J.J. shook his head in disgust as he looked over the shambles that was the gantry. Dr. Andros had just phoned from Command, asked him to undertake a preliminary assessment of the condition of the facility, just to ballpark the extent of damage. The assignment was already depressing him. Still, from what he could see so far, things could have been worse. There was no obvious physical injury to VX-2 or to the transmission antennas up on the hill, though the testing and corrections could take weeks. The gantry was a total loss, no doubt about that, but otherwise the major physical structures on the island appeared unscathed. The main reason, naturally, was that almost everything important-including the superconducting coil and the Fujitsu-was well underground.
The main scene now was all the bodacious helicopters, Hueys, on the landing pad and all the Army commandos milling around. Jesus! How did everybody in Launch Control miss what was really going on? Looking back, the whole thing was fishy from the word go.
Now the Army types were collecting the bodies of the terrorists and acting like they had cleaned up the place all by themselves. Guess that was going to be the official story…
Mr. Bates had already come down to Launch, shook everybody's hand, and thanked the crews for hanging in there. He looked a little shook up, but he wasn't talking like it. Totally upbeat. You had to love the guy. He also delivered the news that as soon as things settled down, SatCom was going to kick some ass in the space business.
Jordan Jaegar looked up at the brilliant Greek sunshine and grinned in spite of himself. Shit, he couldn't wait.