It only took them about twenty minutes of walking. Normally, that would be nothing for Parkowski, but she was exhausted. She stopped to catch her breath as her boyfriend kept walking.
There were about ten vehicles in a small parking lot with one entrance leading out to a rough, two-lane road headed south along the riverbank. Around the parking lot were five buildings — she had miscounted — two large, four-story tall high bays and two smaller, one-story buildings alongside one that didn’t look like much more than a garage. Strewn around the area were cinder blocks, pallets, and other construction-type garbage.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“It’s an old SMC processing area,” he answered. “It was used for processing of the old DSP — Defense Support Program — missile-warning satellites. But, when they went to SBIRS fifteen years ago, this whole area was abandoned. Or, at least that’s what they told me when we came to get the GOVs here to ferry around VIPs. That’s all this area is now, a parking lot,” he finished with a laugh.
“Why did they abandon it?” Parkowski asked.
He shrugged. “Those birds are processed at Astrotech down the road,” DePresti explained. “I think the facilities here are so specialized that it’d cost too much to refurbish them for another purpose or to support another mission, so they just left them in place.”
Even in the dark, Parkowski could tell that the buildings had seen better days. Part of the roof of one of the smaller office buildings was falling off, probably damaged from a hurricane, and she spotted a hole in the garage. Regardless, the vehicles, mostly small SUVs or large sedans with a pair of pickup trucks rounding out the group, were all less than a few years old.
She stood and tried to relax while DePresti started trying to open up the cars and get the keys, which he told her were always kept in the glove compartment.
He wasn’t having much luck.
“Fuck,” DePresti said after his third failure. “I was here less than a year ago, and all of these were unlocked. It was an open secret on base; you need a GOV, you take the right just before the NASA Parkway and take that road all of the way up until you come here.”
“I wonder if some policy changed,” Parkowski said, finding a seat on a concrete block and sitting down. “Or if someone got in trouble.”
DePresti didn’t respond. Instead, he kept trying to open car doors. Eventually, he ran out of options. “Well, shit,” he said. “There goes that plan.”
“Maybe they moved the keys inside one of these buildings?” Parkowski suggested.
He looked like he was going to angrily reject her idea, but then nodded. “Go look, I’ll keep trying.”
Parkowski swung herself off of the concrete block and walked over to the garage-like building.
The door was locked, but Parkowski was able to see through a small window next to it. In the darkness, she could see the building was just one room and it was completely empty. There was some serious water damage on the floor.
No keys in there.
The next closest building was one of the high bays.
Parkowski pushed her tired legs forward to the tall building.
There must have been a cloud over the moon, obscuring some of its reflected light, because as the Aering engineer walked towards the structure it was bathed in light.
She felt a pang of sadness as she saw an American flag painted on its side near the top, half of the stripes faded away and the rest hanging on by a thread. It didn’t seem like anyone had been in the high bay in years.
Her eyes skipped to some writing above the American flag. “SPACE AND MISSILES SYSTEM CENTER PROCESSING FACILITY A98.”
Parkowski’s heart skipped a beat.
A98.
The same numbering scheme they had seen on the packets in the secure room in Hangar AZ. In fact, just one number off from the building they were looking for.
This story wasn’t over yet.
“Mike,” Parkowski said.
“What?” DePresti yelled while he tried to yank a sedan door open.
“I think you need to take a look at this.”
He grunted and stepped away from the GOV. “What do I need to look at?”
Parkowski wished she had a light as she pointed a finger at the top of the building. “What do you see?”
“I see that it’s a processing facility run by SMC.”
She wanted to slap him. “Keep reading.”
“…A98. What’s so important about that?”
Parkowski did slap him. “Idiot!” she said loudly. “Don’t you remember your network decoder ring from back in Hangar AZ?”
“Yeah.”
“The Bronze Knot data was coming from A99. Maybe it’s one of the other buildings here.”
“Shit, I forgot,” DePresti said, scratching his head. “Are the other buildings numbered?”
Parkowski did a quick check of the garage. B16. “Yeah, and in the same scheme.”
DePresti walked off to check the office buildings while Parkowski strode over to the other high bay, located at the other side of the parking lot from A98.
