He went back to what was left of his seat (one of the Russian missiles had blown off the backrest), strapped himself in, thinking that in the days before the attack he would have automatically picked up his earset and electret microphone and set it in place. Not so now. There wasn't any point — even though the station's tracking beacon had been activated, the tracking and data relay satellite system was smashed to hell. They could only talk with someone on the ground using the ultrahigh frequency radios that were limited to line-of-sight. With TDRS you could talk or exchange data with someone on the other side of the planet — with UHF, if you could cut through the static, if you talked at night, you might be able to talk to an earth station you could see out the window. Maybe.
He wished he could have the same problem seeing or thinking about Enterprise…
The thought of the wrecked shuttle and her dead crew back in the docking module suddenly deflated him, left him with a deep sense of frustration and anger. Nothing he or anyone else did would make a difference as far as they were concerned. And by forcing this mission to reactivate the station he'd exposed other crewmen… including Ann… to the same risk… But no, he had to remember this mission was about much more than revenge. It was about saving lives. American lives out there in the Persian Gulf…
That was what he'd told the Joint Chiefs and the president when he'd met with them to argue the case. He'd had a tough time at first… Stuart had done a good job convincing people that Armstrong's station commander was a casualty who, for his own good and the country's, ought to be put out to pasture. What he was after would needlessly provoke the Russians. Saint-Michael had countered with the very likely scenario, if they didn't reactivate the station, and when he'd finished even Secretary of Defense Linus Edwards seemed to comprehend the seriousness of the situation. Saint-Michael had gotten authorization only just in time, though, to put a hold on the launch so he could arrange a cargo switch…
Alone now in the command module, he was not so all-fired sure he was right. And with that thought came another: that he'd better be, or the folks back home just might invent a Yankee Siberia for him if his plan backfired.
"The most sophisticated radar ships in the world," Admiral Clancy grumbled, "and I still feel naked as a jaybird out here."
The commander of Nimitz carrier fleet was talking to Captain Edgewater, captain of the Nimitz, in the carrier's combat information center. He was talking about the USS Ticonderoga, Shiloh, Valley Forge and Hue City, the Aegis battle management cruisers operating alongside Nimitz as the battle group steamed slowly eastward in the Arabian Sea.
Ticonderoga and her sisters, although over a decade old, were indeed some of the most sophisticated vessels in the world. Their four large phased-array radar antennas could scan the skies for hundreds of miles in all directions, electronically link dozens of ships together and direct gun, aircraft or missile attacks against hundreds of targets all at once, They carried nearly a half-billion dollars worth of nuclear-hardened twenty-first-century equipment. Yet here in the middle of the Arabian Sea they were made virtually impotent by the sophistication of weaponry and the preponderance of enemy forces surrounding them.
Clancy pointed to a five-foot-by-five-foot liquid-crystal display in the center of Nimitz's CIC. "I need more eyes up there, Captain," Clancy was saying, jabbing his finger toward the center of the Arabian Sea. "Ticonderoga's detection range for high-flying aircraft is only about three hundred miles; for surface vessels and low-flying aircraft it's about fifty miles, and for fast-moving, sea-skimming missiles or aircraft the detection range could be as little as twenty miles." Edgewater agreed with the commander of the Persian Gulf flotilla. Clancy continued: "It's just not enough. With Soviet cruise missiles having Mach five speed and supersonic bombers that could carry fifty-thousand-pound payloads at Mach two and fifty feet above the water, Ticonderoga can barely keep up. An AS-6 cruise missile diving down on us at nearly Mach speed would only give our escorts five minutes to destroy the missile. A Soviet Blackjack or Backfire bomber at extreme low altitude, detected at maximum range, would be right on top of us in seconds, giving us barely enough time to react."
"They have to get past the fleet defenses first, Admiral," Edgewater said. "We've got nearly a hundred missile launchers on-line, plus fifty fighters aboard Nimitz ready to fly—"
"But we're already stretched to the limit," Clancy said, pointing around the periphery of his fleet's escorts. "We've got Soviet ships from the Red Sea and Yemen, Soviet aircraft and cruise missiles from Iran, and the Arkhangel carrier group from the south and east." He shook his head, trying but failing to manage a rueful smile. "Some old sea dog I turned out to be… A carrier's main defensive weapon is not getting itself into indefensible tactical situations in the first place. Here's a perfect example of what not to do: getting yourself surrounded on all sides by the bad guys… We need a good five hundred miles of reliable surveillance before we can safely secure this group. Right now we don't have it. We need some important help if we're going to pull this off."
"The best we can get out here," Edgewater said, "are our own carrier-based EF-18s and Hawkeye AWACS radar planes."
"Which will be prime targets when the shooting starts. And we just don't have the assets to assign one fighter to one Hawkeye for protection."
"We can try another HIMLORD recon drone sortie."
Clancy shook his head. "Those drones are worth their weight in gold, but they're sitting ducks against shipbome surface-to-air concentrations. We sent four of them up two days ago and the Soviets used them for target practice." He paused for a minute, staring at the screen; then: "What about Diego Garcia? Any help from the Air Force available?"
"Same deal with Air Force E-3C AWACs," Edgewater said. "The Russian Su-27s will pick them off right away. Command won't risk them so far out without fighter escort."
"They're trying to tell me about risk?" Clancy had no trouble getting up a sarcastic smile. "I'm up to my eyeballs in risk." He studied the huge SPY-2 Aegis repeater display in front of him. "Y'know what we need, Joe?"
Joe knew: they needed their space-based eyes back.
For the last ten minutes the general secretary had listened with scarcely disguised impatience as Khromeyev and Rhomerdunov briefed him on their conversation with Govorov about the recent movement of the space station. "Stop right there," the Soviet commander in chief said, holding up his hand. "I've heard enough to worry me. Thank you very much. But in spite of your emphasis on Marshal Govorov's assessment of the damage done to the station, you cannot dismiss that he did recommend a second attack."
"Nor would we wish to, sir," Khromeyev said quickly. "But I have already pointed out why an attack would be unwise at this time. Further, intelligence has come up with the very credible explanation that the Americans may be simply retrieving components."
"I can't believe that. The Americans would not have gone to the trouble of boosting Armstrong into a higher orbit if their only objective was to salvage scrap… Govorov should have finished off the station while he had the chance."
"Oh, I agree, sir," Rhomerdunov said. "But logic tells us there is no possible way Armstrong can be repaired and reactivated in time to contribute to the American fleet's operation in the Middle East. Their rescue of a nonoperational Armstrong is of no consequence to our operation,"
"I would like to believe these assurances of yours." The general secretary moved back to the seat behind his desk, leaving the two men standing ill at ease. He stared directly at them. "So your recommendation is to do nothing?"