service module, which had all of the systems and equipment to support the spacecraft and also provided storage space. The payload also contained a docking module.
The launch was a complete success, and Shenzhou-10 entered its orbit in perfect synchronization with SZ-7. It would take just two orbits to close the distance between them, and then docking would commence. That would double the size and personnel aboard China ’s first military space station, Tiangong-1…
…which happened to be in precisely the same orbit as Armstrong Space Station.
TEN
The most rewarding things you do in life are often the ones that look like they cannot be done.
– ARNOLD PALMER
SOCOTRA ISLAND, REPUBLIC OF YEMEN
A SHORT TIME LATER
Whack waited until two A.M. before venturing outside via the back patio and roof of the house. He made careful scans of the area with the Tin Man suit’s millimeter-wave radar, infrared sensor, and sound amplifiers. Sure enough, there was a car parked about thirty yards east of the driveway, tucked behind a tree, with a view of the Range Rover parked at the base of the lighthouse.
“One tail on the main highway,” he radioed to Patrick McLanahan via his secure satellite transceiver built into the Tin Man armor.
“How many observers?” Patrick asked.
Through his telescopic low-light sensor he could see a lone white-skinned occupant in the vehicle, smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper, with what appeared to be a camera with a long lens on a monopod. “One. Distracted. Good time to leave.”
“Roger.”
Whack dropped off the house, then down the embankment to the shore. He ran until he saw lights from a fishing boat, then climbed back up the rocky ledge and scanned again. He was out of the line of sight of the surveillance car, and the way was clear, so he went south of the highway, scanned again, then started running west toward Socotra Airport. The terrain was rocky and barren, with few places to hide, but it would make it easy to spot pursuers or locals. The land rose steeply at first, then dropped into narrow crevasses and then smoothed out to vast wastelands. Running and jumping would’ve been easier closer to the ocean, but he wanted to avoid fishermen and patrols.
“It’s getting more rugged farther west,” he radioed. Northeast of the town of Qadub, he found himself running up a large plateau that rose precipitously a thousand feet above him to his left. He stopped to scan the area and check battery levels. “Damn, I’m already down to fifty percent,” he radioed, “and I’m only halfway there.”
“You got the second set of batteries?” Patrick asked.
“Yes, but I might have to risk returning via the coastline and avoid this terrain on the way back if I’m burning watts like this.”
“We might need a third set of batteries?”
“I thought of that, but I also thought it might arouse suspicion-that’s an awful lot of weights for a beefy saltwater diver. I’ll be more careful.”
From his premission target study, he knew he had to cross the highway east of Qadub, because the plateau dropped quickly south and east of town. Locals in Qadub seemed to be having some sort of festival or mass gathering. The town was actually split into three neighborhoods, divided by the highway and by the dirt road leading from the main part of town to the sea: the fishing village near the ocean, the town itself south of the highway, and a cluster of farms and orchards to the west. South of town was impassable-the town sat at the base of two sheer plateaus. The only way around was a narrow strip of sand north of the highway and south of the fishing community.
Whack knew he was in trouble the minute he scanned the area around the town. “I don’t friggin’ believe it,” he radioed.
“What?” Patrick asked.
“It looks like they’re having a fiesta or something down there,” Whack said. The townspeople were actually holding a procession from town to the fishing community along the dirt road! “I just got reminded again of the commando’s ‘Six Ps’: Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.”
“Abort and try tomorrow night,” Patrick suggested.
He was 3.4 miles to his objective and still on time. “The procession looks like it’s just getting started,” Whack radioed. “It’s the middle of the night, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you people sleep?”
“It’s a weekend-long party celebrating the beginning of the fishing season,” Patrick said. “I just Googled it. They’ll be out there tomorrow night, too.”
“Great.” He could see lights being carried by townspeople, but through his infrared sensors he could see that not everyone was carrying lights, so the procession was quite long-probably a couple hundred people in all. There was absolutely no place to hide north of the highway.
“I’m going to go for it,” Whack said. “I’ll pick a gap in the procession, jump over the dirt road, and hope to get lost in the darkness.”
“Too risky, Whack,” Patrick said. “If someone sees you, they’ll certainly alert the police, who would alert the Yemeni army border patrol, who would undoubtedly alert the Russians. Better off not pushing a bad situation. You got a couple more nights to-”
“Wait!” Whack exclaimed. At that moment the skies to his right over the ocean erupted in a shower of rockets and sparkles. “Fireworks! They’re having a friggin’ late-night fireworks show at the fishing village!” The people on the dirt road began running toward the sea, and in minutes the road was clear. A quick scan showed the area clear for two hundred yards in all directions. “How about that, boss? Looks like it’s clear.” He didn’t even need to jump the highway-that would have highlighted him against the fireworks in the sky. He simply sprinted across the sandy marsh, across the road, and straight ahead north of the highway, halfway up a gentle sandy dune leading to the highway. There were a few homes on the crest of the dune overlooking the ocean, but if anybody was home, they’d probably-hopefully-be looking up at the fireworks, not down toward the beach.
Another three-mile run, and soon he was at Socotra Airport. “I made it, boss,” he radioed. He made his way east of the airport and up a gentle rise to just outside a very large rectangular fenced compound situated on a rocky plateau overlooking the airport. During World War II, this compound had been a British prisoner-of-war camp, and then became a British military headquarters and radar site after the war until they withdrew from Yemen in the late 1960s. When the Soviet Union was invited by the Communist Democratic People’s Republic of Yemen to use port facilities in Aden in the 1970s, the Soviets took over the Socotra facility, enlarged and modernized it, and turned it into first an observation post, then a sea-and air-scanning radar facility, and finally into a combined space tracking facility and intelligence-gathering site, listening in on transmissions from space and from ships transiting the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean. It was again modernized and enlarged two years ago, when the United States started expanding its Space Defense Force satellite network.
The twelve-foot-tall perimeter fence was brightly illuminated. “Just as our intel said,” Whack radioed. “Roving patrol on the west side, guard towers at the corners. The objective is in sight.” It was right in the center of the compound, mounted near and below a large radome: a 150-foot-diameter steerable open latticework dish antenna, pointed almost straight up.
A lot of times, the first sight of the objective made commandos anxious and excited, and it was vital to squelch that feeling and stick with the plan. The most important thing was not to alert the Russians to the point where they would shut down the transmitter or inspect the antenna. They were already alerted to Whack’s presence by the inspector at the airport, and they had probably assumed this was his objective.
He moved to his planned entry point on the east side of the facility, the farthest away from the airport, then
