Saint-Michael’s four technicians worked quickly, speaking rarely and only in clipped, unemotional, well-rehearsed phrases. They had practiced hard for this very important test, and they knew the eyes of the world were on them.
“How does our orbit look?” Saint-Michael asked.
“We should be in position to intercept throughout the boost and midcourse phases,” a tech replied. Armstrong Station was in a seven- hundred- by one-hundred-mile elliptical polar orbit, roughly centered near the north pole. Because the northernmost part of the orbit was farther from earth, the station spent two and a half of its three hour orbit over the pole, allowing it to scan longer for attacking north- launched missiles.
“Missiles are above the atmosphere,” the tech at the master multisensor console reported. “Approaching one hundred miles altitude.”
“Thor missiles ready for launch,” another tech reported. The general nodded once again. The SBM-29A Thor missiles were Armstrong Station’s antiballistic weapons. Resembling long metal cigars, the cylindrical missiles were simple but effective. Ten of them were loaded into a circular free-flying carrier-ejector “garage” that was attached to Armstrong Station’s long main structural keel by a steel tether. The missile garage was equipped with thrusters that would allow it to point its business end toward the attacking ICBMs in response to remote slaving commands from the space station’s sensors.
“All six ICBMs are approximately two minutes from burnout,” the main sensor tech reported. “Approaching max firing range.”
“Prepare to launch missiles,” Saint-Michael ordered. “First three missiles on full automatic intercept during ICBM boost. Fourth missile on SBR intercept mode only in midcourse intercept. Program fifth Thor for blind-launch intercept. Program sixth Thor missile for full manual track in midcourse phase—Chief Jefferson will perform the intercept. Program the remaining intercept missiles for full automatic in case any get away.” The missile tech’s fingers flew over his controls.
“SLBMs approaching optimum range.”
Saint-Michael turned to the chief sensor technician, Space Command Chief Master Sergeant Jake Jefferson. "Ready, Jake?” Jefferson, a finger lightly resting on a large steering trackball on his console, nodded.
The general flipped his communications earset to stationwide intercom. “Attention on the station. Stand by for missile launch.” He sat back and laced his fingers. “Launch commit all Thor interceptors.”
A single switch was activated. “Launch commit.”
The SBR tracking computer had been feeding tracking information to the Thor ejector, pointing the ten missiles towards the six sea- launched ballistic missiles flying at thousands of miles an hour through space. Three of the Thor interceptor missiles had also been receiving precise guidance information from the SBR sensors, so their onboard sensors already knew where to look for the SLBMs. These three missiles, with super-accurate data being constantly fed to them, waited in the ejector for their computer-directed launch command.
Of the other seven Thor missiles, two were launched immediately after Saint-Michael issued the launch commit signal. The first of these two missiles was directed entirely by Armstrong Station’s powerful SBR and other sensors, simulating a failure of the Thor’s on-board trackers. The second missile, simulating a failure of all tracking data uplink signals from Armstrong Station, relied solely on its on-board radar and infrared sensors for the intercept.
Despite the technician-induced failures, however, the two Thor missiles performed flawlessly. Each Thor missile had a two-stage liquid-fueled engine capable of ten thousand pounds of thrust, which instantly accelerated the four-thousand-pound missiles to fifteen thousand miles per hour in a few seconds. Shortly after their motors fired, a one-hundred-foot-diameter steel mesh web unfolded from the Thor missile’s body, effectively increasing the missile’s kill radius.
The first two interceptor missiles did not need the webbing to neutralize their targets. The space station’s SBR sensors detonated the one-thousand-pound high-explosive flak warhead on the first Thor missile a split second before the mesh hit the ballistic missile’s upper stage, instantly shredding the SLBM’s protective warhead shroud, destroying the sensitive inertial guidance electronics, and sending the entire upper stage spinning off into space. The second Thor missile, directed by the radar seeker head on the missile itself, made a direct hit on the SLBM upper stage moments after third-stage burnout, completely destroying the ballistic missile.
“Two hits confirmed,” a tech reported aboard the space station, and a cheer went up among the crew. Saint-Michael gripped the armrests on his commander’s chair and allowed himself a faint smile.
That was enough for Jefferson. He took a deep breath and hit the launch button on his manual control console, ejecting the Thor missile that was to be manually guided.
“Thor six away,” he announced.
A split-second later, Armstrong Station’s intercept computers decided that the two lead ballistic missiles were in proper range, and the first two fully automatic Thor missiles were ejected from the launcher garage by blasts of supercompressed nitrogen gas.
“Thors one and two away.”
Saint-Michael nodded at Jefferson. “You’re right on so far, Jake. Show those guys down there what a spacer can do.”
Taking his cues from the SBR-directed interceptors, Jefferson punched the command keys that ignited his missile’s liquid-fueled engines and unfurled the one-hundred-foot steel snare. His computer monitor showed the sensor image of the trailing sixth sea-launched ballistic missile, and a circle cursor represented the sensor image of the Thor missile as it sped away from Armstrong Station.
Gently, carefully, Jefferson pressed the enable switch on the side of the tracking console with his right middle finger and rested his right thumb on the trackball. As long as he depressed the enable button, any movement of the trackball would trigger tiny vernier thrusters on his Thor missile’s body, which would slide the interceptor missile in any direction to align it with its target. Jefferson’s job was to keep the SLBM roughly in the center of the circle cursor all the way to impact.
“Direct hit on Trident number one,” a tech reported. “Thor two is ten seconds to impact. Thor three is launched. . . .”
“Three out of six hits,” Saint-Michael said. “Good, but not good enough....”
“Good proximity hit on Trident two,” came another report. “Four out of six destroyed....”
“Excellent,” the general was saying, “excellent—”
“Clean miss on Trident three!” the tech suddenly shouted. “No snare, no proximity detonation.”
Saint-Michael felt a nervous tingling in his fingers that caused him to concentrate even harder. “Auto launch commit on Thor number seven,” he snapped. But the technician had anticipated his command and the missile was already speeding out of its chute.
Jefferson was having problems of his own as Saint-Michael leaned over his shoulder.
“It’s like tryin’ to thread a needle with two baseball gloves on,” Jefferson muttered. He risked glancing up from his tracking monitor at the missile-status indicators. ‘Tve used up three-quarters of the vernier thruster fuel. This is turning into a tail chase....”
“Easy, Chief,” the general said. “You got it wired. Relax.” He was also talking to himself.
“Tridents three and six approaching MIRV separation....”
Saint-Michael sat back and looked nervously at the back of Jefferson’s sweaty right hand. The two remaining SLBMs were almost ready to MIRV—each of the missile’s ten individual reentry warheads was soon going to separate from the carrier bus. If they did, it would be almost impossible to knock down the small warheads.
Jefferson’s thumb barely touched the trackball’s surface as he attempted to nudge the interceptor towards the ballistic missile bus. The sensor image of the SLBM was becoming more and more erratic. Jefferson’s thumb quivered slightly as he fought for control.
“You got it, Jake
. Easy, easy.. ..”
“It’s gonna miss,” Jefferson said through clenched teeth. “Launch another interceptor, Skipper. Fast. It’s gonna—”
Jefferson’s console instruments froze. The chief master sergeant didn’t notice the frozen readouts... he was totally absorbed in trying to merge the two sensor images even though he no longer had control.
“You got it,” Saint-Michael said as he read the frozen numbers. “Twenty-five-foot snare on the webbing and a snare detonation. Good shooting, Chief.” Jefferson nodded thanks and pulled his hand away from the sweat-moistened trackball.
“MIRV separation on Trident three,” a tech reported. “Thor seven is. . .” He paused, studying the computer analysis of the sensor inputs. “It looks as if Thor seven snared all but one of the MIRVs just after MIRV separation,” he said. “I’m tracking one single warhead. Track appears a litle wobbly, but I think it’ll reenter the atmosphere intact.”
“Will it impact in the White Sands range?” the general asked.
After an excruciatingly long pause during which Saint-Michael was about to send another Thor in a long tail-chase after the rogue warhead, the tech responded. “Affirmative, Skipper. Well within the range, but at least five miles outside the target cluster on the range. Clean miss.”
“Okay.... Well, we didn’t kill it but we nicked it enough to send it off course. And we got fifty-nine of sixty warheads....”
“Ninety-eight point three-three percent effective,” Colonel Wayne Marks, deputy commander for engineering, added, slapping the technicians’ shoulders in congratulations. “Pretty good county fair shooting, I’d say.”
Saint-Michael retrieved his coffee cup. “Unless you’re under that one remaining warhead,” he said.
USS CONSTELLATION
“Very well,” Rear Admiral Bennett Walton said. He returned the phone labeled “CIC,” combat information center, to its cradle and looked over at the president.
“Sir, Cheyenne Mountain reports one Mark 21C dummy reentry vehicle impacting at the White Sands Missile Test Range.”
The president felt his face flush with excitement. He turned and smiled at the secretary of defense. “One warhead? Just one?”
“That’s it, sir,” Walton said. “And that one warhead was diverted off course and missed its intended impact point by eight nautical miles. If the warhead had been active, the fireball would not have extended to the target. Communications says Armstrong’s after-action report is being received in CIC.”
The president shook hands all around, then sat back in the carrier commander’s seat and sipped coffee.
“Damn, I think we’ve got something here. .. .”
THE KREMLIN, USSR
Through swirling gusts of snow that fell outside the triple-paned windows, the Soviet Union’s Minister of Defense Sergei Leonidovich Czilikov had difficulty seeing even as far as the frozen Moscow River and the new Varsauskoje Highway that spanned its southern and northern banks. He watched policemen trying to direct traffic around a minor collision in the middle of Bakovka Avenue east of the new Kremlin Administrative Center. Another long, severe winter was coming.
Czilikov turned away from the icy scene outside, but things were equally as depressing and cold inside. Seated around a long oblong oak table in the cavernous office were the members of the Kollegiya, the Soviet main military council. The Kollegiya included three deputy ministers of defense, a KGB general, the commanders of the five branches of the Soviet military, and five generals representing various support and reserve elements of the military. Fifteen men, six in business suits with medals and ribbons, the rest in military uniforms, and not one of them, least of all Czilikov, under the age of sixty. All but one, the relatively young KGB chief, Lichizev, were Heroes of the Soviet Union.
They were surrounded by aides and secretaries in hard metal folding chairs arranged along the century-old tapestries covering the walls of the room. Two elite Kremlin guards, each armed with AKSU submachine guns, flanked each heavy oak door leading into the chamber.
Everyone in the large, cold room looked on edge. Czilikov knew what each of them was expecting. As he moved to the unoccupied head of the conference table, the hubbub of noise died abruptly away.
“We must attack,” Czilikov said. The faces of the fifteen men remained stony, grim. Mindless cattle, Czilikov thought to himself. The new general secretary had such a firm stranglehold on these formerly powerful soldiers, Heroes of the Soviet Union, that most were afraid even to look up from the table. The spirit of glasnost in general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s regime had been squashed.
“Intelligence reports are conclusive, tovarishniyes,” Czilikov declared. “Nearly all of the pro-Khomeini factions have been defeated by the moderates, and the pro-Western government is consolidating control of both the people and the military. The Alientar government in Iran has promised a return to pre-Khomeini wealth and prosperity for its people—funded by the Americans, of course. The KGB predicts that the Iranians will agree to the reopening of air and naval bases and listening posts in Iran in exchange for generous financial assistance. Which means that arms sales to Iran from the West, which were nothing more than secretive trickles, may soon flow like vodka.”
Czilikov fixed each of them with an imperious stare. Despite his age, his eyes danced with the same fire as when he was a young tank commander rolling triumphantly across Poland in World War II. “The old efforts to consolidate the Transcaucasus under our rule by kindling this wasting, bloody war between Iran and Iraq have failed. Our former leader, more concerned with his television image than the needs of the future world Communist state, failed to anticipate that religious fanaticism can be a powerful, sustaining force—particularly in Iran. Our lack of success in supporting the Hussein regime in Iraq has seriously hurt our prestige. The result is that we are in danger of losing all our influence in the whole Middle East.”
“Could this really be so, Comrade Marshal?” Deputy Minister of Defense and Chief of Ground Forces General Yegenly Ilanovsky asked. “Surely the hatred that the Iranians have for the Americans cannot be erased overnight? Thousands were killed in the American bombing raids on Tehran and Kharg Island just a few years ago.”
“Raids which the Iranians themselves foolishly invited by attacking American shipping in the Gulf and staging that Christmas terrorist attack on Washington,” Admiral Chercherovin, commander in chief of the navy, said. “They seem to have an instinct for self-destruction.”
“Which may play into our hands nicely,” Lichizev, the KGB representative, put in. “As for how the Iranians feel about the Americans at the moment, my agents in Iran report a distinct softening in attitude. Public memory can sometimes be conveniently short, and official memory can be adjusted. The CIA has given vital military support to the puppet regime of the Ayatollah Falah Alientar. They have helped crush his enemies very effectively, much as they did when the Shah Pavelirili Rezneveh was in power, before they got an attack of democratic conscience....”
“It is obvious that past transgressions have been forgotten,” Czilikov summed up. “And if the United States and Iran sign a friendship and cooperation agreement, the Iran-Iraq war will be over within days. Iraq will not fire on an American vessel, and the skies over Iran will be nearly impenetrable if American planes are allowed to land there. We will be as powerless as we were in Egypt twenty years ago.”
The Kollegiya became silent. The next question hung over the group like a poised guillotine blade, but no one was going to ask. Czilikov’s gaze swept over the gray-haired men at the table, but he met few direct glances.
They were waiting for their orders, Czilikov decided. Well, give them the order....
“Operation Feather has been approved by the Politburo,” Czilikov finally said. “The plan for the occupation and control of Iran and the Persian Gulf. Swift execution is essential. The United States must be prevented from entering the Persian Gulf with a major naval air force. We do not want a repeat of their flagging operatio
n of five years ago. We must take tactical command of the Persian Gulf theater before Iran formally asks the United States for assistance. Ayatollah Larijani has established a govemment-in-exile in Syria and has been persuaded to help us. He will announce that it was the pro-West members of Alien- tar’s party who precipitated the war with Iraq. He will denounce the war as an American plot to divide the Islamic brotherhood. He will call for a holy war against Alientar’s puppet regime.”
Czilikov paused, letting his carefully chosen words sink in. “Then he will announce an alliance with President Hussein of Iraq to unite the two warring nations under a new flag, creating the Islamic Republic of Persia.”
Czilikov returned to his seat and motioned to First Deputy Minister of Defense Sergei Khromeyev, chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. Khromeyev stepped before a wide flat-lens computer screen set up in a comer of the room.
“The tentative scenario has been approved by the Politburo,” Khromeyev began. “The ultimate objective of Operation Feather is to consolidate the Persian Gulf region under complete political and military control of our Soviet Communist party. The party, through the defense council, has ordered the Stavka to accomplish the objectives set out in these orders.”
Khromeyev referred to a folder on the long conference table as a detailed computer-generated map of the Persian Gulf appeared on the screen. “Forces employed will consist mainly of air, land, and sea forces under the command of the Southern Military Theater. Operation Feather will be conducted using forces generated during Operation Rocky Sweep, our annual Southern TVD military district combat exercise. The forces mobilized during Rocky Sweep will be augmented by reserve forces for home defense as Operation Feather is implemented. A small but dramatic Iranian attack against one of our destroyers in the Persian Gulf will precipitate our defensive containment response. The attack will be preplanned by GRU and KGB agents in place in Iran, and will use Iranian Silkworm antiship missiles fired from Bandar-Abbas near the Strait of Hormuz.
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