Up to 190 knots.
A little more cyclic.
Two hundred knots and climbing.
He felt a light vibration on the cyclic as the all-aluminum fuselage broke through the air at 205 knots. The French Guiana coast became visible under the bright sun. Crowe lowered the green visor as the cockpit flooded with light.
“Stallion One, Mambo, over.”
Crowe spoke in his voice-activated headset. “Go ahead, Mambo.”
“What’s your ETA, Stallion One?”
Crowe briefly checked the rectangular radar screen below and to his right. It pinpointed Mambo’s position. “About a half hour, perhaps a bit less.”
“Just spotted four helicopters loaded with troops. Things are gonna get pretty hot around here. Every second counts, over.”
“We hear you, Mambo. Be there as fast as we can. Check back in ten minutes. Over.”
“Roger, Stallion. Over an’ out.”
Crowe checked his airspeed one more time. He was already flying faster than he was supposed to at a mere ten feet over the waves. He inched the cyclic forward by another dash and increased the power to ninety-five percent.
He briefly checked the fuel gauges and watched the digital readout, decreasing almost one and a half times faster than normal cruising speed. He was down to 7500 pounds of fuel. Crowe did a quick calculation in his head and decided he had about a little over an hour’s worth of fuel left. Barely enough to get there, pick up the troops, and head out.
He pressed the frequency scan button on the cyclic.
“Blue Ridge, Stallion One, over.”
“Stallion One, go ahead,” Davenport’s rough voice crackled through his headset.
“It’s gonna be close making it back. Request you guys get as close as you can to the coast, over.”
“Ah, negative, Stallion One. We’re too close to Guiana territory.”
“Christ, Skipper! You want us to fucking plunge into the ocean on our way back? We’re gonna be sucking fumes in just over an hour. Over.”
“All right, Stallion One. We’ll get as close as we can. You better do what you can to conserve fuel on your way out. Over.”
“Roger, Blue Ridge. Over an’ out.”
Crowe frowned. There was a good possibility he’d run out of fuel. That in itself did not present an immediate life-threatening problem since the Stallion had the capability of landing at sea, but if the rescue area was going to be as hot as it appeared, he was concerned about being forced to hover around for some time before he could actually go in. And there were a million other things that could go wrong. If there was one thing Vietnam had taught him, it was that plenty of things were bound to go wrong during a mission that could never be anticipated. In order to maximize one’s chances of success, one had to be sure there weren’t any known problems or limitations going in, especially with the rescue craft.
Crowe put those thoughts aside and kept his eyes on the rapidly approaching coastline.
CHAPTER TWENTY
RETURNS
Kessler held on to the handles on the side of Kvant-2’s hatch, wearing Jones’s space suit and backpack system, which Strakelov had retrieved from Lightning. At NASA’s request, Kessler had opted not to use the second MMU. Although he had not seen any obvious sign of tampering, NASA didn’t want to add risk to an already dangerous flight.
He now stared at Lightning quietly, gracefully gliding directly under the large Mir complex. The sight was breathtaking. A brittle-looking Earth covered most of his field of view, driving home the realization that they were indeed in an extremely low orbit. Outside temperatures were approaching 110 degrees centigrade as reported by Mir’s computers. At that height they were encountering a low concentration of air molecules which, when traveling at over twenty thousand miles per hour, caused enough friction to boil any exposed surface. But that was of no immediate consequence to Kessler. His Extravehicular Mobility Unit isolated him from the extreme temperatures of space while the life-support system backpack unit circulated chilled water through the plastic tubes laced throughout the nylon stretch fabric of his suit liner.
Of immediate interest to Kessler were Lightning’s open payload bay doors and the missing thermal tiles. He checked the display on his chest-mounted control unit and noticed he had over five hours of oxygen and suit pressurization left. He shifted his gaze to his right and saw through the gold-coated visor over his helmet that Strakelov was waving him over.
Kessler nodded and gently pushed himself toward the cosmonaut, who was backing himself into the Russian MMU look-alike system. Strakelov extended his right hand and pulled Kessler toward him, and motioned for Kessler to hold on to the right handle. Kessler complied as he got a close-up look at the midriff of Strakelov’s space suit. The operating instructions and numerals applied to the suit were reversed. At first puzzled, Kessler quickly realized that unlike the easily read display on top of the chest-mounted control unit of his EMU, the Russian Orlon-DMA suit had all instructions and controls on the chest facing forward. Since Strakelov could not look straight down at them, the Russians had worked around the problem by providing cosmonauts with wrist-mounted mirrors.
Strakelov counted from five to one with his left hand. Kessler followed the fingers and firmly held on to the handles as the Russian’s index finger pressed a switch on the right-hand control pod. Air puffed out the back of the Ikar unit, softly propelling them toward the wounded orbiter. He could see Valentina Tereshkova moving three large oxygen cylinders into Lightning’s air lock. They would provide enough breathable air inside the crew module to reach the Earth’s atmosphere. That also meant that Kessler could now deactivate most of the environmental-control system, leaving the backup fuel cell free to power all communications and navigation equipment vital to Lightning’s safe return to Earth.
For a brief moment Kessler wondered if all of their efforts would be in vain. Was it all for nothing? Was he just kidding himself in thinking that he could realistically survive Earth’s re-entry with tiles missing? A wave of doubt filled Kessler’s mind as he continued to move toward the orbiter. Kessler eyed Lightning’s port wing. He stared at the American flag painted directly under the letters U.S.A. He filled his lungs with pure oxygen and his chest swelled. In spite of all the problems, Lightning was still there, in one piece. And so was he. He had to get Jones to safety. He owed him that. It was his responsibility to get his vessel and crew safely back down to Earth… just like in the Navy. Space orbiter or F-14D Tomcat, it didn’t matter. A vessel was a vessel, and he was in command. A deep sense of confidence filled him as he continued to stare at the gleaming, clean lines of the orbiter. The lights from Mir reflected against its white surfaces. He wasn’t sure if it could be done, but he was willing to try. Kessler reached Lightning with renewed enthusiasm.
An hour later, tied to a line unreeling from an electrically powered winch under his direct control, Kessler reached the orbiter’s underside, where Strakelov and Tereshkova were already hard at work stuffing sections of the Soyuz spacecraft’s loose thermal insulation sheets into the six-inch-deep holes left by the missing tiles. Kessler briefly shifted his gaze up toward Mir. The Soyuz craft was coupled to the Kvant-1 module. He noticed the “petal-like” protuberances of loose thermal insulation. Strakelov had merely clipped a few sheets off and hauled them over to Lightning.