scientist and engineer couldn’t believe his N1RTSats were being used in an actual operation that was part of America’s response to a nuclear explosion. What better endorsement could Sky Masters, Inc., ask for than from the U.S. government in a crisis situation? Unfortunately, his other Sky Masters colleagues had been less than enthusiastic. After General Curtis of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had given the go-ahead, the government presented Masters with a request for six satellites and two boosters ASAP-a contract worth $300 million. It was all on a handshake and letter of intent, and Helen Kaddiri, as a board member, was especially vocal about taking satellites contracted for by other buyers and selling them to the government. Masters check to see if all pages have been scanned. They had had to do some hard lobbying, but the board-even Kaddiri-finally agreed. Still, it put the ALARM booster program to its most grueling test, but it was the process that Jon Masters had originally devised the system to accomplish: twelve hours from the goahead, two space boosters were launched that inserted two completely different satellite constellations into low Earth orbit-not just single satellites, but multiple, interconnected strings of small, highly sophisticated satellites. Thankfully, both launches went off perfectly, all the satellites’ buses were inserted into the proper orbit, and one by one the skies were “seeded” with tiny Sky Masters, Inc., spacecraft. By the time Masters had landed his DC-10 back at his base in Arkansas, loaded the plane with the equipment he needed for the SAC STRATFOR team, and then flown on to Guam, all of his NIRTSats were in their proper orbits and reporting fully functional. The recon satellites were in nearly circular 415nautical-mile equatorial orbits; the communications satellites were in lower 200-mile orbits inclined 40 degrees to the equator so they could download their data directly to continental U.S. ground stations as well as to facilities on Guam. Masters was betting everything on this mission-and he was also betting that while he was away Helen Kaddiri would probably try to position herself for a corporate coup d’etat. He’d been expecting it for some time. He shrugged, realizing he’d have to deal with that later. Masters’ DC-I 0, with its distinctive red, white, and blue SKY MASTERS emblem on the sides, was parked just outside the hangar next to the north apron, which was perched atop the five-hundred-foot cliff on Guam’s north shore. Masters and General Brad Elliott, who’d flown in with Masters on the DC-10, met newly appointed SAC STRATFOR commander Major General Rat Stone, his aide, Colonel Michael Krieg, and Colonel Anthony Fusco, who was the commander of the 633rd Air Base Wing. Elliott was there to observe Masters’ gear in action, in person. If they were going to be using it at HAWC, he wanted to see it up close. Introductions were made all around, and after everyone mentioned the humidity, they were taken by military van-in a sudden downpour no less-to the MAC terminal, where a Guamanian customs officer, assisted by a MAC security guard in full combat rig and carrying an M-16 rifle, checked their customs declaration forms and inspected their hand-carried items. After that, General Stone turned to Masters. “What I’d like is to get your gear in place as soon as possible, ” Stone said. “I’ve got an EC- 135 communications plane and the recon planes available, so 1 can use DSCS to collect reconnaissance data, but I don’t like sending those planes so far over water unless we get a better idea on what the situation is over there. The sooner we can get your system working, the better.” The Defense Satellite Communications System, or DSCS, was the current global voice and data communications system in operation; the system’s drawback was that it could relay signals only from ground station to ground station and could not link aircraft. An EC-135 communications plane could act as a pseudoground station and could relay signals from another aircraft via DSCS to a ground station, but that meant orbiting the EC- 135 near the first aircraft-which meant sending another important aircraft thousands of miles offshore and exposing it to possible enemy action, which in turn meant assigning additional fighters and tankers to support it. “That’s what I’m here for, General, ” Jon Masters said. “With the NIRTSats in place, we can talk with your AWACS and reconnaissance planes directly. When my computer complex is set up, we can get their radar pictures and they’ll be able to receive our PACER SKY pictures.” Jon grinned. “It’s gonna be awesome. Once we get the rest of the birds tied in, you’ll have dozens of planes tied together and linked to Andersen. You’ll hear a guy on some B-52 sneeze three thousand miles away just as clearly as if he were sitting right beside you, and you can say ‘gesundheit’ a second later-and while he’s wiping his nose, you can lay his crosshairs on a target for him. Too much!” Stone turned and smiled at Elliott, who returned his amused grin. The officers and the young scientist piled into the heavy air-conditioned blue Air Force van, and they headed back out on Perimeter Road. Jon asked, “I understand your first reconnaissance sortie will take off in a few hours?” Stone nodded. “It’s about four hours’ flying time from here to the Philippines for the RC-135 and AWACS planes; about three hours for the EC- 135. They arrive on station in the Celebes Sea about midnight. They stay on station for four hours, then head on back. They RTB about eight A.M.”
“So my crew can have the plane about nine A.M.?”
“That’s right. You said installing your PACER SKY gear will take less than five hours, which is good because maintenance needs to get the aircraft ready to go at four P.M. That gives you a little leeway, but not much.”
“It’ll be plenty, ” Masters assured him. “Great.” Stone turned to Fusco and said, “Take a swing past the south apron and let’s see what’s going on, Tony.” They drove south along the flight line road, past an E-3C AWACS radar plane with its distinctive thirty-foot-rotodome atop its fuselage; another camouflaged Boeing 707 aircraft with no distinctive marking except for two canoe-shaped fairings on the underside of the fuselage behind the nose gear and rows of antennae atop the fuselage; and another Boeing 707 aircraft painted white over gray, with a refueling boom on the tail and a large, complex antenna array on the top of the fuselage. There were also two McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 aircraft modified as aerial refueling tankers in dark green and white camouflage nearby, and another two Boeing 707s also modified as tankers in standard light gray livery. Crates and crew members from Sky Masters, Inc., were already congregating around the planes, talking with Air Force maintenance crews. “Quite a collection of planes out here, ” Masters exclaimed. “I recognize the AWACS plane and the KC-10 and KC-135 tankers, but what are the other 707s?”
“The dark gray one is an RC-135X radar reconnaissance plane, ” Stone explained. “The fairings you see house the multimode radars with the inverse synthetic aperture and pulseDoppler systems, which we’ll use to map out ship and troop locations; it can also slave its radar to radiation-detection sensors to map out locations of search, acquisition, fire control, and missile uplink transmitters, and in an emergency we can arm it with antiradar missiles. I believe you’ll be installing a PACER SKY set and your communications complex on him so he can receive your PACER SKY data and transmit his data directly here. “The other is one of SAC’s EC-135L radio relay aircraft. We’ll be using him on the first few missions to make sure we get a good feed from the recon planes.” He paused for a moment, then said, “This is a good way of conducting strategic reconnaissance. Lots of planes, lots of crew dogs, not much sleep. Frankly… I still trust this method. No offense, Doctor Masters.”
“None taken, ” Jon said. “I’m sure the crews will enjoy the tropical weather, because they won’t be doing much flying. My NIRTSats’ll work just fine.” The commander of the Strategic Air Command STRATFOR gave the young scientist an amused nod. This guy’s got confidence, Stone had to admit. He wasn’t afraid to place his trust in this high-tech crap, although none of it had ever been tested in fast-changing, demanding combat conditions. Unfortunately, it was cockiness like this that usually got such operations in big trouble. “What exactly is the plan for these recon flights?” Elliott asked. “Simple, ” Stone replied. “We’re going to do the southern Philippines first; the Chinese defenses are weaker. RC- 135 no less than one hundred miles off the coast, well within radar range but nothing too provocative-I got that word loud and clear from JCS. AWACS close enough to monitor the Philippine coast and all our aircraft. Two hundred miles east, we put the EC-135. Between the AWACS and the carriers, we put a Navy E-2 Hawkeye radar plane to control escort fighters coming from the carriers. The Navy will put up tankers to service their fighters after takeoff; we’ll have a KC-10 nearby to service all aircraft involved in the recon operation.”
“How many fighter escorts will you have up?” “Not enough, ” Stone replied grimly. “JCS asked for eight per aircraft; we’re only getting two. Apparently the White House thought eight fighters per looked too much like an invasion force.”
“So if there’s any trouble . . .” Elliott said. “We run like hell, ” Stone answered. “The fighters cover the withdrawal; they don’t engage. But we’re not expecting any trouble. We’ll be far enough offshore that we won’t seem like a threat. The Chinese should lay off.” The sight across the road from the south apron commanded instant attention; it was a huge black B-52, with a tall, pointed tail, glistening polished steel skin, and racks of bombs hanging from hardpoints under each wing. Masters asked, “What’s that? Some sort of memorial?”
“The Arc Light Memorial, ” Colonel Fusco replied. “Dedicated to the men who flew the heavy bombing missions over Vietnam. That was one of the B-52s that made the last bomb run over North Vietnam in 1972-Old 100, ‘ the one-hundredth B-52, built in 1955. We keep her in tiptop shape-in fact, it’s still considered an operational aircraft. The memorial was dedicated on the first anniversary of the return of the POWs from Vietnam.”
“I’ve crawled all over a B-2, ” Masters said, “and I know the avionics system on the Space Shuttle like the back of my hand, but you know, I’ve never seen a B-52 this close before. Weird, huh? That thing is just plain huge.”
