Owen Larrabe feels the excitement building as he sits in his pressure suit on a box beside the F-106 and studies the top-secret flight plan he figured he’d never get the chance to fly. Two crewmen are hovering at the ready, one holding his helmet.
“I’d better get in,” he says, getting awkwardly to his feet. The two crewmen are instantly at his side, walking him to the ladder for what will be a brief but arduous job of sliding into the seat and attaching himself with straps that he won’t have enough mobility to reach. F-106 cockpits were not designed for pressure suits.
Owen pauses to survey the interior of the secret hangar, built to look like a dusty warehouse on the far side of the well-worn Air Force base. When they’re ready and the security police have chased off everyone who might otherwise be looking, the entire false front of the allegedly old brick building will open, allowing him to taxi quickly to the adjacent end of the runway for a quick takeoff to the west. By the time he plugs in the afterburner, the building should have returned to normal, protected by the anonymity of its uninteresting appearance and a host of sophisticated sensors and monitoring devices.
Like an astronaut who never thought he’d fly a mission to space, Captain Owen Larrabe has always thought of his weird, secret assignment as a pain. Three years stationed at Holloman supposedly flying a revived continental defense mission in one of the few remaining F-106 squadrons, while secretly maintaining proficiency for this mission and spending too many weekends and evenings practicing getting into and out of the pressure suit. Two other pilots here have the same mission and the same problem, with wives and families who just don’t understand where they go all those extra evenings when the rest of their squadron is at home or having barbecues.
The last strap is being snapped in place and the young crew chief runs over his checklist, showing the removed ejection seat pins and getting the requisite nod from his pilot.
At least, Owen thinks, the air conditioned temperature maintained in the hangar is a blessing. He’ll taxi into the desert heat in comfort.
The side of the hangar is in motion now, large hydraulic arms moving the counterbalanced facade up and over as he runs the checklist and starts the engine, timing the start of his quick exit for the moment the marshaler signals the door is clear. His takeoff and flight clearance have already been granted on a special UHF frequency and the airfield is silent, awaiting his departure. He finishes the last checklist item and smoothly swings the Delta Dart onto the runway, bringing the power to maximum and then plugging in the afterburner as he accelerates, the unusually long missile held snugly inside the weapons bay. He passes eighty knots with a glance to his left. The building is a building again, the door closed, the crew invisible, and he pulls the bird into the air, cleaning up gear and flaps and burner as he turns for the intercept point somewhere to the southeast.
The missile has been designed to launch itself, just like the original test back in 1985, but at nearly ninety thousand feet. And the trajectory is not what they’ve practiced. Instead of a head-on shot, it will go for an intercept from a forty-five-degree angle from the back.
He’s already had the classified briefing on what they’re trying to do, and there’ll be only one chance. If they miss, on the very next orbit ninety minutes later the old Russian missile shroud will impact the spacecraft, obliterating both.
But his equipment is improved from the old days. The first and only successful test had none of the sophisticated onboard guidance computers he has now, and the missile was more or less a dumb infrared tracker. The pilot of that test plane, Doug Pearson, had become the first and only “space ace,” the first to shoot down a spacecraft.
And now,Owen thinks, I’ve got the chance to be the second. Sweet.
Yet, the seriousness of the mission is not lost on him. The stakes couldn’t be higher. He’s trained to take out an enemy’s orbiting eyes or an orbiting nuke if anyone is ever stupid enough to put one up. But this is a different type of shooting.
Owen engages the trajectory computer and locks his global positioning satellite system into the data stream, pleased to see the green light flash on his screen. The flight director pops into view and he places the dot representing the F-106 in the middle, following the computer commands to the start point. The mission is to be flown in radio silence, except for his transponder and an open satcom channel to the mission commander back in the Pentagon. He’s closing on the hold point where he’ll fly a racetrack pattern for thirty minutes waiting for the precise moment to start the run, and he looks over to check the fuel remaining, momentarily disbelieving the figures.
What the hell?
He should be reading a full tank but it’s coming up short. Disastrously short, and he wonders if the fuel totalizer could be wrong.
A quick mental calculation deflates that possibility, and he toggles the UHF radio back to the ground crew’s frequency at Holloman, triggering a series of messages that end with the realization that someone screwed up big-time.
I don’t frigging believe this!he thinks, his heart pounding. Twenty years to practice and the one time we get a mission we blow it for insufficient fuel?
There’s no time to scare up a tanker. He runs the numbers again, the planned fuel burn during the antisatellite launch run and the fuel between now and then, plus the fuel back to the base.
They don’t match. If he uses the most fuel-efficient speed to hold, he’ll still flame-out on the way back down from launch altitude.
Okay, but can I dead-stick her back to the base?
The thought is chilling, shoving an engineless F-106 back through the stratosphere and stretching the energy enough to make the home runway.
But that, too, won’t work. He’d end up crashing in the desert fifty miles short or worse.
The call to the command post in the Pentagon is tough but crucial, and there’s a momentary flurry of confusion until a general comes on the line.
“Bluebird Two-Three, Stargazer. You do realize we have no other options on this mission?”
“Roger, Stargazer. I can’t believe we’re short. I don’t suppose there are any tankers airborne nearby?”
“Negative. We just looked at that, and there’s no time to go back. Can you make the launch work?”
“Yes, sir. That I can do, but I’ll flame out on the way down.”
“We’re considering a punch-out scenario here.”
Owen’s finger freezes on the transmit button for a few seconds. Punch out of a perfectly good F-106? Worse, a specially modified F-106? A hundred million dollars or more reduced to junk because one of his team failed to read the tanks?
Not acceptable,he tells himself.
“Stargazer, there’s an alternate airport below my flight path. Civilian and short, but I can probably make it in dead stick.”
“Which one?”
“Carlsbad Muni, sir.”
Silence for a few seconds before a cautious reply reaches his ears.
“Your choice, Bluebird Two-Three. You are authorized to leave the ship or take it in without power to Carlsbad. We’ll scramble a team there right now just in case.”
“Roger.”
“Hey, Bluebird… a personal note from an old fighter pilot, okay? Don’t wait too long if you have to leave her. Eject inside the envelope. Got it?”
“Roger, sir.”
Chapter 21
Satisfied that his parentals have quieted down at long last, Alastair Wood slides out of bed and quietly pads across the cold floor of his room. He pulls on a thick robe before sitting at his desk and firing up his most prized possession—a computer with a flat screen monitor and the high-speed Internet connection that was his main gift for his just-celebrated twelfth birthday.