But if she could get back inside without being detected, she’d be able to surprise them from behind and maybe do away with those two slimeballs—this time permanently.
She moved carefully across the station’s outer skin, focusing on firmly grasping a pipe, a metal ridge, and handrails that ran along the FGB as she made her way to the ПρК.
It was time to confront the terrorists.
HADID HOME, VIENNA, VIRGINIA
The two-story house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac. The house was ideally located, half a mile up the street from the last stop on Washington D.C.’s Metro Orange line. White windowsills accentuated the blue paneled siding. A wide porch ran across the front and red maple trees covered the yard. An elementary school stood two blocks away, the community swimming pool was across the street, and the normally quiet neighborhood was home to well-to-do, two-income families who mostly worked for the federal government.
But this day was different. The streets leading to the circle of houses were packed with crowds of people, honking cars, armadas of police officers, and a line of TV news vans with satellite dishes on their roofs. Helicopters thrummed overhead.
Adding to the chaos, traffic was backed up throughout the neighborhood, all the way out to I-66, a half mile to the east, and extended from downtown D.C. to past West Virginia. Cars clogged the interstate systems throughout the east coast, all trying to head west, away from the cities, but mired in the traffic and making no headway.
The evacuation that had started only hours earlier with the startling revelation of the space station’s impending crash now paralyzed the transportation infrastructure. Air terminals, bus and train stations were packed with frightened, panicked people. Rental car lots up and down the east coast were stripped bare, emptied in scant minutes. The number of people abandoning the east coast dwarfed the outflow of people after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Newscasters stood on the street just outside the lawn of the Hadid family home. Every so often their cameras caught a glimpse of someone peeking through the drawn curtains. More and more details were leaking out about the young American woman astronaut aboard the ISS as Kimberly Hadid-Robinson’s childhood home became a magnet, a storm center, a focus of attraction for the curious, the fearful, and the news media.
Kimberly’s picture, along with photos of Kazakhstani cosmonaut Farid Hazood and Qatari tourist Adama Bakhet were splashed in news venues across the whole world.
Despite the press encampment outside the Hadid home in Virginia, NASA maintained a stony silence about the whereabouts of her ex-husband, astronaut Scott Robinson, or what he was doing.
Even worse, because of Kimberly’s Arab American background and her darkish Middle Eastern features, rumors were swirling that she might actually be in cahoots with the terrorists. But most of the American public was sympathetic toward the photogenic young astronaut—when they were not in a panic about being hit by a million pounds of radioactive space station debris.
Inside the Hadid home, Kimberly’s father sat alongside his wife on the living room sofa, his eyes fixed on the family’s high-definition TV screen. The same scenes, the same suppositions, the same wild guesses from self-anointed “experts.”
And it all amounted to the same thing: No one knew what was happening on the International Space Station. No one really knew if Kimberly was dead or alive.
Kimberly’s mother could not stand watching the so-called news broadcasts. Her head rested on her husband’s shoulder as she quietly sobbed. Her father wished he could cry, too, but the tears would not come. He sat like a statue, waiting, hoping, silently praying to the God of the universes that his daughter would live through this terrible day.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
The streets surrounding Grand Central Station were mobbed with people, overflowing into an area of over five million square feet reaching from East Thirty-Ninth to East Forty-Sixth Street and from Fifth to Second Avenue. An ocean of people pushed to the station as they fought to catch nonexistent trains out of the city. Screams mixed with crying, sobs, and angry shouting. People gagged at the stench of unwashed bodies and vomit. The less fortunate were trampled as the crowd surged over them.
The parkways were congested. Smoke rose from stalled cars and buses, unable to move in the largest traffic jam in the world. People scrambled over smaller vehicles, struggling their way to bridges that were just as packed as the streets. The roads were so packed that bicycles were unable to make their way through the throng.
LaGuardia and JFK International were closed, the last planes having long deserted the area, but people still jammed the terminals, overwhelming the few TSA employees trying to keep people away. Fathers helped boost their families over the fences surrounding the airport, and soon the tarmac and runways were covered with people desperately searching the skies for incoming planes.
Lines into liquor stores snaked around the block as people stockpiled anything containing alcohol. Wine stores were overrun as rumors spread about a limit on purchases.
Groceries and convenience marts were filled with people making a run on canned goods, dried food, and bottled water. Signs at the front of the stores prominently announced that credit and debit cards would not be accepted; transactions were on a cash only basis. Most of the ATMs were empty, and some had their fronts defaced by frustrated customers. Banks and the financial district closed early; the only people not hoarding, seeking shelter, or trying to evacuate stood around ragtag preachers on street corners proselytizing the crowd.
In Central Park robed druids danced around a bonfire made from fallen trees and trash laid out in a giant X, marking a projected impact point like a bull’s-eye for the incoming space station. Across the park, wiccans led their acolytes in chants, putting a hex on the station to miss the city. Elsewhere throughout the city, mainstream churches were packed in prayer meetings.
A majority of people barricaded themselves in high-rises, apartments, townhomes, and condominiums, unconvinced that the station would hit the city—but seeking shelter from the mayhem generated by the fraction of eight million residents that seemed to have completely lost their minds.
RUSSIAN SERVICE MODULE (SM)
Gasping for breath, Kimberly reached the end of the Russian Service Module, ready to enter the ПρК’s cramped docking port. She hoped desperately that the inner hatch to the port was closed; otherwise she’d have to vent air from the entire station through a small valve to get in, and that would take hours.
But she didn’t have hours, she knew. Maybe minutes. Maybe less.
Floating outside the airlock, she felt as if she were groping through a fog as she started depressurizing the ПρК’s small volume. She recognized the symptoms of oxygen deprivation, yet knew she couldn’t afford to rush and make a mistake. Moments dragged by as the air vented from the transfer chamber.
She shook her head, momentarily at a loss as to what she needed to do next. Then she fumbled in her utility pouch and pulled out a ⅜-inch square ratchet. Holding it firmly in her gloved hand she giggled as she thought, A square peg in a hex hole. Then she wondered why that was funny.
Carefully, she inserted the ratchet in the recessed hexagonal opening, and then turned it to open the hatch. The circular metal hatch swung open. Kimberly felt a gust of relief: the inner hatch had been closed. Thank God.