“Ellen, it’s true that people turn to me with satellite navigation questions, but for once I don’t have any answers. Instrumentation in the space station Stargazer shows that the satellites are all in place, but they’re simply not receiving or sending data. They’re just hunks of metal in orbit. The problem isn’t just one of inconvenience. All of us could get around without satellites a few years ago, but because people have learned to rely on them, there have been numerous serious car accidents caused by people not knowing where they were. Young drivers don’t even know how to unfold a paper map.”
“Mr. Langdon, do you suspect that the satellite navigation problem could have something to do with our bizarre weather?”
“Because these incidents happened so close in time to each other, we have to suspect a connection. But as of now it’s merely a correlation, not a causation. I don’t know how a satellite problem could cause a severe drop in temperatures, and neither do my colleagues. We have our suspicions, but as of now it’s a complete mystery.”
“Thank you for joining us today Mr. Mitchell, and I hope we’ll be seeing you again.”
“Our next guest is one of the key leaders of our nation’s military, Admiral Gregory Collins, Chief of Naval Operations. Because we don’t have a satellite feed, you may notice the picture isn’t clear from time to time. Admiral Collins, please tell us about satellite navigation in the Navy.”
“As you probably know, Ellen, the Navy has been using satellite navigation a lot longer than civilians have been using it in their cars. We do have an advantage in that we never relied exclusively on satellites to take a position. We take what’s called a celestial fix, which determines a position by the ship’s location in relation to plotted stars. We also have sophisticated inertial navigation systems in our ships. But, like everybody, we’ve grown to rely on the simplicity of satellite navigation.”
“We’ve grown to rely on a lot of things, admiral, including normal weather.”
“True, Ellen. In the past few days we’ve been introduced to a new world.”
Chapter 40
July 31
“Stargazer, Stargazer, this is Rosetta, come in.”
“I’ve repeated that 10 times, Frank,” Phil Duncan said to Rosetta CEO Frank Morgan. “Bottom line is that we’re out of communication with Stargazer. Our primary communication was through satellite, so it shouldn’t surprise us if we have trouble, but this is different. We’re in a total blackout.”
“Mr. Morgan, it’s Homeland Security Secretary Bellamy on line one for you,” his assistant said.
“I was about to call you, Mr. Secretary. Since I spoke to you a few hours ago we haven’t been able to communicate with one satellite, not one. But it gets worse. Our space station Stargazer is off the grid as well. Stargazer is our link to the satellites. Without her, we’re blind.”
“Frank, I have with me a Mr. Atkins. He’s a government investigator (Bellamy would never disclose that Buster is a CIA agent) and he’s got a few questions. Is Phil Duncan with you?”
“Yes, Phil’s here. Go ahead, Mr. Atkins, how can we help you?” Morgan said.
“At the time the satellites went down, a weather tracking airplane encountered an extremely bright flash from the ground in South Dakota,” Buster said. “The aircraft lost its hydraulics and crashed.”
“Yes,” Morgan said. “I heard about that on the news. Because it was so close in time to the satellite blackout, we’re following that as a lead, but it hasn’t taken us anywhere.”
Phil Duncan tugged on his shirtsleeve and pointed to the TV.
“Mr. Atkins, there’s something coming in on the TV. I’m looking at Fox News.”
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, Shepard Smith here for Fox News. We’ve just received a disturbing report of yet another plane crash, this time involving six aircraft. A squadron of Navy F/A-18 Hornet jets was flying in formation over New Jersey on their way to land on the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier steaming off the East Coast. The report said an enormous flash of bright light emanated from the ground in Southern New Jersey, near Cape May. One of the pilots managed to say that he had lost all control of the jet and it was nosing down. Fortunately, the planes were high enough to make for successful ejections. We’ve been told that all six pilots parachuted safely into the ocean and were picked up by motor launches. We will bring you further reports as they come in.
“In other news, there has been no official explanation for our loss of satellite communications this morning. All land vehicles, airplanes, and ships at sea are without satellite navigation. Not one GPS is working. Over the years we’ve gotten used to GPS as a matter of convenience and we were shocked when the government just announced that it’s a national emergency. We forget that our satellite system is a vital part of our national security, not just the convenience of giving us directions in our cars. The military is treating this event as a direct attack on the country.”
Chapter 41
August 1
After today’s show, Ellen joined me at 26 Federal Plaza. Although our house in Greenwich Village was not far, the state of our emergency screamed out for me to be on location and ready to respond to the changing situation.
We were in a moderating temperature pattern once again, but this time it was different. The temperature was going up, but more slowly than in the recent days. The thermometer read 60 degrees at At 6 p.m. as we stood by the window looking out at the snow-covered Manhattan streets. I don’t know why we looked out the window so much. Were we expecting something different? We sipped cocktails before dinner. I’ve limited myself to one drink before dinner because I never knew when I would have to snap to and make fast decisions. Truth was, I felt like drinking a whole bottle of Scotch.
“Hey, Rick, it’s getting dark as hell,” Ellen said. “It can’t be another snowstorm coming. It’s too warm.”
Writers love to use the word ominous. The word conveys the thought that some bad shit is about to happen. That friggin cloud looked ominous.
“Oh my God, look at that,” Ellen said, pointing south over lower Manhattan. “That’s a funnel cloud, a tornado.”
I ran to my desk and pulled out a pair of binoculars. Having grown up and spent all my life in New York City, I had never seen a tornado, only in photos and on film. The gigantic cloud looked to be 10 blocks wide. The roaring sound was like a speeding train on our roof.
It wasn’t just a tornado, but a gigantic tornado.
I handed the binoculars to Ellen. She turned the dial on the view finder to get a better closeup.
“Oh, no. I can’t be seeing that. What’s that debris I see flying? Tell me it’s impossible.”
I looked again through the binoculars. The debris that Ellen mentioned was vehicles—cars, busses, and trucks. The slushy but still deep snow began to swirl in front of us. Something pelted the window.
“Hey, let’s go into the den. We shouldn’t be near any windows.”
A TV monitor in the den picked up the view outside 26 Federal Plaza from the security cameras pointed at the entrance. I breathed a cautious sigh of relief. The scene in front of the building was a riot of slush and rain, but it was not a tornado. I ran back to the window. The gigantic tornado moved off to the west. We dodged a bullet. After 15 minutes, the wind died, but we could still hear a distant roar and crashing sounds of flying debris, including vehicles. The tornado moved northwest up the Hudson River and, as we later discovered, would devastate Weehawken, New Jersey.