Chief of Staff Dowd was on the phone to the Spacetrack monitor on the floor below, while Whittenberg was holding the receiver on a direct line to Admiral Bergstrom. Sir Isaac and Strand were monitoring a green CRT screen.
"I calculate they're entering the first retrofire window… now," announced Sir Isaac. "They can initiate reentry within the next two minutes."
Whittenberg relayed Sir Isaac's information to Bergstrom, and seconds crawled by one at a time, until two minutes elapsed. Dowd muttered into his receiver to the Spacetrack monitor one last time, then looked up and announced, "No change in orbit, General."
"Give it one more minute to be sure," ordered the CinC, and another sixty seconds dragged by.
Dowd spoke into the phone again, waited for a response, then said, "It's definite, General. No retrofire on this pass."
"Good. Call CSOC and tell McCormack it's a definite go on the Kestrel." The CinC then spoke into his own phone. "There was no retrofire on this pass, Admiral, and we're sending the Kestrel up."
"Fire it, Sergei! Fire it!" pleaded Lubinin.
"I am trying!" yelled Yemitov, as he repeatedly mashed the red button.
"What's the problem out there?" barked Iceberg.
Lubinin cursed. "We do not know, Intrepid. We have some type of malfunction… Sergei, what is wrong?"
Yemitov gave up trying. "I do not know, Vasili," he said in an angry voice. "It could be something on this unit, or there could be a problem with the receiver and igniter on the Progress engine."
Lubinin swore again. "You return to the Soyuz and retrieve the backup remote device. I will disengage the timers on the explosive bolts. Then we must try again."
"What do you mean, a malfunction'!" demanded Kostiashak.
Popov had had it. "How the hell am I supposed to know?" he fired back. "The damned thing did not fire! You know as much about it as I do!"
The Chairman's cool veneer had finally cracked. Without the Intrepid on Russian soil, his plan was on the rocks. "What can we do?" he asked ruefully.
Popov sighed. "Not a great deal. I will contact the Chief Designer at Baikonur and have him patched into the communications link. Maybe there is something he can do, but I doubt it. It is all up to the cosmonauts now. Perhaps they can diagnose the problem, but they must do it quickly. There are only eighty-seven minutes to the next reentry window."
Kostiashak got a grip on himself. He must, he told himself, ' 'play out the play.'' He summoned Colonel Borisov and rapidly scratched out a message. "See to it that this message is transmitted to the General Secretary's aircraft."
"At once, Comrade Chairman."
"Message coming in now, Skipper," said Whizzo. "Gimme a sec." He rapidly decoded the four-letter epistle and handed it to the pilot.
"Damn!" Ghost Leader grimaced as he glanced at the message. It read: hold.
The two black batwings were flying a rectangular holding pattern in Soviet airspace near the Initial Point (IP) for their bomb run. The Baikonur runway was some 250 miles distant. They had remained undetected by radar, and visual detection was highly unlikely because a quilt of giant cumulonimbus clouds blanketed the Kazakhstan steppes. The two bombers were still flying in a loose "stacked" formation — one on top of the other — about three hundred feet apart at an altitude of thirty-three thousand feet. They were ducking in and out of the fluffy towers, and although flying inside the clouds made for a bumpy ride, the extra concealment was welcome.
"Is the laser channel open?" asked Ghost Leader.
"Roger, Skipper," replied Whizzo.
The pilot keyed his mike switch. "Ghost Two, this is Lead. Did you copy the message?"
"Roger, Lead."
' 'Okay, then. It looks like we gotta kill another ninety minutes up here. We'll stay in the clouds as much as possible until we get a go-no go from Omaha. Apparently that shuttle hasn't started to come down yet."
"I copy, Lead," said Ghost Two. "We're with you."
The antenna which fed into the triggering device for the Progress engine was sticking out of a tiny hole at the base of the engine.
"The base is sealed shut," said Chief Designer Vostov in a tired voice, "and it is inaccessible from your position. All you can do is feel the antenna itself to determine if it is firmly attached to its anchor point on the igniter inside the engine."
Lubinin reached out and gently probed the thin wire. "It appears to be securely fastened, Comrade Chief Designer."
There was a pause on the other end. "Very well,'' said Vostov finally. "All you can do is use the backup remote-control trigger. Perhaps there was a flaw in the first one. Try to position yourself as close to the antenna as you dare when you engage the trigger. Remember, the signal is line-of-sight."
Lubinin sighed. "Yes, Comrade Chief Designer."
Inside the Intrepid, Iceberg had almost blown a fuse. All he knew was that the jerry-rigged engine hadn't fired, and that was followed by a lot of radio chatter in Russian — which he couldn't understand.
Yemitov floated into view and hovered over the nose.
"So what's the holdup?" demanded Iceberg.
"There was some type of malfunction of our triggering device. We are going to try again" — Yemitov checked his wrist chronometer—"in forty-three minutes. We will use a backup transmitter."
Iceberg was not pleased. "What's your name, anyway?" he asked the Russian.
Yemitov hesitated a moment. He was repelled by Iceberg's black eyes. They seemed to bore right through him. Carefully he replied, "Sergei."
"Yeah, well, I have something to tell you, Sergei."
Yemitov felt a chill. "And what is it that you wish to say to me?"
Iceberg's eyes were flint hard. "Don't fuck it up this time."
General Secretary Vorontsky's private Ilyushin was a sumptuous vehicle that was divided into three compartments. The forward section was a lounge area with a small bar. The middle compartment was a study, possessing a custom-made desk and chair, while the rear cabin was a bedroom.
One of Vorontsky's greatest pleasures was taking the jetliner to Western capitals for state visits. He enjoyed the pomp and circumstance of an airport arrival, while his wife enjoyed shopping sprees at Harrods or Saks Fifth Avenue with her American Express card.
On other occasions he would take the jetliner into Siberia for a fishing trip at Lake Baikal — often in the company of someone other than his wife.
The aircraft's bartender had just handed the General Secretary his third vodka when the captain came out of the cockpit with a message. The General Secretary quickly scanned the note and looked up at the pilot. "This message is from Comrade Kostiashak. He says General Popov thought it best to bring down the American spacecraft after one more orbit, and that it will land at Baikonur at approximately six p.m. When are we scheduled to arrive there?"