---

UPPING THE ANTE
CHAPTER XV
(Excerpt)

1054 MST 3 JANUARY
CABIN TWO MILES SOUTH OF EVERGREEN
ROAD TO CONIFER
JEFFERSON COUNTY, COLORADO

     Six inches of freshly fallen snow covered the Evergreen-Conifer Road.  Milo Dilb stared out at the empty mountain road through madly swishing wipers.  Clawing the wheel to the left and then back, he narrowly avoided a steel road marker, its black painted top and flag barely visible under packed snow.  He slowed still further.

     The heater blasted vainly at the snow piling on the windshield and fog, only the wiper arcs clear, mist blurring his view of the road.

     Topping a rise, he saw Evergreen ahead.  Muttering, he pulled into a service station and turned around.  Carefully watching the odometer, he looked intently to the left after two miles passed.  A cleared drive appeared suddenly from behind a stony outcrop, only partially hidden by a gnome cap of snow.

     Turning up the drive, he dropped the transmission into a lower gear.  Three vehicles mantled in white stood on the cleared parking area.  Stopping before the door, Milo got out carrying a bulging briefcase with both hands.  Leaning it against the door jamb, he opened the door, slid the briefcase to the floor inside, and shut the door behind him.

     Martin, Burt and Peanut were waiting for him at the table drinking coffee.  After dropping his coat on a nearby table, Milo continued with his burden to the oak table. Dumping over the briefcase, bound papers and maps spread over the surface and dropped over the sides.

     Eyes glinting over his coffee cup, Peanut said,  "Get lost?  Or have you just been killing baby trees and wanted to show us what you've been up to with all of that paper?"

     Grimacing, Milo said,  "Shut up, Peanut.  It's dangerous out there.  You three didn't have to drive through a blizzard, so don't hassle me."

     Picking up the paper from the floor, Burt growled,  "What is all this?  And don't mess around.  There isn't much time if we are to get the February shuttle."

     Martin glanced at the cover of the packet in his hand.  'Emergency Communications Plan'.  "We better get busy.  Three weeks isn't a long time if Kennedy is tough to penetrate.  And if this mound of trash is any indication, it's going to be a bear."

     "Where are the maps?"  Burt was rummaging through the piles.

     "Here."  Milo handed over a stack of USGS (United States Geologic Service)
1:24000 maps of Kennedy Space Center and its surrounding area.

     Spreading them out, he began to tack them to the wall.

1955 EST 21 JANUARY
MOSQUITO LAGOON, INTERCOASTAL WATERWAY
VOLUSIA COUNTY, FLORIDA

     The forty-five foot motor launch moved slowly south down the Intercoastal Waterway through the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.  Darkness had descended, and the water was a little lighter than the islets and marshes to east and west.  Nearing Bissette Bay, located on the lagoon side of the sandy barrier island, two canoes were slid over the launch's side.  Six figures stepped in and paddled off.

     The fiberglass canoes moved sluggishly, even with three paddlers each.  They both had plastic wrapped packages strapped to the keel.  Stinger surface to air missiles and weapons were wrapped in each of the packages.

     Reaching Plantation Island, the boundary of the Space Center, they got out night vision goggles and swept the area carefully.  Continuing on, they paddled on southeast to Pardon Island.  Pulling into a slough, they carefully parted the sedges.

     A radar reflective camouflage net was spread over the canoes, held up by plastic poles and butterflies, which are three thirty inch arms joined at a common hub.  The hubs sit on the poles.  The net is spread over the butterflies resulting in effective radar scattering.  The net was yellow and sand pattern with plastic grasses placed on the exposed side.

     Grabbing cold MREs (Meals, Ready to Eat), they settled down to watch the night wear away.  Four slept, two watched.

     On pad 39B, twelve miles southeast, floodlights shining on the shuttle paled as dawn approached.  At lift-off, the shuttle's two solid fuel boosters by themselves would provide over two million pounds of thrust.  They drop off after two minutes of flight, and then are recovered for reuse.  The external liquid fuel tank stays with the shuttle into orbit, separating after eight minutes.  It burns up on reentry.

     Leading up to the launch, helicopters criss-cross the Space Center Reservation.  On the surface, boats sweep the Atlantic Ocean, Mosquito Lagoon and Banana River, jeeps slowly cover the sandy beach and roads and foot patrols walk the launch pads and facilities.  For electronic security, cameras unblinkingly watch the shuttle and its boosters and radar swings around the sky and skims the surface of the sea. All of this activity disturbs the nesting birds, upsetting the wildlife community almost as much as the birds.  However, a certain amount of common sense still infects the space program where launch safety is involved.

     The day passed peacefully as the countdown proceeded normally, with expected delays.  No one spoke in the canoes.  In the security plan, there had been an indication that vocal sound detection equipment might find them if they spoke.

     Two hours after sundown, the canoeists carefully lowered the net and packed it away.  They had no metal to reflect radar coverage above the water line.  Continuing southeast, they stayed close to the sedge and grass banks, too shallow for the drafts of the patrol boats.  No roads carried the vehicle patrols near the east bank of Mosquito Lagoon.

     The passage of the regular patrols was a break in the monotony for the canoeists. The passage of a helicopter or boat patrol was met by them pulling into a slough and putting up the net.  At Eddy Creek, two and a half miles from Pad 39B, they made their final stop.  They arrived just as morning nautical twilight began to break, that time traditionally defined as the point at which a person can distinguish between a white thread and a black one.

     Seven hundred feet from the overnight camp, the sea rolled onto the beach, on the other side of a fifteen foot dune.  One minute to cross at a run.  The paved highway was a half mile south.  Nervously, the canoeists watched as each scheduled patrol passed by their position.

     Rising slowly from the east, darkness as a coverlet was pulled up gently from nesting birds and space shuttle alike.  The canoeists fell into a torpor, with only two actively watching at any time.  Just at dawn, they rolled out of the canoes and excavated pits just behind the dune's crest.  Plastic wrapped packages were unstrapped from under the canoes, where they had given no radar returns.  Slitting them open, the weapons were kept at ground level, or below it if possible.

     Climber moved up to the crest and looked through the grasses waving gently there.  Waving up the others, they stayed low as they quickly spread a second net over the pits and weapons.  Climber had a thirty-thirty hunting rifle.  The others, all from the Bay Area cleanup crew, had equipped themselves with either Uzis or MAC-10s.

     Four Stinger missiles were laid out, ready to use.  Two others were available, if needed.  The position had been carefully chosen to avoid patrol paths, and was in a kind of shadow.  Hiding in plain sight was the most successful way to do what needed to be done.

     Seconds haltingly replaced each other, to become, after millennia, minutes. Eternities later, hours passed.  A helicopter swung out toward them, and passed within a quarter of a mile.  Half a mile away, Tod Pappadoculus, on foot patrol with a german shepard, Sirius, walked on the hard sand beach slowly northward.  The five year old Sirius, named after the dog star, had his head up and was sniffing at the scents coming down the light breeze from behind the team.

     After two days of living in the swamp and paddling over twenty miles, every member of the team was smelling distinctively human and dirty, although the accumulated swamp smells tended to mask the human musk.  Sirius began scanning the marshes and dunes in the direction of the lagoon.

     Tugging hard on the leash, Tod's mouth could be seen moving by Climber from the crest of the dune behind which the six hid.  The dog began tugging back and strained toward the dune as it reached a point only two hundred yards away.

     Carefully scanning the waving dried grasses, Tod knelt behind Sirius and released him.  Off at a run low to the ground, Sirius arrowed at the hiding place.  Slipping behind the dune, Climber knelt and pulled his knife from his ankle strap.  Waiting, he held it blade up.  The other five lifted their rifles, and watched in a circle.

     A bare whisper of pads on sand alerted Climber a moment before a blur of black and brown launched itself over the crest of the dune.  The knife, needle sharp, opened the dog from sternum to head, while pivoting him over on his back.  The flying dog brought down the net, blood spewing him.

     Slithering to the crest, a man and a woman, Uzi's on single shot took up sight pictures on the guard laboring over the sand, now just one hundred yards away.  Sharp retorts from the first shots disturbed birds nesting around them.  Tod crumpled onto his face.

     Patty, after a quick scan, dashed up to the huddled figure stirring on the ground.  Gary crouched just off the dunes crest, watching.  Pulling her knife, Patty slit the guards throat, a spurt of arterial blood shot up momentarily over her hand and soaked her camouflage shirt and boots.  She began dragging him to the slough fifty feet away.  She stopped after ten feet, breathing hard.

     Gary walked over.  Patty was blowing like a helper engine.  Grabbing the dead guard's collar, Gary dragged him and then rolled him into the slough, hidden under a mat of reeds in less than a minute.  He gave Patty a smirk as he walked past.

     The net was back up by the time they returned.  Time slowed further.  Anxious eyes scanned everywhere.

     Almost unnoticed, the fumes around the shuttle began to completely hide it.  The cryoswitch was flipped on, which super cooled the heat seeking heads for four of the Stingers.  Four Stingers came up together, almost as if the synchronization had been practiced.  Unlocking the seeker heads, tones buzzed to all four shooters.  White smoke streams speared out from them at the majestic shuttle.

     A bright sun suddenly showed from under the shuttle as it burnt through the cloud, and slowly rose.  Eleven long seconds later, three of the missiles impacted.  Two hit the solid booster nozzles, with no effect.  Metals, designed to withstand a million pounds of thrust at thousands of degrees, shrug off five pounds of omni directional explosive throwing shrapnel. With impunity.  The third was more successful.

     Two seconds into the missiles' flight, the smoke trails were spotted by security personnel.  A second later, security control knew of the incoming threat.  Flight control knew two seconds thereafter.  Flight control was given the go for shuttle separation at the eight second mark.  As it separated, the shuttle's own engine drew the third missile.  Its exploding shrapnel cut the control surfaces of the left wing and tail.

     Shooting up and away from the boosters, the shuttle began to nose over immediately.  The liquid fuel booster, leaking vaporizing fuel, was trailed by a fire tail.  It achieved level flight at two thousand feet.  Momentarily.

     Forty miles away, the abort button ended the flight of the boosters and its flaming trail.

     The flight characteristics of the shuttle, even in the best of times, were only slightly better than those of a large, white rock.  Without left wing or lateral tail control, a spin immediately developed.  Varying engine power, the pilot, one of the best flyers in the world, balanced the left spin at the cost of altitude.  The shuttle was now at five hundred feet.  Seconds later, the power cut-off.

     Spin resumed.  The shuttle impacted into the ocean at two hundred fifty miles per hour broke this graceful traveler of the stars into innumerable small pieces.

     Four of the astronauts survived the crash, a testimony to the survivability built into the NASA gear.  Two would never walk again.  The flyer whose heroic fight had saved their lives didn't have to worry about not walking.  He had been crushed when his couch rammed the flight yoke on impact.

     After firing off their missiles, the shooting team ran for the beach.  Guns slapping against their legs, they slogged heavily through the sand while unbuttoning their shirts and pants.  A helicopter buzzing loudly could be heard just behind them out of sight, heading for the firing point down the smoke trails.

     Patty picked up her Stinger and flipped the cryoswitch.  Turning, she stared through the sight at the dune one hundred yards away.  The helicopter popped up to three hundred feet, right into an incoming missile.

     "Control, this is Air Three.  Six people on the beach.  SAM's!  Incoming!"  The Bell Ranger helicopter dropped in flaming pieces.      Each of the shooters pulled out a snorkel and small rebreather.  Ripping off their boots, pants and shirts and wrapping their guns in them, they waded out to sea.  Towing the bundles behind them for one hundred yards, the bundles were dropped to the sea bottom as soon as approaching engines could be heard and the shooters dove.

     Two additional NASA security helicopters approached the helicopters flaming wreckage, one from the north, the other the south.  Both came in nap-of-the-earth (NOE), because of the threat environment.  Surface-to-air missiles are notably unpopular with pilots, and they take necessary counter-measures, prudent and otherwise, such as flying NOE, to avoid unpleasant encounters.

     NOE is the tactical flight program whereby aircraft (whether rotorary lift or winged), fly as near as practicable to the terrain and vegetation.  When the vegetation consists of tall trees, NOE flying is conducted below the level of the tallest trees.  Conducting NOE over ground which is barren or covered with low vegetation is simple with terrain following radar for winged aircraft, even those which are hypersonic.

    However, rotorary lift aircraft, helicopters, have their own problems with barren or low vegetation ground.  Ground effect.  Ground effect occurs when the column of air pulled through the rotor blade is compressed by the ground, in effect pushing the helicopter up.  Once a sufficient distance from the ground is reached, lift is achieved solely by the bite and pull of the rotor blade on the air.  Because there is a difference in flying characteristics under the two conditions, rapid and unexpected shifting from one to another has a tendency to introduce the helicopter pilot to a third flying condition-the crash landing.  The trick in flying a helicopter NOE over low grasses and sand, then, is to stay out of ground effect and still remain as close to the ground as possible.  Birds can also be a problem, at least in a wildlife sanctuary or other setting where they can be found in numbers.

     Both of the helicopter pilots were experienced in the hazards to be found in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.  And both had been trained in NOE.  However, buzzing the birds at ten feet and disturbing their nesting habits was severely frowned upon by NASA, since remaining in the good graces of environmentalists (who have no use whatsoever for the space program, and as a practical matter are not going to think kindly of anything NASA, does regardless), is deemed a political necessity.

     The south bound helicopter, Air One, went ground effect coming over a slight rise north of Eddy Bay, and its skid skipped along the water when it lost lift after going into normal flight coming out over the water.  Pulling back on the cyclic and flattening the angle of attack of the blade, the pilot continued on south at a much slower speed, but no higher altitude.

     Air Three had swung out to the beach before heading north.  Speeding north from the south end of the base area at two hundred fifty knots, it arrived three minutes after Air Two went in.  Two security jeeps had pulled up on the beach, and four figures could be seen examining the area.  Two canoes could be seen bobbing emptily on the gentle waves two hundred yards from the beach inside the lagoon.

     Swimming steadily with snorkels out to sea, the shooters carried an underwater beacon.  Three sea sleds, which had started south hours earlier, met them shortly after they reached deep water.  Sharks struck Climber and Patty without warning.  The blood from their victims had dried on their skin until remixed with seawater, a beacon of another kind.

     Panic scattered the swimmers.  Two broke the surface, drawing the helicopters.  The sled drivers shot at the sharks with spear guns, which merely tended to increase the frenzy.  Scuba gear was handed out to the two shooters remaining with the sleds, and the one who returned from the surface.  Then the sea sleds dropped to twenty-five feet and headed to sea.

     Patty had been torn into bloody pieces by the feeding frenzy.  Climber, hit below the right knee, was floating in shock and losing blood quickly.  Parker was swimming frantically for shore.  His splashing diverted the school of sharks from Climber.  He was hit hard and dragged under.

     Air One arrived over Climber just as three sharks arrowed in.  The co-pilot, Link, threw off his seat belt, and hanging onto the door as he opened it, leaned out and down.

     "Take us down, Joan!  Quick!"

     Dropping like a rock, the Ranger neared the water.

     "Lower.  Two feet!"

     The skids were under water.  Link grabbed Climber's limp wrist, and yanked him into the cockpit.

     "Let's go!"  Link ripped open the first aid kit, and pulled out the tourniquet strap.  Wrapping it around the upper thigh, he tightened it up.  Two minutes later they arrived at the Space Center medical facility.  Ten minutes later the first astronaut arrived.
      An hour later the sea sleds rendezvoused with the forty-five footer which had been streaming south with the flotilla of boats heading for the crash area.