"By this." Collins retrieved another photo from his carrying case. This one was a more conventional optical satellite photograph taken several months earlier of a completely different, much larger military airbase. "While I was checking on things, trying to score a few points with the boss, I did some note taking on strategic cruise missiles. I wrote down every detail I could find on AS-6 and AS-4 cruise-missile operations. Of course, one of the biggest Bear bomber bases is Murmansk, so I concentrated my search there, took a lot of notes on the cruise missiles based with the Bear Gs and Hs, with particular emphasis on the support vehicles."
"This story, I know, must have a point. Please get to it."
"I'm getting there, sir. Here's the scoop. The AS-6 missile uses kerosene liquid-fueled rocket engines, with nitric acid as the catalyst. Dangerous stuff. What's more, the stuff has got to be pumped into the missile's tanks under pressure to facilitate airborne ignition. They've built a special truck to do this. Here's a picture of one of those trucks."
Sahl, looking at it under a pair of stereo magnifiers, thought it resembled a huge square-nosed firetruck with a distinctive set of silverized tanks on either side. The photo even showed a crew of four men in silver-colored fire suits working around the truck. Sahl checked the date-time stamp on the photo — it was recent. "Now if you could only find one of those trucks in Tashkent…"
"Ask and ye shall receive." Collins pulled the last photo out of his case. "Taken yesterday."
It was one of the most unusual photos Sahl had ever seen.
It showed, quite clearly, one of the cruise-missile fuel trucks being towed by a large tractor-trailer truck after it had apparently struck an aircraft tow-bar on a flight-line access road. Sahl thought of the luck element that was required in this business of reconnaissance photography: a few seconds more or less and the accident never would have occurred or the KH-14 satellite never would have spotted the truck. A few more minutes and the wreck would have been towed away without a trace and they might never have known for sure about the cruise missiles.
"It's impressive, Collins. They've got AS-6 or AS-4 cruise missiles in Tashkent."
"Probably AS-6s. They stopped production on AS-4s back in 1989, in favor of the AS-6. "
"Those things could be real trouble — correct me if I'm wrong. The AS-6 has both a ground and ship attack version. Either a three-thousand-pound high-explosive warhead—"
"Or a two-hundred-kiloton nuclear warhead," Collins said. "Fairly long range on a normal launch profile — they could probably launch at high altitude as far north as Shiraz in central Iran, well out of range of our Patriot, Hawk and RAM surface-to-air missile sites, and hit the strait. If they overwhelm our perimeter defense they could launch attacks against the fleet in the Gulf of Oman."
Sahl did not have to think very long to reach a decision. "I need an analysis brief by one o'clock for the afternoon meeting…" But Collins was already opening his photo case again, arid a red-covered folder with a security strip-seal dropped onto Sahl's desk.
"Jesus, Collins, am I going to have to spend the rest of my four years to retirement looking over my shoulder to see when you're going to bury me, like you did Barnes?"
"Nah," Collins said, "I got faith, sir… I figure a smart man like you is going to help me move on up."
Sahl smiled, opening the intelligence brief. "If you can't beat 'em, help 'em beat up on someone else."
It was a sight Ann Page had never wanted to see.
A whole section of the hospital's intensive-care ward had been occupied by a portable hyperbaric "altitude" chamber. Jason Saint-Michael lay inside the chamber on a hard plastic table. Ann winced as she looked at his inert form — he looked even more emaciated, more drawn. Electrocardiogram and electroencephalogram leads were attached to his body, running to terminals outside the chamber, where technicians and doctors studied the sensor readouts. "His heart seems normal," Doctor Matsui said as he rechecked the EKG paper strip. "Strong as a horse, as a matter of fact. He's in excellent condition." He shook his head. "Except for the… other thing, "
"What happened?" Ann asked.
"The same thing he's been experiencing during his comatose state. His body is still throwing off the nitrogen. Nitrogen is absorbed easily in the soft tissues of the body — that's why it accumulates in the joints, causing the bends. The general's case is more serious. The nitrogen accumulated in his brain, causing his blackouts, seizures and the pain. He probably absorbed a lot into his brain tissue, and in normal atmospheric pressure the nitrogen bubbles slowly work their way out of the tissue and into his bloodstream, in his nerve centers. "
"But all this happened a month ago," Ann said. "He came out of the coma. Why is he still having these seizures?"
"I don't know… Obviously his body is still being affected by the nitrogen bubbles in his system, or perhaps there was some sort of neural, vascular or chemical damage. I'm afraid we don't know very much about cerebral dysbarism — fact is, we don't know much about anything when it comes to the brain or the nervous system. But there are a few things I do know. First, General Saint-Michael is no longer on flight status. His condition is obviously disqualifying. I also have to recommend his relieve as commander of Armstrong Space Station, or what's left of it."
Ann had to turn away. What she was hearing, whether Matsui knew it or not, was in effect a death sentence. No, damn it. That wasn't going to happen. To hell with the doctors. Matsui said he didn't know much. Good, that put them all even — starting from scratch. She'd take those odds.
CHAPTER 31
Topography and climatology tactical situation briefings said it was a region with a dry, subtropical climate, but no one could convince First Lieutenant Jeremy Ledbetter of that. The twenty-two-year-old army officer, fresh out of ROTC at Penn State University and specialty training at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, was packed in a layer of "Chinese underwear" thermal-quilted underclothes beneath his desert gray fatigues, which themselves were covered by a reinforced plastic poncho. In the predawn hours in central Iran, even in mid-August, he was freezing his butt off. On top of that, Iran, which rarely got any rain during the summer, was experiencing a real Kansas-style gullywasher.
As Ledbetter surveyed his encampment he felt as if he was in charge of the entire defense of Iran. In fact he was in command of a combined air defense battery, a CAB: a MIM-104 Patriot and an MIM-23 I-Hawk missile battery just outside the sleepy little peat-farming town of Robat in the Meydan Valley of Iran. He commanded an eighty-man detachment of U.S. Rapid Deployment Force soldiers and at least ten million dollars worth of high-tech surface-to-air missiles. His third Patriot high-altitude missiles and eighteen I-Hawk low-to-medium-altitude missiles virtually sealed off the entire Meydan Valley to unidentified aircraft for one hundred miles in any direction.
Ledbetter's CAB was also the "snare," the choke-point between two other Patriot sites on either side of the Meydan Valley. Enemy aircraft would circumnavigate the Patriot missile batteries at Anar and Arsenjan. That would force them down the Meydan Valley and right into Ledbetter's all-altitude-capable missiles. Once enemy aircraft were caught in the narrow valley, there was no escape for them except to try to outrun or outmaneuver the oncoming missiles — both hugely difficult feats.
The proof was there for all to see: a Soviet Backfire-B supersonic bomber had been caught in the "snare" and had tried to use its speed to outrun one of the I-Hawk' missiles. Unfortunately for the Backfire's pilot, in his hurry to escape attack he had been diverted from his job as a pilot. His Backfire had splattered all up and across the western wall of the Jebal Barez Mountains to the east of Robat, traveling at least at Mach one at three hundred feet off the valley floor. Ledbetter's Patriot and Hawk missile radars could still pick up the wreckage of the crash on the mountainside. No doubt other Soviet bombers' radar could detect it too. Well, let it be a warning, Ledbetter thought, as he sipped coffee from a metal cup. The message: don't mess with the Three-Thirty-Fifth.