Thorpe's Candle

SHOOTING STAR

The black ocean moved in apprehensive swells somehow knowing the huge object was there. A tense breeze swept away the clouds exposing a clear, starry night. Even the fiercest predators turned away, diving deep into the protective depths as the leviathan maneuvered into position. On its back, the titanium door that shielded its deadly cargo opened like a slow-motion jack-in-the-box revealing the cone-shaped nose of the SS-N-17 “Snipe” ballistic missile.

Inside the Mako Shark, the fire-control officer pressed a series of buttons on an elaborate, semicircular electronics console. His actions initiated the launch sequence as he spoke the target coordinates into his headset microphone.

A crewman in the missile bay listened to the numbers. He then reached his arm through a small opening until his fingers touched a numeric keypad inside ballistic missile number three. He punched in the coordinates and watched the numbers appear on a red digital readout above his hand. Reading them back for confirmation, he then closed and sealed the access doors on the outside of the missile and finally closed the small, thick door on the missile tube. Yanking his headphone connector from its socket, he raced along the catwalk that ran beside the other SLBM tubes and jumped through the hatch into the launch support compartment. Two of his fellow crewmen slammed the emergency blast door shut and spun the wheel, sealing it tight.

The fire-control officer then pressed another series of buttons and reached inside his shirt to remove a key that hung on a chain around his neck. He inserted it into a lock on the console. A second man, standing just out of arms-length, took a key from around his neck and inserted it into a lock on the console.

“On my mark,” The fire-control officer nodded to the second man. “Three — two — one.”

With a click, the two men rotated their keys from the “unarmed” position 45 degrees straight up to the “armed” position. The section of the control panel designating missile warhead status shifted from blue to blood red.

“Missile armed, Colonel,” the fire-control officer said. His hand gripped what looked like a video game joystick — his finger on the trigger. With temples pounding and sweat beading on his forehead, he stared at the digital displays.

A few seconds later, a voice came through his headset. “Fire-control, this is Colonel Blackstone. Fire your missile.”

His hand tightened on the joystick, and he squeezed the trigger.