Plague Ship (Oregon Files 5)

Eric typed at his computer and brought up an artist’s rendition of a satellite, unlike anything ever orbited before. The main body was a long cylinder, and ringing it were five enclosed canisters that were more than thirty feet in length. No one needed to see the hammer-and-sickle emblem on its side to know it was Russian. The drawing itself had that distinctive Soviet style that was both pompous and amateurish at the same time.

Eric commenced, “Though its real code name was November Sky, it was known almost exclusively by the nickname Stalin’s Fist. It was launched in 1989 at one of the warmest periods during the Cold War in direct violation of about a dozen treaties.”

“That’s all fine and dandy,” Linc grumbled, “but what in the heck is it?”

“Stalin’s Fist is an OBP, or Orbital Ballistic Projectile, weapon. Our military played around with the idea, calling it Rods from God. The theory is incredibly simple. Inside those tubes are tungsten rods weighting eighteen hundred pounds apiece. When fired, they fall through the atmosphere and hit whatever they are aimed at. Coming in at an orbital velocity of eighteen thousand miles per hour, multiplied by their mass, they hit with the kinetic energy of an atomic bomb, only there is no fallout, and defensive reaction time to such a weapon is cut in half because there is no ascent stage like with a conventional ballistic missile. You might see a flaming object in the sky for a moment, but that’s it. No warning and no chance to escape.”

“The Soviets intended it as a first-strike weapon,” Juan added. “The idea was to target several major Western cities lying along the same longitudinal axis and blame a freak meteor shower. With no radioactive fallout, and the rods themselves vaporized on impact, there would be no way to say it wasn’t. They even had astronomers ready to show doctored photographs of the meteors moments before they entered our atmosphere. With the Western world reeling from losing five cities, the Sovs thought they could roll across the border and Europe would be theirs.”

“How do you know it didn’t work?” Eric asked Juan.

“Because one of my first Black Ops for the agency was to infiltrate the Baikonur Cosmodrome, where it was being launched on an Energia rocket, and disable it. I rigged it so the satellite couldn’t receive a signal from the ground because of earth’s magnetic field. It will only react if the order comes from above the atmosphere.”

“Why not just blow it up on the pad?”

“It was a manned mission. Two cosmonauts went up with it to manually deploy its solar panels. It was three days into the mission before they discovered the bird had been sabotaged.”

Hali asked, “They couldn’t just boost a ground signal?”

“It would have fried the electronics.”

“Couldn’t they have sent a signal from Mir, their space station?”

“They knew the jig was up, so they left it floating around up there in a polar orbit.”

“Do you thin

k it still works?” Eric asked.

“Unless it’s been hit by space debris, it should work perfectly.” Cabrillo was warming to the idea. “Okay, hotshot, you found us an alternative to a nuke. How do you propose we get a transmitter sixty miles into space so we can commandeer the satellite?”

“If you can get me the codes from Ivan Kerikov”—Stone typed again and brought up yet another picture—“I’ll get it up there using this.”

Juan and the others stared slack-jawed for a moment at the audacity of the plan. Cabrillo finally found his voice. “Eric, you got yourself a deal. I’ll call Overholt to arrange your transport. Eddie and Linc, come up with a plan to get those codes from the Russian arms dealer tonight. Then, we leave port.”

“You still want to head to Eos Island? Eddie asked.

“I’m not abandoning Max.”

CHAPTER 30

LOOKING AT HIS REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR, JUAN couldn’t tell where his face ended and Kevin Nixon’s makeup began. He glanced at the enlarged pictures that Kevin had taped to the mirror as a guide and then at his face again. It was a perfect match. The wig he wore was the exact shade, and the style was the same as well.

“Kevin, you’ve outdone yourself,” Juan said, and plucked away the paper collar Kevin had put around his throat to protect the tuxedo shirt he was sporting.

“Making you look like Arab terrorist Ibn al-Asim is nothing. If you’d asked me to make you look like one of their floozies, then you can call me a miracle worker.”

Juan deftly tied his bow tie and shrugged his broad shoulders into a white dinner jacket. While nearly every man looks good in a tux, Cabrillo pulled it off with extra aplomb, even with the padding around his middle that filled out his physique to match al-Asim’s. It didn’t hurt that their surveillance showed the terrorist financier favored Armani. He had a flat holster at the base of his spine for his preferred weapon, the FN, Five-seveN, automatic pistol.

“You look like James Bond with a paunch,” Mike Trono said from across Kevin’s cluttered workroom.

In his best Sean Connery brogue, Juan shot back, “The janitorial staff is to be seen and not heard.”

Mike and Jerry Pulaski were wearing uniforms that matched the janitorial staff of the world-renowned Casino de Monte Carlo, having gotten the designs during a brief afternoon reconnoiter. Kevin and his staff kept hundreds of uniforms, everything from a Russian general to a New Delhi traffic cop to a Parisian zookeeper, so it took them only a few minutes to modify a standard jumpsuit to the style they wanted.

Mike and Jerry carried a heavy-duty trash can on rollers, as well as a rolling mop bucket, and a plastic sign warning SLIPPERY FLOOR.

The chief steward appeared at the doorway, silent and unobtrusive as always. He wore a crisp white apron over his suit. There was a debate among the crew as to whether he changed aprons before leaving the pantry or simply never spilled anything on himself. The odds favored the latter by a huge margin. He held a sealed plastic container in one hand like it was loaded with live snakes, and his face was cleaved by a deep frown.