The woman hesitated for a moment, a little confusion in her eyes, then gave him her tiny smile. “No, go ahead,” she said. “I like performing in front of cameras.”
“I’ll bet you do, Melissa,” Tom said. He turned, made his way to the camera in back, and pressed the button to turn it on. “I have another one up front that I want to get also.” He turned . . .
. . . and found himself face-to-face with Melissa, looking into her dark, hypnotic eyes. He smiled, admiring her high cheekbones and full red lips. “Hey, baby, I can’t wait either, but let me . . .”
. . . and that’s when the knife plunged through his abdomen, up through his diaphragm, through his lungs, and all the way into his heart. A hand went over his mouth, but he did not cry out—he was dead before he hit the carpet.
The woman pulled the rear sports camera down from its mount, took the money clip, cracked open the side door, saw there were no onlookers, and quickly left the van, got into her own car, and drove away. By the time they found the body, she was hundreds of miles away.
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
DAYS LATER
“There it goes,” Vice President Ann Page said. She was in the White House Situation Room with President Kenneth Phoenix; National Security Adviser William Glenbrook; Harold Lee, the undersecretary of defense for space; and Air Force General George Sandstein, commander of Air Force Space Command, watching live video being broadcast from space on the Situation Room’s wall-sized high-definition monitor. They watched in stunned amazement as a large section of the International Space Station separated from the rest of the structure and began to drift away from the ISS. “For the first time in almost twenty years, the International Space Station is vacant,” Ann breathed, “and for the first time ever, there aren’t any Russian components on it.”
“What is being taken away, Ann?” the president asked.
“That is called the Russian Orbital Segment, or ROS, sir,” the vice president replied, not needing to refer to any notes—as an ex-astronaut and aerospace and electronics engineer, she was an expert on all American and American-involved space stations dating back to Skylab. “There are three docking and airlock modules, one docking and storage module, one laboratory, one habitation module, one service module, four solar arrays, and two heat radiators.”
“Any critical modules being taken away? If we sent crews back up there, would they be in any danger?”
“The most important Russian module was Zvezda, or ‘star,’ the service module,” Ann replied. “Zvezda is the large module all the way in the ‘back’ as the station flies, and as such provides attitude and navigation control and is used to boost the station to a higher orbit when necessary. It also produces power, oxygen, and water, among many other critical functions.”
“And now?”
“Zvezda will eventually be replaced by two American modules, the ISS Propulsion Module and the Interim Control Module,” Ann explained. “These two modules were built back about twenty years ago when Zvezda was delayed in construction and were meant to serve as backup control and propulsion systems in case Zvezda failed or was damaged; the Propulsion Module was also designed to deorbit the ISS when the time came.”
“That time might be coming sooner than we expected,” National Security Adviser William Glenbrook commented.
“Both modules have been in storage at the Naval Research Laboratory,” the vice president went on. “When the Russians made the announcement that they were going to take the ROS off the ISS, the NRL initiated functional checks of the two modules. That has just been completed, and now we are just waiting to have the modules mated to a booster and sent to the ISS. The problem with that is that the two modules were built to be transported to the ISS aboard a space shuttle, so some reengineering will have to be done to get them on a rocket. That might take a few more weeks.”
“So that’s why the station had to be abandoned?” the president asked. “They couldn’t make power, water, or oxygen, or control the station?”
“The Harmony module on the ISS can make consumables, but for only two astronauts, not six,” Ann said. “Unmanned and manned spacecraft can resupply the ISS and dock to the ISS to control and boost it higher if necessary, so station control and provisions should not be an issue. For safety reasons, it was decided to evacuate the ISS until the Russians’ de-mating procedure was—” Ann suddenly stopped and was staring at the high-def monitor. “Oh, my Lord! Well well, our Russian friends sure seemed to be very busy over the past several months, haven’t they?”
“What is it?” Phoenix asked.