“Thirty seconds . . . Ten . . . Five, four, three, two, one. Go for separation.”
The pilot aboard the mother ship released a lever that held ’Roo clamped to the aircraft’s belly. The space plane fell free for a few moments, to get distance from Kanga, before Taggart toggled the liquid-rocket motor.
To Eric, it felt as if every one of his senses was assaulted at the same instant. The roar of the engine was like standing at the base of a waterfall, a palpable sensation that beat on his chest. The airframe’s vibrations forced him to clutch the armrest while he was slammed back into his seat, as if by a giant fist. His body shook inside his skin so much it felt like someone was rubbing him with sandpaper. His mouth had gone dry from the dose of adrenaline sent shooting into his veins. Focusing hard on the speedometer, he saw that, in seconds, they were nearing the sound barrier.
The g-forces kept him pressed into his reclined seat, as Taggart pointed the nose ever higher, the vibrations getting progressively worse, and Eric feared the airframe would come apart in midair. And then they burst through the sound barrier. The vibrations diminished, and while he could still feel the thrust of the engine they were traveling faster than its throaty snarl, and it grew noticeably quieter.
One minute after the motor kicked in, they burst above a hundred thousand feet, and Eric was finally coming to grips with the ride. His heart rate slowed, and, for the moment, he let himself enjoy the space plane’s raw power.
The airspeed gauge hit two thousand miles per hour and they still accelerated. Looking over his head, he noticed the sky darkening rapidly, as they roared up through the atmosphere. As if by magic, stars began to appear, faintly at first but brightening. He had never seen so many so clearly. Gone was the twinkle caused by their light passing through earth’s atmosphere. They held steady, and their numbers swelled, until it looked as though space was made of light rather than darkness.
He knew if he stretched out his hand, he would be able to touch them.
The indicator in front of him suddenly flashed red. He couldn’t believe four minutes could pass that quickly. Straining against the g’s, he moved his hand over to the laptop.
“Ten seconds,” he said on the frequency the Oregon was monitoring. If Hali replied, it was lost in the rocket’s din.
The altimeter was still reeling off numbers in a blur. They hit three hundred and ninety-four thousand feet when the light went yellow, and, in those last five seconds, they rose another mile. The indicator turned green just as they hit the four-hundred-thousand-foot mark.
Eric typed in the command, as the rocket motor consumed the last of its fuel and the cyclonic pumps that fed it went quiet. The g-forces that had hammered him into his seat suddenly released him, and the silence left his ears ringing. They had gone weightless. He had often experienced moments of it on roller coasters, and on a few flights with Tiny Gunderson, when they were fooling around, but this felt different. They were on the very edge of space now, not playing tricks with gravity but almost out of its reach.
In the cockpit, Jack Taggart activated the armatures that raised the entire wing so it was at an angle to the fuselage. The added drag, and the dynamics of the new configuration, kept the plane incredibly stable, as it started its long glide back to the airfield outside of Monahans, Texas.
“What did you think?” he asked.
“Just a moment.”
Taggart thought Eric might be sick and he craned around to look, but Stone was concentrating on his computer. The kid had just been given the ride of his life and he was already working. Taggart admired the dedication, thinking back to his first Shuttle mission. He hadn’t been able to do anything but stare out the window his first hour up here.
“Repeat that, Elton. Over.”
“I said, we’ve got confirmation from the bird’s onboard telemetry. She has fired her maneuvering thrusters and is changing orbit. Targeting computers are online, and it’s going through its prefire checklist. Congratulations. You did it!”
Eric didn’t know if he wanted shout for joy or cry. In the end, he settled for simple satisfaction that his plan was going to work. He had to give credit to the Russians. When it came to their space program, they knew what they were doing. Where NASA was all about elegant finesse, the Soviets had gone for simplicity and brute force, and, as a result, they built to last. Their Mir space station remained in orbit twice as long as originally planned. Had it not been for lack of funds, it would likely still be up there.
“Roger that. Over and out.”
“Well?” Taggart asked.
“It worked. We now have control of the Russian satellite.”
“I wasn’t asking about that. I want to know what you thought of the flight.”
“Colonel, that was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced,” Eric said, feeling weight slowly returning to his body. His stomach settled back into its normal position.
“I know it won’t go into the books, but, just so you know, we broke the altitude record. We’re going to limit our paying flights to about three hundred and thirty thousand feet, so it’s a record that’ll be around for a while.”
Eric chuckled to himself, thinking how jealous Murph was going to be—and how impressed Janni would be. But, no sooner had the thought crossed his mind, the smile died on his lips, and he once again considered Max Hanley’s fate.
CHAPTER 35
MAX HAD RACKED HIS BRAIN, THINKING OF A WAY OUT of the subterranean fortress, and he had only one solution. On a late-night foray, he had discovered triple guards on the stairwell leading to the garage, and he knew that he wasn’t going to bluff his way past them. Kovac had left his face a swollen mess, and the guards would be suspicious the moment they saw him.
He wasn’t getting out the front door, so he had to sneak out the back.
He left his hiding place in the closet of the executive wing and made his way to the generator room. He made sure to hide his face from the few people he passed in the hallways. He rounded a corner nearest the room where the jet engines spun the turbines that powered the facility and saw that Kovac had ordered a guard to stand watch here as well. Keeping his pace steady and measured, he walked down the corridor. The guard, a kid of about twenty wearing a blue police-style uniform and with a nightstick in his belt, eyed him as he approached.
“How ya doing?” Max called jovially when he was still ten feet away. “Yeah, I know, my face looks like hamburger. A bunch of antiabortion zealots jumped me day before yesterday at a rally in Seattle. I just got here. Hell of a place, huh?”