Flight of the Condor

by Richard P. Henrick

  Though he had witnessed many a launch there, he never failed to get an emotional charge out of seeing the assembled rocket as it awaited the signal to lift off. This morning proved no different. As he passed by the preparation facility, he looked to his right, and set his gaze on the silver-skinned Ariadne perched securely on its launch pad. Over fifty meters in length, the missile appeared sleek and powerful, its four bulging boosters secured to each of its fins. A cloud of whitish vapor streamed from its fuselage, and several support vehicles were busy seeing to the last-minute refueling and pre-flight checkout.

  Once again, the colonel was diverted by the rumble of distant thunder. A line of black clouds could be seen gathering to the south. It wouldn’t be long now until they would make their presence known here at the facility.

  With the hope that they’d be able to get the Ariadne skyward before this storm struck, Moreau guided his jeep towards a nearby, low-level concrete bunker. Taking a last look at the advancing clouds, he parked his vehicle and walked quickly to the bunker’s central access door. Before he was allowed entry there, he needed to enter an identification code into a frame-mounted key-pad. Once this was accomplished, he inserted his personalized ID card into a slot positioned beneath the computerized lock. Several seconds passed, and then the door slid open with a loud hiss.

  Inside it was dark and noticeably cooler. Hastily, he followed the single tile-lined hallway to the preparation room. There he chose a spotlessly white jumpsuit from several outfits that had been hanging on the far wall. Only then did he press for the elevator that would efficiently whisk him three floors underground.

  The environment that he soon entered was drastically different from that he had encountered upstairs.

  Flashing digital consoles, blinking video screens, and the hushed tones of the dozens of white-suited technicians now visible met his eyes and ears. Without hesitation, Moreau proceeded to the console marked Meteorology. There he encountered a white-haired individual nervously hunched over his display screen.

  “Bonjour, Marcel. Tell me, old friend, are we going to have time to get Ariadne skyward before the rains begin?”

  A warm smile spread across the grizzled meteorologist’s face upon catching sight of the source of this query.

  “Good morning to you, Jean Moreau. If LeMond can keep us on schedule, we will just make it. Otherwise, it doesn’t appear promising.”

  Absorbing this observation, Moreau looked up into the screen of one of the several wallmounted video monitors that were conveniently placed inside the control room. He took in a close-up view of the same rocket that he had inspected outside. Most aware that a launch delay would be costly, he scurried over to the room’s central console, to check the progress firsthand.

  Just as he reached this station, which was dominated by several manned, interconnected computer terminals, the room filled with the cold, feminine voice of the launch monitor.

  “I minus five minutes and counting.”

  Relieved that the liftoff appeared to be right on time, Moreau approached a rather lanky, longhaired figure seated at the station’s center. Before the colonel could greet this technician, the young man caught sight of him out of the corner of his eye. Smiling, he rose to exchange handshakes.

  “So you made it back, Colonel,” greeted Jacques LeMond with a wink.

  “How was the fishing?”

  Brushing aside this question, Moreau offered one of his own.

  “Meteorology indicates that we won’t have time for a single delay. How do the systems look?”

  The young technician seemed surprised with his haste.

  “Have you no confidence in your own protege, Colonel? Everything appears just perfect. I see no reason that we won’t have a liftoff right on schedule.”

  With this, Moreau’s mood lightened.

  “Of course I have confidence in you, Jacques LeMond. Otherwise, I would have never left in the first place.”

  Meeting his assistant’s broad grin, Moreau looked to the nearest video screen as the room’s monitor speakers again activated.

  “I minus three minutes and counting. All ground personnel should be clear of the launch pad.”

  With his gaze still glued to the picture of the Ariadne visible before him, Moreau didn’t even notice Jacques LeMond return to his console. The colonel’s mind was cluttered with thoughts, and he was hardly aware of the continued passage of time, until the familiar female voice again sounded.

  “I minus sixty seconds and counting… five, four, three, two, one, ignition!”

  With a wall of flame and a rumbling roar, the Ariadne’s four solid-rocket engines burst forth above a fiery tongue of spent propellant. As this mixture of powdered aluminum, ammonium per chlorate synthetic rubber, and other exotic additives interacted, a thrust of over one million pounds was generated. In response, the Ariadne soared off skyward.

  The atmosphere inside the control room was thick with tension as the video screen filled with the sight of the rising behemoth. This tenseness was relieved only after the monitor speakers once more activated.

  “Trajectory appears good. All conditions go for full throttle.”

  This revelation was met by an excited chorus of cheers and applause, for with full throttle the most critical phase of the launch had passed.

  Jean Moreau’s attention remained glued to the video screen until he was certain that the solid-rocket motors had jettisoned from the booster cleanly, and that the Ariadne’s first stage had fired properly. Only when this was confirmed did he allow himself a sigh of relief.

  The Ariadne’s main engine was but a speck on the television screen when Jacques LeMond gathered at his side.

  “That looks like another one for the Consortium, Colonel. I hope our Japanese customers will be satisfied. Oh, by the way, in all the excitement, I forgot to give you this envelope. It arrived by special courier late last evening.

  Moreau’s assistant handed him a sealed manila envelope, which he quickly opened. His eyes lit up upon reading its contents, yet all too soon a distracted, serious glow colored his expression.

  “Well, Colonel, what’s it all about, or can’t you tell me?”

  Moreau seemed called back to life with this comment.

  “I’m sorry, Jacques, but it’s a dispatch from the Commandant’s office. The old man wanted to share with us some rather unfortunate news regarding the Americans. It seems they lost another one of their Titan 34-D’s. It went down over Vandenberg early yesterday morning.”

  “Those poor Yanks,” returned LeMond with a shake of his head.

  “First it was the shuttle, now it’s the Titan. Even with all their billions of dollars, they can’t even get a satellite into orbit. Who knows? Until they get their difficulties ironed out, maybe they’ll come to us for help.”

  Moreau grinned wisely.

  “You just might have hit upon something, my friend. It would sure beat asking the Soviets for assistance, and just think what the Consortium could do with all those extra funds.”

  LeMond’s response was influenced by the voice of their monitor, who announced that the Ariadne’s second-stage motor had fired right on time. With youthful exuberance, he flashed his superior a hearty thumbs-up.

  Jean Moreau was barely conscious of this gesture, his thoughts a million miles away. While his mind’s eye focused on the Ariadne’s payload as it prepared to deploy itself in outer space, he carefully folded the dispatch he had just received and placed it inside the flap of his jumpsuit’s breast pocket. Deep within his subconscious, he was already beginning to calculate the novel opportunities this news could portend.

  Chapter Six

  It was late afternoon by the time Lieutenant Colonel Todd Lansford finally made his way to the bluff overlooking Vandenberg’s Point Arguello. He had spent most of the day indoors, studying the bathymetric charts of the waters he presently stood before.

  Seeing firsthand the raw immensity of the area of ocean his search was to be centered in gave him a ne
w respect for his present assignment. Added to the difficulty of this herculean task itself were the political pressures that he was already beginning to feel.

  From the contents of the various phone calls he fielded throughout the day, it was most obvious that Washington was in a hurry for results. Of course, he had been the lucky one chosen to fulfill their impossible bidding.

  As a senior officer with SAM TO the Air Force’s Space and Missile Test Organization, Lansford had been given the tough assignment of coordinating the search for any debris that might have survived the recent Titan 34-D failure. Such evidence was of major importance in determining the exact reason the missile had gone down. Since a design fault would mean that the entire Titan program could be threatened, no Titan would be launched until a reason for this most recent failure was determined. This fact made his present mission that much more significant.

  Carefully scanning the surrounding terrain, the fifty-four-year-old officer was well aware that most of the search operation would be taking place under the Pacific. The reason for this was simple, for the Titan had just began arcing over Pacific waters when it had exploded in a fiery mass of debris and flame.

  Compounding the difficulty of this underwater search was the fact that the topography of the sea bed there was extremely inhospitable. The jagged nature of the very bluff he presently stood on was a prime example of the type of physical environment that they’d be facing.

  Cut from primordial volcanic rock, Point Arguello was a wild, desolate spot. It was formed by a semicircle of serrated rock with needle-like pinnacles and razor-sharp reefs that had been a nightmare for navigators throughout the decades. Originally labeled La Guijado del Diablo, or the Devil’s Jaw, by the Spaniards, the reefs had been responsible for the sinking of dozens of tall-masted, treasure-laden galleons.

  On this particular afternoon, the ocean appeared deceptively calm. Noticeably absent were the surging riptides, pounding surf, and pea-soup fogs that not only cut visibility down to zero, but distorted and muffled sound as well. Each of these factors helped give the Point its tragic notoriety.

  Direct proof of the area’s dangers lay immediately to Lansford’s left. There, placed on a bed of concrete, was a rusted anchor, raised from the surf in 1973. It belonged to the U.S.S. Chauncery, one of seven Navy destroyers that had plowed into the Devil’s Jaw on the night of September 8, 1923. Lansford had read an account of this tragedy upon his initial deployment at Vandenberg. At that time he had been shocked by this incident that had somehow been kept out of his collegiate history books.

  It had been a simple navigational error that had led this squadron of high-speed warships onto the reefs off Point Arguello. Though all seven ships had been sunk, miraculously only 23 seamen out of a possible 800 had been killed. The tragedy had occurred when the navigator of the lead destroyer, the U.S.S. Delphy, had miscalculated a directional radio beacon signal. Veiled by a thick nighttime fog, the ship’s officers had thought they were well south of Point Conception, on their journey from San Francisco to San Diego. Because of this error in their calculations, they had ordered the ships to turn due eastward into what they had presumed was sheltered Santa Barbara Channel. Yet, in reality, they had yet to pass Point Arguello, three miles north of Point Conception. The destroyers had been running in a tight battle formation, and ship after ship had plowed into the awaiting rocks, their horrified captains unable to halt their forward progress until too late. And once again the Devil’s Jaw had added yet another pile of debris to its already bone-littered sea floor.

  Pondering this unbelievable tale, Lansford noticed the weird, brooding silence that seemed to haunt the spot. No seabird or gull cried overhead, the only sound audible being that of the wind and the incessant, surging surf.

  Angling his line of sight back out to sea, he studied the breakers that formed in long frothing sets over a quarter of a mile beyond. It was beneath these crashing waves that his search would begin.

  Preliminary reports from the submarine U.S.S. Razorback showed the initial debris field to lay approximately three and a half miles offshore. There, in 150 feet of water, the first major pieces of wreckage had been spotted. A subsequent sonar scan of the ocean’s bottom had picked up over 500 additional pieces of debris, lying in a sector 5 miles long and 400 feet wide. Because this path led out to sea, much of the wreckage could lie in depths of over 800 feet.

  Their first objective was to completely search, localize, and visually classify. Then, utilizing such unique platforms as the Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle Marlin, they would initiate the difficult task of exhuming as many of the pieces of wreckage as possible. Without benefit of the DSRV’s articulated manipulator arms, such a task would have been impossible.

  Aware of the time limitations all too recently placed upon him, Lansford prayed that relatively stable weather would continue to prevail. A series of storms now could delay their efforts for weeks. At last report, the base meteorologist had seen no significant lowpressure systems in the immediate area. If this remained constant, the first actual piece of debris could be extracted as early as the next day. Of course, this still depended upon various logistical concerns that he had absolutely no control over, such as a mechanical breakdown in their equipment. Yet, as it stood now, his superiors would be accepting no excuses.

  What they demanded were results. This was the bottom line that he would have to be working for no matter the cost.

  Stifling a yawn, Lansford ran his hand through his crew-cut. There would be little time for sleep until they learned just what had taken the mighty Titan down. Glad that Marjorie and their two boys were off in Florida visiting her parents, he was prepared to give this project his all. The vital importance of its ultimate ramifications couldn’t be ignored.

  The lieutenant colonel had known the identity of the Titan’s top-secret payload from the very beginning. Thus he hadn’t been surprised when the first calls had begun arriving from the Pentagon as news of the missile’s failure reached Washington. What he was having problems understanding was the unusual speed with which his superiors were demanding results. An investigation of this type could take weeks to complete. Even then, it was somewhat doubtful if they’d ever know the exact cause of the explosion.

  Lansford had only begun understanding just how vitally important it was for the Air Force to get the last remaining Keyhole in orbit late the previous night, when orders had arrived instructing them to ready Slik 6 for a possible launch. He had been shocked to learn that this directive also included instructions to get the Condor out of storage and ready to fly.

  Both the launch complex and the shuttle vehicle had been mothballed, ever since the Challenger disaster had put the whole program in a state of indefinite suspension. Only recently had NASA agreed to a series of design corrections which were to be implemented on the surviving shuttle vehicles to make flight safer. Yet the Condor, a top-secret military version of the shuttle, had yet to be adapted. It was designed to be launched from Vandenberg, with as little public fanfare as possible, its ultimate mission veiled in secrecy. Lansford and his coworkers had not expected to see it fly for at least two years, when the design changes were scheduled to be completed. That was why these new directives had come as such a shock to him.

  He could only assume that the nation’s very security was currently being threatened. There could be no denying the effectiveness of the Keyhole reconnaisance satellite program. As the space-home eyes and ears of the nation, such a platform would give the U.S. its first hint of an enemy’s hostile intentions.

  Though such an important satellite always had a back-up in orbit, something must have occurred to necessitate the tragic, rushed launch of the Titan.

  Since that previously reliable delivery system was now in question, and since a replacement Titan would take over a month to assemble, a decision had been made to ready the Condor.

  As a member of the military, Lansford was no stranger to risk. His daily assignments often sent him to the far corners of the gl
obe. Oblivious to the dangers involved, he did his duty without question.

  Yet, in this instance, he couldn’t help but find himself doubting the rationality of those he served. Even if a Keyhole had to get airborne, did it necessitate risking a billion-dollar space craft known to be deficient, and its brave crew besides?

  The shrill ring of his car phone interrupted his thoughts. Shifting his line of sight from the surging Pacific, he turned his attention to his current means of transportation. The dark-blue Air Force station wagon was parked less than a quarter of a mile away.

  The earthen roadway was cracked and dusty as he crossed the plateau and approached his vehicle. Without opening the automobile’s door, he reached inside the open window and picked up the black plastic receiver.

  “This is Lieutenant Colonel Lansford speaking.”

  The familiar voice on the other end replied instantly.

  “Sir, it’s Master Sergeant Sprawlings. I thought you’d like to know that the C-5A you’ve been waiting for from Hawaii is on its final approach. ETA. is at half past the hour.”

  Hastily checking his watch, Lansford responded, “Very good. Sergeant. I’m down at the Point presently, and should have just enough time to get over to the airfield to greet them.”

  “Do you want me to meet you there, sir?”

  “You’d better continue to hold down the fort. By the way, any more calls from D.C.?”

  “Nothing since you left, sir. You did get one inquiry from Roger Winslow over at KXBC. He wanted to know if you had anything new about the cause of the Titan failure. I just told him he’d have to bide his time with the other reporters until an official news bulletin is released.”