Operation Damocles (25 page)

XXXVI

Air Force Captain John Connally stood behind Lieutenant Lewis Pritchart, watching the monitor as the seated Pritchart fired the maneuvering thrusters to position Diana into Damocles’ orbital track. The thrusters were powered with CO
₂
gas, an inert substance that did not leave a detectable heat signature, as a burning rocket propellant would have.

Most defensive sensing devices were equipped to look for radiant heat energy emitted by engines or electrical equipment. Diana was in reality a fairly unsophisticated piece of hardware in comparison with most terrestrial weapons systems, but for her space-oriented stealth application, she was like her namesake who, in mythology, had hunted and stalked game in the forests of the gods—a well-endowed, silent, almost invisible killer.

“What’s your propellant inventory?” Connally asked.

“She’s showing a hundred and sixty kilograms. That Y-Y valve is still sticking. It’s getting better, loosening up, but I’m still a little afraid to use it. It takes more gas, because you have to add moment, then reduce it, but I’d rather rotate around and bring another set of thrusters to bear, than risk losing all her propellant and spinning her out of orbit.”

“What’s your velocity and trajectory, now?”

“She’s slowed to seventy-five hundred meters per second. She’s increasing orbit radius by two meters per minute. She’ll cross Damocles’ orbital track in about four hours.”

“That’s close to the predicted vertical vector. What’s the horizontal like?”

“She’s on the money, now. If Damocles is in a really stable orbit, he’ll run right into her on that plane. Like billiard balls. Is the plan of engagement still the same?”

“Yes,” said Connally. “Diana will increase orbit radius twenty-five kilometers above Damocles’ track, slowing so that he is accreting velocity with respect to her. As he swings around the limb of the earth at two hundred and forty degrees, she will begin firing thrusters, picking up velocity and falling inward into Damocles’ path. She’ll be waiting for him at a hundred and ten degrees west.”

“What about her targeting system? And the firing sequence? What was decided?”

“Well, since we don’t have anything to practice on, we’ve got to assume that her aiming optics are in alignment. As for the firing sequence, we won’t have the luxury of repositioning after each shot, and trying it again. The brass have decided to manually fire all twenty-four projectiles at once. If we miss, the best we can hope for is a head-on collision. That’s the reason her attitude is so critical when the projectiles are fired. We don’t want the recoil moments to push her out of Damocles’ path. Even if those missiles are dead-on, we still want Diana and Damocles to collide. Her braking thrusters are programmed to fire as soon as her armory is empty. She and Damocles should impact at almost sixty meters per second, relative.”

“Unless Damocles sees her coming, and blows her out of the sky.”

“Yes. There is always that possibility,” said Connally, sighing loudly.

“Will people on the ground see it, you think?”

“If it’s a clear night, people in Arizona might see a pinprick flare of light with the naked eye. Of course, if we miss, and Damocles retaliates, they will get a hell of a show.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, too. If we are one of the military targets programmed into his fire control system, we are likely to miss seeing that show. We will be the show.”

Connally rolled his eyes, an expression of long-suffering patience on his face. “That’s what I like about you, Pritchart. You’re such a fucking optimist.”

XXXVII

“I want to speak to Dr. Thelma Richards please,” Ortiz said into the phone. “Yes, I’ll hold.”

He sat at his desk, played with the hem of his lab coat and stared at it introspectively, his mind far away. A greeting in the earpiece brought him back to the present.

“Hi, babe. How’s my gal?”

“Hector, you old horse’s ass, where are you?”

“I’m in my office; where else would I be?”

“Damn,” she responded, “the way my secretary spoke, I thought you were nearby. I wanted to plant a big, sloppy kiss on your old, bald head.”

“Hell, I’ll come down there for that. I’d rather you scrubbed my back, though.”

“Not that the thought isn’t somewhat intriguing, but Charlie might object to that effusive of a greeting.”

“That’s silly. Charlie is my best compadre. We swore to share everything, years ago.”

“Oh, yeah? Whom have you been sharing with him? Not that little Rosie-thing you were dating the last time I saw you, huh?”

“Oh, that reminds me, tell Charlie that Rosie asked about him. She especially wanted to know if his wife still doesn’t understand him.”

“You miserable old bastard. Did you just run out of people there to aggravate, or do you actually want something?”

“Well, really I just wanted to hear you talk dirty to me, but as an excuse to call, I thought I might ask you how Butch is doing.”

“He’s holding up. Between Zeke and Joe Dykes, and a weekly call from yours truly, he has a lot of support, and he’s putting up a brave front. At least, to the world.”

“Is he ready to come in with us?”

“I just don’t know, Hector. I’ve never even hinted at it, you know? He doesn’t know anything. It makes me feel like a traitorous bitch every time I talk to him. He’s suffered a lot over all those deaths. We all have, but with him it’s really bad. He feels responsible. You would think he was involved, the way he sits and stews over it, or that he did it all by himself.

“Anyway, it seems really rotten for me to know and not tell him, but I halfway worry that it’ll push him over the edge if I do.”

“I know how you feel, babe, and you have to be sure of his reaction before you tell him. It’s still early days. We can’t come out of the closet, yet. There is too much at stake.”

“I know, I know. Not to worry. Tell me again, why he has to know at all. At least, why right now?”

“Well, it’s not that urgent, but within a few months, when all this is over, he’s going to have a hell of a lot of money to spend, and we want to hit the ground running. The economy is going to need the jobs in order to recover quickly and put these times behind us. He has a couple of years of planning to accomplish in a few months. The sooner he’s on board, or out of the way if it comes to that, the better off we’re going to be.”

“You sound heartless, Hector.”

“You know I don’t mean to be. I’ve got to be pragmatic, though. We’ve been utterly callous with the lives of millions; we can’t quit now, and know we spent those lives for nothing, just to spare the feelings of one of our own. That means I have to be an asshole to my friends, also. I don’t like it, and it’s not the real me. It’s who I have to be, for now.”

“I know, Hector. I didn’t mean it.” She sighed. “I’ll find a way to break it to him, feel him out, talk him into it. I’ll fly back to Atlanta this weekend, if he’s free.”

“Thanks, babe. If he joins up, he’ll have the opportunity to accomplish more than any of his predecessors. The major emphasis is going to be on expansion of science and technology, and the creation of jobs in humanitarian enterprises. It will be a time of dreams come true for the entire world. I want him to be a part of it.”

“You make it sound like heaven. I’ll do my best to convey that idea to Butch.”

“Okay. Come up and see me, if the opportunity arises. Bring Charlie. I want to see if I can talk him into conjugal rights.”

“Why Hector, I thought you were straight.”

“You know what I mean, you shameless hussy. Charlie is kind of cute, though, when you think about it.”

###

Later that night, Hector Ortiz and Paul Haas sat in a deserted laboratory at Stanford University. It was early on a Tuesday morning, and they had been up most of the night. They had two computers and two large monitors set up side-by-side on a lab table, and both men sat on stools in front of them, watching the screen on Haas’ monitor intently as two dots of light moved slowly across a fixed, glowing gridwork of lines. Ortiz’s monitor showed a concentric circle with a cross-hair, and a single point of light in its center. A speakerphone and encryptor sat on the bench near the computer, and the red light showed an active circuit. A panel with a glowing, green indicator light and a push-button switch sat in front of Ortiz. The phone was tied into a satellite transponder and dish antenna on the roof.

“How is your signal now, Leland?” Haas said into the phone.

“Much better,” came the reply. “I’ve got my gain at maximum, though. Something is interfering with the relay satellite. George is boosting that signal now. Ah! There it is now, strong and steady. I can reduce my gain now.”

Haas and Ortiz listened to vague words and sounds as the people on the other end of the phone talked to one another in the background, then the man on the other end was addressing them directly again.

“What is your telemetry telling you, Paul? I want to cross-check the range with you as they close. Ready on my mark . . . one, two, three, mark. I’m reading 2,870.1 meters. What have you got?”

“I’ve got exactly 2869.7 meters. Our calibration is pretty close. It will be only a few centimeters’ difference by the time they’re within firing range.”

“What is the velocity delta now?” asked the voice on the phone.

“Two meters per second, on the nose,” Haas answered. “Diana will be within one kilometer in just under sixteen minutes. What do you show?”

“The same,” came the answer. “All right, we’re about as ready as we can get. Be sure and let me know if you see the least bit of drift out of alignment, Hector. If they miss with their weapons, we’ve got to make certain that impact takes place, or that our backup makes it appear so. Is the bomb armed?”

“Yes. We’ve got a green light,” responded Ortiz. “If they miss, and if it looks like the recoil moments are pushing Diana out of alignment, I will detonate the explosive.”

“Do it anyway, Hector,” came the response. “If they even come close with their phalanx of missiles, detonate the bomb. If they miss by a wide margin, then we’ll have to wait for collision, otherwise they might suspect.”

“Will do,” said Ortiz. “Not to change the subject, but how did the other launches go?”

“No problems, so far. We heterodyned a signal against their radar transmitters, shifting harmonics all across their bandwidths. We used directional signals with big dishes and lots of power. The receiver circuits weren’t meant to cope with that kind of gain. It blew some circuits and effectively pulled the plug at Woomera, and shut down their radar systems for a few minutes while we launched. They don’t have any suspicions, as far as our contacts have heard—put it down to a simple equipment failure. One civilian airport radar reported what they thought was a military launch, since they get them regularly from that direction, but the military doesn’t know what to make of it. They are passing it off as a radar glitch. They had no means of interfering with it anyway, but it’s important that they think they have only the one system to contend with. Both insertions are complete, and they are on station as of yesterday afternoon, one hundred and twenty degrees apart. We’re doing the final ranging-systems calibration, now.”

“That’s a relief,” said Haas.

“I know. I’m glad it’s over, too. Now all we have left to do is to carry out this little production of ours, and if it works out the way we hope, it will all be over within a few months at most. Keep your fingers crossed.”

“I’ve got everything that I’ve got two of crossed,” said Ortiz.

“We’re getting close, Leland,” interrupted Haas.

“Okay, you guys have the ball. I’ll just sit back and watch.”

The seconds ticked by as Ortiz and Haas waited, eyes straining for any indication that the killer satellite had fired. The distance had narrowed to eight hundred meters.

“Six-point-seven minutes to impact,” said Haas. “Why haven’t they fired?”

“They’ve got balls,” said Ortiz. “They’re risking discovery and annihilation on getting close enough to make a sure kill.”

“There it is!” exclaimed Haas excitedly.

A cluster of dots raced across the screen, right to left, between the two original blips. It took less than two seconds for the cluster to meet the second, oncoming blip.

“It’s dead-on, Hector. Detonate!”

On Ortiz’s monitor, the cluster of lights loomed toward his screen, like a bird’s-eye view of a shotgun charge. The missiles were coming directly at the satellite’s camera. The image transmission time was factored into Ortiz’s actions; at this range, he barely had time to see whether the projectiles would be moving in the right direction before sending the return signal to detonate the explosive. Haas had said “detonate” as the speeding projectiles left Diana’s armory. A fraction of a second later, they were crossing the halfway point when Ortiz closed the switch. Ortiz thought he saw the machine markings on the tip of a closing projectile, just before the image on his monitor blanked out. “Well, that’s that,” he said.

###

The operations center at SATCOM in Cheyenne Mountain erupted in a bedlam of cheering, yelling personnel. Captain Connally raised a fist in the air and jerked it downward, signaling victory. Technical personnel were hugging each other. The base commander looked at his deputy.

“Well, that’s that,” he said. “I guess I’ll go make a phone call.”

XXXVIII

President Vanderbilt sat back in his chair, smiling expansively at the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President. Orville Tomlinson and Frank Ketchum were there, also. With the exception of Joseph Miller, who seldom ever smiled, all faces were lit up with satisfaction. Vanderbilt grinned forgivingly at Ketchum.

“Well, Frank, you botched the L.A. job, but it looks like the Air Force hauled your chestnuts out of the fire. The bastards are out of business, anyway. Now, I want you to openly go after them. I want you to find those sons of bitches and bring them to me. I may decide to have a summary execution by firing squad, in a city park.”

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, sir,” said Tomlinson. “There is a smattering of public support out there, now that the thing is destroyed, but only a smattering. If we are going to win them back, now is not the time to run roughshod over the law. We should work them up a bit—make them remember those who were killed by the terrorists. Give me a couple of months, and you’ll have a sixty-percent approval rating again. Then, a quick and emotional trial, followed by a swift execution.”

The smile faded from Vanderbilt’s face, and he regarded Tomlinson coldly.

“If I ever need your advice, I’ll ask for it, Tomlinson.”

Tomlinson blanched, said nothing.

“You may as well hear this now,” said Vanderbilt, surveying the ring of faces. He smiled, gloating in anticipation of their reactions to what he was about to tell them. “We have decided it’s time to clamp down. Soon, there will be no further pretense of seeking public approval. We are going to place the country under martial law and kick the shit out of dissenters until the rabble fall into line. The sooner they understand their place, the better.

“You people had better do as you’re told, too, and you had better do it enthusiastically if you want to remain in your elevated positions. It won’t be long before having a whole loaf of bread will be a status symbol.

“If you continue to prove your loyalty, you can enjoy the good life. If not, you’ll live in alleys and eat garbage, like all the rest. Is any of this sinking in?”

Tomlinson sat cowed, eyes searching the floor for some ray of security, and finding none. Ketchum had a look of resignation. Harold Tanner gazed out the window, a silent tear rolling down his cheek. Miller’s expression did not change, nor did his eyes waver.

“Now, get out of here, you sniveling cowards,” said Vanderbilt. “I want an expensive bottle and a cheap whore. I’m going to celebrate. A new day is dawning. I suggest to you all, either get on board, or go find a quiet place to blow your brains out. Now, get the hell out.”