The Fall Read Free Page A

recalling the feelings rekindled during their interrupted dinner—feelings long absent in their busy lives.
    Two damn years, Jack, she thought, frowning. That’s how long it had been since they’d really connected, since the fire of their initial years of marriage was quenched by the realities of their almost separate lives, driving a deep wedge between them, resulting in Jack sleeping more often on the couch than in their bedroom.
    But there had been something there last night, a spark of years past, and a part of Angela was hoping to pick up where they had left off.
    But first you need to do this jump, she thought, as Jack separated from the pod and instantly assumed the planned initial descent profile, opening his arms and legs as if he were flying, stretching the titanium alloy webbing from his waist to his elbows and in between his thighs. The idea, which had earned her another patent, came to Angela by watching sugar gliders jump from tree to tree.
    â€œPhoenix, KSC. Jump plus five seconds. Looking good. All systems nominal. Pod ignition started. Ten seconds to drone deployment,” Pete said while sitting back down at his station in the middle row as General Hastings stepped aside to confer with the pair of Los Alamos physicists he had brought down with him along with a dozen military personnel, which he called his “security detail.”
    â€œRoger that. Phoenix’s good up here.”
    Hastings said something to his head of security, Captain Riggs, a steroids-enhanced brute who had come close to attacking Jack after last night’s heated exchange with Hastings.
    My money would have been on Jack, she thought with a grin, taking a sip while sizing up Riggs, who looked as if he ate rocks in his morning cereal. The man was certainly solid, with tight muscles visibly pressing against his dark uniform.
    In fact, he looks too perfect, she thought, with his closely cropped blond hair, hard-edged features, and very fair skin—certainly a fine specimen of Aryan descent. And interestingly enough, all of Hastings’s men had that look. Some had dark hair. One was Asian. Another black. But they all looked as if they were grown in the same place, like little toy soldiers, seldom making eye contact, and not one of them ever looked in her direction.
    Maybe they’re gay, she thought.
    Or maybe the good general cuts off their balls like they used to do in the old days.
    Riggs saluted the general, did a perfect about-face, and proceeded to direct his team of eunuchs to cover all entrances to Mission Control before approaching NASA’s press coordinator in the back of the room.
    She exhaled slowly, reminding herself that the brass was footing the bill. But if NASA could pull this off, perhaps Hastings, his pit bulls, and his pair of gurus would crawl back to whatever shithole they had come out of and let the real pros continue to drive this program.
    She gave the Alamo scientists a furtive glance while biting her lower lip. The male one was in his sixties, bald, and a bit hunched over, with round glasses perched at the edge of his thin nose. The female was much younger, perhaps in her forties, rail thin, with ash-blond hair, light-colored eyes behind thick glasses, and a pasty complexion that suggested she probably didn’t get outside much.
    Maybe Hastings is doing her, she thought with another grin, finishing off her drink and executing another perfectly loud three-pointer.
    She had never seen either one of them before last night, when she caught them in the suit-up room with their noses deep in the electronic guts of her baby, the product of nearly six years of painful design and redesign. Jack had to literally restrain her when Angela had instinctively reverted to her biker upbringing, turning into a junkyard dog about to mangle the visiting physicists, who scrambled out of the room.
    She hoped she wouldn’t see them ever again after today.
    Angela had no clue yet, why there was a