Still, the Special Forces officer felt that he could not ignore the breach of security he had just been party to. "That may be so, Capitain," he stated crisply, accentuating the word "capitain." "But it does not mean that we officers need to add our voices to that sort of thing. If anything, I would expect an officer would do his best to discourage violations of operational security."
Already in a dark mood, the smile on Hogg's face faded. "There's one thing that I am in no need of, Major," he replied in a low, menacing tone, "and that is a lecture on what my duties as an officer are." He was about to add "especially by an American," but decided that would be a bit too much. "As an SAS officer," Hogg went on as the American stared at him in stony silence, "my men expect me to make informed decisions and show them the same sort of trust they show when they salute smartly and follow my orders. While things may be different in your Army, in this regiment, simply telling the men that they have no need to know doesn't cut it." He was about to leave it at that, but Patrick Hogg was not one to drive the knife in without giving it that last painful twist. Leaning forward, he looked into Fretello's eyes. "Perhaps, Major," he whispered with a sinister smile, "if you spent a bit more time with your feet in the mud where the real soldiers are and less time parked behind a keyboard pounding out directives and plans that brief well, you'd understand that sort of thing."
Flushed with anger, Fretello jumped to his feet, knocking his chair over as he did so and into one being occupied by a German belonging to Grenzschutzgruppe 9. This commotion brought an abrupt halt to a dozen conversations that had been going on in the crowded lounge. It also placed Andrew Fretello in an awkward position. Though he wanted to respond to the SAS captain in the mo.-: decisive manner that reason would permit, to do so in public would have serious consequences, consequences that the American staff officer was not prepared to pay. Opting to choose discretion over personal satisfaction, Fretello turned and stormed off through the crowd, which parted before him like the Red Sea for Moses.
He had almost made it to the door when, from behind, he heard the Irish drawl of the SAS captain call out: "Major, you've forgotten your dinner. Would you care for a doggie bag?" As bad as this was, the chorus of laughter that followed pierced him like an arrow. With nothing by way of a reasonable response open to him, Fretello clenched his fists and kicked open the door, almost hitting the same big legionnaire he had run into when he had entered.
Quickly stepping aside and out of the way of the infuriated American officer, Stanislaus Dombrowski watched him go before turning and entering the pub. As he did so, he noted that everyone in the place was looking at him. Stopping, the big Pole asked, quite innocently, "Did I miss something?"
This brought about another wave of laughter before everyone got back to whatever they had been doing. At his table, a self-satisfied Patrick Hogg hoisted his beer and took the last of his brew down in a single gulp. Finished, he slammed the empty bottle on the table and smacked his lips. "I think I'll have another," he shouted to no one in particular as all thoughts of his Jenny had faded, for the moment.
Chapter 8
Looking up at the pale blue sky, whatever doubts Tim Vandergraff had been harboring over entering the asteroid's footprint to cover this story were quickly forgotten. The "footprint," as the journalist of his tiny TV news team explained to the audience back home, was the zone in which the particles that had once been asteroid Nerius 1991 HWC were expected to enter Earth's atmosphere and impact. Though continuous observation and an analysis of data gathered from it had shrunk the footprint to an area of only several hundred square kilometers, no one was willing to pinpoint where the asteroid would actually impact, if indeed it did. Laborious and often heated debate between the experts, both on camera and in hundreds of closed meetings, as to what would happen at 05:34 Greenwich mean time tended to create more doubts than answers.
It was as a result of this climate of uncertainty that Tim Vandergraff decided to risk crossing over the imaginary line to cover the biggest story of his career. "You know how those government and civil-defense types are," he explained to journalist Anna Roberts when she voiced her concerns. "When faced with a situation like this, they go overboard. They evacuate twice as many people as is necessary and build a margin of safety into their projections that borders on the ridiculous. I'm sure that if he had his way. General Likhatchev would empty all of Russia east of the Urals just to be sure." Though still concerned. Anna Roberts and Antonio Halbas, cameraman and sound tech, went along. Only their official guide, a Russian from the State Information Bureau, had no doubts that what they were doing was tantamount to suicide. It had taken a bribe four times that normally budgeted for use in "persuading" Russian officials to convince the guide to abandon common sense and cooperate.
Using the projections that NASA had generated, Vandergraff took his intrepid little team of Americans to a spot that was just off the anticipated glide path of the asteroid. Located on the north slope of a heavily wooded ridge overlooking a river, Vandergraff hoped to catch sight of the incoming projectile as it first hit Earth's atmosphere southwest of where they now stood. If their luck held and the folks at NASA were even close to being right, Halbas would be able to track Nereus 1991 HWC as it sliced through the increasingly dense air that it encountered. The heat created by the friction generated as air passed over the irregular surface of the asteroid would reach several thousand degrees Fahrenheit within seconds. The entire asteroid would become a fireball as the silicate rock and iron that it was made of melted. Vandergraff was told that this phenomena would create a spectacle that would stand out against the bright, early spring sky. And though he expected to lose sight of the asteroid as it disappeared over the southeastern horizon, the TV camera would be able to pick up the flash and resulting mushroom cloud as the alien intruder finally made contact with Earth's surface some one hundred kilometers away. "I'm not guaranteeing you the Pulitzer prize," he told his fellow journalists as he made his pitch to ignore the published minimally safe distance, "but what we record tomorrow will rank right up there with the film clip of the Hindenberg and man's first step on the moon."
Neither Roberts nor Hables were fools. Both were veteran correspondents who had covered more than their fair share of natural and man-made disasters around the world. Anna Roberts had earned her spurs reporting in the Balkans and covering the Second Gulf War. Hables had honed his skills in the camps of Colombian guerrillas and covering the Mexican drug wars. Individually, each entertained doubts about the wisdom of crossing over into the footprint of the asteroid in the off chance that they would find the perfect spot, one that was both safe and ideal for viewing its descent. Yet such was the challenge of the chase, not to mention their pride as journalists willing to hang it all out in pursuit of a story, that they kept their concerns to themselves.
Once committed, all thoughts of any dangers associated with their decision were pushed aside as they prepared themselves and their equipment for an event they would have only one opportunity to capture. Besides technical matters, such as establishing a good satellite uplink and a location in the Siberian wilderness that would provide them an unobstructed, panoramic view of the southern sky, there were more aesthetic concerns that needed to be addressed. Though the primary focus would be on the asteroid itself, a suitable spot where Anna Roberts would stand and deliver her commentary was necessary. Tim Vandergraff was an absolute genius when it came to that sort of thing, which was why he was there.