Red storm rising - By Tom Clancy Page 0,200

of the war.

Nakamura eased her fighter under the tanker's tail, and the boom operator expertly shoved the refueling probe into the back of her fighter. Ten thousand pounds of fuel transferred into her tanks in only a few minutes, and as she disengaged, a small cloud of kerosene vapor escaped into the sky.

"Gulliver, this is One-Zero-Four, over," she called over the radio.

"One-Zero-Four, this is Gulliver," replied a colonel in the passenger compartment of a LearJet cruising at forty thousand feet.

"All tanked and ready to go. All on-board systems show green. Orbiting at Point Sierra. Ready to initiate intercept climb. Standing by."

"Roger that, One-Zero-Four."

Major Nakamura kept her Eagle in a small turning circle. She didn't want to waste a drop of fuel when she started her climb. She shifted ever so slightly in her seat, which for her was a violent show of emotion when flying, and concentrated on her aircraft. As her eyes traced over her cockpit instruments, she told herself to control her breathing.

Space Command's radars picked up the Soviet satellite as it passed the bulge of South America. Computers compared its course and speed with known data, matched them with the position of Nakamura's fighter, and a computer spat out its commands, which were relayed to the LearJet.

"One-Zero-Four, come to heading two-four-five."

"Turning now." The major brought her fighter into a tight turn. "Holding on two-four-five."

"Stand by ... stand by--initiate!"

"Roger." Buns pushed her throttles to the stops and punched up the afterburners. The Eagle leaped forward like a spurred horse, accelerating through Mach 1 in seconds. Next she eased back on the stick, bringing her Eagle into a forty-five-degree climb, still accelerating into a darkening sky. She didn't look out. Her eyes were locked on her cockpit gauges: the fighter had to maintain a specific flight profile for the next two minutes. As the Eagle rocketed into the sky, the altimeter needle whirled around its clockface. Fifty thousand feet, sixty thousand feet, seventy, eighty, ninety thousand feet. Stars were visible now in the nearly black sky, but Nakamura didn't notice.

"Come on, baby, find the son of a bitch ..." she thought aloud.

Beneath the aircraft the ASAT missile's tracking head came on, searching the sky for the infrared heat signature of the Soviet satellite. A light blinked on Buns's instrument panel.

"My weapon is tracking! Repeat, my weapon is tracking. Auto launch sequence equipment is activated. Altitude ninety-four thousand feet seven hundred--breakaway, breakaway!" She felt her aircraft lurch as the heavy missile dropped free and immediately brought her throttles back to low power and brought the stick back to loop the fighter. She checked her fuel state. The afterburning climb had nearly emptied her tanks, but she had enough to make Langley without tanking again. She had already turned for home when she realized that she hadn't seen the missile. It didn't matter anyway. Nakamura turned west, letting the Eagle settle into a shallow dive that would terminate on the Virginia Coast.

Aboard the LearJet, a tracker camera followed the missile upward. The solid-fuel rocket motor burned for thirty seconds, then the warhead separated. The Miniature Homing Vehicle, an infrared heat sensor embedded in its flat face, had long since acquired its target. The Soviet satellite's on-board nuclear reactor radiated waste heat out into space, and the resulting infrared signature rivaled the sun. As its microchip brain computed the intercept course, the MHV made a tiny course alteration and the distance between warhead and satellite dropped at a precipitous rate. The satellite was northbound at eighteen thousand miles per hour, the MHV southbound at over ten thousand, yet another hitech kamikaze. Then--

"Jesus!" said the senior officer on the LearJet as he blinked his eyes and turned away from the TV screen. Several hundred pounds of steel and ceramic had just turned to vapor. "That's a kill, say again that's a kill!"

The TV picture was downlinked to Space Command, where a radar picture backed it up. The massive satellite was now an expanding cloud of orbiting rubble. "Target is negated," said a calmer voice.

LENINSK, KAZAKH S.S.R.

The loss of signal from the Kosmos 1801 satellite was recorded scant seconds after it was obliterated from the sky. It was no surprise to the Russian space experts, since 1801 had used up its maneuvering thrusters several days before, and had been an easy target. Another F-1M rocket booster was sitting on a launch pad of the Baikonur Kosmodrome Complex. An abbreviated launch sequence countdown would be under way inside of two hours--but from now on the