“Welcome, señor,” Asunción said. “More work to be done.”
The man looked up. He was in his forties but appeared older about the face. Deep lines and loose folds of pale skin attested to some form of confinement away from a sun that had once tanned the thin body to a leathery brown. That had obviously faded, as apparently had the man’s desire for anything beyond that which he was commanded to do.
“I was here last month, General,” Anatoly Vishkov observed in a voice that was pathetic in its mild attempt at defiance. “A visit every three months was deemed sufficient when—”
“When we agreed to let you live, you miserable little insect!” Asunción brought a hand back to slap the insolent weakling, but the rumble of a distant explosion ended the action before it began. The general noticed the puzzlement on the Russian’s face. “The exercises are close today, it seems.”
Vishkov listened as another blast echoed across the water of the bay to his rear and reverberated through the man-made canyon of buildings and equipment in the complex. The valleys north of Cienfuegos did twist and distort sound quite frequently, a trait common to areas with similar geological and weather conditions. The physicist in him rationalized it as possible.
“If you work quickly, you can be finished by nightfall,” Asunción posited, opting for a different tack to gain compliance without questioning. It was preferable that the Russian be kept blissfully unaware of the troubles just twenty miles distant, lest he be motivated by some sense of humanity to refuse his assigned task. The general thought that quite unlikely, as the onetime honored guest of his nation had proven himself to be quite susceptible to the mere threat of physical violence. Still, to take a chance at this stage would be foolhardy.
“What more work can I do?”
“Make it ready,” Asunción directed.
The Russian hung his head as a tired man did, a smattering of tears already on his cheeks. “It is ready. It is always ready.”
“No, señor.” Asunción reached out and lifted the Russian’s head by his chin. “Ready to use.”
The look on Vishkov’s face changed from frustration to horror. “To use? You mean to…”
“Presidente Castro wishes a complete readiness test.” It was a lie, one without precedence but one the Russian had little reason to disbelieve.
Another roar rolled in from the water. Vishkov turned his head toward it, then back to his tormentor. What is happening?
“Señor…” The general stood aside and gestured grandly at the entrance as a hotel doorman would for a visitor.
The Russian physicist had no choice. Where once he had been a man respected for his ingenuity, he was now a prisoner of his value…and of his weakness. To stand up to his taskmasters would mean certain death, or, that which he feared more, a painful precursor to the release of the hereafter. Death, while not a welcome concept, was preferable to that which he could suffer, yet he was incapable of bringing that on to stave off the other. It was a circle of defeat few had mastered as well as the man who, in his brighter days, had mastered the atom and its destructive power. That mastery now remained as the sole bit of control that Anatoly Vishkov maintained over his existence.
And, in a twist of perception that he was incapable of realizing, it made him supremely powerful over a game he suspected he had just begun to play in the familiar role as pawn.
CHAPTER SIX
IMAGERY AND ICONS
It was known as Area 51 to most officially acquainted with its existence. Those more intimately involved with the goings-on at Groom Lake in the barren desert expanse of Nevada gave it more literal and crafted monikers. Dreamland, a name often shared by the nearby Tonopah Test Range, was one. The Black Hole was another. All, though, succeeded only partially in describing the mystical happenings in a place that, despite evidence to the contrary, didn’t exist.
The early afternoon light was painting the imposing mountains of the Timpahute Range a washed-out white and tan, and, unfortunately, was robbing Groom of the welcome cloak of darkness in which operations were almost exclusively conducted. Secrecy, normally a concern for intelligence and military agencies, was a well-crafted paranoia on the dry lake-bed facility that was surrounded by a piece of restricted government land the size of Switzerland. But, in homage to one of its nicknames and despite the oppressive and serious nature of the business that took place there, dreams not only existed at Groom, they took flight and soared as none could have imagined.
The aircraft was rolled out behind a tug into the harsh, breezy environment and was positioned at the threshold of Groom’s six-mile-long runway. Only ninety feet in length, it weighed in at 180,000 pounds, two thirds of which were the exotic super-cooled liquid-methane fuel that both fed the delta-winged aircraft’s twin propulsion systems and helped to dissipate the heat generated by high-speed flight from its airframe.
After allowing time for the tug and its operator to clear, the tower gave clearance to the pilot of the craft that had come to be known as Aurora, though the official government designation of the Special Access — or “black” — program was Senior Citizen. The pilot, more a mission manager, was an Air Force major who had logged more hours now at Mach 5+ than any of her fighter-driver cohorts. Four feet behind her the Reconnaissance Systems Operator sat, two high-resolution displays dominating his console of instruments, which controlled the array of imaging and signals sensors that were the real heart of the billion-dollar bird.
With the entry of a command into the flight-management system, the aircraft accelerated under a highly advanced form of rocket power down the concrete slab, the pilot providing only steering to keep the bird on the centerline. A thunderous, resonating roar, the product of Aurora’s unique two-phase propulsion, swept across the desert base, penetrating every structure above and below ground. Fifteen thousand feet after it began its roll, the computer brought the nose up. The climb-out was slow as the aircraft turned to the southeast, but once pointed in the right direction, a battery of microchips decided it was time to accelerate to operating speed and “pulled the trigger,” adding thrust that pushed the ninety-ton bird through Mach 2 in less than thirty seconds. With a nose-up attitude of seventy degrees, the Aurora was passing through thirty thousand feet when its forward momentum was sufficient (Mach 2.54) to switch over to the ramjet propulsion. Passing sixty thousand feet and somewhere over the Nevada/Utah border, the aircraft was breaking Mach 4. Directly over Cedar City, Utah, it passed Mach 5 at 120,000 feet. At this point the flight-management system eased the climb, leveling the Aurora out at thirty miles over eastern Texas, and set a constant throttle at Mach 6.2. Aurora was moving faster than any rifle bullet in the world just fifteen minutes into its flight.
Because of the relatively short distance to the target, no in-flight refueling would be needed on the return leg, making this an easy quick-pass mission. The pilot kept constant watch on the flight systems, particularly the surface and airframe temperatures, the former of which was hovering around a quite acceptable one thousand degrees.
Somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico the RSO activated three of his sensors. They had crossed through two time zones in just under thirty minutes, so the day was two hours older over their target. No low-light or IR imaging would be necessary, though. Today they would need just the two visible-light Casegrain telescopic cameras and the Synthetic Aperture Radar.