Steve Martini - Trader of secrets

“What do we do?” said Britain.

“Let’s hope that Israeli pilot keeps his transponder turned on,” said Thorpe. “In the meantime, get ahold of drug enforcement. Tell them we’re going to need help. Boots on the ground. The Mexican army, the judicial police, the whole nine yards. But only people they can trust. Any kind of political or law enforcement juice they have with the Mexican government, tell them we may need it all.”

It was a helpless feeling, throwing himself on the mercy of another agency, and burning whatever goodwill the bureau may have amassed with a foreign country. Whatever was happening in Mexico was beyond the reach of the U.S. government unless they were prepared to go to war.

Thorpe picked up the phone. It was not going to be a pleasant conversation. He would have to call the White House and tell Fowler that the bureau had lost whatever information they might have gleaned from Herman Diggs and that the Israeli government appeared to know all about Project Thor.

We decide to time our reconnaissance of the road north of Coba for late afternoon, to drive slowly, and if need be, to wait until dark to take a closer look.

Harry and I select a pair of hundred-power binoculars from a local sporting goods shop. We buy a half-dozen bottles of water, put them in an Igloo container filled with ice, and pick up two large hunting knives for defense along with a handful of road flares, anything that might come in handy if we need help. We would buy guns but we can’t.

Possession of a firearm or even a single round of ammunition by a foreign national in Mexico will net the visitor a long and harsh prison term. Mexico is a testament to the failure of gun laws to curb bloodshed. It has among the most severe firearm restrictions in the world. Yet the country has become a veritable war zone of gun-fueled drug violence. Any Mexican teen with a trigger finger can buy a fully automatic assault rifle and bandoliers of bullets for a few pesos from black marketers. The fact that the transaction is illegal means only that the dead victims are all law abiding.

Since guns are not available to tourists, Harry and I have to make do with what we can find. We settle on two rubber-sling spearguns from one of the dive shops in Playa del Carmen. All the while Joselyn is laughing. “Why don’t you get the mask and flippers and finish out the outfit?”

Harry is in no mood for humor. He throws one of the spearguns onto the front seat and nearly ends up sitting on the tip as he gets into the car.

By three thirty we reach the highway intersection at Coba. I turn, and we head north. We turn off the air conditioner and open the windows so that all of our senses are alive as I drive slowly up the road. Within two miles, the absence of any other traffic becomes obvious to all of us.

“Get the feeling we’re in the land of the dead?” says Harry.

We pass occasional mud-brick huts and small concrete houses, all of them abandoned. Some have their windows broken out with their front doors off the hinges. A few show the scorch marks and black soot of fire.

To Joselyn it reminds her of some of the test sites in the Nevada desert, what she calls “atomic city.” “All that is missing,” she says, “are the mannequins strapped to posts along the road.”

Harry and I are in the front seat. Joselyn is in the back, her head almost on my shoulder as her eyes give the road the thousand-yard stare. The three of us strain constantly to see what is up ahead.

Each curve brings us to a near stop until I can creep around and see what’s there. The foliage is so thick that it crowds the road in places, growing over the edges of the asphalt as if to reclaim the offending ribbon that runs through the jungle.

We come to an intersection with a dirt road off to the right.

“Stop!” Harry is halfway out of the car before I can hit the brake. “If anything happens, don’t wait for me.” With the speargun in hand, he runs cautiously toward the dirt road as Joselyn and I sit in the hot car with windows open, my foot ready to hit the gas pedal to pick him up if I have to. He disappears down the dirt road, and a few seconds later comes back and waves me forward. Neither Joselyn nor I have to ask what Harry is doing. We all know that the road of death is likely to be a dead end. Without saying it, the thought of a vehicle getting behind us and blocking our retreat is ever present.

From the look of it, the pavement has not seen much in the way of recent traffic. There are sizable chunks of rock in the middle of the road.

Harry gets back in the car. “It’s OK,” he says.

About a mile farther on we pass several abandoned and wrecked cars along the shoulder.

“Slow down,” says Harry.

“I’m doing ten miles an hour,” I tell him.

“I know. Slow down.” Harry tightens his grip on the speargun, though what he is going to do with it if we run into trouble I’m not sure.

I tell him to watch where he’s pointing the thing. He tells me to keep my eyes on the road.

Several of the wrecked vehicles have the brown-rusted hue of burned-out metal, their tires gone as if eaten by fire. A light pickup truck, or what is left of it, appears to have been shot to pieces. The driver’s door panel is filigreed with enough holes that it looks like a lace doily.

“Pull over,” says Harry. He wants to check it out.

I pull in front of the burned-out pickup and put the car in park, but I leave the engine running. Harry and I get out.

As we approach the burned-out vehicle, we realize that the passenger compartment is not empty. Slumped across the narrow bench seat is a partially burned and decomposed body.

Part of DARPA’s mission, along with the Department of Defense, was to anticipate new weapon systems and to study and explore them before they could be developed and used by adversaries against the United States. It was for this reason that the Defense Department drew NASA into the web on Project Thor.

If they could prove that the concept of using Near-Earth Objects as weapons was feasible, the plan was to publish the findings. Once it was known to the world, it would become infinitely more difficult for any nation to use asteroids in a preemptive strike against a foe and to hide their actions behind the blind of nature.

Any unexplained catastrophic impact would be followed by a thorough investigation, and the possibility of devastating reprisals would act as a deterrent once more. At least that was the theory. Now they had created a monster. Worse, they had lost control of it.

The information Leffort traded away gave up mastery over the two iron-core asteroids. More damaging was the fact that this transfer of knowledge had been grasped without difficulty by the talent pool of scientists assembled at Coba. Where these people had obtained their training Leffort did not know, possibly Europe, perhaps the United States. It really didn’t matter. The fact remained, they knew their business. They could easily build on what they had been given.

So far they had managed to park and conceal the two asteroids at the lunar Lagrange point without any real assistance from Leffort. The problem he had now was to keep them away as he prepared the final targeting software for the asteroid’s final trajectory around the moon.

Leffort was not at all comfortable doing this. The problem was that the targeting software was not his product. It had been developed by Raji and his crew, none of whom were present. The software was designed to deal with fine-tuning as to deflection, the timing and angle of entry into the earth’s atmosphere, which would be critical for targeting.

Because it was not part of his turf at NASA, Leffort had not spent much time familiarizing himself with many of the aspects of final targeting. His specialty was the selection, harvesting, and macro movements of the asteroids in space. When he turned his back on Raji in Paris and allowed him to be killed, Leffort didn’t realize the box he was putting himself in. Raji’s death suited his purposes because Fareed’s portion of the payment would be wired into Leffort’s account. But now he had to perform. If anything went wrong, Leffort knew he would be held responsible. They would kill him in a heartbeat, or send the Mexican in to do it.