Chapter Two
Launchpad 39A
Jacques felt sweat cling to his white “bunny suit” as he rode the elevator up the giant Fixed Support Structure on the launchpad. The humid Florida air remained cool before dawn, much more pleasant than the equatorial jungles of French Guiana. But still he felt as if he were in a pressure cooker.
He worked well under pressure.
Two other NASA technicians—real ones—shared the open-framework elevator with him, talking to each other with glory-days stories of previous launches. Jacques kept his white-blond head down, pretending to study a technical brief he had kept folded in one of the pockets of his bunny suit. His modified toolkit sat at his feet on the metal-grid floor.
He had been practicing this infiltration for the past two weeks, accustoming himself to the routine, doing dry runs. His badge and access codes were up to date, and with nearly a thousand technicians working on Atlantis during the frenzy of launch preparations, he knew he could slip through, so long as he didn’t do anything to draw attention to himself. Security might look tighter, but the chaos and distractions of such a busy time actually made infiltration easier.
The elevator bumped to a stop at Level 195, the crew entry. As the door opened, Jacques saw three technicians standing next to the elevator power box. He stiffened, not expecting anyone there, but he quickly realized they must be waiting for the astronauts to arrive. As the techs inside the elevator cage shuffled off, one turned and gave Jacques a thumbs up, jerking his head toward the topmost levels of the external tank. “Good luck up there.”
“Same to you,” Jacques said stiffly, trying to smother his French accent. People might remember it.
He relaxed as the elevator rattled shut again. With a whirring sound, the lift continued up to the gaseous oxygen vent access arm. He placed his foot against the tool kit, guarding the ten-kilogram surprise inside.
In many ways this was much easier than sneaking into the Ariane launch facility. Even though NASA had over fourteen thousand contractors working on the shuttle program, the Americans were so confident they rotated people in and out of the launch team a thousand at a time—too many faces for the security people to check personally, forcing them to rely on sophisticated video monitoring systems and badges.
He smiled at the thought of silky Yvette and her own part of the task; Yvette should just now be entering the TV relay bunker, and soon the surveillance cameras would no longer be a problem.
Clockwork. Mr. Phillips’s plans always went along like clockwork.
The clanking elevator slowed to a stop much higher on the gantry. The metal frame doors creaked open, and Jacques looked out with an unobstructed view of the Kennedy Space Center from hundreds of feet above the huge, burn-streaked concrete pad. In the predawn darkness, the area spangled like a Christmas tree, blazing lights all across the swamps in chains of light.
Some distance north, at Launchpad 39B, another shuttle stood at another gantry, and even more distant stood the towering gantries for Titan rockets. America’s Spaceport, Jacques said to himself. It would never be the same, after today.
Bathed in white glare from the spotlights, the gaseous oxygen access arm was a pathway two meters wide and extending in front of him to the top of the shuttle’s rust-orange external tank. The spacecraft was already a giant bomb, filled with explosives. It needed only a small spark to set it off.
Jacques picked up his toolkit, stepped out onto the walkway, and glanced around, blinking in the glare. A lone technician worked at the end of the access arm, monitoring the flow of oxygen topping off the tank. A steel-runged ladder led from the access arm to a bank of open metal storage bins just below. A videocamera monitoring the tank and the attached equipment watched from the end of the arm, pointing in the other direction; he saw no other cameras around.
Good. Then they were alone.
Jacques pulled on his respirator hood, as required to prevent workers from being overcome by fumes. He zipped it shut, then covered the zipper with a Velcro flap. NASA people were so concerned about safety. He turned on the oxygen flow and took measured breaths—timing was critical. Clockwork.
He waved a gloved hand at the technician at the end of the access arm until he got the man’s attention. His voice sounded muffled inside the loose white hood, keeping his accent from being noticeable. “Excuse me, could you come here a minute? I’ve got a problem.”
The tech twisted a safety valve and strode down the access arm toward Jacques, boots clomping. He glanced left and right behind his own respirator faceplate to see Jacques’s badge as he approached. “Hey, you don’t have access for this level. What are you doing up here?” The tech frowned.
Jacques motioned toward the storage bins below, out of range of the stationary videocamera. “A problem came up. I need your help.”
“What problem?” The tech leaned over.
Jacques quickly wrapped his forearm around the man’s hooded neck and jerked as hard as he could. He heard a muffled snap, and the technician grew slack. “My mistake, mon ami,” Jacques said to himself. “The problem is taken care of.”
* * *
Next step.
Two hundred and twenty-seven feet above the launchpad—the top of the skyscraper—the long truss of the gaseous oxygen vent arm ended in a “beanie cap” at the tip of the external tank. Warm gaseous nitrogen was pumped into the beanie cap to prevent chilled oxygen vapor from condensing ice out of the damp Florida air, where it might collect on the shuttle and cause damage during launch.
Unrecognizable in his bunny suit, Jacques lingered at the top of the vent hood, casually bracing himself against a guard rail. In full view of the diagnostic cameras, he went through the motions of inspecting for clumps of ice.
Periodically stooping for better access, Jacques moved out of view of the cameras and reached inside his toolkit. He withdrew a plastic-cased box containing the explosives and the RF receiver wired to the detonator. Everything had been painted the same rust-red as the foam on the external tank. He removed the adhesive strips and pressed the device into the thick insulation of the tank, securing it in place.
The vent arm was the highest swing arm of three attached to the Fixed Service Structure. One minute and forty five seconds before launch, the vent arm would raise from the top of the rust-red tank and retract.
It would make the bomb totally inaccessible. And once the explosive detonated, the fuel reservoirs in the shuttle’s external tank and solid rocket boosters would take care of the rest.
Satisfied that all was well, Jacques moved back down the access arm to the elevator cage. He glanced behind him at the storage locker down one level. From this vantage, Jacques could barely tell it held a corpse.
The tech’s body would be cremated by the intense heat—either during the launch or the ensuing explosion of Atlantis, whichever came first.
He reached into his pocket and squeezed a thin transmitter, sending a microsecond-long, encrypted radio signal to Mr. Phillips. Next step completed.