Don Pendleton - Dark Star

“Damn, the news media has the story,” Brognola muttered irritably. “But I guess we couldn’t kept it from them for very long.”

“I did my best,” Price said, not glancing that way. “At least I have most of the news channels convinced it was merely a fuel leak explosion and not a terrorist attack.”

“How did you manage that?”

“Had the NASA spokesperson deny it vigorously…before they could ask.”

In spite of the situation, the big Fed almost grinned. “Yep, that would do it, all right.”

She shrugged again. “It usually does.”

Reaching the far end of the corridor, they hurried to one of the electric cars that would take them along the underground passageway that led to the Annex building. Moments later, after passing through security, Price and Brognola headed to the Computer Room.

A hushed excitement filled the large room with palpable force. A soft breeze murmured from the wall vents, the pungent smell of strong coffee came from a small kitchenette, and the soft sound of muted rock music floated on the air. Hunched over elaborate workstations, four people were typing madly on keyboards.

“Damn it, there are too many of them!” Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman growled, callused hands pushing his wheelchair a little closer to the wall monitor.

“And this isn’t even half of them,” Carmen Delahunt said, her face hidden behind a VR helmet as her gloved hands fondled the empty air opening computer files on the other side of the world.

“Explain,” Kurtzman demanded, turning the heavy chair in her direction.

“A lot of these companies don’t have computerized files for me to hack,” Delahunt replied. “Some are actually using handwritten ledgers, for God’s sake! There is no way that I can ever track down all of the shipments.”

“Shipments of what?” Price demanded as she advanced closer.

“Air,” Kurtzman said, briefly glancing at her, then turning to wheel back to his workstation. His desk was a mess, covered with papers, CDs, hastily scribbled notes and several books on military history with handwritten corrections in the margins. A steaming mug of coffee stood next to his keyboard.

“Air?” Brognola demanded, crossing his arms.

“Liquid air, actually,” Kurtzman explained, locking the wheels into place. “We did a spectral analysis of the MPEG from the cell phone and found out the X-ship was using conventional rocket fuel.”

“LOX-LOH?” Price demanded skeptically. “But that’s impossible! The combination doesn’t give enough energy to power an SSO!”

“Which means they have some way to boost the reaction, but there’s no denying the facts,” Kurtzman retorted gruffly, tapping a few buttons. “See for yourself.”

With a flicker the main wall screen revealed a wind rainbow with a few interspersed black bars.

“See those color absorption lines?” the cyber wizard said pointing a thick finger at the black bars. “That’s oxygen and hydrogen, no doubt about it.”

“Can they be tricking the sensors somehow?” Brognola asked hesitantly.

Reaching for the mug of coffee, Kurtzman paused to arch an eyebrow. “Trick the visible spectrum?” he asked, sounding incredulous. “No, Hal, the things are using LOX-LOH as fuel. That’s a fact. How they get those reaction pressures is beyond me, though. Hunt is working on a few ideas, but has nothing yet.”

Hearing his name, Professor Hunting Wethers looked up from his workstation for a moment, then returned to the complex mathematical equations scrolling across his monitor. The side monitors were full of three-dimensional images of rocket engines and charts of shock-diamond explosion pulses inside the exhaust flames.

“It doesn’t matter how the terrorists are boosting the engine power of the X-ships,” Price said. “What is important is that if they’re using regular fuels, then they just refuel after every attack.” She paused. “Which means they must have refueling stations hidden all over the world, mountaintops, in the middle of a forest or a desert, anywhere at all. Distance means nothing to these ships.”

“That’s why you’re checking into industrial air plants,” Brognola added, his interest piqued. “To try to track down any recent shipments of liquid oxygen.”

“Close enough,” Kurtzman said. “Only it’s—”

“Hydrogen,” Delahunt interrupted, her gloved hands brushing aside firewalls and massaging access codes. “There’s too many medical uses for liquid oxygen, so hydrogen is much easier to track.”

“Anything usable yet?” Brognola prompted.

“No,” the woman replied curtly, her frustration obvious. “There are simply too many air plants in the world.”

“Roughly a double deuce of them worldwide,” Kurtzman added.

Mentally, Price translated the figure. “Twenty-two thousand plants?”

“At least. Lots of uses for compressed air, you know. Hell, we pack munitions in pure argon, and use liquid halogen in our fire extinguishers! And who’s to say the terrorists haven’t built one for themselves in Borneo or Outer Mongolia.”

“Liquid hydrogen…what an interesting possibility,” a voice murmured. “Yes, that might just work.”

“What do you have, Akira?” Kurtzman demanded, twisting in his chair while setting down his empty mug.

Over at the third workstation, a handsome youth of Japanese ancestry thoughtfully blew a bubble of chewing gum before answering. “I’ve been considering the inability of the heat-seekers to attack to the X-ships,” Tokaido said, unwrapping a fresh piece of bubble gum. Briefly he inspected the sugary piece before sliding it into his mouth. “The only possible answer is liquid nitrogen.”

Frowning, Kurtzman was about to ask a question, then his face brightened. “You mean, a defusement pattern, like Looking Glass?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Damn, that’s clever,” Kurtzman muttered. “Yes, I’ll bet that would work as a heat shield. Not for very long, but obviously for long enough. These things travel so fast.”

“Speed is the key,” Tokaido confirmed, tapping a button before a series of charts flashed into existence on the wall screen.

Price and Brognola looked hard at the diagram. They both knew that Looking Glass was the code name for the 747 jumbo jet used as the mobile headquarters for SAC, the Strategic Air Command, the people who controlled all of the nuclear weapons in the nation’s arsenal. The 747 was heavily armed, and the Air Force had boasted for decades that it could not be shot down. Studying the screen, they now knew why. The moment radar registered an incoming missile, Looking Glass would automatically release a stream of liquid nitrogen that chilled the air around the jet engines, momentarily masking their heat signature. With nothing to lock on to, the enemy missile would simply sail right past the mobile headquarters.

“Doesn’t Air Force One use something similar?” Price asked.

“Sure, the Secret Service invented the idea.”

“How much liquid nitrogen would an X-ship need for this tactic?” Brognola demanded. “Those big engines must be hotter than a hellfire barbecue.”

“At least,” Tokaido replied, snapping his gum. “I don’t know how large a crew they carry, but I’d guess—and it’s purely a guess, mind you—that an X-ship is probably only good for two maybe three ventings. After that, they’d be as vulnerable as any ship. Unfortunately…”

“Unfortunately, after the first missile salvo, they take off faster than lightning,” Kurtzman said, working a calculator program on his console. “Damn it, we’d need a concentrated strike of ten Sidewinders launching in unison, overlapping two other salvos, to get a definite kill on the first attack.”