Pale Blue Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Mike Jenne

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Yucca Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Yucca Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Yucca Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Yucca Publishing® is an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.yuccapub.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Jacket design by Haresh R. Makwana

  Jacket photo: Gemini Mission courtesy of NASA

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63158-084-0

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63158-091-8

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Adele, with Love

  A sweet smile, a joyful laugh, a kind heart,

  a hand to hold, and a life to share.

  Author’s Note

  The year is 1972. Blue Gemini astronauts Major Drew Carson and Major Scott Ourecky have flown a total of seven missions to intercept and destroy suspect Soviet satellites, and one mission to rescue a Navy astronaut from a secret ocean surveillance variant of the MOL (Manned Orbiting Laboratory) that was crippled by a massive solar flare. Only one more mission-ready Gemini-I/Titan II “stack” remains. The Aerospace Support Project’s clandestine PDF—Pacific Departure Facility—on Johnston Island has been destroyed by Hurricane Celeste. Depending on the results of the upcoming Presidential election, the Project might be extended for twelve more missions or cancelled outright.

  Ourecky is hospitalized after he returns to earth following the MOL rescue mission. After his release from the hospital, he returns home to discover that his wife Bea has left him and is staying with a friend dying of cancer. Although the separation is temporary, he is woefully concerned that his marriage will end in divorce unless he is soon freed from the high demands and airtight secrecy of the Project.

  Since his secret space missions will never be reflected on his official personnel records, Carson is still obsessed with flying combat missions in Vietnam.

  General Mark Tew, the Project’s commander, is anxious to retire and put Blue Gemini behind him but insists on staying on to protect Carson and Ourecky.

  After the tragic incident involving his ocean surveillance MOL, Admiral Tarbox schemes to gain more influence over Blue Gemini, with the objective of eventually taking over control of the Project after Tew retires. To this end, he enlists the support of Tew’s deputy, Virgil Wolcott, who wants the Project to be extended for another twelve missions.

  The Soviets, led by RSVN Lieutenant General Rustam Abdirov, continue to develop the nuclear-armed Krepost space station. A two-man crew—Lieutenant Colonel Gogol and Major Vasilyev—are selected for the Krepost’s first mission. As Abdirov pushes the Krepost program toward fruition, he gradually loses his equilibrium and becomes obsessed with unilaterally deploying the Krepost’s nuclear warhead—the “Egg”—to force a thermonuclear confrontation with the West.

  Major General Gregor Yohzin, Abdirov’s deputy, has been recruited by American intelligence and has been passing secrets to the West for years. Eager to stymie Abdirov’s scheme, he is now providing information about the Krepost as well.

  1

  HIATUS

  Aerospace Support Project

  Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio

  7:04 a.m., Tuesday, August 29, 1972

  Only slightly more than a week after returning from his eighth mission into orbit, Major Scott Ourecky felt less like a seasoned spacefarer and more like an invalid confined to a sanatorium. Arriving at the Project’s headquarters, he pulled into a parking place, shut off his car, and then hacked up a blood-tinged lump of phlegm.

  He was just returning from the base hospital, where he had endured yet another grueling round of respiratory therapy. Despite the intensive treatments, it was rare when he could sleep through an entire night without having to drape a towel over his head while sucking in medicated steam from a humidifier.

  Ourecky’s chest ached as he wheezed for breath; his lungs felt like rough burlap sacks jammed with coarse gravel. Although the doctors assured him that his lingering bronchitis was healing, his agonizing ordeal was far from over; they also cautioned that he should expect to cough up bits and pieces of dead lung tissue for at least another month.

  Despite his frail state, his crushing workload had not subsided even an iota. He and Drew Carson spent most of their duty days consumed in seemingly endless rounds of post-flight interrogations about last month’s MOL rescue mission. In addition to the usual array of Project officers who conducted the exhaustive debriefings, a trio of Navy engineers also participated, seemingly intent on gleaning evidence concerning the MOL’s communications failure prior to the massive solar flare. It was terribly frustrating for Ourecky; even though he had gone aboard the MOL to rescue Ed Russo and shut down the MOL’s nuclear reactor, there was little he could share with his inquisitors that might shed light on why their station’s radios had malfunctioned at such a crucial juncture.

  Likewise, there was no change to his marital disharmony; he and Bea were still separated. Ourecky thought of her often. As much as he longed to see her, he decided to grant her at least a few more weeks to cool off and collect her thoughts. After all, as it was often said, absence makes the heart grow fonder, so maybe the more time that they spent apart, the more inclined she might become to return home. Besides, his chronic cough was just one more thing that he didn’t want to explain to her.

  Although he missed her immensely, and missed Andy as well, he wanted to wait until the time was right to see them. She and Andy were still in Dayton, staying with her friend Jill and her mother. He and Bea talked on the phone almost every night, but the conversations always seemed lukewarm. Politely evading the subject of their separation, they could have been chatting from opposite ends of the earth instead of being merely a few miles apart. More often than not, she talked about her friend Jill’s medical issues. Only recently, Jill’s oncologist had pronounced that her ovarian cancer was terminal. The last time they talked, Bea tearfully related that they didn’t expect her to survive past Christmas. The way that Bea described it, Jill’s mother was on the verge of becoming a basket case. Losing a child is always traumatic, so witnessing her daughter’s demise in slow motion was probably more than she could effectively bear.

  Bea made it clear that she intended to stay with Jill until the very end, whenever that might be. He and Bea agreed that it was better if Andy believed that Ourecky was gone on another one of his extended TDY trips. After all, the toddler was accustomed to his father’s prolonged absences; that was certainly easier to explain than why his parents could not currently live under the same roof.

  The more often they talked, Ourecky came to suspect that Bea was either also a strict adherent to the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” belief, or she just wasn’t in an almighty hurry for them to reconcile. Although she had indicated that he was always welcome to visit, she never actually invited him to drop by. Perhaps she was just waiting for him to broach the issue. Sighing, he trusted that their fractured relationship would eventually be mended, if granted adequate time, much as he hoped that his scarred and aching lungs would someday heal.

  7:52 a.m., Tuesday, August 29, 1972

  As he waited for the weekl
y intelligence update, General Mark Tew referred to an index card that listed his hour-by-hour regimen of prescribed medications. His hands quaked and his left eyelid twitched. Willing his hands to be steady, he poured a glass of water from the pitcher on his desk and then sorted through the collection of bottles and vials in the desk drawer, which was now his personal pharmacy. He swallowed seven pills of various sizes and colors, chased them with water, and closed the drawer.

  Granting himself a few minutes to relax as the medicines took effect, Tew perused the newspaper as he waited for the others to arrive. He was fascinated with the story of a champion American swimmer—Mark Spitz—who was an odds-on favorite to win several gold medals at the Summer Olympics, which had commenced this week in Munich. A lifetime ago, Tew had been a varsity swimmer in college—winning All-State in the freestyle and breaststroke—but his athletic career was cut short when he drafted into the Army Air Corps.

  The newsprint blurred as he found it increasingly difficult to focus. One or more of his prescriptions was apparently wreaking havoc on his eyesight. He no longer drove, because he just didn’t feel safe behind the wheel, and could only read for a few minutes at a time.

  Tew set the paper aside, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and listened to the clock on the wall. Tick…tick…tick…tick. It reminded him that his life—what remained of it, given his current circumstances—was metered out in precious seconds.

  Blue Gemini had exacted a grim toll on Tew; his health was deteriorating at an almost exponential rate. Each visit to his cardiologist yielded a more dismal pronouncement of his life expectancy. He was concerned that at some point in the relatively near future the doc would simply declare that he had already died and had missed his own funeral. As of last week, according to the physician, he shouldn’t expect to be above ground for more than a year at most. He was no longer seriously considered as a viable candidate for a heart transplant, because the rest of his circulatory system was so damaged that his arteries and veins probably couldn’t handle a new ticker.

  Despite his health woes, and they were legion, he was diligently trying to stay at the Project until the very last mission was flown, if for no other reason than to protect Carson and Ourecky.

  In his opinion, he had something in common with the pair: from his perspective, all three of them were living on borrowed time. He had personally assured them that he would not bow out until they were transferred—permanently—-away from the Project and safely out of the clinging grasp of Wolcott and Tarbox. When that time came, Ourecky would be enrolled at MIT to complete the doctorate that had long been promised to him. After the last flight, Carson was slated to enter a career “holding pattern” as the commander of a Germany-based fighter squadron until it was deemed safe for him to fly in Vietnam, provided that the war was still being prosecuted in Southeast Asia.

  And although Virgil Wolcott had repeatedly sworn that he would promptly release Carson and Ourecky after the last mission had flown, or at least grant each an opportunity to determine their own fate, Tew just couldn’t shake the infuriating notion that Wolcott would not hold true to his word.

  In truth, Tew was far less concerned about Carson’s fate than he was with Ourecky’s; he felt confident that Carson could fend for himself, but Tew was very aware that Ourecky’s marriage was on the verge of failure. So, determined to stretch out the process as long as possible, in order to protect his two veteran astronauts, Tew was decisively engaged in an endurance contest that could likely end in his death.

  Tew’s concerns about Ourecky might all be for naught if Blue Gemini folded after the last mission, since the engineer would certainly be released from the Project forthwith, but there was still considerable potential that the secret space program might be extended. If that happened, Carson would probably elect to stay on, and if given ample opportunity, he would likely convince Ourecky to remain as well. After all, when it came to flying the Blue Gemini missions, the two men were like the wheels on a bicycle: one was useless without the other.

  As much as Tew respected their friendship, he didn’t want Ourecky’s marriage to further suffer, so he looked for any and all opportunities to keep the two men physically separate. If there were any practical way to keep them on opposite ends of the country, Tew would do just that, just to stifle Carson’s influence.

  In any event, he desperately wanted the last mission to fly sooner than later, particularly since his influence was on the wane. The Pentagon leadership had decreed that the two military manned space programs—Blue Gemini and the Navy MOL—which had previously competed for scarce resources and funding, would be combined into a joint enterprise.

  Once the two programs were joined, Tew would step aside, and Tarbox would take the helm. Unless he elected to retire, Wolcott would remain in his current assignment, serving as Tarbox’s civilian deputy. Once openly antagonistic, the two former adversaries had forged a synergistic alliance. Although the merger was still very much subject to the winds of politics, it was accepted as a foregone reality by most of the Project’s workers; many were already looking to Tarbox for guidance and leadership.

  Although Tarbox’s transition was theoretically still pending, he was almost a regular fixture at the Project’s offices, as he sought to cultivate relationships and curry favor with the Air Force senior leaders who would make critical decisions on the future of military manned space programs. It would be months before the Air Force and Navy formally combined their programs, but the transformation was already well underway, as the politically savvy Tarbox moved swiftly to assert his influence. Tew grudgingly endorsed the merger between the Air Force and Navy programs and had ceded most of his day-to-day responsibilities to Wolcott. But as much as he welcomed a relief, Tew resented Tarbox’s rapid encroachment.

  The consolidation would not be without casualties. Roughly three quarters of the Project’s civilian employees would lose their jobs. At the conclusion of the last Blue Gemini mission—whenever that might be—the bulk of the Wright-Patterson operations would be shifted to the Navy’s more modern facilities in California.

  As it was, Blue Gemini was theoretically at its culmination point. There was only one stack left to fly, and it was earmarked to attack the Soviets’ elusive Krepost orbital bombardment system. The Project’s headquarters and mission control facilities were still operational at Wright-Patterson, but their launch options were severely limited, since the PDF—Pacific Departure Facility—on Johnston Island had been decimated by Hurricane Celeste shortly after the last mission. If the Project was extended, most of the anticipated missions probably could be executed with launches from either Vandenberg or Cape Kennedy, but there was also some discussion that the PDF would be rebuilt, possibly as an even more expansive facility.

  Although there was considerable support for Blue Gemini to continue into a second phase, momentum had stalled. Nothing could happen until after the Presidential elections in November. If Nixon was reelected, then it was virtually a sure bet that an extension of Blue Gemini would be immediately approved and secretly funded. The Project’s prospects weren’t nearly as clear for a Democratic win; in all likelihood, McGovern would cancel Blue Gemini as soon as he was briefed on it. In Tew’s mind, the election hinged on the potential outcome in Vietnam. To his credit, Nixon was making every effort to end US involvement in the war-torn nation, but he clearly had a long way to go before the electorate was convinced of his sincerity.

  The Vietnam War had already contributed substantially to the demise of the Air Force’s MOL. In creating a massive program that was in the public eye while simultaneously concealing the secret purpose for its existence, the Air Force had painted themselves into an odd corner. The program’s leaders found themselves in the awkward and untenable position of defending the MOL’s continuation in two different forums. On the unclassified side of the discussion, the costs of the Vietnam war were already overwhelming the military budget, so it was virtually impossible for the Air Force to publically justify a two-man sp
ace station that was—on the surface—little more than a duplication of NASA’s current and planned endeavors to explore space. Furthermore, on the classified side, it was equally difficult for the Air Force to justify how the MOL’s crew could perform their actual mission—strategic reconnaissance of the Soviet Union—more efficiently than unmanned reconnaissance satellites currently in development.

  Even as the Air Force’s MOL program abruptly died in 1969, Tarbox was shrewdly able to keep the Navy’s ocean surveillance variant a secret. Tew suspected that the “Ancient Mariner” was only successful in this venture because of the unusual accounting lessons gleaned by Russo during his stint at the Project. Blue Gemini’s expenditures were scattered across so many other Air Force programs that only Tew actually knew how much money was being spent. Learning from Tew’s experience, conveyed by Russo, Tarbox had managed to keep his program flying underneath the budgetary radar.

  Besides shrouding his accounts in black budgets, Tarbox’s greatest coup was absorbing virtually all of the MOL hardware, less the KH-10 “DORIAN” camera system and several mainframe computers, from the program’s contractors after the Air Force program was abruptly cancelled. Forced to lay off thousands of loyal workers in a matter of weeks, the MOL contractors were reeling in shock, and even though they had been directed to simply destroy the parts, they were obviously reluctant to wreck their handiwork. After all, Tarbox’s gesture probably lent them at least a glimmer of hope that the defunct MOL might eventually be revived. Consequently, it was relatively simple for Tarbox’s scavengers to collect and consolidate the modules at a massive hangar located at North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego.

  In one fell swoop, by saving the invaluable components from the scrapyard, Tarbox amassed the key building blocks necessary to assemble the Navy’s MOL. Even as the Air Force’s MOL effort was blowing apart faster than a high-speed crash on a Formula One racetrack, Tarbox was able to convince key leaders of the pressing need for a manned ocean surveillance platform. The hardest sell was persuading them to allow a nuclear power plant in orbit, but once Tarbox cleared that hurdle, his secret space program was quickly underway.