Red Hammer 1994 (4 page)

“General Morgan has been here since 0500,” the colonel said over his shoulder.

Air Force General Anthony Morgan had been Commander in Chief, US Space Command (USCINCSPACE) for over two years. As such, he was responsible for all US military space activities, including the launch and operation of all military satellites. Dual hatted as Commander in Chief, North American Aerospace Defense Command, his men and women manned NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain complex, nerve center of the nation’s extensive early warning and space-tracking networks. Pundits tagged him as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs-space was a hot area these days. Thomas couldn’t argue the point. Morgan was politically connected and had punched all the right tickets.

The colonel escorted Thomas to an out-of-the-way conference room where Morgan was seated alone with a mug of coffee in hand, reading a stack of message traffic. He was a big man, who had lost his hair but not his contagious smile. Too many years of desk duty had added a slight paunch to his once-athletic frame. He stood as they entered, smiling broadly.

“Bob, good to see you,” he greeted, extending his beefy hand. He towered over his average-sized guest. “It’s been quite a while.”

“Good to see you, General,” Thomas replied, receiving a firm shake.

“How was your trip?” Morgan added.

“Fine, sir.” Thomas unbuttoned his blue overcoat and tossed it on the polished oak conference table. “We had a smooth flight.”

“Well, tell me, how’d it go?” asked Morgan, his tone more serious.

Thomas scowled. “We barely made it. Dealing with NASA is a real pain in the ass. We came within a whisker of scrubbing the mission. And the weather for tomorrow is rotten; a storm’s moving in. We could’ve blown the whole laser test.”

Morgan nodded in agreement. The air force detested depending on the on-again, off-again shuttle team. The habitual delays were getting more frequent and played havoc with critical launch schedules. If it were up to Morgan, he’d scrap the entire fleet of flying dinosaurs and put them out to pasture in NASA’s stable of fancy visitor centers with the rest of the early space-years relics.

“How about the reporters?” Morgan asked. “They were pestering me all week. I got the feeling they were damn close, especially that one from the Washington bureau of
Aviation Week
, a nosy bastard, I forget his name.”

“Don’t think so, sir,” replied Thomas, leaning against a side table. “Just the usual stuff, guessing the payload and the orbital parameters. The consensus seemed to be an operational test of a new radar satellite.”

“Good,” said Morgan. “Want coffee?”

“No, thanks,” said Thomas, holding up his hand. He planned to get some sleep.

The big man walked over to a Formica countertop separating the conference room from a small galley. He grabbed a dingy Pyrex pot and topped off his mug. The strong aroma quickly filled the room, sending a pleasurable jolt through Thomas. Morgan grew serious.

“I talked to the people at Vandenberg; everything’s on track. They’ve beefed up security without raising undue suspicion, or so they tell me. All the telemetry stations are ready.” Morgan drew long and hard on his mug, wincing as the brew passed muster.

“We’re going to have quite an audience tomorrow for the show. CINCs or their deputies, senior service reps, and top civilians from the labs.”

“It should be impressive,” said Thomas, not sounding convinced.

“We have high hopes on this one.” Morgan flushed. “Could be the breakthrough we’ve all been praying for.” CINCSPACE cocked his head. “Something bothering you, Bob?”

Thomas hesitated. This wasn’t really the time, but it had to be said. He leaned against a swivel chair braced against the table. “I had time to think on the plane,” he said. “Timing could be off on this. The Russians have been irritable as hell lately. Laptev outdid himself yesterday. Called for the dismemberment of Ukraine. The Poles are scared; the Germans are scared; everyone’s scared. If the Russians detect the test, we could have hell to pay.”

Morgan’s brow knitted. “Are you suggesting we call off the test? After all we’ve accomplished?” Morgan stepped closer. “Laptev’s a blowhard, a one-man show.”

Thomas raised his palms in surrender. “No, sir, of course we can’t call it off. But the secretary has similar concerns, especially about the Russians’ surveillance capabilities.” Most military men had written off the hapless Russians and their crumbling space-surveillance assets, but not Thomas.

Morgan began to pace. “The Russians have a huge gap in coverage with one of their large space-surveillance radars down for maintenance. The rest of their system is marginal. Based on our computer models, we’re confident the test will be undetected. Besides, the Russians have absolutely no inkling of the breakthrough we’ve achieved. The total payload for
Discovery
is less than fifty thousand pounds, far less than any current estimates for an operational space-based laser system. It will be impossible for the Russians to put all the pieces together.”

The answer sounded too well-rehearsed, but Thomas held his tongue.

“Seriously, Bob, we’ve thought this through very carefully. We’ve had extensive surveillance of Vandenberg for weeks. The CIA has been closely monitoring Russian intelligence-gathering activities, especially the status of their other surveillance assets. They don’t have much left, Bob. We don’t anticipate problems. You can assure Secretary Alexander of that. I already have.” The last comment signaled that Morgan had heard enough dissension. Thomas let it go. It was late.

Thomas’s silence was the response Morgan desired. The conversation was over. “I know you want to hit the rack. I appreciate you stopping by.” Morgan’s hand shot out again.

“Good night, General Morgan.”

Morgan smiled his response. “A car will pick you up at the door at 0730 for the ride to Falcon.”

The colonel gestured at the door with his right arm. “Follow me please, General Thomas.”

The morning broke bright and clear, and the magnificent snow-capped Rockies were framed in the distance by Thomas’s frost-covered BOQ window. Thomas had thoroughly enjoyed the extra two hours picked up by traveling west. He used it to casually shower and shave and even took time to read the morning paper, which was delivered to his door.

The day’s action was at the Consolidated Space Operations Center (CSOC) residing at Falcon Air Force Base northeast of Peterson, set in the open plains of Colorado. First conceived in the early 1980s, it was now the hub for all military activities in space, pulsing with constant activity. Falcon also served as the site for the National Test Bed, a super-secret computer simulation center. It was the most powerful concentration of computing power in the free world outside the NSA at Fort Meade in Maryland.

The pleasant ride to the CSOC took less than twenty minutes through flat, open country. The morning was bitter cold for April, and the remnants of an unseasonable snowstorm clung to patches of ground bordering the highway.

“Crazy weather,” commented the same colonel from the night before, “the first part of April was beautiful with temperatures in the low seventies, and the next thing you know, we get a blizzard. The locals tell me this can happen as late as May. I’m new here.”

Thomas smiled. “I know,” he said. “I was stationed here six years ago. Loved it.”

He leaned back in the sedan’s seat, admiring the breathtaking scenery. It had a soothing effect, bringing back pleasant memories of his last operational tour before being thrust back into the insanity of the beltway.

Bob Thomas had cut his teeth as a highly decorated air force fighter pilot. Commissioned through Officer Training School in Texas, he had fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one’s view, caught the tail end of the Vietnam War flying over two hundred sorties in an F-4 out of Korat, Thailand. He never lost an aircraft over enemy territory, but had been shot up twice by heavy ground fire. On the second such occasion, he barely made it back to base, smoke pouring from his starboard engine, hunks of his elevators shot away. Slamming hard on the runway, he had skidded off and decapitated a grove of palm trees. He walked away without a scratch, much to the amazement of the frantic crash crew rushing to his rescue. His later career followed the fast track, all the way to early selection for lieutenant colonel and the coveted prize of a commanding officer’s slot of an F-15 Eagle squadron in Germany. He could do no wrong, a “head and shoulders” officer with an impeccable reputation.

But a freak accident cut short his dream command and almost his charmed life. One hot summer afternoon, an engine flameout during takeoff in a newly reworked F-15 sent him plunging into the dense tree line adjacent to the base perimeter. He luckily punched out just seconds before the fully fueled jet exploded into an orange fireball that roiled the forest. Far too close to the earth, his main chute never fully deployed. He was sent twisting and flailing into a tall pine. His broken and gashed body was rushed to the base hospital, where the expert medical staff saved his life, but not his career. A smashed pelvis left him with a distinctive limp, and a tree branch cleanly sliced his cheek open like raw meat. He lay in the hospital for weeks, depressed and despondent, nursing himself back to health, but destined never to fly his beloved fighters again. A replacement for squadron commanding officer was named before he ever left the hospital.

Transferred to DC, Thomas had begun what was for him a series of dreary, unpleasant staff assignments, some air force, some Joint. He continued to excel based on hard work and a stellar reputation for getting the dirty jobs done, but he fought the system at every turn and made his life miserable. His running mates had won the right to command air wings, while he languished behind a desk, beset by mind-numbing drudgery. It was tough to stomach. He wasn’t sure what kept him going through those rocky years, although most certainly his wife played the central role. His beautiful, strong, caring wife, who gently encouraged and cajoled, was always sensitive to the hurt left by the cold, official termination from flight status and the scars that still haunted his body. When he felt too sorry for himself, she would give it to him with both barrels.

Making brigadier general had been a watershed. His peers called it a miracle. That prized milestone signaled a continued career in uniform and wiped away any residual self-pity and doubt. He was a military man to the core, and he knew it.

His current duty assignment had been serendipitous. A close friend, now in the government, had introduced him to the current secretary of defense years earlier when the friend and Secretary Alexander were both still in private industry. Thomas was on his way to Colorado Springs for a tour as a watch commander in the Missile Warning Center at Cheyenne Mountain. He fell into an unplanned lunch with the two in Alexandria. They had enjoyed a lively discussion about the course of events in Russia, with Alexander optimistic and Thomas pessimistic. Alexander was noticeably impressed with Thomas’s lack of rigid dogmatism, which crippled so many bureaucrats, military and civilian alike. Later, as a two star on the Air Staff, he was unexpectedly tapped out of the blue as Alexander’s senior military advisor. The secretary hadn’t forgotten the tough-looking general with the scarred face who spoke his mind.

With the new job came a third star. He rose in seniority over forty or fifty general officers in the air force, not the best way to make friends among the senior-officer corp. Friends told him it was a guaranteed stepping stone to four stars and a major air force or unified command. The old luck had returned in spades.

Thomas found the job exhilarating. He felt renewed after years in the bureaucratic trenches, fighting narrowly focused air force budget battles. He was a big-picture man. The world he and Secretary Alexander now faced was startlingly different from the unparalleled drama, breathtaking euphoria, and plain giddiness that gripped the planet early in the decade. Ice-cold reality had hammered home with a vengeance. The epochal upheavals in the world’s supposedly rigid power structure left everyone breathless and cultivated a breeding ground for international mischief.

In retrospect, that wonderful period in American history had been an aberration. It started with the brilliant Desert Storm victory romp through Kuwait and Iraq. The Soviet Union had been relegated to a bit player, a helpless onlooker, struggling to stay in one piece. The United States had emerged as the undisputed master of the universe. After years of procrastination, the START I treaty was successfully negotiated and later amended by START II for even deeper reductions. The treaties promised massive cuts in the superpower nuclear arsenals, the first ever. Conventional forces were dissolving on both sides of the quickly forgotten Iron Curtain. Fledgling democratically elected governments in Eastern Europe struggled for life, but the atmosphere was electric. Anything seemed possible. Even the bankrupt and beaten Soviets—now Russians—appeared on the tortuous road to real economic reform and the beginnings of some sort of democracy. The once frightening prospect for a major East/West confrontation was proscribed from acceptable Washington cocktail party chitchat, and the threat of a nuclear showdown ranked up there with the probability of a comet striking the earth. Even the antinuclear movement gave up the ghost, convinced that mankind was on the golden road to reason and universal nuclear disarmament. The Cold War was clearly over; the ranting of a few surviving anticommunist curmudgeons in the Capitol was no matter. Their days were numbered.

Then the clumsy Soviet coup attempt by Stalinist dreamers momentarily turned the world on its head. At first it seemed as if the clock had been instantly rolled back ten years. Faceless Soviet hard-liners made ridiculous pronouncements that presaged an instant return to the Cold War. Battered Marxist/Leninist holdout regimes around the world cheered, but just as quickly the hapless conspirators were behind bars. The party was disgraced, and the military ran for cover, wearing their apparent indifference to the plotters as a sign of fidelity. The abortive coup unleashed decades of pent-up resentment and hatred, accelerating the Soviet state dismemberment to breakneck speed.