by Dale Brown
“Attack an ally with a hypersonic meteor from space? Are you crazy, Ken…?”
“Sir, if they launch all those missiles and they have WMDs on them, they could kill millions of people,” Phoenix argued. “Even if the Taliban or rogue forces were involved, and not the Pakistani government, it would certainly start a war.”
“I don’t believe the Paks would allow missiles with WMDs to fall into the hands of the Taliban,” Gardner said. “This is a provocation, nothing more. Someone wants to start a shooting war. We tell New Delhi to stay calm and not overreact, and we’ll come through this.”
“But what if you’re wrong, sir?” Phoenix insisted. “What if they’re armed with WMDs? We have a way to stop them. Order the space station to attack.”
“The world will think I’m nuts, firing those meteor things-”
“You can’t just sit back and do nothing, sir-”
“Hey, Phoenix, shut the hell up and remember who you’re talking to!” the president snapped, jabbing a finger at his vice president. The room fell silent except for the reports of the missile’s flight path being relayed from Armstrong Space Station. Gardner looked at the holographic 3-D map for a few moments, his eyes darting here and there; then, his head still lowered, he said in a low voice, “Order the space station to attack those other rockets and nail that one that lifted off.”
“Armstrong, this is General Bain, immediate attack commit authorized by the president,” Bain ordered.
“Armstrong copies, attack authorized,” Kai Raydon responded.
“All stations, all stations, this is Armstrong, attack-commit authorization received,” the voice of Senior Master Sergeant Valerie “Seeker” Lukas said. She was at her monitor and tracking console in Armstrong Space Station’s command module. “All personnel, stand by.” To Kai Raydon beside her, she said, “All combat stations reporting manned and ready, sir.”
“Okay, kids, this is for real this time, but we do it just like we’ve rehearsed,” Kai said on the stationwide intercom. “Line it up, Seeker.”
“Roger, sir,” Lukas said. “Kingfisher Zero-Niner is responding to telemetry and reports ready, sir.” She turned to Raydon. “This will be a Mjollnir and ABM attack from the same platform at almost the same time, sir-I don’t think we’ve ever practiced that before.”
“Now’s a good time, Seeker,” Kai said. “I want to concentrate on the rocket. Have they launched any other Shaheens yet?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you can use more than one Trinity on the one in flight,” Kai said. “Hopefully we’ll nail the others before they launch. One Hammer should be more than enough for the ones still on the ground, but use another if you need to.”
“Yes, sir. Trinity One is counting down, twenty seconds to release. Hammer One is counting down, twenty-six seconds to release.”
As the Pakistani ballistic missile rose through the atmosphere, four hundred miles above it and six hundred miles behind it, the weapon garage named Kingfisher-9 emitted short thruster pulses in response to steering commands from its tracking and targeting computers. The cylindrical spacecraft had its own radar, electro-optical, and infrared sensors trained on the rocket, but the muzzle of the spacecraft was aimed well beyond it, along the computed flight path.
At the proper instant, the fire control computers launched the first Trinity interceptor vehicle. The kill vehicle used steering instructions broadcast from the weapon garage to insert itself into its own orbit that intersected the missile’s flight path. By this time the rocket motor on the Shaheen-2 ballistic missile had already burned out, and it was approaching its coasting phase at the top of its ballistic flight path. Even though it was a “tail-chase,” Trinity was traveling at orbital velocity of almost five miles per second and closed the distance to the vastly slower Pakistani missile in just eighty seconds. With ten seconds to intercept, the Trinity weapon activated its own millimeter-wave terminal guidance radar, refined its aiming with ultrashort bursts of thruster fire, and zeroed in for a direct hit.
Back on Kingfisher-9, immediately after launching the first Trinity vehicle, thrusters were already turning the weapon garage in a different direction, and as soon as the spacecraft was pointed properly, a Mjollnir vehicle fired-this one aimed toward Earth. Thrusters directed the payload on course. Specially shielded to withstand the extreme two-thousand-degree heat of reentry, slowing but still traveling more than four miles per second, the weapon package pierced the upper atmosphere in just over ten seconds.
As the superheated ionized air around the heat shield subsided, the shield was ejected, exposing the millimeter-wave terminal guidance radar aboard the payload guidance bus. The radar took digital pictures of the target area, comparing terrain features to its internal database for fine course corrections, then zeroed in on the target itself. In thousandths of a second it identified the target, measured the total target area, and computed the precise instant to release the titanium sabots. Small maneuvering vanes allowed some small course corrections, but the weapon was traveling too fast for the vanes to have much effect.
Seconds before impact, the sabots separated from the guidance bus, creating a radius of destruction precisely equal to the target area. The sabots hit the Earth traveling almost two miles per second, each with the force of a two-thousand-pound high-explosive bomb, creating a crater large enough to fit a jumbo jet within it…
…but missing the target area by over a mile, completely destroying a grain-processing facility on the outskirts of a village instead. Panicked by the massive explosion that erupted so close by, the terrorists abandoned the remaining two missiles and fled.
“It missed!” Bain shouted. “The other missiles are still alive.”
“But we got the one they launched,” Phoenix said happily. “We won’t have an interceptor to get the other ones if they launch, but-”
“What…just…happened…here?” President Gardner asked in a low, completely stupefied voice. His eyes looked up from the holographic imagery of the two nearly simultaneous attacks to the faces of the advisers around him. “Was that real?”
“Sir,” General Bain said, grinning like a kid at a circus, “it looks like we just took out a ballistic missile…with a weapon fired from space.” He pumped a fist in the air. “I don’t believe it myself, but they did it. They shot down a ballistic missile from space.”
The president looked at the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in utter disbelief, then with exasperation at his senior uniformed military adviser celebrating like a kid at a Little League game. “As you were, General,” he growled. “Who knows what we hit with those meteor things. This thing’s not over.” Bain lowered his eyes contritely, but not convincingly so. Gardner glared at Phoenix angrily. “I never should have fired those meteor things at Pakistan. That was wrong advice, and I shouldn’t have had to have it shoved in my face by you.” Phoenix said nothing, but returned Gardner ’s glare with a steady gaze.
“Mr. President, it appears the terrorists are abandoning those remaining missiles,” Kai Raydon reported from Armstrong Space Station. “They’re bugging out.”
“General Bain, make sure that space station stands down and doesn’t fire any more meteors at anybody!” the president said, drawing a finger across his throat to order the link cut off. To the State Department representative: “Send an immediate message to New Delhi, tell them the missiles have been abandoned and will soon be recovered, and urge them not to retaliate,” the president said. “Tell them the emergency is over. Get Mazar on the phone-call his office every ten seconds if you have to, but I want to talk to him immediately.”
He took a breath, swallowed hard, then added, “And I want to see Page and that general on the space station, Raydon, in the Oval Office as soon as possible. I want to know everything about those weapons. Then I want to meet with Secretary Barbeau and figure out what we’re going to say to the rest of the world when the news of what we’ve just done gets out. And someone shut this damned table off.”
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The room began to clear out, but just as the vice president was leaving, Gardner said, “Mr. Phoenix, a word with you.” Ken Phoenix turned and returned to the Situation Room, along with Chief of Staff Kordus; the others wore expressions signifying they were happy to be leaving. “I’ll meet you in the Oval Office in a few, Walter,” the president said. Kordus glanced warily at the president, but nodded and departed, closing the door behind him.
“What was that, Phoenix?” Gardner exclaimed after the door was closed. “What the hell do you think you were doing?”
“My job, Mr. President,” Phoenix replied flatly.
“Your job is to take over for the president if he is unable to serve and to preside over the Senate, not to call up whatever military units you feel like and issue orders to the president of the United States! And you did it in the middle of a damned crisis, in front of my entire national security team. You undermined my authority and far overstepped yours.”
“I thought part of my job was to offer advice, sir.”
“Advice, yes-then shut up and let me make the decisions, not pop off at me!” Gardner snapped. He looked at Phoenix inquisitively. “You did seem to know an awful lot about that space station and those weapons. Why is that?”
“I get the same briefings as you, Mr. President.”
“Been keeping up on the so-called Space Defense Force? Your friend McLanahan’s old wet dream, before he retired, joined up with Martindale in that illegal mercenary outfit, and screwed the pooch in Iraq?”
“I keep up on a lot of things, sir. That’s my job as well, isn’t it?”
“I see. You seem to have a lot of lofty ideas about what your job is.” Gardner sat back against the conference table, looking Phoenix up and down, studying him. “You know, Ken, I keep hearing these rumors that you intend to resign as vice president and run for the White House. Any truth to that?”
“This isn’t Paraguay, sir,” Phoenix said. “No U.S. vice president has ever resigned his office to run for president. It would be political suicide.”
“That wasn’t a yes-or-no answer, Ken,” Gardner observed. “You would at least have the decency of talking to me beforehand, open and honestly?”
“Sir, the election is in ten months. You’ve been campaigning for reelection since last September-”
“But there’s supposed to be a supersecret campaign organization in place that can get you up and running in an instant, right? That’s what I heard.” Gardner couldn’t tell if Phoenix ’s silence was an admission, a denial, confusion, uncertainty-or hopefulness.
“Listen, Ken, you’re a good guy. I’ve never said it outright, but I’m sure you’ve known this already: You’re a formidable politician. You’re very bright, folks like and respect you, your background and public record are exemplary, and you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty, like what you did in Iraq. I picked you to help unite the country after the partisan mess Martindale left it in.”
“And so I wouldn’t run against you in the last election.”
“That didn’t matter, Ken,” the president said earnestly-whether it was real or not, Phoenix couldn’t tell, which was one of the things that made Gardner such a formidable political figure.
“You’re a young guy. If you want to run for office in 2016, you’ll still be a young guy, in your midfifties, and with eight years of experience in the veep’s office. But let me give you some advice: If you resigned to run for office, you’d be committing political suicide, like you said, public and bloody. No one respects a quitter, especially a political quitter. You’d have less than one term in office, running against your former running mate, and you’d be forgotten in the dustbin of history except as the only guy to resign as vice president to run for president. Do you really want that?”
“I never said I wanted it, sir.”
“No, but you’ve never denied it either,” Gardner said. He affixed Phoenix with a direct gaze. “Start denying it. Forcefully. Or you’ll be spending a lot of time sequestered away in some undisclosed location. Understand?”
“Understood, sir.”
“And remember, there’s only one president in this country. Keep your opinions and directives to yourself unless I ask you a direct question or until you raise your right hand and say ‘So help me God’ with me either standing in the background at your inauguration or in a flag-draped box in the cargo hold of Air Force One. Don’t interfere with my Situation Room again. Clear?”
“Clear, sir.”
President Gardner shook his head and smiled. “‘Blast ’em from space,’ he says. ‘Don’t just sit there and do nothing,’ he says. We’re going to catch some shit for that, for sure,” and he departed the Situation Room and headed back to the Oval Office.
“Had your heart-to-heart with Phoenix, Joe?” Chief of Staff Kordus asked after the president entered his office. “I know you’ve been looking for just the right opportunity to tell him the score, and he sure delivered.”
“He came back from that nightmare in Iraq with a big head, and it needed to be shrunk down a few,” the president said. He longed for a cigarette and a glass of rum, but it was way too early in the day, even for him.
“What did he say about running for president?”
“Neither confirmed nor denied it,” Gardner replied. “But we know there’s an exploratory committee set up. I don’t know what he’s waiting for.”
“He’s not sure,” Kordus offered. “If you dropped him from the ticket, he’d go for it in a heartbeat.”
“I’m not about to do that, unless he does something really, really dumb and there’s such a loud hue and cry against him from the party or the public that I’m forced to drop him,” the president said. “And with what he went through in Iraq, he’s an action hero and rock star rolled into one.”
“Well, we’ve leaked so many hints about a rift between you and him that today’s outburst will put more pressure on him to shit or get off the pot,” Kordus said. “His speeches on your behalf are less and less about you and more toward your policies-rather, his take on your policies. Everyone is guessing he’ll leave. What’s Stacy Anne saying?”
“She’s getting real impatient,” Gardner admitted. “Her campaign speeches are packin’ ’em in like crazy-she’s a natural, and the public loves her sass. With her actions in Iraq and Turkey, the public really got a good look at her diplomatic experience in the face of hostile action-not at the same level as Phoenix, but pretty damned close. She keeps on saying that she wished it was her that got shot down over Iraq.”
“I heard that-and I don’t think she was kidding.”
“Me neither. But she wants in the West Wing in the worst way.”
“So like you said, Phoenix has to be forced to resign, or do something Agnew-like to voluntarily resign, or something completely egregious that you have no choice but to drop him from your ticket,” Kordus said.
“Too bad I can’t fire him.”
“Unfortunately he was elected, same as you, so he can only resign, be impeached, or die,” Kordus said. “But if he keeps on popping off at you in cabinet or NSC meetings, the others might force him to resign for the good of the country.”
The president waved a hand. “Enough about Phoenix -he’ll wait four more years, and then he’ll probably just waltz into the White House,” he said. “I won’t give a shit then-I’ll be at my beach house in Florida in between seven-figure speaking engagements. My bigger problem is how to explain what in hell we just did today.”
“Give it a week or two for things in South Asia to calm down,” Kordus said, “and then we’ll leak the existence of those Pakistani missiles-if it hasn’t already been leaked by India or Russia. You’ll look like a hero for taking them out. You can just tell everyone that you’re not at liberty to discuss how it was done. Then you’ll have to decide if you want to keep those space interceptors up there, or take them down.” He saw the president’s upticked eyebrows, indicating the silent question, and replied, “They sure as hell did the j
ob, even if they missed the target.”
“They sure as hell did…and that’s what concerns me,” the president said. “If people start believing in space weapons, they may not want aircraft carriers.”
“There’s no comparison,” Kordus said. “It’s apples and oranges. I remember when the so-called experts were saying carriers were obsolete because of the cruise missile and the stealth bomber. It’s not true. Eventually we’ll have hypersonic flying ships and laser guns and then maybe the aircraft carrier will go away, but it won’t happen in our kids’ lifetimes.”
The president looked uneasily at his friend, chief political adviser, and idea machine. “I hope you’re right,” he said. “I’m not afraid to say I was impressed. That Kingfisher thing is a game changer. But we’ve got a lot invested in building up the fleet again, and I don’t want some new cool technology to derail our plans.”
“If it looks that way, we’ll pull the plug on Kingfisher,” Kordus said. “It did miss, after all, and killed a lot of innocent people in the process. It may not be ready for prime time yet.”
SOUTH OF HAINAN ISLAND, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
DAYS LATER
The sea-launched ballistic-missile tube door opened on the spine of the USS Wyoming, the seventeenth Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarine, but instead of launching a Trident ballistic missile, a missile-shaped vehicle called a Grebe slowly eased out of the missile tube and began floating to the surface as the submarine moved away. It listened for any sign of collision or interference using passive sonars, even halting its ascent at one point when it detected a nearby fishing vessel.
After reaching the surface, it assumed a semisubmerged tail-low stance while it updated its navigation system using GPS signals and continued to listen for threats. Once it determined the coast was clear, wings and skis popped out of the Grebe’s body, two rocket engines fired to lift the vehicle out of the water, and a small turbojet engine started when the vehicle reached a thousand-feet altitude. It climbed slowly, using a spiral flight course to avoid flying too close to Hainan Island before it reached its cruising altitude. Once reaching twelve thousand feet, it activated its low-light television and imaging infrared sensors and set a course for the Chinese naval base on Hainan Island. The Grebe’s composite structure and small size kept it from being detected by air defense radars on the heavily fortified island.