“Not in my judgment, sir. It was—”
“So you fired a missile at it, and it returned fire, and you then hit it with a radioactive beam of some sort, correct?”
“No, sir.” But something was wrong. Patrick looked at the camera, but seemed to be having trouble focusing. “It…we didn’t…”
“So what happened?”
“Mr. President, the MiG fired on us first,” Boomer interjected. “The Vampire just defended itself, nothing more.”
“Who is that?” the President asked the National Security Adviser. He turned to the camera, his eyes bulging in anger. “Who are you? Identify yourself!”
“I’m Captain Hunter Noble,” Boomer said, getting to his feet, staring in shock at the image of Patrick being helped by Lukas, “and why the hell don’t you stop badgering us? We’re only doing our jobs!”
“What did you say to me?” the President thundered. “Who the hell are you to talk to me like that? General Bain, I want him fired! I want him discharged!”
“Master Sergeant, what’s going on?” Bain shouted, ignoring the President. “What’s happening to Patrick?”
“He’s having trouble breathing, sir.” She found a nearby intercom switch: “Medical detail to the command module! Emergency!” And then she terminated the videoconference with a keypress on the communications control keyboard.
“McLanahan is having a heart attack?” the President exclaimed after the video images from the space station cut off. “I knew he shouldn’t be up in that thing! General Bain, what kind of medical facilities do they have up there?”
“Basic, sir: just a medically trained technician and first aid equipment. We’ve never had anyone have a heart attack on an American military spacecraft.”
“Great. Just fucking great.” The President passed a hand through his hair in sheer frustration. “Can you get a doctor and some medicine and equipment up there right away?”
“Yes, sir. The Black Stallion spaceplane can rendezvous with the space station in a couple hours.”
“Get on it. And terminate those bomber missions over Iran. No more cruise missile shots until I know for sure what happened.”
“Yes, sir.” Bain’s videoconference link cut off.
The President sat back in his chair, loosened his tie, and lit up a cigarette. “What a clusterfuck,” he breathed. “We kill a bunch of innocent civilians in Tehran with a hypersonic missile fired from an unmanned bomber controlled from a military space station; Russia is screaming mad at us; and now the hero of the American Holocaust has a damned heart attack in space! What’s next?”
“McLanahan’s situation might turn out to be a blessing in disguise, Joe,” Chief of Staff Walter Kordus said. He and Carlyle had known Joseph Gardner since their years in college and Kordus was one of the few allowed to ever address the President by his first name. “We’ve been looking for ways to cut funding for the space station despite its popularity in the Pentagon and Capitol Hill, and this might be it.”
“But it has to be done delicately — McLanahan is too popular with the people to be used as an excuse to cut his favorite program, especially since he’s been touting it all over the world as the next big thing, the impregnable fortress, the ultimate watchtower, yada yada yada,” the President said. “We have to get some congressmen to raise the question of safety on that space station, and if it needs to be manned at all in the first place. We’ll have to ‘leak’ this incident to Senator Barbeau, the Armed Services Committee, and a few others.”
“That won’t be hard,” Kordus said. “Barbeau will know how to stir things up without slamming McLanahan.”
“Good. After it comes out in the press, I want to meet with Barbeau privately to discuss strategy.” Kordus tried hard to control his discomfort at that order. The President noted his friend and chief political adviser’s warning tenseness and added quickly, “Everyone’s going to have their hand out for the money once we start the idea of killing that space station, and I want to control the begging, whining, and arm-twisting.”
“Okay, Joe,” Kordus said, not convinced by the President’s hasty explanation, but not wanting to press the issue. “I’ll set it up.”
“You do that.” He took a deep drag of his cigarette, crushed it out, then added, “And we need to get our ducks in a row soon, just in case McLanahan kicks the bucket and Congress kills his program before we can divvy up his budget.”
CHAPTER THREE
One does what one is; one becomes what one does.
“No bread, no peace! No bread, no peace!” the protesters chanted over and over again. It seemed the crowd, now numbering around two or three hundred, was growing bigger and exponentially louder by the minute.
“If they have no bread, where do they get all the energy to stand out here and protest?” Colonel Mostafa Rahmati, commander of the Fourth Infantry Brigade, muttered as he studied the security barriers and observed the crowds getting ever closer. Just two weeks earlier, Rahmati, a short, rather round man with bushy dark hair that seemed to grow thickly across every inch of his body except the top of his head, was executive officer of a transportation battalion, but the way commanding officers were disappearing — presumably killed by insurgents, although no one could rule out desertion — promotions came quickly and urgently in the army of the presumptive Democratic Republic of Persia.
“More smoke,” one of Rahmati’s lookouts reported. “Tear gas, not an explosion.” Seconds later, they heard a loud bang! strong enough to rattle the windows of the airport office building he and his senior staff members were seated in. The lookout sheepishly glanced at his commanding officer. “A small explosion, sir.”
“So I gather,” Rahmati said. He didn’t want to show any displeasure or exasperation — two weeks ago he wouldn’t have been able to tell a grenade explosion from a loud fart. “Watch the lines carefully — it could be a diversion.”
Rahmati and his staff were on the upper floor of an office building that once belonged to the Iranian Ministry of Transportation at Mehrabad International Airport. Since the military coup and the start of the Islamist insurgency against the military government in Iran, the coup leaders had decided to take over Mehrabad Airport and had established a tight security perimeter around the entire area. Although most of the city east of Tehran University had been left to the insurgents, taking over the airport turned out to be a wise decision. The airport was already highly secure; the open spaces around the field were easy to patrol and defend; and the airport could be kept open to receive and send supplies by air.
Besides, it was often pointed out, if the insurgents ever got the upper hand — which could be any day now — it would be that much easier to get the hell out of the country.
The windows rattled again, and heads turned farther southeast along Me’raj Avenue northeast toward Azadi Square, about two kilometers away, where another billow of smoke, this one topped with a crown of orange fire, suddenly rose. Bombings, arson, intentional accidents, mayhem, and frequent suicide bombings were commonplace in Tehran, and none more common than the area between Mehrabad Airport, Azadi Square, and the famous Freedom Tower, the erstwhile “Gateway to Iran.” Freedom Tower, first called Shahyad Tower, or the King’s Tower, commemorating the two thousand five hundredth anniversary of the Persian Empire, was built in 1971 by Shah Reza Pahlavi as a symbol of the new, modern Iran. The tower was renamed after the Islamic Revolution and, like the U.S. Embassy, was seen more as a symbol of the decadent monarchy and a warning to the people not to embrace the Western enemies of Islam. The square became a popular area for anti-Western demonstrations and speeches and so became a symbol of the Islamic revolution, which was probably why the marble-clad monument to Iran’s last monarchy was never torn down.