Tom Clancy's op-centre_ mirror image - Tom Clancy [89]
"I understand, sir," Squires said.
"The plan's as complete as we can make it given the little we know," Rodgers said, "though I expect we'll have updates as H-Hour nears. I'm sorry we can't do more for you."
"That's okay, sir," Squires said. "It isn't Tacitus or any of those guys you quote, but I told Private George when we left him in Helsinki that the cartoon character Super Chicken had a perfect observation for tough situations like these: 'You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.' We knew it, General, and we're still glad to be here."
Rodgers laughed. "I'm trusting the fate of the world to a man who quotes Saturday morning cartoons. But I'll make a deal with you. Come back in one piece, and I'll bring the popcorn to your house next Saturday morning."
"You're on," Squires said, signing off and collecting his thoughts before briefing the team.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Tuesday, 3:08 A.M., St. Petersburg
For just over an hour, Sergei Orlov had been asleep in the chair at his desk-- elbows on the armrests, hands folded on his abdomen, head slightly to the left. Though his wife didn't believe he'd actually disciplined himself to be able to fall asleep anywhere, at any time, Orlov insisted that it wasn't a talent he'd been born with. He said that when he first became an astronaut, he trained himself to snatch sleep in half-hour segments amid the long hours of training. More remarkable than that, he said he found what he called his "rest bits" nearly as refreshing over the course of a day as his normal six hours of sleep a night. And there was the added benefit that, instead of his energy and attention span flagging as the day went on, they remained high.
He could never work like Rossky, who needed to stay with his problems until he had wrestled them to the ground. Even now, with his night counterpart on duty, the Colonel was still at his post in the heart of the Center.
Orlov also found that daunting problems always seemed to make more sense after a short nap. During his last space flight, a joint mission with Bulgaria-- and the first three-cosmonaut flight since the crew of Soyuz II suffocated in their spacecraft-- Orlov and his two comrades had tried to dock their Soyuz ship with the Salyut 6 space station. When engine failure left the ship and the station on a collision course, mission control ordered Orlov to fire his backup rocket to return to earth immediately. Instead, he fired a short burst to back a safe distance away, shut off his headset, and rested for fifteen minutes-- to the dismay of his crew. Then he used the backup engine to effect the docking. Though there was no longer enough fuel in the backup rocket to return to earth, once inside the space station Orlov was able to troubleshoot the main engine, repair the faulty circuit, and salvage the mission and the self-respect of the mission team at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Later, back on earth, Orlov was told the on-board echocardiograph had showed that his cardiovascular activity slowed and remained down after his rest. Thereafter, cosmonaut training included "power naps," though they didn't seem to work as well for other cosmonauts as they did for Orlov.
He never slept to escape what was happening in his life, though when Orlov was finally able to shut his eyes at 1:45 A.M., it felt good to file away the concerns of the moment. He was awakened at 2:51 when his assistant, Nina, buzzed to tell him he had a call from the Ministry of Defense. When Orlov got on, Marshal of Communications General David Ergashev informed him about the troops moving into Ukraine and asked the new Operations Center for help monitoring European communiqués about their activities. Stunned by the news and wondering if this was just a high-level test of the Center's capabilities-- why else wouldn't he have been told?-- Orlov passed the order to Radio Officer Yuri Marev.
Through fiber-optic links with satellite dish stations outside of St.