Four and a half hours after the final shots were fired in the jungle near Coba, a single errant asteroid somehow slipped undetected into the inner solar system. It had happened before, close calls with potential impactors, but this one was far nearer and more dangerous than most.
News accounts of the mysterious fire in the sky over the southern United States received sparse coverage in the world’s media. Less than two inches appeared on one of the inside pages of the only major daily in Phoenix, Arizona.
Scientists at NASA were still gathering data and analyzing the potential for disaster. A few members of Congress renewed their calls for more funding to scan the skies, the first step toward avoiding any future catastrophic event.
But most leaders, including those in the White House, assured the public that there was no real reason for concern. There was, after all, a far greater chance of winning the lottery than being killed by an asteroid.
Near disasters were always something that government leaders sought to downplay, especially if their own incompetence and possible corruption were contributing factors. It was one of the time-tested reasons for classifying otherwise public information. People in positions of power always had to survive; otherwise the world might turn upside down. Doctors merely buried their mistakes. Presidents shoveled them by the ton into the constantly sucking and massive dark hole of national security.
Fortunately the asteroid merely skimmed the earth’s upper atmosphere before skipping out into space, a close call, but no harm-colorful fireworks that illuminated the evening sky over the American Southwest.
What the newspapers and even the American government didn’t know was that Lawrence Leffort’s attempt to peddle secrets to a foreign power, and to test the deadly results in the desert of Arizona, was doomed from the inception.
Even without the failed rocket mounts, the iron asteroid that Leffort and his colleagues had so carefully harvested and sequestered behind the moon never had a chance of reaching Earth. The reason was that the final targeting software from the flash drive in Raji Fareed’s jacket had been intentionally scuttled by the man himself.
Fareed was an Israeli agent, a longtime sleeper in the space-age catacombs of the American empire. He had been sending information to Tel Aviv for years. It was how Israeli intelligence became aware of Project Thor. And they were not alone.
For decades America’s technologic crown jewels had been plundered by government and industrial spies and peddled by presidents who pocketed million-dollar speaking fees after they’d left office. The entire concept of a global economy embraced by both major parties was a naked excuse by political leaders and their Wall Street buddies to hollow out entire American industries and sell them abroad. American workers were left behind to squabble over the crumbs from diminishing social programs.
Of the few items of value in Fareed’s Paris hotel room, the only one that counted was the curious pair of spectacles with the wireless flash drive, the ones that Bruno’s men left on Raji’s body when they dumped him in the alley. Along with Raji’s notes, the glasses contained the accurate targeting software. It was the reason Fareed wanted so desperately to get online, so that he could transmit the data to his handlers in Tel Aviv.
As it turned out, the information never left America. The spectacles rested in the bottom of Joselyn’s purse and there they stayed until one afternoon when she crushed them under the wheel of her car. She smashed the flash drive with a hammer in the garage of the house she shared with Paul in Coronado, San Diego. It was bad enough knowing that NASA and the American Defense Department possessed the secret for bombing the earth with missiles from space. Joselyn had no intention of making it easy for the information to propagate.
And oh yes! Minutes after the croc tasted Liquida, while he was still deciding which parts were appetizers and which were entrees, the dog Bugsy crawled from the brush into Sarah’s lap. He had been shot in the side by the Mexicutioner but only grazed. He cried and whimpered but survived. Now he lives in the house with Sarah. This spring he sired three pups. Sarah kept the pick of the litter. She named him Adin.