“Whoa, whoa, wait a damn minute,” Gardner said. “What are these penetrators? Are they nuclear?”
“They are simply titanium shapes, like a big antitank sabot round, sir,” Raydon said. “They have no explosive warhead of any kind-they’re designed to destroy with sheer velocity and mass. They reenter Earth’s atmosphere at greater than orbital speed: thousands of miles an hour, like a meteor.”
“A meteor?”
“Ninety seconds to go, sir,” Raydon said. “Yes, Mr. President, the reentry vehicle carries three sabots through the atmosphere and then uses sensors to get a precise fix on the target before releasing the sabots at hypersonic speed. Shall I engage?”
“Just shut the hell up, all of you,” the president said. He stared at the holographic map in front of him, uncertainty evident in his face.
“Mr. President, Prime Minister Pawar of India is on the line.”
The president snatched up the phone. “Mr. Prime Minister, this is Joseph Gardner…yes, sir, this is indeed an emergency. We have detected three Pakistani rockets that appear to be in launch position. We have attempted to contact President Mazar but he won’t talk to me. He-yes, sir, I’m told they appear to be Shaheen-2 intermediate-range ballistic missiles.”
“Thirty seconds, Mr. President,” Raydon said.
“Mr. Prime Minister, I don’t have much time,” Gardner said. “I am advising you that I intend on attacking these rockets…using cruise missiles fired from sea.” Most of the president’s advisers looked relieved; Phoenix looked confused. “I’m doing this because…yes, from a U.S. warship visiting Karachi. I don’t want you to mistake it for an attack against India. I don’t know who is in control of those rockets, and for the safety of the entire region I…they are positioned east of Quetta, at a town called-”
“Platform’s over the horizon, sir,” Raydon said. “Ninety seconds before we lose it.”
“Mr. Prime Minister, I didn’t call you so you could attack those rockets yourself,” Gardner said. “I think that would spark a wider exchange between India and Pakistan. I called to advise you of our actions so you wouldn’t try to attack. I’m urging you to let us take action and asking you to be on extra alert but do not take offensive action. I am asking that you-” The president’s expression turned blank, then to disbelief, then to red-hot anger. “Shit, he hung up!” He slammed the phone onto its cradle so hard the holographic images on the Situation Room’s conference table shimmered. “Get him on the line again, and then-”
“Scud, scud, scud!” a female voice shouted. “All stations, this is Armstrong, single ground missile launch detected from location sierra-alpha one-three.” As the stunned presidential advisers watched, one of the holographic images of the Shaheen-2 rockets they were watching lifted off and began to fly above the conference table. “Armstrong is tracking a single ground-launched missile. Preliminary trajectory appears to be suborbital ballistic, flight time estimate nine minutes.”
Ken Phoenix adjusted the display so they could see the computed flight path of the rocket-and sure enough, it was headed directly toward New Delhi, India. “Mr. President, order Armstrong to attack both the missile and the ones on the ground! The platform is in position now-”
“Attack an ally with a hypersonic meteor from space? Are you crazy, Ken…?”
“Sir, if they launch all those missiles and they have WMDs on them, they could kill millions of people,” Phoenix argued. “Even if the Taliban or rogue forces were involved, and not the Pakistani government, it would certainly start a war.”
“I don’t believe the Paks would allow missiles with WMDs to fall into the hands of the Taliban,” Gardner said. “This is a provocation, nothing more. Someone wants to start a shooting war. We tell New Delhi to stay calm and not overreact, and we’ll come through this.”
“But what if you’re wrong, sir?” Phoenix insisted. “What if they’re armed with WMDs? We have a way to stop them. Order the space station to attack.”
“The world will think I’m nuts, firing those meteor things-”
“You can’t just sit back and do nothing, sir-”
“Hey, Phoenix, shut the hell up and remember who you’re talking to!” the president snapped, jabbing a finger at his vice president. The room fell silent except for the reports of the missile’s flight path being relayed from Armstrong Space Station. Gardner looked at the holographic 3-D map for a few moments, his eyes darting here and there; then, his head still lowered, he said in a low voice, “Order the space station to attack those other rockets and nail that one that lifted off.”
“Armstrong, this is General Bain, immediate attack commit authorized by the president,” Bain ordered.
“Armstrong copies, attack authorized,” Kai Raydon responded.
“All stations, all stations, this is Armstrong, attack-commit authorization received,” the voice of Senior Master Sergeant Valerie “Seeker” Lukas said. She was at her monitor and tracking console in Armstrong Space Station’s command module. “All personnel, stand by.” To Kai Raydon beside her, she said, “All combat stations reporting manned and ready, sir.”
“Okay, kids, this is for real this time, but we do it just like we’ve rehearsed,” Kai said on the stationwide intercom. “Line it up, Seeker.”
“Roger, sir,” Lukas said. “Kingfisher Zero-Niner is responding to telemetry and reports ready, sir.” She turned to Raydon. “This will be a Mjollnir and ABM attack from the same platform at almost the same time, sir-I don’t think we’ve ever practiced that before.”
“Now’s a good time, Seeker,” Kai said. “I want to concentrate on the rocket. Have they launched any other Shaheens yet?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you can use more than one Trinity on the one in flight,” Kai said. “Hopefully we’ll nail the others before they launch. One Hammer should be more than enough for the ones still on the ground, but use another if you need to.”
“Yes, sir. Trinity One is counting down, twenty seconds to release. Hammer One is counting down, twenty-six seconds to release.”
As the Pakistani ballistic missile rose through the atmosphere, four hundred miles above it and six hundred miles behind it, the weapon garage named Kingfisher-9 emitted short thruster pulses in response to steering commands from its tracking and targeting computers. The cylindrical spacecraft had its own radar, electro-optical, and infrared sensors trained on the rocket, but the muzzle of the spacecraft was aimed well beyond it, along the computed flight path.
At the proper instant, the fire control computers launched the first Trinity interceptor vehicle. The kill vehicle used steering instructions broadcast from the weapon garage to insert itself into its own orbit that intersected the missile’s flight path. By this time the rocket motor on the Shaheen-2 ballistic missile had already burned out, and it was approaching its coasting phase at the top of its ballistic flight path. Even though it was a “tail-chase,” Trinity was traveling at orbital velocity of almost five miles per second and closed the distance to the vastly slower Pakistani missile in just eighty seconds. With ten seconds to intercept, the Trinity weapon activated its own millimeter-wave terminal guidance radar, refined its aiming with ultrashort bursts of thruster fire, and zeroed in for a direct hit.
Back on Kingfisher-9, immediately after launching the first Trinity vehicle, thrusters were already turning the weapon garage in a different direction, and as soon as the spacecraft was pointed properly, a Mjollnir vehicle fired-this one aimed toward Earth. Thrusters directed the payload on course. Specially shielded to withstand the extreme two-thousand-degree heat of reentry, slowing but still traveling more than four miles per second, the weapon package pierced the upper atmosphere in just over ten seconds.