Shadow Command

know if it will be below the sixty-six-mile limit, sir, but depending on how fast and how successful we are at maneuvering the—”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Perfect, just perfect. Your spaceplane coming out of orbit right over the capital of Russia will look like an ICBM attack for damned sure, won’t it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “This is precisely the nightmare scenario the President was afraid of. He’s going to tear your throat out, McLanahan.” He paused for a moment; then: “How long does the President have to decide this, General?”

“About five minutes, sir.”

“For God’s sake, McLanahan! Five minutes? Everything is a crisis with you!” Kordus shouted. “But poor planning on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on our part!”

“Lives could be at stake, sir.”

“I’m well aware of that, General!” Kordus snapped. “But if you had bothered to wait and have this plan approved by the White House and the Pentagon before launching the spaceplane, none of this would be happening!” He muttered something else under his breath; then: “I’ll take this request to the President right away. In the meantime, stay on the line because you will have to explain all this to the National Security Adviser so he can properly advise the President, because I doubt if you have the capacity to explain it clearly enough to him to his satisfaction — or that he would even listen to you if you tried. Stand by.”

* * *

“Crew, be advised, we’re doing a y-translation in preparation for deorbit. Stand by.” Using her multifunction display and her piloting skills, Moulain used the Black Stallion’s hydrazine thrusters to flip the spaceplane around so it was flying tailfirst. The maneuver took almost two minutes — a record for her. Everything felt exactly the same to the crewmembers in the passenger module, and even Macomber’s stomach didn’t complain. “Maneuver complete, Genesis. When do we start down? When can we fire the ‘leopards’?”

“We need to find out if you can reach a safe landing runway if you deorbited right now,” Dave Luger interjected. “We’re also looking for a tanker that can refuel you in case you can’t reach a suitable airport, and we need permission from the White House to bring you down over national boundaries.”

“You need what?” Macomber retorted. “You think the Russians are going to shoot at us with a fucking laser, and you need permission to get us the hell out of here?”

“We’re running the calculations, Major — put a sock in it and let us do our work,” Luger said sternly, unaccustomed to being yelled at by a field-grade officer. Still, the tone in his voice made it obvious he wasn’t all that happy about the circumstances either. “Stand by.”

“Do it, Frenchy,” Macomber said on intercom. “Get us the hell out of here.”

“I can’t do that without authorization, S-One.”

“The hell you can’t. You’re the spacecraft commander — you made that real clear to me, remember? Exercise some of your authority and get us the hell out of here!”

“I can’t just drop us out of the sky without knowing where we go once we re-enter the atmosphere,” Moulain said. “I need to know where we’ll be when we resume atmospheric flight, what our best range will be, which runway we’ll approach, what the terrain is, how long the runway is, what the political, diplomatic, and security situation will—”

“For Christ’s sake, Frenchy, stop asking questions and hit the damned button!” Macomber shouted. “Don’t wait for some politician to wave his hand or give us the finger — just do it!”

“Shut up and stand by, Macomber!” Moulain shouted. “We can’t just pull over and shut off the engine. Just hold your water, will you?”

“We’ll be crossing the target area’s horizon in about two minutes,” Terranova reported.

“We briefed several recovery, alternate, and emergency bases in eastern Europe, India, and the western Pacific,” Macomber persisted. “We know we have alternates. Just declare an emergency and land at one of them.”

“We’ve already passed most of the safe emergency bases,” Terranova said. “The alternate landing sites we had picked were designed in case of failure to insert into orbit, failure of re-entry burn engines, or alternate landing sites if we started deorbit but weren’t authorized to go into the target area. We’re past that point now. If we didn’t deorbit by now, the plan was to overfly the target area, transfer orbits if we had enough fuel, or stay in orbit until we could land back at Dreamland. We can’t just turn on a dime and head back the other way.”

“So we’re screwed,” Turlock said. “We’ve got to overfly the target area now.”

“Not necessarily, but the longer we delay firing the ‘leopards,’ the fewer options we have,” Terranova said. “We can always bleed off more energy and drop faster through the atmosphere to try to stay as low to the horizon as possible, then once we’re back in the atmosphere we can use the rest of the available fuel to fly away from the tracking radar.”

“Then do it!”

“If we bleed off all our energy and don’t have enough fuel to make it to a suitable landing site, we’re dead,” Moulain said. “This bird glides just a little bit better than a damned brick. I’m not going to throw away all our options unless there’s a plan! Besides, we don’t even know if there’s a Russian anti-satellite laser down there. This could all be just a bad case of paranoia.”

“Then there’s one more option…”

“No way, MC.”

“What’s the last option?” Macomber asked.

“Jettisoning the passenger module,” Terranova said.

“What?”

“The passenger module is designed to be its own re-entry vehicle and lifeboat…”

“I’m not releasing the module except in an emergency,” Moulain insisted. “Absolutely not.”

“There’s no way we can make it down by ourselves!” Macomber cried.

“The simulations say it can, although we’ve never tested it for real,” Terranova said. “The passenger module has its own reaction control system, high-tech heat shields better than the Stud, parachutes and impact attenuation bags for landing, a pretty good environmental system—”

“‘Pretty good’ isn’t good enough, MC — the captain doesn’t have any armor on,” Chris Wohl interjected.

“It’ll work, Sergeant Major.”

“I’m not jettisoning anything, and that’s that,” Moulain cut in. “That’s the last resort only. I’m not even going to consider it unless all this fearmongering comes true. Now everyone shut up for a minute.” On the command channel: “Genesis, Odin, what do you got for us?”

“Nothing,” Patrick responded. “I’ve spoken to the chief of staff, and he’s going to talk to the President. I’m waiting to talk to SECDEF or the National Security Adviser. You’re going to have to—”

“I’ve got it!” Dave Luger suddenly cut in. “If we deorbit now and use max-G maneuvers to lose altitude, we should have enough energy to make it to Baku on the Caspian coast of Azerbaijan. If not, you can make it to Neftcala, which is an Azerbaijan border and coastal patrol base. Turkey and the United States are expanding an airstrip there and you might have enough runway to make it. The third option—”

“Jettison the passenger module into the Caspian Sea, then ditch the Stud in the Caspian Sea or eject before hitting the water depending on how out of control we become,” Moulain intoned.

“Stand by, Stud,” Patrick said after a short pause. “Genesis, I’m studying the latest images of the target area, and I’m concluding that the trucks and setup at Soltanabad are virtually identical to the ones we saw in Kabudar Ahang in Iran. I believe the Russians set up their mobile anti-spacecraft laser in Soltanabad. Can you verify?”

“General, are you sure this Russian threat is for real? If we do this, there’s no turning back.”

“No, I’m not sure of any of this,” Patrick admitted. “But the signs are looking just like Stud One-One. Genesis?”

“I’m double-checking, Odin,” Dave Luger said. “Remember they faked the setup at Kabudar Ahang to suck in the Battle Force. They could be doing the very same thing again.”

“We’ll know in about sixty seconds, crew,” Terranova said.

“We can’t wait,” Patrick said finally. “Stud, this is Odin, I’m ordering you to deorbit, do a max-rate re-entry interface profile, and attempt an emergency landing at Baku or Neftcala, Azerbaijan. Genesis, upload the flight plan to the Black Stallion and be sure it’s executed. Do you copy?”