Shadow Command Read online

  “Fifteen minutes to bingo fuel at this rate and course, SC,” Moulain reported. “Stop this shit and turn us around!”

  “Five more minutes and we’ll do a U-turn, Frenchy,” Boomer said, then muttered, “C’mon, you chickenshits, shoot already. We’re right dead in your sights and we’re not jamming—take the—”

  At that instant the two “bat-wing” symbols on the threat warning display depicting the MiG’s search radars started to blink. “Warning, warning, missile alert, six o’clock, twenty-three miles, MiG-29K…” followed moments later by: “Warning, warning, missile launch, missile launch, AA-12!”

  “Here we go, Frenchy—hold on to your bloomers,” Boomer said. He jammed the throttles to max afterburner, then spoke, “Leopards online.”

  “Leopards online, stop leopards…leopards activated,” the computer responded, and both crewmembers were shoved back into their seats when the full force of the Laser Pulse Detonation Rocket System engines fired up in full turbojet mode—with the throttles already in full afterburner, rather than moving them up gradually, they got almost full turbojet power in just a few seconds. The airspeed jumped from just below Mach 1 to Mach 2, then 3, then 4 in the blink of an eye. He then started a steep climb, then kept the pitch input in until they were headed straight up, passive fifty, then sixty thousand feet.

  “Missiles…still…tracking,” Moulain grunted through the nearly seven Gs. “Still…closing…”

  “I’m almost…done…with these bozos, Frenchy,” Boomer grunted back. He pulled the power back at Mach 4 and kept pulling on the control stick until they were inverted. He rolled upright, his nose now aimed down almost directly vertical, then glanced at the threat display. As he hoped, the two MiGs were still transmitting radar energy, searching for him—the AA-12 missile, a copy of the American AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, was homing in using its own on-board radar.

  “Wondering where I went, boys? You’ll find out in a sec.” Boomer aimed the Black Stallion at a point in space where he thought the MiGs would be in the next heartbeat or two—at his relative speed, the MiGs appeared to be hovering in space, although the threat display said they were flying at almost twice the speed of sound. Just as he caught a glimpse of the black dots below him, he rolled left until he was knifing right between the two Russian jets. He had no idea if he had judged the turn correctly, but it was too late to worry now…

  The MiGs were nothing more than imperceptible blurs as he flew directly between them, missing the closest by just fifty yards. As soon as he passed them he pulled the throttles to idle, deactivated the LPDRS engines to conserve fuel, used the MAW system to assist the spaceplane to level off without breaking itself into pieces—at their current rate of speed they would hit the Black Sea in just eight seconds without the Mission Adaptive Wing technology—and started a tight left turn just in case the AA-12 missiles were still tracking…

  …but he didn’t have to worry about the missiles, because moments later they caught a glimpse of a large flash of light above them, then another. He rolled upright, let the G-forces subside, and scanned the sky. All they could see were two black clouds above them. “Payback’s a bitch, huh, comrades?” Boomer said as he headed westbound once again.

  They had to chase down the tanker again and refuel because they had reached emergency fuel status in just a couple minutes with the LPDRS engines activated. The tanker crew was jubilant, but Moulain was even more quiet and businesslike than usual—she said nothing else except required call-outs. “You guys okay, Four-One?” Boomer asked.

  “We got our dentures loosened big-time,” the tanker pilot said, “but it’s better than the alternative. Thanks, Stud.”

  “You can thank us by giving us a little more gas so we can make it to MK.”

  “As long as we have enough to make it to the nearest runway, you can have the rest,” the tanker pilot said. “And don’t even think about buying any drinks for any other gas-passer anywhere on the planet—your money’s no good with us anymore. Thanks again, Stud Seven.”

  Less than an hour later the two aircraft made their approach and landing at Constanţa-Mikhail Kogălniceanu Airport in Romania. The airport was located fifteen miles from Constanţa and nine miles from the city’s famed Mamaia Beach on the Black Sea, so it was rarely affected by the freezing fog that shrouded the coastal city in winter. The U.S. Air Force had built an aircraft parking ramp, hangars, and maintenance and security facilities on the northeast side of the airfield, as well as upgraded the airport’s control tower, radar and communications facilities, and civil airport terminal. Along with NATO and European Union membership, the investments made in Romania by the United States had quickly turned this area known before only for its busy seaport and historic sites into a major international business, technology, and tourist destination.

  The two aircraft were escorted to the security area by a small convoy of armored Humvees and parked together in the largest hangar. There was a lot of hugging and handshakes between the crews as they deplaned. They debriefed their mission together and then separately, with promises to meet up for dinner and drinks later in Constanţa.

  Noble and Moulain’s mission debriefing took considerably longer than the tanker crew’s. It took nine grueling hours to debrief the maintenance and intelligence crews, Patrick McLanahan on Armstrong Space Station, Dave Luger at Dreamland, and get their usual post-flight physical exams. When they were finally released, they cleared Romanian customs at the civil airport, then took a shuttle bus to the Best Western Savoy Hotel in Constanţa, where the U.S. military contracted for transient lodging.

  The Black Sea coast was not busy at all in winter, so except for a few airline crews from Romania, Germany, and Austria and some surprised businessmen unaccustomed to seeing much partying in Constanţa in winter, the Americans had the bar to themselves. The tanker crew had already been partying hard and was buying drinks for anyone who wore wings, especially the foreign female flight attendants. Boomer was ready as well, but to his surprise he saw Lisette heading for the elevator to her room. He extricated himself from the arms of two beautiful blond flight attendants, with promises he’d be right back, and hurried to follow her.

  He barely squeezed himself past the closing elevator doors. “Hey, Frenchy, turning in so soon? The party’s just getting started, and we haven’t had dinner yet.”

  “I’m beat. I’m done for the day.”

  He looked at her with concern. “You haven’t said much since our little run-in with the Russkies,” he said. “I’m a little—”

  Suddenly Moulain whirled toward him and smacked him across the jaw with a closed right fist. It wasn’t that hard a blow, but it was still a fist—he was smarting, but mostly from the surprise. “Hey, what’d you do that for?”

  “You bastard! You prick!” she shouted. “You could’ve gotten us both killed today out there!”

  Boomer rubbed his jaw, still looking at her with concern; then he nodded and said, “Yeah, I could have. But no one pushes around my tanker.” He smiled, then added, “Besides, you gotta admit, Frenchy, that it was one helluva ride.”

  Moulain looked as if she was going to punch him again, and he was determined to let her do it if it made her feel better…but to his surprise, she rushed forward in the elevator, threw her arms around his neck, smothered him with a kiss, and pressed herself against him, pinning him against the wall.

  “You’re damned right, Boomer, it was one helluva ride,” she breathed. “I’ve flown jets off of carriers in two wars and been shot at dozens of times, and I have never been so turned on as I was today!”

  “Jeez, Moulain…”

  “Frenchy. Call me Frenchy, dammit,” she ordered, then silenced him with another kiss. She didn’t let him up for air for a long time.

  “You were so quiet on the way back and in debriefing, I was afraid you were going into some kind of shell-shocked fugue state, Frenchy,” Boomer said as Moulain started kissing his neck. “You sure have a funny way
of showing your excitement.”

  “I was so excited, so turned on, so friggin’ aroused that I was embarrassed to show it,” Moulain said in between kisses, her hands quickly finding their way south of his waist. “I mean, two fighter pilots died, but I was so jacked up I thought I was going to come in my damned flight suit!”

  “Dang, Frenchy, this is one strange side of you that I never—”

  “Shut up, Boomer, just shut up,” she said as the elevator slowed on their floor. She had him practically unzipped and unbuttoned by then. “Just take me to my room and fuck my brains out.”

  “But what about your fiancé and your—?”

  “Boomer, I said, shut the hell up and fuck me, and do not stop until it’s morning,” Moulain said as the elevator doors slid open. “I’ll explain it to…to…oh hell, whatever his name is, in the morning. Remember, Captain, I outrank you, so that’s an order, mister!” It was obvious that issuing orders was just as much of a turn-on for her as flying the hypersonic spaceplane.

  CHAPTER TWO

  One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

  —VIRGINIA WOOLF

  ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

  THE NEXT MORNING

  The command module was the center of activity aboard Armstrong Space Station, and it was here that Patrick McLanahan attended the video teleconference with select members of President Gardner’s national security staff: Conrad F. Carlyle, the President’s National Security Adviser; Gerald Vista, the Director of Central Intelligence, who had remained in his post from the Martindale administration; Marine Corps General Taylor J. Bain, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Charles A. Huffman, Air Force chief of staff; and Air Force General Bradford Cannon, commander of U.S. Strategic Command and—until the details could be worked out by Congress and the Pentagon—the theater commander of all U.S. space operations and responsible for training, equipping, and directing all space combat missions. Hunter Noble—a little bleary-eyed after not very much sleep, both because of the time difference and because of Lisa Moulain—was linked in to the teleconference via satellite from the command post at Constanţa Air Base.

  Patrick and Master Sergeant Valerie Lukas were floating in front of the wide-screen high-definition teleconference monitor, secured by Velcro sneakers to the bulkhead of the command module. Patrick kept his hair buzz-cut short, but Lukas’s longer hair floated free on either side of her headset’s crossband, giving her a weird wolverine-like appearance. “Armstrong Space Station is online and secure, sir,” Patrick announced. “This is Lieutenant General Patrick McLanahan, commander, High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, Elliott Air Force Base, Nevada. With me is U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant Valerie Lukas, noncommissioned officer in charge of this station and the sensor operator on duty at the time of the attack in Tehran. Joining us via satellite link from Constanţa, Romania, is Air Force Captain Hunter Noble, chief of manned spaceflight operations and hypersonic weapon development, High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center. He was the officer in charge of the attack mission over Tehran and the designer of the SkySTREAK missile that was used in the attack. He returned to Earth yesterday after completing a reconnaissance aircraft insertion mission over eastern Iran, which we will brief you on later.”

  “Thank you, General,” General Taylor Bain said from the “Gold Room,” also known as the “Tank,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff conference center on the second floor of the Pentagon. As was the case of most officers in the post–American Holocaust United States, Bain was young for a four-star Marine Corps officer, with dark brown hair trimmed “high and tight,” a ready smile, and warm gray eyes that exuded trust and determined sincerity. “Welcome, everyone. I believe you know everyone here. Joining us from the White House is National Security Adviser Conrad Carlyle; and from Langley, the Director of Intelligence, Gerald Vista.

  “I first want to say that I’m pleased and frankly more than a little amazed to be talking to you, General McLanahan, aboard a facility that just a few short years ago was considered little more than a Cold War relic at best and a floating money pit at worst,” Bain went on. “But now we’re considering putting hundreds of billions of dollars into the next five budgets to create a space force centered on that very same weapon system. I’m convinced we’re seeing the beginning of a new direction and future for the American armed forces. Captain Noble, I’ve been briefed on your incident yesterday, and although we need to discuss your judgment skills I’m impressed with how you handled yourself, your crew, your fellow airmen, and your craft. I believe it was yet another example of the amazing capabilities being developed, and the future path we’re on looks incredible indeed. But we’ve got a long way to go before we take that journey, and the events of the past few days will be critical.

  “First, we’re going to get a briefing from General McLanahan on Armstrong Space Station and his operational tests recently run, and Captain Noble’s incident over the Black Sea. We’ll discuss a few other matters, and then my staff will prepare our recommendations to SECDEF and the national security staff. I’m sure it will be a long uphill fight, both in the Pentagon and up on Capitol Hill. But regardless of what ensues, Patrick, I’d like to say ‘job well done’ to you and your fellow airmen—or should I say, fellow ‘astronauts.’ Please proceed.”

  “Yes, sir,” Patrick began. “On behalf of everyone aboard Armstrong Space Station and our support crews at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base, Elliott Air Force Base, and Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, thank you for your kind words and continuing support.”

  Patrick touched a button that presented photographs and drawings in a separate window to the videoconference audience as he continued: “A brief overview first: Armstrong Space Station was constructed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It is the military version of the much smaller NASA Skylab space station, built of spent Saturn-I and Saturn-IV rocket fuel tanks joined together on a central keel structure. Four such tanks, each with over thirty thousand cubic feet of space available inside, form the main part of the station. Over the years other modules had been attached to the keel for specialized missions or experiments, along with larger solar panels for increased power generation for the expanding station. We can house as many as twenty-five astronauts on the facility for as long as a month without resupply.

  “The station hosts several advanced American military systems, including the first space-based ultra-high-resolution radar, improved space-based global infrared sensors, advanced space-based global communications and high-speed computer networking, and the first space-based anti-missile laser system, code-named ‘Skybolt,’ designed to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles from space. The station’s space-based radar is a sophisticated radar system that scans the entire planet once a day and can detect and identify objects as small as a motorcycle, even underground or underwater.

  “The destruction of our strategic command and control systems and ballistic missile defense sites by the Russian Federation’s air attacks against the United States highlight the need for a capable, secure, and modern base of operations to conduct a wide spectrum of vital defense activities, and Armstrong Space Station is that facility,” Patrick continued. “The station is now the central data collection and dissemination hub of a network of satellites in high- and low-Earth orbits linked together to form a global reconnaissance and communications system, continuously feeding a wide array of information to military and government users around the world in real time. The station and its supporting reconnaissance satellites can track and identify targets on the surface, in the sky, on or under water, underground, or in space, and it could direct manned and unmanned defenders against them, like a space-based multifunction combat control system.

  “The state-of-the-art systems aboard Armstrong Space Station give it other important capabilities that complement its primary military function,” Patrick went on. “In case of war or natural disaster, the station can serve as an alterna
te national military operations center, similar to the Air Force’s E-4B or Navy’s E-6B Mercury airborne command posts, and can communicate with ballistic missile submarines even while deeply submerged. It can tie into radio and television airwaves and the Internet worldwide to broadcast information to the public; act as a nationwide air, maritime, or ground traffic control center; or serve as the central coordination facility for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The station supports the International Space Station, acts as a space rescue and repair service, supports numerous scientific research and education programs, and is, I believe, the inspiration for a general reawakening to the exploration of outer space for young people around the world.

  “Currently, Armstrong Space Station hosts twelve systems operators, technicians, and officers, set up very much like the combat crew aboard an airborne command post or sensor operators aboard a radar aircraft. Additional crews are brought aboard as necessary to run specialized missions—the station has accommodations for another dozen personnel, and can be expanded quickly and easily by attaching additional modules brought aloft by the shuttle, the SR-79 Black Stallion spaceplane, the Orion crew expeditionary vehicle, or remotely piloted launch vehicles—”

  “Excuse me, General,” National Security Adviser Carlyle interjected, “but how is it possible to bring additional modules up to the station on a spaceplane or remotely piloted vehicles?”

  “The fastest and easiest way is to use inflatable modules, Mr. Carlyle,” Patrick responded.

  “‘Inflatable’? You mean, not rigid, like a balloon?”

  “Like a balloon, only a very high-tech balloon. The technology is based on NASA’s ‘Transhab’ experiments of ten years ago, when inflatable modules were suggested for the International Space Station. The walls of our models are primarily made of electro-reactive material that is flexible like cloth until a current is applied and it’s struck, when it hardens into a material that resists impact a thousand times better than steel or Kevlar; this material is backed up with other non-electro-reactive materials that are still many times stronger than steel or Kevlar. Inflatable structures give just enough to absorb energy from impact without damage—you can’t ding the walls of these things.