Years before NASA planned to travel to Mars,
and before the International Space Station ever reached orbit, the future of America’s space program hung in the balance . . .
In this gripping alternate history scientific thriller, the technicians of NASA hoped to create a failsafe shuttle in the wake of the CHALLENGER disaster.
With the brand-new space shuttle LIGHTNING, all systems were go . . .
Then lightning struck twice.
SIEGE OF LIGHTNING
America’s greatest technological achievement has been sabotaged. First an engine malfunctions. Then, another. Now LIGHTNING is desperately trying to land, racing against time--and a powerful and unseen enemy will do anything to make the first flight of LIGHTNING its last . . .
PRAISE FOR R.J. PINEIRO
WITHOUT MERCY
“Constant action, sympathetic heroes, believable evildoers, and absolute authenticity on every page.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“The authenticity of the story makes the tale particularly terrifying, especially at a time when real-life international relations appear unstable. A fine apocalyptic thriller right up the alley of Clancy and Thor fans.” —Booklist
“A masterful thriller written by men of deep experience. Epic in scale yet swiftly paced, Without Mercy is as convincing as it is chilling. First-rate and very highly recommended!”
—Ralph Peters, New York Times bestselling author
“The ultimate terrorist scenario, with authenticity steeped into every page. Col. David Hunt and R.J. Pineiro put their credentials on display in stellar fashion. Readers who enjoy Tom Clancy and Brad Taylor will find a new favorite.” —Ward Larsen, USA Today bestselling author
WITHOUT FEAR
“Outstanding… This military adventure thriller deserves to become a genre classic.”
—Publisher’s Weekly, starred review
AVENUE OF REGRETS
“Avenue of Regrets is a superb psychological thriller, a gripping tale of violence, tension and intrigue. From the very first chapter it propels the reader into a dark world haunted by the demons of the past and the horrific evil of the present. Highly recommended!”
--Douglas Preston, #1 bestselling author of the Pendergast series of novels.
“An engrossing novel of domestic suspense…a fast-paced tale of murder and horrific crime with twists and turns worthy of Hitchcock. Along the way, Pineiro, who’s best known for his military/computer thrillers, dishes up some wry reflections on humanity, trust, and forgiveness.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A man becomes entangled in a conspiracy of murder and deceit with ties to a years-old murder charge for which he received an acquittal. Pineiro’s novel thrives on copious plot turns . . . high stakes perils unfold throughout, and surprises persist all the way to the epilogue. Zigzagging plot rife with suspense and character detail.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Greed, violence, and the hope of redemption are the defining themes of Avenue of Regrets, a nonstop action thriller . . . perfectly paced, with clues revealed in small doses…the writing is tight and smooth and keeps to the nail-biting pace.”
—Foreword Reviews
SIEGE OF LIGHTNING
“An insider’s look at the secretive world of space exploration. Truly a good read.”
--Nelson DeMille, Bestselling author of The Gold Coast and The Charm School
“Chilling . . . a riveting climax.”
Joe Weber, bestselling author of DEFCON One
“Heart stopping . . . one of the best thrillers of the year.”
--Charles Ryan, author of The Capricorn Quadrant
“Gripping, spine-tingling and explosively brilliant . . .
Pineiro might just be the next Michael Crichton!”
--Guy Durham, author of Stealth and Extreme Prejudice
BOOKS BY R.J. PINEIRO
Siege of Lightning
Ultimatum
Retribution
Exposure
Breakthrough
01-01-00
Y2K
Shutdown
Conspiracy.com
Firewall
Cyberterror
Havoc
SpyWare
The Eagle and the Cross
The Fall
Without Mercy *
Without Fear *
Ashes of Victory **
Avenue of Regrets
Chilling Effect
* With Col. David Hunt
** With Joe Weber
NON-FICTION
First Fire The Consultants ***
*** With Robert H. Wilson
SIEGE OF LIGHTNING
A Novel
R.J. PINEIRO
Siege of Lightning A Novel
Auspicious Apparatus Press
Copyright © 1993, 2019 by Rogelio J. Pineiro
Published by arrangement with the author
First published by Berkley Publishing Group
All rights reserved. Produced in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. For information please contact [email protected]
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Table of Contents
Praise For R.J. Pineiro
Author’s Note And Updated Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Epilogue
About The Author
Siege of Lightning is dedicated to two very special people in my life:
My beautiful wife, Lory, a friend for all seasons.
My son, Cameron. Thanks for letting me rediscover the world through your eyes.
AUTHOR’S NOTE AND UPDATED ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
When I first wrote Siege back in 1990-1991 (it was originally published by The Berkley Publishing Group as an original paperback in April of 1993), George H. W. Bush was our president, Johnny Carson still hosted The Tonight Show, Cheers dominated the TV landscape, and Dances with Wolves won the Academy Award for Best Picture. In addition, Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm—the liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s grip—were in full swing. At the time, NASA was busy building the Space Shuttle Endeavour to replace Challenger, lost in that tragic accident on January 28th, 1986. Interestingly enough, the novel was originally titled Flight of Endeavour, but my editor at Berkley, Andrew Zack, talked me into changing Endeavour for a fictional shuttle, Lightning. And while he was at it, Andy also changed the title.
Back then, a lady named Kay Grinter from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Public Affairs Office
at Kennedy Space Center was immensely helpful by providing me with massive amounts of technical information on the orbiter, mission events, crew systems, and general operations at KSC. This time around, Al Hallonquist, fellow classmate at Florida Air Academy and also an Aerospace Historian Life Member, published author, and maintainer of the www.mercury13.com, provided an updated technical review of the manuscript and made helpful suggestions. Al is also the guy who runs the astronauts show side of Spacefest. In addition, Al was able to get Robert Lee “Hoot” Gibson, Captain, USN Ret. and also former NASA astronaut, to answer a few space shuttle questions. Thanks also to Dennis Jenkins, aerospace author, for insight and perspective.
Back then I had editorial support from Gary Muschla, who helped me clean up the early version of the story, as well as from Matthew Bialer, my agent at William Morris, and, of course, from the great Andrew Zack, one of the finest editors in the business. This time around, I was lucky to be connected to Todd Barselow, from Auspicious Apparatus Press, who manually transcribed the story from an old and yellowed paperback into a Word document, and then gave it a full scrub in preparation for its new release as an eBook, audiobook, and also new paperback. And along the way, my good friend, Alice Frenk, performed a final clean-up of the manuscript. All errors that remain are my mine and only mine.
My wife, Lory, was there back then (as she continues to be by my side today) listening to my frustrations, complaints, and ideas. Her patience never runs out during those long nights and weekends when this and other novels are written and rewritten.
We Roman-Catholics seem to have a specific saint for just about everything. The saint for impossible causes is St. Jude. Since getting a novel published comes very close to that, I chose to pray to him a while back. I guess it paid off 26 years ago, and it continues to pay off today. Thank you, St. Jude.
This novel was originally inspired by those unforgettable words delivered by President Ronald Reagan at 5pm EST on January 28th, 1986, on the eve of the Challenger disaster. I thought it appropriate to finish this introduction with his closing remarks.
“The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor that last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God.’”
—President Ronald Reagan
PROLOGUE
BAIKONUR COSMODROME, EASTERN KAZAKHSTAN
Bathed in the soft ruddy glow of an autumn sunset, the Russian cargo spacecraft Progress VI trembled as the engines of its four strap-on boosters and central core ignited with the thundering roar of thousands of gallons of highly pressurized kerosene reacting with liquid oxygen, unleashing a combined thrust of 400,000 pounds against the flame-deflector pit.
Engulfed in a pillar of blaze and smoke, the rocket hesitated for a few seconds as the monumental upward drive fought the gravitational force pulling down on its 300,000-pound mass, until slowly the unmanned ferry gained the momentum necessary to achieve lift-off. The four “tulip” stabilizer arms, cradling the three-stage rocket over the concrete stand, fell back to their retracted position through the action of counterweights as the deafening RD-107 engines thrust the craft clear of the launchpad.
On-board computers issued hundreds of commands per second to the attitude-control boosters to keep the ferry from drifting off course as the launch vehicle broke through the sound barrier in forty-five seconds.
Leaving a long billowing trail of smoke, the boosters fired for another eighty seconds before separating from the central core, which continued to fire as the second stage for an additional two hundred seconds.
Forty seconds into second-stage firing, the abort rockets on the shroud tower ignited and the protective third-stage shroud separated into two halves along its longitudinal axis, exposing the spacecraft inside.
At an altitude of ninety miles, the second stage separated, and the RD-461 third-stage booster kicked into life with a final thrust of sixty thousand pounds for 240 seconds, injecting Progress VI into an east-to-west elliptical orbit 150 miles in perigee and 310 in apogee. The flight plan called for the spacecraft to remain in the orbit for seven hours and fifteen minutes, after which Progress VI’s main engine would start the first of three orbital burns to approach Space Station Mir.
The Olympus 6-F8 oceanography studies satellite continued its low-Earth orbit of 150 miles with an inclination of eighty-two degrees while performing a surface-imaging survey of the water off the Venezuelan coast. Its central processing unit temporarily switched tasks in response to a priority-one signal sent from a tracking station in French Guiana.
The signal ordered the processor to run a one-time algorithm, which would erase itself from memory after execution, programmed to jettison a cylindrical-shaped white object that had remained concealed since the satellite’s launch several months back.
The five-hundred-pound cylinder did not house any of the infrared and microwave imaging gear that filled most of the parent satellite. Aside from six tubular solid-propellant rockets around its one-foot diameter, a homing sensor, and a transponder radio, the five-foot-long object contained three hundred pounds of HEP, High Explosive Plastic, connected to a fuse with a brief time delay. The radar-absorbing fluorocarbon resins coating the entire cylinder made it nearly invisible to its creators as well as to the Russian tracking stations controlling Progress VI.
The rockets fired, propelling the cylinder into a highly elliptical two-hundred-by-three-thousand-mile orbit, but the cylinder never reached its apogee. It never even came close. As the accelerating object reached its maximum velocity, its homing unit detected Progress VI in its own orbit one thousand miles away.
The high-speed chase did not last long. Traveling at nearly thirty thousand miles per hour, the cylinder closed the gap in minutes and struck the rear section of the Russian craft with a relative velocity of five thousand miles per hour. On hitting the target, the cylinder fractured and its explosive filling spread like a pancake around the Russian craft, detonating a split second later. Stress waves propagated along the length of the craft, sending hundreds of metal fragments traveling around the interior of Progress VI at lightning speed, and puncturing the liquid oxygen and kerosene fuel cells housed in the rear.
On-board impact sensors registered the attack but were unable to transmit the data to Earth. The blast that followed dwarfed the initial explosion. Thousands of gallons of propellant and liquid oxygen ignited creating an inferno that lasted only a few seconds, but long enough to destroy Progress VI.
KOUROU, FRENCH GUIANA
The operator sitting behind the green CRT display read the Orbital Termination message flashing on the top left-hand corner of the screen. The message marked the end of the drone satellite’s transponder radio signal, indicating that the drone had been successful in reaching its target and detonating.
The operator shifted his gaze to the circular radar screen to his left and verified that the Russian craft had disappeared from the display. Satisfied, he continued processing the surface images collected by the Olympus satellite.
CHAPTER ONE
NEW BEGINNINGS
There can be no thought of finishing, for ‘aiming at the stars,’ both literally and figuratively, is a problem to occupy generations, so that no matter how much progress one makes, there is always the thrill of just beginning.
—Dr. Robert Goddard
LAUNCH COMPLEX 39, PAD A. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLORIDA
Gleaming and pristine, Lightning stood quietly perched above her concrete stand, pointing at the heavens. Expectant, waiting, she seemed to be a mighty bird of prey poised to rise into the air on pillars of flame produced by her powerful twin Solid Rocket Boosters. Her external fuel tank was an unsightly but necessary blemish on her otherwise perfect white skin, composed of over 21,000 thermal protection tiles individually placed in
their unique spots on the orbiter—a multimillion-dollar jigsaw-puzzle task.
The furnacelike late-morning Florida sun had already elevated outside temperatures well into the nineties. Mission Commander Michael Kessler glanced at the launch complex as he received permission from X68, the designator for the Shuttle Landing Facility, to taxi a Gulfstream II jet short of Runway 33, the fifteen-thousand-foot-long runway of the Kennedy Space Center’s landing facility. The Shuttle Training Aircraft, or STA, as the Gulfstream was known, had been extensively modified by NASA to simulate a space shuttle orbiter for practicing “dead stick” landings.
After reaching the runway hold lines, he spoke in his voice-activated headset, “X-ray Six Eight, STA holding short of 33 ready for take-off.”
“STA you’re clear for take-off Runway 33. Maintain runway heading.”
Kessler read back the instructions and nudged the throttle to steer the Gulfstream onto the runway. He gently applied full power the moment he aligned the nose with the runway’s center line. The dual Rolls-Royce Spey 511-8 turbofans came to life unleashing nearly twenty thousand pounds of thrust, propelling the fifteen-year-old jet down the sizzling concrete surface. Kessler kept the aircraft aligned with the center line as airspeed increased. One hundred knots…One-ten…One-thirty.
Kessler pulled up when he read 150 knots and put the jet on a steep climb.
“STA, climb and maintain three five thousand.
Kessler acknowledged and then began making wide circles over the water while climbing to his designated altitude. During STA approaches, air traffic control would close down the area around Kennedy Space Center to other air traffic, meaning the Gulfstream would be the only aircraft in the vicinity until completing the approach.
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