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Authors: David Hagberg

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During a sixty- to ninety-day mission, every man aboard the boat was allowed to receive a three-hundred character message from a loved one ashore every ten days. Called
familygrams
, the messages were vetted by the squadron commanders at Pearl to make sure they contained nothing disturbing; no Dear Johns, nothing about serious family problems, financial troubles, illnesses. The men aboard a submarine, isolated from the outside world, needed to hear only good things.

Since the messages were so short, everyone had their own abbreviations and personal codes. Entire family sagas were boiled down to a few lines.

S&B BOY 2/3 ALL FINE: DAN BRCS OUT: SCCR FINAL CHAMPS: HSTN TRIP ON: BGSCRNTV

YR BDAY: CAR OK FALSE ALARM: YR MOM HERE FOR S&B: DAD GLFNG EVERYDY: BBQ FR SDY'S

ANNV….

Shirley and Ben had a baby boy on February third and everyone was doing fine. Their son Danny had his braces out. The Tigers soccer team won at finals, and as state champs they were going to Houston, Texas in March for the nationals. His wife had bought him a big-screen TV for his birthday, which was yesterday. Their car, which they thought had a problem with the transmission, was okay. But buried in that part of the message were the words
false alarm
. On the way down to the boat for this cruise they had discussed the car's repair problem. He had told his wife to get it fixed immediately, no matter what it cost. They thought that she was pregnant and that she would be needing reliable transportation the closer she got to her due date. But her pregnancy was a
false alarm.
His parents had come out to Honolulu for the birth of Shirley's baby. As expected, his dad went golfing every day. Sandy and Josh, their best friends, were having their eighth anniversary, and his wife threw a backyard BBQ for them…and more.

Familygrams were the high points of a crewman's week. Cutting them off would be a hardship.

There were a few raised eyebrows, but no one uttered a word. As the CO said, there were no options this time.

“The second item that you need to know was loaded aboard at Pearl. The two Tomahawks are TLAMs. Land-attack missiles. And they are nuclear.”

Someone whistled softly. Attack submarines very rarely carried nuclear weapons since the end of the cold war. No matter how perfect the fail-safe systems were, something could go wrong. Either the accidental launch of a nuke, or an accidental detonation of one aboard the submarine. It could possibly even happen while the submarine was in a friendly port.

The ramifications would be nothing short of catastrophic for the U.S.

“What are our targets, skipper?” Lieutenant Jablonski, their weapons officer, asked. His expression was unreadable, but he was not unhappy. Dr. Death was on the prowl, this time with the real thing.

“Pakistan's military command headquarters at Chaklala, and Chardar Air Force Base where their nuclear weapons assembly facility is located.” Dillon let that sink in. “We'll get authorization to release via ELF. It should be the only comms we receive for the duration.”

This was news to Bateman, who immediately understood the implication of their orders. ELF, or extremely low frequency, was a method for communicating with submarines while they were submerged. It was very slow; it took fifteen minutes to send one group of three letters. There was a lot of room for errors and miscommunications.

The president or secretary of state was going to tell the Pakistanis to back off. By developing a thermonuclear device, and by blatantly testing it aboveground, the balance of power between India and Pakistan had undergone a very large change, and the Pakistanis were thumbing their noses at their neighbor.

A war was possible, even likely, now.

The
Seawolf
, armed with nuclear weapons, was being sent out not only to make sure the
Jupiter
satellite and the
Discovery
astronauts fixing it weren't fired at, but to prevent such a war.

Seawolf
was going to be used as the ultimate “big stick.” The message from Washington to Islamabad would be precise: Deploy your nukes and Pakistan will be subject to immediate nuclear attack.

Dillon caught the look of understanding in his XO's eyes and he nodded. Bateman also understood Dillon's dour mood.

“The last item is the reason behind the tight security at Pearl and the reason for our comms blackout. Our actual mission is known only to a very small handful of people. As far as everyone else is concerned
Seawolf
departed on her normal patrol at robin redbreast.” He looked at his people.

“If we get into trouble we're on our own. No one will come to rescue us, because no one will know where we are. The route to our AO was left to my discretion.” AO was area of operation. “Our lives might depend on it.”

“Not from a Kilo boat, skipper,” Bateman said, frowning.

But Dillon looked at him and nodded. “If she had the advantage of knowing that we were coming. And when.”

“How?”

“There's a spy in the Pentagon. In the navy, maybe operations, maybe even someone in one of the joint chiefs' offices. If he knew that we were on our way, the advantage would definitely
not
be ours.”

2

1100 LOCAL
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER

“So when the hell were you going to tell us, Paul?” air force Maj. Susan Wright demanded. “Launch morning?”

She had ridden out this morning with Paul Thoreau to watch
Discovery
moving ponderously toward launchpad B. STS140's mission profile, its
entire
mission profile, had shown up on NASA's special projects Web site this morning. No one knew who'd put it there.

Thoreau stopped the NASA pickup truck at the crawler way intersection to wait for the shuttle to catch up. It was a hundred yards behind and moving slowly.

“I didn't have to tell you anything, because the problem's not going to affect the mission,” he said. He got out of the truck and leaned against the fender.

Susan Wright climbed out and stormed around the front of the truck to him. She was a head taller than Thoreau, and was the mission pilot. And she was very good. During a competion between the air force's top fliers and navy fighter pilots at a joint top gun school two years ago she had come out on top. It was the women pilots' turn to stick it to the jocks, and she never let anyone forget that she was the best.

“I'd consider someone shooting at us with a laser weapon is a problem that could put a serious damper on a good day,” she said. She'd picked up the nickname Mighty Mouse after
Top Gun.
It was shortened to Mouse, and she hated it, but she never let on.

“They won't be shooting at us, Mouse. It's the satellite they want.”

The crawler's tracks crushed the gravel in the broad roadway, making noises like pistol shots over the roar of the diesel engines.

“Not much comfort if they miss and put one through a fuel tank,” she argued. Thoreau was watching the oncoming shuttle. He turned to her.

“Look, whoever is doing the shooting is good. They've already blinded three of our satellites by shooting out their optics and electronics packages. That's pinpoint accuracy. They
will
not be gunning for us.”

“Unless we happen to get in their way,” Mouse Wright said. She glanced over at
Discovery
. “Wouldn't take much of a hole at just the right spot to put us into some serious shit, that's all I'm saying.”

She took off her aviator's glasses and put them in one of the zippered pockets in her NASA blue jumpsuit. She was an attractive woman, with short blond hair, and fine features.

The sky was clouding over, but no serious weather was expected for another twenty-four hours. By then
Discovery
would be safely out at the pad, ready for launch in twelve days.

“Do you want to back out?” Thoreau asked. “You have the option. It won't reflect on your NASA record.”

She shook her head after a moment. “What about Don and the others?”

“I haven't talked to them yet. I just found out myself this morning. We're still trying to find out how the hell that part of the mission statement got put on the Web. But I'd hazard a guess that Leavenworth might be the next address of whoever the hell did it.”

Air force captains Donald Wirtanen and Rodney Conners were payload specialists on this mission. Along with their civilian crew member, Dr. Tom Ellis, they were originally scheduled to deliver a large load of supplies and construction equipment to space station alpha.

Ellis, who was a space medicine and zero-G physiologist, would help implement a long-term nutrition and exercise program for the resident astronauts.

Those missions were still a go. But the
Jupiter
repair mission had top priority. All the way from the Oval Office. And it was that part of the information on the Web site that most baffled Thoreau. There weren't many people who knew.

Thoreau watched the oncoming shuttle in silence for a couple of minutes. The fact of the matter was that he hadn't planned on informing the crew about the laser problem until forty-eight hours before liftoff. At that point they would be isolated from the media.

Bob Bishop had added that stipulation. “I'll back you all the way,” he'd said. “But we have to keep this quiet. The fewer who know about the real problem, the better it's going to be for you.”

“I'd like to give my crew the same chance to back out that the president gave me,” Thoreau had argued.

“That'll be their option right up to T-minus five hours. I can promise you that much.”

“That doesn't make any sense, Bob, unless a second crew has been trained.”

“There are always replacements standing by, you know that.”

“I'm talking about the people trained for the repair mission,” Thoreau shot back.

Bishop shrugged. “It's a military problem. If your crew can't or won't handle it, someone else will.”

Thoreau had almost backed out then and there, except for one trait of his: it was something he sometimes thought of as a character flaw. It was his superman complex. Truth, justice, and the American way. The president had asked for his help and he had given his word. Nothing could make him back out.

“There'll be an MA briefing, won't there?” Mouse Wright asked. MA was
military aspects
.

“Yeah,” Thoreau replied without taking his eyes off
Discovery
. She was beautiful, even clamped to the crawler. Ready to fly.

“When?”

“Soon.”

“When?” Mouse insisted.

Thoreau looked at her. “Four o'clock this afternoon.”

“Good,” she said. “We'll be there. And if someone tries to keep us out I'll withdraw and I think I'll be able to convince the others to do the same.”

“Like I said, Mouse, that's your option.”

“Goddammit, Paul. I'm not fooling around here. Our lives are at stake. It's tough enough achieving orbit without something going wrong that can kill us. I want to know exactly what we're up against. If you can't trust me—trust your crew—to keep the information secret, then how the hell can you trust us to get you up there?”

Thoreau had imagined this exact conversation, but not for another eleven days. She was correct, of course. And Bishop was just going to have to see it their way. If NASA tried to replace his crew they would have to replace him as well.

He nodded. “You're right, Mouse. But no flash photography or tape recordings.”

She grinned. “I read you loud and clear, Colonel.”

1600 LOCAL
KSC ADMINISTRATION HEADQUARTERS

A dozen senior military officers and a few civilians were seated around the long conference table in the director's briefing room when Thoreau walked in with his crew.

They took their places across from the mission director, who nodded curtly, and then got up and went to the podium at the head of the room.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Scott Buzby, I am STS one-forty mission director. Let's get the introductions out of the way and then get started. We have a lot of material to go over.”

Most of the officers were air force and navy intelligence; several worked for the National Reconnaisance Office, which was run by the air force and which controlled the entire constellation of U.S. spy satellites. The
Jupiter
series was not their newest birds in orbit, but they were important.

The civilians worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.

John Galt, seated third from the end by the door, could sense the underlying tension amongst the astronauts. But he knew what the cause was, because he had given it to them.

Putting the
Jupiter
mission repair parameters on NASA's Web site had been fairly easy to do. Just the nudge, he hoped, to get someone to slip up.

The president had promised Colonel Thoreau that STS 140 would get help. Galt wanted to know who was going to help, and in what form that help was going to take.

With any luck, he thought, he'd have the answer to both of those questions before he left this room.

BOOK: By Dawn's Early Light
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