by Dale Brown
“With his buddy in the White House? No doubt.” Air Force Colonel Martin Tehama was designated the commander of the High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center after Major General Terrill “Earthmover” Samson’s departure, bypassing Patrick McLanahan. A well-respected test pilot and engineer, Tehama wanted to rein in the “extracurricular” activities HAWC often got involved with — such as using experimental aircraft and weapons in “operational test flights” around the world — and get back to the serious business of flight test. When Patrick left his White House adviser position he was awarded command of HAWC, bumping Tehama out. He retaliated by delivering reams of information on HAWC’s classified missions to members of Congress. “After Summers files a full report on your condition, he’ll reappear and take charge as soon as you announce your retirement — or the President announces that you’re being medically retired.”
“The President and Senator Barbeau will use my heart thing to cancel the Black Stallion program, citing health concerns, and their errand boy Tehama will promptly shut it down within months.”
“Not even that long, Muck,” David said. “The word from the Senate is that they’re going to push the White House to move quicker to shut us down.”
“Barbeau wants her bombers, that’s for sure.”
“It’s not just her, but she’s the loudest voice,” Dave said. “There are lobbyists for every weapon system imaginable — carriers, ballistic missile subs, special ops, you name it. President Gardner wants another four aircraft carrier battle groups at least, maybe six, and he’s likely to get them if the space program is canceled. Everyone’s got their own agenda. The spaceplane lobby is practically nonexistent, and your injury just casts a shadow on the program, which delights the other lobbyists no end.”
“I hate this political shit.”
“Me too. I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did working in the White House. You definitely weren’t made for wearing a suit, listening to meaningless speeches while wasting weeks testifying before another congressional committee, and being jerked around by lobbyists and so-called experts.”
“Copy that,” Patrick said. “Anyway, the heat’s been turned up, and Tehama will turn it up even more — right in our faces. All the more reason to accomplish this Soltanabad mission, bring the crew back safely, and get some good intel all before tomorrow morning. The Russians are up to something in Iran — they can’t be content to just sit in Moscow or Turkmenistan and watch Iran become democratic, or disintegrate.”
“I’m on it,” Dave said. “The air tasking order will be ready by the time you get the green light. I’ll send you the orbital game plan and the complete force timing schedule right away. Genesis out.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Integrity is praised and starves.
— DECIMUS JUNIUS JUVENALIS
HIGH-TECHNOLOGY AEROSPACE WEAPONS CENTER, ELLIOTT AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA
A SHORT TIME LATER
“It’s ten times more boring than playing video games,” Wayne Macomber complained, “because I can’t even play the thing.”
“Pretty deep wash ahead, Whack,” U.S. Army National Guard Captain Charlie Turlock said. “It angles away from the objective, so we’ll eventually have to get out. We should—”
“I see it, I see it,” Macomber grumbled. “Wohl, clear those railroad tracks again.”
“Roger,” Marine Corps Sergeant Major Chris Wohl responded in his usual gravelly whisper. A moment later: “Rails are clear, Major. Satellite reports the next train is twenty-seven miles to the east, heading in our direction at twenty-five miles an hour.”
“Copy,” Macomber responded, “but I keep on seein’ a return at my three o’clock, five miles, right in front of you somewhere. It’s there for a second and then it disappears. What the hell is it?”
“Negative contact, sir,” Wohl radioed.
“This is nuts,” Macomber muttered, knowing that both Turlock and Wohl could still hear him but not caring one bit. This was not how he envisioned doing mission planning…although he had to admit it was pretty darned cool.
As incredible as the spaceplane was, even the passenger module was a pretty nifty device. It served to not only carry passengers and cargo inside the Black Stallion but also as a docking adapter between the spaceplane and a space station. In an emergency the module could even be used as a spacecraft crew lifeboat: it had maneuvering thrusters to facilitate retrieval by repair spacecraft while in orbit and to keep it upright during re-entry; little winglets for stability in case it was jettisoned in the atmosphere; enough oxygen to allow six passengers to survive for as long as a week; enough shielding to survive re-entry if the module was jettisoned during re-entry; and parachutes and flotation/impact attenuation bags that would cushion the module and its passengers upon land or water impact. Unfortunately all this protection was only available to the passengers — there was no way for the Black Stallion’s flight crew to get inside the module after takeoff except by spacewalking while in orbit and using the transfer tunnel.
Macomber and Wohl were wearing a full Tin Man armor system, a lightweight suit made of BERP, or ballistic electronically reactive process material which was totally flexible like cloth but protected the wearer by instantly hardening to a strength a hundred times greater than steel when struck. The suit was completely sealed, affording excellent protection even in harsh or dangerous environments, and was supplemented with an extensive electronic sensor and communications suite that fed data to the wearer through helmet visor displays. The Tin Man system was further enhanced by a micro-hydraulic exoskeleton that gave the wearer superhuman strength, agility, and speed by amplifying his muscular movements.
Charlie Turlock—“Charlie” was her real name, not a call-sign, a young woman given a boy’s name by her father — was not wearing a Tin Man suit, just a flight suit over a thin layer of thermal underwear; her ride was in the cargo compartment behind their seats. She wore a standard HAWC flight helmet, which displayed sensor and computer data on an electronic visor similar to the sophisticated Tin Man displays. Trim, athletic, and of just slightly more than average height, Turlock seemed out of place with a unit full of big, muscular, commandos — but she brought something along from her years at the Army Research Laboratory’s Infantry Transformational Battle-lab that more than made up for her smaller physical size.
All three were watching a computer animation of their planned infiltration of the Soltanabad highway airfield in Persia. The animation used real-time satellite sensor images to paint an ultra-realistic view of the terrain and cultural features in the target area, complete with projections of such things as personnel and vehicle movement based on past information, lighting levels, weather predictions, and even soil conditions. The three Battle Force commandos were spread out approximately fifty yards apart, close enough to support one another quickly if necessary but far enough apart to not give one another away if detected or engaged by a single enemy patrol.
“I can see the fence now, range one point six miles,” Charlie reported. “Moving over the wash now. The ‘Goose’ reports thirty minutes of flight time left.” The “Goose” was the GUOS, or Grenade-launched Unmanned Observation System, a small powered flying drone about the size of a bowling pin, launched from a backpack launcher, that sent back visual and infrared images to the commandos by a secure datalink.
“That means we’re behind,” Macomber groused. “Let’s pick it up a little.”
“We’re right on schedule, sir,” Wohl whispered.
“I said we’re behind, Sergeant Major,” Macomber hissed. “The drone will be running out of fuel and we’ll still be inside the damned compound.”
“I’ve got another Goose ready,” Charlie said. “I can launch it—”
“When? When we get close enough for the Iranians to hear it?” Macomber growled. “How noisy are those things anyway?”
“If you’d show up for my demos, Major, you’d know,” Charlie said.
“Don’t give me any lip, C
aptain,” Macomber spat. “When I ask you a question, give me an answer.”
“Outside a couple hundred yards of engine ignition, they won’t hear a thing,” Charlie said, not disguising her exasperation at all, “unless they have audio sensors.”
“If we had proper intel before starting this mission, we’d know if the Iranians had audio sensors,” Macomber groused some more. “We need to plan delaying the drone launch until we’re within two miles of the base, not three. You got that, Turlock?”
“Roger,” Charlie acknowledged.
“Next I need—” Macomber stopped when he noticed a flicker of a target indicator appearing again in the very periphery of his electronic visor’s field of view. “Dammit, there it is again. Wohl, did you see it?”
“I saw it that time, but it’s gone,” Wohl responded. “I’m scanning that area…negative contact. Probably just a momentary sensor sparkle.”
“Wohl, in my book, there’s no such thing as ‘sensor sparkle,’” Macomber said. “There’s something out ahead of you causing that return. Get on it.”
“Roger,” Wohl responded. “Moving off-track.” He used a small thumbwheel mouse to change direction in the animation, waiting every few meters until the computer added available detail and plotted more warnings or cautions regarding whatever lay ahead. The process was slow because of all the wireless computer activity, but it was the only available means they had of rehearsing their operation and getting ready to fly it at the same time.
“We’re supposed to be commandos — there’s no such thing as a ‘track’ for us,” Macomber said. “We have an objective and a million different ways of getting there. It should be a damned piece of cake with all these pretty pictures floating in front of us — why is this making my head hurt?” Neither Turlock nor Wohl replied — they had grown quite accustomed to Macomber’s complaining. “Anything yet, Wohl?”
“Stand by.”
“Looks like tire tracks just past the wash,” Charlie reported. “Not very deep — Humvee-sized vehicle.”
“That’s new,” Macomber said. He checked the source data tags. “Fresh intel — downloaded in just the past fifteen minutes by a low-altitude SAR. A perimeter patrol, I’d guess.”
“No sign of vehicles.”
“That’s the reason we’re doing this, isn’t it, kids? Maybe the general was right after all.” It sounded to both Wohl and Turlock as if Macomber hated to admit that the general could be right. “Let’s proceed and see what—”
“Crew, this is the MC,” the mission commander, Marine Corps Major Jim Terranova, cut in over the intercom, “we’ve commenced our countdown to takeoff, T-minus fifty-six minutes and counting. Run your pre-takeoff checklists and prepare to report in.”
“Roger, S-One copies,” Macomber responded…except, as he noted himself with not a small bit of shock, that his words came out through an instantly dry, raspy throat and vocal cords, with barely enough breath for the words to escape his lips.
If there was one thing these guys at the High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center and the Air Battle Force were really good at, Macomber had learned early on, it would definitely be computer simulations. These guys ran simulations on everything — for every hour of real flight time, these guys probably did twenty hours on a computer simulator beforehand. The machines ranged from simple desktop computers with photo-realistic displays to full-scale aircraft mockups that did everything from drip hydraulic fluid to smoke and catch on fire if you did something wrong. Everyone did them: air crews, maintenance, security, battle staff, command post, even administration and support staffs conducted drills and simulations regularly.
A good percentage of all the personnel at both Elliott and Battle Mountain Air Bases, probably one-tenth of the five thousand or so at both locations, were involved solely in computer programming, with other private and military computer centers tied in all around the world contributing the latest codes, routines, subroutines, and devices; and at least a third of all the code these top secret super-geeks wrote 24/7 had to be involved solely with simulations. This was his first real trip into space, but the simulations were so realistic and so numerous that he truly felt as if he had done this dozens of times before…
…until just now, when the mission commander announced they were less than an hour from takeoff. He had been so busy preparing for the approach and infiltration into Soltanabad — just three hours to get ready, when he demanded no less than three days to prepare in the Combat Weather Squadron! — that he had completely forgotten that they were going to be blasted into space to get there!
But now that frightening reality hit home with full force. He was not going to just pile his gear into a C-17 Globemaster II or C-130 Hercules for a multiday trip to some isolated airstrip in the middle of nowhere — he was going to be shot almost a hundred miles into space, then flutter down through the atmosphere through hostile airspace to a landing in a desert in northeastern Iran, where quite possibly an entire brigade of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps fighters, the elite of the former theocratic regime’s terror army, could be waiting for them.
In the time it would normally take for him to just arrive at his first transition base en route to his destination, this mission would be completed! That simple fact was absolutely astounding, almost unbelievable. The time compression was almost too much to comprehend. And yet, here he was, sitting in the actual spacecraft — not a simulator — and the clock was ticking. By the time the sun rose again, this mission would be over, and he’d be debriefing it. He would have entered low-Earth orbit, traveled halfway across the globe, landed in Iran, scoped it out, blasted off again, re-entered low-Earth orbit, and hopefully landed at a friendly base…
…or he’d be dead. There were a million unforeseen and un-simulatable things that could kill them, along with the hundred or so simulatable things they practiced dealing with day after day, and even when they knew something bad was going to happen, sometimes they couldn’t deal with it. It would either work out okay, or they’d be dead…or a hundred other things could happen. Whatever would happen, it was all going to happen now.
Macomber certainly felt the danger and the uncertainty…but as it so often did, the frenetic pace of every activity dealing with McLanahan and everyone at the High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center and the Air Battle Force quickly pushed every other feeling of dread out of his conscious mind. It seemed a dozen voices — some human, but most computerized — were speaking to him at the same time, and all needed acknowledgment or an action, or the speaking quickly changed to “demanding.” If he didn’t respond quickly enough, the computer usually ratted on him, and a rather irate human voice — usually the mission commander but sometimes Brigadier General David Luger, the deputy commander himself, if it was critical enough — repeated the demand.
He was accustomed to performing and succeeding under intense pressure — that was the common denominator for any Special Operations commando — but this was something entirely different: because at the end of all the sometimes chaotic preparation, they were going to shoot his ass into space! It seemed Terranova made the announcement just moments earlier when Macomber felt the Black Stallion move as four Laser Pulse Detonation Rocket System engines, or “leopards,” in full turbofan propulsion mode, easily propelled the aircraft to Dreamland’s four-mile-long dry lake bed runway.
Whack was not afraid of flying, but takeoffs were definitely his most fearsome phase of flight — all that power behind them, the engines running up to full power sucking up tons of fuel per minute, the noise deafening, the vibration its most intense, but the aircraft still moving relatively slowly. He had done many Black Stallion takeoffs in the simulator, and he knew that the performance numbers even with the spacecraft still in the atmosphere were impressive, but for this part he was definitely on pins and needles.
The initial takeoff from the dry lake bed runway at Elliott Air Force Base was indeed spectacular — a massive shove as the LPDRS engines in turbofan mode moved into f
ull military thrust, then a rapid, high-angle climb-out at well over ten thousand feet per minute after a short takeoff roll. The first few seconds of the run-up and takeoff roll seemed normal…but that was it. At full military power in turbofan mode, the four LPDRS engines developed one hundred thousand pounds of thrust each, optimized by solid-state laser igniters that superheated the jet fuel before ignition.
But high-performance takeoffs were nothing new to Whack or to most commandos and others who flew in and out of hostile airstrips. He had been in several huge C-17 Globemaster II and C-130 Hercules transport planes where they had to do max-performance takeoffs to get out of range of hostile shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles in the vicinity of the airstrip, and those planes were many times larger and far less high-tech than the Black Stallion. There was nothing more frightening than the feel of a screaming five-hundred-thousand-pound C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane standing on its tail clawing for every foot of lifesaving altitude.
The Tin Man outfit actually helped his body take some of the G-forces and even gave him a little extra shot of pure oxygen when it sensed his heart and breathing rates jumping up a bit. Because the thrust was so powerful and the air so dense at lower altitudes, the laser igniters had to be “pulsed,” or rapidly turned off and on again, to avoid blowing up the engines. This created the distinctive “string of pearls” contrails across the Nevada skies that conspiracy theorists and “Lakespotters”—guys who sneaked into the classified test ranges in hopes of photographing a top secret aircraft for the first time — associated with the Air Force’s Aurora hypersonic spy plane.
They had a short high subsonic cruise out over the Pacific coast to the refueling area, and then a rendezvous with an Air Battle Force KC-77 tanker. The secret of the Black Stallion spaceplane program was the inflight refueling, where they took on a full load of jet fuel and oxidizer right before blasting into orbit — instead of launching from zero altitude in the thickest part of the atmosphere, they would begin the cruise into space from twenty-five thousand feet and three hundred knots, in far less dense air.