Delta Blue

Fifteen

“The Americans used it in Vietnam,” Mac Zeigman said. “They called it Wild Weasel.”

With the loss of Metzenbaum, Zeigman was now the operations officer of the Zwanzigste Speziell Aeronautisch Gruppe. He was a hungover operations officer, after a late night of carousing in Bremerhaven. It had been his first free night in weeks, and he had used it well, if not too wisely.

Memory of some woman yelling at him. Had to be slapped around a little.

He had a raging headache that made tracking the conversation difficult.

“Yes, but they used the tactic offensively over Hanoi,” Oberst Weismann countered. “The decoys were used to draw SAM fire, then the attack aircraft fired on the SAM radars. The MakoSharks are not targeting SAM radars, and we would not be using it offensively.”

“The principle will work here, also, Herr Colonel. I have discussed it with the planning staff.”

“Review every incident for me, Major. Tell me what were the targets.”

“Other than photographic reconnaissance?” Zeigman said. “Platform Eight’s dome was destroyed. Platform Nine was attacked, as was the pipeline.”

“And we have lost four aircrews,” the wing commander said. “Two Eurofighters and two Tornadoes. The result of engagements initiated by ourselves. Now, again, the purpose of the overflights?”

Zeigman thought about it, then said, “I cannot explain Platform Eight. The rest of the flights over the wells were intended to gather information. On the night of the Soviet diversion, the air cover was drawn off so that the Americans could once again photograph.”

“And Platform Nine?”

“Only the defensive batteries were hit.”

“Then?”

“Their attention was diverted to the pipeline. That was the first real offensive operation, utilizing torpedoes.”

“Which tells you?”

Again, Mac Zeigman pondered, silently urging his head to clear. “They learned what they wanted to learn about the wells, then decided to cut off the oil flow by disrupting the pipeline. They are not going to attack the wells.”

“Yes,” Weismann said, idly scratching the back of his hand. “That is what I think. Additionally, Admiral Schmidt also believes the next efforts will be directed at the wells, though under them.”

Zeigman was not certain he would make a good operations officer. He was a pilot, and a damned good one. In the air, he made instantaneous decisions that had made him a survivor. On the ground, hashing and rehashing the intentions of American or Soviet commanders, he became quickly bored and muddled.

He was born a killer, not a plotter of when or where or who should be killed.

“I am going to tell you something that perhaps will explain, not only the interest of the Americans and the Soviets, but also their reluctance to approach the wells.” Weismann rubbed his forehead. Soon he would have no skin left, Zeigman thought.

He waited.

“This is highly classified information, Major.”

He nodded.

“The wells are not what they seem, not oil wells. They are geothermal taps.”

Zeigman shrugged his shoulders elaborately. A well was a well.

The commander explained the tremendous amount of energy to be drawn from the platforms when they were all completed. Over sixteen million kilowatts of electrical power.

Zeigman did not much care.

Weismann explained the dangers, what might happen to the ice and to the water levels if the wells were damaged.

So?

“So, like Admiral Schmidt, I am certain the wells themselves will not be attacked. The Americans are not foolhardy. They will continue to make their attempts on the cables.”

“Under the platforms?”

“Perhaps.”

“That means submarines, Herr Colonel. The interceptors will be useless.”

“Not necessarily. My thought, Major, is that the Americans, or the Soviets, or both, will attempt to penetrate the underwater screen placed by the Third Naval Force. I also think it likely they will, as they have done, create a diversion for Schmidt’s ships with aircraft.”

Zeigman winced as a lance of pain caromed around his brain. “I could agree with that.”

“Therefore, we will modify your modified Wild Weasel tactic. Think of it, Mac! Schmidt’s naval ships become the decoys. The invaders will try to divert the ships, and Schmidt’s guns will throw up flares. And… ”

“And it will be a duck shoot,” the new operations officer said. Finally, here was something that excited him and diminished his headache.

“Exactly! Now, we must analyze the MakoShark’s behavior. The time of night it has appeared, the normal approach routes, what we know of its armament, its speed and maneuverability. If we deploy most of our squadrons, we can overcome it with numbers.”

It sounded like a good idea to Zeigman.

Goldstein was lying to him, and the pseudodirector of the GESPENST PROJEKT, the banker’s son, knew absolutely nothing. The Jew had the banker’s son tied up in a web of misinformation.

Eisenach knew this, and it enraged him.

The constantly delayed project would be delayed again and again, and he had no recourse but to develop quickly a new strategy which would force the Americans and the Soviets to remain behind their borders.

After arriving at Templehof from Peenemünde by helicopter, Eisenach transferred to a Piaggio PD-808 executive jet for the flight to Svalbard Island. He sent Oberlin back to headquarters to watch over the daily tasks while he was gone.

By one-thirty, the jet had landed on Svalbard Island at the airfield which was leased from the Norwegians, and Eisenach had made his preparations by way of the jet’s sophisticated communications systems. The plastic explosive, detonators, and radios had been ordered.

If there was a drawback to the location of the wells, it was to be found in their distance from mainland Germany. Marshal Hoch and Eisenach had both tried to persuade the geologists to drill farther to the south, but to no avail. They must go to where the geology permitted the taps, not the other way around. The expense had been enormous, millions of deutsche marks, for the undersea cables. And helicopters could not reach the platforms from the mainland. Always, there was the transfer of aircraft en route.

Eisenach descended from the airplane into heavy drizzle and mud coating the concrete. He buttoned his uniform topcoat as he splashed his way to the helicopter. It was a navy helicopter, and the two pilots got out of the cockpit to salute him and help him into the back seat. He tossed his briefcase and the overnight valise that he kept in the Piaggio onto the floor next to him.

The pilot climbed back into his seat and said, “The flight will be very rough, Herr General. The weather is not cooperating with us.”

“A little rain shower?”

“The front has yet to come through. It is worse to the east of us.”

Eisenach smiled grimly. “We will just have to do our best, then.”

Shaking his head negatively, the pilot turned back to his controls, donned his headset, and started the two Allison turboshaft engines. The general put on his own earphones to help drown the noise of the engines, then buckled his seat belt. As they lifted off, Eisenach saw his executive jet pilots chocking the wheels and tying the aircraft down. They had complained of the stopovers at Svalbard, having to spend their days in the tiny operations hut. He estimated that the visibility was almost a mile.

Within ten minutes of flight, it was down to a quarter-mile. The rain was much heavier, sluicing over the Plexiglas bubble of the helicopter in thick streaks. They were flying low, less than a hundred feet above the ocean, and Eisenach could see ice trying to form on the water. It looked like gray sludge floating on the surface of the sea, damping the waves. The salt content was high enough to keep it from totally freezing at -4 degrees Centigrade — the water temperature reported by the pilot, but the thought of going down in it was chilling, also. A man would not live for long, perhaps five minutes.

The BO-105 bounced radically, short up and down strokes that kept Eisenach from concentrating on anything but where the water was and what the pilots were doing. He could tell that the pilot was fighting the controls, and several times, thought about returning to Svalbard.

His heart was beating faster than usual.

Bahnsteig Acht went by on the right, identified by the pilot over the headset, and Eisenach used binoculars to examine it. Though it was difficult to see much from the erratically moving helicopter, he thought that the repairs to the dome had been completed.

It had been a difficult few days for the men on the platform, exposed to the weather while replacement panels were installed.

“Platform Eleven will come up on our right, Herr General,” the pilot said.

He never saw it. The visibility had drawn down so tightly that even the roiling surface of the water disappeared from time to time.

When they reached Bahnsteig Eine, the wind was blowing fiercely. In midday, it was dark enough to require landing lights on both the pad and the helicopter. The radio operator on the platform reported gusts to forty kilometers per hour, and ten men in parkas emerged from the dome to steady the helicopter as the pilot fought it to a landing. The rain was almost horizontal on the platform, and as the turbines died, he could hear it slapping the windshield like gunshots.

Eisenach was immensely relieved to be on something solid again, but hoped that his relief was not evident in his face. He pushed open his door, slid out of the helicopter, and leaned into the wind, holding his hat with his gloved left hand. The raindrops pelted his face like sand. He left his luggage for someone else to bring.

Oberst Hans Diederman was waiting just inside the doorway for him. His fatigue uniform appeared tighter on him. His demeanor was just as bubbly as ever. “Herr General Eisenach! How good to see you!”

The same greeting as ever, also. Eisenach firmly doubted the man’s sincerity.

“Good afternoon, Hans.”

“This is not a day to be flying, General.”

“It was not too difficult,” Eisenach insisted as he stripped off his dripping topcoat.

It was warm inside the dome. Despite the insulation between the living spaces and the wellhead, it often became overly heated. The Russians would love it, Eisenach thought. They had a fanatic devotion to overheated buildings.

“I want to see the wellhead, Hans.”

“Right this way.”

They walked down the wide corridor to the fiberglass wall, and Diederman opened a thick door, then stepped over a raised coaming. Eisenach followed.

This third of the dome was not subpartitioned in any way. There were lights at deck level, but the upper reaches of the dome were almost black. It seemed a great deal of wasted space, and indeed, the domes were larger than necessary for living and operating needs, but the high empty spaces were necessary to accommodate the drilling rigs. Though the rig was no longer in place here, it was anticipated that it would have to be reinstalled occasionally in order to clean the injection well. On his left was another door, leading to the control room, and a triple-paned glass window which allowed the operators to view the wellhead and turbine generators.

There were three turbines, and the high-pitched whine of them threatened the eardrums. Eisenach knew the schematics well. Two of the turbines were driven off of the steam and hot water rising from the well, the third was driven by the residue of steam still available from the first two. Exhaust vapors then went through the succession of tanks attached to the back side of the dome, one of which contained a small turbine generator that produced more than enough electricity for the platform’s own operations.

Huge condensers collected the spent steam and vapor, reduced it to water, and sent it to the massive pump that injected the water back into the earth.

Walking the deck was an adventure in itself. Piping of a dozen diameters, the largest a meter across, created a maze. They were painted white and yellow and red. One had to step over, duck under, and slip around the conduits in order to cross the decking.

A light gray haze seemed to float in the space, and the walls dripped constantly with moisture.

It was hot, over a hundred degrees. Heating the domes had never been a problem. Rather, after this, the first platform, had been constructed and the drilling completed, they had had to install air conditioning. Maintaining the sensitive electronics at steady temperatures had been a necessity.

Diederman handed him a pair of cushioned ear protectors, and once he had them in place, the scream of the turbine generators was bearable. The engineer led the way through the pipe maze, large yellow signs were attached to most of the pipes. Steam. Hot water. Valves were everywhere, most of them remote-controlled, serving no discernible purpose, but required for safety, if steam pressures became too high to contain and had to be vented, and for diversion so that one or all of the turbines could be shut down for servicing.

Thickly insulated cables, strung on ceramic insulators, emerged from the generators, were routed above the piping, and directed into the space beneath Diederman’s control center. There, the electricity was filtered, transformed, and channeled in ways that Eisenach did not understand. He knew only that the electricity drawn from the other operating platforms was collected there, then distributed into one of the two undersea cables. The undersea cables, he had been told, carried 220,000 volts.

Diederman drew him to a stop outside a guardrail that circled the wellhead. The railing protected a space that was four meters in diameter. The well cap, of some cast alloy, was head-height above the deck and was almost two meters in diameter. Several large pipes emerged horizontally from it, leading toward the turbines. The well casing, a meter in diameter, rose through an oversized hole in the decking. Exterior air was allowed to flow in around the casing, helping to cool it. Still, the casing and wellhead were tinged a yellowish-brown from the heat.

Diederman leaned toward him and yelled. Eisenach had to pull his ear protector away from his ear to hear. “Three hundred and eighty degrees Fahrenheit! Now, we could boil your tea instantly.”

Eisenach nodded, shifted the ear protector back in place, and peered down through the gap between the well casing and the deck. He could see the wave tops five meters below. Depressed wave tops, coated with the icy sludge.

The perspiration was running down his face, and his armpits were damp. He wiped his face, tapped Diederman on the shoulder, and they threaded their way back through the maze to the corridor and the elevator.

He had missed lunch, but Diederman was happy to have a second lunch, and the director ordered thick ham-and-rye sandwiches and coffee delivered to his office.

They sat at the big table, Diederman’s console close to his hand.

“So, now, Herr General,” Diederman said, talking with a stuffed mouth, “you have come triumphantly through a summer storm, only to look at a wellhead?”

“Yes, Hans, I have.”

“To what purpose?”

“To make alterations to the platforms. A fail-safe mechanism, as it were.”

Diederman frowned.

“Below the deck, a meter above the sea surface, we are going to attach plastic explosive to the well casings. I imagine that it will probably have to be insulated from the casing in some manner.”

Diederman’s eyes flew wide open, a feat of some magnitude with all of the fat around them.

“We will also place explosives on each of the anchor cables.”

“This is fail-safe, Herr General? Pardon me, but it is asinine!”

“It is fail-safe in that it will deter further attacks by the Americans.”

“You are to publicize this foolish act, now?”

“A leak or two through the intelligence networks should accomplish what I want, Hans.”

“You want to endanger all of the men aboard these platforms, do you?” Diederman’s face was beet red with his anger.

“Not at all. The explosives will be remotely triggered from here only, and will require a key which you will carry. It is an engineering problem for you. We want the anchor lines to break first, then the casing to detonate. The platforms will float freely away.”

“You are very certain that this can be accomplished, Herr General.”

“Of course. I have already ordered the plastic explosive and the radio equipment. Admiral Schmidt’s frogmen will assist you.”

If he did not count food, engineering problems were Diederman’s joy. The anger faded from his face as he said, “You have forgotten the injection wells. They will also have to be severed, and… ”

Amy Pearson was in her office cubicle, performing a routine visual check of the station. It was not an assigned task — Brad Mitchell had that duty, but it had become a habit for her. She liked to know what was going on around her.

With her fingers tapping out camera numbers on the keyboard, she watched the screen as it jolted from one view to the next. Interior shots of corridors, spokes, modules, priority compartments like the nuclear reactor or the Honey Bee receiving docks. The exterior shots came from six cameras mounted on the spokes. She hesitated when the exterior view of the hangars came up on Spoke Fifteen’s camera. Delta Blue was departing, slowly sliding away from the station.

She wasn’t certain that she was totally in favor of McKenna’s mission. He had had to spend nearly an hour with her, finally convincing her — almost convincing her — of the soundness of his logic.

She had finally signed off on the plan, as had General Overton, but her signature included the statement, “with reservations.”

McKenna was so damned stubborn.

But he kisses pretty well.

She brushed away that thought quickly and asked Donna Amber on the intercom to connect her with the National Security Agency at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland.

The giant facility tapped in on almost all of the television, telephonic, and radio communications in the world. The sonobuoys and listening posts that the MakoSharks had scattered from Europe to South America were monitored by the Agency.

When Amber had the connection made, Pearson asked for the German section.

“MacDonald.”

“I thought you might be on duty, Walt. This is Amy Pearson.”

“Hello there, honey. You up in the cold blue sky?”

“I think we’re just about directly over Tokyo.”

“Boy, I tell you. If my heart were up to it, I’d take you up on your invitation to visit.”

She had never met MacDonald in person, and she didn’t know whether he truly had a heart condition or just weak nerves.

“You’re missing the best view ever.”

“Don’t I know it. What’s up?”

“I wanted to see if you’ve had any action on some of our listening posts.” She read him the list of code numbers she had compiled.

MacDonald was the section chief, and he yelled for one of his subordinates to go check the machines. With voice communications, the NSA had computers similar to Val Arguento’s to scan for key words in the millions of dialogues. With sonobuoys not covered by the navy, the continuous output was recorded on tape machines. The listening posts were more sophisticated, collecting sounds for half an hour at a time and then compressing them digitally into a sixty-second blurts radioed to a satellite.

On the NSA’s end, the messages were decompressed into real time, then saved on tape.

She and MacDonald chatted for several minutes, then he said, “Here we go, Amy. On your sixteen sonobuoys in the Norwegian and Greenland seas, only four are still operational. We have the Bohemian passing through seventy-five degrees north, but that was three hours ago. Farther south, on buoy three, we picked up the screws of a fishing boat.

“The Elbe River LP’s at Köthen show a marked increase in the frequency of traffic, Amy.”

“Which way, Mac?”

“Northward. Sounds like heavy tugboats, so there’s probably long strings of barges.”

It could be increased industrial goods, but she suspected that military material was being moved.

“How about Peenemünde?” she asked.

“No dramatic changes,” MacDonald told her. “Automobile traffic. Once in a while, we hear machine tools.”

“Okay, thanks, Mac. Look, if you hear anything out of the norm at Peenemünde, give me a call, will you?”

“Sure. In fact, I’ll program what we have into the computer as a base pattern, so we can get an automatic alert if there’s anything strange that comes up.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Come and see me some time.”

After she signed off with MacDonald, Pearson spent half an hour thinking about McKenna’s proposal. Thinking about what could go wrong.

Resetting her tether straps to give her a little more freedom, Pearson switched on her computer and keyed in her access code to the main database. She called up the photographs taken of well number eight, selected the clearest low-light shot, and then transferred it into her graphics program. That program let her manipulate the image, and she duplicated it, side by side, then rotated one so that she had a top and side view of the dome and platform. The side view looked a little squashed, so she elongated it until the dome appeared round again.

The top view displayed the openings created by Mabry Evan’s warheads. Through the holes, she could discern three distinct partitions, dividing the diameter into three almost equal sections, so she erased the remaining portion of the top of the dome, then drew in the partitions. The section containing the wellhead and turbine equipment, which were blurred in this photo, was at the back of the platform, opposite the helicopter pad.

She wished she could erase the ceilings of interior spaces and see what was below them, but had to guess that they were housing and operational spaces. Probably five or six floors of them.

Erasing the dome face in the side view, she sketched in approximate floor levels. The dome’s diameter was constant from the deck of the platform up to midheight, then it began to curve in toward the middle. For the upper hundred feet, any floor installed would be smaller in area than the floor below it. Still, it would be possible to fit in as many as fifteen floors with adequate head room and floors thick enough to carry ventilation, power, and plumbing.

She went back to her top view. Peering closely at the photograph, it seemed to her that there was a fair amount of distance between the top of the dome and the first apparent ceiling on the inside. As a guess, she would say at least fifty feet. She went back to the side view and erased several top floors.

What seemed logical to her is that the dome on every platform was similar. They were, after all, mass-produced as preformed parts. The well itself would be at the back of each platform. There was something else she knew.

What was it?

On the electromagnetic maps.

She called up the maps on a second screen and studied them closely.

Wells one and eleven gave off more electromagnetic pulses than did the other wells. For the most part, the pattern indicated that the power cables from most of the platforms converged upon both one and eleven.

Primary and secondary collection and distribution centers. Well number one would be the primary, since it was drilled first.

She looked at her manipulated drawings and thought that maybe McKenna was right.

Again.

Damn him, anyway.

“Sorry to drag you all this way, Colonel, but with something of this magnitude, I like to see the face of the man with the proposition,” Adm. Hannibal Cross said.

“I don’t mind the trip, if you don’t mind the hour, Admiral,” McKenna said.

It was after eleven. McKenna and Munoz had put down at Peterson Air Force Base, Munoz headed for a cab and the city lights, and McKenna and General Brackman had commandeered an F-111 swing-wing bomber for the flight to Washington. Brackman flew, claiming that he rarely got the chance to get behind the controls anymore. It was the primary reason to avoid becoming a general, McKenna had thought. It was funny how that exalted goal of his — to get that star — had evaporated so easily. The house he had grown up in, with a World War II vet father, had instilled him with a sense of duty and responsibility, and somewhere along the line, he had come to the conclusion that his duty was best served right where he was at.

“Around here, Colonel, there aren’t any early or late hours. It’s always late.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sit.”

They were in the chairman’s sumptuous office, which overlooked the Potomac and the River Drive entrance to the Pentagon, and they all moved to a small round conference table in one corner. Cups had been set out, and a tray containing a Thermos pot of coffee, sugar, and cream rested in the middle of the table. There were yellow pads and pencils for everyone. A copy of McKenna’s two-page telex was in front of every padded chair.

Everyone included the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General Mays of the air force; General Brackman; Adm. Carl Woldeman, the chief of Naval Operations; and Gen. Budge McAdams, the army chief of staff.

McKenna counted seventeen stars on five left shoulders and decided he was in company where he didn’t belong. Or did not want to belong. They all had experiences similar to his own, but they had adapted to the ultracomplex politics that flowed around the head of the military and the head of the government. McKenna had little faith in politics.

“Before we get into your proposal, Colonel McKenna, we’ve got one little item to take care of,” Cross said.

“Yes, sir, I suppose that we do.” McKenna knew what was coming.

“I’m referring to Major Lynn Haggar.”

He kept his silence.

“It is not the policy of the Department of Defense to put our female members in situations where they might be subjected to hostile fire. That’s the policy, Colonel, and you’ve subverted it.”

“No, sir, I have not.”

“You’d better explain that,” Harvey Nays said.

“Major Haggar is simply learning to fly the MakoShark. She’s capable and extremely competent. There is no intention of placing her in a combat situation. The MakoShark primarily flies reconnaissance missions, for which she is qualified. More qualified, gentlemen, than most of her peers. The number of people who are certified to fly either a Mako or a MakoShark is extremely limited. I take only the best pilots, and they are rare.”

“But with the situation we have in Germany… ”

“If it came to that, I’d fly on her wing,” McKenna said. He turned to look at McAdams. “We had women flying combat during the excursion to Panama. They did well.”

“That was inadvertent,” Budge McAdams said.

“If Major Haggar encounters combat, it will be inadvertent,” McKenna said.

“You don’t have anyone more prepared… ”

“No, sir, I do not.”

“Inadvertent?” Nays asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Brackman said, “General Overton says she’s already flown the MakoShark.”

“And did quite well, General.”

Mays looked at Brackman, who shrugged, then at Cross and nodded.

Cross Said, “Keep her out of dangerous situations, Colonel. She is not to be scheduled for any flight over Germany or German interests. We’re not altering policy, but we’re allowing you to develop her as a recon pilot.”

“Thank you, Admiral.”

He tapped the telex. “Now then, what you’re proposing is definitely a dangerous situation, isn’t it? And you’ve set it for three days from now. Why is that?”

“For the most part, it’s preparation time. I’ve got to get Delta Yellow checked out and airborne. I know that Admiral Woldeman is already accumulating a task force of specialized ships off the coast of England, but he will need a few more days. General Brackman said that the British are participating, and that the Soviet Union may do so. If you approve my operation, General McAdams will have to alert the Rapid Deployment Force and get them to England.

“From a more global point of view, which I admit is not my bailiwick, I understand that the Germans may have ICBM capability within the week. That would alter our position drastically, I think, and perhaps prevent our ever doing anything about the geothermal wells. I’m in favor of taking care of the problem now, before the Germans can stop us, and before there’s an accident.

“Therefore, I believe we need a ‘go’ or a ‘no go’ yet tonight.”

Hannibal Cross shook his head dejectedly. “We’d have to, at minimum, get the President out of bed.”

“The hours are long in this town, Admiral.”

Cross studied him. “Yes. I believe I mentioned that. What do you want to call this thing, Colonel?”

The flag ranks would want to discuss the details yet, and probably suggest a few thousand changes that McKenna might resist, but he had the feeling that everyone in that office had already made up his mind.

It would be a matter of convincing the White House and any other agencies the President felt should be involved.

“For the media, when they see the troops on the move, Admiral? I’d say it’s a training exercise, perhaps a joint exercise with the British and Soviets. Call it Operation Whale-Saver. That might get the environmentalists on our side for a change.”