Most of the cargo bay was occupied by the two PAMs, payload assist modules — large liquid-fueled rocket engines with remote-controlled guidance units and a mounting-adapter. It would be Ann's job, with help from Marty Schultz, to attach the Skybolt laser module to the PAM, align it pointing away from earth and activate it. Using steering signals from Falcon Mission Control on earth relayed through the NASA TDRS satellite relay system, the PAM would boost the laser module into a six-hundred-mile storage orbit, giving Space Command another few months to assemble a shuttle sortie to retrieve the modules. Even though America's cargo bay was the same size as a shuttle's, the spaceplane was not designed to bring large objects like Skybolt back from space. A second PAM was being carried as a spare or, if the first was successful and if there was time, to boost Armstrong Space Station's command module itself into a storage orbit.
A huge crane was lowering a large cylindrical object, eight feet in diameter and ten feet long, into the forward part of the cargo bay. For some reason its stark simplicity made it even more painful to look at. Ibis was a spaceborne crypt, a huge coffin, the device that would be used to bring back the bodies of the crew of Armstrong space station and the space shuttle Enterprise.
Ann looked at it, then turned away. "It looks like an old fuel tank," she said to Marty. "It is," he said. "The kind brought up on shuttle flights to refuel satellites. it's been heavily insulated to protect the… he paused, swallowed hard, "the crew during reentry. The cargo bay can get as high as a thousand degrees Fahrenheit during reentry."
She touched him lightly on the shoulder. "I don't like what we're doing here," she said. "We're being pushed around by the Russians, even told when and how to claim our own dead. Damn, I really wish Jason… General Saint-Michael were going with us. Somehow right up until now I thought he'd manage it…" (As, she thought, he'd managed to make love to her after a sickness that would have kept most men in a hospital for weeks…)
The American and Soviet carrier battle groups were still separated by over two thousand miles of ocean, but even one-eighth of a world apart they had already started the first few tentative steps toward a conflict both knew was all but inevitable.
The Nimitz carrier group had moved out into the Arabian Sea to allow its escort ships room to spread out more and maneuver at higher speeds. The group had been augmented by three frigates, two cruisers and two armed reserve supply ships from Diego Garcia, the tiny island naval base south of India. It was still enforcing a strict blockade of Soviet-bloc ships trying to enter the Persian Gulf, which prevented the weakened Brezhnev from refueling from Iran, and airlifted fuel and supplies were not sufficient to allow the Soviet carrier battle group to operate at peak efficiency.
The Americans had sent several flights of B-52 bombers with F-15 fighter escorts from Diego Garcia to shadow and test the response pattern of the huge Arkhangel carrier group, which had just crossed the Eight Degree Channel west of Sri Lanka and was now in the Indian Ocean. The B-52s, the assault aircraft of choice because of their fuel capacity, were armed with twenty-four Harpoon medium-range antiship missiles apiece, making them formidable threats against the carrier fleet.
But the Arkhangel was not about to let the B-52s anywhere near the fleet. The Soviets first engaged the B-52s as far as three hundred miles away from the carder, using their Sukhoi-27 Flanker carrier-based fighters in seemingly never-ending streams. The Soviets knew that at high altitude the B-52s' improved Harpoon missiles had a range of one hundred miles; they simply doubled that figure and set up a stiff air cordon. The Su-27s were docile at three hundred miles, shadows at two hundred and fifty miles and aggressive in warning off the B-52s and their escorts at two hundred twenty miles. Warning shots were fired at two hundred miles, with more emphatic verbal warnings given.
The F-15s were at a huge disadvantage. They had to leave their vulnerable KC-135R and KC–1 °C aerial refueling tankers far behind, out of range of the Su-27s, so their combat range was severely limited. The B-52s could count on enough fighter protection only to break through the first wave of Su-27s from the Arkhangel; then they were on their own for the last dangerous one hundred miles to their launch points.
The B-52s obeyed the very last verbal warnings received and turned around right at the two-hundred-mile point. Even so, they were able to accomplish their primary mission, which was to collect valuable data on the shipborne tracking and acquisition radars that had been sweeping them, as well as radar data from the Su-27s that had pursued them. But the scraps of information the B-52s collected did not alter the basic fact: it was going to be a nightmare, if not an impossibility, trying to get close to the Soviet fleet.
Like the Arkhangel's carrier group, the Nimitz's had to contend with airborne threats of its own. The Nimitz was only a thousand miles south of Tashkent, the Southern Military District headquarters, where ten Tu-95 Bear bombers were now based. The Bears carried the naval-attack version of the AS-6 cruise missile, which could be launched against the Nimitz well within the protection of Soviet land-based surface-to-air missile sites in occupied Iran. The Soviets also had a new weapon, the AS-15 cruise missile, a long-range, nuclear-tipped supersonic cruise missile. The AS-15 could be launched from well within the Soviet Union, or its shipborne version could be launched from one of the Arkhangel's escorts at extreme range. Supersonic land-based bombers from the Soviet Union were also a major threat against the American fleet.
Another series of strategic maneuvers were being accomplished in an entirely different realm: under the sea. A small fleet of American attack submarines had moved into the Indian Ocean and were edging closer and closer to their adversaries. But unlike the sky-spanning maneuvers of a high-altitude B-52, this precombat dance was measured in single miles or even in yards. It might take days for a Los Angeles-class attack submarine to move two miles closer to the escort ships surrounding the Arkhangel; then, in a chance encounter, it would be discovered by a lucky helicopter sonar dip or a tiny telltale sound from within the submarine, and then the sub would be forced to run off and start all over again. Four subs were involved in this tension-filled chase, maneuvering bit by bit toward their huge target.
The Nimitz was a bit more fortunate: the four Soviet attack submarines from Vladivostok remained with the Arkhangel battle group in a defensive posture, prowling the seas close to their battle group. Other subs were being reassigned from Havana and from the Mediterranean toward the Persian Gulf, but they could be tracked as they made their way through the Suez Canal or Strait of Gibraltar or around Cape horn. If hostilities erupted they at least could be intercepted before they reached the Nimitz battle group. What the outcome would be was, of course, uncertain.
The battle lines were already drawn. Even though the combatants were still several hundred miles apart, the chief players in the final battle of the Persian Gulf had already been chosen. The confrontation would soon be at hand.
There was no jovial prelaunch breakfast with family members and politicians, no press conference, no words of congratulations or encouragement. The crew of America had the traditional steak-and-eggs breakfast, but it was served in strict privacy in the HTS Launch Control Facility mess hall. A few words passed between the crewmembers, but they were hushed and confined strictly to the flight or the launch.
After breakfast the crew filed toward the life-support shop for their prelaunch suiting-up. The four crewmembers pulled anti-"g" suits over their coveralls, which would protect them against the sustained five to six "g" s they might experience in the first ten minutes of flight. Because breathing might be difficult in the high "g"- environment, each would also wear POS facemasks, with oxygen fed into the masks under pressure.