by Dale Brown
The MHD generator quickly picked up speed, sending tremendous pulses of electricity through the capacitors until it filled, then released the electron energy all at once into the laser chamber. This sequence occurred several thousand times a second, creating massive pulses of electron laser energy that were reflected up and down the magnetic laser amplifier, increasing its power even more until the laser light reached its maximum power, then shot out of the amplifier, into a collimation chamber to focus the beam, then out of the module through the directional adaptive mirror and into space.
The higher the Shahab-5 rose through the atmosphere, the more vulnerable it was to the electron laser beam. The intense heat, focused precisely on the rear one-third of the missile where its first-stage liquid fuel was stored, burned through the rocket’s skin within three seconds, then detonated the rocket fuel. The plume of fire traveled through the sky for several seconds, blossoming outward as it climbed until the fuel was completely burned up.
“Target destroyed,” the radar sensor operator reported. “Confirmed kill.”
“Good job, Ann,” Raydon said. “I’m very impressed. You sure know how to cook.”
“Damn right I do, Kai,” Ann said. “Damn right I do.”
MASHHAD, IRAN
THAT SAME TIME
“Missile destroyed—less than one minute after launch,” Russian General Kuzma Furzyenko, chief of staff of the Air Forces of the Russian Federation, commented, shaking his head at the report coming in via secure text messaging from a Russian spy ship in the Arabian Sea. “Amazing. Quite amazing.”
“I’m glad you’re impressed, General!” retorted Ayatollah Hassan Mohtaj, acting president and Supreme Leader of Iran. “That was a half-billion-dollar ballistic missile that was just destroyed…and on your request! I hope you realize your government is going to compensate us fully for the cost!”
“You will be fairly compensated, Mohtaj…you just won’t be paid anything,” Furzyenko said.
“Oh? How, then?”
“By helping keep your asses alive,” the general said.
“First we turn over the body of their commando, the robot machine, and the equipment from their spaceplane over to you for free, and then we waste our most sophisticated missile on a test flight for you, and we will not be paid? That is simply not fair, General.”
“We can simply take our troops back to Russia and leave you to your fate,” Furzyenko said. “Is that fair enough for you?” Mohtaj opened his mouth but said nothing. “Who will destroy you first if we left, priest? Buzhazi? The Qagev princess and her followers? The Americans? The Israelis? Your fellow Iranians? So many enemies, so little protection. Think about it before you speak to me again with that tone of voice, priest.” Mohtaj gulped indignantly but said nothing. The Russian glared at him, then picked up his secure telephone and waited for the encrypted connection. “General Furzyenko here, sir.”
“How did it go, General?” Russian president Leonid Zevitin asked.
“The Americans took the bait as you predicted, sir,” Furzyenko said. “We simply waited until we knew Armstrong Space Station would be in a good position to attack, then had Mohtaj command the Pasdaran to launch the Shahab-5 missile over the Indian Ocean.”
“You didn’t actually target it for Diego Garcia, did you, General?”
“It would have impacted in the Indian Ocean but far short of the island, shortly after second-stage ignition—it would have looked like an unsuccessful launch.”
“Any chance the missile was shot down by one of their airborne lasers?”
“Their one known AL-52 aircraft has terminated its patrol north of Tehran and is being refueled somewhere over the Persian Gulf,” Furzyenko said. “We know they have one or two flyable 747 AL-1 airborne laser aircraft, but we believe if they are operational they were kept back guarding the homeland and were not part of McLanahan’s Iran operation. Our picket ships have detected no other aircraft in the area, although their stealth bombers could have sneaked past us. We will get telescopic infrared photographs of the space station that should confirm that the Skybolt laser fired, but I am confident that it was Skybolt that destroyed the Shahab-5.”
“So Martindale has resurrected the space laser again,” Zevitin said. “This is a major violation of the Outer Space Treaty and a clear and serious escalation of hostilities all around the world. The United States has militarized space, again.”
“Agreed, sir. This calls for a quick response.”
“And there will be one, General,” Zevitin said. “I guarantee it. What of our fanar unit?”
“Fanar was moved away from the Strongbox right after we destroyed the spaceplane,” Furzyenko said. “We left its surveillance radar in place and put a decoy trailer at the site, both of which the Americans destroyed. But the laser is on its way here to Mashhad under heavy guard. We’ll fly it back to Russia right away.”
“Very good, General, very good,” Zevitin said. “Gather your analyses and post-strike reports and report to me as soon as possible, and we’ll plan Russia’s next move against the newly aggressive President Martindale and his pet bulldog, General Patrick Shane McLanahan.”
“Nakanyets!” Furzyenko said happily. “At last!”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Janet and Bryan Raydon and Linda and Richard Offerdahl for their generosity.
Thanks to astronaut Mike Mullane, author of Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut (New York: Scribner, 2006), and Thomas D. Jones, astronaut and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to NASA (New York: Alpha, 2002) and Sky Walking: An Astronaut’s Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), for their help on understanding the wonders and dangers of space flight and for their thoughts and opinions on the military use of space.
Thanks to the organizers, sponsors, exhibitors, and presenters that I met at the 2006 International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight, held in Las Cruces, New Mexico, part of the X-Prize Cup weekend demonstrating and rewarding the newest advancements in private spaceflight technology. I especially wish to thank Patricia C. Hynes, Lowell Catlett, and Thomas Burton for their hospitality and help.
I would also like to thank Andy Turnage, executive director of the Association of Space Explorers, for his support, along with ASE members (all of whom had to make at least one orbit around the Earth) Jay C. Buckey Jr., Thomas Jones, and Dr. John-David F. Bartoe, with whom I was lucky enough to hang out with at the symposium and gain some “behind-the-scenes” insight on living and working in space.
Your comments are welcome! Visit www.AirBattleForce.com or e-mail me at [email protected]. I may not have time to reply, but I read every e-mail.
CREDITS
Cover design by Richard L. Aquan
Cover photograph by Steve Bloom/Getty Images
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
STRIKE FORCE. Copyright © 2007 by Air Battle Force Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition April 2007 ISBN 9780061752940
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedication
This novel is dedicated to all who make the often difficult decision to do one simple thing: Go For It. When you see it happen, it’s more exhilarating than a space launch, and twice as powerful.
Contents
Dedication
Cast of Cha
racters
Weapons and Acronyms
Real-World News Excerpts
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Credits
Copyright
CAST OF CHARACTERS
AMERICANS:
JOSEPH GARDNER, President of the United States
KEN T. PHOENIX, Vice President
CONRAD F. CARLYLE, President’s National Security Adviser
MILLER H. TURNER, Secretary of Defense
GERALD VISTA, Director of National Intelligence
WALTER KORDUS, White House Chief of Staff
STACY ANNE BARBEAU, senior U.S. senator from Louisiana, Senate majority leader; Colleen Morna, her aide
GENERAL TAYLOR J. BAIN, USMC, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
GENERAL CHARLES A. HUFFMAN, Air Force chief of staff
AIR FORCE GENERAL BRADFORD CANNON, commander of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM)
ARMY GENERAL KENNETH LEPERS, commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)
MAJOR GENERAL HAROLD BACKMAN, commander of the Fourteenth Air Force; also commander of Joint Functional Component Command-Space (JFCC-S) of U.S. Strategic Command
LIEUTENANT GENERAL PATRICK MCLANAHAN, commander of the High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center (HAWC), Elliott AFB, Nevada
BRIGADIER GENERAL DAVID LUGER, deputy commander of HAWC
COLONEL MARTIN TEHAMA, incoming commander of HAWC
MAJOR GENERAL REBECCA FURNESS, commander of the First Air Battle Force (air operations), Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base (ARB), Nevada
BRIGADIER GENERAL DAREN MACE, Air Battle Force operations officer, 111th Bomb Wing commander, and EB-1C mission commander
MAJOR WAYNE MACOMBER, deputy commander (ground operations) of the First Air Battle Force, Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base, Nevada
MARINE CORPS MASTER SERGEANT CHRIS WOHL, NCOIC, First Air Battle Force
U.S. ARMY NATIONAL GUARD CAPTAIN CHARLIE TURLOCK, CID pilot
CAPTAIN Hunter “Boomer” NOBLE, XR-A9 Black Stallion spacecraft commander, Elliott Air Force Base, Groom Lake
U.S. NAVY LIEUTENANT COMMANDER LISETTE “FRENCHY” MOULAIN, XR-A9 spacecraft commander
U.S. MARINE CORPS MAJOR JIM TERRANOVA, XR-A9 mission commander
ANN PAGE, PH.D., former U.S. senator, astronaut, and space weapon engineer
AIR FORCE MASTER SERGEANT VALERIE “SEEKER” LUKAS, Armstrong Space Station sensor operator
IRANIANS:
GENERAL HESARAK AL-KAN BUZHAZI, leader of the Persian military coup
AZAR ASSIYEH QAGEV, heir presumptive of the Peacock Throne of Persia
LIEUTENANT COLONEL PARVIZ NAJAR AND MAJOR MARA SAIDI, Azar Qagev’s aides-de-camp
COLONEL MOSTAFA RAHMATI, commander of the Fourth Infantry Brigade, Tehran-Mehrabad Airport
MAJOR QOLOM HADDAD, leader of Buzhazi’s personal security team
MASOUD NOSHAHR, Lord High Chancellor of the Qagev royal court and marshal of the court’s council of war
AYATOLLAH HASSAN MOHTAZ, supreme leader in exile of the Islamic Republic of Iran
RUSSIANS:
LEONID ZEVITIN, president of the Russian Federation
PETER ORLEV, president’s chief of staff
ALEXANDRA HEDROV, minister of foreign affairs
IGOR TRUZNYEV, chief of the Federal Security Bureau
ANATOLI VLASOV, secretary of the Russian security council
MIKHAIL OSTENKOV, minister of national defense
GENERAL KUZMA FURZYENKO, Russian chief of the general staff
GENERAL NIKOLAI OSTANKO, chief of staff of the Russian army
GENERAL ANDREI DARZOV, chief of staff of the Russian air force
WOLFGANG ZYPRIES, German laser engineer working with the Russian air force
WEAPONS AND ACRONYMS
9K89—small Russian surface-to-surface missile
ARB—Air Reserve Base
ATO—air tasking order
BDU-58 Meteor—precision-guided vehicle designed to protect payloads from the heat of re-entry through the atmosphere; can carry approximately 4,000 pounds
CIC—Combat Information Center
coonass—a person of Cajun ethnicity
E-4B—National Airborne Operations Center
E-6B Mercury—U.S. Navy airborne communications and command post aircraft
EB-1D—B-1 Lancer bomber modified as an unmanned long-range supersonic attack plane
ETE—estimated time en route
FAA Part 91—regulations governing private pilots and aircraft
FSB—Russian Federal Security Bureau, follow-on to the KGB
HAWC—High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center
ICD—implantable cardioverter-defibrillator
Ilyushin—Russian inflight refueling tanker aircraft
MiG—Mikoyan-Gureyvich, Russian military aircraft maker
OSO—offensive systems officer
RQ-4 Global Hawk—high-altitude long-range unmanned reconnaissance aircraft
SAR—synthetic aperture radar; also search and rescue
Skybolt—space-based anti-ballistic missile laser
SPEAR—Self-Protection Electronically Agile Reaction network intrusion defense system
sun-synchronous—an Earth orbit on which a satellite passes over the same spot at the same time of day
Tupolev—twin-engine Russian jet bomber
USAFE—U.S. Air Forces in Europe
VFR—Visual Flight Rules
Vomit Comet—aircraft used to fly parabolic flights to simulate weightlessness
XAGM-279A SkySTREAK (Scramjet Tactical Rapid Employment Attack, or “Streaker”)—air-launched hypersonic attack missile, 4,000 pounds, 12 feet long, 24 inches in diameter; uses a solid rocket motor to boost the missile to Mach 3, then switches to a JP-7 jet fuel and compressed atmospheric oxygen scramjet to cruise at Mach 10; inertial and precision GPS navigation; satellite datalink operator mid-course reprogramming; ballistic flight profile max range 600 miles; after accelerating to Mach 10, releases precision-guided warhead with millimeter-wave radar and imaging infrared terminal guidance with auto-target discrimination or satellite datalink remote operator target selection; no warhead; two can be carried aboard EB-1C Vampire bomber in aft bomb bay; four carried internally or four externally by EB-52 Megafortress; four carried internally by B-2 stealth bomber
XR-A9—single-stage to orbit “Black Stallion” spaceplane
REAL-WORLD NEWS EXCERPTS
STRATFOR MORNING INTELLIGENCE BRIEF, 18 JANUARY 2007—1216 GMT—CHINA, UNITED STATES—U.S. intelligence agencies believe China destroyed the aging Feng Yun 1C polar orbit weather satellite in a successful anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons test Jan. 11, China Daily reported Jan. 18, citing an article to appear in the Jan. 22 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology. U.S. intelligence agencies are still attempting to verify the ASAT test, which would signify that China has a major new military capability…
…The new cloud of debris orbiting the Earth is an indication of things to come should two space-faring nations face off in a conflict. Especially in the case of the United States, space-based assets have become too essential an operational tool to be ignored any longer in times of war.
STRATFOR DAILY INTELLIGENCE SUMMARY, 3 APRIL 2007—U.S./IRAN: U.S. attacks against Iran would not lead to a decisive military defeat of Tehran and would be a political mistake, Russia’s Chief of the General Staff Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky said. He added that it is possible for the United States to damage Iran’s military, but not to win a conflict outright.
STRATFOR INTELLIGENCE BRIEF, 7 SEPTEMBER 2007—Cooperation between the Russian Federal Security Service and Ir
an’s Interior Ministry will enhance Iran’s border security, First Deputy Director-General of Russian Federal Security and Border Services Viktor Shlyakhtin said, according to an IRNA report. Shlyakhtin is in Iran to inspect Iranian-Russian projects in areas of Iran’s Sistan-Balochistan province that border Afghanistan and Pakistan.
RED OCTOBER: RUSSIA, IRAN, AND IRAQ—STRATFOR Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 17 September 2007—Copyright © Strategic Forecasting Inc.—…The Americans need the Russians not to provide fighter aircraft, modern command-and-control systems, or any of the other war-making systems that the Russians have been developing. Above all else, they want the Russians not to provide the Iranians any nuclear-linked technology.
Therefore, it is no accident that the Iranians claimed over the weekend that the Russians told them they would do precisely that.
…[Russian president Vladimir] Putin can align with the Iranians and place the United States in a far more complex situation than it otherwise would be in. He could achieve this by supporting Syria, arming militias in Lebanon, or even causing significant problems in Afghanistan, where Russia retains a degree of influence in the North…