“Juliet Whiskey, this is Control. Do you read, over,” the sergeant said into the headset.
“Control, this is Juliet Whiskey. All systems go. We are nominal to profile.”
“Roger. Commence launch sequence on my mark. Five, four, three, two, one: mark!”
A hundred miles away, the pilot punched burners again and hauled back on the stick. The Blackbird performed as beautifully as always, standing on her tail and rocketing into the sky before nearly a hundred thousand pounds of thrust. The pilot’s eyes were locked on his instruments as the altimeter spun around like a maddened clock. His speed was now thirteen hundred miles per hour and increasing, while the SR-71 showed her contempt for gravity.
“Separation in twenty seconds,” the systems operator in the back seat told the pilot. The Blackbird was now passing through a hundred thousand feet. The target was one-twenty. The controls were already mushy. There wasn’t enough air up here to control the aircraft properly, and the pilot was being even more careful than usual. He watched his speed hit nineteen hundred several seconds early, then:
“Standby for separation . . . breakaway, breakaway!” the man in back called. The pilot dropped the nose and started a gentle turn to the left that would take him right across New Mexico before heading back to Nellis. This was much easier than flying along the Soviet border—and, occasionally, across it. . . . The pilot wondered if he could drive down to Vegas to catch a show after he landed.
The target kept going up for a few more seconds, but surprisingly did not ignite its rocket motor. It was now a ballistic object, traveling in obedience to the laws of physics. Its oversized fins provided enough aerodynamic drag to keep it pointed in the proper direction as gravity began to reclaim the object for its own. The rocket tipped over at one hundred thirty thousand feet, reluctantly pointing its nose at the earth.
Then its motor fired. The solid-fuel engine burned for only four seconds, but that was enough to accelerate its conical nose to a speed that would have terrified the Blackbird’s pilot.
“Okay,” an Army officer said. The point-defense radar went from standby to active. It immediately saw the inbound. The target rocket was pushing itself down through the atmosphere at roughly the same speed as an ICBM warhead. He didn’t have to give a command. The system was fully automated. Two hundred yards away a fiberglass cover exploded off a concrete hole drilled in the gypsum flats, and a FLAGE erupted skyward. The Flexible Lightweight Agile Guided Experiment looked more like a lance than a rocket, and was nearly that simple. Millimeter-wave radar tracked the inbound, and the data was processed through an onboard microcomputer. The remarkable part of this was that all the parts had been taken off the shelf from existing high-tech weaponry.
Outside, men watched from behind a protective earthen berm. They saw the upward streak of yellow light and heard the roar of the solid rocket motor, then nothing for several seconds.
The FLAGE homed in on its target, maneuvering a few fractions of degrees with tiny attitude-control rockets. The nosecap blew off, and what unfolded would have looked to an outsider like a collapsing umbrella’s framework, perhaps ten yards across . . .
It looked just like a Fourth of July rocket, but without the noise. A few people cheered. Though both the target and the FLAGE “warhead” were totally inert, the energy of the collision converted metal and ceramic to incandescent vapor.
“Four for four,” Gregory said. He tried not to yawn. He’d seen fireworks before.
“You’re not going to get all the boosters, Major,” General Parks chided the younger man. “We still need the midcourse systems, and the terminal-defense ones.”
“Yes, sir, but you don’t need me here. It works.”
For the first three tests, the target rocket had been fired from a Phantom fighter, and people in Washington had claimed that the test series had underestimated the difficulty of intercepting the inbound warheads. Using the SR-71 as the launch platform had been Parks’s idea. Launching the drone from higher altitude, and with a higher initial speed, had made for a much faster reentry target. This test had actually made things slightly harder than was expected, and the FLAGE hadn’t cared a bit. Parks had been a little worried about the missile-guidance software, but, as Gregory had noted, it worked.
“Al,” Parks said, “I’m starting to think that this whole program is going to work.”
“Sure. Why not?” If those Agency pukes can get us the plans for the Russian laser . . .
CARDINAL sat alone in a bare cell, one and a half meters wide, two and a half meters long. There was a bare light bulb overhead, a wooden cot with a bucket underneath, but not a window except the spy hole in the rusted iron door. The walls were solid concrete, and there was no sound at all. He couldn’t hear the pacing of the corridor guard, nor even the rumble of traffic on the street outside the prison. They’d taken his uniform blouse, and belt, and his polished boots, replacing the last with cheap slippers. The cell was in the basement. That was all he knew, and he could tell from the damp air. It was cold.
But not so cold as his heart. The enormity of his crime came to him as it never had. Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov, three times Hero of the Soviet Union, was alone with his treason. He thought of the magnificent, broad land in which he lived, whose distant horizons and endless vistas were peopled with his fellow Russians. He’d served them all his life with pride and honor, and with his own blood, as the scars on his body proclaimed. He remembered the men with whom he’d served, so many of whom had died under his command. And how they had died, defiantly cursing the German tanks and guns as they burned alive in T-34s, retreating only when forced to, preferring to attack even when they knew it to be doomed. He remembered leading his troops in a hundred engagements, the frantic exhilaration that accompanied the roar of the diesel engines, the reeking clouds of smoke, the determination even unto the death that he had cheated so many times.
And he’d betrayed it all.
What would my men say of me now? He stared at the blank concrete wall opposite his cot.
What would Romanov say?
I think we both need a drink, my Captain, the voice chimed in. Only Romanov could be both serious and amused at the same time. Such thoughts are more easily considered with vodka or Samogan.
Do you know why? Misha asked.
You’ve never told us why, my Captain. And so Misha did. It took but a brief flicker of time.
Both your sons, and your wife. Tell me, Comrade Captain, for what did we die?
Misha didn’t know that. Even during the shooting he hadn’t known. He’d been a soldier, and when a soldier’s country is invaded, the soldier fights to repel the enemy. So much the easier when the enemy is as brutal as the Germans were . . .
We fought for the Soviet Union, Corporal.
Did we, now? I seem to remember fighting for Mother Russia, but mainly I remember fighting for you, Comrade Captain.
But—
A soldier fights for his comrades, my Captain. I fought for my family. You and our troop, they were my only family. I suppose you also fought for your family, the big one and the little one. I always envied you that, my Captain, and I was proud that you made me part of both in the way that you did.
But I killed you. I shouldn’t have—
We all have our destiny, Comrade Captain. Mine was to die young at Vyasma without a wife, without children, but even so I did not die without a family.
I avenged you, Romanov. I got the Mark-IV that killed you.
I know. You avenged all the dead of your family. Why do you think we loved you? Why do you think we died for you?
You understand? Misha asked in surprise.
The workers and peasants may not, but your men will. We understand destiny now, as you cannot.
But what shall I do?
Captains do not ask such questions of corporals. Romanov laughed. You had all the answers to our questions.
Filitov’s head jerked up as the latch slipped on the door of his cell.
Vatutin expected to find a broken man. The isolation of the cell, the prisoner stripped of identity and alone with his fears and his crimes, always had the proper effect. But while he looked at a tired, crippled old man, he saw the eyes and mouth change.
Thank you, Romanov.
“Good morning, Sir Basil,” Ryan said as he reached for the man’s bags. “Hello, Jack! I didn’t know they were using you as a gofer.”