Robert Ratcliffe: Red Hammer 1994

The defense minister played devil’s advocate, a dangerous proposition. “That would be in direct violation of the START treaty language,” he intoned.

Laptev’s pudgy face turned to stone. His eyes burned with black fire. Laptev was an inch from renouncing the treaty completely. He knew in his cold heart that the Russians had been coerced into signing, duped by false promises of dollars and technology that never materialized. The hopelessly flawed treaty would leave the Russians prostrate before the Americans by the year 2003, if not sooner. Time was slipping through their fingers.

“I spit on a treaty signed by imbeciles and traitors to the Motherland.” He suddenly flashed on Gorbachev and Yeltsin. How he hated those men. They personally destroyed Russia and now made a fat living on the Western lecture circuit, charming ex-cold warriors and liberal politicians who revered them as gods.

The defense minister cringed. “A technical point, President. I agree with your position completely.” Heads nodded approvingly as the defense minister slumped in his chair, wishing that he could disappear. Beads of sweat blossomed on his forehead, and his cheeks flushed as he furiously searched his mental cabinet of clichés and politically neutral truisms for an escape route. He came up empty and sighed, waiting for the expected lance from the left.

Laptev let him twist in the wind. At times like this he understood Stalin, his methods and his moods, his use of fear to mold men’s wills. “I need no tutorial on the treaty language, thank you. I will be the final judge on what does or does not violate the treaty.” His defense minister was beginning to sound like the American secretary of state. He made a mental note.

Laptev raised his bushy eyebrows in question. The defense minister signaled closure. Chair legs screeched across the floor as no one lingered in the president’s presence.

Laptev rose and faced his aide. “Time to play the charming whore,” he groused. The bankers were waiting.

Lieutenant General Robert Thomas, aide to the secretary of defense, was pissed. He clenched his jaw, and the deep scar on his right cheek reddened menacingly. The old injury to his left hip ached, and his rumbling stomach only compounded his discomfort. He wiped the sharp features of his tanned face and then arched his spine, which brought a flush of relief to his tight lower back. “Idiots,” he mumbled. “What the hell is going on?” The comic opera being performed before him smacked of classical NASA procrastination and incompetence.

Thomas leaned his lanky six-foot frame against the stainless-steel rail, gripping it like he wished he could break it in two. He had doffed his uniform blouse hours ago, and his blue shirt was stained with sweat under the armpits and down his spine. Gazing out from the raised platform, the scene before him was pure bedlam. NASA technicians in white short-sleeved shirts and too-short ties glanced over their shoulders, each wondering if they would be next to feel the heat.

The central status board announced yet another hold. “Damn it!” Thomas snapped. He stormed off, shaking his head, muttering under his breath. He pulled up and studied the tabular data displayed on a large plasma screen prominently positioned on the front wall. His sour expression was proof that the numbers essentially said that everything had gone to shit.

Thomas spied the launch director and worked up the energy for yet another run. A tight circle of senior NASA officials huddled in muffled discussion. The engineers turned managers crowded closer and braced themselves. Thomas really didn’t have the stomach to beat them up anymore, but Secretary Alexander had given him his marching orders—kick ass and get the shuttle off the ground by sundown.

The countdown for the shuttle Discovery had been stopped on five separate occasions since first light. As the fading Florida sun coasted toward the horizon, the launch window was slamming shut. The odds now favored that the super-secret mission would be scrubbed. NASA was pushing for a reschedule to early morning, but Space Command was fighting them tooth and nail. Then there was the threatening warm front moving rapidly north from the eastern Caribbean, driven by powerful gale-force winds. Stringy clouds streaked with black were already drifting over Launch Complex 39, casting long shadows over the two imposing support towers and the massive shuttle resting quietly on pad 39A. The only signs of life were wisps of condensed gases vented from the liquid-hydrogen and liquid-oxygen fuel tanks. To further muck up the works, upper atmospheric winds had increased by over five knots in the last two hours, yet another abort criteria according to the NASA liturgy.

“What’s the holdup?” Thomas barked as he stepped into their private conversation. “If there’s a problem, it had better be a showstopper, not some third-order backup system for flushing the toilet.”

The mission director, a tall, walking skeleton, turned purple with rage. He was at the end of his rope.

“General Thomas, we’re working on the flight computer software problem as fast as we can,” he pleaded, both flustered and mad. “Get off our backs,” he added, his voice rising in intensity. His comrades raised their eyebrows in unison at their leader’s unexpected boldness. They correctly predicted disaster and stepped aside, giving the general elbow room, more than happy to throw their hapless companion to the wolves. Thomas planted himself six inches from the mission director’s hawk like nose, staring hard and scowling.

The director became unnerved, backpedaling with Thomas in pursuit. He held his hands up chest high in a gesture of surrender. His voice ratcheted up in pitch.

“The software has been reloaded, and the validation algorithms are being run as we speak. We can’t go any faster,” he offered apologetically. “We have to follow procedures, or I can’t recommend a launch.”

Thomas was unimpressed and moved in for the kill. “If Discovery doesn’t go in the next forty-five minutes, I’m going to have your ass. And stop that ‘we’ crap. The decision is yours and yours alone.” A furious Thomas stomped off. The thin NASA man started to almost dance. “What the hell are they putting up there, anyway? Why hasn’t anyone said anything? I’ve never seen a mission like this!” he said to his friends. The mission director sulked off, disgusted with anyone in a uniform.

Thomas glanced at the clock and shook his head. They couldn’t make it, not now. Time was rapidly slipping through their hands. An adjacent wall-mounted video monitor showed Discovery stuck on the launch pad, with a small digital clock in the lower corner frozen at T minus twelve minutes.

This particular shuttle mission had aroused unbelievable curiosity and attention both at Kennedy and in the press. Security had been the tightest in recent years. A week-old canned press release mentioned a “scientific mission,” but most observers were savvy enough to sense it was an important military payload. Speculation ranged from a new communications or reconnaissance bird to a prototype wide-area surveillance radar satellite developed by DARPA, the DOD research and development folks.

At a computer console, one of the launch operators queried the shuttle-health monitoring system and then flashed a relieved smile. “The flight software checks out OK,” he reported proudly, straightening in his chair.

The mission director was a changed man. His face returned to its normal pasty tone. He exuded a muffled sigh to signal his release from bondage. “Resume the countdown at T minus twelve minutes.”