“Surely the government is planning to do the same thing,” said O’Reilly.
“General, as an American, I hate to say it, but NASA is nothing but a mere shell of its former self,” said Houston. “We don’t even have the capability to put a man in space anymore. For the foreseeable future, we’ll have to rely on the damned Russkies to get our people to and from the International Space Station. Can you believe it? The damned Russkies!”
Mitchell could tell that Houston was becoming quite perturbed.
Houston stood, jammed his thumbs into his brown leather belt, and began to pace the room. “Heck, even the Chinese are capable of launching their own astronauts into space. Where are we these days? Nowhere, I tell you. If it weren’t for private companies like mine, there would be nothing flying up to the space station from the United States.”
“Sir, with its limited budget, these days NASA is primarily focused on the launching of robotic probes to Mars and further out in the solar system,” explained Donaldson.
“That’s fine, but it doesn’t put food on the dinner table, now does it?”
“Sir — sorry, I mean Dave,” said Mitchell, feeling awkward about using Houston’s first name. “This is all very interesting, but unless someone has been keeping a really big secret from me, Polaris doesn’t have any astronauts capable of flying to the Moon to dig for gold.”
Houston laughed aloud and then took his seat. “Sorry boys, I was preaching a bit there. I do that from time to time. It’s just that I get so passionate about the fact that the rest of the world is passing us by in outer space, and our government is letting them. Iran, India, Japan, the Europeans, and even Israel, they’re all capable of launching their own satellites. It won’t be long before they start to put men in orbit too.”
“Sir, what exactly would you like us to do for you?” asked O’Reilly.
“Have any of you gents read anything about the Soviet Luna Program?” queried Houston.
Donaldson said, “If I remember correctly, the Soviets sent a series of robotic probes to the Moon to gather information. It was a program that ran from the 1960s all the way up to the mid-seventies.”
“Correct. However, do you know the history of Luna 15?”
“Not in any great detail,” replied Donaldson.
“Mike, it was a probe that was sent to the Moon the exact same time as our boys on Apollo 11,” explained Houston, looking straight into the eyes of the men sitting across from him.
“What’s so special about Luna 15?” asked Mitchell.
Houston’s eyes began to blaze; his voice grew excited as he spoke. “That particular probe was sent to gather samples of rock and dirt and then return them to the Earth. It would have allowed the Soviets to claim that they were the first nation to go to the Moon and return with a sample of rock.”
“What happened to it?” asked Donaldson. “As I recall we beat them to and from the Moon, and our astronauts returned with quite a few kilograms of rock from the surface. I don’t ever remember reading anything about a Soviet probe returning with a sample from the Moon before Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.”
“Apart from a few lines in the morning papers announcing that the Luna 15 probe had been deliberately crashed into the Moon, there was nothing further written or said about that particular attempt by the Soviets to land a probe on the Moon,” explained Houston.
“Sir, what does this have to do with your coming here today?” politely asked O’Reilly, wishing that Houston would get to the point.
“General, to be blunt, that probe has everything to do with why I am here today,” said Houston. “Folks, the Luna 15 probe didn’t crash into the Moon. It landed as planned and a sample was drilled out of a nearby rock. The sample, weighing a mere one hundred grams, was placed in the probe’s return vehicle and launched back towards the Earth.”
“Then why was it reported as a failure?” asked Jackson.
“Because just like in sports, there’s no glory in coming in second place,” said Houston. “When the boys in Moscow crunched the numbers, they saw that their probe was going to arrive a few hours after Apollo 11 made it home. So they decided to scrub the mission and say that they crashed it rather than admit that they got licked.”
“What happened to the return vehicle and its sample?” asked Mitchell.
“It was reprogrammed to burn up in the atmosphere,” explained Houston. “However, I recently obtained information that proves that it didn’t burn up as planned. Instead, it landed somewhere in the South Atlantic.”
“The South Atlantic is a mighty big place, sir,” said Mitchell. “Besides, unless it soft-landed somewhere safe it’s going to be sitting on the bottom of the ocean under several kilometers of water.”
Houston smiled. “I know precisely where it landed, and boys, it’s sitting out there just waiting for someone to go and pick it up.”
“Where did it land?” asked O’Reilly.
“On Bouvet Island,” said Houston, slapping the table.
Jackson shook his head. “I’ve never heard of it.”
Donaldson said, “It’s an ice-covered island that is now a Norwegian dependency and is the remotest island in the world.”
“I guess that’s why you’re in the intelligence section, Mike,” said Jackson. “You’ve memorized a ton of UFI.”
“Sir, why is this probe so important to you?” asked O’Reilly. If his people were going to go looking for a missing piece of Russian hardware, he wanted to know why, or he wasn’t going to sign off on the mission.
“General, when I first learned the truth behind the Luna 15 probe from a contact in Russia, I grew intrigued. So I bought a copy of the original flight log which contained all of the technical data that the probe sent back to earth,” explained Houston. “The Soviets thought that they had destroyed every shred of evidence proving that Luna 15 had successfully landed on the Moon. However, one of the mission’s technicians secretly kept copies of everything. What the Soviets didn’t realize, or perhaps more likely didn’t care about at the time, was that the sample they dug out of the rock was almost pure platinum.”
Donaldson thought about it for a moment. “Platinum is one of the rarest elements found on earth. Annually, only a few hundred metric tons are dug up. Eighty percent of the world’s supply is in South Africa, and we all know that country is none too stable these days.”
“According to my scientist, after studying the data sent back by Luna 15, they concluded that there could be tons of it sitting just below the surface of the Moon waiting to be mined,” said Houston enthusiastically. “Now what I’d like to do is hire you gents to go down to Bouvet Island and find that probe for me. It’s essential that before I spend several hundred million dollars designing and launching a probe to the Moon to mine for platinum I want to be one hundred percent certain that what the Russkies found up there truly was platinum. The data says it is, but until I have the sample examined here on earth by an American, and not some goddamned Russkie scientist, there’ll always be an element of doubt in my mind.”
O’Reilly was intrigued. “Sir, before we agree to this assignment there a couple of things that need to be clarified.”
“Sure, what’s bothering you, General?”
“First off — why us? Looking for missing space probes is not what we do on a daily basis.”
“Fred Ward, my senior vice-president of operations, suggested you to me. He said he knew you from his time in the army.”
O’Reilly grinned. Fred Ward had commanded a special operations aviation regiment when O’Reilly was the commanding officer of Delta Force. “How is Fred these days?”
“He’s put on a few pounds and lost most of his hair. He looks like a monk if you ask me.”