As soon as they were off of the base DePresti hit his hand on the dashboard next to the steering wheel. “Goddammit!” he yelled.
“What?” Parkowski asked.
“I should have checked the launch manifest,” her boyfriend said. “Fuck. I had no idea that there was a processing campaign going on right now. It’s all on the internet, too, but neither of us thought to look.”
“Why is security so tight?” Parkowski asked, a little annoyed. “I don’t remember it being like that for your launch or you would have said something.”
“It wasn’t,” he said. “Shit, it’s not even like this for any other NRO launch, you just can’t get near their processing facilities while they’re preparing their spacecraft. You can still get through the gate.”
He got back on A1A and started back to the hotel.
“Is this launch different from any other NRO launches?” Parkowski asked.
DePresti thought for a minute. “It might be. I don’t work the IC stuff much, I’m read in, but all of my stuff is Space Force. I have a few guesses as to what it could be, but none of it will mean anything to you.” He sighed. “And it’s probably not related to Bronze Knot or the ILIAD mission either.”
They drove in silence until they got to the motel.
It was well into the afternoon now, the clock showing five minutes past two, and the rest of the day was pretty much shot.
Parkowski was devastated. How did they not think to check if they could get into the Cape with their badges? They assumed too much. It put a lot of self-doubt into her mind. What if they got to Hangar AZ and couldn’t get in? What if the Bronze Knot information had been moved to another location? She was very worried that this would be yet another boondoggle.
DePresti started going through his documentation from his GMIM job, looking for a loophole or flaw in the security processes that would allow them access to the facility and let them onto the Cape proper.
Parkowski spread out a map of the area onto the motel room’s table and took a look at the facility. It was huge. After taking a look at the scale, Parkowski was shocked at how large both the Space Force base to the south and the NASA complex to the north were. It would have been nice to have been able to visit in person to give her preconceived notions a basis in reality, but that unfortunately wasn’t currently possible.
From her initial inspection, there appeared to be extremely few points of entry to either of the sections of the Cape.
She would have thought the NASA, civilian side would be easier to gain access to, but it looked like it was just as buttoned-up as the DOD section of the launch complex to the south. There were less than half a dozen gates, and DePresti told her that between them were ten to fifteen-foot chain-link fences, most of which were electrified. Security cameras were on posts behind the fence at fifty-meter increments. There were likely other, unseen, sensors as well, but neither Parkowski nor DePresti had any insight into them.
Unless they could talk themselves through one of the gates, the facility seemed almost impenetrable.
She sighed and got out some snacks that they had brought from Barstow. DePresti was deep in thought, focused on something on his laptop, so she left him alone.
Instead, she went back to the map.
Parkowski started at the top of the Cape, at Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, and worked her way counterclockwise along the edge of the controlled area. There was nothing. No way in.
Her finger reached the southeast corner of Cape Canaveral, on the other side of the port past the docks and cruise ships, and stopped.
“There’s nothing,” she said to herself.
“I know,” DePresti said, agreeing with her. “It’s one of the most secure areas in the country. The launch complexes are worth trillions of dollars in materials, and even more than that in their intrinsic value. They, and the ones out on the west coast at Vandenberg, are our only access to space and can’t be easily replaced or rebuilt.”
Parkowski took a deep breath. “Are you getting anywhere?”
“Nope.”
She took another look, tracing her finger around the map again, and just getting more frustrated.
“Can you try calling someone and get at least your name on the list?” the Aering engineer suggested.
“I think that’s a bad idea,” DePresti replied. “We’re trying to keep as low of a profile as possible, and a guy not currently working launch or with the NRO would raise a lot of eyebrows.”
She didn’t respond.
There was something she was missing. This couldn’t end here. They had come too far, worked too hard, to just give up. Parkowski traced around the map again and stopped.
She had something.
“What about coming in from the water?” she wondered aloud.
DePresti gave her an odd look. “Explain.”
“How much of the security presence is looking outwards towards the ocean?” Parkowski asked.
He thought for a moment. “Most of it is focused at the gates, or on keeping unwanted intruders from sneaking on base through a hole in the fence or something like that,” DePresti answered. “There’s some small government-owned motor boats that travel up and down the coast, but they are most active during launches making sure that the exclusion area is clear. I think there might be some beach patrols too, but they’re limited in scope too.”
“Any kind of passive sensors?” Parkowski asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know of any, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there.”
A plan began to formulate in her mind. “What if we rented a small boat and some dive gear and at night anchored a few hundred yards off the coast,” Parkowski suggested, “and traveled that distance with scuba gear underwater? Once we get there, we hide our gear and book it to Hangar AZ and get inside.”
DePresti smiled. “That’s not the worst idea you’ve had.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
DePresti found a nautical map of the Cape Canaveral region in their hotel room.
Parkowski put it down over the topographical map she had been studying and the two engineers began to closely examine the shallow waters off of the coast of the launch complexes.
Her boyfriend traced a path from the interior part of the port — where most of the boat rental places were located — along the Atlantic up Landing Zones 1 & 2 where OuterTek landed their first stage boosters, just two miles east of the main gaggle of buildings that contained their final destination of Hangar AZ.
She shook her head. “No, no, we can’t go right there. That’s too suspicious. We need to go out to sea and then hook back towards the Cape.”
“Fine,” DePresti agreed, “we go out here,” he said, pointing at a spot a little over two and a half miles off of the coast, “outside the security zone, set anchor, and then come back to LZ-1.”
“Why do we need to land there?” Parkowski asked.
He laughed. “It’s two miles from the hangars, and that’s the closest point along the Atlantic side. We’re going to swim two-plus miles and then walk another two-plus to our destination. I’d like to keep it as short of a trip as possible.”
“Gotcha,” she replied.
Parkowski checked the clock. It was four-thirty, almost time for dinner. She needed some sense of normalcy before they embarked on their mission. “Want to go grab something to eat?”
The Space Force officer nodded. “Yes, but let’s go get some gear first.”
The pair got back out on A1A and found a dive shop. Inside, they used some of the cash Chang had given them to rent tanks, masks, buoyancy compensators, flippers, and respirators, as well as to buy a pair of wetsuits. The water around Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach was warm, staying in the low seventies even in the winter, but if they were going to have to swim miles to and from the boat, especially at night, having the neoprene shorty suits would be beneficial. DePresti also picked up a dive knife, a waterproof satchel, and an underwater flashlight.