Warren Murphy: Sole Survivor

"Do you want to defect? Is that it?" asked the President of the anonymous voice.

"A defect is an error or fault in a physical form. It is a noun. I do not understand you when you use the noun 'defect' as a verb. Please clarify."

"I mean do you seek asylum in the United States of America?"

"I seek to land in America. I have already said that." The Secretary grabbed the receiver so his words would not transmit uplink to the shuttle.

"With all due respect, Mr. President, the consequences of letting that ship land on American soil are enormous. The Soviets will retaliate. They'll probably cut the support staff to our embassy in Moscow even more. Or suspend the rights of our diplomats to shop in the better stores."

"This is a humanitarian situation. That ship is in trouble. Let it land. We'll sort out the fallout later."

"I wish you hadn't used that word, Mr. President."

"What word?"

" 'Fallout,' "

"You have a point," said the President. "But we can't just ignore that man. He'll talk to us but not to his Russian comrades. What should I do?"

"Stall him until we can confer with the Soviets. Maybe we can negotiate an understanding."

The President nodded. He lifted the phone set to his rugged face. "I am sorry, Yuri Gagarin, but I cannot authorize a landing on United States soil at this time," he said.

"I do not need your authorization. I am coming down." As the President and the Secretary of Defense watched in horror, the green triangle on the simulator board tilted so its apex pointed earthward. It began to descend. High in orbit, the shuttle Yuri Gagarin rolled like a shark submerging into an inky ocean. Thrusters sent it tumbling and then its rear braking engines were brought into play. A six-second firing was all the ship needed to slow its orbit. Then it slipped, wing first, into the outer edges of earth's atmospheric envelope.

In the cockpit, the control yoke moved automatically. Lights blinked through automated sequences on their own and switches clicked as if piloted by ghosts.

The Yuri Gagarin descended, nose down, its whitish wings growing yellowish-orange along their leading edges. It descended in a flat glide through the ionosphere and into the stratosphere, moving at Mach 25-over eighteen thousand miles per hour. Pink superheated plasma streamers broke out over the hull. Only the insulating cushion of the reentry shock-wave kept the six-thousand- degree heat of atmospheric friction from incinerating the ship.

Once in the thicker troposphere, the tail jets flamed into life and the shuttle Yuri Gagarin leveled out over the Pacific Ocean and began to vector for the west coast of the United States.

In the White House Situation room, there was near-panic.

"Mr. President, I implore you," said the Secretary of Defense. "We have to shoot that thing out of the sky. It's heading toward California."

"It's in trouble," said the President stubbornly.

"It may be, but we certainly will be. We cannot-we must not-allow a Soviet machine to penetrate our airspace unchallenged. We don't know what they're up to. They could be carrying onboard nuclear or biological weapons."

The President heard the frantic garble of Soviet ground control commanders in the background. The NSA stenographer continued spewing out shorthand translations of their broadcasts.

"What are they saying?" the President asked the NSA man.

"Sir, they are threatening the cosmonauts with dire consequences if the Gagarin touches down anywhere but Soviet Russia."

"A ruse," snapped the Secretary of Defense. "They want to allay our fears, make us think we're reeling in a propaganda coup."

The President watched the tactical map of the United States on one wall. The shuttle, still represented as a coded green triangle, crossed the grids of longitude and latitude toward the luminous green line of the coast of California.

"We can intercept over the Pacific," said the Secretary of Defense. "Wave it off. If it refuses, blow it out of the sky. We'll be justified."

"Maybe. But will the world understand? How would it look if we shot down a shuttle? It would be worse than the time the Russians downed that Korean airliner."

"Maybe that's what they want," said the Secretary suddenly. "Maybe they're trying to set us up. Oh, my God, what do we do?"

"Put a pair of chase planes on it," the President ordered. "Tell them to stay with the shuttle, but not to challenge it. Let's see where they land."

The Yuri Gagarin landed in the least expected location-New York's Kennedy International Airport. It came down on runway 13-Right, without requesting clearance or landing instructions, and rolled to a stop at the far end of the runway, just short of the blast fence.

There it sat while the tower, on orders from Washington, hastily diverted all incoming traffic to La Guardia. All takeoffs were suspended and the airliners were drawn close to their gates like frightened fish who sense a predator.

The National Guard was the first military authority on the scene. They set up a command post in the tower until an Air Force team flown in from NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain Complex threw them out. The National Guard commander left in a huff, claiming that the protection of New York City from the Soviet invader was his responsibility. He vowed that there would be hell to pay.

He was told to go kiss a tank.

Meanwhile, the shuttle just sat on the runway, ignoring radio demands for the crew to disembark peacefully. From his high vantage point in the tower, Colonel Jack Dellingsworth Rader trained his binoculars on the Soviet shuttle until he saw the red letters CCCP on the near wing. He followed the clean lines of the craft until the smaller black letters Yuri Gagarin appeared in the lenses. Then he lifted the glasses ever so slightly until he had a clear view of the cockpit. It appeared empty. It had been empty ever since the ship landed. Before landing, if the testimony of a chase plane pilot could be accepted. But that was impossible. A craft that sophisticated could not land on automatic.

Colonel Rader picked up a field telephone and got the captain in charge of the NORAD team, who were deployed on the runway.

"The cockpit still appears empty," he said.

"Yes, sir, Colonel. I am reliably informed that the cockpit has been vacant since the first F-15's intercepted over California."

"Impossible. That pilot has to be mistaken."

"Sir, every Air Force pilot who picked up the shuttle along the way reported the same situation."

"Well, it's sure empty now," Colonel Rader harrumphed.

"The NASA team has just arrived, sir. Shall I send them in?"

"Now's as good a time as any."

"Yes, sir."

Colonel Rader picked up his binoculars. Below, four figures in white anticontamination suits exploded from the back of an olive-green van. They crept up on the shuttle from the rear, slipping in under the tail assembly-the main blind spot of most aircraft. They sneaked along the side until they got to the main hatch, affixed charges of C-4 plastic explosive, and retreated until the charges whoomped and the door yawned like a slack mouth.

The team tossed flash grenades through the open door and then climbed a portable ladder into the ship itself.

Minutes passed. There came a grinding sound from within the shuttle. It lasted barely a minute. After that there was silence.

No one came out of the shuttle. "Any word?" asked Colonel Rader.

The captain's voice came over the field telephone much more subdued than it had before.

"I'm trying to raise them now, sir. They were under orders to maintain radio silence unless contacted first. But they are not responding to my calls."

"Keep trying."

The colonel listened in as his second in command repeated his requests for a reply from the NASA team leader. The team leader did not reply.