Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [64]
“We’ve only got one rocket left, number 9,” Voskresenskiy continued. “And we don’t know what to do to fix the nose cone.” The next test launch was scheduled for September 7, and it would have identical results. The R-7 would perform flawlessly; the dummy warhead would be completely destroyed on reentry, confirming the missile’s current uselessness as an ICBM and weapon.
“We need to take a break to make radical improvements on the nose cone,” Voskresenskiy told Chertok, leaning closer and lowering his voice to a mock-conspiratorial whisper. “While we’re working on it, we’ll launch satellites. That’ll distract Khrushchev’s attention from the ICBM.”
6
PICTURES IN BLACK AND WHITE
On the morning of August 28, 1957, the same day that Boris Chertok and Leonid Voskresenskiy would sip cognac and swap conspiratorial jokes at the Burdenko military hospital in Moscow, ground crews at a secret airstrip outside Lahore, Pakistan, readied a mysterious plane for takeoff.
The black, single-engine craft bore little resemblance to anything that had ever taken to the skies before. As with a glider that had been retrofitted for powered flight, its slender silhouette defied conventional design. The wings were disproportionately elongated and dog-eared at the tips. Strange metallic poles held them upright like overgrown pogo sticks. An alarmingly slim sail rose from the tall tail section, which seemed so frail that it might crumble at the slightest crosswind. The landing gear was equally unusual and flimsy and appeared to consist of a lone bicycle wheel.
In the predawn Punjabi gloom, the misshapen plane looked all the more alien against the sweltering backdrop of ancient battlements and mosques and the muezzin’s call to prayer that echoed softly from minarets in the surrounding hills. Though the heat index had already crossed an oppressively humid one hundred degrees, and shimmering waves would soon rise with the sun from the steaming tarmac, technicians in sweat-stained coveralls pumped an antifreeze additive into the plane’s huge fuel tanks. The specially blended gasoline was necessary because it was cold where the aircraft was headed, the coldest place imaginable. But the mechanics gingerly filling the tanks from portable fifty-five-gallon oil drums did not know where that was; their security clearances went no further than maintenance.
While the ground crews made their preflight rounds, another group of technicians, distinguished by their white gloves, fidgeted in a bay under the single-seat cockpit. There, next to three small-diameter portholes that contained the most sophisticated photographic lenses ever devised, they loaded a 12,000-foot-long spool of high-resolution Kodak film. The custom-made film and 500-pound Hycon camera were the only outward clues as to the plane’s true purpose. Otherwise, it had no markings, identification numbers, or insignias. No running lights winked under its dark fuselage, which had been painted dull black to better blend in with the night sky. Nowhere in its equally anonymous innards was there a manufacturer’s seal or anything else that would betray that the CL-282 Aquatone had been assembled at the top-secret Lockheed Skunkworks plant in Burbank, California.
Officially, the CL-282—or the U-2, as it would eventually be called—did not exist. Neither did the pilot, E. K. Jones, who was going through his own preflight routine in a small, barrack-style building near the runway. Like the twenty-man Quickmove mobile maintenance team and the fuel drums they had brought with them, Jones had been flown in the day before from the U-2 main staging base in Adana, Turkey, to minimize American exposure to prying Pakistani eyes. At 4:00 AM a doctor measured his temperature, pulse, and blood pressure and examined his ears, nose, and throat for signs of infection. The medical exam was a formality; like every one of the two dozen U-2 pilots on the CIA’s payroll, Jones