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“Worst case?”
“The end of all organic life on earth.”
“Well,” Overholt said, “I can safely state you’ve ruined my morning.”
IN THE OREGON’S control room, Eric Stone was carefully watching a monitor. He would pin down the location of the meteorite, then it would seem to move. Using all the various locations, Stone was trying to vector in on the object. Then he punched in more commands on the computer keyboard and glanced at a different screen. Stone was using space the Corporation rented on a commercial satellite.
The image filled the monitor but the sea was hidden by a heavy cloud cover.
“Boss,” he said to Cabrillo, “we need a KH-30 shot. The clouds are too thick.”
The KH-30 was the Defense Department’s latest supersecret satellite. It could peer through clouds, even into the water itself. Stone had been unable to hack into the system despite repeated efforts.
“I’ll ask Overholt the next time we talk,” Cabrillo said. “Maybe he can railroad the National Reconnaissance Office into giving him time. Good try, Stone.”
Hanley was staring at the track map on another monitor. The Oregon was flying through the water but the other vessel had a good head start. “We can overtake them before Scotland anyway, if they stay at the current speed.”
Cabrillo glanced at the monitor. “It looks to me like they’re on a course for the Faeroes.”
“If that’s the case,” Hanley said, “they’ll reach port before we can overtake them.”
Cabrillo nodded and considered this. “What’s the location of our jets?”
Hanley pulled a world map up on the screen. “Dulles, Dubai, Cape Town and Paris.”
“Which aircraft is in Paris?”
“Challenger 604,” Hanley answered.
“Direct it to Aberdeen, Scotland,” Cabrillo said. “The runway at the airport in the Faeroe Islands is not long enough to handle it, and Aberdeen is the next closest city. Have it fueled and ready if we need to use her.”
Hanley nodded and walked over to a computer to enter the instructions. The door to the control room opened and Michael Halpert entered. He was holding a manila folder in his hands. He walked to the coffee machine, poured a cup and then approached Cabrillo.
“Mr. Chairman,” he said wearily, “I’ve exhausted the database. There are no terrorists or other criminal elements that go by the nickname the Ghost.”
“Did you find anything?”
“One Hollywood actor who fashions himself a proponent of the dark side, an author who does vampire books, an industrialist, and 4,382 various e-mail identities.”
“The actor and the author are definitely out,” Cabrillo said. “All the ones I’ve met are too stupid to plan lunch, much less an assault on a terrorist ship. Who is the industrialist?”
“One Halifax Hickman,” Halpert said, reading from the file, “an ultrarich Howard Hughes type with a vast variety of business interests.”
“Find out everything you can about him,” Cabrillo ordered. “I want to know everything from the color of his underwear on through.”
“Will do,” Halpert said as he walked out of the control room again.
It would be twelve hours before Halpert exited his office.
And when he did, the Corporation would know a lot more than it did right now.
IF TD DWYER claimed he was not nervous he’d be lying.
The group that was assembled around the conference table were the blue-ribbon winners in the nation’s power struggle. More than a few of them appeared nightly on the news programs, and most were recognizable to anyone not living in a cave.
The people assembled were cabinet officials, the secretary of state, the president and his advisors, and a scattering of four-star generals and intelligence leaders. When it was Overholt’s turn to address the group, he gave a quick overview of the situation and then introduced Dwyer for questions.
The first question came from the heaviest of hitters.
