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U.S.
ARCHIVES: VOL.
I The
Run For Crystal Palace Joseph
Hailey
ISBN
: Hardcover 1-4134-6586-2 Softcover 1-4134-6585-4 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is
entirely coincidental.
THE BERING SEA Thirty-four degrees south of Crystal Palace, effervescent foaming
white caps dotted the surface of the gray colored water just off the Aleutian
Islands. An occasional seal, followed by a large killer whale herding a lone
morsel of food to his friends in the waiting pod, was the only living thing for
hundreds of miles in all directions. Ice-cold wind, chilled even further by the freezing temperature of
the large floating icebergs that it swirled over, made the day an easy one for
flying. The cold air, thicker in molecular density than warm air, would pass
over the wings of the aircraft and give it more lift than flying on a day of
hot, thinner air. An alien sound began to increase in volume as it approached quickly
from somewhere farther north. It sounded like a motorcycle off in the distance,
a bike preparing to cross a faraway bridge, then got louder as it got closer. It
wasn’t a threatening sound, not invading the senses, but a growling noise,
almost a deep hum getting steadily louder. The source was unseen by the human
eye as it passed overhead and Dopplered, changing pitch like a high-speed race
car as it zoomed by the spectator stands and headed for the finish line. Short, stubby wings having already been pulled into the fuselage to
actually reduce the lift of the cold, thick atmosphere now extended slightly as
the aircraft transitioned from the terrain it was following to the white-capped
water below. The flight computer, aware of where it was because of the onboard
global positioning system, adapted quickly as it realized it was over water.
Notorious for having little to no lift over its liquid surface, the flight computer’s
programming ordered the short wings slid. Within only twenty-feet of flight,
the wing stubs extended outward to gather more pressure from the diminishing
lift that was even now swirling a great deal less under the supporting aluminum
alloy wings. The terrain-following cameras, working double duty as eyes for the
graphic-oriented camouflage computers, quickly began feeding input from the
high-powered Zeiss lenses mounted in the fore and aft of the fuselage. The
electroluminescent panel-covered fuselage of the vessel would turn the skin of
the craft a light, almost sky blue on the bottom and a dark grayish blue,
complete with moving whitecaps, on the top. The bottom colorings that slid into
place were to inhibit revealing the craft from the surface of the ocean or
land, and the top blue gray with authentic-looking white-capped animated waves
to limit its being noticed from above. The definition of above included
visual inspection at close range and also from bird’s eye orbiting spy
satellites. Within a matter of moments the twin cruise missiles, after all
encountered colors were broken down by the onboard computers into digitally
readable pixels, vanished so completely, it was as if they never existed. If
anyone had seen them for the blink of an eye it took them to recalibrate their
camo-covered light-emitting membrane, they would have easily thought they were
seeing things. Everything vanished into the background colors of the frozen
tundra except for the one word that seemed almost out of place on the
streamlined hull of a tried-and-true weapon such as the Tomahawk. The telltale yellow and black flower of nuclear warning was missing
from these birds, those symbols of a weapon as ordinary as kilotons and
radiation had vanished months earlier. The only thing that distinguished these
from the ordinary U.S. arsenal of Tomahawk nuclear missiles was the simple word
across their fuselage: experimental. The chances of anyone seeing the two missiles, 250 miles south of the
Arctic Circle at wave-top level and well over Mach one, were remote by anyone’s
standards. They were sophisticated machines of war, state of the art at the
very least, and heading for target with hateful mechanized vengeance. The knife-edge bow of the USS Ticonderoga sliced through the
water like a razor dropped on point into a pool of liquid. The gray hull,
freshly painted from two months in dry dock and usually dull in appearance,
seemed to gleam in the early-morning light of dawn. Aircraft of every size and
description filled the deck as each waited for orders to take off, go below,
hangar up, or simply wait for update. Lt. Simon Sinclair, who had the interesting call sign of “Lady,”
adjusted the cockpit harness as he looked at the sky above the flight deck. It
was chilly, slightly cloudy, with a six-knot breeze coming over the forward
deck. A perfect day. He hoped the weather held for his thirtieth birthday in
two days. “Perfect day,” his radar instruments operator (RIO) blurted over the
headset in Lady’s helmet. The RIO, or GIB for “guy in the back,” was named
Chuck Applethorpe. He looked to be a clone of “Lady” Sinclair, except for the
fact that his call sign, “Panther,” sounded more like the name of a crew member
on board an F-14 preparing to go supersonic at a moment’s notice. Panther’s
hair, unlike Lady’s, was dark brown and short, not high and tight like the
marine’s, but a more civilized gentleman’s cut that seemed to fit more into the
real world when the Ticonderoga pulled liberty. Both of them had olive
skin of black Irish descent, with cold blue eyes that were sharp and darting
everywhere. Finally, seeing the deck was clear of turbine-clogging debris, both
of them looked at their instruments then at the skies for any sign of trouble,
any danger that could be a threat to the carrier. The dawn patrols wingmen, “Deeter” and “Ice,” would lift off forty
seconds after the first Tomcat, just long enough to let the jet wash of the
lead F-14 dissipate. In contrast to Lady and Panther, Deeter was a
short-cropped redheaded kid with a large splash of freckles across his nose and
cheeks. Ice, his RIO, was a black kid from Oklahoma with hair shaved so close
to his head it was merely a shadow across his scalp. Lady nodded unconsciously as he heard the weather report from the
tower. The same weather report read verbatim from a piece of paper that every
pilot in line had memorized only an hour before in morning briefing. “Foxtrot Zebra, acknowledged,” Lady said into his helmet mike, and
listened to the other Foxtrots call in and confirm the morning weather speech.
“Foxtrot Zebra, this is Sammy Smith, you are clear for takeoff, wind is out of
the west at seven knots,” the tower voice said, using the designated code name
of Sammy Smith. Lady casually looked over to visually inspect that the canopy was down
and locked, then glanced over to the green light on his console, confirming
that the glass bubble surrounding him and the RIO was indeed down and locked.
Lady raised his right hand to the visor of his helmet, saluted the officer of
the deck (OOD), slid his hand over and slammed the throttles to full military
power. Within a matter of seconds, the interior of the F-14 vibrated like a
pissed-off cobra as the afterburners of the Pratt and Whitney engines reached
full takeoff power. Lady released the brake and felt the G-force slam him into
the cockpit seat as the steam-powered catapult grabbed the front of the jet
and, like the foot of a giant, kicked the plane in the ass end of the
blue-flamed, screaming turbines. Instantly, the deck
of the Ticonderoga fell away only to be replaced by the deep watery blue
ocean that supported the floating city they had just left. “Sammy Smith, this is Foxtrot Zebra, we are in the tube, five by
five, have a good day,” Lady said calmly, looking to the horizon and
calculating how long it would take him and Panther to do their rendezvous with
the one-hundred-mile mark. He realized that at the speed they were traveling as
they were a little over three miles out, that Deeter, his wingman, would just
be leaving the deck. Lady didn’t want to be that far from his wingman, so he
backed off the throttles. “What the hell was that?” Panther said from the rear seat as he
looked down at his screen. Lady merely focused on the heads-up display (HUD) that was
illuminated on the glass of his canopy in front of him. The radar, altimeter,
false horizon, and even onboard system checks were displayed on the front
canopy in front of him in a soft red light. From what Lady Sinclair was
looking, there was absolutely nothing to be seen. He frowned, checked his
instruments, and realized that nothing about his panel had malfunctioned. “Don’t see anything,” Lady replied, scanning the internal warnings
for any kind of incoming bogie or radar lock. Nothing. “It was a blip. I saw it. Something was there,” Panther insisted, now
straining over to his right to see if he could spot something visually through
the rear of the polycarbonate bubble. Inside the Ticonderoga radar command center or CIC, Ensign
Paul Bairot stared at the screen of his radarscope as the light bar spun over
the visual screen in front of him. For only a moment, he too noticed that
something wasn’t right. Something looked as if it had blipped. Something,
almost like a passing shadow that appears at the corner of a person’s eye,
seemed to surface and then vanish as quickly as it had appeared. An incoming bogie was the first thing he thought, but then, like the
shadow that moves at the flick of a light switch, it seemed to magically
disintegrate into the green screen of the radarscope. Unlike the myth of
“flying under the radar,” it was virtually impossible to fly at an altitude so
low that the military radar couldn’t pick up the aircraft. So for Ensign
Bairot, his dark lower lip becoming more contrasting to his pale white skin as
he bit down on it, it spelled out the fact that in a military situation, or in
this case a combat scenario, what he saw could be something coming in under a
stealth format. No radar contact, no infrared signature, and no supersonic
footprint. Immediately, as he had been trained to do, he went to the overhead
live feed satellite. His hands flew over the console as the in-range satellite
moved into position and aimed its powerful lenses and electronic sensing
devices down onto the coordinates he was now feeding it. “Come on, come on,” he said under his breath, a cold sweat slowly
forming on his forehead. Anything supersonic leaves a turbulent invisible wake on the ground
and in the air. With the correct instruments, the “wake” or footprint can be
tracked from the air or even from space. If it could be followed from the air,
then it could be sent via telemetry to the console in front of him and shadowed
without the “enemy” knowing about it. The only problem was shadowing the
inbound before the invader knew it, and being ready for them. At the speed that
the bogie, or in this case, the hypothetical blip he thought, was
moving, Ensign Bairot, if he was right, realized he wouldn’t have time to
finish peeing his pants. Dr. Bishop liked to picture the hundreds of sailors scurrying around
for any kind of protective cover in the last seconds of their lives. He almost
smiled to himself, if it could be called that, as he gave the order, six miles
before impact, to the two inbound UGM-104 Tomahawk cruise missiles to “decloak” from stealth mode and arm their small very
specialized programmed warheads. Dr. Bishop liked the fact that he had changed
his mind, liked the fact that with only a whim, he had decided to alter the
programming while the birds were in flight. He looked at the small screen and
smiled at the time-to-impact counter. There was no logic in his thoughts, only
a decision of pure human desire, pure incongruity with his first decision of
tactical perfection. Ensign Bairot’s console suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree as alarms
began sounding at every other console in CIC. Bairot was out of his chair and
screaming into his headset as the two inbound rockets appeared just about on
top of them. “Con! CIC! I have two inbound bearing one niner six! Range!” he
screamed, quickly looking at the bulbous distance to target housing over his
head. The smooth metal housing contained red light-emitting diodes that formed
numbers that were rapidly counting down to zero. Zero, of course, meant the
midships of the Ticonderoga. He shook his head, not believing what he
was looking at and how fast the numbers were approaching impact. “Range!” he repeated, “Four point five miles! Speed eighteen
hundred knots! Impact two seconds!” Other alarms began to sound. All in the CIC knew in those last few moments
that it was hopeless, as the time factor was too close, too imminent. They were
about to be hit with two rockets that were impossible to hit, impossible to
ward off. Ensign Bairot’s last thoughts were those of wonderment. He knew that
whoever had launched the missiles knew a great deal more than they should about
the defense systems of the nuclear carrier. The automated, computer-driven
Gatling guns, missile launchers, and support system radar could lock on, cycle
rounds, and even pivot 180 degrees in anticipation of destroying a target
within a parameter of 2.5 seconds. The incoming missiles would impact in just
under that, not giving the ship’s auto systems time to react by a mere half of
a second. All the crew could do, if the Tomahawks weren’t nuclear, was hope
that they didn’t hit anywhere near where they were stationed. That, in this instance, wouldn’t be the case. Lady
looked down at his radar as Panther began screaming in the rear seat. “Radar
contact! It’s two fucking cruise missiles. They’re headed for the carrier!”
Panther screamed as he turned around trying to look behind the cockpit. “Turning to intercept!” Lady screamed into his mike as he jerked the
stick around and watched as the first missile hit and seemed to lift the whole
carrier off the water. It was all Lady could do to get his visor down, only
milliseconds before the impact and the subsequent flash of detonation. It looked like a wave pattern as the missiles detonated. In a nuclear
strike, Lady thought there should have been nothing left of the floating
runway. But half of it was going down; the other half looked like it was cut
down the center parallel to the water. “Son of a bitch!” Panther screamed, “what the hell kind of weapon is
that?” “Mayday, mayday!” Lady began, trying to keep his voice in a calm,
highly trained drone, “this is Foxtrot Zebra to Sammy Smith, do you read?” Lady
shook his head, not believing he was watching the front half of the carrier
tilt over and roll like Jell-O sliding off |