But still, Leonov had to at least make a gesture to show the capitalist swine the Rodina knew he was there.
"Scramble the 11th Interceptor Regiment at Archangel," ordered Leonov. "If he turns west toward Kola we may at least have a shot at him."
"At once, Comrade Colonel."
At 75,000 feet, Griggs eased back on the throttles and gently pushed the stick forward to level off the Blackbird prior to their final climb and high-speed run. "How're we doing, Pretty Boy?"
"On track, Catman. Ready to go max?"
"Ready," said Griggs firmly.
Maj. Felix "Catman" Griggs physically "resembled his radio call sign, for he was wiry and catlike and sported an upper lip of bristly whiskers. Capt. Thomas "Pretty Boy" Floyd, however, was the antithesis of his call sign, in that his face was uglier than a mud fence. Yet for some unfathomable reason, women were profoundly attracted to him.
"Okay… okay…" muttered Floyd nervously as he monitored the readouts from the astro-tracker and NavChronometer.
"Okay… okay… okay… now! Put the spurs to it, Catman!"
"Roger." Griggs shoved the dual throttles all the way forward, causing the air-intake cones on the Pratt & Whitney J-58 engines to start pulsating in and out. The pulsing action regulated the airflow pattern into the engines, transforming them from turbofans to ramjets. The compressed air and JP-7 fuel exploding in the combustion chambers produced a combined thrust of 65,000 pounds, propelling the Blackbird at a speed nearly twice as fast as that of the supersonic Concorde.
A product of Lockheed's famous "Skunk Works," the SR-71 looked like a black hooded cobra with wings, and had always enjoyed a mystical reputation. No air-breathing aircraft, before or since, had been able to match its speed and altitude capabilities. Only thirty-two of the aircraft were built in the early sixties, causing them to be collector's items in every sense of the term — not only because of their singular abilities, but because the special tooling used in their construction no longer existed. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had ordered Lockheed to destroy the special tooling so the SR-71 would not compete for funding with his pet project — the FB-111 bomber. (In fairness to McNamara, the FB-111 was a fine plane for the Air Force — if the U.S. ever went to war with Canada.)
Griggs and Floyd concentrated on their instruments with intense silence as the Russian coastline approached. With any luck at all they would complete the round trip of fifteen hundred miles and be out of Soviet airspace in less than fifty-five minutes.
On the edge of the stratosphere Griggs watched the sky turn to twilight as he leveled off for the last time. Then he let his aircraft come up to its fastest gait, like a thoroughbred on the backstretch.
The SR-71 was now exceeding the velocity of a .30–06 rifle bullet.
They had been the most exasperating hours of his life. There was absolutely nothing, nothing, he could do but sit and wait. To have come to the very threshold of success, then have his triumph shattered by a broken plastic circuit board — well, it was enough to make even an Iceberg crack.
He'd eaten a little, rehydrating some of the freeze-dried food in the pantry. But his appetite was barely active. He'd avoided checking on the bodies of Mulcahey and Rodriquez floating in the airlock, for he knew they were dead. Mostly he kept himself strapped into the command seat, watching the inverted horizon and trying not to think of the Constellation on the pad at Kennedy. Would they launch into a polar orbit from Kennedy? Probably not. He hoped the Intrepid's last message about a fire had convinced them everyone on board was dead. They wouldn't risk sending a shuttle near Miami. It would be a political decision to do that, and no politician would be insane enough to risk another Challenger disaster over a major city. They'd send up a recovery ship from Vandenberg, he kept telling himself. And that would take time.
Iceberg willed himself not to look at the clock. When he'd passed over Irkutsk earlier he hadn't even activated his transmitter. The message from the ground had been brief: Stay off the air. We're working on the problem. We'll contact you over Perm.
The Intrepid was just passing over the Arctic ice cap. He'd be able to talk to them in about twelve minutes.
If a Russian and an American airman could trade places between the Soviet Aerospace Defense Warning Centre in Magnitogorsk and NORAD headquarters in Cheyenne Mountain, they would be struck by the similarity of the two facilities. At both locations large projection screens dominated the giant room, and there were rows and rows of consoles. Both the American and Russian centers had a Crow's Nest overlooking the entire facility, where a colonel was on duty at all times to respond to any ' 'bogie,'' or unidentified aircraft or missile. Still another similar aspect was that just as CSOC Mission Control outside Colorado Springs was separate and apart from Cheyenne Mountain, so was the Aerospace Defense Warning Centre separate and apart from the Kaliningrad Flite Control Centre. With General Secretary Vorontsky and KGB Chairman Kostiashak keeping their operation tightly under wraps, not even Colonel Leonov in the Crow's Nest was aware the orbiting spacecraft and the Blackbird were approaching a rendezvous. To him, they were separate and distinct.
Leonov — who was middle-aged and somewhat overweight with a thick crop of wavy gray hair — looked at the northern hemisphere map projection on the wall, which showed North America and Russia in a circle around the Arctic ice cap. He spun a dial on his control panel and the projection zoomed in on the Soviet Union west of the Urals. A white dot moving south was the SR-71.
Leonov scratched his chin. Blackbird overflights were rare, and it was his guess this SR-71 was out to get something the American spy satellites were unable to capture. What, he couldn't imagine, but that wasn't his concern. Of the few overflights he'd been briefed on, he knew the Blackbirds always exited Soviet airspace at a different point from where they entered. This one had not turned west toward the Kola Peninsula as he'd expected, but instead had crossed the coastline south of Novaya Zemlya on a bearing almost due south. If it continued in that direction, it most certainly would not turn due west, because it might oome within range of the Moscow antiballistic missile defenses, and those Galosh missiles could reach the Blackbird. Also, if it continued on its present southerly course it would reach Afghanistan, and, in view of the Soviet reinva-sion, that seemed an unlikely destination, to say the least. Neighboring Iran had long been hostile to the United States, so it certainly wouldn't land there. China, Pakistan, and some Persian Gulf Arab states were possibilities, but there was no historical precedence of Blackbirds operating out of those countries. Therefore, the SR-71 would most likely turn slightly southwest and land in Tirkey — a NATO country. Either that, or it would turn back north and link up with another tanker for refueling.
Leonov carefully inspected the Barents Sea airspace, and the only bogie he could find was making its way slowly toward Spitzbergen Island. The other blips on the screen were Russian military or civilian aircraft. He lifted the phone on his console and punched in the radar operator who had first alerted him. "That bogie headed toward Spitzbergen. Have you identified it?"
"Yes, Comrade Colonel. It apparently is a tanker. We tracked two bogies that joined into one radar signature, then divided. The American Blackbird separated from that signature."