“Then attack. Use an entire squadron. Whatever is necessary to retake Bandar-Abbas—”
“With twenty supersonic bombers?” Czilikov interrupted. “Not only would our losses be heavy, but the Americans might think the launch represented a possible threat to the Nimitz carrier battle group or to the American airbase in Saudi Arabia. They might counter with considerable force, even threaten to use nuclear weapons against our forces—”
“I don’t believe that,” the general secretary said. “They’re not crazy. They couldn’t hope to control such a drastic escalation....”
“If they lost the Nimitz carrier group, sir, their only tactical response to avoid losing their foothold in the region would be an all-out attack. From our point of view, it’s a huge risk to take. We have no conclusive evidence that the Americans would not attack with nuclear weapons. Remember Kennedy at the Bay of Pigs? And ever since, they’ve refused to say what they wouldn’t do.”
“Rationalizations for doing nothing, Czilikov. The Politburo is already demanding an explanation, and we’ve got to give them one. The Americans are threatening to mobilize for a general war. We’ve lost the element of surprise. There is even a rumor that the Americans have captured a member of the KGB who participated in the initial attack on our own vessels in the Persian Gulf—”
“That is impossible,” Marshal Lichizev, the commander of the KGB, said. “All of our operatives are accounted for. It’s an obvious bluff.”
“No matter. Denials do no good.” The general secretary looked at each of the Stavka members seated in front of him. “Feather had to be a swift, decisive, massive blow to occupy and dominate the region. It had to be a coordinated, precision strike at the major strategic choke- points. Instead, we’re caught on unsteady, indefensible ground. Rather than a swift victory, I’m left with a damn stalemate. Worse than a stalemate: our clumsy lies are exposed, naked before the entire world. The great bear with its nose caught in the mousetrap....
“Heroes of the Soviet Union.” The general secretary’s voice was laced with irony. “In eight hours I go before the Politburo and tell them how I plan to proceed. As I see it we have three possible options: retreat in disgrace, hold our unsteady and embarrassing position, or attack.” He turned again to Czilikov. “Do you have an answer? Is Operation Feather a failure? Do we turn and run? Will I be the first leader of the Soviet Union to order a retreat in the face of vastly inferior forces?”
“What you want, I cannot give you—”
“What? What did you say?”
“You don’t want recommendations. You want to dictate. I will not be dictated to, nor will I be insulted.”
The general secretary leaned toward Czilikov and in a low voice said, “Be careful what you say, old man.”
“Sir, you can insult the title of Hero of the Soviet Union if you like, but you cannot ignore its implications. Nor can you ignore the consequences if your senior military staff should resign or retire during an operation of the magnitude of Feather....” Czilikov’s face was flushed as he spoke.
The general secretary looked around the conference table. All faces were turned toward him.
“What do you see, comrade?” Czilikov went on, encouraged by the silence. “Are you perhaps trying to compute how many would follow if I leave or am removed?”
“I am always computing that, Marshal Czilikov.” It was an uneasy reply.
“Sir, I am your ally,” Czilikov said, his voice more conciliatory. “I believe in Operation Feather. But it’s a military operation, not a political one. Occupation and control of the Transcaucasus and Persia can only be brought about with the use of military force. And it cannot happen instantly. The advances we have made in the past twenty-four hours are, I believe, nearly miraculous. Our forces have taken control of over a million square kilometers of territory in mere hours. Our objective is close at hand. But we cannot proceed rashly, or all our efforts will be for nothing.”
The general secretary paused, knowing he was, at the moment, outmaneuvered and not knowing precisely what to do about it. “Well, then, Czilikov, I put it to you. I have a meeting in eight hours. What is the new military plan?”
Czilikov nearly preened. He had, it seemed, made the general secretary back off. “The forces in Iraq, Iran and the Persian Gulf must stay in place. It is absolutely essential. They must be able to defend themselves against any attack or intrusion, but without increasing their ranks.”
“No reinforcements?” the general secretary said. “If we stop hostilities, isn’t that the time to enhance our forces?”
“Not immediately... sir. We must appear as if we are prepared to pull out of the area, to release our newly acquired territory. We must not, of course, retreat or give away an inch of ground.”
“So we are reverting to a defensive war? I don’t understand, Czilikov. If we stand still we will eventually be pushed back—if not by the Americans then by world opinion and its condemnation. Or by both.” ~
“We will be fighting a defensive war on one front only, ” Czilikov said, and turned toward Marshal Rhomerdunov, the commander of aerospace forces. His old foxhole compatriot allowed a reassuring smile.
“On an entirely different front,” Czilikov went on, “we will take command. And, sir, when that happens we will win much, much more than Persia and the Transcaucasus....”
TYURATAM, USSR
He tried to be patient and gentle in his lovemaking, but he was too keyed up, too mindful of what the next day might bring. Alesander Govorov resisted his young wife’s spirited foreplay and took her quickly—almost savagely. She strived to match his intensity, to counter with a frenzy of her own, but she couldn’t fake her orgasm fast enough. He withdrew from her, wrapped his powerful arms around her chest as he lay behind her on his left side, then kissed the back of her neck as an unspoken apology for his clumsiness. In less than a minute he fell asleep. She pulled his arms around her tighter, accepting his apology. There would be other nights. She remembered the good ones. They were worth waiting for....
The ringing telephone jarred his eyes open. He swung his feet to the carpeted floor and stood, feeling not at all fatigued despite the few short hours of sleep. He picked up the phone and began speaking to Gulaev.
“Yes. Yes, I see_____ Have the report ready for me. I’ll be there immediately.”
Govorov’s wife did not get out of bed, although she was wide awake as he dressed, getting into his dark gray flight suit. She did not want to see him hurrying off to Glowing Star. If for any reason he did not return, she wanted to remember him the way he had been the night before—strong but vulnerable, impatient but sensitive, a loving, caring husband, an imperfect man. Much more than a soldier, though she was careful not to let him know such thoughts. They would have embarrassed him....
General Govorov came into the Space Combat operations center at Tyuratam at a pace that would have left most men short of breath. Gulaev had to rush to keep up with him as they hurried into the general’s office. Govorov was already holding out his hand for the Operation Alpha report as his subordinate closed the door.
“It appears the Sary Shagan laser has been even more effective than we hoped, sir,” Gulaev said as he passed the space defense commander a sheet of computer printouts bound in a notebook. “The station’s orbit is much more erratic than before, which suggests a guidance or propulsion malfunction. Also, just a few hours ago we detected several objects near the station. Small in size, no propulsion, very hot.”
Govorov studied the printouts, looked up at Gulaev. “Debris?”
“That’s my guess, sir.”
Govorov looked down at the printout again, nodding in approval as his eyes scanned the columns of numbers. It seemed they’d managed to cripple the vaunted Armstrong Space Station, after all. It wasn’t out of control yet—he would have received a report about a rescue mission—but it was damaged. Vulnerable.
A quick look at the rest of Gulaev’s report brought no pleasure.
“Ou
r attacks have stopped?”
“Temporarily, sir. For safety’s sake, Colonel Sokilev at Sary Shagan has limited the laser firing schedule to a five-burst volley every eight hours—”
“But my orders were to fire continuously. Why were they countermanded?”
“The pulses generated by the facility are tremendously powerful. There was a problem with some of the computer circuits shorting. The circuits are reportedly fixed, but Sokilev feels continuous firing carries too great a risk—”
“I should have been consulted. Tell Sokilev that if he goes against my command again, he will be replaced. Also tell him that I expect Operation Beta to be put into effect within the hour. Armstrong is about to pass below the horizon. If we can destroy the Americans’ only other eye on the region, NORAD’s launch-detection satellite, we will be able to get very close to the space station without ever being detected.”
“But what about Armstrong’s Thor missiles, sir? Even if the Americans only have minutes to react, they’ll be able to target the spaceplanes.”
“Yes, the Thors would be a problem... if we didn’t have the means to get Armstrong to expend its arsenal.”
“You mean the Gorgons?”
“Why not? It doesn’t matter if they are all destroyed. The point is, they will draw off Armstrong’s fire and allow Voloshin and me to get within range of the station.”
Gulaev nodded. “I’ll see to the Gorgons immediately, sir.”
“Have a firing disposition report ready for me in half an hour.” Gulaev saluted and turned to leave the office. “And Gulaev....”
The younger officer turned around. “Sir?”
“I’ll be leaving for the launch pad in fifteen minutes. See that I’m not disturbed until then.”
Gulaev nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him. As he did Govorov got up from his desk and stood by a large window overlooking the launch site. From there he could see the maintenance crews completing the final checks on the SL-16s. It was a beautiful day, the general thought to himself, a perfect day to ride a fireball into the sky. He couldn’t wait to get started.
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION
Jason Saint-Michael’s warning to his crew not to get too cocky about the role the station had played in the invasion of Bandar-Abbas seemed prophetic now as he clicked his microphone to the off position and reflected on the message he had just received from Space Command. The Russians had apparently just used their laser to knock out an American geosynchronous TRW Block 750 infra-red launch detection satellite, leaving Space Command and NORAD with no missile launch detection for south-central Asia. It didn’t take a genius to guess what would happen next. Odds were that at that very moment the Gorgon missiles at Tyuratam were being readied for launch.
Which dictated he do... what? He had been about to order Jerrod Will to discontinue Enterprise's orbit around the station and redock, so that Ann and Kevin Baker, who had also made the decision to leave, could be sent back to Earth. But he wasn’t so sure now that he shouldn’t evacuate most of the personnel...
He mentally kicked himself for not getting Ann off the station earlier. Even though it bothered him to think of her gone, it bothered him much more to think she might be in serious danger. He just hoped Will could get the Enterprise docked and personnel aboard before he had to contend with those missiles headed their way. At least Will and Sontag had flown their most recent resupply mission to the station without Marty Schultz, so there would be that much more room in the cramped Shuttle. The hard part was going to be deciding who should go and who should stay.
Saint-Michael keyed his microphone. “Enterprise, what’s your status.”
“Still orbiting the station, per your orders, General,” Will said. “What’s up?”
“More trouble, I’m afraid. I want you to redock immediately.”
“Will Airlines copies,” Jerrod said as he activated his forward thrusters. He turned to Sontag as if to say what now? but the copilot merely shook his head. They’d have their answers soon enough.
By the time Enterprise had docked with the station and Will had made his way to the command module, Saint-Michael had already received two more messages from Space Command. As Will stepped through the module hatch the general acknowledged him with a nod and continued talking to Ann, who had overheard the exchange between Saint-Michael and the controller at Falcon Air Force Station in Colorado Springs.
“General,” she said, “it looks like the station’s going to be attacked. Skybolt could help. I’m sure I’ve just about solved—”
“No arguments, please.”
“But—”
“Damn it, Ann, report to Enterprise now”
This time there was no argument. As she left the command-module hatch, Will moved next to Saint-Michael. “General, we’re ready to fly, if that’s what you want. I’ve got Yemana rigging up for a token OMS and RCS refueling—just a safety margin for us. Won’t take long. Kelly is helping him in the docking adapter. What have we got?”
“Eight Soviet orbiting vehicles just entered orbits similar to ours,”
Saint-Michael told him. “We lost track of them, but ground tracking stations are keeping an eye on them.”
“Launched from Tyuratam?”
“Yes, two from the Glowing Star area, the rest from the antisatellite area at Baikenour.”
“Gorgons?”
Saint-Michael nodded. “That’s my guess.”
“Sounds like they popped the whole AS AT alert fleet. What about the two from Glowing Star? Do you think they’re manned?”
“Don’t know. They’ve had time to move two more Gorgons to Glowing Star, but I think our intelligence would’ve reported that.” “What are our people doing in the gulf? Any major movement?”
“None. Matter of fact, most units on land and in the gulf appear frozen. The Russians haven’t retreated, but they’re not advancing either. They may be reassessing.”
“Or they may be waiting for Silver Tower to get blasted out of the sky before finishing the job of overrunning Iran,” Will said. “We’d better get loaded up....”
“I can’t just abandon the station completely,” Saint-Michael said, checking the system status readouts. “Not yet, not if the Russians are gearing up for a major offensive. We have to be there when they kick it off.”
“General, it might only take one more shot of that laser or one direct hit from a Gorgon to put you out of commission. One shot on a fuel tank or in your engineering module and whoever’s left on board will be in deep—”
“We’ve got the lifeboat....”
“The lifeboat? Excuse me, but the term ‘lifeboat’ applied to that hunk of tin out there was coined for the congressman and senators who yakked about having a rescue craft but who wouldn’t put up the money for more shuttles or spaceplanes. You know that, sir. We both know it’s not a lifeboat—it’s more like a piece of waterlogged driftwood. It leaks like a bad condom and it probably wouldn’t stand the stress of recovery in a shuttle. It’s craziness to rely on it.”
“Some speech—and maybe all true. But it doesn’t matter.... It’s what we’ve got to do the job. This is an emergency—”
“Don’t create another one, then.”
“Jerrod, I hear you. That’s it. Take care of your ship and your passengers. I’ll cut the crew on the station down to two or three. You take the rest back to Vandenburg or Edwards. Now move it. We haven’t got much time.”
As Will exited the module, Colonels Marks and Walker approached Saint-Michael. Marks handed the general a computer printout. “Bad news, Skipper. My calculations show that we only have a day and a half’s worth of fuel. Tops.”
Saint-Michael scanned the fuel figures. “Even with a reduced crew. No experiments? Reduced power usage?”
“Those figures include all that, plus only a conservative estimate on the necessary fuel consumption with the lost thruster—it could be worse than those numbers.”
“We’ll need almost four-a-week refuelings at t
his rate,” Saint-Michael said, “unless we get that thruster working—”
Walker cut in. “General, there’s another option....”
“I know, return to a standard polar circular orbit. Stop the retracking thruster course corrections. But then we’d have only a few minutes over the Persian Gulf every few hours. We’d be almost useless as a surveillance platform.”
“But we’d be secure, General. This station is a strategic defense laboratory, not really a surveillance satellite. We’ve proved our value in the first defense of Iran and the Persian Gulf region, but now the game has changed. 'We're the target, a major target. If the Russians shoot down this station, the United States has lost a lot more than just an SBR platform. ...”
Saint-Michael stayed silent, seemingly lost in thought.
Walker sensed the shift in the general’s thinking and nodded to Marks, who said, “At Jim’s request, sir, I’ve worked up the fuel considerations involved in putting us back in polar orbit.” He handed Saint Michael another printout. “We would have enough fuel to reestablish the new orbit, and we wouldn’t be dependent on so many refuelings—”
“Skipper, warning message from Space Command tracking,” Moyer broke in through the station wide intercom. “Orbiting vehicle within five miles vertically and one hundred miles laterally from the station.”
Saint-Michael quickly sat back in his commander’s seat; Walker returned to his position beside Jefferson on the master SBR display.
Saint-Michael keyed the intercom. “Jerrod, status of your refueling.”
“Few more minutes.”
“You’re out of time, Jerrod. Attention on the station. Emergency. Discontinue all refueling operations. All crewmen except command module personnel report aboard Enterprise immediately. This station is on red alert. Jake discontinue SBR earth surveillance. Launch commit all Thor interceptors for station defense.” He turned to Walker. “Jim, can you handle the Space Command relays and back up Jake on the SBR board?”
“Sure thing.”
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