Strike Force

“Contact, sir!” one of the new sensor operators aboard Armstrong Space Station crowed. The technician was dressed in a simple blue jump suit and wore Velcro sneakers and Velcro patches on his knees and forearms to help keep himself attached to various places in the main operations section of the station. Three other sensor and computer operators, all newly arrived at Silver Tower to operate its reactivated sensors, were similarly dressed and similarly attached to various parts of the module, studying multi-function touch-screen displays of satellite imagery all around Iran. “Target area two has activity!”

“About damned time,” Colonel Kai Raydon snorted. “Okay, gang, let’s get ready to rumble.” He switched his console’s display to that operator’s screen. It showed a real-time NIRTSat ultra-wideband radar image of what appeared to be tractor-trailer rigs suddenly appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the mountains of western Iran. The radar image was precisely tuned by computer to squelch out terrain and forest returns and only show moving metallic returns. “Yep, we’ve got the cockroaches coming out of the woodwork for sure.” He flipped on the secure satellite communications channel. “Genesis, this is Odin, you got a copy on our Polaroid?”

“Roger, Odin,” Patrick McLanahan responded from the White House Situation Room. The high-definition television monitors in the White House conference room had been set up to display images from not only Silver Tower’s sensors but from hundreds of other aircraft, satellite, and surface ship sensors as well, or a mosaic of all sensor data put together.

“Right where you said they’d be, General,” Raydon remarked. He watched as the station’s computers, networked in with the computers on the ground at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center’s operations center, started calculating the proper orbital mechanics to intercept the mobile missile launchers. “Odin to Stud One-Three, how are you doing down there?”

“Happy to be back and ready to go, Odin,” Captain Hunter “Boomer” Noble responded. He was on the ground at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center in Nevada, pulling “cockpit alert” in the second of two remaining XR-A9 Black Stallion spacecraft. Noble had been back in the United States for less than a day before being tasked for another mission, but he didn’t hesitate to accept the assignment. “Thanks again for not grounding me, Genesis.”

“No problem, One-Three,” Patrick replied. “Glad you feel up to it.”

“We need all the swinging dicks we can to fly, kid,” Raydon said. “Are you getting the pictures and the orbital insertion data?”

“Roger,” Hunter replied. A fiber-optic data cable connected to the spaceplane was busy feeding orbital information, weapon ballistics data, and precise position updates to the Black Stallion’s flight and payload computers. As he read, the computer beeped at him, warning him that the “BEFORE POWER ON” checklist was underway. He acknowledged the built-in countdown hold. “Looks like I’m counting down, guys,” he said. “I’ll talk to you once I’m airborne.”

“Contact, sir!” another sensor operator shouted. “Target area five!”

“Looks like we’ve got another fish on, Genesis,” Raydon said. He switched to the new target. This one was the most unlikely area they had under surveillance, but if they did detect activity it would be one of the most important ones to address. “Got bad news for you, Genesis: your old friend the Shahab-5 launch site is active.” He studied the latest images from the launch site. “I don’t see any rockets on the launch pad — you took care of the last one very nicely — but the latest ultra-wideband radar scans we took from the Tower tell us they have three occupied silos out there. It’s fair to say they’re all Shahab-5s, and some might have nuclear warheads.”

“Any chance they could be decoys, Odin?” Patrick asked.

“You’re the ex intel guru, sir,” Raydon said, peering at the radar images even more closely. “The ultra-wideband radar system installed on Armstrong Space Station has the capability of seeing underground, but atmospheric, angle of sight, and target composition conditions have to be perfect, and with our eighties-era computers we can’t always get a good detailed image even if we are lucky enough to get the perfect shot. The underground missile silos at Kermān are obviously Russian-designed hardened suckers. I just can’t call it for sure, Genesis. The Iranians claim the Shahab-5s are just satellite boosters, and the silos are just secure storage facilities. I don’t buy that for a second.”

“Neither do I, Kai,” Patrick said. “But we don’t have many assets out in-theater, and I need an assessment of the threat.”

“Sir, if Iran has issued this alert because of what’s happening in Tehran right now,” Raydon said, “there’s no reason I can think of for them to be warming up a space launch vehicle. I think they’re going to launch their big boys. And we know what the target will be.”

“Diego Garcia,” Patrick said.