Orbit

Chapter 29

John Kent has lost count of how many nighttime approaches he’s made to the KSC runway in one of NASA’s T-38s, but this one is unannounced. He rolls the sleek twin jet onto a stable final approach, working the throttles forward and back to keep the supersonic trainer on speed across the threshold. Touchdown and aerobraking are followed by a rapid taxi to the ramp where an unmarked NASA car is waiting, the driver bringing the ladder over as John cuts the engines, opens the canopy, and finishes the shutdown checklist. The man is on the top of the ladder now and John reaches over to shake his hand before unstrapping.

“Griggs! Great to see you.”

“Glad you’re here, old sport. I’m beginning to feel like the French underground versus Vichy.”

“World War II-speak again, Griggs?”

“Can’t keep an amateur historian down. Need help outta that tin can?”

“Nope. Stand back please, and don’t try this at home.” He pins the ejection seat, unstraps, and stands before swinging a leg carefully over the side and climbing down.

He joins Hopewell in the front seat of the car.

“Why am I here, Griggs?”

“I need your help, John. We’ve got a presidential directive to launch and a soft sabotage operation being run by our dear administrator to prevent us from launching,” he says, gesturing toward the Pad 39 launch complex visible in the distance bathed in lights. “I don’t know why Shear is silly enough to believe he can send an operative into my space center and not be found out.”

“The woman you told me about?”

“Miss Dorothy Sheehan. I’ve had one of my guys watching her, and where Sheehan shows, nothing goes. She’s not red tagging anything herself, but throwing her HQ weight around so that anything she points to someone gets excited about. All day today it’s been one crisis after another, not a one of them legitimate. I’ve warned Curtis, because I think he’s in cahoots, but I don’t have enough evidence to go over Geoff’s head to the White House.”

“And the bottom line is?”

“We’re not going to make this window, John, if this crap continues.”

“Of course he’s been against this from the start. Anything involving DiFazio…”

“Is he wrong, John?”

“Yes, dammit!

“But we don’t want another Challenger, John. And, Bubba, since you is my bona fide partner in crime, I want to review everything they’ve fingered so far and have you take a long look at the overall plan.”

“Look over your shoulder?”

“Exactly. I’m afraid of pushing too hard, even against this rotten interference.”

“Where are we going?”

“Back to my office. And before you ask, yes, I’ve got Kip Dawson’s monologue punched up on my computer. You were busy boring T-38-sized holes in the sky, but just before I came out to pick you up, he was talking about a huge scandal involving his drug company employer, and if someone doesn’t end up in the hoosegow over it, I’ll be shocked.”

“Good Lord. He writes it there and things happen here, and he doesn’t even know it. Talk about the power of the pen.”

It doesn’t take an FBI agent to know that a moving light in an empty house is seldom a good thing. But Tucson police officer Jimmy Gonzalez can see nothing amiss as he slides up to the curb. He reads the call details again on his dash-mounted computer screen. “Next-door neighbor reports seeing flashlight beam moving around inside. Knows resident is out of town. Window involved on east side by shrubs.”

There’s a phone number listed for the house and he punches up the number on his cell phone, waiting until it flips over to a voice-mail message.

He closes the phone and types in that he’s leaving his car and investigating. Walking carefully, he moves along the eastern side of the rambler and positions himself to peer into the window where the flashlight beam was reported to have been.

Nothing.

He shines his powerful SureFire through the pane, lighting up a den that seems intact and untouched, then continues around the back and other side of the house, checking the doors before returning to his car.

“House secure, nothing appears amiss,” he types, closing the call and deciding there’s no point to interviewing the complainant.

Special Agent Kat Bronsky of the FBI has never loved the desert, but Tucson has been an exception, especially the pristine resorts on the northern flank of the town. This time, however, a two-week Homeland Security assignment meant a forgettable Tucson motel from where she’s spent most of the afternoon watching Kip Dawson’s amazing story unfold—including the fact that his home is less than a mile away from where she’s sitting. But reading that somewhere in the Dawson home is a file with evidence of criminal activity electrified her. For the past year she’s been part of a special strike force investigating Vectra Pharmaceuticals.

A quick after-hours phone call to her superior in D.C. is unavoidable, if unanswered. She waits a fitful twenty minutes for a callback from the urgent beeper message she leaves, relieved when her cell phone finally rings with his number on the screen.

“If I just read about it, Glen, and you read about it, at least someone at risk from Vectra saw it. We should get a warrant and get out there now.”

“Already in motion, Kat. A big alert triggered by the White House came down moments before you called. We’re trying to roust the Tucson office right now.”

“They’re not answering beepers or phones?”

“The whole team is away in Phoenix, I think. We’re working on it.”

“Okay, there’s no time. Let me take it.”

“You don’t know the local judges.”

“I don’t need to. There’s no one covering that house while we’re talking, so let me go out and at least watch the place. When you get the local team, have them get the warrant and hook up with me there.”

“Kat, use the local police for that.”

“Glen, that’ll go out on the radio channels, and anyone interested enough to be racing in to snatch that file will be on the police scanner.”

“Okay, dammit, you’re making sense, as usual. But, Kat, this one is the highest priority for doing things right. We can’t screw up an evidentiary grab started by a presidential order without all our heads rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue. Got it? No heroics. Do not go in or touch that file without a warrant.”

“No problem. Message understood and acknowledged.”

Finding the address and driving to 4550 East Fernhill takes less than ten minutes, and Kat parks down the street before walking back slowly, looking over the darkened residence as she approaches. Why is a local police cruiser in front of the house? She hesitates, pretending to search for an address, as the officer pulls away and passes her, accelerating around the corner as she makes a quick note of his plate number.

She sees mature trees in the front yard casting deep shadows against an overhead streetlight and takes advantage of the black hole to disappear alongside the Dawson house, moving carefully past shrubbery until she’s at the northeast rear corner. She waits a minute to watch and listen. The house is dark and quiet, and she decides to move to the nearest window and peer in before checking the doors and finding the best vantage point from which to be sure no one enters.

The ground beneath the window is a flower bed of soft topsoil anything but native to Tucson, and she steps in it carefully and lifts her eyes above the sill, letting her vision adjust to the darkness inside.

At the same moment a startlingly bright beam of light stabs through the interior, illuminating a desk in the corner of what appears to be a den.

Kat jerks herself back to one side, but whoever is wielding the flashlight doesn’t appear to be interested in looking her way. She can see him, a male of average height, holding the flashlight and moving the beam to a four-drawer filing cabinet.

There’s no doubt in her mind what’s happening. He moves quickly toward the cabinet like he’s been there before, and she can see he’s carrying something metallic. He focuses the light on the cabinet lock on the upper left-hand corner and tries to balance the flashlight between chin and shoulder while he uses what looks like a small kitchen knife and perhaps an ice pick to spring the lock.

The man appears to be alone and she watches his ham-handed fumbling with the lock.

This is not a professional thief, she concludes, unsurprised. Whoever he is, he’s got a stake in getting rid of the evidence Dawson talked about.

The man reaches a breaking point and throws the makeshift tools to the floor in disgust, looking back and forth around the room as if the key might be hanging within reach if he could just take the time to spot it.

The desk catches his eye and he moves to it, flashlight beam on the top drawer as he rummages through it, pulling it out steadily until it suddenly falls to the floor. He’s on his hands and knees now, frantically sorting through the contents, then coming up with a key. He leaps to his feet, racing back to the file cabinet but can’t insert it.

Wrong key, boy, she thinks, calculating which way he’s likely to leave if he achieves his objective. In the reflected beam of the flashlight when it hits his face every few moments she can see he’s a Caucasian male, perhaps in his fifties, and moderately overweight.

He’s back on his knees rifling through the contents of the fallen desk drawer, and Kat can see the flashlight beam shaking in his trembling left hand.

Scared to death. Probably never had more than a traffic ticket, and probably not armed.

Another key! He’s back up and over to the file cabinet and this time the lock springs open. She can hear his small victory yelp even through the window as he yanks open the drawers successively until finding the one he’s looking for.

FBI procedures and common sense dictate calling for police backup and intercepting the suspect as he leaves, and she reaches for her cell to dial 911 the same moment a bright light snaps on from behind and an excited male voice orders her to freeze.

“POLICE! GET THOSE HANDS UP!”

Kat can see the man inside the den turn, startled, a folder in his hand as he yanks it from the drawer and snaps off his light. She can see him bolting to the rear door in the den, fumbling with the knob and the lock, and she turns quickly, raising her hands as she sidesteps toward the corner of the house.

“Turn that light out! I’m an FBI agent!”

“KEEP YOUR HANDS UP!”

She glances back through the window, aware the intruder is still struggling with security locks and frantic to get out. She has only seconds, she figures, to calm the cop down.

She looks back at the bright light in her face.

“There’s a suspect in that house and we don’t have time for this. I’m going to pull out my ID wallet! Keep your trigger finger under control!”

“KEEP THOSE HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM! DID YOU HEAR ME?”

She pulls the ID wallet from her jacket pocket with two fingers, bringing it out laterally and flipping it open as she hears the back door being flung wide.

“Hold it right there!” the cop is saying to Kat, his voice more uncertain now as he gingerly approaches, surprised and unprepared for her to turn around and yell toward the back of the house while still thrusting the ID wallet at him.

“FEDERAL AGENTS! FREEZE! HANDS IN THE AIR! NOW!”

“What… what are you doing?” Jimmy Gonzalez asks, his gun still leveled at his suspect as he tries to read the ID at the same time he’s trying to see who she’s yelling at.

“GET THOSE HANDS IN THE AIR, MISTER! NOW! ON YOUR KNEES OR I’LL SHOOT! DROP THAT FOLDER!”

Kat looks back to Gonzalez in a lightning move.

“Satisfied?”

“I… guess.”

“Here’s my ID. Toss me your light.”

“What?”

“NOW!”

He tosses the SureFire to her, watching as she catches it and tosses him the ID wallet, covering the distance between the corner of the house and the obviously frightened man kneeling by the backdoor in a few heartbeats. She covers the suspect with a 9mm Glock Jimmy never saw her unholster.

“Officer? Bring your cuffs, please.”

Jimmy responds as quickly as he can, cuffing the man as he notes the business suit and the balding head.

“Don’t shoot! I’m a friend of Kip’s! I have a key!”

“But not to his filing cabinet, it appears,” Kat says. “What’s in the folder?”

“Ah, private company information.”

“Right. Half the world read exactly what you read about a particular folder with a rubber band and a red exclamation point in the file cabinet you just broke into.”

“Kip asked me to protect this if anything ever happened to him.”

“Sure he did. What’s your name?”

No answer.

“NAME! NOW!”

“Ah… Robert Wilson.”

“How did you get in the house?”

“I have a key. I’m authorized.”

“All right, Mr. Wilson, you’re also under arrest on suspicion of obstruction of justice in a federal case, for starters. Officer?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Please Mirandize this gentleman after you finish cuffing him, and then get us some backup while the rest of my team gets here.”

“Okay.”

She turns to Jimmy Gonzalez now, asking his name, and he responds as he hands her back the ID wallet.

“Good job, Officer Gonzalez. All the way around.”