Free Area 51: The Sphinx-4 by Robert Doherty

five, hundred and twenty-five feet tall and covering eight acres of land, one of the largest buildings in the world. The VAB was designed to withstand winds of up to 125
    miles per hour. Its

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    foundation rested on 4,200 steel pilings 16 inches in diameter driven down 160
    feet to bedrock.
    Etor had first visited the facility when it was named Cape Canaveral. The VAB
    was originally designed for the assembly of the massive Saturn launch vehicles.
    It had since been modified to support the assembly of the space shuttle.
    Etor watched as the high bay door, 456 feet high, rumbled to a halt, opening the spacious interior to the warm night air carried by the ocean breeze. The space shuttle Atlantis, mated with its external fuel tank and two solid rockets, stood vertical on top of the crawler-transporter. With a very slight jar, the huge treads on the crawler began moving, edging the entire shuttle system on its mobile launcher platform out of the VAB.
    Although the final destination was in sight, it would take the crawler six hours to make the short distance to the point from which the shuttle would be launched. Normally when a shuttle was moved at night, spotlights highlighted the procedure, providing a spectacle to the American public whose tax dollars funded the entire operation. This night, though, the movement was being made in blackout conditions. All roads around the space center had been blocked off since nightfall, reducing spectators to the security personnel and technicians involved—and those with the proper security clearance.
    With the destruction of the shuttles Endeavour and Columbia, Atlantis, quickly brought out of a retrofit, was the only spaceworthy manned craft left in the inventory; The shuttle Discovery had been stripped down to the bone for an extensive rebuilding, and it was estimated that even at breakneck speed—a term astronauts didn't want to hear when someone was talking about working on a vehicle they would be riding in—it would take over a month to get it ready for flight.
    The transporter was 131 feet long by 114 wide. It

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    moved on four double-tracked crawlers, each 10 feet high and 41 feet long. Just one of the track shoes weighed 2,000 pounds. With a maximum speed of one mile per hour, Atlantis cleared the VAB doors and the treads slowly crunched their way toward Launch Complex 39-A, which was 3.4 miles away. Etor turned and walked toward one of the old launch sites, half a mile away from the road, easily outpacing the shuttle on its path.
    He climbed down a rusting iron staircase into an old observation bunker, his feet splashing through water that had accumulated on the concrete floor. He leaned on a ledge, peering through a narrow slit at the black silhouette of the moving shuttle. He pulled out a small black box and pressed the on button.
    "It is moving," he reported.
    "Do you know the mission profile?" the voice on the other end asked.
    "The cover story is deployment of two surveillance satellites. The reality is that the payload consists of the latest generation of Warfighter satellite. They want to put it in orbit and take out the Warfighter you control."
    "That is unacceptable." There was a short pause. "I have a lock on target. Out here."
    "Out," Etor acknowledged, putting the communicator back in his pocket.
    The transporter was less than a quarter mile from the VAB when a flash of light streaked down from above and hit the top of the external. fuel tank. The laser beam ignited the five hundred thousand gallons of liquid oxygen and hydrogen.
    The resulting explosion not only obliterated Atlantis, it took out the vehicle assembly building. Windows as far away as ten miles were blown, and the shock wave from the explosion was heard in Orlando, forty miles away.
    Etor had ducked down, deep inside the shelter, but

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    even there the passing blast wave sucked the air out of his lungs. He waited a few seconds, then stood and looked out. There was nothing where the