Warren Murphy Destroyer 105 Scorched Earth

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WITHIN THE HOUR, America's nuclear arsenal was placed on the highest state of
readiness: Defcon One.
This was not lost on the Kremlin, who then ordered their Strategic Rocket
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Force to go to the next state of readiness. High Red.
When informed that there was no higher or redder state of readiness above the
one in which they had already been placed, the president of Russia belched and
said, "I will get back to you on this quandary ...."
And the planet Earth spun on while, orbiting it, a closed ball of
stealth-colored material waited for the next signal from its unknown master.
Chapter 33
When they landed at Sheremetevo II Airport in Moscow, Remo Williams told
Colonel Radomir Rushenko, "Have this thing refueled and ready."
"Ready for what?"
"The flight back to the States."
"You are going back to the States? This is impossible. It will not be
permitted."
"You're our insurance that it will be," warned Remo, leaving his seat.
The Master of Sinanju accompanied Colonel Rushenko to make the arrangements
while Remo fed kopecks into an airport pay phone. After a half hour of trying,
he failed to get through to America.
Returning to the aircraft, he informed Chiun of this unhappy fact.
"We will call from a city possessing a telephone that works," Chiun said,
eyeing Colonel Rushenko unhappily.
"We should have never become friends," Rushenko lamented. "When we were
enemies, we had motivation. Our phones worked. Our armies were feared and our
space program was the envy of the entire world."
"The Communist world," said Remo.
"The entire world."
"Who went to the moon and who didn't?" countered Remo.
"The moon is only a rock. We had our eyes upon Mars."
"Why Mars?"
"It is the Red planet, is it not?"
"No," interjected Chiun. "In my language, it is Hwa-Song, the Fire Planet."
Colonel Rushenko shrugged. "It is the same thing. I can tell you this now
because the world may soon end, and if it does not, Russians will not be going
to Mars without space vehicles anyway. But when the U.S. achieved the moon
landing, a twenty-year plan was drawn up to claim Mars for USSR. It would have
been the ultimate expression of Soviet technological superiority. Anyone can
land on the barren moon only three days away. But Mars, it is an authentic
planet. We would have seized it, controlled the cosmic high ground and mocked
you from its red glory."
"What happened to this twenty-year plan?" asked Chiun.
Rushenko shrugged. "What always happens. The quotas were not achieved, and it
became a thirty-year plan, a forty and so on until it was forgotten."
"You can have Mars, too. I'm sick of Mars," Remo growled.
"No one will go to Mars now. It is a pity. All our dreams are rust and dust.
Yours as well as mine."
"Save it for the funeral," said Remo.
"Whose?"
"Yours if you don't get off the subject."
Colonel Rushenko subsided. The Yak took off, heading west to Europe and the
first refueling stop that had a working telephone.
Chapter 34
Dr. Cosmo Pagan was in his element. For some, that element was the earth.
Others, the sky. Still others, the oceans of the world.
Cosmo Pagan's element was nothing less than the media.
The phones would not stop ringing. It didn't seem to matter to anyone that he
gave confused and contradictory theories to the strange events that were
troubling the blue earth.
It certainly didn't matter to Cosmo Pagan. People read only one newspaper a
day these days-if that. And they watched only one newscast a day. Since most
people were creatures of habit, they stuck with what they liked.
Thus, Cosmo Pagan was simultaneously informing newspaper readers and TV
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viewers that the inexplicable events dominating the headlines were a direct
consequence of ozone depletion, random asteroid strikes and the possible
impact of cometary fragments from a hitherto-undiscovered invisible comet
bypassing Earth.
The comet theory seemed to go over biggest. At least, Pagan got the most media
requests to tell the world about the dangers of passing comets.
He got other calls, too. A zillion lecture offers. A bunch of new book offers.
PBS was on the horn, too. They wanted to do a special on life on other
planets. It was Cosmo Pagan's favorite topic. He had become an exobiologist
chiefly because until proof of actual extraterrestrial life came along, he
could just make stuff up. He didn't even need factoids.
Cosmo accepted all offers. Except one.
"Dr. Pagan," an anxious man asked. "I can't identify myself or my employer,
but we're looking for a man just like you. You'd be our in-house consultant
and company spokesman."
Cosmo Pagan didn't need to know the who or the what. He had only one concern.
"How much?"
"A million a year."
"I love that number! It's a deal."
"Great," the suddenly relieved voice said. "But understand this will be an
exclusive. You couldn't speak publicly on any subject in your field. In fact,
we insist that you immediately halt all public statements on any subject until
the contract is drawn up. Especially this asteroid and ozone scare-talk."
"Out of the question. I don't do exclusives. Goodbye "
The man kept calling back, upping his offer. But Cosmo Pagan was no fool. If
his face wasn't before the public, he had no public. No public, no publicity.
No publicity, no career. He stopped taking the nameless man's calls and got
down to the serious business of informing his public.
This time Pagan asked that his wife, Venus, interview him for CNN. In fact, he
demanded it. The last guy had asked hard questions. And since Venus Pagan was
still pretty sharp looking for her age, it was nice to show her off once in a
while.
The interview was conducted in his private observatory by satellite hookup.
Cut down on commuting costs that way.
"Dr. Pagan..."
"Call me Cosmo. After all, we are man and satellite."
Venus Pagan smiled with professional coolness. "In your view, are comets
dangerous?"
"When Halley came around in 1910, a lot of people thought so. They threw
end-of-the-world-comet parties. Spectrographic analyses of the comet's
composition showed traces of cyanogen gas, and for a while people worried our
planet would be gassed to death when it passed through Halley's tail. Gas-mask
sales boomed. But long-period comets like Halley and Hale-Bopp don't come very
close to earth spacially speaking."
It was in the middle of his dissertation that the first satellite images of
the Baikonur Cosmodrome disaster were broadcast. It was supposed to be a
military secret. But in the post-Cold War world, commercial satellites had the
same global overviews as spy satellites. The brief bidding war for the
pictures was won by CNN. The photos were rushed to the hot studio in
midtelecast.
"Dr. Pagan. I mean, Cosmo."
"Call me honey, angel."
"We've just been handed satellite images taken of Baikonur Cosmodrome in
Russian Kazakhstan. It's been scorched in three places. These images resemble
satellite photos we've seen of the Bio-Bubble and Reliant catastrophes. Can
you shed any light on this latest event?"
Dr. Pagan accepted the photos, which were also broadcast in a floating graphic
insert beside his head. He got very pale very fast.
"I might be mistaken," he said, "but there appear to be three impact sites-if
that is what they are-which suggests to me cometary fragments. Asteroids don't
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travel in packs."
"No comet fragments were found here in the U.S.," Venus probed gently.
"This may be a broken-comet phenomenon we are witnessing. Understand that
Earth is always revolving. As was the case with Jupiter when those fragments
struck. Though they entered the Jovian atmosphere in a straight line, they
impacted in a string along the planet's surface because Jupiter moved between [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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