“I have a good memory, sir, and I seem to remember you. Are you the same Colonel Rand who was detained by the Chinese government on Hainan Island after your spy plane was escorted down?”
“I was a major back then, but yes, that’s me.”
“Wow. Didn’t they hold you for like five days?”
“Six if you include the night I got there.”
“What was that like?”
“A major international incident,” Rand said. “I really can’t comment beyond that.”
Mobi looked like he was about to say something else but stopped himself, instead staring at the silver eagle on Rand’s uniform.
“You want to discuss fashion now?”
“No sir.”
“Spit it out.”
“Not to fly my freak flag too high, Colonel, but we fly civilian missions here.”
Alvarez took control of the situation. “So we do,” she said. “But lest you forget, the lab also receives a significant portion of its funding from the Department of Defense, and as such we’ve always remained open to their needs, just as they’ve been open to ours.” Alvarez was using her soft voice, and though she was in no way a hard edged woman, Mobi knew that soft voice meant one thing: that there were outsiders in their midst and he’d better listen. “Colonel Rand, would you like to take it from here?”
Rand didn’t mince his words. “Can I assume Mr. Stearn has security clearance?”
“Class Two Civilian,” Alvarez said.
“Then let’s get to it. Being in your line of work you no doubt know that the Germans had a number of unique aircraft in development during Word War II.”
“Sure, the V2 rocket, the Heinkel He 178 jet, any number of the Horten brothers’ designs,” Mobi said.
“So you’re aware that the V2 rocket was the predecessor to every ICBM on the planet. You know the Heinkel He 178 was the world’s first jet aircraft. What do you know about the Hortens?”
“I’m a communication engineer, not an aircraft historian.”
“I didn’t ask you what you did for living.”
Mobi cast a glance at Alvarez. Her look told him to play nice. “The Horten Ho 2-29 was the world’s first stealth aircraft. The Horten 18, a larger version of the 2-29, was a long range bomber. The Nazis probably would have won the war if they’d been able to get either one of them into production in time.”
“Good. Now what you might not know is that the Germans are also said to have invented a number of lesser known technologies.”
Mobi was quiet for a long moment. “You’re talking about the 21.”
“So you do know something.”
“The Horten 21 was built on the 2-29’s basic design. It was larger with an aluminum skin, but the big difference was the power source. It was supposed to contain a working low energy nuclear reactor — the holy grail of nuclear design — cold fusion.”
“That’s right. Cold fusion. Anything else you’d like to add, Mr. Stearn?”
“Yeah. Nobody’s ever been able to confirm the existence of the 21. And not because they didn’t try. Project Paperclip was launched by the OSS after the war to, among other things, get to the bottom of what exactly the Nazis might have done with the prototypes. They came up with nothing. Nada. As far as the official record stands, the Horten 21 was never built.”
“It’s a good analysis, but not quite accurate,” Rand said.
“What did I miss?”
Rand's lips curled into a crooked smile. But there was nothing nice about it. It was a smile designed to prove a point. “You missed the little detail about one of these Nazi birds being found. Approximately five years ago, a heavily corroded Horten 21 was pulled from a Chinese rice paddy. By the time officials got to it, the locals had melted most of it down for scrap metal, but the reactor and communications systems were still intact.”
Mobi let out a slow breath. “I knew it. You guys have got one, don’t you? Where is it? Nellis? Edwards?”
“No. In spite of our best efforts, we don’t have a 21, Mr. Stearn.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“They have one. An unmanned Chinese satellite incorporating what our experts believe to be a working model of the Horten’s cold fusion reactor was launched into orbit twenty-six hours ago.”
Unable to contain himself, Mobi jumped up from his chair. “Awesome. What can I say? This is just awesome.”
“It’s not entirely awesome, Mr. Stearn.”
“Which part? The part about cold fusion being the answer to the world’s energy crisis? The part about not having to burn oil anymore? Or the part about no nasty radioactive waste like you get out of nuclear fission?” Mobi threw his hands into the air. “Which part of this equation could not possibly be awesome?”
“The part about the Chinese having lost control of their satellite,” Alvarez said.
“Lost control?” Mobi asked, “As in dead in the air?”
This time Rand made no effort to disguise his smug superiority. “As in the Chinese bird is on a collision course with Earth. Unless we can do something about it, your totally awesome cold fusion reactor is about to blow a whole lot of people all the way to hell.”
Chapter 16
One day Michael got home from school early. He must have been in the fifth or sixth grade. His dad had just gotten back from one of his trips and he had a gift for him. It was a little woven bamboo tube called a Chinese Finger Puzzle. The trick was, you stuck a finger into either end of the little woven tube and you pulled. The tube grabbed your fingers and wouldn’t let go. The more you pulled, the tighter it grabbed. The only way to get your fingers out was to go in the opposite direction. To push them together so that the little tube squished back down and widened, finally letting your fingers out. Michael played with the finger puzzle for weeks after that until finally it broke. It was fun while it lasted, though. And it taught Michael an important lesson. Sometimes to move forward, you needed to take a step back.
***
Michael wasn’t accustomed to Houdini acts. But a Houdini act was apparently what Kate had planned for them from the start. From the moment their bodies hit the hard aluminum floor of the Cessna, Kate made it clear that Michael shouldn’t get too comfortable. As soon as the plane began its slow arc onto the runway, Kate pulled Michael back to his feet, beckoning him to lift his end of the capsule. Before Michael could ask why, a second shot had hit the cowling of the aircraft. Deciding he might live a longer life off the plane than on it, Michael picked up his end of the load and followed Kate out the far cargo door. Using the Cessna as cover, they made their way across two taxi ways to an ancient propeller driven DC3 revving for takeoff.
A quick heave of the capsule later and they were through the DC3’s open cargo door. It only took another moment for their pursuers to sideswipe the Cessna, but by that time the DC3’s wheels had left the ground. Examining their current conveyance, Michael had to wonder if taking a bullet might not have been a better option. The old DC3’s cabin was no more than a bare shell, hay swirling in the heavy breeze. There was a crate of pigs at the back and a hole in the fuselage where the cargo door should have been. A manufacturer’s plate mounted above the hole indicated that the aircraft dated back to 1942. Michael was about to hazard a guess as to how often it had been serviced since then, when the logical half of his brain told him to stop. If the plane was good enough for the pigs, it would have to be good enough for him.
“Hand me the cargo net!” Kate shouted over the wind.
Michael looked up at the canvas cargo net he held with one hand. He released it from a tie bracket and handed it to Kate, careful to avoid the open door as they secured the capsule in place.