PART II
THE PRESENT
CHAPTER ONE
The plane was eight miles out of Bangkok and climbing rapidly, heading due east, the four Pratt & Whitney TF33-P-100A turbofan engines at full thrust. Dawn was touching the eastern sky, coming out of the Sea of China and reaching over Vietnam toward Cambodia and Thailand.
The aircraft was a modified Boeing 707 that had been specially built over twenty years ago for the US military. Since its sale, the US Air Force insignia had been painted over and the entire fuselage was now a flat black, except for the plane's name, scripted in red on the nose: The Lady Gayle. The most notable change on the outside from the standard 707 was the large 30 foot diameter rotodome on top of the plane, just aft of the wings. There were also no side windows, hiding the interior from prying eyes.
After buying the used plane from the government for twenty million dollars, Michelet Technologies, the company that now owned it, had spent two years renovating it. The interior of the modified 707 had cost Michelet an additional forty million dollars to refurbish to its own specs. The company had recouped their investment and much more in the first three years the plane had been in service. Most recently, there was the mission over northern Canada where the plane had helped Michelet's special earth survey crew target eight sites as potential diamond fields. So far, two sites had turned up diamonds, three had been busts and the other two still had field teams on the ground. The two good fields had already yielded over eighty million dollars profit in product, with three times as much projected to be mined over the next two years. It would have taken ground survey crews years to find the sites and do the initial scans, something the plane had done in one day with one pass over the area.
The Lady Gayle was the latest and most unique wrinkle in geologic exploration, able to accomplish missions from looking for diamond fields to searching for deep buried oil. Of course, it wasn't the plane itself, but the forty million dollars of high tech surveillance and imaging equipment which produced the finds. The plane was the platform for the sophisticated equipment and the scientists. Their information was data-linked to Michelet Corporate headquarters in Glendale, California.
At both locations there was a member of the Michelet family, third richest in America according to those in the know. In Glendale it was the senior man himself, Paul Michelet, sixty-four years old and not looking a day over fifty. He ran the entire Michelet multi-national empire, but the Imaging Interpretation Center, IIC, buried four stories underground beneath the chrome and black glass Michelet Building, was his favorite place. He also had a personal tie to the crew of the Lady Gayle, named after his late wife, a woman with some distant connections to the English monarchy. On board the 707, his daughter and only child, Ariana Michelet was in charge.
This was no case of unfounded nepotism and every person on board the Lady Gayle knew that. Ariana Michelet had a PhD in earth sciences and a masters degree in computers. She not only understood the machines, she understood what the machines were coming up with. And she had spent the last ten years working in the field for Michelet Technologies before being promoted the previous year to head of field surveys. Besides her technical expertise, she also had an uncanny way with people, something her father could appreciate.
At the present moment she was having every person in her crew run through a diagnostics check to make sure that their equipment was working properly and that each data link with Glendale IIC was fully integrated. All of it was tied to a master computer, named Argus, on board the plane and a similar computer at the IIC.
From front to rear, the plane's interior was designed for a specific job. There were no rows of seats and no windows. Directly behind the door leading to the cockpit was a separate compartment with two seats facing the rear on a raised platform. This area was the communications console. Banks of radio gear filled the plane beyond with a small passageway leading further back to a single seat surrounded by computer and imaging screens, which was the office where Ariana oversaw all. A wall separated her from the next compartment, the console center where there were six seats facing two rows of equipment. There was a lot of space around the consoles, even a conference table where the crew could hold meetings while airborne.
Each operator sat in a specially contoured crash seat that was mounted on tracks, allowing it to be moved to any console if need be. The seats could be locked down to the track at any location. Lighting was turned low, a mellow glow that allowed the people to concentrate on their computer screens.
The space behind the console center, above the wings and slightly to the rear was filled with racks holding computer mainframes and other high-tech gear. Behind the computers, the tail of the plane held eight bunks, a small galley, shower and restrooms. When on deployment, the crew of the Lady Gayle stayed on board because security was vital.
The pilot had over ten thousand hours in 707s, his co-pilot not much less. Their instrumentation was state of the art, as good as anything currently coming off of Boeing’s assembly line.
The crew that manned the cabin of the plane consisted of eight specially trained personnel. With the aid of Argus, the imaging crew was able to do the job of many more. In fact, Argus was so sophisticated that Ariana could practically fly the plane from her rear position, using the master computer in conjunction with the autopilot and automatic tracking system. The Michelet personnel at the IIC in Glendale could also fly the plane from the other side of the world using their own master computer, sending commands via satellite link to the autopilot.
Ariana oversaw all operations from her small office using video cameras and sensors. More importantly, she had a dozen small computer screens arrayed around her, each one showing multiple feeds from the screens behind her in the console area. To her immediate rear, her systems analyst and chief aide, Mark Ingram, oversaw the imaging consoles. He knew as much about the systems as any of the operators. Between Ariana and the cockpit sat her chief communications man, Mitch Hudson, surrounded by his radios.
Ariana was thirty-four years old and the gods had not subtracted from her looks to bestow the gift of brains. She was tall and slender, her coloring a mixture of olive and dark. And though she looked lovely in bright colors, she tended toward khaki and denim slacks and shirts that were loose and comfortable and effectively hid her hard flared hips and full bosom. Ariana was extremely appreciative of her abilities as a scientist. Her looks, while important to some, were of little importance to the woman herself.
She had deep brown eyes and when the smile left her face, those eyes could flash with displeasure. Right now, those eyes were flashing at Hudson, who was standing in the door to her office, having just reported to her that their trailing radio/imaging wire was having problems unreeling. The wire was in a pod under the tail of the plane and as the Lady Gayle gained altitude it spooled out until over two miles of it trailed behind the plane, a most effective antenna. Except at the moment, it wasn't working properly, having stuck with only a quarter mile unreeled.
“Can you fix it?” Ariana asked.
“I'm going to reel it back in,” Mitch said. “Maybe there's a kink and that will knock it out.”
“Get it working. We only have one run and I have to give the final go at the Cambodian border which,” she looked at a numeric display, “is only six minutes away.”
Hudson ducked into the passageway leading to his station. “I'm on it.”
Ariana leaned back in her seat and scanned the computer screens. No other problems had been reported. She knew her crew would report trouble to her right away. It was the environment she fostered. She believed in honesty both ways, telling her crew everything she could and expecting them to keep her abreast of the latest developments. Unlike many managers, she also didn't eviscerate the bearers of bad tidings, unless, of course, the bad tidings were the result of the bearers' incompetence. In that case, the worker was quickly removed from Michelet Technologies. With billions of dollars and a corporate empire at stake, there was little room for incompetence.
“We can do the run without the wire if we have to,” Ingram said, suddenly appearing in the passageway that led to the rear. He was in his mid-forties and showed the stress of having worked for her father since leaving MIT over twenty years ago. His hair was prematurely gray and his body in poor physical condition, about thirty pounds overweight on his six-foot frame, but his mind was as sharp as ever.
In the beginning he had always been looking over her shoulder, checking everything, but over the past year he had accepted that she knew what she was doing and he had gone back to concentrating on his own responsibilities. It had relieved a lot of pressure for both of them, but there was still residual tension in Ingram having been de facto demoted when Ariana took over his job. His pay had in fact been increased, but she knew there were times he missed being in charge.
“I know we can make do without the wire,” Ariana replied.
Ingram nodded and went back. Ariana could sense some frustration on his part. For years this had been his place and he was uncomfortable working in the main console area. There had been no need for him to check on Hudson’s systems. On one hand she could appreciate Ingram’s thoroughness, on the other she could resent his intrusion. She decided to go with the former and focused her mind on the upcoming mission.
Ariana picked up a small, cordless headset and put it on. She clipped a frequency changer onto the belt of her khaki pants. She flipped the channel on the changer without having to look, then spoke. “Glendale, this is Lady Gayle. How do you read me?”
“We read you loud and clear,” a voice instantly responded. “Mister Michelet wishes to speak with you, Miss Ariana.”
She leaned back in her seat as her father came on. “Ariana, how do things look?”
She didn’t hesitate. “A little problem with the trailing wire, but other than that all systems are go.”
“Can you go without the trailing wire?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“I'll call you when we get on station,” she said, a dozen tasks awaiting her attention. Her father understood and signed off.
***
At the IIC in Glendale, Paul Michelet tried to stay out of the way of his subordinates. Unlike his daughter, he didn't understand what all the machines in the room below him were doing. That's why he paid top dollar for those who did. His success over the years was based on his ability to understand people and the big picture and make the hard decisions. The details he left to others.
Paul Michelet was currently standing in a small conference room that looked out over the imaging and interpretation center. A one-way glass wall separated him from the technicians below. He could see and hear everything that happened and they never knew if anyone was in the conference room. Michelet had long ago discovered that such a set up increased efficiency. If people never knew whether the boss was looking, they had to assume he was and work accordingly.
There were two men in the room with Michelet. One stood so perfectly still that he might have been missed by a person casually glancing in. He was Lawrence Freed, Michelet's chief of security and all around trouble-shooter. Freed was a slender black man, less than five feet ten inches tall and looked like a strong wind might easily sway him. Michelet had had difficulty believing the man's dossier when he'd interviewed him three years ago for the position. The man described on paper was an ex-Delta Force commando, a black belt in five martial arts, and a brilliant operations officer. Not only was Freed's physical appearance deceiving, the man was so quiet and soft of voice that one had great difficulty imagining him capable of violence. Michelet had had his doubts, but Freed came highly recommended from some of Michelet's contacts in Washington so he'd taken a chance. He hadn't regretted it yet in the past three years. Freed got results.
The other man in the room was Freed’s polar opposite. Roland Beasley had not stayed still from the moment he entered the room. Beasley was a large bear of a man, with a pale white forehead and a large bushy gray beard. Michelet had recently hired Beasley. He too came highly recommended. Beasley had yet to prove his worth.
Michelet turned from the IIC. There was a map spread on the teak wood table in the center of the room. “It's taken me seven months to pay off the right officials in Cambodia to allow this overflight.” He wanted Beasley to know that this wasn't some academic lark but a serious business venture with much at stake. Michelet had dealt with “academic” experts before and he knew it was important to make them realize they were no longer in the ivory halls.
“It should be most interesting,” Beasley said. He spoke with a slight British accent, but his dossier indicated no significant time in England and a birth place of Brooklyn. Michelet assumed Beasley had acquired the accent in his academic circles. Beasley was an archeologist/historian, with a specific area of expertise in Southeast Asia.
Freed didn't indicate that he had heard either comment. Of course, as Michelet knew, Freed had been in charge of organizing all those payoffs through their intermediary in Cambodia. He’d also gathered the material in Beasley’s dossier.
Michelet continued. “Michelet Technologies, and everyone else in the geologic business, know that there are vast mineral resources in Southeast Asia. Bangkok is the center of the world's gem business and Thailand is the largest exporter of uncut stones on the planet. But we think Cambodia holds even more than Thailand.”
“You're talking about spending so much money, though,” Beasley said. “Can it be worth that?”
Michelet stared at Beasley as if the man had just uttered a string of profanities. “Rubies and sapphires are different colors of an element called corundum, which is the crystalline form of aluminum oxide. Trace elements inside the corundum give the gems their color. For rubies the trace element is chromium. For sapphires, it is titanium. Rubies are perhaps the rarest of gems, commanding four times the price of diamonds weighing the same amount.”
Beasley frowned. “I know that some Thai businessmen have been running a black market mining operation in southwestern Cambodia, extracting some precious gems under the protection of the Khmer Rouge whom they pay off, but I didn't think it was that lucrative.”
“It isn't if you consider forty millions dollars a year gross on the black market not lucrative,” Michelet said, reevaluating Beasley. Obviously the man hadn’t stuck his head in the textbooks all his life. “We think they are working a weak field area.” He tapped the map of Cambodia on the conference table. “The area the Lady Gayle is overflying is one that we believe, based on imaging from satellites and the space shuttle, holds very strong gem and crystal fields estimated to be ten times as dense as the best field in Thailand. The Cambodian highlands, north of Tonle Sap. No one has ever gone into that area and looked.
“The problem has always been two-fold. One is penetrating the harsh mountainous jungle region to survey for those gems. The other is surviving the various fighting factions and the over ten million land mines laid in Cambodia. Both those factors have effectively stopped any ground surveys. The lack of a stable government in Cambodia for decades has also been a problem.”
Beasley nodded. “The closest I've been to the area is the ancient city of Angkor Thom which contains the temple Angkor Wat, just north of Tonle Sap Lake. I never attempted to go further north nor do I know anyone who has. It would have been most unhealthy. If the Khmer Rouge or bandits didn't get you, as you said, the mines would or the triple canopy jungle in very rough terrain, or the wild beasts of the region. There are no roads, no villages, nothing. A most dangerous area.”
Michelet pulled out a binder and flipped it open. There were various photos inside, all taken from high altitude. “Last year, the Space Shuttle did some imaging on Cambodia as it flew over. I had contacts at the Jet Propulsion Lab forward me some of the basic data.”
Beasley was looking at the photos with interest. “Amazing!” he said. His fingers traced over one of them. “Look at the Angkor Thom complex in this one. You can see the moats most clearly. I know archeologists who would give quite a bit for these.”
Not enough, Michelet thought. It had cost him six hundred thousand dollars to get the imagery. Michelet more than most knew that everything had a price, and loyalty was usually the lowest.
“The data from these photos told my interpreters that the area deserves a more detailed look. The initial readouts indicate a high likelihood of the type of geological formations that hold precious stones present in quantities worthy of exploitation.”
Beasley nodded. “Cambodia has vast resources that have gone untapped in the midst of all the turmoil. There are parts of that country that no white man has ever seen. There were rumors of a great city in Cambodia for many years but the first explorer to reach Angkor Thom didn't get there until 1860. And it's my personal opinion that Angkor Thom wasn't the city of the legend, but a later, smaller city.”
Michelet had done some checking with other sources and knew the specific area he wanted the Lady Gayle to survey was even more remote. He narrowed down the area he had indicated, tracing it on the map. “This area, the highland region of the Banteay Meanchey region, is practically unmapped and uninhabited.”
Beasley looked at it. “There's a reason for that besides the roughness of the terrain, the mines and the Khmer Rouge.”
“Excuse me?” Michelet was surprised. This was news to him. “And what is that reason?”
“Angkor Kol Ker,” Beasley said.
“And that is?” Freed took a step closer.
“As I was saying. There was a legend of a great city in Cambodia for many years. When the French naturalist Henri Mouhot discovered Angkor Thom in 1860 everyone thought he had solved the mystery of the legend. But there have always been, and still are, rumors of ruins, to the north and east of this area. Of a city even more ancient and more magnificent than Angkor Thom and its temple Angkor Wat. It's called Angkor Kol Ker. Many legends surround those ruins, but very little fact is known. A French expedition tried to get there in the 1950's but it disappeared. It was assumed that they ran into unfriendly guerrillas, the forerunners of the Khmer Rouge. Since then, no one else has tried. It’s not even certain that the city ever existed. It might just be a myth. Sort of a jungle Shangri-la. Some of the legends that are associated with it are rather fantastic.”
Beasley’s hand twirled an edge of his mustache. “The legends, if they are to be believed, promise dire consequences to anyone entering Angkor Kol Ker or the area surrounding it. So in mythical terms, this area is cursed.”
Michelet turned his back to Beasley at the last sentence. Freed had quietly moved over and he was also looking at the map. “Let's hope Lady Gayle gives us some pinpoint data. That region is over forty-thousand square kilometers. That's a lot of jungle to survey.”
Michelet smiled. “With the imagery from the Lady Gayle, the interpreters will pinpoint possible sites down to within a half a kilometer.”
“That good?” Beasley was impressed.
“That good.”
Beasley was excited. “I wonder if we might be able to find Angkor Kol Ker using the data.” He squinted at the space shuttle imagery. “Hell, I bet no one's even looked at these pictures for ruins, have they?”
“Ruins don't make money,” Michelet said.
“Schliemann made out pretty well after he found the ruins of Troy,” Beasley commented. “And remember, people thought Troy was as much a legend as Angkor Kol Ker.”
“What about the curse?” Freed asked. “Doesn’t that concern you?”
“I didn’t say I believed in the legends,” Beasley said. “I just believe it’s worth looking into. Some of them are legends based on legends, including one that the people who settled this area over ten thousand years ago were refugees from Atlantis. In the same manner there are those who believe the early Egyptians, the ones who built the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids were also refugees from a greater kingdom.”
Michelet was focused on the large electronic map in front of the IIC where the small dot represented the Lady Gayle had crossed the Cambodian Border and was approaching the target area, which was outlined in blue light.
Freed glanced over at Beasley. “Do you think Angkor Kol Ker was real?”
Beasley spread his fat hands. “It’s a personal belief of mine that there is always much more truth to legend that most scientists espouse. But, to convince those others, I must hold a stone from a ruin of the city in my hand and smash it over their forehead. Then they might believe it is real. Until then, it is only a myth to them and thus for me.”
“The stones we are looking for are more valuable than any that could come out of an old city,” Michelet said.
Beasley picked up the imagery and looked at it more closely. “I would not be so sure of that.”
*****
At fifteen thousand feet, the Lady Gayle was cruising at three hundred knots and beginning to loop north toward the target area. Ariana had their location pinpointed to within ten meters, updated every one-thousandth of a second by use of the global positioning receiver mounted in the rotodome. The GPR worked off the band of global positioning satellites, GPS, the United States had blanketing the world, picking up a signal emitted by the three closest and then a computer in the GPR immediately determined location through triangulation. They were getting close to the target area and the interior of the 707 was a bustle of activity as controllers prepared their equipment.
“Slow to imaging speed,” Ariana ordered and the pilots reduced thrust until the 707 was flying only 20 knots above the aircraft's stall speed.
Ariana knew the routine by heart but she used the checklist taped to an open space on her console anyway. “Open viewing doors.”
Along what had been the luggage compartment of the aircraft, hydraulic arms slid open doors on the right side of the plane. Inside were mounted the eyes of the Lady Gayle. There were regular video and still cameras with various degrees of telephotic lenses thermal sensors, and imagers that could view throughout the spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet. Although they couldn't directly see the outside world from the enclosed space of the plane, the analysts could now see the world below through the magic of their machines.
Verbal reports came back to Ariana through her headset, confirming what her console told her; they were ready.
“Mark,” she said to Ingram, “let Argus take over and give us the planned racetrack over the area.”
Ingram coordinated with the pilots and soon the plane was being flown by the master computer along a pre-determined path. The 707 banked to the right, aligning all the sensors with the ground and began a long, slow turn.
“We're getting some interference on FM,” Mitch Hudson announced in her ear.
“Switch frequencies,” Ariana ordered.
“We've got nav problems,” Ingram was looking at the relay he had from the cockpit.
“Specify,” Ariana ordered as she leaned forward and her fingers flew across the keyboard of the closest computer, drawing up the navigational information.
“Our compasses are going nuts,” Ingram said.
“GPR still working?” she asked.
Ingram's hands were flying over his control panel. “Roger. We still have GPR and satellite communications, but our FM and UHF are down.”
“High frequency radio?”
“Still working.”
Her father's voice crackled in her headset. “Ariana, what’s going on? They're going crazy down in the IIC.”
“We're getting some interference, dad,” Ariana said. She glanced at Ingram's data, then spoke to him over the intercom. “Can we make the run, Mark?”
“Imaging is fine. I've switched from normal data link to putting everything through satellite. So far so good. But if we lose satellite and HF we have no back-up. Standard operating procedure for this situation is we abort.”
“This is our only window of opportunity,” Ariana said. “Hie-Tech will be here, if they aren't already, and get a jump on us if we don't do it now.”
Ingram's voice was impassive. “I'm telling you the rules we wrote, Ariana.”
Ariana thought for a second, then keyed the radio. “Dad, I think we should abort.”
“What's that?” her father's voice was now distant and scratchy. “I . . . hear . . . . said. Repeat . . .”
“We're over target area,” Ingram cut in on intercom. “Everything's rolling, but we're scattered on the satellite link.”
Ariana slapped a palm onto her chair arm. “All right. We--” She froze as the plane dipped hard right and alarms began going off.
“I've got controls!” the pilot’s voice was calm and controlled. “Auto pilot is down. Nav link and GPR are down. Argus is off-line to flight controls.”
“Can you handle it?” Ariana demanded. She felt her stomach tighten and her breakfast threaten to come up.
“We're trying,” the pilot responded.
“Abort and return to Bangkok,” Ariana ordered. She was forced to swallow down a trace of acidic vomit that came up her throat.
“Oh hell!” the pilot yelled in the intercom. “We're losing control. There's some sort of strange mist outside.”
Ingram's voice came from the console area. “The wings, the tails, they're controlled by radio. If we're losing all spectrums, then the pilots are losing their ability to control the plane using normal controls.”
“Carpenter!” Ariana called out the name of the woman who was responsible for the master computer. “What's with Argus?”
“I don't know,” Carpenter's voice came back through the intercom. “He's going nuts, spewing garbage!”
“Take Argus off-line on all systems!” Ariana ordered. “Get the back-up going.”
Ariana felt her stomach lurch as the nose tipped over. Mugs and papers crashed to the floor. She couldn't help it now as she leaned over and threw up on the floor to her left. She sat back up. She rapidly typed into her keyboard, bringing up the same view the pilots had, via the front looking video camera. All she saw was a yellowish mist with streaks of black in it, swirling. Visibility was less than fifty feet. If the pilots had lost instruments--the thought chilled Ariana.
“We're working the controls manually,” the pilot announced, as if reading her mind. “Trying to keep it level and steady but all our instruments are lousy.”
Ariana knew that meant the pilots were trying to manhandle the large plane with muscle power, the pilot and co-pilot gripping the yoke with both hands, muscles bulging as they tried to force their commands through the back-up hydraulic system.
Hudson's voice suddenly came over the intercom. “I'm getting a weak FM transmission from the ground!”
“Record and forward to IIC,” Ariana automatically ordered.
“Roger,” Hudson said. The plane rolled left. In the back, one of the controllers had not locked his seat down and he went spinning down the rails toward the rear of the plane.
“We can't keep it up!” the pilot yelled. “I don't have altimeter. I don't know how low we are. I have no instruments and no visual. Controls are not responding. Prepare for crash landing!”
Hudson yelled to Ariana. “Your father is calling.”
A weak voice came over the radio. “Ariana . . . going . . . “
Ariana had no time to respond to her father, even if she could. She tore off her headset and yelled into the corridor, so that everyone in the bay could hear her. “Lock your seats in! Prepare for crash landing!”
Ariana looked at the video displays that showed the pilots' view. Nothing but the strange mist. There was a flash of gold light on the right side of the display.
“What the hell?” the pilot exclaimed.
Another flash of gold, this time to the left, then the screen went dark.
“I don't believe it,” the pilot's voice was almost a whisper in Ariana’s ears. “Sweet Jesus, save us.”
“What's happening?” Ariana demanded. She felt herself press against her seatbelt. She knew the feeling: zero g. That meant they were in a terminal dive.
“We've lost both our--” the pilot began, but suddenly the intercom went dead.
Then all went black as the plane seemed to come to a sudden halt and Ariana was thrown hard against her shoulder straps, her head slamming back against the headrest in recoil.
*****
In Glendale, Paul Michelet threw open the door to the conference room and took the stairs to the IIC two at a time, Freed just behind him. Michelet burst into the control room. “What's going on?”
“We're losing contact with the Lady Gayle,” the senior tech told him.
“That's impossible,” Michelet sputtered.
“What about the plane's transponder?” Freed asked.
“We’re getting the HF transponder intermittently,” the tech said. He pointed at the board. “We've got location but it's losing altitude fast.” He checked his computer screen. “Eight thousand and descending.” He stared. “That's strange.”
“What?” Michelet demanded.
“It's just going straight down, no forward velocity. Like it just came to a halt in mid-air. That's not possible. And the descent--” the man paused, not believing what his instruments were telling him.
“Go on!” Michelet ordered.
“The descent is not terminal now. It's like it's being controlled but that's physically impossible given the rate and speed of the plane.”
“Put the Lady Gayle on the speaker,” Michelet said.
There was a burst of static, then they could hear the pilot's voice. “Lady Gayle .. . . attitude . . . two . . . four . . . power . . . . Mayday . . . . there's . . . . God . . . . strange . . . . Jesus!” then suddenly the static was gone.
“She's down,” the tech said.
*****
175 miles above the southwest Pacific, a KH-12 spy satellite began receiving electronic orders from the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. At that location, all Patricia Conners, the imagery operator knew, was that the person ordering the new mission had a sufficient CIA clearance and went by the code name Foreman. What Conners found strange about the request was that Foreman only wanted a large-scale shot covering a section of north-central Cambodia.
Conners thought such a request a waste of the advanced equipment. The KH-12 she was tasking was one of six in orbit. They were the cutting edge of satellite technology, carrying an array of sensors. To keep them in orbit and available for taskings such as this, each one was refuelable, a classified operation which space shuttle crews accomplished every few missions.
She had a model of the KH-12 on top of a bookcase along one wall of her office. It looked like the Hubble Space Telescope with a large engine attached to provide maneuverability. The body of the satellite was 15 feet in diameter and almost 50 feet long. It was a tight fit in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle. Two solar panels were extended out of the body once the satellite was in orbit to provide power, each over 45 feet long and 13 feet wide.
Inside her office two floors underground, beneath the main NSA building at Fort Meade, Conners could not only change the KH-12's orbit, she could down-load real time images from the satellite and forward them to any location on the planet. She did this through the large screen computer that sat in the center of her desk.
On the left side of the computer she had a large framed picture of her grandchildren gathered together at the last family reunion, all six of them, two via her daughter and four from two sons. On the right side of the computer was a pewter model of the Starship Enterprise, the one from the original TV series. Stuck on the side of her monitor were various bumper stickers from the science fiction conventions she religiously traveled to every year, ranging from one indicating the bearer was a graduate of Star Fleet Academy to another warning that the driver braked for alien landings.
Conners' attention was fixated on the computer screen. She watched her display as, with the burst of a booster engine, the particular KH-12 she had commanded shifted its orbital path and moved northwest. The satellites were positioned so that any spot on earth could be looked at within 20 minutes of getting a mission tasking. Conners estimated a time on target of twelve minutes.
She got a thrill every time she did this, knowing that she was one of the few people on the planet who actually “drove” a spacecraft, even if from the safety of her chair and office. She actually had a set of astronaut pilot wings that her late husband had made for her. They were pinned to the front of a baseball cap, the one her husband had always worn when he went fishing. The cap rested on top of her computer monitor.
Conners spent the intervening minutes double-checking all systems. As the KH12 swooped across Cambodia, infrared cameras took a series of pictures with other imagers recording their own spectral data. The satellite's telescope had an electro-optical resolution of less than three inches but they wouldn't even come close to needing that on this shot.
Conners quickly typed in new commands, getting a new screen. She looked at the map of the target area. With the regular spectrum camera she knew that great resolution wouldn't help much with the triple canopy jungle. The best effect would come from the infrared and thermal imaging. Of course, she didn’t know the objective of the search.
She believed that knowing what she was looking for would greatly increase her efficiency. She was the expert on the KH-12 and the other satellite systems the NSA controlled and she knew that she was the best-qualified to judge how the systems should be used. But she usually had no need to know, therefore she didn’t. One of her favorite pastimes was looking over the imagery requested and trying to figure out exactly what the requester was looking for.
Conners downloaded the data the KH-12 transmitted to her, making a copy for the NSA's computer bank--every piece of downloaded data ever picked up by a satellite was somewhere in the NSA system--and bounced a copy to the designated MILSTARS address for Foreman indicated in the original tasking.
Out of curiosity Conners pulled up the downloaded data and ran it through her computer to the printer. She wasn't supposed to do that, since she certainly didn't have a “need to know” but Conners thought it was a stupid regulation. She was a human being after all, not part of some machine with no curiosity. Besides, she rationalized, the more she knew, the better she could do her job.
She made a cup of tea while the machine gently hummed, spewing out three pages. Taking a sip, she looked at the first one. Her initial impression was that the printer must be broken. It was a thermal image and the center of the shot was a fuzzy, white haze in the shape of a triangle.
“What the heck?” Conners muttered as she fanned through the optic and infrared shots. All showed the same triangle in north-central Cambodia.
“But that can't be,” Conners spoke the words aloud. There were no atmospheric conditions, which could block all three types of imaging.
She quickly sat down at her desk and checked the printer, running a test. It was working fine. She bit the inside of her lip. The next possible problem was the computer on board the KH-12. She checked--the satellite was now heading south toward Malaysia. She gave the commands for the imagers to take some shots. As the data appeared on her screen, there was no triangular blur on it. She sent it to the printer. The paper showed clear images.
Conners sat back at her desk and looked at the three images Foreman had requested. There was no type of man-made interference that could do that as far as she knew. Conners stared at the three pictures once more. But something had.