Tomahawk (23 page)

It was long, narrow, and walled with equipment, eight by twenty at a guess, with a huge chair at each end, mounted on rails. Dark blue indoor/outdoor carpet, stained and mushy underfoot. Behind him, the flight commander said, “Doug, this is your universe. Why don't you tour him?”

“Right.” Geddes took him down the aisle. “Let's start this end. Beyond this wall is the generator. These chairs are from C-one forty-ones. You get a four-point harness so you can ride out the blast from an SS-eighteen. Air conditioning. Chemical-bacteriological-radiological filters. Emergency lighting. Everything's shock-mounted.” As he pointed to the racks and consoles, Dan noticed he was wearing a sidearm. “Recognize any of this?”

“Oh yeah.” He was looking at the same equipment he'd been sweating over to get installed in
New Jersey.

“We only had four billion to build this system, so we stole shit from everywhere. Those clocks up there are from Poseidon submarines. The sat comm's Army.” Manhurin leaned to a display. The same orange-on-black touch screens, Dan noted, that the Navy used. “Pull up the systern status. There we go.,.. We're going to drill this afternoon, then get a launch window and fire our first test round sometime after nightfall.”

“How's your experience with maintainability? We've had some problems.”

Geddes said they had bit losses on the fiber-optic cable; comm outages, especially on uncovered HF; and the electronic surge assemblies on the VHF tended to trip and blow up, which cut the comms between the flight commander and the security force. But the system worked reasonably well, considering it had been thrown together
from off-the-shelf components from different source activities. “Let's just say I've seen a lot worse. Like Titan, all bolts and tubes and hypergolics.”

“How about the DTDs?” The data transfer devices were the way the land-attack mission data got from the planning activity to the firing unit.

As if it helped him talk to have the equipment actually in his hand, Geddes reached down to slide it out of the RASS. The data transfer device was a rectangular box the size of a small suitcase, with a gray metal baseplate at the bottom. The sides and top were smoky plastic, through which Dan could see the platters.

“Only hitch is, we get head lockups occasionally. Your screen freezes; then you look in and the platters aren't spinning. I think it's the vibration does it.”

“How do you unlock it?”

Geddes glanced at Manhurin, who grinned, and the crew commander said, “Well, this isn't in the manual, okay? But it locked up back at Dugway, and we were taking it out to work on it, and one of my guys happened to drop it. So then we said, ‘hey, let's put it back in and see if it spins now.' And it did. So when it locks up, we take it out and knock it against the rack. Usually, that frees it up.”

When he'd seen enough of the LCC, Decker took him across a field, following what he said was a fiber-optic cable under the snow, to one of the transporter-erector-launchers. Beneath the tented camouflage, it was reminiscent of the armored box launcher, but mounted on a trailer, with a big German-made tractor up front. From there, the security officer took him past the support vehicles, the vehicle park, the fuel farm, the cluster of twenty-man tents where the guys lived in the field. Then he led him out into the winter woods, tramping slowly through crisp, squeaking snow. His breath crackled as the moisture in it froze.

“Halt. Password?”

Four ghosts rose from the ground. White oversuits, M 16s, grenade launchers. Behind them, the preying mantis crouch of a machine gun. Decker gave the password, then explained their perimeter deployment, the
ground radars, how they sited the vehicles and TELs. “In Europe, we're going to have to strike a balance between the ground threat and the air threat. If there're terrorists or Spetsnaz, we bring the perimeter in close. If things really go to shit, we fall back and go to close-in defense.

“Right now, we're set up for an attempt to infiltrate. Remember what I told you last night? About those Peace Posse types you were sippin' tea with?”

“That they were Commies. I still don't buy it.”

“Buy it or not, they're going to try to disrupt these tests. We have firm statements of intent. Idea is to pressure the Canadians to call them off. The Liberals have already passed an anticruise resolution. So they could actually poke a pretty big stick in our wheels…. Anything you feel like telling me?”

“No.”

“Want to play intruder tonight? We'll give you a night scope, see if you can penetrate our position.”

“Maybe some other time.”

When they got back, it was lunchtime. MREs—meals, ready to eat—and hot coffee. He talked to the techs and took notes, tips he could forward to
Merrill
and the battleships.

Finally, he went back to the tents and found his bunk. It felt strange to be staring up at green canvas, to hear the wind rattling the fabric, the hiss of a Coleman heater, instead of the steady hum and whir of a ship.

When he woke, it was dark. He checked his watch, afraid for a moment he'd missed everything, but the time reassured him. He pulled parka, boots, and gloves on again and left the tent.

The overcast sealed off the stars, and he crunched across the snow in darkness so complete, he had a moment of disorientation. He walked with his hands out, so he didn't run into any trees. Then he felt something yielding. He ducked under the camo netting and went up the steps into the van.

The red lights filled the interior with blood and shadows. Geddes and his second in command were strapped in. Manhurin wasn't around; he was probably in the flight
commander's vehicle, overseeing things. Dan found a folding chair, set it up in front of the launch console, and settled in to watch.

It was like the Navy launch control group, except that there weren't as many display terminals. One flat panel displayed different screens of data: weapons system status, mission status, missile status, calibration status. As the crew commander flicked through them, Dan leaned back, random screens of thought sequencing through his mind. Wondering if what Decker had told him about the protesters could be true. If it was, did it mean the same was true of Haneghen? Of Deborah and Ken, and the others whose motives seemed so pure and transparent?

Or was it just a smear? Defining the others as evil, and thus of necessity directed by what the leader of all just crusaders had called “the Evil Empire”?

Was he being enlightened? Or contaminated?

He sat musing as numbers flickered on a heatless screen.

“We're gonna take it from the start, just like a combat launch,” Geddes told him. “Here's the scenario. We dispersed a couple of days ago, been waiting for the word. And here it comes.” The Teletype began to clatter. Dan was taken aback; he'd expected something more high-tech, but the sergeant came over with a regular old highfreq message.

“Gimme the procedure book…. Okay, that breaks: Execute missile C-three on mission one thirteen. Your launch window is zero-two-ten-Zulu to zero-two-thirty-Zulu.” He glanced at the clock. “Pull out the authenticators. Here come the numbers.”

Plastic popped. “It's a match,” his second said from the far end of the trailer.

The deputy crew commander got busy on the radio, letting everyone know launch was imminent. “Double-check, make sure nobody's hanging around the TEL,” he added. Dan had an unpleasant vision of some unwary cook being blown into the trees.

“The security cops'll clear out the path downrange on the fly-out vector,” Geddes told him. “Likewise around
the back-blast area. That booster burns through the end of the canister, it sends a lot of shrapnel flying around. Okay, let's power up this sucker.”

There were seven steps to the alignment. Meanwhile Geddes was downloading the mission into the missile's guidance set. “Erecting the TEL.”

He read off the elevation, and stopped it at forty-five degrees.

“That's higher than our box elevates,” Dan said.

“We got to shoot over trees and hills. Okay, come on. .. .There it is. Alignment complete. Green missile on C-three.”

Geddes reported mission download. His assistant took his hands off the console, held them up like a chef contemplating a casserole ready for the oven. “That was expeditious. Seventeen minutes till window opens. Keep me honest on this, Dan.”

At 0208 military time, they started reading off the final checklist. One man set the touch screen and the other confirmed it before going on to the next step.

“Confirm mission load. Push mission IDT TEA. Confirm mission number against initiating message.”

“Confirm, one thirteen in the missile, one thirteen on the message.”

“Confirm within launch window.”

“Check, check, check.”

He'd expected something dramatic at the moment of putting a nuclear-capable missile into the air. But all that actually happened was that Geddes said casually, “Everything look good to you? Did Gene report back range clear? Prepare to launch. Three, two, one, press.” He laid his thumb firmly on the screen. At the far end of the van, his assistant did the same.

A sudden roar made the equipment judder in its racks. Dan flinched. Through it, he dimly heard Decker yell, “Missile away.”

He unlocked the door and swung himself under the camo net. The roar was already dwindling, but it was still so loud, he clapped his hands over his ears. He swept his gaze around above the trees as an acrid, powder-smoky cloud swept over him. Then saw it, a flickering, swiftly
rising white-orange meteor that winked out even as he glimpsed it, absorbed by the overcast night.

Yet still he stared upward, shielding his eyes. And for a suspended few seconds, it was as if, even though he couldn't see it, he was still riding with it, a ghost in the machine.

As the missile emerges from the canister, four tailfins pop out. But still the climbing rocket is steered, not by fins, but by thrust vector tabs that aim the flame of the booster exhaust like a yards-long torch.

At thirty seconds of violent acceleration, two or three nautical miles downrange, transitioning from pitch-up into level flight, the guidance set approaches a crucial decision. Both airspeed and attitude are critical for engine start. With only forty-two square inches of intake feeding an engine the size of a pony keg, the missile has to have an exact vector and velocity of airflow down the airframe.

There will only be one chance to start the engine.

At 475 nautical miles an hour, the guidance set decides it is within the envelope. The missile jerks as explosives fling the booster free. An instant later, the air scoop blows down into its flight position. Stubby, sharp wings snap out like switchblades. Another signal triggers the starter cartridge.

Alone in the darkness, the missile rocks at the threshold of flight, half rocket, half aircraft. Now it must fly, or surrender to the reign of gravity; arch ballistically downward, returning to the earth's embrace.

A roar, a whine, a trail of black smoke. The missile drops its tail, quests with its nose. Radar beams finger the darkness, tracing hill and valley with invisible cat whiskers. Within its computers, patterns flash.

Its long flight has begun.

The van door opened behind him, spilling red light. Figures looked skyward, as if they could tell something about the missile, already miles away.

“Looked like a good launch,” Dan said to the shadow he thought was Decker.

“Yeah, looked sweet. But a couple times we've had good launches, and then the thing goes bonkers.”

“Bonkers?” He'd read the summary stats on the Air Force shots, but he hadn't seen anything detailed.

“Sometimes you get a pitch-over, it flies for a while, then sort of falls out of the sky. It'll hit level-out and something happens. T-one ninety-six did that. Total wreck, the chute didn't deploy and it went into a canyon.”

Geddes joined them. “She's on her way,” he whispered. “Fly, baby, fly.”

They stood around watching the sky till it got too cold to endure, then dispersed. Dan trudged over to the telemetry van with Manhurin, but the men within motioned them angrily out. So they went back to the mess tent. After a thawing-out period, they ate more MREs off their laps, sitting on the bunks. Somebody went around bumming the miniature Tabasco bottles from the condiment packs. Then they just sat waiting.

It came in three hours later. Short and simple, relayed from the impact point via the AW ACS aircraft that had tracked the missile through the whole 2,200-kilometer flight.

GLCM C3 FLYING MISSION 113 TRACKED VISUALLY BY CF-18 THROUGH FINAL LEG. PASSED OVER AIM POINT TOKTOYAKTUK PENINSULA. RECOVERED BY PARACHUTE.

“There it is,” said Manhurin, getting up. “Good work, everybody. Especially the maintenance guys.”

Dan joined them in smiles and handshakes. After all this work, to actually see the thing fly, to know it could do the job! But almost instantly, from what felt like another half of his brain, a darker thought quenched his ela. tion. Was this really something to celebrate?

He went to bed and stared for a long time at the canvas, stretched close and taut and dark above his face like an already-fitted shroud.

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