Newcombe checked the control panel, then studied the map. “General, the crew is right . . . here.” He pointed to the map. “Eight miles south of our position. We should be able to see the launch after you transmit the launch command. Sir?”
General Taylor stepped forward and glanced at his watch. “Ten o’clock on the dot,” he said. “Let’s do it.” Newcombe directed the general to a large red button mounted on a box on the master control panel. The Air Force general pressed the button, and Newcombe started a clock. Everyone else glanced at his watch.
“If you’ll follow me, gentlemen.” GeneralTaylor led the way out of the control room and outside into a large stretch of sand dunes and low scrub trees. Newcombe put the sun on his left shoulder and pointed westward.
“General Taylor’s command has alerted the launch crew as well as the tracking and telemetry stations,” he explained. “The rest is simple. While the train comes to a complete stop, the doors of the train open and the missile canister begins to erect. The canister is raised rearward, so the exhaust end of the missile is hanging off the end of the railcar.
“Meanwhile, the crew decodes and authenticates the launch order. All of the missile’s internal ‘housekeeping’ functions are automatic. By the time the crew verifies the message and inserts their launch keys, the missile is ready to go.”
Newcombe checked his watch; seventy-five seconds had already elapsed. He looked up at his military spectators.
“I told you gents this would be a surprise ...”
At that instant, a thunderous roar rolled across the dunes. Several of the spectators, Newcombe included, jumped. All looked southward.
The missile itself could not be seen except as a tiny dark speck, but the half-mile-long tail of flame was clearly visible from eight miles away. The pillar of fire rose, accelerating at unbelievable speed. It felt as if the rocket exhaust was blasting at them from directly overhead.
“A few seconds late, gents,” Newcombe said over the slowly receding noise. “But spectacular, eh?” Newcombe pulled out a walkie-talkie. “Control, this is Newcombe. Pipe the telemetry narrative outside, please.”
“Amazing,” General Taylor said. “An intercontinental missile with an eight-thousand-mile range, ready for launch in a little over sixty seconds.”
“Javelin at sixty nautical miles altitude, seventy-three miles down- range,” the voice of the launch controller reported. “Expecting first stage burnout in forty seconds. Speed approaching two thousand miles per hour. Altitude now eighty-three nautical miles, one hundred seven miles downrange . . .”
“Very impressive,” General Taylor said. “A most successful launch.”
“The Javelin hasn’t begun to perform, General,” Newcombe said. “We’ll begin receiving telemetry from Guam and the Marshall Islands soon. They’ll tell us the progress of the Javelin's warheads. We expect a circular error pattern of not more than a hundred feet.”
“One hundred feet!” one of Taylor’s aides said. “After an eight thousand mile flight on a small ICBM? Why, that’s—”
“Unbelievable, I know.” Newcombe smiled. “Although the Javelin is transportable and deployable in dozens of ways, we haven’t just created a mini-ICBM. The Javelin is just as accurate as the new MX Peacekeeper missile, yet it’s one-third the size and one-half the cost.”
“Javelin at two hundred seventy-three miles altitude, turning further seaward now at three hundred miles downrange,” the controller intoned. “Successful first stage burnout and second stage ignition. Velocity seven thousand miles per hour. Inertial systems functioning well.”
“We can listen in on the rest of the launch from the visitor’s area,” Newcombe said. “We have champagne ready.”
“Minor inertial course correction,” the launch controller said. His voice sounded a bit more strained. Newcombe shot a puzzled glance at the loudspeaker, then wiped his face clean and replaced the puzzlement with a broad smile. No one else had noticed the inflection, or they weren’t showing it . . .
“Guam reports tracking Javelin on course. Javelin at four hundred nautical miles altitude, one thousand one hundred miles downrange,” the controller reported. Suddenly his reports were coming faster. “Javelin correcting course . . . reestablished on course . . . now correcting course again for premature third-stage ignition ... Guam reports loss of tracking and telemetry from Javelin. Mr. Newcombe, to the control center, please.” Newcombe’s beeper went off, but he was already running for the command center.
“We have lost the Javelin, ” the monotonous voice continued. “We have lost the Javelin. ”
* * *
“Damage report! All Sections, damage report!”
If anyone could see Commander Markham’s hands at that moment, they would see knuckles as white as chalk as they crushed the seatbacks he was gripping for support. Every one of the thousands of lights in the U.S.S. Lawrence's intelligence section had snapped out. A few battery- powered lights automatically came on, but they did little to penetrate the solid darkness of the steel-lined, windowless chamber.
Markham wondered how the order for a damage report was being broadcast. It had to be a battery-operated backup intercom. Hand over hand, he felt his way along the double rows of seats on either side of the aisle toward the front of the intelligence section. He felt a few men rising from their seats, and he risked letting go of the seatbacks to push them back down.
“Keep your seat, Kelly,” he ordered. “The damn lights just went out, that’s all. Check your station.” He heard a timid, “Yes, sir” in reply.
Markham made his way to the ship’s radio box mounted on the section’s forward bulkhead. The radio was hardly ever used—stray transmissions from the intel section’s computers could be picked up for miles through such an antiquated telephone. He picked it up.
The hum he heard in the receiver was deafening, but someone was still trying to use it. “Intel section. Do you read me? Intel section—”
“Intel, Markham here,” he shouted into the phone. “Bridge, this is Markham. How do you hear?”
“Very weak,” replied the voice—Lieutenant Commander Christopher Watanabe, the first officer, Markham guessed. “Damage report.”
“No structural damage noted yet, Chris,” Markham said. “All our power is out. All our equipment is shut down.”
“Understand no structural damage,” Watanabe reported back. “Could not copy the rest. Send a runner forward with a report on the double. The ship is on Condition Yellow. Repeat, Condition Yellow.”
“Copy.” Markham dropped the phone back on its hook. “All right, now hear this,” he called out into the pitch-dark intel section. “The ship is on Condition Yellow. Everyone, one more check of your area for damage and sing out. Kelly!”
“Yes . . . yes, sir?” came the broken, timid voice again.
“You wanna leave so fast, here’s your chance. Get up here.” The young seaman ran forward. “You’re the runner for our section. You don’t go topside without a parka, arctic mittens, life vest, and a lifeline—and this time use the damn thing.” Markham pushed the youngster aside and peered into the gloom of his now-impotent electronic stateroom. “Listen up. Any damage? Water? Cracks? Gas? Strange sounds? Sing out.”
No reply. “Move out, Kelly. Tell Watanabe no damage. Tell him I’ll give a report on operational status myself later.” Kelly nodded and disappeared through the useless magnetic-lock security door and into the storm beyond.
Markham started to make his way aft through his dark, dead multimillion dollar intelligence section. “Anything?” he asked no one in particular. “Battery backups? Printer buffers? Anything?”
“I’ve got nothing,” one operator said. “That entire battery backup system we had installed is dead. It doesn’t work for shit.”
“What the hell hit us?” someone else asked. “All my sensors and screens flared, like a huge power surge. Then—poof. ”
“All right, all right,” Markham said, pulling on an orange life vest.
“If you don’t have anything recoverable, forget it. Pair up and start collecting your hard copy printouts. You’ll have to use the hand-crank shredders if Engineering can’t get the power back on. If that doesn’t work, or if you start to backlog, we’ll bag the printouts and start a bonfire in the dumpster on deck. Masters, Lee, suit up and get that dumpster now. No sense in waiting until the Russians start boarding us.”
The two men hurried off.
“Printer ribbons, handwritten notes, logbooks, memos, scribbles,” Markham recited as he began to pace the aisle, monitoring the destruction preparations. “Astleman, goddamnit, put that life vest on!” Markham made his way over to Garrity’s station and knelt down to face the veteran intelligence man.
“What was it, Garrity?”
Garrity ripped the cover off his computer printer’s ribbon cartridge and wadded up the ribbon. When he turned toward Markham, there was genuine fear in his eyes.
“I could see it coinin’,” he whispered. “It was like . . . like a wave of energy. It kept on building up, then everything went dark.”
“Kavaznya?” Markham whispered. “Did it come from Kavaznya?” Garrity nodded, wiping a carbon-blackened hand across his sweating forehead. “Whatever the Russians got out there, Commander, if it didn’t blow us out of the Pacific, it at least tagged somethin’ else for sure ...”
12 Washington, D.C.
“Where the hell is he?” Curtis asked Jack Pledgeman, the President’s press secretary, who was trying to ignore the four-star general.
“He’s late,” Curtis said, loud enough for everyone in the White House Conference Room to hear. Fortunately, the only ones who paid any attention were members of the President’s immediate staff and Cabinet who were quite accustomed to Curtis’ outbursts. The two dozen cameramen and technicians, putting in final touches to their extensive camera and lighting gear, were too intent on their work to notice. And the members of the White House press corps and other correspondents were outside, hoping to corral the President in the hallway for one-on-one questions before the scheduled morning Cabinet photo session.
Curtis punched a palm in irritation. “When he hears what—”
“Dammit, General, keep it down,” Pledgeman interrupted. “Those tapes are rolling over there.”
“They won’t be—”
“I asked you to—”
Pledgeman didn’t get to finish. At that instant, the President strode quickly into the room. The men and women at the large oblong conference table rose to their feet. The President was followed closely by a tight knot of reporters and correspondents. Cameras and lights clicked on and filled the room with a buzz.
The President brushed deep, thick brown hair from his forehead and waved toward the seats. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, take your seats.” Nobody sat down until the President had stepped over the yards of sound and light cables taped to the rich carpeting and reached his executive’s chair.
A bright floodlight snapped on directly in front of the President, right over the Secretary of Health and Human Services’ head. “If you don’t mind?” the President said, scowling at the light. “You’re going to fry one of my people.” The light was immediately extinguished. The President nodded his thanks, removed his half-lens Ben Franklin glasses, and wiped them with a handkerchief. Pledgeman quietly admonished the photographer and pointed to a twelve-inch-square opening in a distant corner where he could set up his camera.
“Quite a crowd today, eh, Jack?” the President said to his press secretary. Pledgeman nodded. The President replaced his glasses on his nose and looked over his agenda for the meeting, a shortened and mostly staged version of a formal Cabinet meeting.
A network television anchorwoman, microphone in hand, was stepping quickly into the place vacated by the cameraman. General Curtis steered himself around her, maneuvered around the backs of the chairs occupied by the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, and finally made his way to the President’s side. He arrived just as the anchorwoman took one last glance at her notes and smiled at the President. She, not Curtis, had the President’s full attention.
“Mr. President, before we get started, I’d like to ask you—”
Simultaneously, Curtis bent down between the Secretary of Defense, Thomas Preston, and the President. He said in a half-whisper, “Mr. President, I have some important developments that can’t wait.”
The President, eyes drawn to the attractive Oriental newswoman, scarcely noticed Curtis. The general’s deep voice interrupted the woman’s question.
Pledgeman, on the alert for this sort of embarrassing scene, stepped between the newswoman and the Secretary of Agriculture at the conference table.
“Problem, General?” Pledgeman asked quietly.
General Curtis leaned closer to the President. “Sir, I must speak with you immediately. There are new developments at that. . . power facility we talked about.”
“After the Cabinet meeting,” Pledgeman said.
Curtis hesitated.
“Wilbur, it has to wait,” the President finally said. “Is it an immediate emergency?”
Everyone watched Curtis. No one knew exactly what an “immediate” emergency was, but it would be plastered all over page one of every newspaper in the country if he said “yes.” Coming directly from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the classification “immediate emergency” would mean only one thing. He’d have some tough explaining to do.
“It’ll have to wait, General,” Pledgeman said, repeating the President’s words. “We must get started here.”
“I’ll be in my office as soon as I’m through here, General,” the President said as Curtis was ushered out by one of Pledgeman’s associates.
As the door to the conference room slammed behind him, Curtis turned on his aide.
“Colonel Wyatt, you will stand here and wait for the President. The instant he comes out of that room, you are to confront him and remind him that I am waiting for him in the Oval Office. Tell him that it is now a matter of national security. Don’t speak with anyone else but the President. If Pledgeman or anyone else tells you differently, you have a direct order from me to bust him in the chops. All clear?”
Wyatt, amazed at his boss’ behavior, nodded and watched as the general marched down the corridor.
“It’s incredible. Absolutely incredible.”
The President of the United States stared out the window of the White House Oval Office, making the announcement to the gently falling flakes of snow outside. General Wilbur Curtis collected the sheaves of notes and computer printouts, glanced at the Secretary of Defense, Thomas Preston, and sat down. Secretary of State Marshall Brent stood at the opposite side of the President’s cherry desk, looking over copies of the intelligence analysis Kenneth Mitchell, the CIA director, had shown the President. United Nations Ambassador Gregory Adams sat on a couch, seething as he thought of Karmarov’s apparent duplicity at the Security Council session.
“Merry goddamn Christmas,” the President muttered.
For the first time in months, Curtis felt a huge weight lift off his shoulders. He’s finally beginning to believe me, Curtis thought. It had taken the deaths of twelve men and women and the loss of a billion dollars worth of military hardware, plus the new evidence in hand.
“But how can we be sure that this is an orbiting mirror, General?” the President asked over his shoulder, not bothering to turn away from the window. He was holding an eleven-by-fourteen black-and-white enlargement of a large, rectangular object. The object was silvery and slightly curved, with a surface resembling a reflective quilted blanket. A thin web of girders surrounded it, along with several oblong tanks and other vessels. “Mr. President, the evidence indicates that—”
“The President asked you a specific question, General,” Tom Preston interrupted. “How can we be sure?”
“We can’t be sure, Mr. President,” Curtis said. “That photo could be various things—solar collection panels, solar shielding . . . but
look at the facts: Our RC-315 recon plane records massive energy discharge frm the Kavaznya facility. Simultaneously, we record the destruction of a geosynchronous satellite directly over the complex in space. I believe the RC-153 was destroyed by another energy blast to keep it from reporting the data it was gathering.
“Less than two weeks later, the Lawrence intelligence vessel we sent over there to monitor the site records another massive energy blast from the Kavaznya site. Seconds later, the third stage of our Midgetman missile prematurely ignites and we are forced to destroy it. Information from the Lawrence exactly matches the data on the blast that we received from the RC-153 before we lost contact—”
Secretary of Defense Preston interrupted. “So how does that prove there’s an orbiting mirror, General Curtis?”
“Before the energy blast, the Lawrence reported unusual data signals being transmitted from the Kavaznya radar,” Curtis went on. “Their information is still being analyzed, but the experts on the Lawrence have described data transmissions between the radar at Kavaznya and two Soviet satellites in Earth orbit.
“They believe the first satellite was furnishing position data to Kavaznya during the time that the Midgetman missile was in the boost phase. The Kavaznya radar was tracking a second satellite and was also furnishing steering signals to it. Such sophisticated steering signals could be used to align a mirror on the missile.
“After the destruction of the Javelin missile was reported, I ordered a simple backtrack. Assuming a lesser blast from Kavaznya—which we didn’t know at first since the Lawrence's report hadn’t reached us yet— and again assuming an orbiting mirror, we computed all the possible points where a mirror would have to be placed to hit the Javelin, and used our Spacetrack optical space tracking telescope at Pulmosan, South Korea to photograph those sections of the sky.
“You have the result, sir,” Curtis said, forcing down his anger. To be fair, he told himself, it wasn’t that the President did not believe him—he didn’t want to believe him. “The mirror is one hundred and fifty feet long, seventy feet wide. It is attached to the underside of Salyut Nineteen, which has been in orbit for almost a year. The satellite has docking bays, large fuel tanks, and small crew quarters although we do not believe it’s manned.”
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