Ellenshaw and Golding slowly lowered their hands and looked at Everett and Jack.
“Do you two know anyone that leads a normal, dull life?” Pete asked Collins.
“Only you, Pete, only you.”
INCHON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, SOUTH KOREA
The hangar was leased to Chan Ri International. The company was a lesser known aircraft manufacturer that specialized in avionics packages for advanced fighter aircraft. The packages were made up of fire control systems and other avionics that were used by the Western powers. Most Asian stock market watchers were a little surprised when Chan Ri stocks suddenly sprang to life after a three-year period when most traders thought the company was on the way out following the introduction by the U.S. of the highly advanced F-22 Raptor, the new fighter for the twenty-first century that left Chan Ri technology far behind. But somewhere along the way the company had received a massive influx of capital, and try as they might, agents of the Securities and Exchange Commission could not uncover where the money had come from.
The twenty-five-year-old Grumman F-14 Super Tomcat sat gleaming inside the small hangar as several technicians checked the hard points along the fuselage of the U.S. Navy fighter jet. As the first of the two weapons was raised into position just below the starboard hard point, the pilot walked over to make sure the job was being done right. He placed a gloved hand on the plastic nose cone of the missile and felt a rush of power course through his hand and then his entire arm. He rolled his eyes and knew he was coming home again. The small pilot almost dropped his black-painted helmet onto the floor of the hangar as he felt the euphoria. The South Korean technicians turned and wondered why this pilot, whom they had just met that morning, was acting so strange.
Former naval aviator Thomas Green finally removed his hand from the missile and stepped back. He watched the final loading and was satisfied that the long, heavy weapon was placed properly. He stepped over to the rolling munitions cart and saw the second weapon as it sat gleaming white under the bright fluorescent lights of the hangar.
Green had been free just thirteen weeks from the maximum security penitentiary at Huntsville, Texas, where he had served ten years of a twenty-year sentence for an abortion clinic bombing that had killed three nurses and the doctor who owned the building. Unfortunately for the former Navy pilot, he had also killed two of the protesters, his own people, outside the clinic. All of this had been spawned by a woman he had once called his wife, who had murdered their unborn baby while he had been deployed to the Persian Gulf in 1991 during the First Gulf War. Since then, Green had found God, and God had placed the burning sword of righteousness into his hand and told him to strike. Two powerful swords were being placed on his aircraft at that very moment.
The crated parcels from Raytheon Corporation had been stolen in the month prior to Green being brought onboard the project. He knew that all he had to do was pull the trigger and the illegal weapons from the United States would do the rest. The seeker heads had been changed out in San Diego before their shipment to South Korea—they were now the largest heat seekers the world had ever seen.
The two Vought ASM-135 ASAT missiles had gone through extensive testing at Raytheon in the late eighties, and then when the antisatellite missile treaty was signed between the United States and the Soviet Union they were crated and stored at the testing facility, never to see action.
Tommy Green had been offered $3 million for this one mission, with more money and missions to follow, but after speaking with the financial backer many times in prison, through the thick glass of the visitor center, Green had decided he was doing it because that’s what the Lord wished him to do. The money had been declined on the promise that he would have the opportunity for all of the missions if they became viable.
A man in a dark pair of slacks and a nice pullover shirt stepped up and slapped Green on the back.
“Well, the Chinese launch in twenty minutes, at 0615,” James McCabe said as he looked the pilot over. “You’ll taxi at exactly the same time. I am told to tell you good luck, Captain, and that your martyrdom, if it happens, will be the plague that brings down Pharaoh.”
“Praise the Lord,” Green said as he slid on his black helmet. “I only wish I could call out to the world as the hand of God reaches out for the heathen’s rocketry and say, Thou art great!”
McCabe watched the man climb up the ladder and into the cockpit. He shook his head and stepped back. He now knew why so many millions upon millions of deaths had been brought on by religious wars. It was because the true believer was the most dangerous animal of all. He waved his hand one last time as Green looked his way and saluted.
McCabe stepped away as the twin GE turbofans started turning on the old and venerable F-14 Super Tomcat. As the hangar doors rose and the morning sunlight diffused the bright fluorescents inside, McCabe turned and left for the car that would take him to his private jet, where he would fly out before all international airspace was closed—and before the Chinese started looking in earnest for the murderers of their space crews.
“The fireworks are about to begin,” McCabe said as he settled into the backseat of the limo. The powerful F-14 Tomcat pulled free of its hangar with two gleaming white claws attached to its sides in the form of the most powerful anti-satellite missiles ever created.
The F-14 received immediate clearance to taxi to runway 3B. The controller watching from the large tower glanced out the window and saw the polished white jet as it sped to the taxi line. The voice on the Tomcat’s radio had an American accent, but as the controller adjusted his binoculars he saw for the first time that the American-built aircraft had South Korean military markings on its fuselage and wings. As he pondered the strangeness of the plane’s identification, his eyes widened. He saw what was strung along the underbelly of the large naval fighter. Because Inchon International was so close to the North Korean border, it was agreed between North and South that no military aircraft could take off armed as this one obviously was. The South Korean air force was not even allowed to place dummy bombs and missiles on their aircraft, as this was not a military airfield and the North might just mistake the flight as a first strike attempt.
The controller lowered the glasses and reached for the large alarm button on his console. He knew he had to alert the airport security staff and the air force of this attempted military flight. Just as the alarm sounded the controller knew he would be too late even as all controllers calmly told their departing flights to hold at their present locations.
The F-14 Tomcat roaring down the runway was the last to lift into the blue sky.
The ASM-135 ASAT space weapons were about to spread their wings for the first time in actual space combat.
JIUQUAN SATELLITE LAUNCH CENTER, GOBI DESERT, CHINA
The ten active launch pads at Jiuquan were guarded heavily after the debacle in Kazakhstan. The People’s Republic had brought in five hundred specially trained army personnel to oversee the security aspects of the flight center.
Launch pads 1-C and 7-A were active for the historic Chinese flights. This was the first Chinese manned mission intended to reach the lunar surface. Two massive Long March 8s, the second largest rocket system in the world, sat at their launch towers complete with the Zihuang lunar landers. Each Long March had a crew of ten Chinese air force personnel aboard. The mission had been planned so rapidly that the Chinese engineers were still evaluating the return specs for the two-capsule twenty-man flights. Nothing had been assured, not even a successful landing on the Moon.
The three-staged Long March launch system had four solid rocket boosters attached to the mainframe of the rocket. The main system itself had four powerful Shang-7 engines, almost equal in thrust to the American version from which the engines had been “borrowed” in the late seventies. At T-minus thirty seconds and counting, all four hundred engineers in the nearby control center watched with wide eyes as the elevator system and fuel hoses started popping free of the two giant rockets. Television cameras fr
om China’s state-run facilities were carrying the launch to over 800 million Chinese on a five-minute delayed “live” broadcast.
The first rocket and crew to be lifted from the pad was named Glorious March. The second was Magnificent Dragon. Each was hastily built and each of the twenty-man crews knew that an explosion was more likely that a clean liftoff. But no crew member, even the military personnel who were prepared to do battle if necessary, would have traded places with any other man or woman on Earth. Every rocket had a glorious red band separating each of its three stages, and each band had the golden Chinese stars encircling it, with the stars ultimately shooting off toward the next stage in line. Other than that bit of color, each system was ivory white and stood out magnificently against the clear morning sky above the Gobi. Finally, at T-minus ten seconds, the loudspeakers came to life as the crowds of reporters watched on the chilly morning.
“… ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, we have main engine start,” the Chinese announcer called from the mission control building as the four main engines fired, sending a tremendous cloud of gases and fire free of the spacecraft. “… two, one, we have solid booster ignition on all four solid rocket boosters.”
Every journalist present could hear the excitement in the voice of the announcer as he watched the cloud of hot gases pour out of the engines on launch pad 1-C. The cameras zoomed in as the first movement of the giant rocket became apparent. The extending arms that carried oxygen and fuel to the main engines finally separated and the vehicle started to move. The clock was now running on Glorious March as its bulk lifted free of the Earth. Before it cleared the tower’s uppermost reaches, the ten-second countdown of Magnificent Dragon began. The same sequence sent the main engines to flame as Glorious March fully cleared the giant tower. Men and women, engineers from around the world, couldn’t help themselves, from Houston to Guiana, to Baikonur Cosmodrome, men and women from every country stood and cheered or pounded their fists as the two Chinese rockets cleared the restraints of Earth’s gravity. No one ever wanted to see astronauts die or an attempt at space fail. It was a human weakness to see greatness and cheer it.
The two massive rockets rotated, sending their bulk dangerously close to the stall point as they rolled 15 degrees in the clear sky above the desert. Reporters from the world over were stunned at the power of the Long March launch system as the ground still shook beneath their feet. The Glorious March led the way, followed four miles behind by Magnificent Dragon as the first stages separated.
The Chinese mission to the Moon had begun.
* * *
The F-14 Tomcat climbed at a 45 degree angle. Then, as Green watched with his dark visor down, he saw the bright red and gold plumes of the two launches out of the Gobi. His radio was crackling with warnings from the North Koreans and the Chinese that the Tomcat was in violation of their joint airspace. Green reached out and shut down his communication system. He then pushed the Tomcat’s throttle as far forward as it could go, sending JP-4 jet fuel into the exhaust of the nacelles. The exhaust rings expanded and the F-14 was pushed into afterburner. Green pulled the stick straight back into his belly and the Tomcat turned nose up as it started its climb through the Earth’s lower atmosphere.
As he climbed, Green raised the small protective cover on his control stick and pushed the blue button. The seeker head in the first ASAT came to life as it started its infrared sweep of the area in front of the F-14. First one and then the other missile locked on its particular target—each of the two Chinese rockets as they climbed for high Earth orbit.
“It’s in God’s hands now,” Green said, as he thumbed the red switch. He closed his eyes and again whispered an almost silent prayer as the first ASM-135 ASAT left its launch rail. With the Tomcat facing straight up into the air, the missile’s exhaust streamed back along the clear canopy of the jet, fogging the plastic. The plane was starting to shudder as it fought for altitude against the turbulence created by the giant ASAT, which was now trying desperately to close the gap between it and the second stage of the Long March rockets. The Tomcat’s GE engines fought and struggled for air in the high reaches of sky.
As Green switched seeker heads and missiles, he locked on to the Magnificent Dragon as it lagged behind the first rocket. He pushed the trigger and waited three seconds as the powerful engine of the ASAT cleared the aircraft. Green immediately pulled away as his starboard engine started to flame out due to a lack of breathable air. Green swung the jet over onto its back and then he rolled and fell into a nose-down dive for the deck. It was at that exact moment that his threat radar illuminated from the west and the east. He was being tracked by air-to-air weapons.
“Thank you, Lord, for this final challenge, this last test of my faith and my allegiance to your cause,” he said into his oxygen mask as he saw the eight radar blips on his screen. Chinese and North Korean fighters were trying to prevent him from reaching the Sea of Japan, where his rescue boat was to be waiting for him. Green smiled and switched the control stick selector to guns, as he knew he had no defensive or offensive missiles left. In fact, they had never been loaded. “As I walk into the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil…”
The Tomcat dove straight into the advancing communist fighters as the first ASAT found its target.
* * *
The giant first stage separated with a bright flash as the controllers followed the ascending rockets on the long-range telemetry and photo analysis provided by a MiG-31 chase plane. As the fighter climbed on afterburners, its cameras, three still and two video, transmitted a continuous stream of pictures to mission control. Suddenly, a dark object streaked toward the leading Long March just as its first stage separated from the second. All eyes watched as the bright flash of exploding bolts and the ignition of the second stage blurred the picture momentarily, and when it cleared they saw the object and were horrified when they recognized it as a streaking missile. Just as the ASAT’s radar and IR seeker head came into the thirty-foot-diameter target range, the missile broke apart and a ten-pound explosive charge detonated, sending out five thousand ball-bearing-sized steel projectiles. The bulk of them struck the empty first stage as it fell back to Earth, but enough fought their way through the disturbed air and heat to connect with the three engines of the second stage. They struck the exhaust bells of the engines and punctured through the fuel lines that provided the combustion chambers the needed oxygen and nitrogen mix.
As millions of eyes watched in horror, the second stage simply vanished in a white and red plume of fire. The second and third stages fell apart in the expanding fireball that sent the lunar lander smashing up and into the ten-man compartment of the crew module. The debris expanded even further, slowly spiraling in all directions as the Long March ceased to exist in the blink of an eye.
The witnesses to the tragic happening then noticed another streak of light as it plowed through the remains of the first rocket. A second antisatellite missile shot upward and was on track to strike the Magnificent Dragon as the first spent stage went flying past the ASAT. As luck and fate would have it, a fortuitous accident occurred. The remaining fuel of the solid propellant rocket boosters was being spent even though the first stage had separated cleanly. As they spun out of control, falling back toward the Earth, a sudden burst of flame shot from the exhaust nozzle of one of the boosters, catching the ASAT as it flew past. The heat was tremendous and burned through the hard plastic nose cone of its seeker head. With molten circuit boards and damaged processing units, the ASAT exploded before its outer casing could be blown free; thus the ball bearing shrapnel was slowed by 50 percent of its normal velocity. The particles shot up and over the second stage, scraping along the aluminum fuselage and then past the third stage where only five of the steel balls penetrated the outer casing into the lunar lander’s protective shell. The rest, over a hundred fragments, hit the crew module, three of them penetrating.
The crewmen reacted fast, even though they had little training in this ev
ent, as it had not been foreseen. The three holes threatened to destabilize their environment, and as the second stage fired and separated from the third, the crew managed in spite of the g-forces that threatened to crush them to place three plastic patches against the holes that appeared as if by magic.
The ten-man crew didn’t know what had happened either to them or to the Glorious March, but they did know that one of their three computer systems was out along with their radar. The communications module was damaged and they were leaking oxygen.
On the ground, multitudes watched as the third stage of the Magnificent Dragon reached lower orbit and kept climbing, barely escaping the death that had caught her sister ship. All at once a thousand voices started shouting out their troubles from the various telemetry stations.
The Magnificent Dragon had achieved orbit, but no one knew yet if it could stay there, much less continue on to the Moon.
* * *
Sixteen miles away, Tommy Green didn’t know if his crusade had achieved the desired effect as he scrambled to get the F-14 out of North Korean airspace. There were now ten MiG-31s on his tail and he doubted if escape was in his future, but he suspected it had never been in the plans of his employers. He should have been angry, or disappointed, but he knew he had been given the choice, and God had helped make the decision for him.
With no thought of regret or remorse, Thomas Green, former captain in the United States Navy, and a devout follower of Samuel Rawlins, turned the F-14 Tomcat around and headed straight toward his pursuers. He released the clip on his oxygen mask and started saying the Lord’s Prayer as he pointed the Tomcat’s nose at the flight leader and opened fire with his rotary cannon. To his surprise, the barrel started its electrically driven spin, but no twenty-millimeter rounds came out of the rotating barrel. Green smiled and shook his head, not feeling betrayed in the least. After all, he thought, the mission parameters were such that his trail could not lead back to McCabe or Rawlins. Their work was far from complete, while his duty to God was.
Legacy: An Event Group Thriller Page 25