Final Strike--A Sean Falcone Novel

by William S. Cohen

  * * *

  The Americans and Chinese were billeted on separate floors. In contrast with the large Chinese entourage, the American group consisted only of Amador, Anderson, Malone, and the two NASA observers.

  At breakfast on their first day at Plesetsk, Anderson and Malone had enthusiastically compared notes on what they knew about the highly secretive base. Long a Cold War target for U.S. intelligence, Plesetsk was on Francis Gary Powers’ reconnaissance list when his U-2 spy plane was shot down in 1960. The first photos taken by Corona, the pioneer U.S. spy satellite, were of Plesetsk. The photos showed railroad tracks that did not appear on German military maps from World War II. At that time, those blood-stained battlefield maps contained the best of the scant information that U.S. intelligence had on Soviet geography.

  That had been the beginning of surveillance that moved on to satellites and seemed destined never to end.

  95

  Eight days had passed since the world learned of the plan to try to destroy the asteroid “with nuclear explosives.” Although details of the launch remained secret, the date of doom was known. The leaders had spoken to the world on January 24. So the Last Day, as many called it, was March 6. Television channels and newspapers ran versions of what GNN called Catastrophe Countdown—38 Days to Collision.… 37 Days to Collision.…

  On 31 Days to Collision, the state-controlled All-Russia State Television Company announced that President Lebed would speak “on the matter of Asteroid USA” at noon Moscow time. Every television network in the world prepared for the signal from Moscow.

  “Greetings to all who dwell on the Earth,” he began. “I wish to tell you that at Russia’s great Plesetsk Cosmodrome, preparations are under way to save the Earth and all who live in its many lands. A Russian spacecraft named Rescue will soon launch from Russian soil and, for the first time in history, will use nuclear explosives for peaceful purposes in space.”

  Instructions appeared on-screen in many languages, giving the address of a website for downloading digital copies of a multilingual fact book prepared by Dr. Shvernik. It contained all that was known about Asteroid USA and the plan to destroy it. He emailed the English-language fact sheet—and a cordial note—to Dr. Taylor, courtesy of General Amador, via a secure U.S. military communications link. As a joke between them, Shvernik wrote down “American numbers” following the metric numbers.

  Excerpts from Taylor’s copy of the fact book:

  Orbital velocity, the speed a spacecraft must go to reach Earth’s orbit, is 7.9 km/sec (17,671 mph). ICBMs ordinarily reach a maximum velocity of 6-7 km/sec (13,421-15,658 mph). Escape velocity, the speed required to escape Earth’s orbit, is 11.2 km/sec (25,054 mph). Rescue will travel at 16.09 km/sec (36,000 mph) to escape Earth and then will travel at 41,038 km/h (25,500 mph).

  Asteroid USA is traveling at a speed of 55,000 mph (24.59 km/s). Rescue will take 17.764 days to reach and destroy the asteroid. This is 8.236 days before expected Earth collision.

  The schedule:

  Inspection of missile and voyage simulation: 28 January

  Adaptation of missile: 29 January to 1 February

  Inspection and controls testing: 0500–1500 GMT 2 February

  Installation of payload: 1600 GMT 3 February

  Launch Day 11:19 GMT 4 February

  Impact: 07:12 GMT 22 February

  96

  On the morning of February 1, officers of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces escorted the American observers, the Chinese general, and his interpreter to a bus outside headquarters. The bus traveled about two miles down a road fringed by snow-laden trees. At Launch Pad 12, the bus stopped, and the officers ordered them to put their cell phones into a basket one of them held at the entrance to a concrete bunker. The Chinese general objected through his interpreter, but given the choice of standing in the cold or entering the bunker, he quickly dropped his objection.

  As soon as they were all seated, they heard a rumbling, and through the narrow viewport they saw an approaching sixteen-wheel vehicle. The long carriage and the canister upon it were painted in gray-and-green camouflage. On the doors of the cab were large red stars. Shvernik, in his heavy coat and black ushanka, climbed out of the cab and, microphone in hand, acted as a master of ceremonies.

  A Russian officer in the bunker pointed to earbuds and pantomimed putting them on. Shvernik spoke in Russian; the Americans and Chinese got simultaneous translations.

  “Good morning,” he began. “Welcome. I am standing in front of the transporter erector launcher. Within the launcher is an intercontinental ballistic missile. Its Russian name is Topol, which is the name of a beautiful tree. I guess it gets that name because it can hide in a forest. The NATO name for it is Sickle. I’m assuming they chose that name because that is the tool carried by the Grim Reaper. Let us hope it cuts down the asteroid. In the words of President Lebed, the Topol is the savior of humanity. It has changed its mission from carrying death to carrying hope.”

  Shvernik pointed to an eight-wheeled truck in camouflage colors. “This is the Launch-Assisting Support Vehicle. In that big metal box it carries are the Topol controls.” As he spoke, a Topol crewman in the cab demonstrated the missile’s deployment, raising the launcher, with a dummy missile inside, to a vertical position. Big cylindrical stabilizers descended to the concrete launching pad, bracing the vehicle and its load.

  “It is now nearly ready to fire into space,” Shvernik said. “Topol’s propellant is solid fuel. Missile-defense devices—such as decoy detectors and signal-jamming devices—have been removed to lighten the missile and focus its navigation system on the target.” The Russian escort officers looked stunned by the revelation of this information.

  “Controls are internal, programmed before liftoff, with duplicate controls available in the support vehicle,” Shvernik continued, walking toward the bunker. “The warhe.… the nuclear explosives.… have not yet been installed.”

  He entered the bunker and switched on a large screen showing a voyage simulation video. Its labels were in Russian, English, and Chinese “This is the voyage of the modified Topol,” Shvernik said, “beginning its journey by entering a suborbital trajectory.

  “The Topol,” he continued, “then moves along the curvature of Earth and takes flight beyond the atmosphere, heading toward the asteroid, 55,232,686 miles away. As the missile nears the asteroid, the missile’s nose opens and two ‘explosive packets’ jut out.

  “The first nuclear explosive is fired and achieves a high-speed velocity that demands an equally fast and precise guidance system. Because impact at that velocity would destroy the packet before it could detonate, a delay command causes it to explode a micro-second before impact. The explosion produces a deep crater. The second packet, fired moments later, explodes deep in the crater, blowing up the asteroid and saving Earth.”

  Shvernik turned to his audience and bowed slightly.

  “Very well-done simulation, Dimitri,” General Amador said. “But I have a question. In the briefing that Dr. Taylor gave me, he said that the second … explosive might not pulverize the asteroid. There may be large fragments, big enough to do real damage. My question: What are the chances of an explosion producing large fragments?”

  “By my calculations, General, about fifty-fifty,” Shvernik replied.

  The answer added to Amador’s unease, not only because fifty-fifty was never a good bet but also because he felt Oxley had sent him here as a symbol of cooperation, not as a player in this event. The two-warhead, or “nuclear explosive” missile plan, developed entirely by Russians, might lessen the magnitude of the catastrophe, but the chances of severe damage was still … fifty-fifty. Ours not to reason why, he thought, drawing upon his collection of military axioms. But he would soon be composing his report to the commander-in-chief, and it would contain the fifty-fifty warning.

  * * *

  The launcher folded back to its travel position and the missile carrier lumbered off to the adaptation area, followed by the s
upport vehicle. The foreigners were not allowed to visit the fenced-in, tightly guarded “adaptation area.” Amador made a formal protest to Marshal Paskevich, who politely said that an American inspection of Russian nuclear warheads was not part of the agreement between Lebed and Oxley.

  The observers’ cell phones were returned and they were bused back to their quarters. The NASA observers, Gillespie and Thiessan, jointly composed a technical report and sent it to Taylor, wherever he was. Amador conferred with his officers and then went off alone to send a terse message to President Oxley, emphasizing the lack of cooperation with the Russians.

  When their reports were sent off, they all went to a big common room. Sitting in elderly overstuffed chairs before television screens, the Americans watched GNN on government-controlled Russian television in silence while Russians and Chinese chattered and pointed at the screen. GNN was devoting its entire schedule to covering American riots and the enormous traffic jams as panic swept coastal communities.

  The Russian and Chinese governments had imposed a television blackout of activities at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Also kept from the eyes of ordinary Russians and Chinese were the riots and clashes with police or soldiers that were erupting everywhere in their homelands. All the blinded audiences saw were scenes of fear and panic in America.

  97

  Ben Taylor was on his way to Cape Canaveral unaware that it had just become the magnet for a local rumor that had emerged from America’s fog of fear and rage: Billionaires were said to be gathering at a secret site in Florida, waiting to board a spacecraft that would take them into orbit around the Moon until the asteroid struck the Earth. When the billionaires returned to Cape Canaveral, they would rule the remnants of civilization. The Grudge Report picked up the rumor, spreading it further. The rumor epicenter was Canaveral.

  Hundreds of believers stormed the bridges and causeways leading to Merritt Island, the site of the famed and telegenic NASA launching facility and the little-known facility known as the Air Force Station. Florida National Guard troops and Air Force Special Operation units manned roadblocks, and with occasional tear-gas grenades successfully kept the mob at bay.

  As an Air Force helicopter skimmed over the main causeway, a man in the mob raised an automatic weapon and took aim. A Special Forces sniper shot him before he could fire. The helicopter soared up and sharply veered toward Patrick Air Force Base’s helipad.

  When the helicopter landed, an armored personnel carrier pulled up. A somewhat shaken Ben Taylor emerged and, flanked by Air Force Special Forces bodyguards, boarded the personnel carrier, which stopped at a checkpoint topped by coils of razor-wire before delivering Taylor to base headquarters.

  * * *

  There was some truth to the secret spacecraft rumor. NASA and Air Force personnel were, in fact, working together to build a special spacecraft, the Hypervelocity Asteroid Intercept Vehicle, or HAIV, as a backup to the Russian missile flight. President Oxley had added control of the HAIV program to Taylor’s asteroid agenda. At Amador’s suggestion, Taylor had met with Lieutenant General Al Hardwick, head of the Air Force Space Command, at a base in Colorado and later at the Pentagon, planning on how the military and civilians would work together. Now Hardwick was spending most of his time on Merritt Island, at the Space Command’s Patrick Air Force Base.

  According to NASA’s official description of the proposed two-section vehicle, it “blends a hypervelocity kinetic impactor with a subsurface nuclear explosion.” In that design, the first section uses its own immense kinetic energy to burrow into the asteroid, producing a crater for the second section to enter and detonate its nuclear cargo.

  Hardwick, dismissing what he called “the one-barrel” design, wanted a “double-barreled” vehicle that would carry a nuclear explosive device in each section. While NASA engineers were working on the one-nuclear version, Hardwick had authorized simultaneous development of his double-barreled design. He had called in nuclear-weapon experts of the Air Force and the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees America’s nuclear-weapon stockpile.

  The director of the NNSA, who could dispense nuclear weapons only under direct orders from the commander-in-chief, presented the one-or-two-nuke issue to President Oxley. He had passed the decision to Taylor, who flew to Cape Canaveral to settle the issue.

  “Bit of a ruckus out there, Ben,” Hardwick said as he greeted Taylor. “They thought you were a billionaire planning to evade the asteroid.”

  “Well, Al, I don’t want to evade it. All I want to do is bust it.”

  * * *

  No public announcement had been made about plans to build an HAIV. President Oxley, heeding advice from Falcone, had decided that news of an American backup plan would raise doubts about the Russian effort and inspire a new round of panic.

  Besides umpiring the double-barrel HAIV issue, Taylor had to determine the time of the HAIV launch. Over coffee in Hardwick’s office, Taylor succinctly laid out the problem: “The estimated collision day is March sixth. If the schedule holds, the Topol missile—I hate that name ‘Rescue’—will take eighteen days to reach and destroy the asteroid on February twenty-second.”

  “Right,” Hardwick said, writing the dates on a lined yellow pad. Being left-handed, his writing seemed awkward. Round-faced, pudgy, and balding, he looked like an accountant inside the camo uniform of a three-star general. “That leaves eleven days for HAIV to do the job. Pretty tight backup. If two Russian warheads can’t do it … well, I just don’t know.”

  Hardwick swiveled his chair and switched on a large monitor on the wall behind his desk. “Here’s a look at a simulated HAIV flight, based on the NASA one-nuke version.”

  On the monitor came the launching of an Atlas missile by a triple-rocket array. “We’ve strapped on booster rockets,” Hardwick said. “She can travel faster than the Russian missile—36,000 miles per hour.

  “After leaving Earth’s orbit, the Atlas nose begins its voyage to the asteroid. As it comes into sight, the Atlas fairing opens and the HAIV, a vehicle with the shape of a refrigerator, emerges. Cameras in its front section pick up an image of the asteroid. A thirty-foot boom pops out from the front section, which heads toward the asteroid, leaving its aft section behind. Sensors on the boom detect the asteroid’s pocked surface and send a signal to the trailing aft section, which responds by beginning the detonation sequence of the nuclear device it carries. The front section digs into the asteroid. The rear section, following one millisecond behind, enters the new crater and detonates, shattering the asteroid.”

  “Funny, it looks simple and complicated at the same time,” Taylor said.

  “That’s certainly true of this gizmo,” Hardwick responded, turning off the video. “We went into a 24/7 mode on it when you said the HAIV would be a backup. I thought it was just something like a jack-in-the-box idea. Looked simple, but is a bitch to build.”

  “I like the original design,” Taylor said. “From what I figure, putting a nuke in the first section is superfluous and dangerous. Instead of blowing up the asteroid it could blow itself up, along with the follow-on second section.”

  “Think about its hypervelocity,” Hardwick said. “It’s 6,700 miles per hour. As you well know, the hypervelocity can be so high on impact that instead of digging a crater it would turn to liquid or vaporize.”

  “The NASA designers certainly thought of that,” Taylor said. “We’re talking a knife edge here: too high velocity and the front sections vaporizes; too little and it doesn’t dig in.”

  “Exactly,” Hardwick said. “So let’s crank down the velocity—and add a nuke.”

  Taylor’s memory called up his nightmare experience with Falcone years ago, when a seemingly dormant nuclear bomb, accidentally dropped into the sea by an Air Force aircraft, had exploded and all but destroyed Savannah. “I’m leery about getting another nuke into this equation, Al,” Taylor said.

  “Okay. But at least let’s talk about the double-nuke version,” Hardwick said.


  Before Taylor could speak, Hardwick continued: “First of all, is that design feasible? I’m pretty well acquainted with the—let’s call it ‘conventional’ model. I do know that there was concern by some NASA engineers that the first section would be coming in at such a high velocity that it would collapse rather than burrow into the asteroid.”

  “And?” Taylor asked, obviously unconvinced.

  “We’ve simulated both first-section models again and again. Impact velocities in the range of two thousand miles per hour. Same thing happens: It burrows and remains intact.”

  “And in your simulations with the nuke package, the nuke survives and responds to the detonation command from the second section?”

  “Correct,” Hardwick answered.

  “How deep is the crater?”

  “Average depth in the simulations is 3.207 meters.”

  “Okay,” Taylor said. “Let’s talk about construction. How far along are you?”

  After paging through the notebook, Hardwick said, “Model A—the conventional design—will be completed in nine days. Model B—the double-barreled HAIV—will be completed in seven days.”

  “Sounds very optimistic, but—”

  “Yeah,” Hardwick interrupted. He was famed for his fast-talking skills before congressional committees. “NASA knew what it was doing. HAIV is designed for an Atlas four with the type of nose fairing designed to carry satellites. We know the size and weight of the payloads carried inside those fairings. The NASA guys just hammered together components—some one-time-only handmade items, most of them off the shelf: terminal guidance sensors, deployable camera, thermal shielding material. That sort of thing. As one of the NASA guys said, ‘This is not rocket science.’”