‘You’ve got it sewn up nicely, Mike,’ said the General, beaming. ‘Very good organisation. Well done.’
‘I only pick up a telephone, General. You know that, sir.’
They were climbing into the mountains now, passing a side road marked with a military arrow sign: NORAD HQ.
‘That’s the way up to the main entrance, sir,’ Mazzard told him. ‘We go some five miles up here and turn back to come in at the side. It’s like a kind of service entrance for the control rooms. I figure someone from Peterson’ll have tipped them off by now. They’ll probably all be on edge around the main entrance buildings.’
‘They’ll know at this end too,’ the General grunted. ‘Not fools, these people. They’ll all know. Be expecting us exactly where we’re going in.’
Ten minutes or so passed before the convoy reached the next slip road, duly marked NORAD 2. ‘Here we go, then, sir. You really feeling better?’ Mazzard craned forward to take a good look at the General, and the skull-faced Captain turned in the front seat.
‘Is the General not well?’
‘Captain,’ General Banker growled, ‘when a man’s just given a new, and highly-responsible posting, parted from his wife while the house gets fixed up, and living on base, he sometimes makes a fool of himself. No, I am not ill; but I used up a lot of cleaning fluid last night.’
The Captain made a sound which the General took to be humorous.
‘I feel’, the General continued, ‘a shade like a puppet.’ Turning to Mazzard: ‘You walk me through it, okay? I’ll be fine if you simply guide me.’
‘Don’t worry, sir, we’ve done it all before.’
‘Sure have,’ said the General. From above came the clatter of a helicopter, flying low, as though following the convoy.
They were in a gap now, hewn through solid rock, the great slanting sides closing them in. Then out of the gap into a left turn, and the grey road widened, white dust falling around them, like a fine lawn spray as they came on to a clean mountain stretch.
The mountain reached up above them, and there – a mile ahead – stood a solid pair of gates, with a great high circle of cyclone fencing reaching out on each side. Large steel girders were set at intervals in the fencing, each topped by constantly moving cameras. Behind the fence, a cluster of buildings stretched back to the rockface of Cheyenne Mountain.
There were two GIs out in front of the gates. As the convoy appeared, one of them turned to shout towards the blockhouse on the right of the gates. Before they came within a hundred yards of the barriers, an officer appeared, through a smaller gateway by the blockhouse.
The convoy slowed, the motorcycle escort wheeling off, left and right, to come in close to the staff car. The first APC also turned, moving right, then circling on its own axis to point inwards. Precise and very military. The General was, once more, most impressed. These people knew what they were doing.
Turning towards Mazzard, he said, ‘You do the introductions, Mike, will you? As usual. No fuss. I’ll stay slightly aloof.’
Major Mazzard looked very pleased, as the electric windows slid down and the NORAD officer – a young Captain – approached the staff car.
Yes, thought the General, they were well-prepared here too. Looking forward through the cyclone fencing, he could see that an honour guard had already turned out, forming up on the flat area immediately inside the gates.
The young NORAD officer saluted as though his life depended upon it, and Mazzard spoke to him, clipped humourless: ‘General Banker – Inspector-General United States Air/Space – to officially inspect your base, Captain.’ He handed over an impressive-looking document, at which the Captain merely glanced. He knew top brass when he met it.
‘Very good, sir.’ The NORAD Captain smiled and turned his head, ordering the gates to be opened. ‘We’re delighted to see you, General, sir. The base is open to you. If there’s anything we can do to make your trip more pleasant . . .’
‘It’s not meant to be pleasant, Captain,’ the General snapped. ‘I’m here to look at your operations rooms and ask a few questions. You follow me, Captain?’
The NORAD officer’s smile did not fade. ‘Whatever you say, sir. Anything we can do for you, anything at all. Please drive right in.’
‘The General’s anxious to go inside the mountain as soon as possible,’ Mazzard interpolated.
‘Right, sir. Our acting CO is already waiting for you in Operations. It won’t take you long to get there.’
The gates had opened, and they drove through, followed by one of the APCs. The other stayed outside the perimeter, turning to point back, down the road, its cargo of troops disembarking and taking up defensive positions. In minutes the General’s team had NORAD No. 2 HQ entrance neatly sealed off.
As the car came to a halt, the honour guard snapped to attention and presented arms. ‘That young officer seemed a hair casual, Mike,’ the General muttered, climbing from the car.
‘Yes. I’ll get his name. Probably hasn’t had many dealings with Inspector-Generals before, sir, and thought the friendly approach would be best.’
‘Get his name.’ The General had begun to sound crusty.
‘You don’t want to inspect that honour guard, do you, sir?’ Mazzard asked. But the General, in spite of his hangover, appeared intent on doing everything correctly. Slowly he passed down the ranks of men, stopping to ask questions of every third soldier.
At the end of the last rank, the General dismissed the guard commander, returning his sharp salute, then looked at the young NORAD Captain who had met them. ‘Right,’ he snapped. ‘I want you, Captain, to take me, with my adjutant and the Captain here . . .’
‘Luxor,’ the thin, damaged officer prompted, ‘Captain Luxor.’
‘Yes.’ The General shot Luxor an unfriendly look. ‘Yes, you; Major Mazzard, and Captain Luxor. Nobody else, just the four of us, will go in; and I wish to meet your Commandinng Officer.’
Mazzard, at the General’s elbow, quickly asked, ‘Sir, don’t you think half a dozen of the men should . . . ?’
‘No. Major.’ The General was very firm. ‘They don’t need to see any of this. Don’t really know why we bothered with an escort of this size. No, we go and have a look. Now let’s move. I don’t want to hang around here all day. Just the four of us.’ Before he had even stopped speaking, the General began to walk purposefully, his back as straight as a ramrod, towards the buildings huddled close to the rockface.
He was well ahead of Mazzard and Luxor, when the NORAD Captain came up fast, trotting at the General’s heels. ‘The Commanding Officer, sir . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, sir. As I said, we have a full Colonel on duty, waiting for you. The Commanding Officer’s away on leave today sir. I think you should’ve been informed.’
The General nodded. ‘That’s nothing to bother about. Your Colonel’ll do as well as anybody.’
The buildings, set against the rockface, were purely a defensive camouflage for the entrance. Solidly built, reinforced with steel, and housing a few small administrative offices their main purpose was to block the tunnel which led into the mountain.
The young Captain was still speaking. ‘At the main entrance – around the other side – we have an underground park for vehicles and other facilities,’ he chattered. ‘This is really a kind of back door.’ They passed through a pair of steel doors, which swung open when the Captain pressed his hand against a small screen.
Behind the steel doors, the world changed. The passage narrowed into a short metal-lined alley, only wide enough to accommodate one man at a time. This led to a small command post, occupied by four sturdy marines who stood guard over the next entrance of sliding steel panels.
The marines, for all their immaculate appearance, were co-operative and unquestioning. After a word from the NORAD Captain, one spoke into a white intercom, then they stood aside as the blast-proof panels slid noiselessly back.
The General and his entourage did not really know
what to expect within the mountain. The General, himself, supposed that his mental picture would be coloured by other similar installations he had visited, though they all had seemed somewhat like movie sets. He expected large elevators, taking staff deep below the earth, or open railcars, like a modern coal mine.
There turned out to be no such devices. Once through the doors they were already inside the mountain and standing in a great circular chamber, a reception area, fashioned from inside the bare rock. Air conditioning kept a pleasant, comfortable temperature, and there were carpets underfoot, though the place was, basically, a refurbished cavern.
Four large desks were manned by strangely uninterested staff, in charge of electronic sniffers for bugs, weapons, and explosives. The General insisted on checking each of these desks before turning to meet a tall, bronzed Colonel, who wore pilot’s wings and a plethora of medal ribbons. The Colonel was backed up by a team of some four officers, most of whom wore the rank of major. All seemed to be around the same age – late thirties, or early forties.
The Colonel saluted, introduced himself and his staff, apologised for the absence of his Commanding Officer, and offered the General what he called, ‘every possible facility’.
General Banker nodded, noting that the Colonel and his men wore side arms. He then introduced his own two staff members.
The Colonel, who felt in strangely benign spirits that morning, had noticed immediately that General Banker was in his dress uniform while his staff officers wore combat dress and carried side arms. It struck him as unusual, but not sinister. Before coming up from the control room, he had also received a bizarre message – from the main gate – that the General’s detachment of troops had sealed off the No. 2 mountain entrance, taking up positions both within and outside the perimeter fence. Now, the General was oddly uncommunicative, so the Colonel explained that the four officers with him had volunteered to stay on duty.
‘By rights they should be just coming off shift,’ the Colonel said, smiling proudly. ‘But they all offered to stay on so you could be well briefed, General.’ He continued to explain that, when on duty, these officers supervised the various command posts, the Main Control Room, and the monitors. ‘When you’re on duty here, it’s a full-time six hours of concentration.’ He appeared to be exceptionally serious when talking about the work. ‘The officers on duty at this moment are not in a situation where they could be certain of answering all your questions, sir.’
The General thanked the Colonel for his officers’ thoughtfulness, and deferred to him, asking what he should see first.
‘Oh, whatever you like, General. We’re at your service here. Look at anything, take over if you want to. Nobody will mind. We’re serious people, doing a very special job; but we have to let you see everything, and give you any information you need.’
For a serious officer, the General considered that the Colonel had suddenly taken leave of his senses. A bit casual for a man in charge, he thought. Then Major Mazzard stepped in. ‘I think the General’s particularly interested in seeing how you control the Space Wolves, sir.’
The General held up a hand. ‘Now don’t let us rush into anything, Major. The Colonel knows how this outfit works. After all, this is one of the most important bases in the entire country . . .’
‘Well.’ The Colonel had a pleasant, slow drawl. ‘Well, we’d certainly be the first to know if anything went sour, if that’s what you mean, sir. I’d recommend we look at the Main Operations Control first.’
‘Whatever you say,’ General Banker agreed.
The Colonel gestured towards another pair of anti-blast doors, set in the centre of the half-circle wall behind the security desks.
‘After you, sir.’
The General followed the NORAD Colonel across the soft carpet and through the doors, the other officers, including Mazzard and Luxor, at their heels.
On the other side of the doors, a wide passage led to a T-junction corridor. Looking to left and right, the General saw large swing doors set at intervals along the cross-stroke passage. Straight ahead were similar doors, marked in bold white lettering Gallery: Main Operations.
The Colonel stepped to one side, allowing General Banker to be the first through, the other officers following respectfully.
They were on a wide viewing platform, fitted with chairs and a high, angled, thick glass screen. The view from this gallery was both impressive and virtually unique.
Below them lay a vast amphitheatre in which the audience consisted of about a hundred men and women, each seated behind a bank of computer and electronic instruments – keyboards, scanners, and other complex hardware. Each person on duty appeared to be completely wrapped up in his or her work, making occasional entries on keyboards or speaking into headsets.
Above them – on the far, huge, curved wall – were three massive electronic Mercator projections, each mapping the world. All three projections were topped by rows of digital clocks, showing the accurate time along the earth’s varied zones. But most important, each of the projections was crisscrossed by slow-moving, coloured lines – blues and greens; brilliant whites; blacks, orange; even lines which broke up into different, segmented, hues.
The General let out a slow whistle. He remembered seeing smaller versions of things like this, but never anything on such a scale. ‘I’d be grateful, Colonel, if you’d come over by me and tell us about this amazing display.’
The Colonel started to speak, his voice a strange monotone as he explained the use, and purpose, of the Main Control.
The three projections showed the exact number of known satellites and other space hardware in orbit – the left-hand projection being all non-USA satellites; the one to the far right showing American equipment; while the centre projection monitored all new indications.
At the same time, this centre screen could be programmed, in an instant, to show everything – both American and non-American: even down to the juxtaposition of satellites.
‘That is also the so-called Early Warning projection,’ the Colonel told them. ‘Anything new thrown into space by a foreign power will be spotted on the central screen.’
All three of these great electronic maps were monitored and operated by the technicians seated in the amphitheatre, while they, in turn, were passed information from a number of sources. ‘Anything new would come from one of our tracking stations: ground-based or satellite. Our own hardware is passed on through individual Command Posts, within this complex.’ As the Colonel described it, the whole display sounded very simple, yet nobody seeing it could fail to be awed.
The Colonel was still speaking. ‘For instance, the Big Bird and Keyhole II reconnaissance satellites, are shown on the right-hand projection, but their work is monitored by their own Command Post, which is just along the passage outside this gallery. Of course, all the information those particular satellites send back goes to other stations.
‘Now, if we get something new from, let us say, the Soviet Union, this is immediately picked up on the trace. Within seconds, our SDS – Satellite Data System – relays details. We would take action before knowing exactly what the new object is; but it’s all very fast when it happens, which it does quite often.’
He went on to explain how each satellite system had its own headquarters, working independently. The weather satellites, for instance, passed their data directly to meteorological centres, and the same applied to the reconnaissance eyes in the sky.
‘In a way, we’re like police patrols.’ The Colonel spoke directly to General Banker. ‘We can see what’s up there, check it out, pass on information, and take action. But we’re not responsible for the individual tasks.’
‘Except for the Space Wolves,’ Major Mazzard, on the General’s right, said.
The Colonel nodded. ‘That’s a very special project,’ he said. ‘Would the General like to see their Command Post? It’s possibly the largest we have here.’
Major Mazzard and Captain Luxor both answered for General Banker. Y
es, the General would very much like to see the SW Command Post.
‘Anything you want, sir.’ The Colonel led them out of the Main Operations Gallery and along the corridor to their left until they came to one of the sets of swing doors, marked KS Control. ‘Killersat,’ the Colonel explained, leading the way into a large chamber.
Inside there was semi-darkness. Against the far wall, a smaller version of one of the electronic Mercator projections glowed with light – creeping red lines sweeping above the world – while three men, an officer and two Master-Sergeants, tended the computers and controls.
‘There it is.’ The Colonel waved a hand. Then he spoke louder, for the benefit of the three men controlling the Space Wolves Command Post. ‘Gentlemen, General Banker, the Inspector-General Air/Space Defence. Just taking a look.’
Mazzard was close to the General now. ‘I think the General wants to take more than a look,’ he said loudly.
General Banker turned towards Mazzard, a question forming on his lips.
‘You remember, sir,’ Mazzard prompted. ‘You’re the senior officer here.’
Banker’s brow creased and he looked around. The Colonel stood next to him, while the rest of the staff crowded in the doorway. Captain Luxor stood behind the Colonel’s staff, out in the corridor.
‘Sir, the computer tapes and printouts,’ Mazzard prompted, close at his right elbow.
‘Of course. Sorry, Mike.’ The General smiled, then raised his voice. ‘I don’t wish to bother you, gentlemen, but who’s in charge of this Command Post?’
The officer seated in front of the central bank of controls raised a hand. ‘Sir.’
‘Would you be good enough to unhook your computer tapes and box up all available printouts, please? I need to take them away for study,’ the General said calmly.