Chapter Six
Two Miles from Launchpad 39A
E and E: Escape and Evasion. At daybreak.
Iceberg used the techniques he had learned at the Air Force Academy nearly twenty years ago. Enjoying the challenge, he worked his way from Salvatore’s guard shack deeper into the restricted area, to where he could watch the launch undetected.
He crouched low and avoided the open paths, keeping an eye out for the multiple motion, sonic, and video sensors hidden in the underbrush. He knew where the devices were, how to find them, and—he hoped—how to avoid setting them off. He just had to keep cool, nerves of ice, frosty control.
Iceberg thought about a course called SERE he’d taken at the Academy—Survival, Escape, Resistance, and Evasion. The E and E part had been a major component during the Cold War, and even when peace broke out, knowing how to evade the enemy had saved pilots like Captain Scott O’Grady when he had been shot down over Bosnia.
As he E and E’ed across the swampy turf, Iceberg found himself having fun keeping out of sight from the distant roving NASA patrols, even with his broken foot. He hoped the cast would hold up in its protective moon-boot covering. It would really be a bitch if sand got inside the cast where he couldn’t scratch.
Iceberg crept onto a small rise and spotted the shuttle, perfectly visible in the spotlights and the competing dawn light. This would be a good place to establish his base. Endeavor, ready for its own launch within the next month, stood on the other pad farther in the distance. He flopped down, out of sight from the launchpad and, more importantly, out of view from the LCC building and the rest of Kennedy Space Center operations.
His foot throbbed like crazy, but he had managed to keep the cast dry. He rubbed the skin around the cast just below his knee, annoyed at the deep-seated itch within his bones that he couldn’t reach. With a sigh, he distracted himself by concentrating on the activity around him.
NASA security helicopters flew low over the brush-covered ground as they searched for anyone attempting an illegal entry—such as Iceberg. But now that the sun had splashed over the horizon and added the warmth of dawn to the swampland, the aircraft had to rely more on sight and less on the sensitive infrared detectors to detect any people below them.
Effective launch-day sweeps were nearly an impossible task, more difficult than the Coast Guard searching for a person bobbing in the ocean, because in the ocean people didn’t have bushes, sand dunes, hollows, and trees to hide them. Iceberg had ridden in the NASA security helicopters once during astronaut training as they had skimmed over the site, searching for imaginary terrorists. They hadn’t found any, of course, but he still remembered the thrill of zipping above the sparse vegetation, popping up over a small rise and startling an alligator crawling through the swamp toward the wide, sluggish Banana River.
Iceberg looked over his shoulder as he settled in to his private little viewing area. From here, if he stood above the vegetation level, he could still barely make out the guard shack, though he had taken a circuitous route across what must have been two miles of swamp.
He glanced at his watch. The shuttle crew would have ridden the Crew Transfer Vehicle out to the pad by now. His crew.
One morning, more than a month before the scheduled launch date, Iceberg had used his clearance and his badge to enter the Orbiter Processing Facility, where Atlantis was being outfitted for the mission. In the hangarlike building, teams of workers combed the giant orbiter, testing every minuscule system, every connection, every stress point.
The doors yawned open in the back; the shuttle was so tall that a separate notch had been cut above the doors to allow the tail fin to slip through. Sunlight spilled in from outside, brighter than the garish naked bulbs shining from catwalks far above. Jumpsuited workers passed back and forth, carrying clipboards, comparing checklists.
Iceberg had stood under Atlantis, admiring the craft, watching technicians test every one of the specially shaped ceramic heat tiles on the bottom of the hull, replacing those in need of repair, approving the undamaged pieces. They installed gap fillers between the tiles, designed to keep the searing heat from reaching the aluminum hull. He had walked around silently staring, watching, feeling like a kid in a toy store. One of the shift supervisors asked if he needed anything, but Iceberg waved him away, wanting only to look at the craft, to “kick the tires” before launch.
He had been so confident then.
After Iceberg’s injury, NASA had put that straight-laced idiot Marc Franklin in as commander. Besides being a civilian, Franklin didn’t have the right stuff to be a shuttle commander. Sure, the guy had flown a couple of missions before; and he’d actually done a pretty good EVA on that last flight when they hauled in the Wake Shield. But there was one hell of a difference between following orders as part of a crew and running the whole shooting match. It was a matter of mind-set. Why else did the military spend so much time grooming its people for the particular demands of command?
Iceberg tried to push the sour thoughts out of his mind as he settled in. No changing it now. He had broken his own foot, and he couldn’t blame anyone else for that. His people knew their stuff. They could pull off the mission, even with Franklin as commander.
He opened his pack and dug out a bottle of buffered aspirin, double strength. He debated for a second, then dry-swallowed three tablets to cut the pain in his foot. He didn’t want to be bothered in case he had to high-tail it back to Salvatore’s shack in a hurry.
Iceberg pulled out his binoculars and the TV Walkman. Leaning back, he extended the antenna and tuned to the launch coverage from Channel 7. He saw a picture of Atlantis sitting on the pad, a feed from Amos’s TV relay bunker. On television, though, the shuttle looked brighter, with a high scudding of clouds above. Iceberg glanced up—the sky was absolutely clear. He frowned. That’s funny, he thought. Were the TV cameras picking up something he couldn’t see, or was he getting a ghost reflection on the screen?
Iceberg tried to get better reception. The talking head from Channel 7 came on and explained that the launch was in the middle of a built-in hold. He lay prone, setting the miniature TV to the side as he got out the binoculars. He surveyed the area. Ants marched along the sand, upset at his presence. With a sharp gust of breath, he blew them away from his face, then focused the binoculars.
Technicians in white bunny suits moved around the launch structure. Nearly a mile in front of him sat the nearest M-113 Armored Personnel Carrier, ready to roar into action at the launchpad if called. The seven safety lines—the emergency exit system—fanned out from the 195 foot level of the Fixed Service Structure to a safety bunker twelve hundred feet away.
Iceberg was situated perpendicular to the flame trench, part of the flame deflector system that bisected the hardened launchpad. The trench divided the pad lengthwise, five hundred feet long, sixty wide, forty deep. Nearby, a water tower stood ready to dump its contents down onto the pad in the first seconds of launch for cooling and noise suppression. During ignition, flames from the shuttle’s main engines and solid rocket boosters blasted down the trench and out the sides. The deadly orange cloud from the solid rocket booster’s fuel would drift harmlessly out to sea.
But Iceberg figured his position was safe enough.
On the launchpad the final checkout crew was making their last rounds. By now the countdown should be within T minus 20 minutes.
Iceberg rolled over on the rise and adjusted the volume on the Walkman. Nicole Hunter’s smiling, professional face took up most of the small TV screen. The words LAUNCH DIRECTOR were set at the bottom of the screen, but instead of Nicole’s voice, the reporter from Channel 7 gushed over the audio. “So do you think your past training as an astronaut gives you more credibility with the crew when you have to make tough calls?”
“Tough calls? Give me a break,” Iceberg snorted at the TV. “She has a checklist, doesn’t she?”
“Absolutely,” said Nicole. “I even have a checklist. And the astronauts know they have one of their own calling the shots. Since I’ve been out there on the pad myself, I know what thoughts are rolling through their minds right now.”
“Yeah,” Iceberg muttered. He turned away from the small TV set and looked though his binoculars at the launchpad. “I bet my crew’s thinking ‘Let’s cut the PR bullshit and light this friggin’ candle.’”
Iceberg studied the shuttle as Nicole’s interview continued. Her voice brought back the memory of her being on the training team with them, and the fun they’d had with so many things in common, when she was part of operations, not management and fluff.
He supposed the world needed those kinds of people—the maintenance crews, the launch infrastructure, even the PR flacks and lobbyists that ran interference before Congress. But Nicole had been an astronaut, one of the chosen few who had actually slipped the earthly bonds and—as corny as it sounded—touched the face of God. Then she gave it up.
Nicole claimed she had to look at her long-term career goals. It sounded like a line from some self-help tape she had listened to. Now, though, she was sitting in the limelight, along with Franklin, Gator, and the rest of his crew.
And here he was, hiding in the dirt, swatting mosquitoes.
For now he’d just sit back and relax, let the others enjoy the thrills while he laid low and kept out of sight. He’d always wondered what the tourists felt like at a launch.