Tomahawk (32 page)

“That's what I'm saying, yeah.”

“Then that settles it, I guess. We go to plan B. And you'll keep this all under your hat?”

Dan said he would, then got up. Attucks and Bepko got up, too. They shook hands. “Good luck on your new career,” Bepko said. Dan gave them a wave and headed out the door.

He was going over the preparations for
New Jersey's
sailing date when Cottrell called back. She told him that according to DeSilva, the subcommittee was going to recommend nonapproval of the supplemental. Mulholland had changed his vote. There was no way to tell what the Senate was going to do, but as far as the House was concerned, the way things were looking right now, they couldn't expect to go to full procurement next fiscal year. And it was perfectly possible, if that slipped, Tomahawk might die on the vine. “He said to tell you he's sorry,” she said. “Something about a bouncing ball. Better luck next time.”

He sat back after hanging up, rubbing his face. Feeling, oh, he didn't know what. Only that he felt something.

Then he leaned forward again and went back to work.

19

 

 

 

His return to Cold Lake for the second half of Primal Thunder was less dramatic than the first arrival. No crowded, Spartan C-130 interior. Instead, he touched down in a little commuter plane, commercial air out of Edmonton. Decker was waiting in a Hummer. Dan threw his bag into the back of the utility vehicle. “Thanks for coming for me.”

The security officer squinted up. “It wasn't for you. We got mail, too. See you dressed heavier this time.”

“I'm learning.”

“How's D.C., Commander? Sweater weather?”

“A little colder than that.”

“Well, we got about a foot more snow since you left. And looking for a blizzard on the way.”

“A blizzard? Isn't it cold enough?”

“It ain't cold that makes the storms fun around here,” Decker told him. “Or at least not just the cold. Congress gonna keep us alive?”

“We didn't look good in the hearing. A lot depends on these tests.”

“Well, we're doing our part. I'll tell you, the boys are getting fed up with this weather, the isolation—all of it. Had to break up a fight yesterday.” Decker started up. They stopped at the canteen in hangar number one to pick up sandwiches and hot coffee, then headed out onto the snow-covered two-lane road that led north.

Six hours later, battered and bone-tired, he climbed out into the dark. There hadn't been much chance for discussion with the Hummer in low gear most of the way. He got his chance to drive after a couple of hours, and it had been fun all right. The last thirty kilometers were in the dark, on unpaved roads, with unintentional cross-country excursions. Decker had to get out and shoot compass bearings twice. It was the first time Dan had been in the utility vehicles, and he doubted the old Jeeps would have made it over some of the terrain—especially under deep snow— that the Hummer had negotiated.

The mess tent was warmed with a hissing Coleman and lit with strung bulbs. A generator set hammered not far off in the woods. The perimeter had been pulled in; all the vehicles and service areas were huddled closer together. The crew looked up as he and Decker came in, shaking snow off their parkas. Yeah, not many happy faces. “Mail call,” said Decker, tossing the bag on a table. He sat down where Dan was already muzzle-deep in a mug of hot cocoa.

Manhurin was out making the evening tour, but Sparky brought him up-to-date. The time since Dan had been there had been taken up with security drills and a site shift, to test their ability to do a hop-skip relocation under battle conditions. Sakai had used the break to get into the software with the contractor rep.

Launches would resume tomorrow. The schedule called for one shot a day, to allow for aircraft repositioning and chase team turnaround. Two would be daylight, and two at night. The Canadians were deploying antiaircraft radars across the flight path to see what kind of detection rate they got. The final conference would be at 0800, launch around 1000 tomorrow. Lenson nodded, making a note. “What about the protesters?”

“Something funny happened three days ago. They disappeared.”

“Left town? Folded their tents and took off?”

“Oh, the tent's still there. Decker says there're more people at the gate than ever, they got reinforcements. But the original ones, they vanished. Made a couple of threats
to a reporter from the Edmonton paper, then dropped off the scope.”

“What kind of threats?”

“Oh, the same stuff as before. How they were going to make it impossible to continue the cruise testing. What's happening back at Crystal City?”

Someone in an exposure mask came in while Dan was summarizing the testimony. He saw it was Manhurin when the-major joined them. But he kept talking; this was something the flight commander needed to hear. “Bottom line, we've got to get good results on this series. If we don't, they're probably going to fold the program. Maybe not your chunk of it, Steve—the allies would scream too loudly—but the Navy buy could get postponed, or even zeroed.”

“Wonderful. So it isn't really a test, is it? Now it's got to be a demonstration of success.”

“I guess so. Though I'm not really sure how to read what I was hearing up there.” He told them about the casual atmosphere, the obvious incapacity or lack of interest of the committee members. “It looks like they're basically finger puppets. They do what their staffs tell them. The only thing that makes them sit up and bark is if they sense some way of getting a buck or a job into their home district. Anyway, enough about that. What's on our plate?”

The flight commander passed him a schedule. Dan ran his eye down it. “So you've already started setup and checkout.”

“Uh-huh. That'll run all night. Oh, and I got to tell you, Sparky here's been a big help. Showed us a way to speed up data output that'll cut five minutes off our download time.”

‘That's what I brought him for.”

“We'll do a murder board before the launch. Navy's invited. Of course, it depends on the storm.”

“Who decides go/no go?”

“That's fuzzy, to tell the truth. I suppose I could, or at least I could scrub our launch. But the Canadians are officially in charge, since it's their turf.”

“When do they make the call?”

“It's not like that—we're gonna fly unless they tell us otherwise.”

“Can the weather hurt us? Affect missile performance?”

Manhurin shrugged. “The engine's supposed to run in low-level, subzero, heavy-precip conditions. The guidance system's supposed to recognize a hill whether it's bare or covered in six feet of snow. And everything's designed to cold-soak and still fire. But that's what we're here to find out.”

Dan remembered Niles's directive to wring the missile out. He said, “So if it doesn't work, it helps us testwise, but hurts us fundingwise.”

“Well, this is a pretty robust system, like I told you before. Sparky, you back that statement up?”

“There's no such thing as bug-free software.”

“Thanks for nothing. . . . Anyway, the weak link out here's probably the chase guys, the CF-eighteens they fly to escort the missile. They have to be visual flight rules, so the weather's a major factor there. Anyway, I'm gonna turn in.”

“Yeah, I better crash, too.”

Again Dan lay in the cold darkness. Soon he'd be out of this whole military thing. No more saluting. No more orders. But life was a succession of changes. Each took courage. Courage and faith. He'd made a leap when he went to the Academy. Until now, he'd never looked back.

He was going to have to start working on his faith.

“Sir? Magic telephone.”

He woke with a start. He was still fully dressed; it was ice-cold in the tent, and despite the stoves going full blast a coating of ice shone on the inside of the canvas. So that when the messenger said he was wanted on the secure phone, all he had to do was pull his parka from over him and put it on, then jam his feet into his mukluks. He followed the messenger out into a bitter snow-whirling night.

Halfway to the LCC, he realized he'd forgotten his mask. He stumbled the last few yards, gloves sealed over
his cheeks. With this wind, the chill factor had to be minus sixty, minus seventy.

Geddes was there, on watch, or coordinating the preparations for the morning. He said, “Here he is. Over.” Then he covered the mouthpiece. “For the JCM liaison.”

Dan took the red handset, waited for the beep of the covered satcom. He spoke slowly and as distinctly as he could, given the fact his hand was covering his numbed nose. “Lieutenant Commander Lenson. Over.”

The voice came in crackly but loud. “Commander, this is Admiral Willis's chief of staff. The admiral's been getting some questions about the tests. He wants to know if they're going to be canceled.”

“Sir, I don't have much of a handle on that from here. I'm out in the field with the flight. Over.”

Crackle. Beep.
“What are the conditions up there?”

“What's it look like tomorrow?” he asked Geddes. The crew commander shoved him a message; he read from it into the handset. “Minus thirty degrees. Possible fifty-knot winds. Heavy snow.”

“Jesus. Can we postpone? At least till the weather clears?”

“Sir, in the first place, that's not our decision. And in the second place, I don't think it would be wise. We're up here to wring this system out in northern Europeantype winter weather. The flight crew's showing the strain. They're great guys, but the living conditions are pretty basic. Plus, we're getting rumors the Canadians are thinking about pulling out of the agreement. Right now, we're go. But if we postpone, we may not. end up with a test series at all.”

“We can move it back to Dugway.”

“It was originally scheduled for Utah, sir,” Dan told him. “But it was moved up here for good reasons. Sir, please tell the vice admiral that if he's asking for my opinion as the guy on the ground, we ought to go for it. The guys have spent days peaking and tweaking. If we shift back to the States, it'll look like we ducked a tough one. That might not play too well in the media.”

The chief of staff sounded only half-convinced, but he
said he'd relay that. He signed off. Dan told Geddes, “Last-minute cold feet upstairs.”

“We've been listening to the Canadian test freq. They're going soft, too.”

“They must be used to this weather.”

“I'm not sure that's it. They're wondering where the activists are.”

“Oh yeah?”

“They think they might try to penetrate the launch area,” Geddes told him. “Gene's got the security force on alert. The trouble is, weather like this, the PEWS—the ground radars—they don't work for crap. They could waltz right through the perimeter.”

“I don't think they'd hurt anyone.”

‘They don't have to. All they have to do is cut a fiberoptic cable, or ding up a launcher. We just don't need more publicity.”

Dan thought they were getting worked up over a fairly insignificant threat. He and Decker had had to shoot bearings to find the site, and they knew where it was. How were a few demonstrators going to locate it in four thousand square miles of damn-near-roadless wilderness? But he just nodded, looked at his watch, and said, “Well, I'm gonna try to get my head down for a couple more hours.”

“Commander Lenson? Captain Geddes wants you.”

“Shit, again? What time is it?”

“Oh-three hundred. Come on, sir, I'll take you over there. Don't forget your mask.”

Outside the tent, the Arctic wind sheared effortlessly through parka, gloves, even his heavy boots, leaving him shuddering. The steps slammed into his shins just as the messenger said, “Step up here.”

“Thanks a whole shitload,” he muttered.

“Commander. Hi. Sorry to get you up again, but we got a conversation going on the test net you might want to get in on. They got good weather out of the States, but it's closed down so hard up here, they don't think they're going to be able to get the chase planes off.”