Boomerang

By Glenn Muller

Crippled and out of fuel, Yaogen 18B, a Chinese military satellite is falling out of orbit. As it plummets toward a small Canadian town, with a payload of secret technology, international agents race to find the remnants of the fiery descent.
The Chinese send Soong Zhaojun, an orbital specialist; Alina Zarudneya, a defected Russian rocket technician; and Han Cho, a security officer who has his own agenda. While the Canadian Government dispatch the militia and hope to avoid a costly cleanup, the Americans send over Gord Trumbill, a veteran Homeland Security field agent needing a successful mission to atone for past mistakes.
On their own mission, Silas and Clyde, two satellite-spotting farm boys from Tennessee join forces with the residents to protect the small town's lifestyle from further militarization. Down, though not yet out, Yaogen 18B will bring the World Powers to Goderich - but never count out the locals when they have home field advantage!

Fans of Lynwood Barclay, Clive Cussler, and Michael Connelly will want to add this breakout novel to their library.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glenn Muller
• Release date: Nov 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9780991864157

Glenn Muller

Glenn Muller was born in New Jersey, USA, then spent his early years in England before emigrating to Canada where he would attain Canadian citizenship.After jobs in hotel administration, driver education, computer applications, and bookkeeping, Glenn started his own successful bookkeeping business. Writing, of course, he’s always done for love, not money. Though money is always politely accepted when offered.Chas Fenn, the protagonist in his debut novel, TORQUE, was inspired by the twelve years he spent as a driving instructor, and would appeal to fans of The Republic of Doyle. The sequel, JACKLIGHTER COPSE, was written in response to the demand for another book featuring Chas Fenn and Detective Inspector Evan Lareault. His other novel, BOOMERANG, was influenced by a life-long interest in Space exploration and would appeal to fans of Clive Cussler, Lynwood Barclay, and Michael Connelly.Although his genre is thrillers, Glenn natural sense of humour bubbles to the surface, prompting readers to describe his books as “fun-packed” and “just plain awesome”.

Book preview

BOOMERANG

BY

GLENN MULLER

BOOMERANG

Copyright 2018 Glenn Muller

Smashwords Edition Version 1.6

EPUB ISBN 9780991864157

MOBI ISBN 9780991864164

Print ISBN 9780991864140

Licence Notes

This book is licenced for your personal enjoyment only. Except for brief passages embodied in reviews or other non-commercial uses, this e-book may not be reproduced in any form without the prior written consent of the author. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase them a copy. If you are reading this e-book and did not purchase it, then please visit your favourite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places, are either a product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious context. Any other resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover graphic by Ryan Schwarz.

DEDICATION

To the friendly folk of Goderich, and

amateur astronomers everywhere.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Epilogue

Author's Notes

Acknowledgements

Other Books by Glenn Muller

CHAPTER 1

PLESETSK COSMODROME, MIRNY, RUSSIA

April 16, 1981

Alina stepped from the golf cart and grabbed her toolbox off the back. She kept her eyes down on the short walk to the platform and tried to focus on what she had to do, and not on where she had to do it. The gantry operator was ready with a joke.

Where to, Comrade Zarudneya? he deadpanned in Russian. The lift, a two-metre square metal grid with a minimal amount of safety railing, only traveled from the bottom of the scaffold to the top so the joke worked and Alina gave a nervous laugh.

Penthouse, please.

And no stops on the way, Anatoli. This from Flight Director Vadim Pushkin in Mission Control. We’re holding the clock but our launch window is shrinking.

Although Alina had been suited-up, on stand-by, when the countdown had stopped at T-Minus 9:47, the drive to the pad and then the ascent to the gantry would leave only seventeen minutes to make the repair, descend, and get the hell out of Dodge before the Soviet Bloc’s largest rocket unleashed the power of a small volcano.

Anatoli Fetisov hummed softly as the platform crept up the side of the silo-sized cylinder. The gleaming white wall was wet with condensation from the super-cooled fuel inside. Alina looked up hoping they were near the gantry that led to the payload capsule but they had yet to pass the second stage booster section.

Take a moment to admire the view, said Fetisov. It’s one that few people live to see.

She couldn’t make out the face behind the reflective visor of her companion's HazMat suit. They had only spoken a few times and didn't know each other well, yet Alina knew that Fetisov was a lucky man. Lucky to have been on leave, last year, when a Vostok-2M rocket identical to this one blew up on the pad while being fueled. It had exploded with the destructive force of a twenty-kiloton bomb and leveled everything within a square kilometre. Forty-eight technicians, mostly men with families, lost their lives. The gantry operator and two others working on the scaffold that day were never found; likely vaporized by the blast. Alina now understood why the techs who helped her into the protective suit were unconcerned about the poor fit. This close to the epi-centre it wouldn’t even make a decent body bag.

The lift stopped and Fetisov opened the gate. He motioned for Alina to cross the narrow gangway then stood behind her, ready to assist, as she knelt and opened the toolbox. She handed him a crescent-shaped plastic tray.

There’s not much room, here, she said, so just reach over and hold this beneath the screws as I take them out, in case I drop one. Her kit included spares but a fumbled part dropped into an inconvenient place could have dire results.

The rocket's payload was a test satellite for the top-secret Polyus-Skif program; a fleet of orbiting spacecraft designed to shoot down American ICBM missiles. In theory, at least. The hallway rumours were that the Soviets hadn’t the expertise for such an interception since they still had problems docking with their own spacecraft. But a good bluff can cover many ineptitudes and, if nothing else, Mother Russia had a great poker face. A lesson learned early on, with Sputnik's very first beacon call, was that any old tin can that achieved orbit could be held like a hammer over the Western World.

Mission Control cut in. You have sixteen minutes, Comrade. Alina knew that if she couldn't re-instate the radio link with Soviet Military Command then she should shut the satellite down and recommend aborting the mission; but it would be her call and an unsuccessful launch with her name on the report was not a good career move.

Understood. I’m accessing the outer panel.

She picked up the electric screwdriver then gave a soft groan. It had a carbon bit to eliminate any static charge, which meant it wasn’t magnetized. She would have to grasp each screw with her fingers as they came loose, and then reinsert them manually to close the panel. A nearly impossible task with HazMat gloves.

Anatoli, help me get my gloves off. She held her arm out and the operator grasped her wrist. Then he let it go.

I don’t think I can!

To seal their suits from hazardous liquids and gases, the cuffs and collars had been wrapped with adhesive tape. Fetisov couldn’t peel off the tape around Alina’s gloves while wearing his own, which he also couldn’t take off.

Pushkin, a former cosmonaut who'd made his own share of emergency repairs, was listening in. Check the toolbox, Comrades. There should be a razor knife, inside.

Among the pliers, wire snips, and cable connectors, Alina found a plastic-handled box cutter with a sliding blade. She handed it to Fetisov. Hurry, but try not to slice my wrists.

The operator pinched the slack in her sleeve and made a slit then carefully inserted the blade, sharp edge up, and struggled to work it around her arm. The thin material was tough and didn’t cut well.

Fifteen minutes.

Thank you, Flight. The knife is working. Alina gave the operator her other arm. He made another slit.

Ow!

Sorry.

Fetisov sawed away at the sleeve until he could pull off the second glove.

Fingers now free, Alina quickly removed the screws and pulled the panel off the outer capsule housing. The satellite body also had a panel; four screws came out and she could now see the communications board. The board could be changed hot, while the power was still on, but she could not let it contact the other electronic parts nestled into the tight space. Alina squeezed her hand inside, knuckles scraping on the sharp edge of the hatch lip, and eased the board free from the socket. She carefully brought her hand out and unplugged the flat cable that connected the board to the main processor. To her eye, the board looked fine; no cracks in the composite base, and no obvious breaks in the gold filaments that ran between the transistors. She put it in the foam-lined lid of the toolbox then connected and installed the replacement.

Module check, please, Flight.

One moment.

Are you bleeding? Fetisov touched her thumb.

It’s nothing. She swiped the graze against her sleeve; it wouldn't do to smear blood on sterile equipment. Making a repair up here was bad enough; the top brass must really want this launch to happen to risk opening up a payload outside of the clean room

Did you design this machine, Comrade Zarudneya?

I designed the integration system. The hub that lets all the parts talk to each other. So that essentially made me the hub of the department, and the lucky winner of this lottery.

She saw the operator’s head move in a nod.

Comrades, this is Flight. There’s no response from the unit.

Shit.

Copy that, Flight. I’ll check the cable, if the problem is any deeper we may have to scrub.

The flight director’s lack of response carried weight. Alina had seen the black limousines with their little fender flags file into the parking lot, and the ribboned uniforms that came out of them. Her career was not the only one on the line, today.

She removed the board again and then checked the cable. There, inside the narrow socket, she found the problem.

Flight, the connector cable has a loose transfer pin. I have another cable but I'll need to access the main processor to make the swap. She looked over at Fetisov. They both knew what that meant but he just shrugged his shoulders. There was silence while Pushkin conferred with his team in Mission Control.

Comrade Zarudneya, it will take you and Comrade Fetisov two minutes to descend and two minutes to get back to the launch bunker. There are just over ten minutes left in the launch window. Can you effect the repair or do we scrub the launch?

While Fetisov stood quietly behind her, Alina mentally went through the steps to access the main processor, replace the cable, re-insert the communications board then button up the satellite and the capsule. Seven minutes was awfully tight.

Go or No-go, Comrade Zarudneya? Pushkin was clearly putting the decision in her hands.

Fetisov put a hand on her shoulder and cut into the conversation. Flight; if we went to a blast bunker instead of returning to Mission Control, we could add a full minute to the repair time.

Alina nodded. The blast bunkers were concrete re-enforced shelters, just two-hundred metres away, on each side of the launch pad. They had been built as part of the new safety-protocol following last year's disaster. It would be a hell of a place to sit through a launch but, if Fetisov was up to it, Alina was willing to take the risk. That extra minute was huge and she wasted no time in making a decision.

Anatoli, wait for me on the lift. Flight, start the countdown, I'm unbolting the processor.

A klaxon sounded, announcing the resumption of the countdown at T-minus 9:47. Hurrying, yet carefully placing each nut, bolt, and screw in the tray, Alina gained access to the main processor and replaced the connector cable. Apart from his minute to minute time checks Pushkin stayed silent throughout the reassembly, and so did she although she knew the most powerful people in the country were anxiously awaiting her update.

Test, please, Flight.

To save a few seconds, she picked out the first set of screws while waiting. Please let it work!

Green light, Comrade. Button up and get out of there. Three minutes to lift-off.

Alina replaced the two panels, packed up her toolbox, and hurried toward the lift.

Anatoli; you ready?

Your carriage awaits, Contessa, he replied, holding the flimsy gate open for her.

They were still descending when loudspeakers throughout the Cosmodrome blared the 'one-minute to launch' siren. The lift stopped. Anatoli threw open the gate and they hustled over to the electric cart. Fetisov raced around to the driver's side and as soon as Alina was seated he stomped on the accelerator pedal.

The cart didn't move. He stomped the pedal again.

Take the handbrake off, Comrade!

It is off.

Then why aren't we moving?

It was a pretty simple machine; the right pedal to go, the left pedal to stop. There wasn't even an On/Off switch.

I don't know, and there’s no time to figure it out - we’ll have to run to the bunker. Fetisov jumped off the cart and beckoned Alina to follow. C’mon. Let’s go!

Jogging as quickly as the HazMat suits would allow, they headed for the nearest blast bunker. There were less than twenty seconds before ignition and in her panicked state the hut appeared to be a mile away. She didn't see how they could make it in time. There was a rumble and the large conduits below the rocket begun to flood the pad with water.

Ten seconds.

Flight; we won't reach the shelter in time. Abort! Abort!

On monitors inside Mission Control, the view from remote launch cameras showed two small figures fleeing toward the safety of the bunker. They clearly wouldn't get there before the huge boosters lit up. Pushkin began to reach for the large red Abort button when another hand stopped his arm.

The State regrets to announce, said a gravelly voice behind his shoulder, that today, in the course of serving Mother Russia, two of her brave Comrades have lost their lives.

The water cascaded over the pad and spread outward, quickly gaining ground on the pair desperately running for their lives. The countdown took on new meaning.

Three...

Two...

One.

It only took forty seconds for the six pipes, each seven feet in diameter, to pump three-hundred-thousand gallons of water onto the launch pad. Its purpose was to absorb the heat, and also suppress the damaging sound waves generated by the four great rocket thrusters. When the boosters hit full burn, though, even the small lake couldn't stop the ground from shaking. It made Fetisov stumble and he fell to his knees. Alina looked back and saw him struggle to regain his feet as a great cloud of super-heated mist rushed toward them like a pyroclastic flow.

Communication was now impossible; she could hardly hear herself think. Fetisov, struggling to regain his feet, seemed to realize that his own race was lost and gallantly waved at her to keep going. She looked toward the shelter. They were almost there. She gauged it would take only seconds to help her colleague but when she turned back he was already lost in the roiling cloud of steam. It had swallowed up Fetisov and it was about to devour her.

With no time left to think about Anatoli Fetisov, or anything other than her own survival, Alina ran. She cursed, she sobbed, she gasped for air as the baggy suit fought against her every step. By design, the bunker door was on the far side from the pad, an extra six paces most of which she stumbled through before throwing herself around the corner, half a gasp ahead of the blast wave.

The steam cloud rushed over and around the bunker, then curled back to envelop her. The suit quickly became a sauna, fogging up the visor and making it hard to breathe. Every surface became wet and she cried in pain as scalding water soaked the exposed skin on her hands and wrists. She crawled forward, groping blindly in the deadly mist, until she found the metal door and then the latch, a simple sliding bolt affair made of iron. The door swung inward and she collapsed inside, then immediately rolled to her knees to slam it shut. The rocket’s thunder was now a total body assault and the ground vibrated so violently it seemed impossible for the bunker not to collapse

Alina felt like she was suffocating. She frantically clawed at the tape around her collar and pulled off the HazMat hood. She still couldn't see much; the bunker had no windows or electricity. The only light came from where the door didn't quite meet the concrete pad. The same place where steaming water was now seeping in. Although it ran into a grate in the floor, Alina backed away and climbed onto a cement bench built into the back wall. She curled up on her side, covered her ears with blistering hands, and told herself that the fury would soon subside.

Or the rocket would fail, explode on the pad, and she would die.

CHAPTER 2

Neither Flight Director Pushkin nor the other technicians in Mission Control had time to deal with the tragedy they had just witnessed. The launch was under way. They could no more abandon their posts than a doctor could abandon a mother giving birth, and this baby was a petulant hundred and sixty ton, fire-belching, monster that would just as soon somersault and crash on top of them as continue to struggle free of Earth’s gravity. So they stayed glued to their monitors and watched for anomalies in the data.

The Vostok-2M rocket had cleared the gantry and continued to climb. The booster and first stage engine burned furiously to accelerate the vehicle to 9,000 km/hr. Now spent, they obeyed the command to detach and began the long drop to Kazakhstan. The second stage engine, programmed to burn for six minutes, would thrust the capsule closer to the orbital speed of 28,000 km/hr. It would detach at the edge of space.

Intently focused on the big screen at the front, Pushkin stood with the officials gathered at the back of the room. Two rows down, technician Pyotr Dubtsova toggled the view on his monitor from the telemetry readouts over to a live feed from the launch pad cameras. Fire trucks were just arriving on scene with a pair of ambulances right behind them. They stopped first beside Fetisov’s motionless body. Responders disembarked from an ambulance and ran to the prone figure in the blackened HazMat suit. After a moment one of the fire trucks and the other ambulance sped toward the bunker.

Dubtsova flicked back to the flight data; the telemetry readings were nominal.

He returned to the cameras. The paramedics hoisted Fetisov's limp form onto a wheeled stretcher with care but without urgency. The other ambulance was now idling outside the bunker. He tapped a few strokes on his keyboard and patched into the rescue crew audio. The crew chief was telling the infirmary to prepare for a female patient with burns and possibly scalded lungs.

Alina Zarudneya was alive!

Dubtsova gave small fist pump and peered around at his colleagues. They were all absorbed with the launch. And cowards, too, he thought. All afraid of losing their postings at the Cosmodrome to acknowledge what had really happened. He wanted to tap into the main intercom and tell everyone the good news but knew, if he did, he'd quickly be out of a job and his state-funded apartment. So what did that make him?

He switched the monitor back to his designated readouts, and blinked. Where he expected to see lines of data progressing downwards in a predictable pattern, there was flashing text at the top of the screen:

WARNING: ABNORMAL FLIGHT PARAMETERS DETECTED.

What had happened?

The techs around him were now in an agitated state, rapidly tapping on keyboards and talking into their headsets. Dubtsova plugged into the chatter. The news wasn't good. The second stage engine hadn't detached cleanly. Only two of the three explosive bolts had fired which meant that the booster was still partially connected to the capsule. And probably at an angle to it as if on a hinge.

He snuck a look over his shoulder at the flight director’s station. Pushkin was engrossed in conversation through his headset, with the occasional comment to the important onlookers beside him. To a man, the suits and all their be-ribboned associates were grim-faced and tight-lipped.

Serves you right for not aborting, you murderous bastards, thought Dubtsova, darkly. Both Anatoli Fetisov, who had been a close friend, and the other technician had been summarily sacrificed just so the Minister of Defense could shake his sabre at the West. A firm believer that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, Dubtsova hoped the capsule would crash down into the Minister's dacha, preferably while the son of a bitch was in the hot-tub with his whore of a wife.

He saw Pushkin reach over and hit a button on his console. A moment later the commander’s voice came over the 'all-stations' channel.

Comrades, just before reaching orbital velocity, Mission P-S-One-Zero-Zero failed to disengage from the second stage booster. Telemetry indicates that the craft, though still gaining altitude, is cartwheeling. To try and salvage the launch we will command the capsule to release the satellite and hope the spinning rocket will throw it into orbit. Data is still being collated so we can calculate a release point. Stand by your stations, this is going to happen very soon.

Dubtsova got a request for a data set, which he captured and passed along. The numbers scrolling on his screen rose and fell. To his technician's eye it conjured up the image of a pendulum but since that motion wasn't possible in Space, it confirmed that the craft was indeed cartwheeling. The interdepartmental communication link was open for all to listen, though Flight now controlled who could speak; a privilege restricted to certain capsule and satellite command techs, along with the math geeks who were probably burning out brain cells trying to refine the release point.

The slide rule boys were evidently up to the task because the solution was indeed presented quickly. They had probably figured the odds of failure were so overwhelming it didn't really matter what they tossed onto the table. The odds were right on. As Dubtsova listened to the chatter in his headset he heard the command to release the satellite. Moments later there was a collective groan. The real-time data on his monitor showed that the satellite had disengaged successfully, however, rather than pitching the payload into orbit, their Hail Mary pass had thrown it at the Moon.

The room went silent.

Readouts on the big board at the front confirmed the satellite to be operational, its radio link robust thanks to Alina Zarudneya’s emergency repair. The problem lay in the direction and speed at which it had been flung. From now on, its flight path would only be of interest to students in a training course.

Dubtsova glanced over his shoulder in time to see the top brass exiting the room. He’d bet a month's worth of meal tickets that they weren’t leaving to go visit Alina Zarudneya.

And then he hoped he was right about that.

The USSR went to great lengths to publicize its triumphs - and just as far to bury the failures. If a general announcement wasn't made about Comrade Zarudneya's welfare by the end of his shift, Dubtsova would check on her welfare, himself. The Politburo was inept at many things but it knew how to find a scapegoat when it needed one.

Whatever they had given Alina to dull the pain was working. Her hands were bandaged though she couldn't feel them. An oxygen mask covered her face and she was beneath a tent-like canopy that covered the bed. It was translucent so she could see the activity around her but the doctors, nurses, whoever they were, were blurred. And whatever they were doing they weren't doing to her so she closed her eyes and began to drift off.

As terrifying and tragic as her ordeal had been, she hadn't lost consciousness at any point, and although it hurt her throat to speak she'd repeatedly asked about Anatoli Fetisov. The doctors only told her not to worry about 'that fellow' and to concentrate on getting herself well. They had her swallow some pills and put an intravenous drip in her arm then they’d zipped up the tent and left her alone with her thoughts.

She was in the medical wing of the Cosmodrome. It was more of a laboratory than a hospital. This was where the cosmonauts were examined then put through tests and generally treated like human guinea pigs. There were three other beds in this room. All empty. Four was probably the occupancy limit of the whole department. No doubt she'd be transferred to the hospital in Plesetsk soon. She desperately hoped that Anatoli was already there, but whenever her eyes closed all she saw was a great killer cloud open its jaws and swallow him whole.

For the rest of the Cosmodrome, it continued to be a long and taxing shift. The last few hours especially hectic as employees not scheduled to be onsite had rushed back to their posts when they'd heard the news. All were anxious to re-examine reports, programs, specifications, or anything they had contributed to the project before the investigators locked everything down. Since many technicians shared workstations the extra demand on limited resources only served to raise the stress level in an already tense atmosphere.

Pyotr Dubtsova, still in the Control Room, had responded to more than a dozen requests for data sets from the heads of Research and Development, Design, Manufacturing, Assembly, Transportation, and Programming. All were anxious to verify that their team was not responsible for the malfunction, or to identify external conditions beyond their control like atmospheric static, birds in the launch path, anything that could be presented to avert blame.

It might be weeks, perhaps months, before many would sleep well. The inquiry would audit, interview, and then analyze the findings until all factors related to the failure had been exposed. Of course, general theories had already begun to circulate among the staff and their assumptions were usually close to the mark. The cream of the Soviet Republic’s brain trust worked on the Space program. They understood the workings of their machines, and their inherent flaws. Setbacks were part of the process. However, when component failure or faulty programming caused the disastrous launch of a multi-billion-ruble machine someone had to take the fall. And the inquisitors always found a candidate.

The trajectory had been fine, so Dubtsova and a few others received permission to log-out and go home. He slipped on his jacket and picked up his cigarette pack. It felt light and the ashtray backed that up. He left without saying goodnight to anyone. Those still working in the Control Room seemed to be avoiding eye contact and not only because of the malfunction. Aside from furtive whispers there had been no mention of the two comrades who all had seen running from the launch pad.

The space between Dubtsova's workstation and the next might as well have been a void. Close enough to toss a pack of matches but not a quiet comment. In fact, his communications during the entire day had been solely electronic, and mission-specific. The tragedy had not been publicly acknowledged by those in command, and that omission alone told each person who had witnessed it that it should never be mentioned. Although Flight Director Pushkin and the upper echelon had left the room hours ago Dubtsova knew they were still on site. Probably holed up in a boardroom working out the best way to cover their asses.

Self-serving pricks.

Out in the parking lot, an unlit American Marlboro between his lips, he walked between the rows of cars. He went about a hundred yards, his shadow slanting back and forth beneath the mercury vapour lights, then cut over and re-entered the building via a