Authors: Robert Ratcliffe
Red Hammer 1994 (3 page)
The defense minister cringed. “A technical point, President. I agree with your position completely.” Heads nodded approvingly as the defense minister slumped in his chair, wishing that he could disappear. Beads of sweat blossomed on his forehead, and his cheeks flushed as he furiously searched his mental cabinet of clichés and politically neutral truisms for an escape route. He came up empty and sighed, waiting for the expected lance from the left.
Laptev let him twist in the wind. At times like this he understood Stalin, his methods and his moods, his use of fear to mold men’s wills. “I need no tutorial on the treaty language, thank you. I will be the final judge on what does or does not violate the treaty.” His defense minister was beginning to sound like the American secretary of state. He made a mental note.
Laptev raised his bushy eyebrows in question. The defense minister signaled closure. Chair legs screeched across the floor as no one lingered in the president’s presence.
Laptev rose and faced his aide. “Time to play the charming whore,” he groused. The bankers were waiting.
Lieutenant General Robert Thomas, aide to the secretary of defense, was pissed. He clenched his jaw, and the deep scar on his right cheek reddened menacingly. The old injury to his left hip ached, and his rumbling stomach only compounded his discomfort. He wiped the sharp features of his tanned face and then arched his spine, which brought a flush of relief to his tight lower back. “Idiots,” he mumbled. “What the hell is going on?” The comic opera being performed before him smacked of classical NASA procrastination and incompetence.
Thomas leaned his lanky six-foot frame against the stainless-steel rail, gripping it like he wished he could break it in two. He had doffed his uniform blouse hours ago, and his blue shirt was stained with sweat under the armpits and down his spine. Gazing out from the raised platform, the scene before him was pure bedlam. NASA technicians in white short-sleeved shirts and too-short ties glanced over their shoulders, each wondering if they would be next to feel the heat.
The central status board announced yet another hold. “Damn it!” Thomas snapped. He stormed off, shaking his head, muttering under his breath. He pulled up and studied the tabular data displayed on a large plasma screen prominently positioned on the front wall. His sour expression was proof that the numbers essentially said that everything had gone to shit.
Thomas spied the launch director and worked up the energy for yet another run. A tight circle of senior NASA officials huddled in muffled discussion. The engineers turned managers crowded closer and braced themselves. Thomas really didn’t have the stomach to beat them up anymore, but Secretary Alexander had given him his marching orders—kick ass and get the shuttle off the ground by sundown.
The countdown for the shuttle
Discovery
had been stopped on five separate occasions since first light. As the fading Florida sun coasted toward the horizon, the launch window was slamming shut. The odds now favored that the super-secret mission would be scrubbed. NASA was pushing for a reschedule to early morning, but Space Command was fighting them tooth and nail. Then there was the threatening warm front moving rapidly north from the eastern Caribbean, driven by powerful gale-force winds. Stringy clouds streaked with black were already drifting over Launch Complex 39, casting long shadows over the two imposing support towers and the massive shuttle resting quietly on pad 39A. The only signs of life were wisps of condensed gases vented from the liquid-hydrogen and liquid-oxygen fuel tanks. To further muck up the works, upper atmospheric winds had increased by over five knots in the last two hours, yet another abort criteria according to the NASA liturgy.
“What’s the holdup?” Thomas barked as he stepped into their private conversation. “If there’s a problem, it had better be a showstopper, not some third-order backup system for flushing the toilet.”
The mission director, a tall, walking skeleton, turned purple with rage. He was at the end of his rope.
“General Thomas, we’re working on the flight computer software problem as fast as we can,” he pleaded, both flustered and mad. “Get off our backs,” he added, his voice rising in intensity. His comrades raised their eyebrows in unison at their leader’s unexpected boldness. They correctly predicted disaster and stepped aside, giving the general elbow room, more than happy to throw their hapless companion to the wolves. Thomas planted himself six inches from the mission director’s hawk like nose, staring hard and scowling.
The director became unnerved, backpedaling with Thomas in pursuit. He held his hands up chest high in a gesture of surrender. His voice ratcheted up in pitch.
“The software has been reloaded, and the validation algorithms are being run as we speak. We can’t go any faster,” he offered apologetically. “We have to follow procedures, or I can’t recommend a launch.”
Thomas was unimpressed and moved in for the kill. “If
Discovery
doesn’t go in the next forty-five minutes, I’m going to have your ass. And stop that ‘we’ crap. The decision is yours and yours alone.” A furious Thomas stomped off. The thin NASA man started to almost dance. “What the hell are they putting up there, anyway? Why hasn’t anyone said anything? I’ve never seen a mission like this!” he said to his friends. The mission director sulked off, disgusted with anyone in a uniform.
Thomas glanced at the clock and shook his head. They couldn’t make it, not now. Time was rapidly slipping through their hands. An adjacent wall-mounted video monitor showed
Discovery
stuck on the launch pad, with a small digital clock in the lower corner frozen at
T
minus twelve minutes.
This particular shuttle mission had aroused unbelievable curiosity and attention both at Kennedy and in the press. Security had been the tightest in recent years. A week-old canned press release mentioned a “scientific mission,” but most observers were savvy enough to sense it was an important military payload. Speculation ranged from a new communications or reconnaissance bird to a prototype wide-area surveillance radar satellite developed by DARPA, the DOD research and development folks.
At a computer console, one of the launch operators queried the shuttle-health monitoring system and then flashed a relieved smile. “The flight software checks out OK,” he reported proudly, straightening in his chair.
The mission director was a changed man. His face returned to its normal pasty tone. He exuded a muffled sigh to signal his release from bondage. “Resume the countdown at
T
minus twelve minutes.”
From that moment, events went without a hitch. The launch of
Discovery
was picture perfect. At
T
minus zero, the shuttle’s three main engines roared to life. Powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen stored in the huge orange cylindrical external tank attached to the belly of the shuttle, they were throttled to full power prior to liftoff. Despite producing over one million pounds of thrust,
Discovery
squatted, clamped to the pad, giving the flight engineers precious seconds to monitor the engines for proper performance. The shuttle’s hydraulic system gimbaled the huge engines in a rote pattern and then quickly returned them to their nominal position. It took less than three seconds.
With all systems go, the giant, solid rocket motors strapped to the liquid-propellant storage tank ignited, and explosive hold-down bolts detonated. The monsters, producing over five million pounds of thrust by burning solid propellants, shook the ground and rattled the windows as they pushed the shuttle rapidly skyward in a blaze of orange and yellow fire and billowing black smoke. Ever since the
Challenger
accident so many years ago, the launch team still crossed their fingers and gritted their teeth until the solid rocket boosters were completely spent and safely separated from the shuttle.
Rising through thickening clouds in the fading light,
Discovery
commenced the customary lazy roll on its back and then executed a graceful turn to the north. This signaled to the initiated that
Discovery
and her payload would be put in a highly inclined orbit relative to the equator. The most common trajectory from the Cape, one without the dogleg to the north, put a shuttle in an orbit perfect for launching military and commercial communication satellites into geosynchronous orbit over the earth’s equator at an altitude of 22,300 miles.
The less frequent northerly maneuver signaled a payload destined for low earth orbit, like the electro-optical and radar reconnaissance satellites used by the air force and the CIA to scour the earth’s surface for intelligence data. The final inclination would depend on the magnitude of the turn, and in this case, most observers agreed it was near the maximum permitted, allowing the widest coverage of Russian and Chinese territory by the super-secret payload.
One of the army of white-shirted operators leaned back in his chair like a proud father in the delivery room, grinning from ear to ear.
“Everything looks good, solid rocket-motor burn terminated at
T
plus one hundred and fifty-four seconds, normal separation, orbiter velocity is right on the money, main engines continuing to burn—looks like we’re going to have a nominal orbital insertion.”
“Well, General, satisfied?” asked the mission director, a look of disgust imprinted on his face.
Thomas, his arms defiantly folded across his chest, ignored the comment. “We’re not there yet; the main engines still have to burn for another five minutes.” The mission director scowled.
At approximately
T
plus eight minutes, the main engines shut down, propelling
Discovery
to a picture-perfect entrance into low earth orbit. The sausage-shaped external tank was blown free by explosive bolts and drifted toward earth and a fiery rendezvous within the atmosphere.
“That’s it,” grunted Thomas, a slight smile breaking through his gruff shell for the first time. “Thank you, gentlemen.” He scooped up his things and headed for the exit. Thomas had a plane to catch.
The sleek air force C-21A Learjet touched down at Peterson Air Force Base east of Colorado Springs shortly after ten at night. Its silver fuselage glistened under powerful halogen lamps that lit the runway. In the distance, a dark blue sedan with air force markings idled patiently. Painted on a nearby hangar door was a ten-foot diameter emblem depicting the US Space Command logo. The pilot swung the executive jet from the taxiway, braking to a stop and shutting down the twin turbofan engines. Fifty feet away, a lone air force colonel in a wool overcoat and leather gloves stood rigidly, bathed in the glow from white flood lamps. While the ground crew hurriedly chalked the landing gear, the small cabin door swung open, and Thomas disembarked, raising his overcoat collar against the late-evening cold. The colonel came to life and saluted smartly as Thomas walked toward the waiting sedan.
“Good evening, sir,” he said to Thomas. “Welcome to Peterson. General Morgan is waiting at Space Command headquarters.” The frigid April air helped shake Thomas out of his flight-induced lethargy. He politely returned the greeting.
“I understand it went well,” the colonel said to Thomas as he slipped through the rear door. He looked askance at the Space Command staffer. The long flight from Florida had triggered a much needed reevaluation. Reservations had crept into Thomas’s thoughts.
The sedan pulled away from the hanger and proceeded across the base to the three-story, cinder block and glass building that served as headquarters for the US Space Command and its air force component, the AF Space Command. The driver turned into the wide, circular drive and halted next to the curb. He quickly jumped out, opening Thomas’s door.
The colonel slid from the front seat, standing and adjusting his combination cover. “Please follow me, sir,” he said to Thomas.
Inside the sliding glass doors, a drowsy air policeman leaned on the visitor-control countertop. He snapped to attention after spotting the galaxy of stars rapidly bearing down on his exposed flank. He dispensed with the customary ID check and promptly handed Thomas a visitor no-escort-required badge. Thomas hung the plastic pouch from his pocket as he started off after the colonel.
