Monaghan had thought about reporting the incident, but didn't for three reasons: Nobody would believe Iceberg would be crazy enough to fly an F-15 through a hole in a mountain; any complaint by Mad Dog would be dismissed as the crybaby sniffles of a miffed Navy loser; and the gun camera video recording had run out of tape three seconds before Iceberg's disappearance under the overhang. So Mad Dog had had to let that one slide, but he never forgot… or forgave.
Monaghan turned off the tape and went to the refrigerator to grab a beer — a regular habit, as demonstrated by his generous paunch. He popped the top and walked outside to watch the moon over the distant Sierras. It was a crystal-clear desert night, and the stars were dancing above Edwards Dry Lake.
Slowly and methodically, Monaghan's mind recapped the Red Flag competition one last time. He was totally convinced there was no question. Iceberg had deliberately tried to splatter his Hornet on a mountainside just so he could capture some two-bit championship. Any sicko who would pull something like that was capable of anything.
After he drained the last of his beer, Mad Dog's hefty forearm muscle flexed, causing the can to crumple in his hand. He'd made up his mind.
Kapuscinski, Mulcahey, and Rodriquez. McCormack had said they didn't know which one had gone over.
Monaghan's money was on Kapuscinski, and as far as he was concerned, if the Kestrel went up, that motherfucking snake Iceberg was dead meat.
Whittenberg and Lamborghini straggled into the conference room, still wearing their green flight suits. They looked drawn, haggard, and grimy with stubble on their chins. They'd grabbed a few hours' sleep before heading back from Washington, but it hadn't been near enough to recharge them fully. The long hours and stress were taking their toll.
Whittenberg called a conference of the staff members who were not sleeping, and one by one they waddled in and plopped down in their chairs. The chief of staff had just awakened, and he was probably the most refreshed of the group. Everybody else looked like yesterday's poached eggs.
Whittenberg nodded wearily to Dowd. "Give me a status check, Bull."
"Roger, sir. Let's start off with intel. Chief Kelly, what have you got?" The chief master sergeant had been minding the intelligence shop while Lamborghini and Strand were away. He quickly explained how they were investigating the Intrepid's crew members with the help of an FBI agent.
After Kelly was finished, the Bull said, "Okay, Sir Isaac, what do you have?"
Fairchild turned to face the CinC. "I spoke with General McCormack a few minutes ago. Preparations are proceeding at the Cape and the Constellation should be ready for launch by zero-four-thirty Eastern time tomorrow morning. The Kestrel is in the process of being armed, and will be transported to Van-denberg in about five hours. Also, General McCormack asked that you call him as soon as possible, sir."
Sir Isaac then rose and went to the lectern, his huge nose and skinny frame making him look like a buzzard poised on a fence post. He punched a few buttons, and a Mercator world map appeared on the screen showing the ground track of the Intrepid. "Something occurred during your flight back from Washington that is disturbing," he began, while pointing at the screen. "This is the ground track of the Intrepid as of four hours ago. At zero-four-thirty-two Zulu we received a launch detection in SPADOC of a missile coming out of the Plesetsk Cosmodrome."
"At zero-four-thirty-two?" asked Whittenberg. "That was fast."
"Yes, sir. As you'll recall, our last KH-12 pass had occurred only six hours prior and there were no vehicles on any Plesetsk pads at that time. The Soviets wheeled this one out and launched it in very short order." Sir Isaac punched another button and a second wavy line appeared, parallel to the first. "This is the ground track of the Plesetsk vehicle. It is virtually on a direct reciprocal orbit to the Intrepid, but with one major difference. It is traveling in a circular orbit at a higher altitude of two hundred twenty-one miles."
"I don't think I like this," muttered the CinC.
"Neither do I, sir," replied Sir Isaac.
"Has Admiral Bergstrom been informed?"
"NMCC was notified immediately, sir."
"Your assessment?" asked Whittenberg.
Sir Isaac stoked up his pipe. "Take your pick, sir. It could be an ELINT bird, SIGINT, PHOTINT, IR, you name it. Whatever it is, it seems to be passive. NSA hasn't picked up so much as a bleep of telemetry from it."
"What about an ASAT?" queried Lamborghini.
Sir Isaac rapped his teeth with the pipestem. "It's not impossible, but there are several arguments against that line of thinking."
"Such as," prompted the CinC.
Sir Isaac stared at the ceiling for a few moments before speaking. "I would anticipate an ASAT would mirror the Intrepid's altitude or travel below it, but as I said, this vehicle's altitude is significantly higher. In conducting ASAT tests, the Russians have historically kept the warhead in the same orbital altitude as the target, or else placed the warhead in a lower altitude and put it through a pop-up maneuver in the terminal targeting phase. Also, Russian ASATs have always traveled in a co-orbital flight path. They've never traveled in the opposite direction. So this violates any historical precedent."
"What about that test they ran just before the ASAT treaty was signed?" Lamborghini was referring to a dual launch detection that had been picked up out of the Baikonur Cosmodrome. One SS-N-9 missile went due south, another went due north. What happened exactly, NORAD couldn't say for sure, except that on the very first orbit the two payloads were destroyed somewhere over the South Pole — where the Spacetrack radars had a blind spot. Their flight paths had been kept at such a low altitude that their debris quickly fell to earth before NORAD got a good handle on whether it was an ASAT test or something else. Right after that shot, the antisatellite weaponry treaty was signed.
Sir Isaac shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. But if that was an ASAT, they've only had one test."
"Yeah," said Lamborghini. "One successful test."
Again, Sir Isaac shrugged. "We simply can't say for certain. But consider this: If the Russians are indeed trying to capture the Intrepid, why would they shoot it down with an ASAT?''
Lamborghini mulled that one over. "Maybe they can't retrieve the Intrepid and want to shoot it down to prevent us from arming the platform?"
"If that's the case," countered Sir Isaac, "then why haven't they gone ahead and destroyed it?"
There was a period of silence. No one had an answer.
"So you're still saying it could be anything?" asked Whittenberg.
"That's about the size of it, sir," Sir Isaac sighed.
"That may be," said Lamborghini as he ran a hand through his sweat-stained raven hair, "but this is another uncomfortable coincidence. It must have something to do with the Intrepid. What, I don't know, but there has to be a link."