Final Strike--A Sean Falcone Novel Read online

  “Learned?” Quinlan asked. “Who’s your goddamn professor—”

  Carlton raised his hand again and said, “Sorry. Can’t mention how we got it. The point is we knew that the Soviets kept working on the idea of taking control of a small asteroid and using it as a first-strike weapon by putting it on a course to hit the U.S. It was a crazy idea, but not to the Soviets. They called the project ‘Ivan’s Hammer.’ Carl Sagan heard about it and publicly said he thought it was feasible. The CIA asked RAND to make a study of it, and RAND’s experts also said it was feasible. Then the ideas just seemed to disappear—until we learned that Lebed had talked about ‘Ivan’s Hammer’ a few days ago.”

  Carlton looked toward Taylor and, before sitting down, said, “As a scientist … Ben … What do you think about the possibility that it could actually work? Is it science … or just fiction?”

  “It’s crazy—but it could work if all you wanted to do was hit a random place from Maine to California. They could probably figure a way to move an asteroid in a general direction toward Earth, with somewhere in the United States as the target. But would it hit the target? Imagine a rodeo rider trying to control a steer and you get the picture: a skilled rider and a wild massive beast.”

  “How about threat control?” Carlton asked. “Let’s say Lebed claims he has control of an asteroid and makes certain demands … or else.”

  Remembering Oxley’s request, Taylor kept his expression unchanged. “That’s more geopolitics than science.… Frank. I don’t see how a threat like that would be … realistic.”

  “What do you know about the U.S. Air Force Space Command?” Carlton asked, using his grim national-security voice.

  “Not much,” Taylor replied, trying to not look irritated by the interruption.

  “The U.S. Space Command has thousands of airmen in place all over the world. And when you talk to the commanding general about space, the first thing he usually says: ‘We’re not NASA.’”

  “Meaning?” Taylor asked.

  “Meaning there is a fairly big and expensive piece of DoD that takes warfare in space pretty seriously,” Carlton said. “‘Ivan’s Hammer’ in Lebed’s hands would be a very real threat to the Air Force space guys.”

  “And it sounds realistic to me,” Quinlan said. “That son of a bitch Lebed is capable of anything. I’d advise the President to take a threat like that as real.”

  “Have you heard of the Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition or the X-37B, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle?” Carlton asked Taylor.

  “No, Frank,” Taylor replied. “I would assume that that kind of information is classified.”

  “Well, as a former Air Force officer, I wish it was,” Carlton said. “But a lot of Pentagon contractors like to advertise. The munition with the long name is an electromagnetic bomb and the X-37B can carry it. Due to our society’s ridiculous belief that nothing should be secret, you can find all about it on the internet. An electromagnetic bomb eludes the agreement to keep nuclear weapons out of space, and—”

  Taylor, who prided himself as a scientific showman, rarely felt he was losing his audience. But he realized he had to turn the dialogue—and issue a warning. “Please, Frank, and please, Ray,” he said. “Remember this is a briefing about a real threat: an asteroid hitting the Earth. And remember that the President ordered strict secrecy. What I tell you has to stay in this room.”

  “My job,” Carlton said, “is to watch over all events and possible events that threaten—or seem to threaten—the United States. If I decide that the Space Command needs to hear about Ivan’s Hammer, I will—”

  “You will clear any further revelations with the President,” Taylor said, staring Carlton down. As he returned to his seat, Taylor added, “I need your word on that.”

  Carlton nodded but did not speak.

  “Let’s get back to asteroids,” Taylor said. “Every week I get a report from a NASA office called ‘Gnats,’ but spelled ‘N-H-A-T-S.’ NASA likes acronyms. Maybe because it’s an acronym itself. Anyway, Gnats is the ‘Near-Earth Object Human Space Flight Accessible Targets Study.’ You can see why everybody uses the acronym.”

  “You’re plunging into the weeds,” Quinlan muttered.

  “Sort of,” Taylor said, nodding with a smile. “This NASA agency looks for near-Earth objects that might be accessible for future human space flight missions. As a side benefit, Gnats gives us a handy catalogue of asteroids. I may get notice of more than a hundred in a week. In one week last summer, Gnats counted six hundred and eighty-one.”

  “Six hundred and eighty-one!” Quinlan exclaimed. “Why the hell aren’t there more hits?”

  “Most of them—the overwhelming majority—are in orbits that don’t imperil the Earth,” Taylor replied. “And a lot that could do damage are so small that they burn up when they hit our atmosphere.”

  “But so many? Why so many?” Carlton asked.

  “We’re seeing more because we’re looking more. And what we’re discovering is that there are more—considerably more—asteroids out there than we had thought. Thanks to Gnats, we have an ever-growing catalogue of asteroids. There are millions of NEOs—another acronym: near-Earth objects. In recent times we have discovered nearly twelve thousand new near-Earth objects. Some are as small as, say, a washing machine, and some probably big enough to have their own moons.”

  “You mean there are new asteroids?” Quinlan asked. “I thought that they were like little stars—up there, hard to see with the naked eye. But up there and known.”

  “Asteroids,” Taylor said, “are the orphans of space. Stars, sun, planets, they all get a lot of attention from astronomers. But it’s only recently that asteroids got much attention. Right now, I can tell you, there’s a lot of work being done at a place close to here—in a building at the Goddard Space Flight Center. It’s called the Cauldron. A lot of scientists and engineers are working on NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission.”

  “Pardon my French, but what the fuck is that?” Quinlan asked.

  Taylor shook his head at Quinlan’s profanity. “Sorry, I never studied French…”

  “It’s pretty universal,” Quinlan quipped.

  “Okay,” Taylor said, “then let’s stop fucking around.… Essentially, they’re working on how to build an asteroid lander, which could be programmed to head for an asteroid and change its course by using its thrusters to shove an asteroid that’s heading for Earth. Or its own gravitational pull could make tiny changes to an asteroid’s course. Or the lander could pick up a very small asteroid, or a piece of an asteroid, and bring it back.”

  “What for? The palladium?” Carlton asked.

  “No,” Taylor answered. “So we can examine it and find out how it’s put together.”

  “How privy is NASA to Ivan’s Hammer and Hamilton’s asteroid?” Quinlan asked.

  “NASA’s not in the loop about the possible 2037 collision,” Taylor replied. “And I don’t think anyone there does much thinking about Asteroid USA. It’s an all-but-forgotten news item. They’re being scientists thinking about all asteroids.… I’m just interested in one of them.”

  “Hamilton’s,” Quinlan said. “The one he calls Asteroid USA? And Lebed calls Ivan’s Hammer?”

  “Yes,” Taylor said, nodding. “What I’m doing is defending Earth. Another secret to deliver: I’m representing the United States in a tripartite science group that is working on ways to defend against that one asteroid, which is almost certainly on a course to hit the planet in 2037.”

  “Tripartite?” Carlton asked, his voice edgy. “What the hell are you talking about? The United States doesn’t have any tripartite science agreements.”

  “We have ever since President Oxley signed up President Lebed and President Zhang Xing at the G20 Summit in Istanbul.”

  Quinlan sprang to his feet and said, “Istanbul! Goddamn! I knew he was up to something. He closed me out then, and he’s been closing me out ever since.”

  “Fuck!” Carlton sai
d. “We’ve got China kicking our balls in the Pacific, Russia scaring the shit out of NATO in Europe. And now—now—I find out we’re all in some kind of tripartite scientific tea party. Jesus!”

  Taylor gave up being a lecturer. He walked to the table and sat between Carlton and Quinlan.

  Leaning back, Taylor said wearily, “That’s right. Tripartite. The three major spacefaring nations are working on this. I’m leaving out the EU, Japan, and India.… Each of the three leaders appointed a space scientist. The three of us have met five times so far. It’s been working pretty well. Our common language is English—the Russian scientist got his Ph.D. from MIT, just like I did, but somewhat more recently. My Chinese colleague learned English in China—at Duke University’s China campus near Shanghai. She then got her Ph.D. in theoretical astrophysics at Stanford. In China, her brilliance was recognized and she was assigned to asteroids, which the Chinese worry about much more than we do. It’s a good team.”

  “What exactly are you doing?” Carlton asked. “And how are you managing to keep this secret?”

  “We’re talking, trading ideas, trying to dream up something that could be presented as an effective defense,” Taylor explained. “Our cover is that we’re working on possible changes in the United Nations Outer Space Treaty. It’s been around since 1967, and no one knows anything about it or cares anything about it. It focused primarily on preventing the use of space for military purposes.”

  “Well then, what about Ivan’s Hammer?” Carlton asked.

  “It’s never come up,” Taylor replied. “That’s military. Political bullshit. We don’t deal with it.”

  “It’s not bullshit to me, Ben,” Carlton said. “You can bet your Russian colleague knows about it. What’s his name?”

  “No need for you to know, Frank,” Taylor said.

  The two men glared at each other for a moment. Then Carlton leaned closer and, lowering his voice, said, “I need to know because my job is to defend the United States, not the goddamn planet, I’m betting dollars to doughnuts that those fuckers are going to put cosmonauts on that asteroid and take control of it.”

  Taylor realized that sitting down had been a mistake. He lost his position as controller. Now he was flanked by two type As—ambitious, impatient strivers for making and holding rank. Carlton had reverted to being a General. Quinlan was seeing himself as a stand-in for the President of the United States. And here they were being fed information from a mere scientist, an assistant museum director.

  “The President doesn’t know the names of my colleagues, as you call them,” Taylor told Carlton. “He trusts me.”

  Carlton looked away and began tapping the table again.

  “We’ve met five times in a conference room at the UN campus in Geneva,” Taylor resumed. “Just the three of us, no assistants. I take notes and after each meeting I put them in a safe to which only I know the combination. At the next meeting we go back over the notes and see if anyone has any new ideas. It’s amazingly like other cooperative scientific projects I have worked on over the years. We kick around ideas. But we’re working in secret, and we know we can’t take the usual next step by circulating our ideas among peers and writing articles for journals.”

  “I can see that,” Quinlan said. “I can imagine what would happen if that story got out.” Then, remembering the call from Christakos, he added, “Jesus! We’ve got to figure a way to keep the lid on.”

  “We—my colleagues and I—know that the 2037 secret has to come out at some time. And, of course, we’re worried about panic. The political leaders have to do more than warn. President Oxley told Sean and me—”

  “Sean? Falcone’s mixed up in this?” Quinlan asked.

  “He’s been with me on this since the beginning,” Taylor said. Now it was his voice that was edgy. “Once he knows that you’re being told about this, I am sure that if you ask, he’ll answer that question.”

  Taylor waited a moment for Quinlan to cool down and then continued: “President Oxley told me that he and the other two leaders would be ‘warners’ and everyone else on Earth would be the ‘warnees.’ To prevent worldwide panic, the warners had to do more than warn. They had to tell the warnees that there was a defense, that our scientists had figured out a way to save Earth.”

  Carlton and Quinlan both looked as if they were both about to speak. Carlton spoke first. “Well, what is the defense?”

  Taylor shook his head. “We don’t have a defense.”

  “Jesus!” Quinlan said. “Nothing?”

  “We have some good solid ideas, and we have some solid knowledge,” Taylor replied.

  “Such as what?” Quinlan asked.

  “Well, we know that the Earth moves the size of its own diameter every six minutes,” Taylor said. “So, to avoid a collision, all you have to do is change the arrival time of the asteroid by six minutes. And we know, Frank, there are policy questions on the horizon.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as,” Taylor continued, “should the United States assume responsibility for defending the planet, or should this be a UN project? But the biggest question is: What’s the best way to prevent a collision?”

  “What have you come up with?” Quinlan asked.

  “Basically, three notions,” Taylor said. “One, a solar sail—capturing solar light and using it like wind to move the asteroid to a non-collision course. My Chinese colleague is specifically working on that. Two, blowing up the asteroid with a nuclear bomb, like in that old Bruce Willis movie. As a matter of fact, two government agencies are looking at a nuclear defense. NASA and the National Nuclear Security Administration—”

  “The guys who manage the making and stockpiling of nukes?” Quinlan interrupted.

  “Yes,” Taylor responded. “They’re talking to NASA about what would happen if you tried to nudge an asteroid by hitting it with a spacecraft whose nose was a nuclear bomb. The bomb the nuclear guys are mostly interested in is the B83, about seventy-five times as powerful as the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.”

  “Jesus,” Quinlan said. “That’s a big nuke!”

  “And its use in space is technically in violation of international nuclear agreements,” Taylor said. Glancing toward Carlton, he added, “And so is a spacecraft carrying an electromagnetic bomb.”

  “Is the Nuclear Security Administration involved in this defense of Earth business?” Carlton asked.

  “No,” Taylor said. “Neither they nor NASA know about the twenty-year warning. The President decided to keep them out of that. But they have done some research on the possible use of nuclear weapons to destroy asteroids.”

  “So they’re for the nuclear bomb solution and you guys aren’t. Is that it?” Quinlan asked.

  “You could put it that way,” Taylor said. “But in fact, I think the solution is our third idea: Using the SpaceMine spacecraft already attached to Asteroid USA to nudge it into a new course.”

  “That’s the best?” Carlton asked. “Option Three?”

  “Absolutely,” Taylor answered. “Take control of the SpaceMine spacecraft, which is attached to the asteroid, to precisely move it.”

  “So why not announce that as the defense?” Quinlan asked. “Sounds like good news for all us warnees.”

  “I told you there is one big problem,” Taylor said. “We don’t know where the hell Asteroid USA is.”

  Quinlan and Carlton looked at each other, as if waiting for the other to ask. After a moment, Carlton spoke: “But what about all that Gnats information you get?”

  “When a new asteroid is discovered, the NASA watchers try to get as much information as they can before its orbit takes it out of the sky area being searched,” Taylor explained. “Usually they can get orbital data and an idea of its probable structure. Their job is to focus on characteristics that may make it a potential target for future manned missions. A list of new asteroids is a by-product.”

  “Okay, okay,” Quinlan said. “Cut to the chase. You’ve got this long list. W
hy in hell can’t you just figure out which asteroid on the list is the one that’s going to hit the planet in twenty years?”

  “Because a lot of asteroids just sort of get lost,” Taylor replied. “A lot of asteroids cannot be seen from the ground because they’re in the glare of the sun. The asteroid that blew up over Chelyabinsk was one of them.”

  “Why can’t you put a filter on a telescope?” Quinlan asked.

  “Our telescopes on the ground can’t look into the sun,” Taylor said. “What we need is to put a telescope in space. NASA hasn’t got the money to do it. And another problem: Asteroids have enormous orbits that take them far beyond optical telescopes, and even radio telescopes. NASA defines near-Earth objects as asteroids and comets whose orbits put them within twenty-eight million miles of Earth’s orbit around the sun. The Gnats zone covers a lot of territory.”

  “But you said you think the SpaceMine asteroid is the one you picked for your show Janus, right?” Carlton asked. “So why don’t you know where Janus is?”

  “We know where Janus was when it was first spotted more than thirty years ago and then seen again ten years later. But we lost it. That happens quite often. Right now we simply don’t know where it is—and we can’t tell anybody who might help us find it. Like the Gnats team.”

  “Hamilton knows,” Quinlan said. “That son of a bitch knows.”

  “Hamilton’s in Moscow,” Carlton said. “For us warnees, that’s very bad news.”

  16

  Taylor realized he had nothing more to tell. He knew that he had done more than reveal a secret; he had set something in motion. He thought of a pond he had played near as a kid and how fascinated he had been by the rings of water that radiated out from a tossed stone.

  The session ended with handshakes all around. Quinlan whipped out his cell phone and arranged for the car that had delivered Taylor to take him back to the museum.