Executive Intent Read online

  “Scramble, scramble, scramble, ASM launch detected, scramble, scramble, scramble!” blared the loudspeakers aboard the USS Lake Champlain, a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser escorting the USS George H. W. Bush. The cruiser’s AN/SPY-1B multifunction Aegis radar system detected the missile launches moments before the frantic radio call from the F/A-18 Hornet pilot was received.

  Because they had been closely monitoring the Hornet intercept of the Chinese aircraft, both the ship’s captain and the tactical action officer were at their stations in the Lake Champlain’s Combat Direction Center. Each had two large screens providing them composite information gathered not just from their AN/SPY-1 radar but also from all the other sensors in the battle group via the Cooperative Engagement Capability, which allowed any ship in the battle group to use any radar to attack a target. The Hawkeye radar plane’s data feed was also giving them a look at the intercept beyond their horizon, and the Air Force space station was feeding information from almost anywhere else on the planet.

  One glance at the display and it was immediately obvious that this was going to be close, because the new targets were accelerating past Mach 2 very quickly, going hypersonic, and they were descending to wave-top height. “Change engagement mode to auto special,” the captain shouted.

  “Changing engagement mode from semiauto to auto special,” the TAO repeated. “Sir, engagement mode is set to auto special.”

  The speed of the missiles had already increased to over Mach 3-the Hawkeye radar’s mechanical sweep could hardly keep up with the speed, and the Aegis system had to predict where the next return would appear based on last speed and track. At sea-skimming altitudes, the Lake Champlain ’s electronically scanned phased-array radar would only have a few seconds’ look in horizon-search mode.

  In automatic-special mode, Aegis controlled almost all aspects of ship defense. It activated electronic radar jammers, dispensed decoy chaff and flares, slewed the Mk 45 five-inch gun and provided initial target azimuth to the Phalanx close-in weapon systems, steered the SPG-62 target illuminator, and finally issued firing and target-tracking commands to the cruiser’s vertical-launch SM-2 Standard antiaircraft missiles and Evolved Sea Sparrow defensive missiles.

  Using data from the E-2 Hawkeye, the Lake Champlain ’s first SM-2 missile fired before its own SPY-1 radar locked onto the incoming sea-skimmers. The smoke from the vertical-launch SM-2 missile’s exhaust motor covered the entire forward section of the cruiser as it lifted off. It climbed quickly, then dove for the ocean at a steep angle to reach its computed intercept point. Another SM-2 fired from the aft vertical launcher, followed seconds later by a volley of four Sea Sparrow missiles from the forward launcher.

  “Jesus!” the captain shouted. The Chinese missiles shot past Mach 4, then past Mach 5. “Sound collision! Brace for impact!”

  The first Chinese missile had locked onto the Lake Champlain, switching radar frequencies in order to maintain lock. The first SM-2 missile exploded behind and above it, unable to keep up with the acceleration. The second SM-2 also exploded behind the Chinese missile, but close enough to disrupt its flight path, and it crashed and skittered across the ocean surface like a flat stone. The Sea Sparrow missiles hit next. The antiship missile’s inertia kept its disintegrating fuselage flailing toward the cruiser, close enough for the Phalanx’s radar to lock on at two miles and open fire at one mile with a cloud of twenty-millimeter shells firing at three thousand rounds per minute at the mass.

  The second Chinese missile locked onto the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush. The Lake Champlain continued to fire missiles, assisted by missile launches from the USS Monterey patrolling behind the carrier, but by now the Chinese sea-skimmer had exceeded Mach 7 and completely outran the missiles. The Bush’s last hope was its own Phalanx cannon, which opened fire at one and a quarter miles. Even the Phalanx’s high-speed Gatling gun was only able to release a total of just five rounds at the hypersonic sea-skimmer in the time it took to lock on and open fire…

  …but it was enough. One tungsten shell blew through the Chinese missile’s nose cap, destroying the guidance system, and a second shell hit the air inlet, deforming it just enough to disrupt the air entering the engine, blasting the engine with superheated hypersonic air that instantly tore the missile apart. The red-hot exploding engine ignited the remaining fuel, creating a massive fireball that engulfed the entire aft section of the carrier. Although the ship didn’t suffer a direct hit, the hypersonic debris and fireball that slammed into it killed several crewmen on deck, injured dozens more, instantly destroyed several aircraft chained to the aft deck, and damaged others chained on the opposite side.

  OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN

  THAT SAME TIME

  He said it half aloud to himself, with a feeling of joy that bordered on childlike giddiness: “I’m back. I’m freakin’ back.”

  “Are you talking to yourself again, SC?” the mission commander, or MC, on this flight, Navy Commander Scott Bream, asked, shaking his head and smiling. Bream, twenty years older than the SC, or spacecraft commander, was a twenty-year veteran of the U.S. Navy and a ten-year veteran of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but he could still remember his first space flight as if it was yesterday-he knew exactly how excited the young spacecraft commander was.

  “Damn straight, MC,” the SC, Hunter Noble, replied happily. “It’s been wayyy too long.”

  The two crewmembers sat side by side in the cockpit of a XS-19A “Midnight,” a single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft, the larger sibling of the S-9 “Black Stallion” spacecraft, the first conventional takeoff and landing aircraft able to propel itself into Earth orbit. Able to carry 50 percent more payload than the S-9 and more fuel for longer and higher-altitude missions, the XS-19 went into advanced design and development as soon as the Black Stallion proved its worth. Born of the revolutionary SR-71 Blackbird supersonic and XR-A1 Aurora hypersonic reconnaissance planes, the S-series aircraft were sleek, elegantly sculpted blended-wing designs built of advanced heat-resistant carbon-carbon composites. Instead of being nearly hand-built like the Space Shuttle, Aurora, and Black Stallion, the Midnight was able to be assembly-line-manufactured, albeit by robots working inside massive autoclaves and vacuum chambers.

  Although just twenty-six years old, Hunter Noble wasn’t giddy because this was his first space flight-he was a veteran of dozens more of them than Bream, thanks to his own creation, which he had first conceived as a freshman engineering student: the Laser Pulse Detonation Rocket System, or “leopards.” Leopards were the hybrid turbojet-scramjet-rocket engine that allowed lightweight aircraft like the Midnight and Black Stallion to take off and land like conventional aircraft but achieve low Earth orbit without the need of massive vertical-launch boosters or rocket launchpads.

  Former U.S. Air Force captain Hunter Noble (nicknamed “Boomer” because of what usually happened to his early engine designs during testing) could have left the service and become a multibillionaire from his engine design, but he gave it all to the Air Force in exchange for just one thing: being allowed to fly the final product. It was an easy exchange. But now Boomer had left the Air Force and was a vice president of design and engineering for a small high-tech research-and-development company called Sky Masters Inc., which developed a range of military and commercial aircraft, weapons, communications systems, satellites, and aircraft, and he was making the money he dreamed of and still getting to fly his creations.

  The Midnight had four larger leopard engines under the wings. For takeoff and landing, the engines performed like standard aircraft engines. The aircraft performed an aerial refueling with a specially modified tanker that topped off fuel and also loaded hydrogen-peroxide rocket-fuel oxidizer before the craft made its dash into space. This refueling was in essence the spacecraft’s “first stage,” since at thirty thousand feet, over half of the Earth’s atmosphere was below it and the push into space was that much easier.

  After the final refueling and posi
tioning in the proper location and direction for orbit, the craft accelerated to Mach 3 on its turbofan engines. Spikes in the engine inlets diverted incoming supersonic air around the turbines to specially shaped ducts that compressed the air hundreds of times greater than the jet turbines before mixing jet fuel and ignition, quickly resulting in speeds in excess of Mach 10 and climb rates approaching that of the Space Shuttle. As the aircraft approached the edge of space, the spikes eventually closed completely and the engines converted into pure rocket engines, using hydrogen peroxide as the jet-fuel oxidizer. Laser igniters burned the fuel more efficiently, giving the engines enormous power, but the lasers had to be “pulsed” several hundred times a second to achieve maximum combustion without blowing the engines apart. As speed increased to Mach 25, the spaceplane reached orbital velocity.

  Although the payloads of the S-9 and XS-19 spaceplanes were small-just six and nine thousand pounds respectively, far less than the now-retired Space Shuttle and the Shuttle’s replacement, the Orion crew module, expected to be in service in three to five years-the spaceplanes accomplished what the Shuttle’s designers could only dream about: quick, reliable, and frequent access to space. Orbital flights and dockings with the International Space Station and Armstrong Space Station, America ’s military space platform, were routine; passengers could be flown halfway around the planet in less than two hours; graduates from civilian and military pilot schools could now select “Astronaut” for their next assignment.

  Hunter Noble had left the Air Force to work with private industry when it became apparent that President Joseph Gardner wasn’t committed to the military use of outer space except as a support arm of the U.S. Navy. Although there was little money for space other than in satellite communications and surveillance, there was still money for research and development of other space systems, and that’s where Boomer wanted to be. Today’s flight was going to demonstrate one of those new technologies.

  “ Gipper Range Control, this is Midnight One, I show two minutes to release,” Scott Bream radioed. “Checklist is complete up here.”

  “Copy that,” the senior controller at the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Test Site in the Kwajalein Atoll responded. “Range is clear and ready.”

  “Range is clear, SC,” Bream reported to Boomer. “Release program up and running.”

  “Checked,” Boomer said. “Counting down, thirty seconds to go.”

  “Select computer control to ‘AUTO,’” Bream reminded his spacecraft commander.

  “Nah, I think I’ll hand-fly this one,” Boomer said.

  “The test program called for ‘AUTO’ maneuvering.”

  “I asked about it, and they said it was okay.”

  A moment later: “Midnight, this is Casino, select ‘AUTO’ maneuvering, Boomer,” the chief engineer of Sky Masters Inc. and builder of the test article, Dr. Jonathan Colin Masters, radioed from the company headquarters in Las Vegas. Masters was an executive vice president and chief of design for Sky Masters. “Don’t screw around now.”

  “C’mon, Doc,” Boomer protested, “it’ll be okay.”

  “Boomer, if we didn’t have half the Pentagon watching, I’d say okay,” Masters said. “Switch it to ‘AUTO.’ You can fly the reentry and landing.”

  “You’re all as bad as the military,” Boomer said. He sighed and configured the mission computer as necessary. “Maneuvering mode set to ‘AUTO.’ Where’s the fun in that?” Moments later hydrazine maneuvering jets arrayed around the Midnight spaceplane came to life, which stabilized the craft during release and would maneuver the spaceplane away from the test article after release.

  “Bay doors already open…maneuvering complete…payload locks released, extender arms powering up, standing by for release…now,” Bream reported. They heard a low rumble behind them as the extender arms lifted the payload out of the cargo bay, then several short bangs as the thrusters maneuvered the payload ahead and away from the Midnight spaceplane. “Payload in sight,” Bream radioed back to Sky Masters headquarters. “It looks good.”

  The payload was the experimental Trinity mission module, a twelve-foot-long robotic multimission spacecraft with a rocket booster in the rear; maneuvering thrusters; a guidance, datalink, and sensor section in the nose; and three chambers inside. Trinity was able to reposition itself into different orbits, detect and track other spacecraft, rendezvous and even refuel with a spaceplane or the Armstrong Space Station, and deploy and retrieve packages stowed in its mission chambers.

  “Lost sight of it,” Bream reported as the craft moved away in its own orbit. “Cargo-bay doors closed, the spacecraft is secure.”

  “That’s the way I like every flight-boring and secure,” Boomer said. He checked the flight computer. “Looks like thirty minutes to our orbit transfer burn, and then three hours until we chase down Armstrong. Wish we could be down there to watch this thing light off.”

  RONALD REAGAN BALLISTIC MISSILE TEST SITE, KWAJALEIN ATOLL, PACIFIC OCEAN

  THAT SAME TIME

  “We’re just two minutes to release, everybody,” Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force for Space Ann Page announced as she lowered the headset, which allowed her to listen in on the communications between the Midnight, range control, and Sky Masters headquarters. “C’mon over here for the best view.”

  It was a balmy and tranquil day on the water, but that didn’t prevent several observers from shakily stepping across the deck, holding on to railings and bulkheads. Ann felt as if she were on a cruise ship instead of a barge, and the heat and humidity that was obviously upsetting some of the observers felt heavenly to her. Fifty-nine years of age, auburn hair almost completely gray now, and with so many lines and wrinkles that she was actually considering cosmetic surgery, Ann Page nonetheless felt these were the best times of her life.

  “Are…are you quite sure we’re safe, this close to the target area, Dr. Page?” a pale-faced congressional staffer asked. He was sweating so badly that she thought he had fallen overboard. “How far did you say we were?”

  “Four miles,” Ann replied. “I won’t lie to you, Mr. Wilkerson: Our previous tests were very good, but not perfect. We’re launching from a platform ninety miles in space, traveling over seventeen thousand miles an hour, shooting at a wobbly target that is also spinning at nine hundred miles an hour-that’s how fast the Earth rotates. The projectiles are unguided-we use mathematics to do the aiming. That’s why the weapon is designed only for large-area or slowly moving targets. Only a computer can make the calculations, and if they’re wrong…well, we probably won’t feel a thing.” That certainly did not make the young staffer look any better, and he turned away as if looking for an unoccupied place to vomit into the ocean.

  “It’s a pretty humid day out, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, so we should see a very impressive sight as the projectiles descend,” Ann said. “Sixty seconds to go. The projectiles are not overly noisy, but if you’re sensitive to loud noises you may want to put on your hearing protectors.” Most of the women put on ear protectors; most of the men did not.

  “I’ve seen your presentations and animations, Miss Undersecretary,” a Navy lieutenant commander commented, scanning the instrumented target barge with a pair of binoculars, “and I still don’t see how we can invest so much money in this economic climate in such a limited, futuristic concept. It’s a waste of resources.”

  “Thirty seconds, everyone,” Ann said. “It’s true it’s not a legacy weapon nor very sophisticated, Commander, but as you’ll see, it’s certainly no lightweight. As for being futuristic…well, in ten years I believe weapons such as this will be commonplace. Few heard of GPS before the 1991 invasion of Iraq; by the second invasion of Iraq, it was already indispensable. Here we go.”

  “‘Mjollnir.’” The naval officer sneered. “Couldn’t you find a good ol’ fashioned American name to give it, Miss Undersecretary?”

  “It’s pronounced ‘me-ole-ner,’ Commander, not ‘muh-joll-ner,’” Ann corrected him, “and we do
have an American name for it, although it’s rather long, so we just learn to say ‘Mjollnir.’ And please call me Ann, okay? Stand by.”

  The observers stared out into the ocean. Everything was perfectly still, and the only sounds were the waves gently tapping on the sides of the barge. Nothing happened for several moments. The Navy officer lowered his binoculars and rubbed his eyes. “Did it work, Dr. Page?” he asked irritably. He looked at his watch. “It’s been almost fifteen seconds since-”

  Suddenly there was an impossibly loud ccrraacckk like the world’s largest thunderclap had just erupted directly overhead. For those observers who hadn’t closed their eyes, there appeared in the sky over the target several streaks of white vapor, like a searchlight beam had been turned on. The target barge disappeared in massive geysers of ocean water and clouds of steam towering several hundred feet into the sky. The white vapor streaks seemed to hang in the air for several moments, finally beginning to dissipate in the gentle tropical breezes. Moments later, another massive boom rolled over them as the sound of thousands of tons of seawater instantly turning to steam crashed over them.

  “What…was…that?” someone asked, as if he hadn’t listened to any of the briefings on the weapon.

  “That was Mjollnir, ladies and gentlemen: Thor’s Hammer, the next generation of land, sea, and space-attack weapons delivered from Earth orbit,” Ann Page said proudly. “Each payload releases a spread of four reentry vehicles, but what you saw was just one. The reentry vehicles are guided at first by satellite but then switch to infrared or millimeter-wave radar terminal guidance; it can automatically pick out preprogrammed targets or it can be steered by operators anywhere in the world or in space aboard Armstrong Space Station. The warhead that hit the target was nothing more than a five-hundred-pound chunk of titanium, but traveling at fifteen thousand miles an hour, it had the explosive impact of two tons of TNT. Mjollnir is simple, inexpensive if launched from an orbiting military base, cannot be intercepted or decoyed, and does not violate any existing space weapon treaties.