"Uh, yes, ma'am."
"So what about it?"
Matthews punched a few buttons, then said, "Look at the plot of the signal source, ma'am." A Mercator world map appeared on Matthews's screen with a wavy line indicating the Intrepid's orbit. Three white dots were astride the orbit line, blinking over far northeastern Siberia.
Strand shook her head, as if trying to clear a garbled circuit. By nature she was a person driven by logic, and her logical mind couldn't accept what her eyes perceived. It was like looking in a mirror and seeing the reflection of a stranger's face — it wasn't supposed to be there. But the blinking white lights, like Lady Macbeth's spot, wouldn't disappear. They kept blinking and blinking until finally evidence overcame logic, and the realization imploded on her like a freight train.
She gasped. "But that's… that's…"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Dear God…"
When her F-16 had flamed out over the Utah desert she'd had the same cold, sickening, sinking feeling as she reached for the eject handles. Something was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. Those dots on the screen. They simply could not be. Strand looked around the room, almost in a daze. She needed help. There was Lamboighini across the room. "Colonel!"
Whittenberg lowered himself into the big leather chair, the strain of the afternoon having taken its toll. He'd been on the phone for hours talking to the Chief of the General Staff, the Secretary of Defense, NASA, and the Vice President, explaining in patient detail what had happened and what they were doing to rescue the Intrepid. Whittenberg's orders were straightforward: "Try to rescue the crew and save the payload." At least the Spyglass pictures had come back showing the Intrepid was still in one piece, so maybe there was someone up there to rescue after all.
The CinC poured some coffee from the thermos pot. He wouldn't be getting much sleep the next few days, and SPACECOM had its regular business to attend to. He nodded to his chief of staff. ' 'Okay, Bull, let's begin and wrap it up as soon as we can. I want to check with Chet and see how things are coming at the Cape."
"Yes, sir," replied Michael Dowd as he scanned the room. "Uh, sir, I was going to lead off with intel, but Colonel Lamborghini doesn't seem to be here."
Whittenberg looked at the colonel's empty chair. "Hmmm. That's odd. You can usually set your watch by him. Well, send someone to fetch him. We'll start off with Sir Isaac instead." Whittenberg tried not to show his irritation, but the edge on his voice wasn't lost on anyone.
The Bull was muttering to an aide to find out where the hell Lamborghini was when the double doors to the conference room burst open and the SPACECOM intelligence officer lunged through, with Major Strand on his heels. "General!" heshouted. "We've got trouble!"
Everyone was taken aback by the force of his delivery. Lamborghini was always a cool one. He never got rattled. What was happening? Had SAC gone to DEFCON One?
"Okay, Colonel," Whittenberg said cautiously. "What seems to be the problem?"
Lamborghini went to a wall phone and punched in an extension. "Okay, Matthews, patch it through to the conference-room screen.'' Not waiting for an answer, he went to the control switch at the lectern. He took a few deep breaths. These men needed accurate information, he told himself. Not hysterics. He caught a few more breaths, then ran through a quick brief as calmly as he could. Then he spun a dial on the lectern and a Mercator map appeared on the big overhead screen, showing the wavy line and blinking lights over the Siberian coast, "And that," he concluded, "is the flight path of the Intrepid. The white dots are the radio transmission points."
No one spoke, and there was a prolonged silence — until a clunk was heard from the middle of the table. Sir Isaac's meerschaum pipe had fallen out of his mouth and onto the hardwood surface.
To say the room was shocked by Lamborghini's demonstration would not capture the true essence of the moment. It was more like a collective stroke.
"Jesus H. Christ," was all the Bull could say, while the rest of the table looked like a mass dental examination, for every single mouth was wide open.
As stunned as he was, Whittenberg had to summon up thirty years of military discipline and get a grip on himself. "Colonel… does this mean what I think it means? That the Intrepid is communicating with a Russian ground station?"
"Yes, sir. That is what the data indicate."
There was a pause. "Are you certain the information is accurate?" asked Dowd.
Lamborghini spoke precisely. "I just got off the phone with the analyst at NSA. A civilian named Littleton. He's double-checking, but the signals came through the Eardrum satellite and went through normal analysis."
The chief of staff felt a little relieved. "Those spooks at NSA have been wrong before." But no one echoed his opinion — or was it wishful thinking? "Has CSOC been able to reestablish contact with the Intrepid?" Dowd asked.
"I checked with Mission Control before I came, sir," replied Lamborghini. "Nothing from the Intrepid since it went off the air."
Whittenberg's mind was spinning. The Intrepid talking to the Russians? It was not to be believed. But if it was actually happening, some member of the crew had to be doing the talking. His gaze fell on Strand. "Major. You were in the program with the Intrepid's crew. You probably know them better than anyone here. Did any of them ever seem, well, unstable to you?"
Strand sorted through her memory banks carefully before answering. "Rodriquez always seemed like a bit of an airhead to me, but maybe that's because the guy was so smart. You know, he was like the flaky kid who slept in class and never studied, but always got A's on his tests. He never broke the rules. He was just flaky." She conjured up the copilot. "I got to know Frank Mulcahey fairly well. He was the practical joker. Real solid pilot and conscientious father. Loved a good time. Air Force Academy. Typical red-white-and-blue American boy who was proud of his Irish ancestry." She paused.
Whittenberg prompted, "And Kapuscinski?"
She tugged at her chin. "Kind of a weird bird, sir, but of the three he was probably the least likely to do something like this. Whatever this is."
"Why is that?" asked Sir Isaac.
"I'm a little hazy on this, but I seem to recall his parents were Polish refugees after the war. They'd endured some incredible hardships at the hands of the Soviets. His mother was, uh, well, raped by some Russian soldiers, or so went the rumor. He didn't talk much, but if the subject of Russians ever came up during a conversation it was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. He hated them. Deeply. If he's diverted the Intrepid it would probably be to try to bomb Moscow. Also, sir, he's an incredible pilot. We went one-on-one in a couple of T-38s out of the Cape one afternoon, and he nailed me before I knew where he was coming from."
"So, as far as you can tell," asked Whittenberg, "there's nothing to indicate any of these men had gone… round the bend, so to speak?"
"No, sir," she replied.
Whittenberg digested this for some seconds, then shook the tree. "All right, people. Talk to me. What do we do?"
Lamborghini responded. "Well, sir, I think we should first verify that the information is accurate."
Sir Isaac had retrieved his pipe and was rekindling the light to calm himself. "I agree," he muttered between puffs. "If we bump this up the line, the first thing the Pentagon will want is confirmation. Eardrum is a powerful tool, but triangulating from that distance leaves room for distortion and error. It's happened before." Once more, no one challenged the electrical engineer from MIT.