The same was true for the space center’s air defenses. On hand were barely a dozen Patriot antiaircraft launchers, and four squads of 1st Airborne Division reserve troops equipped with portable Stinger missiles. That was it. All to protect a base that spanned 20 square miles and currently had nearly 1,000 highly skilled people on hand, along with a treasure trove of high technology.
Then there was the hodgepodge of aircraft currently operating from the five-mile shuttle runway. These were now a half-dozen C-5 gunships, so useless against a bomber attack that the UAAF commanders had sent an order to their crews to take off immediately and head west, away from the coast and any impending trouble. The same order was given for the Neptune lightships, the handful of troop carriers and unarmed cargo planes. Like ships leaving harbor before the storm, the airplanes were quickly being scrambled and flown out of harm’s way, leaving behind a depleted and vulnerable base.
With the mysterious disappearance of the six Sabre jets, the only air defense fighters at KSC at the moment were a pair of old F-105 Thunderchiefs—technically a fighter bomber—and a single F-106 Delta Dart, a refugee from the destroyed Key West base. To make matters worse, the fuel situation was very low at the shuttle runway airstrip. Most of the gas had been given over to the big gunships so they could get away. The Thunderchiefs and the Dart had about a full tank between them. A quick calculation by the KSC intell section determined all three airplanes could stay in the air for about six minutes each and no more.
There was, however, a joker in the deck—three of them, in fact. They were sitting 300 miles away on the pockmarked runway at Key West.
They were the pair of F-14 Tomcats and the single F/A-18 Hornet captured during the bombardment of the naval air station. Earlier that day, a small group of pilots and air intelligence officers, using information gained from interrogations of the Nazi pilots, had finally cracked security codes unlocking the flight control computers on the Hornet and one of the F-14s. They had started the F/A-18 earlier in the day and had reported all its flight systems up and working.
But what good could these airplanes do as far as the impending action up at KSC? Nothing, so far as the UAAF staff was concerned. But they made a quick scrambled flash to Key West anyway, informing them of the enemy bomber force forming off the eastern Florida coast.
At the time, it seemed like the prudent thing to do.
This is not to say that there weren’t any defenses being prepared around the KSC.
On the contrary, the building of fortifications, bomb shelters, defense lines, aircraft revetments, and AAA sites had been proceeding at a feverish pace, even more so since the events down in the Keys and in the aftermath of the Norse attack.
The morning before, the entire complement of the 104th New Jersey National Guard Combat Engineering battalion had been secretly airlifted out of their R & R area on the Jersey shore and rushed down to the KSC, two weeks ahead of schedule. With all the strangeness that had been happening with the unit in Surf City—as far as they knew, their girls were still missing—to a man, everyone in the unit looked forward to the change in scenery.
In the 24 hours they’d been on the ground, the defensive face of the KSC had begun to take shape. Two 24-man units were immediately sent to repair the damage on the northern defensive line; bulldozed slit trenches, reinforced with concrete and steel, now made up the bulk of the perimeter. Another team was sent to shore up the southern end of the vast space center, laying down minefields wherever they could and installing everything from bunji-stake pits to “foo lines,” trenches filled with natural gas piping to be ignited in case of attack.
The rest of the CE unit had begun work on setting up the Patriot antiaircraft missile emplacements, many of which had been flown in the day before the Norse attack. These SAM batteries were operational, but they’d been dispersed in a temporary fashion. The NJ104 engineers quickly set about moving them around to get the best in area defense from the 24 launchers on hand.
It had been a long, hard, strenuous job, but by midnight, 18 of the Patriot batteries were in their proper places. Ten had been arrayed in a wide semicircle to protect the VAB and the main KSC control buildings. Three had been set up to protect the small but important Banana River station. Three more had been installed around the complex’s huge fuel storage area. This left only two for protection of the makeshift shuttle-strip airport. The plans for the next day were to install four more of the anti-aircraft launchers around the runway, making its defensive alignment complete and leaving two in reserve.
But for what was coming, this was a case of everything being just a day short.
For Don Matus, acting CO of NJ104, the first news about the gathering of Beagles came in a phone call from General Jones.
Matus and the other staff officers of NJ104—Vittelo, Palma, Cerbasi, DeLusso, and McCaffery—had been working nonstop since their arrival at the space center, typically down in the trenches with their troops, manning shovels and picks, trying to get the impossible done ahead of schedule.
Matus and McCaffery had worked the past 20 hours setting up the Patriots around the VAB. Both men had collapsed and were out cold when the phone rang inside the battalion bivouac at 0505 hours. Coincidently, their barracks were shaking as the huge C-5s were taking off to make good their escape, flying low and slow over the empty administration building the engineers had taken as their own.
Matus was surprised to hear the voice of General Jones. The general’s friendly drawl sounded very tense—and thick with concern. He quickly briefed Matus on the situation and asked him to get his men back to the main part of the base as quickly as possible.
If and when the Ilyushins attacked, the men of NJ104 would be pressed into service—not as engineers, but as the manpower needed to work the Patriot batteries, something none of them had ever done before.
There was an art to firing a Patriot antiaircraft battery.
The acquisition radar was probably the best ever built; it could spot and paint targets flying many miles up and more than 40 miles away. The tracking systems were also superb—once the Patriot began following an intruder, it was almost impossible for that intruder to break the lock. While a battery of microprocessors and minicomputers actually ran the show from the moment the enemy aircraft was sighted, there was a manual override built into the UA’s version of the Patriot, just in case the operator wanted to launch against something coming in particularly low and particularly fast.
Something like an Ilyushin Beagle bomber.
By the time the NJ104 engineers made it to the area around the VAB bunker, the force of Beagle bombers off the coast had grown to 28. Even worse, a small flotilla of Sparviero missile boats had been picked up on surface radar, heading north up the coast. There was also a report from a UA spotter unit that maybe as many as three Enrico Toti submarines had been detected moving in the shallow waters off Vero Beach, also heading north.
This was highly disturbing news for the UAAF command staff. A massive attack was coming and the Kennedy Space Center was its intended target. By 0515 hours, every available man at the sprawling base had been mustered and sent to a defensive position. Many were directed to the beaches as the UA command feared that an armed landing might also accompany the attack or occur soon afterward. Others were put into trenches and behind defensive barriers dug the day before around the KSC’s most important buildings.
For Don Matus and two squads of his NJ104 engineers, the positioning would be a bit higher. They were assigned to a Patriot missile battery that had been airlifted to the top of the massive VAB by one of the base’s CH-54 Flying Crane helicopters. Two smaller Huey choppers were presently ferrying men from the ground to the top of the building. Matus went up on one of these flights, a short hop that took 60 seconds to complete and could be compared to flying up the side of an enormous concrete and steel mountain.
The top of the VAB was so high, the men who’d been placed there could already see the sun, slowly rising out of the ocean beyond the hori
zon. Matus and two of his electrical techs immediately went to work checking the power lines running into the Patriot missile battery. Though no one in the NJ104 team had ever worked a Patriot before, the computers inside the firing hut seemed fairly user-friendly. Once they’d determined that the antiaircraft system had enough electricity to operate, Matus and the techs sat down at the firing station and ran a quick diagnostic and training program through the system.
In clear, concise, and amazingly lifelike fashion, the computer ran a 3-D simulation on what it took to fire a Patriot. Basically it meant identifying the enemy aircraft, making sure all the systems were locked on it and then sitting back to let the software do its work. If everything went as it should, the missile would launch automatically when the bogey reached the outer portion of a 15-mile threat threshold and destroy the incoming aircraft about 35 seconds later.
But in combat, few things rarely went as they should—and no one knew that better than the men of NJ104.
Also positioned along the edge of VAB were four infantry teams carrying Stinger missiles, the smaller, portable, less powerful, but still dangerous antiaircraft weapons. These men were attached to the 1st Airborne Division Reserve, and as such, were probably among the most experienced regular combat troops at the KSC. They also had two .50-caliber machine guns set up, plus a small SBAT-127 multiple-rocket launcher which the Airborne troopers had captured in their travels.
Matus left the Patriot control hut and walked to the southeastern edge of the VAB; he needed to stretch some of the kinks out of his tired, lanky body. The waters of the Atlantic looked deceptively calm and sparkling in the growing dawn; it was hard to believe that anything other than the rising sun was waiting for them out beyond the horizon. The beaches, too, appeared to be eerily sane and inviting, despite the frantic activity as hundreds of UA troops rushed to their makeshift positions. It was the beginning of a perfect beach day. The waves looked high and clean and great for swimming. The nearby dunes and scrub trees would provide shade once the sun became too hot. A little lunch. Maybe a cooler of beer. Matus wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. If only we could take the day off, he thought…
But then more sobering notions came flooding in. Matus couldn’t help but think about what had happened at Surf City and the strangeness surrounding the disappearance of the four young girls. Though the townspeople were still looking for them, few had any hope they’d ever be found. He stared into the unfolding dawn now, removing his Fritz helmet and rubbing his tired neck. A rare wave of philosophical feelings washed over him. He was hardly a religious man, but he did recall some Bible training from when he was a boy… something about how the faithful and the innocent would be lifted up into the heavens before the final battle between good and evil heralded the end of the world.
At that moment he looked straight up into the brightening sky and saw that it was turning the color of blood. From one dark horizon to the other, the sky was becoming a bright, deep crimson, as vivid as a sunset, yet just minutes from the dawn. Matus felt a chill go right through him. He’d never seen anything like this before.
Then it hit him: maybe today was Doomsday and the end was near. After all, the signs were everywhere. The red sky. The eerie calm. A world gone completely insane. Wars raging full tilt around the globe, the fighting worse since the Big War. Maybe this was all part of one big cosmic conclusion. Maybe the four missing girls were in a vanguard of innocents that the cosmos had decided to spare, a divine evacuation before Armageddon arrived.
Matus shook his head. It all seemed to make so much sense under this blood-red sky. And yet, deep down, he realized these apocalyptic musings actually made him feel better.
Maybe those who had disappeared were the lucky ones, he thought finally. Maybe they’d be spared the glimpse of hell that might soon come…
He was broken out of these deep thoughts by an urgent cry from one of his electrical techs. Matus raced back to the Patriot command hut where a message from the bunker below the VAB was waiting.
“Click on your long-range imaging radar,” one of the command officers told him. “And get everyone up there ready for action.”
Matus did as he’d been told and soon punched up the Patriot’s powerful acquisition radar. To his astonishment, he found himself looking at a long-range live TV feed that showed a formation of at least two dozen small jet bombers apparently heading right toward them. The Patriot’s threat-archive screens were identifying them as Ilyushin-28s. The targeting radar said they were now 31 miles off the coast and coming on fast. Matus called back down to the bunker, reported what he saw, and asked for further instructions.
The reply was curt and brief.
“Start firing,” the anonymous bunker officer told him, adding rather ominously, “and you can start praying, too.”
The first Patriot missile went up from the roof of the VAB 15 seconds later.
The 17-foot rocket whooshed away from its launcher at an incredibly high speed, leaving behind a trail of white, almost luminescent smoke as it turned over and disappeared beyond the horizon.
Matus was seated in the Patriot management center’s main control chair, astonished as he watched the missile approach the oncoming bomber formation on the live TV feed. The imaging was so clear he could clearly see the bombs hanging from the lead Beagle’s wings, the airplane’s slapdash blue and white camouflage scheme, and even the two pilots ensconced inside the aircraft nose.
Then, just like that, the bomber was gone, replaced by a flash of light and then a ball of flame. Their first Patriot had hit its mark. A chorus of buzzers and flashing lights on the control panel confirmed this.
But just as soon as this plane vanished, another one came up to take its place. And then another behind that, and another behind that. Now the forward Patriot batteries were firing, as well as those arrayed on the ground around the VAB. Matus somehow found the button which gave his TV screen a long range. Within seconds he was looking at the entire formation of Ilyushins again, this time as the waves of Patriots were cutting into them.
His battery locked onto another target and automatically fired its second missile. A third target was acquired seconds later, and the third missile went up in a flash. Matus was astounded. Never had he seen combat played out so quickly, so up-close and violent. It was like watching a movie. The planes dropping from the TV screen looked like products of a special-effects team; the people inside them did, too. Everything looked so real, it seemed unreal.
But the racket coming from outside the hut dragged him back to reality quickly enough. The whooshing of Patriot missiles going off was nearly deafening now. Somewhere, air raid sirens were wailing. Big guns could be heard, though Matus had no idea who was firing them or at what targets.
The VAB-rooftop Patriot battery fired its fourth and fifth missile a few seconds later. Both left in a hurricane of smoke and exhaust, heading up into the dreadful red sky and quickly disappearing over the horizon. Equally fascinated and horrified, Matus watched them take out two more bombers on the wide screen, destroying them utterly with their high-explosive fragmentation warheads, setting off the underwing weapons even as the doomed pilots tried desperately to unload them.
The rooftop launcher fired its sixth and final missile about 10 seconds later. Matus chose not to stay and watch this one go up. He left the command chair and ran back out to the rooftop. The Beagle formation, or what was left of it, was now 12 miles away. He was sure he’d be able to get a visual on them very soon.
The scene that greeted him on the outside was like something from a Bosch nightmare. Missiles were going off all around him. The crimson sky above the KSC was crisscrossed with contrails, seemingly hundreds of them. Off in the distance, he could hear many violent explosions; it was like the air was vibrating with incredible shock waves. With each successive blast, his ears began to ache a little more. It was getting so loud, so fast, he was sure they’d start bleeding soon.
Strangely, though, the beaches below him still looked tranquil
, peaceful, inviting. He couldn’t stop thinking about how warm the water must be, how high the waves were, and how much he would have liked swimming around in them, just as he’d done so many times before as a kid…
Another loud explosion shook him back to real time. This one was not up in the clouds somewhere, but very, very close. He turned to see an enormous geyser of smoke and flame rising up from the main communications building about a half-mile north of the VAB. The smoke was quickly blown away to reveal the place had been vaporized. There was nothing left—no building, no antennas, no satellite dishes. Nothing but a hole and a huge ring of fire around it.
Matus knew instantly what had happened. He pulled out his long-range binoculars and trained them out on the eastern horizon. Sure enough, he could see a handful of bluish specks out there, each of them kicking up a geyser of smoke and water behind it. They were the Sparviero fast-attack boats. One of them had just fired a Styx missile at the KSC and had destroyed the comm shack.
Now three more Styx had been launched. Matus could see their fiery trails coming out of the water and right toward him at incredible speed. He had just enough time to shout a warning to the troops on top of the VAB when the trio of missiles went over their heads, emitting an ear-piercing screech as they streaked by. An instant later, all three came down, not on any KCS building, but out on the shuttle runway behind the base. There were three enormous explosions—they were so powerful, Matus imagined he could feel the VAB actually shaking. When the smoke and fire cleared, it revealed three gigantic holes in the middle of the very long airstrip.
A series of shouts brought his attention back to the front of the building. Three I1-28 Beagles were roaring in right over the beach. They were so low, Matus was actually looking down on them. They were also flying so close together, they seemed like one aircraft.
Matus didn’t even have to yell out a command. Suddenly everyone on the rooftop was firing at the three bombers. The 1st Airborne guys opened up with their own twin big fifties. At least two Stingers went off. Even some of his own engineers were firing down on the jet bombers with their M-16s.
Death Orbit Page 19
