Cyborg 02 - Operation Nuke

by Martin Caidin

  The White House, following long-established procedures, notified the Kremlin of detection of a nuclear blast through two hot lines, one of cable and the other through the military comsat net orbiting the planet. The equivalent agencies of the Soviet Union, again following a procedure agreed upon by both governments, had done the same. The Russian response to the explosion was delayed only slightly as compared to the extensive American detection system, but the messages passing between Washington and Moscow indicated the preparation behind the set-up.

  Every nuclear submarine of both nations had been alerted that an event of unusual and potentially dangerous significance had taken place. Every nuclear submarine went to Yellow Alert at once; it was a response both effective and well-contained. Political events had brought on many more Condition Yellow alerts than had military moves.

  Parallel reactions took place in the complexes of silo-contained ICBMs of both nations. A total of 2,784 missiles carrying hydrogen bombs also went to Condition Yellow, which stopped short of arming the warheads.

  The only immediate active response occurred with manned aircraft. In the United States a total of thirty-nine B-52 bombers swung from their orbiting stations over the United States and Canada to demarcation lines closer to the borders of the Soviet Union. Ordnance officers aboard the heavy jet bombers brought the two massive hydrogen bombs of each airplane from stand-down status to initial interlock.

  Every man knew that approximately the same steps were being followed by their counterparts in large airplanes bearing the markings of the USSR.

  Jackson McKay hurried his bulk through the final corridor to his office. He had enough time in the tire-squealing rush to his office to review everything received so far on the atomic blast, and he was impatient for information from the follow-up systems.

  He realized suddenly that Oscar Goldman was not there.

  “Where the hell is Goldman?” he asked his secretary.

  “Colorado, Mr. McKay. You remember, sir, he went with Colonel Austin.”

  Of course. Well, he thought, yesterday the concept of using atomic bombs for limited political objectives had been only theory. Today it seemed likely to have become much more than that. With the proliferation of capacity among countries and the responsible presumption of stolen nuclear materials and weapons, the threat of superpower confrontation was much less—just as the opportunity for small and independent groups or countries was much greater. Austin, he decided, was going to be launched on his mission sooner than expected.

  He turned to his secretary. “Set up contact with BCE as soon as you can. Before they reply, be sure they have everything up to date with their counterparts so they can brief me on the latest. Also, get hold of Stetz at Nuke and ask him to do the same.” Imagine, he thought, the Americans and Russians in harness to track down an outlaw atom blast . . .

  Three hundred miles off the west coast of Africa, far from sight of land, Sam Franks slid behind the control yoke in the left seat of the DH-125. For a long moment he sat quietly, his eyes taking in every detail of the instruments before him. He held his gaze on a blinking red light. Directly above the light a needle pointed to the left, crossing a wider double-lined marker. A digital counter read out the numbers eighty-two. Eighty-two miles separation from the Boeing and they were intersecting with forty-degree closure.

  Franks glanced to the copilot on his right. “What’s their altitude?” he asked.

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “Can they hold?”

  “They’re holding.”

  Franks digested it. Thirty-nine thousand feet was a little high for what they planned but the man flying the Boeing was good. Sam Franks had checked him out personally.

  Franks moved his right hand to the autopilot, adjusted a control. Almost imperceptibly at this height, the nose of the DH-125 eased below the horizon. Two thousand feet a minute. The mach needle slid a notch higher to the red line marked on its dial. Franks glanced again at the digital readout above the blinking red light. The eighty-two had changed to a sixty-three. They were closing fast, and he increased slightly their rate of descent.

  They picked up the contrail barely a minute later, a broad swath through the lower stratosphere. The long white ribbon slashed across the sky to their left, still well below their own altitude. Franks waited. Finally he leaned forward with his left hand on the yoke. “Kill the auto,” he told the copilot. He waited until the autopilot system had been disconnected from the controls before he released a tight grip on the yoke. Experience had taught him you never knew when something in that computer might foul up and the ship go berserk because of a fouled trim when you shifted back to manual. He also wanted the feel of the ship in his hands before closing to the Boeing.

  The 707 slid into view, a wide-winged silver minnow racing ahead of its contrail. Franks adjusted the thin pencil mike before his lips and pressed the transmit button on the yoke. “Grey Eagle, we have visual. Six miles.”

  “Roger, Pineapple. Confirm visual and six. You’re closing nicely.”

  Franks kept narrowing the distance until he could read the bright red lettering across the fuselage of the big Boeing. Turkish Cargolines. That name would disappear minutes after the Boeing rolled into a hangar at its distant destination.

  “Grey Eagle, lets get on with it.”

  “Wilco, Pineapple. Remain alongside.”

  “Roger.”

  Franks glanced to his left. A blister extended slowly beneath the aft belly of the 707. It reached its full length of travel and a funnel slid away slowly at the end of a telescoping boom, kept from rotational or other movement by two slab fins. He waited for the call from the big airplane.

  “Pineapple, probe extended and we’re ready.”

  Franks waited several moments, studying the refueling boom behind the Boeing. It was all in the slot. “Okay, Grey Eagle. We’re dropping behind and coming in.” He moved a toggle switch in the center of the panel. The DH-125 swayed slightly and vibrated as an access door above and behind Franks opened in the powerful wind. Moments later the vibration increased as a refueling boom extended into view above and to his left.

  He skillfully closed the remaining distance. The boom slid into the waiting probe and a green light snapped on. “How’s your light?” Franks asked.

  This time the fueling engineer responded. “We’re green and go, Pineapple. You ready?”

  “Roger, let’s have it.”

  Seven minutes later the fuel tanks of the DH-125 read full. Franks called in the information and the fueling engineer confirmed fuel flow off and ready for disconnect. Franks eased off power. The DH-125 disconnected and Franks broke away to the right, brought power in and slid alongside the Boeing until the refueling boom was fully retracted and the blister brought back into the Boeing.

  “Grey Eagle, you’re clean,” Franks said.

  He knew the Boeing crew was studying his own ship. “Roger that, Pineapple. You show the same.”

  “Have a good trip,” Franks said. He rolled in nose up trim, added power, and the DH-125 went for upstairs again. They’d land in an isolated field seventy miles north of the port city of Cagliari in Sardinia while the 707 flew on to an equally isolated field in Turkey.

  It had been an interesting morning, thought Franks. He turned the ship back to the copilot and the ever-waiting robot brain and went back into the cabin, where five minutes later he was sound asleep.

  CHAPTER 6

  Now they were all brought into operation.

  The first were the Vela Hotel watchdogs in their ceaseless surveillance for a nuclear explosion anywhere above the earth’s surface.

  A Camelot satellite, one of four in polar orbit, signalled detection of sudden radiation in the infrared band. The report went into the NORAD computers with the original Vela Hotel flash, confirming the nature of the detonation as well as providing additional confirmation of geographical coordinates.

  A Ferret satellite, scanning frequency bands necessary for certain types of military s
ystems, was interrogated as it passed within line-of-sight range of a ground receiving station. The time of detonation reported by the Vela Hotel and Camelot satellites was computer-checked with the time-related signals recorded by the Ferret. Within seconds the computer technician stared at a “bogey” signal recorded on tape. He punched into the computer the new information and passed on the word to Combat Center inside NORAD. The signal was further computer-checked across a wide range of special electronic transmissions until there seemed little doubt.

  Which called for additional electronic sleuthing.

  Six Samos and one Big Eye military reconnaissance satellites were in orbit at the time of the atomic blast. Interrogation began immediately. One Samos satellite within line-of-sight of the Butukama area, covering an area slightly to the north and well to the south of the geographical coordinates of the city, was commanded to initiate its on-board film processor. Film taken by the Eastman-Kodak search-and-find camera system was developed and printed and, as the Samos passed over a ground station, the pictures flashed to the NORAD center in Colorado, confirming a dark-textured mushroom cloud ascending through the heavy cloud cover in the Butukama area.

  That confirmation initiated immediate tracking of the radioactive cloud dissipating rapidly downwind of Butukama. Within two hours three SR-71 reconnaissance planes descended from 80,000 feet and punched through the cloud. The planes returned to 30,000 feet where they refueled from KC-135 tankers, and raced toward the United States with filter traps containing particles from the radioactive cloud drifting away from Butukama. Five nuclear submarines were ordered to move at once to positions along a line that would permit further surface sampling of fallout particles. Careful study of the particles would provide a detailed composition of the type of bomb material and even the design of the weapon, although the latter would require much more time.

  Three days prior to the Butukama disaster the United States Air Force had launched from the Western Test Range in California a huge Titan-3D/Agena booster with a ten-ton, fifty-foot-long Big Bird reconnaissance satellite, equipped with both an Eastman-Kodak search-and-find camera system and a giant Perkin-Elmer close-look camera. Within one hour and forty-three minutes of the atomic explosion, the Big Bird orbited along a line from north to south nearly a thousand miles west of Butukama. All camera systems were activated and as fast as pictures were developed, they were processed aboard the satellite and radio-transmitted to the military receiving system. If the initial pictures proved useful, on a succeeding orbital pass permanent photographs would be taken, after which the satellite would be ground-commanded to eject a small re-entry capsule with the original negatives aboard.

  The initial radioed pictures revealed a find that at first seemed to have no bearing on the nuclear explosion. Two contrails appeared some three hundred miles west of the African coast, but they were simply part of a contrail pattern involving many jet aircraft operating at high altitude. The pictures would have remained worthless except for the skill of an intelligence officer who believed in checking out any possibility, no matter how remote.

  Two hours later the intelligence officer studied the computer report. He requested a complete rundown on all information received so far on the explosion. When he finished scanning the assembled data he referred again to the photograph from the Big Bird satellite. Five minutes later he was in the office of the NORAD intelligence chief to explain his findings.

  It was simple enough and it might not have meant anything. But it did.

  First, the contrails appearing on the photographs had been fed into the computer. These were then cross-checked with every airline flight and route to eliminate the majority of contrails; such aircraft were fully accounted for. Telephone and telex messages to the appropriate authorities in several countries produced the flight plan records of other aircraft not included in airline schedules. This accounted for cargo flights and a number of business and private aircraft, all of which were required to file flight plans and maintain progress according to those plans. Deviations were noted and recorded.

  Two aircraft failed to fit within the scope of the careful review. With all other aircraft and their contrails eliminated it was possible to select the two white lines on the photographs for which no flight plans or other identification was known. The photographs were rushed to the computer center for enhancement of detail. Placed within special enlargers they gave up their secret.

  “We have positive identification,” the intelligence officer explained, “of the larger aircraft. A Boeing 707. No question about that. There’s sufficient clarity in the picture to show the sweepback at thirty-five degrees instead of thirty as with a DC-8. That, and some other details. See here? The distance between the wing leading edge to the nose, and from the trailing edge to where the tail begins. The intercontinental version, the 320 series, is considerably larger in fuselage length, so we should be right on target with both the aircraft type and basic model. I think we can even break it down to one of the original 707-120 models.” The men surrounding him showed their disbelief. “The contrail. There’s a distinct pattern to the type of engine. It’s not the type of trail you get from the turbofan engine. It’s the older turbojet. That’s reinforced by the fact that the trail even shows another signature. The original J-57 engines on the early 707 airplanes, at least a lot of them, were fitted with a particular type of noise suppressor. Some are still in service. I’ve checked the trail patterns for these aircraft and they are different, sufficiently so, to get a good handle on them.” His finger tapped the pictures. “It fits,” said the officer, “it fits all the way.”

  He was asked, “What about the other ship?”

  “Smaller. Twin-engine. I checked out the location at the time of every possible small , four-engine ship like the Lockheed Jetstar. All accounted for. That makes this one pretty well defined as a business-type jet with two aft engines and a high horizontal stabilizer. See the shadow across the stabilizer of the 707? It’s not there with the other airplane, yet they were both photographed with the same angle to the sun. So we’re looking at a high horizontal tail.”

  Silence. Then an officer turned to him, shaking his head. “You wouldn’t happen to know the pilot’s name, would you?”

  Next came old-fashioned detective work. Into the computer went the maximum range possible of the two airplanes as determined by their position from the nearest airport. All possible landing sites within that range went into a new programming for the computer. Alternate possibilities of air refueling the smaller jet were then fed into the computer. A team of more than a hundred intelligence specialists began to track down the landing and ground movement of every Boeing 707-120, and a jet of the general characteristics of the machine in the photographs with the Boeing. It was drudgery and it was painstaking and it never paid off.

  Nothing. The two airplanes had simply vanished. Which was its own kind of message.

  Airplanes did not simply disappear.

  Not, that is, unless there was an organization with the means to make it happen.

  Jackson McKay hoped he had an answer. Its name was Cyborg Steve Austin. The time for his launching was now.

  CHAPTER 7

  A television studio . . . Steve Austin moving stiffly, slowly, across the stage to the waiting host. The public hadn’t seen Steve since that terrible desert crash at least a year ago. They remembered him as “the last man to walk the moon,” young, tall, rugged-handsome. The studio audience and home viewers were startled by the scarred face, the strained look of this man who had lost his legs and an arm and God knew what else . . . well, at least there wouldn’t be any more talk that he had died, and as for being crippled forever, well, they said the doctors could do miracles and there was one right in front of them.

  “Life Is Wonderful!” was the country’s new TV talk show and it was even putting worry lines on NBC executives as it nearly pulled even with Johnny Carson. Emcee Bob Harvey had apparently pulled off a coup in getting as his special guest the last man on
the moon, a man who had seemed to disappear from the earth, a man they’d said would be a basket case the rest of his life, if indeed he’d survived at all. Bob Harvey’s opposition called him superschlock but Harvey had apparently grabbed the brass ring, carried along on the wave of nostalgia that was washing over America. This was the night. Steve Austin could put him right over the top. Even Carson would want to watch this. And—for added excitement—this particular show would be live, not taped, by specific request of Austin’s representatives (he wasn’t sure just who they were but who cared). His producer was a bit put off by that, but you didn’t argue with the kind of booking that could make the show number one.

  Harvey’s other guest was a man as big physically as he was at the box office, and also making a rare TV appearance. Movie hero for two decades, Duane Barker was also an outspoken conservative; his critics called it right-wing reactionary. He was a winner and presumably just the sort of real man to help greet Austin. One patriot to another . . . When the tumult of applause finally calmed, Bob Harvey faced the main camera and said, “We have another guest. His name is Marty Schiller. When you see him, you’ll feel the way I did when I learned that this man has no legs. But more important, he’s also the man who taught his friend, Steve Austin, how to walk with artificial limbs. I give you . . . Marty Schiller!”

  Jackson McKay slouched in his leather chair. To his right Oscar Goldman leaned forward. They watched the television screen without a word between them as Marty Schiller moved across the stage, the cameras following every move. Where Steve Austin had seemed to have some difficulty and pain, Schiller was a giant of a man who gave off a sense of great strength. Massive shoulders and thick arms, a toothy grin, huge and calloused hands—and when they thought of this man having no legs of his own, well, it was almost too much . . . Schiller stood quietly by Steve Austin while the crowd screamed. Again. When all was finally quiet Bob Harvey, voice tight, told the audience about Schiller. Ex-paratrooper, underwater demolition expert . . . and when he told how Marty Schiller, legs blown away by a land mine, came back not only to walk but to teach other men to do the same, including this famous ex-astronaut . . .