The Glass Lady (5 page)

“We estimate this facility can destroy our satellites up to 248 miles high, do damage to our satellites up to 744 miles, and at least disrupt our birds up to 25,000 miles.”

“God,” sighed the Admiral.

“Indeed. Its lethal range is only twenty-five thousand
miles
, give or take.”

“Accuracy?”

“General Gordon: TORA has fried at least six Cosmos satellite drones. LACE could be obliterated by it—as everything else we put into orbit. You should have sent the Russians an invite to this coffee break, Admiral.”

“I know, Joe. What else has Brother Ivan by way of operational, space laser weapons?”

“Near as we can tell, they have a free-electron, anti-satellite laser weapon at Troitsk and one at Chrernomorskoye. We don't know their lethal range or aiming ability—yet, Admiral.” Admiral Hauch looked at the clocks along the walls for a long moment.

“Then we cannot take LACE down ourselves. Is that the concensus here?”

“Not this year or next, Admiral,” frowned the General from Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.

“Question,” said the young woman from the desert. “Can LACE do it again?”

“Even as we sit here,” answered General Breyfogle.

“Well.” The Admiral rose slowly with a great weight oppressing his sagging shoulders. “I'll let you all out of this glass cage. We're in time for breakfast by now anyway. All we can do is hope the Russian's KGB-Ninth Department believes that their bird shorted herself out . . . I don't have to remind a one of you that not a word of this meeting is to be breathed to anyone. I shall brief the President in four hours . . . I'll get back with you.”

“Each time is like the first. It is all so beautiful, Dimitri. Truly magnificent.”

The black Mercedes wound its way southward from Vienna toward Wiener Neustadt thirty miles away. The two-lane highway made a circuitous course through Austria's lush mountains, low and rounded hills covered with new snow. Beneath a brilliantly blue noon sky, the road was burned dry by the dazzling sunshine.

“Yes, old friend. But you should see my Cheboksary, where the Vetluga flows into the Volga. In the spring. . . how do you say it: Your breath, it would go away.”

“That's how I'd say it exactly.” The American grinned with his face close to the exquisite countryside outside the heavily tinted windows of the backseat. “Maybe this spring, finally.” The westerner in his gray three-piece suit turned his face toward the portly, middle-aged Russian at his side. “And the beautiful Lydia?”

“Very well, indeed,” the Russian warmly smiled. He patted his round belly. “With number three due in June.”

“I hope it's a fine, healthy Comrade,” the American nodded to his friend. “Plump and happy, Dimitri—and with Lydia's blue eyes.”

“Me, too,” the Russian chuckled with genuine pleasure. “So what is the deal?”

“The deal?” the American asked with a smile.

“Where else can I practice speaking ‘American?' ” The Russian laughed loudly. “The British make me speak English. But with you,” the beaming Russian slapped his American guest's knee. ‘‘With you, I talk 'Merican. What is up?”

“You tell me, Dimitri.”

“You know how foolish I feel telling you American secrets that you may not know yet.”

“I'il keep it to myself.”

Outside, the white snow sparkled on hillsides where patches of tall fir trees had been removed to clear fire breaks in the dense forest.

“Under your hat, right?” The Russian chuckled. “I would say—let me think—I would say your people have been caught holding up the bag, yes?”

The Russian's red, round face hardened as he studied the American's face, youthful compared to his own.

“Dimitri, you invited me, remember?”

“So I did. About the midnight meeting, your time, of your laser specialists with Admiral Hauch. Our Ninth Department is most with interest. Don't you know?”

The American sighed as he raised an eyebrow.

“Surprised? That's our job. Besides,” the Russian showed his teeth with a knowing smile, “you can probably tell me what color necktie Marshall Kubosov wore at my meeting this morning.”

The gleaming car rolled to a stop, turned around at Wiener Neustadt's outskirts, and then retraced its route northward toward Vienna.

“You people have a little trouble with a satellite. Yes? LACE is its name, is it not?”

“An accident, Dimitri. You would not have sent for me if your people thought otherwise.”

The American cracked his window to the chilly, clean air. The weight of his diplomatic ballet made the roomy limousine close and warm.

“We would rather call it piracy.” The Russian stated his last word carefully.

“I know the law, Dimitri. I helped write the space treaty between our governments.” The American sounded tired.

“Our intelligence people tell us that your people cannot disable LACE. Is that correct?” The Russian's face was intense.

The American watched the sun-bleached snow pass beyond his fogged window.

“Well, my friend?”

The American's mind was awash with fatigue. He turned a weary face toward the Russian.

“We cannot disable LACE.”

“An encryptor failure?”

“Yes.”

“What about LACE's optics, Alpha Project. Tell me about its mirror.”

“Dimitri, please!”

“The word is ‘piracy'. ”

“It is built by United Technologies Research Center. But you know that.”

“Of course. Go on.”

“Graphite fiber, reinforced glass. Matrix composite mirror. The mirror surface is vaporized silicon.” The American's face showed physical pain.

“Graphite? Most impressive. Very clever indeed.”

“Dimitri, what about your betatron at Saryshagan? Can you hit LACE from there?”

“Of course, my friend.”

“And your anti-satellite homing spacecraft, Dimitri? You began operational tests in April 1981 when Cosmos 1,267 automatically docked in space with Salyut Six. It carried anti-satellite, mini-missiles did it not?”

“It did. Your people in Denver are quite good.”

“And your anti-satellite, rendezvous-and-destroy missiles first flown with Cosmos 1,243 and 1,258 in February and March 1981? Is this system operational, Dimitri?”

“Perhaps.”

“What about your latest air-to-air anti-missile interceptors, Dimitri?”

“Not likely, I am afraid. As you know, our SH-04 is designed to destroy incoming missiles before they enter the Earth's atmosphere. Our SH-08 missile gets to its target inside the atmosphere. Unfortunately, both Soviet missiles have nuclear warheads. Not very clean, to say the least. We are working on the SA-12 anti-missile weapon, which is not nuclear. But the SA-12 missile's maximum effective altitude is not more than meters. These devices are of no help to Washington.”

“But your betatron or your hunter-killer Cosmos vehicles could knock down LACE, couldn't they?” The American's face was pursed with anguish.

“Yes, they could.”

“Will Moscow help us? There is unlimited grain in it if Moscow will help us. Or even the heavy equipment for the trans-European pipeline . . . Will your people help us?”

The Russian turned to his window, and he fogged it with his breath. The moment belonged completely to the silver-haired Soviet diplomat, an old street-fighter from the defense of Leningrad. He knew well the taste of war and of rat meat raw. He allowed that tense moment to linger as the “VIENNA 5 KM” sign sped rearward. He turned to face the glum American at his side.

“No, my friend. It will not be that easy. I am truly sorry.”

The American studied his moist hands resting upon his gray wool knees. The car took the ramp toward the Vienna International Airport. On the airport apron, the American's unmarked jet sat idling its engines on the sunny concrete.

“My government has other plans.” The Russian's words broke the silence as the brilliantly white jet grew larger in the limousine's windshield.

The car rocked to a stop at the jet's razor-thin wings. The whine of the jet engines filled the car as the Russian watched his old friend of many battles without bullets button his coat.

“Blue, Dimitri,” the American called over the din of the jet engines.

“What?” the Russian squinted against the sunlight.

“Marshall Kubosov's tie this morning.”

“But which blue tie?” The Russian pressed his round face toward the American's ear.

“The one with the gray stripes.”

The Russian threw his head back with laughter when he slapped the American's knee. The tall American left the car for his ready aircraft and the long ride home.

With a pie plate filled with motor oil between his legs, William McKinley Parker sat cross-legged on the sandy dune with Galveston Bay 20 yards from his left. He squinted into the brilliant sunshine from the cloudless western sky. Two hundred yards from the back porch of his home in a bedroom suburb 25 miles southeast of Houston, the Colonel balanced a heavy brass marine sextant in his large right hand. Holding the gleaming instrument's telescopic sight to his right eye, the gray-haired airman peered at the shaded image of the high sun reflected in the plate of oil between his dirty deck shoes. With his left hand upon the base of the triangular sextant, he gently moved the index arm until the two heavily shaded mirrors brought the real sun down upon the sun's reflection in the oil. The Colonel held his breath as he fine-tuned the sextant's vernier screw. The real sun above and the reflected sun between his feet merged into one image in the sight.

“Lost, Skipper?” smiled Jacob Enright, who walked through the ankle-deep sand toward the Colonel's bent back.

Colonel Parker looked over his shoulder and smiled at Enright's youthful face.

“Afternoon, Jack.” The Colonel laid the sextant on its side in his lap. Immediately, he looked at the stopwatch hanging from his neck. Then, from the sextant, he read the sun's angular altitude above the motor oil's steady surface. On a pad of paper at his knee, with pencil the Colonel cut in half the angle read from the sextant. He circled this new figure. Beside it, he jotted down the time noted on the stopwatch.

As Jacob Enright stood silently aside, Will Parker made a black dot upon a pad of engineering graph paper set upon the sand. Across the sheet, a series of 20 dots formed a straight line from the paper's upper left corner down to the lower right corner. Sideways along the paper's left margin were penciled the words “sextant altitude.” Across the bottom was written “time—gmt.”

“Not lost, Number One,” the Colonel drawled as he rose to his feet on the beach. “Just keepin' sharp.” William Parker carefully loosened the alignment screws at each of the sextant's two mirrors before he carefully laid the instrument inside an elegantly waxed walnut box. He poured the motor oil from the plate into a plastic bottle.

Before he took a step, the tall colonel rubbed his right leg below the knee as if to work out a stiffness from sitting in the chilly sand.

“The old masters used to practice their sextant with a bowl of molasses for a horizon when they were ashore and away from the sea horizon.”

Colonel Parker studied Enright's designer jeans, his Irish sweater, and his white Topsiders. “Country club closed today, Jack?” the taller man grinned.

“Nope. Thought I'd take you up on your invitation to see the old homestead after all this time.”

Enright looked uncomfortable at his breach of the Colonel's zealously guarded privacy.

“You betcha, Jack,” Parker beamed.

Relief filled Enright's clean, lean face.

“Great, Skipper.”

“Come on up to the ranch, Jack. Pleased to have your company,” the long flier smiled warmly.

Jacob Enright was pleased that finally he had chosen to visit his captain's beachfront home, although the two men should have had their fill of each other that morning. Two hours earlier, they had shot six hours of ascent aborts in the simulator.

You can train with a man, fly with him, sweat and swear with him over flightplans and checklists, and urinate into a plastic bag at his side in the cockpit. But you do not truly know your partner until you have stood in his home and have seen his toys.

Colonel Parker was an odd mixture of visual impressions. Standing, he was long and leggy. Although his short, graying hair ending at a farmer-red neck betrayed the wear of middle age, his lined face radiated the tightness of a four-stripe airman. Beneath his one long eyebrow which crossed the bridge of his angular nose, clear gray eyes twinkled at the world which he had fashioned carefully from his life. Fine lines creased from the corners of his eyes toward his too-large ears. These were perfect pilot's eyes: bright and clear and firmly anchored to the creases around them, borne of uncountable airman's sunrises at the top of the world. The firm leanness of his body and his long, veinous arms were ever covered by a baggy wardrobe of casual clothes and sweat-bleached flightsuits. His clothes hung loosely rumpled upon his spartan frame. He had the look of a man who wears his father's clothes.

At ease, the Colonel looked like a tall, almost gaunt man, who would most likely trip if he took a step. But he moved like a dancer with the agile grace and order of slowly flowing water. To watch his long and elegant stride was to watch a body moving onward to a place he longed to be.

Jacob Enright enjoyed watching his captain walk along the beach. The second in command took pleasure and comfort from the measured determination with which William McKinley Parker walked, flew, and steered his life. But Enright noticed the Colonel favoring his right leg as he walked.

“Too much handball for an old boy,” Enright thought.

Genuine anticipation warmed Enright as he followed the Colonel toward the wooden back porch. The shorter pilot had often wondered what Parker's home would say of its owner. He had speculated whether he would find chrome-and-glass furnishings poised lightly upon thick carpet, or a dirt floor with a black kettle suspended above a firepit. For inside the slow-speaking colonel, whose twangy voice revealed his boyhood in the hollows of Kentucky, there lived both a brilliant electrical engineer and an honest-to-God, mud-on-his-spurs cowboy.