Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (20 page)

           
“Armstrong
reports only one minute of scanning time available, sir. .. first two Soviet
jet aircraft turning northbound past the destroyers... no speed being
registered by any of the three vessels. They appear to be dead in the water...
losing the real-time signal from Armstrong, sir. We’ll get you the latest area
chart immediately.”

           
“What about
that air force AWACS? Can we tie into their data transmissions?”

           
“I’ll try,
Skipper.”

           
Page tossed
the microphone down on its hook.
Antilaser
coating?
God
damn,
she never said
she’d be a target for damned
lasers
....

 
          
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

           
“Picking up
emergency locator beacons from the area of those Soviet vessels, General,”
Jefferson
reported. “A few distress calls.”

           
The command
module was unusually silent. No one could speak except in muted, clipped
voices. They had all witnessed, first-hand, the beginning of what appeared to
be a major confrontation between
Iran
and the
Soviet Union
.

           
Silver
Tower
was now on the short one-hour
portion of its three- hour orbit, hurtling toward perigee, its closest approach
to earth, only eighty miles above the edge of the atmosphere. This part of the
orbit was a busy time for the crew, especially now. Along with the normal
housekeeping functions of running the huge station—power collection and storage
while on the “day” side of the orbit, systems maintenance, and inspections—the
massive amounts of data collected by the crew had to be stored and prepared for
dissemination, and then the proper preparations made in Silver Tower’s numerous
sensor banks for the next two-hour pass over the conflict area.

           
What made
the job even more pressured was the constant stream of calls to General
Saint-Michael, asking for a description of exactly what had happened in the
Persian
Gulf
.

           
“Negative,”
Saint-Michael said into his earset. “Sir, I’m sorry, but I have my orders. My
amended orders are to transmit my stored data to the Joint Chiefs directly....
No, we don’t have the time to retransmit it to Sixth Fleet or Seventh Fleet
Headquarters. We’ll have just enough time to beam it out once before we have to
start setting up for the next orbit over the area... . Yes, Admiral, it was the
California
that requested the data link.
. ..
The
Nimitz
listened in but it was the
California
that asked. .. . Yes, sir,
they must have data from shortly after the Silkworm launch was detected. They
may have even seen the impact themselves
..
..”

           
Saint-Michael
rubbed the painful throbbing in his left temple. At a slight tap on his
shoulder, he opened his eyes and saw Ann moving beside his seat with a cup of
coffee.

           
“You look
like you can use—”

           
Saint-Michael
shook his head and tapped his earset. “I’m on the scrambled satellite link.
Admiral Walton.”

           
Ann nodded,
listening in as Saint-Michael took the cup of coffee and continued speaking
into the microphone.

           
“I’m sorry,
sir? Yes, we can use the data link itself for voice as well as SBR data
transmissions. It’s a frequency-agile scrambled microwave transmission. It’s
not completely jam-proof or completely secure, but it’s real-time voice and
data at the same time, and I think that’s what you want.... What? It was
working fine with the
California
,
Admiral....”

           
“The
California
?”
Ann said.
“Where?
Where is he?”

           
Saint-Michael
held up a hand. “Yes, Admiral. I think the
Nimitz
should get the data, but
California
seemed to be better set up to
receive it. That’s your primary battle management ship, she has better
satellite arrays and combat-control displays.... No, we’ll beam it to anyone
who’s set up to receive it.... Yes, sir....”

           
“How’s my
father? Was he... in the fight?”

           
“Dammit,
Ann... no, Admiral. Stand by one.” Saint-Michael turned to her. “The
Nimitz
battle group was seven hundred
miles away in the
Arabian Sea
when the attack started.
Now please, be quiet.” He turned back to his earset and continued his
conversation.

           
Colonel
Walker interrupted Saint-Michael’s transmission with the “CALL” function of the
interstation communications system. “Ten minutes, General.”

           
“Gotta go,
Admiral. We’re ten minutes from horizon passage.... Thank you, sir. Armstrong
out.” Saint-Michael immediately switched to station wide intercom. “Attention
on the station. Message from the Joint Chiefs, transmitted through U.S. Navy
Commander in Chief Pacific Forces. Well done. That goes double for me. But now
we get to do it all over again—ten minutes to horizon crossing, stand by for
target area.”

 
          
THE KREMLIN,
USSR

           
“It. . . is
.. . impossible.. . .”

           
Marshal of
the Soviet Union Sergei Czilikov read the dispatch slowly, his gnarled fingers
digging deeply into the paper. He dismissed the messenger with a wave of his
hand. First Deputy Minister Khromeyev stepped toward the minister of defense’s
desk, and Czilikov handed the message to him.

           
“A
communication between space station Armstrong and the commander in chief of
Pacific Forces in
Pearl Harbor
,
Hawaii
,”
Khromeyev muttered, reading the message, “discussing the transmission of
real-time, space-based radar data to ships of the Seventh Fleet detachment in
the
Arabian Sea
.”

           
“Govorov
... the space station Armstrong ... is it possible?” Czilikov asked. “That
station is sixteen hundred kilometers in space, traveling twenty-eight thousand
kilometers an hour. Is it really possible that it can report on the position of
all combat vehicles in that region?”

           
“This
message says nothing of the sort. We’ve had satellites that can transmit
real-time imagery for a decade. The technology is rather commonplace. Watching
a few ships in the
Persian Gulf
from space is child’s
play and has been for years.”

           
“But the
attack was detected so quickly....”

           
“Three
hours? Sir, in these days a child in a sailboat on the
Persian Gulf
can report an attack to the world in three hours. I still have not seen any
evidence of the American’s vaunted high-technology spacetracking system.”

           
Czilikov
nodded slowly. “Very well. I will go along with your assessment. Feather will
continue as planned. Were there any serious casualties aboard the
Sovremnnyy?”

           
“No
casualties, sir. An unexpectedly high number of injuries but none serious. The
Sovremnnyy
was hit by three missiles and
suffered extreme damage, much more than planned. In addition, the patrol vessel
Buchara
was hit by a forth Silkworm
missile. Several injuries, heavy damage but she’s still under her own power.
However, sir, there are unexpected bonuses. As unfortunate as the injuries are,
it should serve to fuel outrage and help win support for the operation. This is
no longer an ‘unfortunate incident’—it is a major act of aggression. There also
can be no charge of a contrived attack....”

           
“No, but I
wish it weren’t through our own ineptness that it was so.” Czilikov paused,
thinking. “Strategically, we’re in good shape. The
Brezhnev
is still in grave danger from land-based attack, but
Chercherovin assures me the carrier and her escorts in the gulf can take control
of the skies until Bandar-Abbas,
Tehran
,
Tabriz
, and
Hamadan
airfields in
Iran
are taken by Rhomerdunov and Ilanovsky. Once the air force and army control
those four fields, they will be able to sufficiently seal off the skies for
Chercherovin to move more ships into the gulf.”

           
“And the
American, French and British ships in the gulf? What of them?”

           
“They are
already overwhelmed. We outnumber them two to one. Once the
Brezhnev
controls the skies over the
region, the Western ships in the gulf will be impotent.”

           
Kromeyev
nodded. “Stationing the
Brezhnev
in
the gulf was a master stroke, the tactical advantage we now have there far
outweighs the dangers we faced moving it past the
Strait of Hormuz
.
Who would have thought the Americans would allow us such free access into the
gulf? At the very least, I expected them to match our forces—even that was
never fully accomplished.”

           
“And that
will be the Americans’ greatest mistake,” Czilikov said. “They wanted to play
power politics in the
Persian Gulf
without supporting
their policies. Soon they will pay the price....”

 
          
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

 
          
The master SBR display now only
showed the three-hundred-mile area surrounding the
Strait of Hormuz
,
but even so it took Jake Jefferson and two other technicians to process the
volume of data being collected.

           
“The
Brezhnev
is within one hundred miles of
Bandar-e Lengeh,”
Jefferson
reported.
“Numerous
aircraft in the area.”

           
“Those
Russians sure are getting ballsy with that carrier,”
Walker
said, studying the display.
“Only one ship, a Krivak-class
frigate, between it and Bandar-Abbas.
If the Iranians decide to shoot
again, the carrier will make one inviting target.”

           
“Aircraft
launching from the
Brezhnev
, sir,”
Jefferson
reported again. “Fast moving, not rotorcraft.”

           
“I still
can’t figure the Iranians shooting at those ships,” Kevin Baker said. “Did it
look like those Soviet ships were threatening them, about to go into Iranian
waters?”

           
His
question got him no answer. Saint-Michael was intently scribbling in a
notebook, Ann staying near him.

           
“Where is
the
California
?”
she asked.

           
“Still
about six hundred miles away from the
Strait of Hormuz
,”
Saint-Michael said distractedly. “The
Nimitz
will probably move a few hundred miles closer, within flying range of its
fighters, and wait there.” He looked at her. “I’d say your father’s safe, don’t
worry.”

           
“Safe? I
wish I could believe that.” She looked at the master SBR display. “How come we
can’t see the
Nimitz
and the
California
on
the screen?”

           
The general
was now ignoring her, so
Walker
took it up: “The Joint Chiefs asked us to zoom in on the
Strait of
Hormuz
. They want a detailed look at where that Soviet carrier
Brezhnev
is going and what she’s going
to do.”

           
“But the
Nimitz'
s battle group
...
?”

           
“Still
under surveillance. The SBR still scans the area for a thousand miles around
the target area, and that includes the
Arabian Sea
and
the
Nimitz.
The results of its scans
are still recorded—we just don’t display the whole area. There’s just too much
data to digest, and we can’t keep both shifts going ’round the clock.”

           
“But how
can you tell if something’s happening near the
Nimitz?”

           
“The system is programmed to
alert us if the SBR detects a threat near our own ships. An alarm will go off
and the display will change to scan—”

           
“Rotorcraft
recovering on the
Brezhnev
, sir,” a
tech cut in.
“Brezhnev
turning
northwest into the wind again.”

           
Walker
motioned to Ann. “Why don’t you check those monitors there? You can use them to
plot out the
California
's
position.”

           
Ann thanked
him with her eyes and moved over to the unoccupied computer monitor. She
studied the display, noting with fascination that it identified the type of
vehicle, its location, its speed and its probable destination and time of
arrival. It was identifying trucks, boats and planes of all sizes, even barges
and light airplanes—it even had a line of data on a contact labeled “MARINE
MAMMAL.”