Shadow Command

“Odin, I copy, but are you sure about this?” Moulain asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Just do it, Frenchy,” Macomber said. “If he’s wrong and everything goes snafu, we might take a swim in the damned polluted Caspian Sea with the caviar. Big deal. Been there, done that. If he’s right, we’ll still be alive in an hour. Do it.”

“Flight plan uploaded,” Luger reported. “Awaiting execution.”

“Stud, advise when you execute deorbit procedures.”

“What are you waiting for, Frenchy?” Macomber shouted. “Start us down! Fire the rockets!”

“I don’t want to crash into the Caspian Sea,” Moulain said. “If we don’t make it, we’ll have no option but to ditch—”

“Dammit, Frenchy, get us down now!” Macomber shouted. “What’s with you?”

“I don’t believe General McLanahan, that’s why!” Moulain cried out. “I don’t believe any of this!”

“Stud, I’m sure this is a trap,” Patrick said. “I think we stumbled onto a Russian anti-spacecraft laser weapon site in Iran. If you don’t get out of there, any way you can, their laser will burn through your heat shielding and destroy the spacecraft. I don’t want to take that risk. Deorbit the spacecraft and get out of there.”

“Crossing the target’s horizon, now,” Terranova said.

“Stud, that was an order: deorbit the spacecraft,” Patrick said. “Your objection is noted. I take full responsibility. Now do it.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I copied valid and authenticated orders to the contrary from the national command authority: stay in orbit until we’re in a position to return to Groom Lake,” Moulain said. “Those orders supersede yours. We’re staying. MC, remove the deorbit flight plan and reload the previous one.”

“Frenchy—”

“Do it, MC,” Moulain said. “That’s an order. I’ll stay in this orientation to conserve thruster fuel, but we’re staying in orbit, and that’s final.”

The radios and intercoms got very quiet after that, with Luger and McLanahan feeding the crew and each other a steady stream of radar threat warnings and updated reconnaissance imagery. Time seemed to drag on forever. Finally, Macomber said, “What the hell is going on, Genesis, and how long until we’re out of the shit?”

“Four minutes ten seconds until we cross back below the target area horizon,” Dave Luger responded.

“I’m sorry, Odin,” Moulain said, “but I had to make a decision. I’m following orders.”

“I hope I’m wrong, SC,” Patrick responded. “You did what you thought was right. We’ll talk about it after you’re home safe.”

“How are we doing on that Baku landing site, Genesis?” Terranova asked.

“You’ll lose it in thirty seconds. You won’t have enough energy to make it to Forward Operating Base Warrior in Kirkuk, Iraq, after you re-enter the atmosphere — Herat, Afghanistan, is your best option, but you’ll still have to overfly Soltanabad. Another option might be the deserts of southern Turkmenistan — we can get a special ops team from Uzbekistan in to help you quickly.”

“You suggesting we land in Turkmenistan, sir?”

“I didn’t say ‘land,’ MC.”

Terranova gulped. Luger obviously meant for them to “jettison the aircraft”—let it crash-land in the desert. “What’s the next abort base?”

“Karachi and Hyderabad beyond that.”

“We’re ready to fire the ‘leopards,’” Terranova said. “Ten-second checklist hold. Should I set the re-entry for maximum deceleration?”

“We’re not going to deorbit,” Moulain said. “The Russians wouldn’t dare take a shot at us. Leonid Zevitin’s not crazy. The guy can dance, for God’s sake!” The radios sparkled with low chuckles. But she looked at her aft-cockpit camera and nodded to Terranova, silently ordering him to program the computers for a maximum-rate speed and altitude loss. “I mean, think about it, everyone: no male who knows how to dance would be nutty enough to—”

Suddenly they heard, “Warning, warning, laser detected…warning, warning, hull temperature increasing, stations two hundred fifty through two-ninety…warning, hull temperatures approaching operational limits…!”

“The Kavaznya laser!” Patrick McLanahan exclaimed. “They’re attacking from extreme range. Stud, get out of there now!”

“Initiate deorbit procedures!” Moulain shouted. “Crew, stand by to deorbit immediately! ‘Leopards’ engines throttling up!”

“…hull temperature rate warning, stations two-seventy through two-ninety…warning, warning…!”

The crew was slammed back into their seats as the Laser Pulse Detonation Rocket System engines fired at full power. The immense power of the hybrid rocket engines immediately and dramatically decelerated the Black Stallion aircraft, and it quickly began its fall to Earth. Macomber cried out as the G-forces quickly increased, far past anything he had previously experienced. Soon he could no longer muster the strength to make any noise at all — it took all of his concentration to inflate his lungs enough to keep from passing out.

“Passing twenty-eight thousand feet per second,” Terranova said amidst the almost-constant warning messages. “Passing ninety miles’ altitude…‘leopards’ at ninety percent power, three point zero Gs…”

“Go to one hundred and ten percent power,” Moulain grunted through the pressure.

“That’s over five Gs, SC,” Terranova said. “We’ll have to sustain that for—”

“Do it, MC,” Moulain ordered. “Crew, SC, it’s going to get real uncomfortable for a few minutes. Keep ahead of it the best you can.” A few moments later, her words were cut off by a feeling that her chest was going to implode as the G-forces nearly doubled. Cries of anguish and surprise were evident. “Hang…on…crew…”

“Five point three Gs,” Terranova gasped. “Jesus…passing twenty-five K, passing eighty miles…”

“Oh God, how much longer?” someone murmured — it was impossible to tell who was speaking now.

STRATEGIC AIR FORCES ALTERNATE OPERATIONS COMMAND CENTER, POLDOSK, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

THAT SAME TIME

With the destruction of Engels Air Base near Saratov and the bombing of R’azan underground command center by the Americans, air forces chief of staff General Andrei Darzov had reactivated and modernized an old civil defense shelter and reserve forces reconstitution center southwest of Moscow called Poldosk for use as his evacuation and alternate command post. It didn’t have an air base or even room for a large helicopter landing pad, but it had underground rail lines adjacent to the facility, plenty of freshwater supplies (as fresh as could be expected in the Greater Moscow area)…

…and — more importantly, Darzov believed — it was sufficiently close to large numbers of city dwellers that even someone as crazy as the American bomber commander Lieutenant General Patrick McLanahan might think twice about bombing the place.

Because of its mostly modern high-speed data and communications upgrades, Poldosk today served yet another purpose: as the monitoring and command center for the Molnija anti-spacecraft air-launched missile and Fanar anti-spacecraft laser systems. From a simple room with a bank of four computers, Darzov maintained contact with his forces in the field via secure high-speed Internet and voice-over-IP connections. The command center was completely mobile, could be packed up in less than an hour and set up elsewhere in about as much time, and in an emergency could be run from a single laptop computer and secure cellular or satellite phone anywhere on the planet.

This evening, the focus was on Soltanabad. It was unfortunate that the Americans found Fanar so quickly — it had to be blind luck, or maybe some Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps members turned traitor and informed on them to the coup leader Hesarak Buzhazi or to the Americans. But he had set up Fanar at Soltanabad precisely because so many American spacecraft overflew the area so often. It was, as the Americans put it, a “target-rich environment.”

Darzov scowled at a new readout and hit the TRANSMIT button on the computer keyboard: “Striker, this is Keeper. Say status. You terminated the attack…why?”

“We had full optronic lock on the target and opened fire as ordered, General,” the chief engineer and project