroid wasn’t forwarding it?” Molly asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tabitha replied.

  “Ruben is desperate,” Dennis interjected. “He was desperate enough to send Anna to our office to kill us. So he probably broadcast the message directly from Earth to the second asteroid. That will make it easier for people to figure out that there’s a second asteroid and where to look for it. But maybe he thought that was a risk worth taking. Especially if he knew that we had logs of his secret communications and the ability to decrypt them.”

  Esteban nodded. Molly was silent. Tabitha held her breath and then exhaled.

  “I think you’re right, Dennis. That fucker knew we were going to find his second asteroid so he shut off communications, blocking us out.”
/>   “But why?” Molly asked. “Wouldn’t he lose the asteroid too?”

  “I don’t know,” Tabitha answered. “But I think we need to quickly find out.”

  She looked up at Molly.

  “The first thing we need to do is to figure out the trajectory of that second rock,” Tabitha continued. “Maybe Ruben is thinking he can get it to run dark for awhile and that he can get a ship out to physically recover it kind of like what we did to the first one.”

  “Do you have bearing and time data for the messages that were forwarded from the relay ship?” Molly asked, squeezing past Esteban and sitting down next to Tabitha on the small bench.

  “Yes, I have several months of traffic,” Tabitha replied. She opened another window. “And corresponding antenna angles and starfield calibrations here.”

  “Ok, good,” Molly said. “We should be able to establish a pretty wide parallax baseline using these timestamps.”

  Molly scrolled through some data and then asked, “Do we have network access to Jovian’s servers by any chance?”

  “Yes,” Tabitha replied. “Some guy in one of those McMansions on the shore is running insecure WiFi. So we’re tunneled in through there to Jovian’s VPN. Bandwidth is slow as hell but it should be secure.”

  “Cool. I should be able to compute a trajectory in just a few minutes...”

  “While we wait, how about I make us some breakfast,” Esteban suggested cheerfully. “Does everyone like scrambled eggs and bacon?”

  Twenty-Four

  Marsha Saunders had been a Special Agent in the FBI for more than twenty years. She’d been the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the San Francisco field office for the past three years. She’d led raids on the heavily armed meth lab of a notorious drug gang, the corporate headquarters of a bank suspected of money laundering and a vast factory complex that was making weapons for the black market. But she’d never seen anything like this.

  Just two days earlier she’d been briefed by her boss in DC about a possible link between a terrorist network and an aerospace startup down in Silicon Valley. A week ago she wouldn’t have taken it seriously but… a week ago she’d have put the risk of a car bomb assassination in Sunnyvale as slim. So she’d started preparations. And then overnight she’d received word that new evidence confirmed that this firm, Excelsior Launch Systems, was almost certainly involved in a major plot and that the matter was serious enough to warrant the attention late at night of the FBI Director himself.