Shadow Command

cargo plane standing on its tail clawing for every foot of lifesaving altitude.

The Tin Man outfit actually helped his body take some of the G-forces and even gave him a little extra shot of pure oxygen when it sensed his heart and breathing rates jumping up a bit. Because the thrust was so powerful and the air so dense at lower altitudes, the laser igniters had to be “pulsed,” or rapidly turned off and on again, to avoid blowing up the engines. This created the distinctive “string of pearls” contrails across the Nevada skies that conspiracy theorists and “Lakespotters”—guys who sneaked into the classified test ranges in hopes of photographing a top secret aircraft for the first time — associated with the Air Force’s Aurora hypersonic spy plane.

They had a short high subsonic cruise out over the Pacific coast to the refueling area, and then a rendezvous with an Air Battle Force KC-77 tanker. The secret of the Black Stallion spaceplane program was the inflight refueling, where they took on a full load of jet fuel and oxidizer right before blasting into orbit — instead of launching from zero altitude in the thickest part of the atmosphere, they would begin the cruise into space from twenty-five thousand feet and three hundred knots, in far less dense air.

Refueling always seemed to take forever in every aircraft Whack had ever flown in, especially the big intercontinental-range jet transports, but the Black Stallion took even longer because they actually required three consecutive refuelings: the first to top off the jet fuel tanks, since they didn’t take off with a full load and needed a refueling right away; the second to top off the large borohydrogen tetroxide oxidizer — BOHM, nicknamed “boom”—tanks; and a third to top off the jet fuel tanks once more right before the boost into space. Filling the JP-7 jet fuel tanks went fairly quickly each time, but filling the large BOHM tanks took well over an hour because the boron and enhanced hydrogen peroxide mixture was thick and soupy. It was easy to feel the XR-A9 get heavier and noticeably more sluggish as the tanks were being filled, and every now and then the pilot needed to stroke the afterburners on the big LPDRS engines to keep up with the tanker.

Macomber spent the time checking intel updates downloaded to his on-board computers on their target area and studying the maps and information, but he was starting to get frustrated because precious little new data seemed to be coming in, and boredom was setting in. That was dangerous. Although they didn’t have to prebreathe oxygen before this flight, as they would if they were going to wear a space suit, they couldn’t take their helmets off during refueling operations; and unlike Wohl, who could take a combat catnap anywhere and anytime, like right now, Macomber couldn’t sleep before a mission. So he reached into his personal kit bag attached to the bulkhead and…

…to Turlock’s stunned amazement, pulled out a ball of red yarn and two knitting needles, which already had a section of knitted material strung on them! He found it amazingly easy to manipulate the needles with the Tin Man armored gloves, and before long he was picking up speed and almost at his normal work pace.

“Crew, this is S-Two,” Turlock said on intercom, “you guys are not going to believe this.”

“What is it?” the spacecraft commander, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Lisette “Frenchy” Moulain asked, the concern thick in her voice. There was normally very little conversation during aerial refueling — anything said on the open ship-wide intercom was usually an emergency. “Do we need a disconnect…?”

“No, no, SC, not an emergency,” Charlie said. She leaned forward in her seat to get a better look. Macomber was seated ahead of her and on the opposite side of the passenger module, and she strained in her straps to see all the way into his lap. “But it is definitely a shocker. The major appears to be… knitting.”

“Say again?” Jim Terranova asked. The Black Stallion spaceplane burbled momentarily as if the spacecraft commander was momentarily so stunned that she almost flew out of the refueling envelope. “Did you say ‘knitting’? Knitting…as in, a ball of yarn, knitting needles… knitting?”

“Affirmative,” Charlie said. Chris Wohl, who was seated beside Macomber, woke up and looked over at Macomber for a few seconds, the surprise evident even through his helmet and Tin Man body armor, before he dropped back off to catnap again. “He’s got the needles, the red ball of yarn, the ‘knit one purl two’ thing going, the whole show. Martha friggin’ Stewart right over here.”

“Are you shitting me?” Terranova exclaimed. “Our resident bad-ass snake-eating commando is knitting?”

“He looks sooo cute, too,” Charlie said. Her voice changed to that of a young child’s: “I can’t tell if he’s making a cute widdle doily, or maybe it’s a warm and cozy sweater for his widdle French poodle, or maybe it’s a—”

In a blur of motion that Turlock never really saw, Macomber withdrew another knitting needle from his kit bag, twisted to his left, and threw it at Turlock. The needle whistled just to the right of her helmet and buried itself three inches deep into her seat’s headrest.

“Why, you motherfucker…!” Turlock exclaimed, pulling the needle out. Macomber waved at her with his armored fingers, grinning beneath his bug-eyed helmet, then turned and went back to his knitting.

“What in hell is going on back there?” Moulain asked angrily.

“Just thought since the captain was talking baby talk that maybe she wanted to try knitting too,” Whack said. “You want the other one, Turlock?”

“Take off that helmet and I’ll give it back to you — right between your eyes!”

“You jerks knock it off — maintain radio discipline,” Moulain ordered. “The most critical part of aerial refueling and you bozos are farting around like little snot-nosed kids. Macomber, are you really knitting?”

“What if I am? It relaxes me.”

“You didn’t get clearance from me to bring knitting stuff on board. Put that shit away.”

“Come back here and make me, Frenchy.” There was silence. Macomber glanced over at Wohl — the only one on the spacecraft who probably could make him, if he wanted to — but he looked like he was still asleep. Whack was sure he wasn’t, but he made no move to intervene.

“You and I are going to have a little talk when we get home, Macomber,” Moulain said ominously, “and I’ll explain to you in terms I hope you can understand the authority and responsibilities of the spacecraft commander — even if it takes a swift kick in your ass to make it clear.”

“Looking forward to it, Frenchy.”

“Good. Now knock off the horseplay, put away any nonauthorized equipment in the passenger module, and cut the chatter on the intercom, or this flight is terminated. Everyone got it?” There was no response. Macomber shook his head but put away his knitting stuff as directed, smiling at the feeling of Turlock’s angry glare on the back of his helmet. The rest of the refueling was carried out with only normal call-outs and responses.

After refueling was completed, they subsonically cruised northward along the coast for about an hour, flying loose formation with the KC-77—it was now easy for the tanker to keep up with the Black Stallion since the spaceplane was so heavy. They hooked up with the tanker once again to top off the JP-7 tanks, which didn’t take long, and then the tanker headed back to base. “Orbital insertion checklist programmed hold, crew,” Terranova reported. “Report in when your checklist is complete.”

“S-One, wilco,” Macomber growled. Yet another checklist. He called up the electronic checklist on his helmet’s electronic data visor and used the eye-pointing cursor and voice commands to check off each item, which mostly dealt with securing loose items, checklisting the oxygen panel, cabin pressurization, yada yada yada. It was all busywork that a computer could check easily, so why have humans do it themselves? Probably some touchy-feely human engineering thing to make the passengers feel they were something else other than exactly what they were: passengers. Whack waited until Turlock and Wohl completed their checklists, checked his off as complete, then spoke, “MC, S-One, checklist complete.”

“Roger. Checklist complete up here. Stand by for orbital insertion burn, crew.”

It all sounded very routine and quite boring, just like the endless simulator sessions they made him take, so Macomber began thinking about the target area in Soltanabad once again. Updated satellite images confirmed the presence of heavy-vehicle tire tracks again but did not reveal what they were — whoever was down there was very good at keeping the vehicles hidden from satellite view. The Goose drones were not much better than the space- based radar network in detecting very small targets, but maybe they needed to stay away from the highway airstrip and send in the Goose drones first to get a real-time look before…

…and suddenly the LPDRS engines kicked in, not in turbojet mode but now in hybrid rocket mode, and