Nighthawk

29

The streets of Cajamarca were cold and wet. A brief spell of rain had left mud in the gutters and puddles everywhere. Rain in the mountains was always a cold rain. The damp got into the bones. Paul and Gamay would have preferred snow.

Walking along the sidewalk, Paul pulled his coat around him and flipped up his collar. “I think someone is following us,” he whispered.

“The guy in the colorful poncho,” Gamay said. “I’ve seen him three times since leaving the airport.”

It might have been a good way to blend, as many of the natives of Cajamarca wore similar ponchos in the cold months, but the pattern was unique and Paul and Gamay both had an eye for fashion.

Catching sight of the man in the reflection of a store window, Paul nodded. The pattern was the same; the fur-lined boots were the same. The man was the same.

“What do you say we get off the main street,” he suggested.

“If it means somewhere warm…”

“How about this place,” Paul said, pointing to a brightly painted Internet café.

Gamay read the sign. “Strong java, stronger Internet, 4K video. Let’s go.”

They stepped inside, watched through the glass as the man passed by and saw him return a moment later. Instead of coming in, he sat at the bus stop across the road, apparently content to watch.

Paul was fine with that. He and Gamay moved deeper into the narrow building. Thankful for the warmth, as much as anything.

The café was busy, the coffee, computers and young people creating a perpetual buzz. They found a spot with access to both the front and back doors, logged on to a computer and spent a few minutes browsing.

“Do you think our friend is going to sneak in anytime soon?” Paul asked.

“Doubt it,” Gamay said, “but we’ll see him if he does.”

“In that case, I’m going to make a phone call.”

He stepped away from the desk, found a ladder to the roof and climbed it. Popping out through a trapdoor, Paul climbed onto the roof and lowered the door gently behind him. He wasn’t looking to escape; he just needed a clear view of the sky.

After linking up to the NUMA communications system, Paul was patched through to Hiram Yaeger. He got right to the point. “Kurt needs you and Priya to hack into the NSA’s database.”

Of all the staff at NUMA, Hiram Yaeger was the least afraid to flout authority — it was half the reason he kept his hair long and wore decidedly non-corporate clothes to work. But he was surprised to hear this request from one of NUMA’s most buttoned-down officers. “Who are you?” he asked. “And what have you done with Paul?”

“Very funny,” Paul replied. “I’m serious. Kurt has reason to believe they’re hiding something regarding the Nighthawk and its mission. Good reason. And since he’s the one out there risking his life—”

He must have been on speakerphone because Priya chimed in. “I’m not an expert in such matters, but isn’t that frowned upon… or perhaps illegal?”

“It’s not exactly encouraged,” Hiram admitted. “But we’ve done it before and never really gotten more than a slap on the wrist.”

“Apparently, the NSA is more forgiving than their reputation suggests,” she replied.

“Preventing a worldwide catastrophe with the information we borrowed might have had something to do with that,” Paul said.

“I have no problem with this,” Hiram said. “You know that. But we have been warned. Maybe I should run it by Rudi or Dirk.”

“And ruin their plausible deniability?”

“Good point,” Hiram said. “Okay. We’ll give it a shot.”

Paul knew that meant it would get done. “Kurt wants the information as soon as you can get it. Preferably, before his romantic Sunday drive gets the best of him.”

Hiram promised to do his best and the call ended. Paul looked around to find a large crow staring back at him from another section of the roof.

“Thank God, you’re not a parrot,” he said.

The crow cawed and spread its wings. It flew off to the south, and Paul climbed back down into the warmth of the café.

“Get through?” Gamay said.

He nodded and checked the clock on the wall. “Joe is still several hours away.”

Gamay had already purchased a steaming cup of soup and an alpaca hat. “Yep,” she said, settling in and tapping away on a keyboard. “Looks like this café is our temporary home.”

Back in Washington, Hiram and Priya were left to figure out the details of their latest hacking scheme.

“Whether we should do this or not is one thing,” Priya said. “But how we do it is the more important question.”

“You’re not worried?” Hiram asked.

“Worst thing they can do is deport me back to Merrie Olde England. And while I can’t stand all the rain, you and Rudi will be the ones who go to jail.”

“Not likely,” Hiram said. “But it isn’t going to be easy to break their code. Each time Max and I have hacked the NSA, they’ve responded by raising their game. Their security is quite good.”

“We could overwhelm them with a brute force attack,” Max suggested over the speakers.

Hiram looked up — as he often did when speaking to Max. “Let’s try something less reminiscent of Genghis Khan.”

Priya was already tapping away at her computer. “The NSA may have built the Nighthawk in secret, but they didn’t design it from scratch. Design cues were taken from the space shuttle and the X-37. Ms. Townsend even said something about the Nighthawk using common parts from the X-37. If that’s the case, NASA probably shared data on the construction process. And that means we might be able to hack into NASA instead of the NSA.”

“Great idea,” Hiram said.

“I prefer the word brilliant.”

“Then brilliant it is,” Hiram replied. “To collaborate with NASA, our friends at the NSA would have set up a secure and authenticated connection. If we do as you say and break into NASA first, we can get into the NSA computers through the back door and they might think they’re just sharing data with the Johnson Space Center.”

Max chimed in. “I assign a seventy-three percent chance of success to the plan. And if they do discover the hack, they’ll investigate NASA first, giving us more time to make a run for it.”

“Without legs, you’ll be going nowhere,” Hiram said. “I’m afraid they’ll melt you down for scrap.”

“I could get wheels,” Max suggested. “Like Dr. Kashmir.”

For an instant, Hiram felt awkward, but Priya laughed. “Trust me, Max, having wheels isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Hiram laughed as well. “We’ll talk about your mobility issues some other time, Max. Let’s break into the space center’s network and see if their computers are still on speaking terms with the National Security Agency.”

It was the better part of the day before Priya and Max were able to gain access. Eventually, they had to go through the systems at Cape Canaveral and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory before discovering a link to the NSA database. Shortly, they were receiving copious amounts of information on the Nighthawk’s design, test flights and mission parameters.

Priya and Hiram looked at what they could but relied on Max to determine what was important or not, as they soon had over a thousand pages of information.

As Max continued to sort things out, Priya found herself studying the technical papers related to the Nighthawk’s construction. “Look at this,” she said, waving Hiram over to her desk.

He peered down at the image on her computer.

“These are the blueprints and design specs for the X-37.” She pointed. “And these are the plans for the Nighthawk. See anything interesting?”

Hiram pulled his glasses off, cleaned them with a soft cloth and put them back on. “They’re very similar. Almost identical.”

“The only real difference is size,” she said. “If we scale an original set of plans up, they match. Same engine, same navigation system, same wing design, same heat shield. In fact, aside from a coating of stealth material that burns off on reentry, the heat shield is not much different than the tile system used on the space shuttle since the eighties.”

“So much for the technological leap forward they keep claiming,” Hiram said. “It’s little more than an updated version of an older vehicle.”

He stood up and addressed Max. “Are you sure we’re looking at the correct plans?”

“Affirmative,” Max replied.

“How certain are you?”

“There’s a 99.98 percent probability that the plans you’re looking at match the vehicle that was launched and is now being sought in South America.”

“That’s pretty certain,” Priya said.

Hiram agreed. “It doesn’t make sense. The Russians took an immense risk to grab it. They exposed their secret Typhoon submarine, in an attempt to retrieve the wreckage from where they thought it had crashed, and both they and the Chinese seem willing to risk a war to find it.”

“With the attempts on Kurt and Ms. Townsend so far, I’d say a skirmish has already begun,” Priya added.

Hiram nodded. He looked over the plans once again, double-checking the propulsion specifications and the structural blueprints. “If it isn’t the machine that matters, then it has to be something else. Something related to the mission.”

“Perhaps it collected one of our spy satellites. Or one of theirs.”

“Maybe one of each,” Hiram said. “That would get them hot under the collar.”

“If we knew where it went, we might learn more,” she suggested.

“Max, what can you tell me about the Nighthawk’s mission profile?”

The computer voice responded instantly. “The NSA launches the Nighthawk out of Vandenberg on a modified Titan booster. The vehicle inserts into a polar orbit and stays aloft for extensive periods of time. Seventy-five days on the first launch, eight hundred and fifty-one days on this latest mission.”

“And yet,” Hiram said, scanning through the page count, “we seem to have far more data from the first mission than the second. Are you holding something back on us?”

“Mission 1 was a test mission,” Max said. “Data from all phases of the mission was freely shared with NASA. Mission 2 was an operational event. Fully classified. Only prelaunch data and orbital track information was provided.”

“Can you match up the Nighthawk’s orbital track with known satellites?”

There was a slight pause — unusual for Max, considering how fast her processing speeds were. “The Nighthawk made 14,625 complete orbits and one partial orbit before reentry. At no time did its path intersect with the position of any known satellite. Available data suggests the Nighthawk maneuvered specifically to avoid any orbital convergence.”

“Anything else unusual about the path?”

“For ninety-one percent of its time in space, the Nighthawk remained in the Earth’s shadow.”

“So the Nighthawk was staying out of sight,” Hiram said. “Can’t hijack another satellite when you’re hiding in the dark and avoiding them like the plague.”

“I’m not sure it could retrieve something if it wanted to,” Priya said. “Look at this. On the initial blueprints, the cargo bay is an empty space, just like the cargo bay on the shuttle. But on the last set of prelaunch schematics, the entire bay has been filled with equipment.”

Hiram’s curiosity grew, he pulled up a chair and settled in beside her. “What kind of equipment?”

“Cryogenic storage containers, advanced lithium batteries and a bank of devices called Penning traps—which must use powerful magnets because the control center and the propulsion bay have been electromagnetically shielded to prevent magnetic interference.”

“Penning traps,” Hiram said, trying to remember where he’d heard that term before.

“According to the schematic, they take up the whole bay.”

Hiram nodded. He was suddenly very grim. The truth was coming to him and he didn’t like it one bit. “Max, can you correlate the Nighthawk’s orbit with evidence of the northern lights?”

“Affirmative,” Max said. “The Nighthawk was present in a northern polar orbit during all major flares of the aurora borealis. It was also present over the South Pole during the major and minor flares of the aurora australis, otherwise known as the southern lights. Its positioning indicates direct emersion within the vortex point of the Earth’s magnetic field.”

“Vortex point?” Priya asked.

“Where the lines of the Earth’s magnetic field converge above the North and South Poles, before they dive down into the Earth.”

By now, Priya had picked up on his tone. “Do you know what they’re doing?”

“Testing a theory,” he said. “A very dangerous theory.”

She looked at the schematics again, running her finger across the imaginary Penning traps. The term itself gave her the answer. “They brought something back. Didn’t they?”

Hiram nodded. “I’m afraid so,” he said. “And it’s something far more deadly than any satellite could hope to be.”