Sky Masters Page 6

  all defense-industry stocks with the advent of glasnost, perestroika,

  the opening of Eastern Europe, the unification of Germany. Sky Masters,

  Inc., had to indeed prove itself on each flight. But Jon Masters had

  always let the pressure roll off his back. He paid lip service to the

  concerns of his board of directors and partners, and treated military

  experts like Foch and scientists like Kaddiri as part of his road show.

  He listened only to those who agreed with him. Sometimes he seemed too

  busy having a good time to see the danger in what he was doing. Colonel

  Ralph Foch clearly was not having a good time. He turned away from

  Masters and checked the data readouts being transmitted to Masters'

  launch aircraft from the White Sands Missile Test Range; the data was a

  collection of sensor readings, meteorological-balloon measurements, and

  satellite observations about conditions both in the atmosphere and in

  the region of space that the four NIRTSats would travel. Foch checked

  several screens of data with a checklist and binders of computer models

  devised for this launch, then compared the information with corrective

  actions being reported by Masters' launch aircraft as well as the data

  from the ALARM booster itself. Since the launch was, in effect, the

  ALARM booster's first stage, the rocket was already "flying" the

  mission-issuing corrections to the jet's flight crew, updating its

  position, and continually plotting its new route of flight-while still

  within the cargo bay of the converted DC-10. "You're right on the

  borderline, Doctor Masters, " Foch finally said. "But you're still

  within the safety margin. Pending final clearance from White Sands,

  you're cleared to launch." Foch swung his headset microphone in place

  and made the radio call to the missile-range headquarters, recommending

  clearance to launch. With airborne clearance received, the ground range

  safety headquarters made a last-minute sweep of the range, alerted

  Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center to assist in keeping

  aircraft out of the area, then issued final range clearance. Masters

  grinned at Helen. "You've got the con, Helen." He liked to use

  nautical terms like "con" although Masters had never been near a naval

  vessel. "Initiate launch sequence. "Crew stand by for launch sequence,

  " Kaddiri sighed over interphone as Masters made his way aft with the

  two launch technicians. Kaddiri began to read off the fifty-one-item

  checklist steps, most of which were simply verifying that the computer

  was reporting the proper readings and was progressing smoothly, with no

  fault reports. The automatic countdown stopped on step 45, "Final

  Launch Clearance, Crew Notified, " at T minus sixty seconds, where the

  computer initiated an automatic countdown hold and transferred control

  back to Kaddiri. "T minus sixty second hold, " she announced. "Flight

  controls visually inspected and checked in manual mode." Jon Masters

  liked to accomplish this last check himself instead of sitting up on the

  launch-control console-it was his last look at each missile before

  sending it out into the world, like a parent dressing the child before

  sending him off for the first time to kindergarten. Both launch officers

  and Masters checked the long, slender scissor wings and vertical and

  horizontal stabilizers on the tailplane. When they reported OK, Kaddiri

  activated the flight-control self-test system. The scissor wings

  swiveled out two feet until several inches of the wingtips were visible,

  and the rudder and stabilators on the tailplane jumped back and forth in

  a pre-programmed test sequence. "Self-test in progress, " Masters called

  out. "X-wing to fifteen-degree position, left wingtip right. . .

  rudder right. rudder center . . . rudder left . . . left stab up .

  . . center . . . down . . . center . . . right stab up . . .

  center . down . . . center." The test lasted only ten seconds.

  Kaddiri canceled the selftest, then manually set the booster to launch

  configuration. The wings swiveled back to lie along the top of the

  booster's fuselage. "Verifying flight-control settings for launch, "

  Masters called out. "X-wing centered. Rudder centered. Stabilators set

  to trailing-edge down position." With the horizontal stabilizers in the

  trailing-edge down position, the nose of the ALARM booster would dive

  down and away from the DC-10 after launch, minimizing the risk of

  collision. "T minus sixty countdown hold checklist complete, " Kaddiri

  reported. She checked the navigational readouts. "On course as

  directed by Roosevelt-One, time remaining in launch window one, six

  minutes fourteen seconds." By then Jon Masters had walked up beside her

  and had taken his seat again, taking a big swig from a squeeze bottle.

  "Resume the countdown, " Masters said, watching the TV monitors on the

  console. As he spoke, the pressure-secure bay doors on the lower

  fuselage snapped open, revealing a lightgray cloud deck a few thousand

  feet below. Other cameras mounted on the DC-10's belly, tail, and

  wingtips showed the gaping forty-foot hatch wide open, with the ALARM

  booster suspended in the center of the dark rectangle. "Doors open.

  Thirty seconds to go. . Those thirty seconds seemed to take hours to

  pass. Masters was about to call to Helen to ask if there was a problem

  when she started counting: "Stand by for launch . . . five . . four

  . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . release!" It was a

  strange sensation, a strange sight. The ALARM booster just seemed to

  shrink in size as it fell out of the launch chamberlt continued to fly

  directly underneath the open doors as if it were frozen in place. The

  doors stayed open long enough so that Jon could see the X-wing begin to

  move slightly to provide a bit of stability as it cruised along. The

  DC-10's tail heeled upward as the twenty-one-ton rocket dropped awayit

  would take a minute for the movable counterweight tank to rebalance the

  plane. The crew members in the cargo section held on firmly to

  handholds in the ceiling or bulkheads as their bodies were pressed to

  the floor. "Rocket away, rocket away, " Helen called out. Immediately,

  the DC- 10 began a 30-degree bank turn to the left, and Roosevelt-I was

  lost from the bomb-bay camera. Helen switched to a wingtip camera to

  monitor the motor firing. "We're clear from booster's flight path, "

  Kaddiri called out. "Coming up on first-stage ignition... ready,

  ready... now. Like a giant stick of chalk drawing a fat white-yellow

  line across the sky, the first-stage motor of the ALARM booster ignited,

  and the rocket leaped ahead of the DC- 10 in a blur of motion. When the

  rocket was about a mile away, the X-wing scissored out until the wing

  was almost perpendicular to the rocket's fuselage, and the ALARM booster

  reared its nose upward and began to climb. Nineteen seconds after

  launch, the booster was traveling almost twice the speed of sound and

  had recrossed its launch altitude as the wing generated lift. Seconds

  later, the rocket was lost from view, traveling too fast for the

  high-speed cameras to follow. "T plus thirty seconds, Roosevelt-One
on

  course, all systems normal, passing one-twenty-K altitude, velocity

  passing Mach three, " Kaddiri reported. "Launch-chamber doors closed,

  chamber repressurized, " one of the techs reported. "Ready to reload."

  They were in no hurry to load Roosevelt-Two into position on this

  mission, but Masters liked to practice rapid-fire procedures to

  demonstrate that a multiple ALARM launch within a single launch window

  was possible. "T plus sixty seconds, fifteen seconds to first-stage

  burnout, " Kaddiri reported. "Altitude one-eighty K, passing Mach six,

  pitch angle thirty degrees. All systems nominal." Using the scissor

  wings to augment the motor's thrust with lift, the booster climbed

  quickly through the atmosphere. As the air started to thin and less

  lift was being generated by the wings, they scissored back closer and

  closer to the booster's fuselage until, just before first-stage motor

  burnout, the wings were fully retracted back along the body of the

  rocket. Seventy-six seconds after ignition, the first-stage motor

  burned out and the rear half of the fifty-feet-long booster, carrying

  the rear tailplane and the scissor wings, separated from the rest of the

  booster. The rocket was at the very edge of space, nearly 250, 000 feet

  above Earth. Nine seconds later, the second-stage motor ignited,

  sending the booster streaking into space. The first-stage section began

  its controlled tumble to Earth, and four recovery parachutes opened at

  sixty thousand feet above ground. A specially equipped Air Force C-130

  cargo plane would snag the parachute in midair and reel the firststage

  booster in somewhere over the northern section of the White Sands

  Missile Test Range. This recovery procedure would allow them to use the

  ALARM booster system anywhere in the world without hazard to people on

  the ground, even near heavily populated areas. The second- and

  third-stage motor sections would re-enter the atmosphere from space and

  burn up. "Good second-stage ignition, " Kaddiri reported. "Altitude

  passing three hundred forty K, velocity passing Mach eleven, on course."

  She turned to Foch with a look of concern, then at Masters.

  "Second-stage nozzle reports a gimbal-limit fault, Jon. It might have

  over corrected for winds at altitude and sustained some damage." Masters

  had a stopwatch counting down to the second-stage burnout. "Forty

  seconds to second-stage burnout, " he muttered. "Is it still hitting a

  stop? Is it correcting its course?"

  "Continuous faults on the nozzle, " Kaddiri replied. "It's maintaining

  course, but it might slip out of stage-three tolerance limits." The

  third-stage section of the booster was much smaller than the first two

  stages, designed only to increase the booster's velocity to Mach 25 for

  orbital insertion; it could not perform large course corrections. If

  the second-stage motor could not hold the booster within a gradually

  narrowing trajectory corridor, the booster could slip into a useless and

  possibly dangerous orbit. Numerous "safe" orbits were computed where the

  NIRTSat satellites would not interfere with other spacecraft and where

  they could be "stored" until it was possible to retrieve them, but it

  was usually very difficult to place a malfunctioning booster into a

  precomputed "safe" orbit. If it could not be placed in a position where

  it was not a hazard to other satellites, it could damage or destroy

  dozens of other payloads and re-enter the atmosphere over a populated

  area. Before that could be allowed tohappen, they would destroy it.

  That was exactly what Foch had in mind as he opened the plastic-guarded

  safety cover on the command destruct panel. Foch, Kaddiri, Masters, and

  the ground safety officers at the White Sands range could command the

  ALARM booster to self-destruct at any time; now that the booster was

  flying, Masters had very little authority over its disposition-he could

  not override a "Destruct" command. "I told you this might happen,

  Doctor Masters, " Foch said. "The booster was obviously shaken off

  course by the strong, high-altitude winds, and it sustained some damage

  and can't correct its course enough." But Masters sat back and, to

  everyone's surprise, put his feet up on the control console. "Ten

  seconds to second-stage burnout, " he said, sipping his soda. "Sit

  back, relax. It'll stay in the groove long enough."

  "The decision doesn't rest with you this time, Masters, " Foch fumed.

  "The command'll come from White Sands or the Air Force Space Tracking

  Center. White Sands will initiate the destruct sequence. If their

  command doesn't work, I initiate mine."

  "Well, well.. ." Masters laughed, pointing to the computer monitor.

  Foch turned to look. "Second-stage burnout, and Roosevelt-One is still

  on course." They studied the readouts for a few more moments. The

  booster, headed into a polar orbit over Canada, was picked up by Alaskan

  radar sites as it continued its climb to its orbit altitude. Soon its

  orbital insertion would be picked up by space-tracking radars at San

  Miguel Air Force Station in the Philippines, and the NIRTSats would

  begin their work. After a while, Masters turned to Foch with a smug

  expression. "Minor course corrections being made, but it's right on

  course. Expect third-stage ignition in four minutes." He took another

  big Sip of soda, then punctuated his victory with a loud burp. "I'd get

  your finger away from that destruct button if I were you, Colonel. The

  Navy wouldn't appreciate you blowing up a perfectly good booster." CLARK

  AIR BASE, ANGELES, PAMPANGA PROVINCE REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES

  PHILIPPINES INDEPENDENCE DAY SUNDAY, 12 JUNE 1994, 1147 HOURS LOCAL One

  of the first major uses of Masters' new NIRTSat constellation of

  real-time position and communications reporting capability for Air Force

  aircraft was a few days later-and it was the most inauspicious. It was

  the day the last of the United States Air Force's aircraft departed the

  Philippines as the Americans turned over their military bases to full

  Filipino control. The satellites would control the last of the American

  fighters and tankers as they withdrew from the Philippines to bases in

  Japan and Guam. Headquarters of the U.S. Air Force's Thirteenth Air

  Force at Clark Air Base, sixty-five miles north of Manila, was in a

  magnificent white six-story stucco building, at the end of a long grassy

  mall between the NCO and officers' family-housing areas. Both sides of

  the mall along the Weston and Wirt Davis avenues had once been lined

  with flags of the numerous military units of several nations that had

  liberated the Philippines from Japan during World War II, standing as a

  monument to those who had died defending this island nation against the

  Axis. Now the sixty poles were vacant except for the three flagpoles at

  the head of the mall opposite the headquarters building-the flags of the

  Philippines, the United States, and the U.S. Air Force. From his vantage

  point on the review stand in front of the headquarters building, Major

  General Richard Stone noticed that someone had lowered the American flag

  down several f
eet from the top of its staff-it almost appeared to be at

  half staff. Perhaps it should be so. Stone's aide, Colonel Michael

  Krieg, stepped over to his boss and handed him a Teletype report.

  "Latest on that skirmish near the Spratlys, sir, " Krieg said. "The

  Chinese are still claiming they were attacked by heavy antiship weapons.

  Twentyseven Filipinos dead, six Americans, and five missing."

  "Christ, " Stone sighed. He had watched the repercussions build over

  the last week since the skirmish. "Do the Chinese expect anyone to

  believe that? Why the hell would an oil company have any antiship

  missiles on an oil-exploration platform?"

  "They did have machine guns, sir. Twenty-millimeter. World War Two

  vintage American Mk 4. Pretty good operating condition, too-before the

  Chinese melted it with a Fei Lung-7."

  "Idiots, " Stone muttered. "Opening up on a warship like that. So what

  are the Chinese doing now?"

  "Laying low, " Krieg replied. "Only occasional incursions in the

  Spratly Island neutral zone. President Mikaso's government is being

  very understanding about it so far. Vice President Samar issued a

  statement calling for reparations from the Chinese."

  "Lots of luck." "Vice President Teguina called for an investigation-not

  of the Chinese, but of Mikaso's government, " Krieg added. "Of Mikaso $

  government? Not the Chinese? 'Coursethat's typical, " Stone said.

  "Whatever it takes to distance himself from Mikaso.. . just as he's

  always done. Anything for a headline."

  "The little bastard's got balls, that's for sure. Major General Stone

  grunted. "You can say that againTeguina loves to stir things up. Now,

  what do we have out there keeping an eye on things?" Krieg looked at his

  boss with a look of pure concern. "In two hours-nothing."

  "What?" "Message from CINCPAC." CINCPAC was the acronym for Commander

  in Chief Pacific Command, the U.S. military organization responsible for

  all military activities from the West Coast of the United States to

  Africa. "He wants no combat aircraft or vessels near the area until they

  can get a reading from the Chinese. Strictly hands off."

  "Well, what did we have out there?" Stone grumbled, irritated at