The fifth link in the accident chain had just been connected, but Boomer didn’t recognize it. He was the spacecraft commander—it was his final decision . . . but he didn’t. He thought about it for a moment, then nodded to Ernesto. “No questions, Alice,” he said on intercom. “We press.” Ten minutes later Boomer picked up his portable air-conditioning and oxygen pack, and he and Ernesto headed out to the crew van that would take them to the flight line.
The S-29 Shadow was the third and largest model of the spaceplanes, with five “leopards” engines instead of four, and a fifteen-thousand-pound payload. With the preflight already accomplished by the techs, Boomer and Ernesto entered the spaceplane through the open cockpit canopies, connected their umbilicals to the ship, and strapped in. The Shadow was even more automated than its sisters, and it was just a matter of checking the computer’s progress as it handled the preflight checklists, acknowledging each checklist complete, then awaiting their start-engines, taxi, and takeoff times.
At the preprogrammed time the engines automatically came alive, the after-engine-start checklists were run, the taxi lane was cleared, and precisely at the taxi time, the throttles automatically came up and the Shadow began to taxi itself to the main runway at Battle Mountain for takeoff. “I’ll never get used to the plane just taxiing by itself,” Ernesto said. “Kinda creepy.”
“I know what you mean,” Boomer said. “I’ve asked several times to be allowed to fly it myself, without the automation, but Richter always turns me down, with a stern warning not to try it. After there’s more than one of these, I’ll ask again. Kaddiri and Richter don’t want their newest and brightest daughter defiled by someone like me. They do enough defiling to each other, corregir?” Ernesto gave Boomer a fist bump and nodded agreement.
The two astronauts literally just sat there for the rest of the voyage, chitchatting, monitoring checklists and acknowledging completions and starts, and watching the Shadow do its thing: it flew itself to the refueling anchor, this time over northern Minnesota; refueled itself with another computer-controlled tanker aircraft; turned to the orbital insertion point over Colorado, turned northeast, and hit the throttles at the appropriate time. They watched all the readouts and acknowledged the checklist executions and completions, but in the end they were just babysitters.
But now, as they headed into orbit, they stopped chatting and were on guard, because their track would take them across northwestern Russia . . .
. . . just three hundred miles northwest of Plesetsk Cosmodrome, and practically right over the Russian Red Banner Northern Fleet naval headquarters at Severomorsk.
“Talk about twisting the tiger’s tail, comandante,” Ernesto commented. “Or, in this case, the bear’s tail.”
“You got that right, amigo,” Boomer said. “You got that right.”
THE KREMLIN
MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
THAT SAME TIME
“Sir, an American spaceplane has just been detected overflying Plesetsk Cosmodrome!” Minister of Defense Gregor Sokolov shouted into the phone when Gryzlov picked it up.
“What in hell did you say?” Gryzlov grunted into the bedroom phone. Foreign Minister Daria Titeneva, lying naked beside Gryzlov, was instantly awake, and she rose out of bed and hurried to get dressed—she didn’t know what the call was about, but anyone daring to call President Gennadiy Gryzlov in the middle of the night had to have a damned serious reason for doing so, and she knew she would be called into his office immediately afterward.
“I said, the Americans have launched a spaceplane into orbit—and it came within a few hundred kilometers from Plesetsk Cosmodrome!” Sokolov repeated. “It directly overflew the Red Banner Northern Fleet headquarters in Severomorsk. It is definitely going into orbit, and is on course to intercept Armstrong Space Station within the hour.”
“Vyyebat’!” Gryzlov swore. “How dare those sons of bitches do that after I just issued my orders? Are they f*cking ignoring me? Were we notified of any spaceplane flights?”
“We are checking with the air attaché’s office in Washington, sir,” Sokolov said. “No response from them yet.”
“Those bastards!” Gryzlov shouted. “Phoenix is going to pay for this! Summon the entire security council to my office immediately!”
Twenty minutes later Gryzlov strode into his office, his longish dark hair streaming behind his neck in his hurry. Only Tarzarov and Sokolov had arrived. “Well, Sokolov?” he shouted.