Deep Black

23

By the time Rubens got to the Art Room, the helicopter had disappeared from the screen. Telach hunched over Jeff Rock-man, hitting different feeds; they had an image from a Space Command satellite on the main screen at the front of the room, but it was blurry and full of clouds.

“Did you lose them?” Rubens asked.

“They were flying at the edge of our broadcast circle and the Russians started to jam. It’s one of their new systems,” said Telach.

The com system satellites had very restricted broadcast ranges, sometimes called shadows or arcs, to make them more difficult to intercept. Telach looked distressed, even worse than when the Wave Three aircraft had gone down. Rubens told himself he’d order her to go on a vacation as soon as this assignment was over.

“Were they shot down?” Rubens asked Rockman, the runner.

“We’re looking at radio intercepts,” said Rockman. “The MiG wasn’t targeting them. Probably the satellite can’t get them with the jamming. They might also have turned everything off because of the MiG.”

“Not the locators,” said Telach.

“We were having trouble with them earlier,” said Rock-man.

The locators were essentially small pieces of very slightly radioactive iodine, whose isotope could be detected by a specialized system of detectors, including some mounted in a satellite system. While the system worked fine under perfect circumstances, the thinner the satellite coverage the less reliable the detection. The area where the team was now was actually covered by a satellite focused on China. Even a good-sized cloud bank could interfere with the reception, and so it was not surprising that they were off the grid.

“Where’s the MiG?” asked Rubens.

“They shot down another plane and took off,” said Rock-man. “We think it’s the same unit, but it’s going to take a lot of work to make sure.”

“Who was shot down?”

“A civilian flight,” said Telach.

Rubens went to the empty station next to Rockman and pulled the infrared and imaging radar images up. Unfortunately, the imaging process took time; the data was more than five minutes old.

“That may be them,” Telach said, pointing to a tear-shaped blur in the middle of her screen.

“Let’s not worry about them for a second,” said Rubens. He agreed with Rockman’s assessment that they must be alive but still hiding from the MiG. “Instead, let us consider why the MiG shot down the plane. They’ll show up, Marie,” Rubens added. His assurance didn’t soften her glare. “The plane’s course. Can we compare it to ours?”

“To the Hind’s or the Wave Three aircraft?” she said. Her bottom lip quivered slightly, but she reached down for the keyboard.

“Wave Three.”

“OK. Hang on.” The aircraft had taken off from the same airport and their courses had about an 80 percent overlap — not a coincidence, since the Wave Three mission had been purposely laid out to look like one of the common flights through the area.

“They must have thought it was one of ours,” said Telach. “They must have incomplete information, half-rumor, half-guess.”

Rubens harrumphed. It was possible.

The ELF transmissions from the Wave Three plane were detectable, though the equipment needed to measure them was extremely sophisticated. The working theory on the shootdown as a premeditated, targeted attack on the spy plane was that the transmissions had been detected with the use of that equipment. This wouldn’t fit that theory. On the contrary, it validated the random, renegade attack profile.

Which was exactly the finding Rubens most desired, since it meant that his program hadn’t been compromised. He had to, therefore, reject it out of hand.

“New flight company,” said Rockman, pulling up data on the civilian that had been shot down. “Maybe they just didn’t pay the grift,” he suggested.

“Maybe,” said Rubens. “Or maybe the Russians are trying to convince us that they didn’t actually target our plane.”

“Heck of a way to confuse us. There must’ve been over a hundred people aboard.”

“Could be an acceptable price.”

He could order up an F-47C mission, have transponders on a kite or mini — remote plane, see if the MiG came out. They could study the response, pinpoint the detection system.

Why would the Russians go to such lengths to protect information about the lasers? Hitting the U.S. plane was one thing, but their own?

When operational, the lasers had the potential for changing the balance of power between the U.S. and Russia by blinding U.S. ABM satellite monitors. Of course, a preemptive strike would certainly initiate a war or at least serious retaliation.

What would the circumstances have to be to prevent that?

None. Hitting the U.S. satellites would trigger a violent, immediate response. No one would plan such a thing.

Of course, in the context of the American response, a hundred or so lives would be nothing.

“Boss?” asked Telach, bringing Rubens back to the present.

“What’s been the military response?” he asked.

“None.” Rockman brought up the SpyNet page on the PVO administrative unit responsible for the area. The page, which summarized decoded intercepts from the unit over the past twenty-four hours, showed only routine communications, most of which were weather reports. The self-defense squadron had six planes, all ancient MiG-25s, assigned to the Surgut area, a good distance away from the shootdown. There were several encrypted intercepts on the docket for automatic translation, but the times did not correspond to the shootdown and Rubens saw no need to push them out of the normal queue.

“Do we have radar intercepts available?” he asked.

“Too deep,” said Rockman. The area self-defense radar was too far from the country’s borders to be monitored directly by the standing NSA programs, though of course it could be specifically targeted for a mission. Communications intercepts ordinarily provided more than sufficient information about their operation.

“News media?” Rubens asked.

“Plane’s not due yet,” said Rockman. “Far as we can tell, there hasn’t been an alert. We know from the Third Wave missions that this area isn’t under direct civilian radar and has only spotty PVO coverage.”

Rubens closed his eyes and saw the list of bases Johnny Bib had given him. None were along the flight path.

“We’ll want a passenger list,” he told Telach. “And a cargo manifest.”

“Yes.”

“CIA is on this?”

“As of ten minutes ago. We alerted them.”

Protocol called for an interagency team to be assembled to report on the shootdown. Rubens would want his own person on the team.

“Maybe you’re right,” said Telach. “Maybe they are OK. Karr’s pretty capable.”

“He is,” said Rockman.

Reports on fuel reserves. Bulky encryptions. Random shootdowns. Wave Three. Laser program.

Hard to find a common thread.

Assume they weren’t random. Assume the laser program wasn’t related to this.

Why would they shoot the planes down?

Protect other data at the lab.

What would that have to do with a coup?

Niente.

Skip the coup. Assume the laser was ready to be used.

Still nothing.

Rubens turned and began walking toward the door.

“Boss?” said Telach behind him. “What do you want us to do?”

“When Karr reestablishes contact, see if he can observe the crash site. We’re going to want information on who goes there, everything we can get on the reaction, who was on the plane, everything.”

“They have the Third Wave wreckage aboard the helicopter.”

“Surely they can deal with that,” said Rubens.

“But—”

He didn’t wait to hear the rest of her objection.