But as soon as the flight was airborne, the twenty technicians and engineers aboard the aircraft got to work. The oil-drilling equipment that resembled massive cast-iron pieces were easily and quickly disassembled — they were actually composed of lightweight steel sheeting over polystyrene foam. Pump manifolds became control consoles; oil-drilling valves became test equipment and toolboxes; and oil-drilling pipe became pieces of two unusually shaped missiles.
The missiles had a curly-sided triangular cross-section, rather than a conventional round torpedo shape, with the bottom side slightly broader in an aerodynamic “lifting body” fuselage design. They had no conventional wings or control surfaces such as tail feathers or fins. When the missiles’ flight control systems were tested after assembly, the missiles’ skin actually seemed to undulate and ripple, like the scales of a swimming fish. The missiles’ engine inlets and exhausts were narrow slits both atop and at the weapon’s tail. Tiny sensor arrays covered the outside, looking in all directions. Each missile weighed about three thousand five hundred pounds. They were slid inside a pressure-sealed chamber over the curious cargo doors on the bottom of the aircraft fuselage.
By the time the missiles were in place, the DC-10 was over northern Belarus, fifty miles west of the city of Vitebsk. The technicians still inside the aft part of the cargo compartment donned helmets, parkas, gloves, and oxygen masks, and signaled on intercom that they were ready for the next step. The mission commander nodded, took a sip of Pepsi from a large squeeze bottle, keyed a microphone button, waited for the secure satellite transceiver link to lock in, then: “Hey, Archangel, this is Mad Dog.”
“Go ahead, Mad Dog.”
“We’re all ready to go. Say the word.”
“Do it.”
“Got it. Buzz me if you change your mind.”
“Very well. Good luck.”
“Don’t need it, but thanks. Later.” He turned to the aircraft intercom: “Okay, guys, countdown is under way, T minus two minutes and counting,” Doctor Jon Masters reported. “Final prelaunch checks complete, running pregyro spin-up checks, awaiting RLG alignment in forty-two seconds. Stand by for launch chamber depressurization.”
Jon Masters was happiest in his lab or on a computer design system, but he enjoyed actually going out and firing a few of his babies off every now and then. In his early thirties, with boyish good looks bordering on impish, Jon Masters was the Bill Gates of the military hardware and weapon contractors. He had earned his PhD about the same time most kids were learning to drive a car, and he had helped NASA build a worldwide tracking and data system and had been made chairman of a small high-tech weapons firm in California by the time most young men were getting their first real job. A few years later, he was firmly in control of his company and known the world over as an innovative inventor and designer. Sky Masters Inc. developed hundreds of different strategic and tactical military systems — everything from miniature satellite reconnaissance and communications systems, to high-tech aircraft, sensors, and air-launched weapons.
His most lucrative contracts had always been the top-secret stuff — satellites launched specifically for a classified mission, stealth warplanes, and Buck Rogers-like high-tech weapons. His company actually manufactured few of his designs — he found it much more profitable to license the designs to other high-tech firms. But this project was different. He’d personally supervised every aspect of this mission. This was the ultimate request, and the ultimate challenge — he wasn’t going to let anyone down. Jon Masters had a long enough string of successes working for classified top-secret projects that he could afford to be cocky, but he knew that if it could go wrong, it might go wrong, and he could never be positively sure until the mission was over.
The countdown went smoothly and swiftly. It took less than thirty seconds to spin up and align the RLG, or ring laser gyro, which provided super-accurate attitude and heading information to both missiles’ autopilots and navigation computers. Once the RLG was aligned, the chamber in which the missiles sat was depressurized, and the final data download began. Launch aircraft position, airspeed, altitude, and heading, along with target coordinates and last-second enemy antiaircraft intelligence information, was dumped to the missiles’ onboard computers, checked, then rechecked by computer in a matter of seconds. One more self-test was accomplished, the launch aircraft began a shallow climb, the cargo doors on the bottom of the fuselage were opened, and both missiles were ejected one by one into the slipstream.
The missiles were only in the air for a few minutes when an alert sounded. “Grant Two reporting a flight-control malfunction,” one of the technicians reported. “Looks like the entire left-side adaptive wing actuators are out.”
“Did you try a recall order?”
“It responded in the affirmative, then started reporting off-track,” the tech replied. “It’s trying to make its way back to us, but it can’t steer.”
“Cripes,” Masters exclaimed under his breath. “And that was the best one in the fleet. Did we get a data dump yet?”
“Yes, sir. Grant Two sent a complete data dump as soon as the malfunction occurred, and I requested and received another one. Blytheville acknowledged the fault and data dump, too.” The missiles always collected engine, systems, environmental, attitude, and computer data for the last thirty minutes of flight, like a flight data recorder did on an airliner, and it uploaded that information via satellite back to the launch aircraft and to Sky Masters Inc.’s headquarters in Blytheville, Arkansas. The upload came regularly throughout the flight, just before reaching their target, and whenever there was a glitch.
Jon Masters reached over to a red switch cover, opened it, inserted a key into a lock, turned it, and then pressed a button. Ten miles away, the second missile exploded. “Eighteen million down the tubes,” he muttered. There was no such thing as insurance for an experimental missile — especially one being used illegally. “How’s Grant One?”
“Straight and true, on course, all systems in the green.” Jon nodded. Well, he thought ruefully, that’s why we launch two at a time, even with the best systems — and he had the best systems around. Just ask him.
Grant One (Jon Masters always named his devices after U.S. presidents) continued its flight, descending smoothly from thirty-nine thousand feet under battery power only, heading east. Several minutes after launch, with its battery power halfway depleted, it automatically started its turbojet engine, but kept the power-off glide going until reaching five thousand feet above the western Russian lowlands. The engine throttled up as it began to level off, then reported one last status check to its mothership. Jon responded with a final “go-ahead” order.
The missile accelerated to four hundred and eighty knots airspeed and descended to one thousand feet above ground level as it cruised north of Moscow, skirting the long-range air defense and air traffic control radars ringing the city. Every twelve seconds, it updated its inertial guidance system with a fix from the Global Positioning System navigational satellites, but after only a forty-five-minute low-level flight, its navigational error was less than sixteen feet.