Executive Intent

The second wave of fighter-bombers each carried four Kh-29T TV-guided missiles. They climbed a bit higher than the first wave, both because the air defense radars had already been neutralized and because they needed to get a better look at their targets before attacking. The JH-37 pilots flew precise attack courses and used time and preplanned acquisition waypoints that would guarantee they could spot their targets-air and coastal defense gun and missile sites. Once the sites were spotted, the pilots quickly locked each Kh-29 electro-optical sensor on target and released the missiles, which flew at almost the speed of sound and destroyed them in seconds.

Each of the JH-37Ns in the third and fourth waves carried just two weapons instead of four, but they were even more devastating than their brothers: KAB-1500KR guided two-thousand-pound armor-piercing bombs. They used low-light TV sensors in the nose to home in on the central telecommunications facility in the city, the TV and radio broadcasting center, and the Yemeni army and navy headquarters, allocating two of the massive bombs on each target to assure complete obliteration. Their armored structure allowed them to penetrate even hardened roofs with ease, and their fuses had been set to allow the weapons to penetrate a specific number of floors in each assigned target and then explode in precisely the floor they wanted, mostly in the power-distribution and data-storage rooms, control rooms, or subfloor command posts.

In minutes, the Yemeni civilian and military infrastructure in the city of Aden was rendered deaf, dumb, and blind, followed shortly thereafter by totally decimation.

ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

THAT SAME TIME

A warning tone sounded in the command module, which immediately got everyone’s attention. “SBIRS-High recording a thermal blossom, sir,” Senior Master Sergeant Valerie “Seeker” Lukas reported. She typed some instructions into her computer and carefully read the response. “Looks like it’s in the harbor at Aden, Yemen.”

“Okay,” the station commander, U.S. Army Colonel Alan Camerota, weakly responded. Camerota, just forty years old and looking even younger, was Kai Raydon’s replacement while the general was on scheduled rest and reacclimation back on Earth. An Army strategic air defense engineer and weapons designer, Camerota had trained as a Shuttle and Orion mission specialist for three years but had never been selected for a mission. As one of the experts on the Trinity interceptor vehicle, he had supervised the deployment of the Kingfisher weapon garages, but always from Earth, not from space-but now, with Raydon grounded for at least a month, he had been selected to command Armstrong Space Station as his first and long-awaited time in orbit.

As the old saying goes: Be careful what you wish for-you might get it. Despite years of training and rigorous physical conditioning, weeks in the neutral buoyancy tank at NASA, many hours in the “Vomit Comet” zero-g training aircraft, and a careful diet, Camerota found to his great disappointment that zero-g did not agree with him-and that was putting it mildly. He was using anti-airsickness drugs, both chemical and herbal, and he also used acupressure wristbands and blood-cooling patches on the neck, but after two days in space he was still battling airsickness-his stomach would just not settle down. It was getting to the point where his performance might be affected. He was determined to overcome it, but for now his body was calling the shots.

“Can we get a look at it, Master Sergeant?” Camerota asked.

“We have Kingfisher-Six overhead in nine minutes and Kingfisher-Two within oblique view in seventeen minutes,” Seeker replied. She looked at Camerota and noticed his “barf bag”-a specially designed receptacle with a one-way valve that prevented emesis from flying back out in zero-g-was out and at the ready. “You okay, sir?”

“I’m fine,” Camerota said, but he looked anything but fine.

“I can get Major Faulkner up here.” Former Marine Corps F-35 pilot Major Jessica “Gonzo” Faulkner was the senior spaceplane pilot on the station while Hunter Noble was back on Earth, and she had been training at the commander’s console when not flying or training other pilots-she was, in Seeker’s opinion, by far the best-qualified station commander if Camerota couldn’t continue.

“I said I’m fine, Master Sergeant,” Camerota said as convincingly as he could. “Notify me when Six is in range. What does SBIRS say it is?”

“Stationary dot, very hot burst but cooling off quickly-most likely a large explosion,” Lukas said. “Could be a missile launch, but SBIRS didn’t detect a track.”

“Notify Space Command and STRATCOM,” Camerota said. “I also want to…” And then he paused, gurgled a bit, then threw up in the barf bag.

“Sir…?”