“Jettisoned,” another voice reported.
Mirakov could see the image on the screen. He thumbed the transmit button. “Negative jettison.”
The well-known voice of Colonel General Oberstev came on the air. “Range officer, destroy the vehicle.”
That did not work, either.
Mirakov watched as the A2e slowly accelerated away from the camera’s eye.
Losing altitude.
He estimated that he was 1,600 kilometers east of Moscow, and he wondered if the rocket would impact in any populated area on the eastern coast of the Commonwealth.
Chapter Three
“Son…of a…BITCH!”
Carl Unruh thought that Jack Evoy came out of his chair rather involuntarily, almost like his exclamation. Evoy rounded the big table, headed for the consoles, his eyes staying on the colorful lines streaked across the screen.
“Mark that,” Unruh called to the technician at the console. “Get the coordinates.”
He pushed himself away from the table in the castered chair, reaching for the phone on the cabinet behind him. Lifting the receiver, he punched the buttons for the night duty officer at Langley.
When the man answered, Unruh identified himself and said, “Get me the DCI. Urgent.”
While he waited to talk with the Director of Central Intelligence, he studied the plotting board. From Plesetsk, a dotted purple line emerged, aimed toward the east-southeast. A heavy yellow line and two thinner orange lines also traveled in the same direction. Every few inches along the way, a rectangular box enclosed pertinent data — altitude, velocity.
The two orange lines, representing the Foxbat chase planes, had achieved almost 83,000 feet before curling back and heading for their base.
The yellow line separated from the dotted purple line — the expected track into orbit — at 186,000 feet and almost directly over the Russian Republic city of Prokopyevsk. Abandoning the track the CIA and DIA experts thought the A2e most likely to follow, it had veered eastward.
Worse, it had begun to lose altitude.
The rectangular boxes showed a successive deterioration in both altitude and velocity. As the rocket kept diving, Unruh had been praying the damned thing would burn up, though he did not know whether or not that was a wise hope. What happened to a nuclear payload burned by friction in the atmosphere?
The booster rockets had apparently been expended shortly before the vehicle had passed over the Chinese border.
Unruh wondered if the Japanese Air Defense Force had scrambled. They would have been watching the launch, too, and for a few minutes, the track looked exactly like an incoming ICBM. Panic time.
The rocket was down to 90,000 feet when it passed south of Tokyo.
On the map, the yellow line stopped abruptly at a serene place in the northern Pacific Ocean.
The map suddenly looked quiet.
On the plotting board, the technician labeled in: POINT OF IMPACT-26°20′22″N, 176°10′23″E.
Evoy was standing over the second console, a spare headset clamped over his ears as he listened to the communications from Meade.
He turned around to face Unruh and called across the room, “They’ve intercepted some television shots. It was being telecast live.”
“Wonderful,” Unruh said, though he did not much care. “Just tell me what the hell happened.”
“The main engines flamed out. That’s what cost them velocity. It sounds like they lost all control.”
“What else is going on?”
“The people at NSA are trying to sort it out,” Evoy said. “It’s a bit like July Fourth in hell. The radio frequencies are chaotic.”
After a moment, Evoy added, “They tried to destroy the vehicle by remote control, but it didn’t happen.”
“Anyone mention the payload?” Unruh asked.
“Not on the air in the clear. They’re trying to decode some encrypted messages aimed for Moscow.”
Unruh told the operator of the first console, “Call Defense Intelligence Agency and tell them to get their aerospace and nuclear experts out of bed. We want them standing by. Get someone from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission also.” The technician nodded and began to dial the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Unruh held his phone against his ear and waited. His ear was sweating.
“Stebbins,” the Director of Central Intelligence said, from wherever the duty officer had found him. He did not sound as if he had been asleep. “My line is not secure.”
“Mark, this is Carl.”
“Problem?”
“A big one, maybe. The Red Star package didn’t make orbit.”
“This is the one we’ve been concerned about?”
“Yes.”
“Burn up, did it?”
“No. It didn’t achieve the altitude or speed for that.” Unruh glanced at the screen. “Maxed out at Mach five-point-six.”
“It didn’t break up? Didn’t tumble?”
“No, not from what we’re reading. Took a clean dive into the Pacific.”
“Shit. Where?”
Unruh again looked to the screen. “It looks to be some two thousand miles east of Japan.”
“Put me in an American perspective.”
“Southwest of Midway, fifteen hundred miles west of Honolulu.”
There was a pause while Mark Stebbins digested that. Then he said, “I’ll call the National Security Advisor. You get together whatever data you can grab and meet me at the White House.”
Mark Stebbins hung up abruptly. He was not big on lingering goodbyes.
Unruh replaced his own phone in its cradle. “Jack, we want a videotape of the tracking screen data, plus audiotape of all the voice transmissions. Copies of the TV coverage. Tell the people at Meade to concentrate on this event.”
“Are we worried yet?” Evoy asked.
“I don’t know about the people across the Potomac, but I am.ˮ
When the phone rang, Avery Hampstead’s eyes fluttered open. He lost whatever dream had been showing that night, and he could not recall one fragment of it, though he thought it must have been pretty good. He had an erection.
The phone rang again.
He looked at the clock. 12:44.
It was not a good sign.
He shoved the covers back and rolled upright, trying to not wake Alicia and to get the phone before it rang again.
He just made it. The telephone tingled as he lifted it.
“Hampstead.”
“Avery, this is Carl Unruh.”
They had gone to Princeton together, graduate school in international affairs. Unruh had gone spooky, while Hampstead went bureaucratic. It did not mean that Unruh was entitled to middle-of-the-night calling privileges.
“Can’t recall the name, this time of night,” Hampstead said, prepared to hang up.
“Avery, hold on! I’m sorry about the hour.”
Hampstead sighed.
“I’d like to have you get dressed and go over to the White House.”
“This is College Park. We don’t hang around the White House.”
“Please. I think I’m going to need you.”
“What’s this about, Carl?”
“I can’t tell you. I don’t even know if I’ll get to use you, but I’d like to have you standing by.”
“You know what time it is? They don’t offer tours at night.”
“I’ll clear the way. Go to the East entrance.” Unruh hung up.
“Who’s that?” Alicia asked. Her voice was muffled by the pillow.
“White House calling. I’m invited to breakfast.”
“Sure.” She went back to sleep.
Which was almost what Hampstead did.