“Luke, assign a researcher to find out the symptoms of every known sickness or affliction that astronauts can suffer,” Barbeau went on, “and then I want him to watch every second of every public appearance Phoenix makes to see if he exhibits any of those symptoms.” Cohen had his cell phone out in a flash and issued the instructions. “So what do you think the feedback will be?”
“I agree with your points, Miss Secretary,” Cohen said. “At first, I think most voters will think it’s cool and exciting that the president flew into space and did a spacewalk, talk about his bravery, et cetera. But shortly thereafter, maybe by the time the morning talk shows start discussing this and people start to learn more about the dangers and risks, they might question his judgment and his ability to hold the office. The pressure to resign might be intense.”
“If he thinks he’s going to start gutting the military to pay for his fancy space weapons and cyberwarfare stuff, he’s sadly mistaken,” Barbeau said. “Take away two aircraft-carrier battle groups? Over my dead body. I want to build more carrier battle groups, not take them down! I want to go to shipyards, Navy groups, air bases, and veterans groups and talk about what the effect of doing away with two carrier battle groups will have on the economy as well as national defense. Cut the size of the nuclear deterrent in half? Cut tanks and fighters? Maybe he’s already suffering some kind of space sickness. He’s just committed political suicide. I’m going to see to it that he pays a price for this stunt.”
“I can’t believe he started talking about entitlement reform,” Cohen said. “That’s okay to do before the convention if you’re in a primary race, but he’s already got the nomination. No one is challenging him.”
“He’s going to regret that too,” Barbeau said acidly. “Find out how much one of those spaceplanes and that space station costs, and then find out how many people it will disadvantage if everyone loses even ten percent of their benefits to pay for a spaceplane that ninety-nine-point-nine percent of Americans will never even see, let alone fly. Find out what it cost to fly his butt up there and back, and then compute how much education, infrastructure, and medical research we could have done but for the president’s joyride.”
Stacy Anne Barbeau stepped over to a large mirror in her suite and examined her makeup. “You think you made history today, Mr. President?” she said. “You think you’re a big astronaut hero? You made the biggest blunder in your political career, buster, and it’s going to cost you. I’ll see to that.” She looked at Cohen through the mirror. “Luke, make sure there’s someone in Makeup ready for me and that my TV studio is ready to feed, and tell CNN I’ll be ready in five.”
THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW
RUSSIAN FEDERATION
THAT SAME TIME
“Chelovek deystvitel’no bezumno! The man is truly insane!” Russian president Gennadiy Gryzlov thundered at the television in his office at the Kremlin. “Phoenix thinks he is going to control all of outer space? He will soon learn just how wrong he is!”
Just forty years old, Gennadiy Gryzlov was the son of the former president Anatoliy Gryzlov, and his career paralleled his father’s to a great extent. Gennadiy Gryzlov had graduated from the Yuri Gagarin Military Air Academy and attended basic flight instruction at Baronovsky Air Base in Armavir and bomber flight training at Engels Air Base in southwestern Russia, and had been selected to attended command leadership school in Moscow just two years later. He wanted nothing more than to follow in his beloved father’s footsteps, and determined to do so without his family’s extensive government and petrochemical industry connections.
But shortly after completing command leadership school in Moscow but before he returned to Engels Air Base to take command of the 121st Guards Heavy Bomber Regiment, a Tupolev-160 Blackjack supersonic bomber unit, an event happened that changed his life forever: Engels Air Base was attacked by an American unmanned stealth bomber called an EB-1C Vampire, a heavily modified supersonic B-1 Lancer bomber, destroying dozens of Russian bombers awaiting orders to take off and destroy a nest of terrorists in Turkmenistan. Hundreds were killed in the air raid, including many of Gryzlov’s closest friends and fellow aviators. Both father and son were devastated and spent more than a month attending funerals and memorial services and planning how to rebuild the base and the bomber force.
It was never officially revealed, but the elder Gryzlov told his son who he thought planned the air raid: an American Air Force general by the name of Patrick McLanahan, acting without orders or authority from the American White House or Pentagon. Both men turned their sadness at the devastation into a white-hot burning desire for revenge against McLanahan.