"Clancy, Tom - Jack Ryan 03 - The Cardinal of the Kremlin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clancy Tom)

"Yes, sir, but it took over two years to make it work, and a Cray-2 computer to make it work fast enough to matter. We still need a little more work, but after we analyze what went wrong tonight, another four or five months, maybe, and we got it knocked." "Next step, then?"
"Building a five-megajoule laser. Another team is close to that already. Then we gang up twenty of them, and we can send out a hundred-megajoule pulse, twenty times per second, and hit any target we want. The impact energy then will be on the order of, say, twenty to thirty kilograms of explosives." "And that'll kill any missile anybody can make ..."
"Yes, sir." Major Gregory smiled.
"What you're telling me is, the thingЧTea Clipper works.
"We've validated the system architecture," the Genen corrected Ryan. "It's been a long haul since we started lool ing at this system. Five years ago there were eleven hurdle! There are three technical hurdles left. Five years from no1 there won't be any. Then we can start building it."
THE CARDINAL OF THE KREMLIN Х 47
"The strategic implications ..." Ryan said, and stopped. "Jesus." , "It's going to change the world," the General agreed.
"You know that they're playing with the same thing at Dushanbe."
"Yes, sir," Major Gregory answered. "And they might know something that we don't."
Ryan nodded. Gregory was even smart enough to know that someone else might be smarter. This was some kid.
"Gentlemen, out in my helicopter is a briefcase. Could you have somebody bring it in? There are some satellite photos that you might find interesting."
"How old are these shots?" the General asked five minutes later as he leafed through the photos.
"A couple of days," Jack replied.
Major Gregory peered at them for a minute or so. "Okay, we have two slightly different installations here. It's called a 'sparse array.' The hexagonal arrayЧthe six-pillar oneЧis a transmitter. The building in the middle here is probably designed to house six lasers. These pillars are optically stable mounts for mirrors. The laser beams come out of the building, reflect off the mirrors, and the mirrors are computer-controlled to concentrate the beam on a target."
"What do you mean by optically stable?"
"The mirrors have to be controlled with a high degree of accuracy, sir," Gregory told Ryan. "By isolating them from the surrounding ground you eliminate vibration that might come from having a man walk nearby, or driving a car around. If you jiggle the mirrors by a small multiple of the laser-light frequency, you mess up the effect you're trying to get. Here
ХWe use shock mountings to enhance the isolation factor. It's
Хtechnique originally developed for submarines. Okay? This
Хher diamond-shaped array is ... oh, of course. That's the
Hceiver."
B''What?" Jack's brain had just met another stone wall.
Х "Let's say you want to make a really good picture of some-Bung. I mean, really good. You use a laser as your strobe
F'But why four mirrors?"
B "It's easier and cheaper to make four small mirrors than
one big one," Gregory explained. "Hmph. I wonder if they're! trying to do a holographic image. If they can really lock they illuminating beams in phase . . . theoretically it's possible.Щ There are a couple of things that make it tricky, but thel Russians like the brute-force approach . . . Damn!" His eye^ lit up. "That's one hell of an interesting idea! I'll have M think about that one." ] "You're telling me that they built this place just to tak^ pictures of our satellites?" Ryan demanded. j "No, sir. They can use it for that, no sweat. It makes I perfect cover. And a system that can image a satellite aj geosynchronous altitude might be able to clobber one in knj earth orbit. If you think of these four mirrors here as a tele scope, remember that a telescope can be a lens for a camera! or part of a gunsight. It could also make a damned efficient aiming system. How much power runs into this lab?" |
Ryan set down a photo. "The current power output froa
this dam is something like five hundred megawatts. ButЧ"
"They're stringing new power lines," Gregory observed
"How come?"
"The powerhouse is two storiesЧyou can't tell from thi angle. It looks like they're activating the top half. That'll bn'n their peak power output to something like eleven hundre
megawatts."
"How much comes into this place?" "We call it 'Bach.' Maybe a hundred. The rest goes 'Mozart,' the town that grew up on the next hill over, they're doubling their available power."
"More than that, sir," Gregory noted. "Unless they're j to double the size of that town, why don't you assume the increased power is just going to the lasers?"
Jack nearly choked. Why the hell didn't you think ofti he growled at himself.
"I mean," Gregory continued, "I mean . . . that's like hundred megawatts of new power. Jesus, what if they made a breakthrough? How hard is it to find out what's 1 pening there?"
"Take a look at the photos and tell me how easy you tl it would be to infiltrate the place," Ryan suggested. I "Oh." Gregory looked up. "It would be nice to know hJ much power they push out the front end of their instrument How long has this place been there, sir?"
Х "About four years, and it's not finished yet. Mozart is new.
ХUntil recently the workers were housed in this barracks and pupport facility. We took notice when the apartment building
Хwent up, same time as the perimeter fence. When the Rus-pians start pampering the workers, you know that the project has a really high priority. If it has a fence and guard towers, we know it's military."
"How did you find it?" Gregory asked.
"By accident. The Agency was redrawing its meteorological data on the Soviet Union, and one of the technicians Bedded to do a computer analysis of the best places over there for astronomical observation. This is one of them. The weather over the last few months has been unusually cloudy, but on average the skies are about as clear there as they are here. The same is true of Sary Shagan, Semipalatinsk, and another new one, Storozhevaya." Ryan set out some more photographs. Gregory looked at them.
"They sure are busy."
"Good morning, Misha," Marshal of the Soviet Union Dmitri Timofeyevich Yazov said.
"And to you, Comrade Defense Minister," Colonel Filitov replied.
A sergeant helped the Minister off with his coat while another brought in a tray with a tea setting. Both withdrew when Misha opened his briefcase.
fc "So, Misha, what does my day look like?" Yazov poured BWo cups of tea. It was still dark outside the Council of Min-Bters building. The inside perimeter of the Kremlin walls was Bt with harsh blue-white floods, and sentries appeared and Risappeared in the splashes of light.
Х "A full one, Dmitri Timofeyevich," Misha replied. Yazov fcasn't the man that Dmitri Ustinov was, but Filitov had to Hdmit to himself that he did put in a full day's work as a Kniformed officer should. Like Filitov, Marshal Yazov was By background a tank officer. Though they had never met
Хluring the war, they did know one another by reputation. BMisha's was better as a combat officerЧpurists claimed that
Хhe was an old-fashioned cavalryman at heart, though Filitov
Хcordially hated horsesЧwhile Dmitri Yazov had won a rep-lutation early on as a brilliant staff officer and organizerЧand I a Party man, of course. Before everything else, Yazov was a