Stephen Coonts - Combat

The opportunity to take over the U.S. military’s GPATS module would never be so easy. The Global Protection Against Terrorist Strikes module was one of several modules that made up the current core of the station. But unlike its sister modules, which served either as living quarters or to run experiments and collect data, GPATS, the highly classified military payload of a shuttle flight a year ago, housed a prototype hydrogen fluoride chemical laser gun powered by an array of solar cells. Initially plagued with bugs, the laser had already proven itself useful six months ago, when a malfunctioning satellite had come dangerously close to colliding with the space station. The laser had managed to transfer enough energy to the satellite to deflect its trajectory, missing the station by a thousand feet. Since then, the Pentagon, in order to protect the station from space junk, had used two shuttle flights to haul a billion dollars’ worth of upgrades to increase its power and accuracy, making it capable of disabling enemy satellites as well as incoming nuclear warheads — its design objective during the Strategic Defense Initiative project over a decade ago. But GPATS also housed another weapon, deployed at the request of the United Nations Security Council: thirty BLU-85 warheads, each fitted with individual Earth reentry boosters. The BLU-85 was the largest nonnuclear warhead made by the United States, big brother of the venerable BLU-82 used during the Vietnam era to clear out large areas of forest for helicopter landing pads. The purpose of the BLU-85 aboard the ISS: a tactical, nonnuclear, firststrike antiterrorist-capability weapon that could be delivered with surgical precision anywhere on Earth within minutes. Each warhead provided the equivalent yield of fifteen thousand tons of TNT, or fifteen kilotons — small when compared to the two-hundred-kiloton warheads atop ICBMs, but large enough for its intended application. A single BLU-85 could level a military compound in a hostile nation, vaporize a terrorist training camp, discourage an advancing army, or destroy a cocaine plantation — all with the push of a button, and guided to its target by its own radar in shoot-and-forget mode. In procedures similar to the ones followed for decades by missile-silo crewmen, the weapons were kept in a state of readiness, their launching controlled by two crew members from the United States, the country that footed the entire GPATS bill. GPATS was the United Nations’ ultimate hammer against a rebellious nation or terrorist group, capable of delivering a quick and devastating blow without the large overhead of troop deployments or air strikes, or the political and moral problems associated with a nuclear strike.

And now I will use this weapon against the Russian butchers, thought Sergei, who had become aware of this secret payload during the last month of his training.

Sergei Viktor Dudayev was Russian by birth, but his heart belonged to the struggling people of Chechnya, the land where he’d spent most of his youth as the son of a military officer during the final decade of the Soviet Union. Growing up in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, had allowed the young Dudayev to develop strong bonds with the locals, some of whom were killed during the turbulent civil war period following the fall of the Soviet Union. This secret loyalty had remained very much alive inside Sergei Dudayev after he’d left that war-scarred land, abandoning his friends in their fight for independence. The fire continued to burn in his heart even after he had settled in Moscow and tried to start a new life; even as he himself climbed the military ladder of the Russian military, following in his father’s footsteps; even as his distinguished career eventually led him to the Russian space program.

Sergei reached into a Velcro-secured side pocket and extracted a small electric stun gun, capable of discharging a single twenty-thousand-volt shock, powerful enough to incapacitate an average man for thirty minutes. His people in Chechnya had managed to smuggle the tiny gun inside a Progress Russian cargo spaceship, which had arrived at the station just last week. Along with the gun came coded instructions from his Chechen contact in Moscow on the critical timing to take control of the station.

“Hey, Serg. You look pretty depressed today.” One of the American astronauts floated past him, patted Sergei on the back, and stopped in front of the food galley. The American was the current resident aboard the ISS from the United Nations Security Council. In addition to standard mission-specialist responsibilities, he was also chartered with the protection of the GPATS module. Ever since the UNSC deployed GPATS, a minimum of one crew member aboard the ISS possessed the training and the weapons to defend the military module.

Sergei didn’t respond, his eyes shifting from the American’s holstered stun gun to the back of his light blue flight overalls, identical to the ones Sergei wore, except that the muscular UNSC soldier filled his, while Sergei’s looked a size too big for his lanky frame.

The tall astronaut turned around, his hands fumbling with a brown pack of dehydrated peaches. His round face, pink and white, went well with his short hair. Curious brown eyes blinked at Sergei. “You okay, pal? You look sick. Have you been getting enough sleep?”

His heartbeat rocketing as he tried to hide the stun gun behind his back without looking suspicious. Sergei forced a smile, slightly closing his eyes as he nodded. “Yes, I am fine. Thank you.”

The bulky American shrugged, turning his attention back to his dried peaches.

Sergei Viktor Dudayev tightened the grip on the stun gun and gently pushed himself toward the food galley, arming the weapon and pressing its bare-wire ends against the soldier’s neck.

A light buzzing sound filled the Habitation Module as the pouch flew off, spilling its contents in a brownish cloud. The American jerked for a moment and went limp, his arms floating in front of his body.

First incapacitate, then kill .

Blocking out all emotions, Sergei choked his victim until breathing ceased. Then he felt for a pulse, finding none. Satisfied, he grabbed the dead man’s stun gun before pushing his body aside.

Adrenaline rocketing his heartbeat, Sergei stared toward the other end of the Habitation Module, where sleep compartments occupied both sides of the padded walls and the ceiling. A crewman slept in one of them. Another American, the station commander.

The Russian cosmonaut drifted toward him, coming to a rest in front of the compartment. The commander’s arms floated loosely to the sides as his head leaned slightly forward. The Velcro straps securing him against the padded board applied just enough pressure on his body to create the illusion of sleeping in a comfortable bed.

Sergei curled the hairy fingers of his right hand around the plastic case of the UNSC soldier’s stun gun, and without further thought, drove the hot end of the weapon into the side of the commander’s neck. The astronaut opened his eyes and stared at Sergei in surprise, before his eyes rolled to the back of his head and his arms jerked forward, almost as if trying to reach for his attacker. The motor reflex ended a moment later, and, again, Sergei strangled his incapacitated victim.

The Russian unzipped the front of the American’s suit and removed a key attached to a chain around his neck. The American also wore a small badge around his neck. Briefly eyeing the credit-card-size object, Sergei decided to come back to it later. Right then he needed both ISS master keys.

Sergei Dudayev floated to his first victim and retrieved a second key, before approaching the center of the module and eyeing the closedcircuit TV monitors of the operations workstation. There he verified that the remaining crew members, one British and one Japanese, were still inside the U.S. Laboratory Module, the forty-four-foot-long pressurized cylinder similar in shape and size to the Habitation Module. Satisfied, he inserted both keys on the top of the keyboard of the Multipurpose Application Console, linked to the electronic core of the ISS’s network. From here, Sergei had control of all onboard subsystems such as electrical power, thermal control, data management, communications, interface with ground control, and even full space station attitude control and orbit altitude.