Delta Blue

Three

The Cessna Citation assigned to the commander, USAF Space Command, landed at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington a few minutes before ten o’clock in the morning.

Marvin Brackman ducked for the low doorway and descended to the tarmac. Returning the salute of the driver holding the rear door for him, he tossed his briefcase into the rear seat, then followed it.

The Chevy sedan took the Capital Beltway and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge across the Potomac, then turned north on Route 1. Maryland and Virginia both were in full dress, the foliage and the grass lush and damply green from an early morning shower. Brackman hadn’t checked the weather, but he assumed that by noon, the heat would be typically Washington, hot and wet.

The driver let him out at the River Entrance to the Pentagon, and Brackman crossed the wide expanse of concrete to the doors. Inside, the concourse was packed with tourists and, Brackman figured, about half the 25,000 employees on a coffee break. The stars on his shoulders and the scowl on his face cleared a path for him, and he reached the second floor, E-ring office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at 1035 hours.

He was ushered directly into the office overlooking the river by Marilyn Ackerman, the admiral’s longtime secretary.

Adm. Hannibal Cross had been chairman for just over three years, and he was good in the job. A recruiting poster figure — lean and crisp, with a deep-water tan and weather wrinkles at his eyes, Cross also possessed the eagerness to attack politics with the same deftness he had utilized aboard carriers off Vietnam.

Also present was Gen. Harvey Mays, the air force chief of staff. Mays was a veteran of Vietnam, also, where he had flown F-4 Phantoms. The shrapnel and burn scar on the left side of his face kept him off posters, but he was an adroit and capable commander.

“Sorry I’m late,” Brackman said. “We had head winds.”

“Or excess baggage,” Mays said, looking at Brackman’s waistline.

“Jesus, Harv. You know how many calories I’m on, already? I lost two pounds.”

“In the last month?” Mays laughed.

The three flag officers shook hands and settled into the conversational grouping of couch and chairs in one corner of Cross’s office. Brackman opened his briefcase and placed it on the low oak cocktail table in front of him while Marilyn filled coffee cups and passed them around.

After exchanging several routine updates, Cross said, “Okay, let’s get to it. You said something about Germany, Marvin.”

“Yes, I did. My gal Pearson, who’s the intel officer aboard Themis, came up with it.”

Brackman passed out printed copies of the maps Pearson had displayed at Cheyenne Mountain, then photos of the well, the aircraft, and the ships. He completed his briefing in less than five minutes.

“This the only shot you have of the well?” Mays asked.

“At the moment, yes. I don’t have a satellite in position for a better view, and won’t have for another nine days. If we change the orbit on a KH-11, we might well alert some people we don’t want alerted. However, I’ll have a close-up for you as soon as McKenna makes a run over the area.”

“It’s difficult to judge the scale,” Cross said, “but this dome gives the impression of being larger than necessary.”

“Yes, it does, in comparison with the size of the helo pad. And yet, given the weather conditions, it may be mostly insulation.”

“Maybe,” Cross said.

“We’re hoping to get a snapshot that includes a chopper on the deck or a man outside the dome, so we can do some measuring.”

“You said this has been going on for three years?” Mays asked.

“Correct.”

“And we never cared before?”

“Everybody drills for oil,” Brackman pointed out.

“All right,” Cross said. “McKenna’s going to shoot some pictures. What else should we be doing? I’m not going to the National Security Council or the President with what you’ve got here.”

“No, I don’t want to jump the gun,” Brackman said. “I would like a CIA assessment of current German energy sources and uses. Let’s find out if these wells are on-line and pumping oil to the mainland.”

“Let me talk to Krandall over at Langley,” Mays said. “I can get something quietly.”

“Good,” Cross agreed. “And I might put in a call to General Sheremetevo. We’ve been pretty open with each other lately, and perhaps his people have some ideas.”

Vitaly Sheremetevo was a deputy commander in chief of the Soviet air forces, in charge of the PVO (Protivovoz-dushnaya oborona Strany), the largest air defense force in the world.

“We don’t want to raise any alarms,” Harvey Mays said. “Those people over on the Hill come unglued anytime we bitch about a possible military buildup in Germany.”

Brackman agreed with Mays. Some people in seats of power were too willing to believe the best about the intentions of adversaries, past, present, and future.

“Still,” the admiral said, his eyes fixed in thought, “our position is worse if we spring surprises on the politicos. Now that I’ve had my second thought, I believe I will speak to the President. It might be a good idea to have State query the Germans about, say, the success of their venture in the Greenland Sea. That way, we’re on record as having pursued a diplomatic channel.”

Brackman wasn’t sure he would do it that way, but then he wasn’t the boss, either.

“Hey, Cancha?”

Maj. Frank Dimatta spoke into his helmet mike. “Got something, Nitro?”

“Two somethings. Bearing oh-four-three, we’ve got a solid return. It must be the Air France 747 Josie keeps nagging me about.”

Capt. George “Nitro Fizz” Williams called Delta Green’s on-board computer “Josie.” For no reason that Dimatta had ever figured out. Before they departed Themis, Williams had programmed Josie with the scheduled commercial flights in their area of operations. It wouldn’t do to latch onto the wrong bird.

“And the other?”

“Could be our boy. He’s at our bearing three-four-nine, ninety miles. And his heading is in the general direction of Cape Town.”

“You want a visual pass, first?” Dimatta asked.

“Nah. If it’s the wrong one, I just won’t let go of the Wasp.”

They were lightly armed this trip, just two Wasp II missiles on each of two pylons. The Wasp was a multipurpose missile developed strictly for the MakoShark. While the ordnance pylons could take the modified Phoenix and Sidewinder missiles, as well as pods housing twenty millimeter rotary machine guns, the Wasp II had proved versatile. It had a range of seventy-five miles compared to the Phoenix’s 125 miles or the Sidewinder’s eleven miles. It covered the range at Mach 2.5. The Wasp had retractable fins and a variable exhaust nozzle, useful in low-or no-atmosphere conditions. Targeting was by independent radar-seeker or by visual control, guided by the video camera in the missile’s nose. The WSO could watch the target on his panel CRT and guide the missile toward it by shifting his helmet.

The warhead was composed of twenty-one pounds of high explosive inside a cone of machined metal containing depleted uranium. It could pierce armored plate, and when it detonated, the cone, scored on the inside surface like a jigsaw puzzle, became shrapnel that ripped and tore at anything in its path.

“I’m not going to arm the warhead, Cancha.”

“Fine by me,” Dimatta said. He was an Italian-American from New Jersey who had served as an advisor with NATO forces, in addition to his six years as an air force test pilot. He was dark, easygoing, and a lover of exotic foods. The only thing that really got his adrenaline going was downing hostile aircraft.

“Seventy miles, and I put him at two-eight-thousand,” Nitro told him. “Let’s take her down.”

They had been coasting along at 70,000 feet above the dark side of the dark continent after their recon run over Afghanistan and Iran. The outboard pylon on the starboard wing carried a photo reconnaissance pod. It contained high-resolution cameras shooting 2402-type and infrared films.

Far to the northeast, night would be falling on Mali and Ghana. Below, and to his left behind him, Dimatta could see the lights of Kananga, Zaire. The lights of other small towns and villages were visible, too, but they were infrequent and spread wide apart. Africa was mostly dark.

At 30,000 feet, Dimatta started bringing the speed back until he dropped below the sonic threshold. He saw a flash of cream lightning against the earth. The moon reflecting off a piece of the Sankuru River.

“All right, good,” Williams said. “He’s making two-two-oh knots. That’s about right.”

Their target was an elderly Beechcraft Super-18, a reliable twin-engined light cargo or passenger plane forty years past its prime. Pearson’s information had this one headed toward a rowdy tribe in South Africa with a load of AK-47s, RPGs, a few flamethrowers, and a million rounds of ammunition.

The screen in front of Dimatta showed the target clearly, about forty miles away. The Air France jetliner was to the east now, a hundred miles away.

“You think Pierre’s going to see this, Nitro?”

“Nah. Not a Wasp trail at this distance. Hey, this guy’s going down in rain forest so thick, they’ll never find the pieces.”

“ELS?”

“Emergency Locator Signal? On an old C-fifty-four? You got to be kidding, Cancha. Even if that plane went down, the owners wouldn’t want it found.”

“Yeah. Okay. Cancha give me a heading?” Frank Dimatta had picked up his nickname in the air force as a result of his frequent use of the crunched words, “can cha.” Since then, he had consciously tried to avoid it, but it slipped out once in a while.

“Let me have four points to port… yeah, that’ll do it. I’ve got thirty miles, and I’m going to video. Give me number one.”

The screen in front of Dimatta abruptly shifted to a night-vision enhanced image, but it was from the point of view of the Wasp II on the outboard side of the port pylon. The rain forest was a rippling green blanket. Williams zoomed the lens, searched left, right, then down, and found the tiny black speck moving across the blanket. The speck got larger, took on the shape of an airplane.

Dimatta dialed in “Pylon 2,” on one selector, then “1,” on the next selector, raised the flap, and armed the missile’s propulsion system. The WSO controlled the arming of the warhead.

“Missile’s hot.” He thought he felt his blood pumping faster.

“Got it. No warhead. Targeted.”

The orange target symbol appeared on the screen, lapped over the large black speck.

“Launching.”

The picture on the screen jiggled as the missile leaped from its launch rail. Williams was guiding the Wasp with his helmet, shifting minutely if the target symbol drifted off the Beechcraft. As the supersonic missile closed, Williams reduced the zoom power of the lens.

In a second, Dimatta saw a real airplane.

A second later, he knew it was a Beech Super-18.

The focus was on the left wing… the wing grew large in the screen… the fuselage disappeared… huge engine nacelle…

The engine whipped past, then the view was of green forest, then blackness as the missile crashed into the jungle.

The WSO immediately shifted to the MakoShark’s video system and found the Beechcraft.

It was in an abrupt left turn, diving for a few thousand feet, then straightening out.

“Right on,” Nitro said. “That son of a bitch is going to be wondering what it was for the next ten years. He knows he was one meter away from eternity, but he doesn’t know how or why.”

“That going to be enough? Want another one?” Dimatta’s vision felt super-keen. Everything was so clear. He loved it.

“Nah, not yet. Let’s watch awhile.”

The MakoShark was ten miles from the Beech now, and Dimatta retarded the throttles some more. The HUD registered 400 knots. He nosed over and began to lose altitude at a thousand feet a minute.

Williams let Josie guide the video camera, having locked it onto the target.

The Beech seemed to be staggering. The pilot couldn’t keep it level or flying straight for a few seconds. Finally, he got his nerve back and began to climb.

“Someday, we’re going to fuck up and actually hit one of these bastards,” Dimatta said. “Pearson might even stop giving us practice targets.”

Pearson didn’t know they actually fired missiles at live people. Whenever her intelligence net found some bad guys transporting contraband, she passed it on to Dimatta and Williams, strictly, she said, for the purpose of practicing night interceptions.

“Someday, if we’re lucky,” Nitro said, “the President’s going to turn us loose on drugs and gunrunners.”

“Cross your fingers and anything else you can cross.”

“Let’s go find a hot one and a cold one,” Williams said.

“Can… give me a heading.”

Eighteen minutes later, Dimatta found the infrared landing lights and put the MakoShark down smoothly at Jack Andrews Air Force Base in the middle of Chad in Northeast Africa. Most of them called it “Hot Country,” because it was.

During daylight hours, it was forbidding territory. Located on the southern edge of what was known as the Bodelo Depression, the nearest village, Koro Toro, was over a hundred miles away. It was rough and rugged desert composed of clay and sand sediment without one redeeming feature. The temperatures could reach 124 degrees and often did.

At night, it wasn’t much less forbidding. A good moon gave the terrain surrounding the base the appearance of a lunarscape. Pale, wind-sculpted rock and sand formations. It looked dead; nothing moved. The air was clear, though, and the stars shown with exceptional brilliance.

Like Wet Country, Merlin Air Force Base, the base in Chad was semi-covert. The MakoSharks could operate in the barren reaches rather freely during daylight hours, but when they were in residence, they were parked and serviced inside Hangar One, just in case the airbase was being observed by satellite or Foxbat reconnaissance craft. There were three more hangars and a single massive three-story residential building that contained dormitory rooms, apartments, recreation rooms, and dining facilities.

Also like Wet Country, Hot Country served as a launch and recovery base for the HoneyBee resupply rockets. The launch complex was located to the west of the main base, linked to it by a twin set of railroad tracks.

The HoneyBee vehicle was state-of-the-art in rocketry. It was forty-six feet long and nine feet in diameter, segmented into four compartments — nose cone, which contained the electronics; payload bay; fuel compartment; and propulsion system. For launch, there was an additional booster engine that was jettisoned at 300,000 feet and was not recovered.

The reentry shroud over the nose cone, cast in ceramic, was good for six or seven return trips into the atmosphere and was then replaced.

In a typical mission out of either Chad or Borneo, supplies brought in by C-123, C-130, and C-141 cargo transports were stored in Hangar Four and packed into cargo modules. In Hangar Three, recovered rockets were refurbished, then moved to Hangar Two for final calibration, fueling with the solid-fuel pellets, and insertion of the cargo modules. From there, the Honey Bee was moved to one of the three launch pads on cradled flatcars and craned into position.

The launches had become so routine that they were now less than spectacular to the people involved with them. Depending on time and relative position, a HoneyBee generally achieved rendezvous with Themis in about three hours. In nine years, only four Honey Bees had been lost on launch and seven had malfunctioned in space, but been recovered. Six had been destroyed upon reentry or recovery.

Recovery was also routine. The vehicle descended by parachute and was netted by specially fitted C-130 Hercules aircraft. The C-130 attempted its first pass at about 30,000 feet, so that if it missed, it would have time for a couple more passes. As it flew above the top of the parachute, a loop of cable trailing from the aircraft snared the parachute shrouds, then the rocket was winched aboard, sliding into a rollered cradle in the plane’s cargo bay. It was the same system occasionally employed to rescue downed pilots.

Occasionally, the Hercules missed its quarry, and the HoneyBee splashed down in the sea or crunched down in the desert. Then, the Chinook helicopters took over.

It was important to complete recovery for the HoneyBees frequently came back with cargo aboard. Pharmaceutical concoctions formulated in the almost pure vacuum and zero-gravity of space, electronic components assembled in the same conditions, biological experiments, and ultraclear telescopic photographs were a few of the services performed by the air force for contract customers. The air force was highly paid for these services, and for transporting client employees — biologists, chemists, engineers — to Themis for short stints of duty.

Transportation of client personnel was accomplished aboard the Mako, and there were six of them based at the three support airbases. It was McKenna’s idea. They were an unarmed and unstealthy version of the MakoShark, finished in flat white, and they served an additional purpose. The Mako was a platform for McKenna’s training of flight crews before he made final evaluations of the crew and introduced them to the MakoShark. Dimatta and Williams had spent four months in a Mako.

The HoneyBee and the Mako aerospace vehicles were the overt side of the operations. Though the MakoShark was known to exist by friendly and unfriendly governments, its capabilities were still a tightly kept secret.

Dimatta and Williams stayed with Delta Green until it was parked in Hangar One, then performed their post-flight checklist. A second MakoShark, tentatively coded Delta Orange, was parked next to them, but it was a month or more away from completion. When they were finished, they walked over to the nearly deserted dining room, which was always open, and sat at a table by the window. The view was of flat expanses of sand, a few clumps of brush, and far off, the flat gray runway.

The menu was limited outside of the normal three meal times, and Dimatta was forced to settle for reheated sauerbraten.

George Williams ordered a salad heaped with tomatoes and cucumbers and red onions and sprouts, oil-and-vinegar dressing on the side. No nighttime chef was going to overdo the dressing for him. Williams was a fitness freak. At six-two and 160 pounds, he appeared five or six years younger than his thirty-three. The bright red hair and green eyes added to his youth.

When their plates were delivered, Williams said, “You know what they put in that stuff, Cancha?”

“Yes. And I wholeheartedly approve.” Dimatta forked a chunk of the beef into his mouth and closed his eyes, savoring the flavor.

“It’s going to clog up your whole system.”

“I’ll die a happy man. Your problem, Nitro Fizz, is you don’t know how to enjoy life.”

“You’re going to die before your time.”

“We may all die before our time,” Dimatta said. “But you’ll have ulcers, worrying like you do. Me, I’ll be fat and satisfied. And if we had any unattached women around here, I’d be more satisfied.”

The hub was gigantic, a cylinder of 300 feet of diameter by 200 feet of width. One half of it was constructed like a honeycomb, containing twenty-eight cells, eight of them large enough to accept a Mako or MakoShark behind closed doors. The smaller cells were used to port resupply rockets or for the containment of fuel and other stores.

On the interior end, each of the hangar cells had a window and control station overlooking the hangar. From there, the docking operator could suck the oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere out of the hangar, open the outer doors, guide the Mako or the MakoShark inside, and then close the doors and recharge the atmosphere. The MakoSharks were kept out of the view of satellite eyes and earthbound telescopes. Additionally, it was much easier to service the craft inside the mother ship. Bobbing around in clumsy spacesuits outside the space station encouraged accidents.

McKenna spent part of the morning — Themis’s artificial day was keyed to Eastern Standard Time — supervising the servicing of Delta Blue. The interior, vaultlike door to the hangar was open, and technicians moved freely into and out of the hangar, propelling themselves through the zero gravity with accustomed ease. Grab bars were spaced throughout the hub for the purpose of initiating or arresting movement.

Delta Blue floated in the middle of the hangar, secured only by a half-dozen bungee straps. With her momentum matched to that of Themis, the straps were necessary only to prevent rotation or fore-and-aft movement if a technician pushed off her skin too hard. The dark-blue finish seemed to absorb light from the fixtures mounted all around the gray-painted bay.

The cockpit canopies and the payload bay doors were open as a service technician scurried about with a vacuum hose, seeking any trace of dirt or dust. Minute, foreign objects floating in the station’s atmosphere were taboo. The passenger module had been removed and lashed to one side of the cell, along with another passenger module and several cargo modules. One of the nice things about a weightless environment was that almost any heavy task could be accomplished by one person.

Fuel hoses from the feeder outlets of the hub were attached to the craft, tended by another technician. A flashing red strobe light mounted in one corner indicated that fuel was being transferred. To further emphasize the danger of that operation, a low-toned chime kept repeating itself.

Inside the pressurized hangar, environmental suits were not necessary, and everyone, McKenna included, wore the light blue jumpsuits that had evolved as the clothing of choice aboard Themis. They were comfortable, allowed freedom of movement, and were easily maintained. The soft-soled boots were incorporated as part of the jumpsuit.

When the tech with the vacuum was finished with the forward cockpit, McKenna pushed off the wall, shot across thirty feet of space, and grabbed the windscreen. Twisting around, he pulled himself down into the seat and locked his toes under the rudder pedals to hold himself in place.

Powering up the computer, McKenna called up the MakoShark’s maintenance log. The computer automatically kept a record of the hours used on all of the critical subsystems. Upcoming maintenance requirements were flagged. McKenna scrolled the log up the screen, but did not see anything imminent. A couple more flights, and the doppler radar was due for calibration. The turbo-ramjets would go for another 1500 hours before requiring overhaul.

The chime went silent and the red strobe quit blinking as the fuel technician detached his special fittings and began to retract the hoses into their receptacles.

McKenna didn’t have his helmet, with its microphone, so he reached into the crevice between the seat and the side of the cockpit and found the alternate microphone. Tapping in the frequency for Themis’s maintenance office on the radio pad, he said, “Beta One, Delta Blue.”

A few seconds passed before someone got to the console. “Beta here.”

McKenna recognized the voice of Lt. Col. Brad Mitchell, who was the chief vehicle maintenance officer.

“I’m ready to dump data.”

“Okay, hold a minute. Delta Blue. Go.”

McKenna keyed the command into the computer pad, and all of the updated maintenance data files from the MakoShark were transferred into Beta One’s computer files. Beta One maintained current files on all vehicles operating outside of the atmosphere.

“Okay, got it. Anything pressing, Snake Eyes?”

“I don’t think so, Brad.”

“Is Shalbot out there?”

McKenna looked around and saw T.Sgt. Benny Shalbot, the head avionics technician, hanging onto the hangar door frame. “He’s here, just thinking about it.”

“Well, tell him to get his ass in gear, then get over to Hangar Four. Delta Red’s got a nav radio problem.”

Delta Red was a reserve craft.

“Got it, Brad. Blue out.”

McKenna released his toehold, tapped the seat sides with his fingers, and rose out of the cockpit.

“Hey, Benny, your boss is looking for you.”

Shalbot, a gnome of a man with curly white hair, a bulbous nose, and an infectious grin, said, “And if I’m not careful, Colonel, he’s going to find me.”

Shalbot shoved off the door frame, towing a large black box behind him, did a somersault in midflight, and landed with practiced ease on the nose of Delta Blue.

“He said something about a navigation radio problem on Delta Red,” McKenna said.

“Fuck. Second time in two trials. I’m going to have to change it out. You got any glitches, Snake Eyes?”

“None that Tony or I picked up on.”

“Good.”

Positioning the black box — one by three by two feet in size — in midair above the windscreen, Shalbot opened its lid and withdrew a long umbilical cord. Diving head first into the cockpit, he plugged the multiple-pin connector into a receptacle at floor level on the left side of the cockpit. He rose feet first out of the cockpit, tucked his legs, and rolled upright.

“You need me for anything, Benny?”

“Nope. Go sleep or something. Hey, Snake Eyes, you get a chance to do something this trip?”

“No. Got close, but got called off at the last second.”

“Shit. That’s what this goddamned job does for you.”

Not his job and not McKenna’s job. This job. It was all one effort, every task melded into the singular task, and most of the forty-nine people who were aboard Themis regularly felt like they were part of a team, as Shalbot did. And like anyone in any large organization McKenna had ever known, Shalbot was instantly prepared to complain about the job. He would also be instantly ready to defend it. He was part of an elite team.

Shalbot activated his PDU — Portable Diagnostics Unit — and began the sequence that would test every electronic circuit aboard the MakoShark for operation within specified tolerances. One malfunctioning integrated circuit board, or one diode overheated too many times, could turn success into catastrophe, and the MakoSharks’ electronics were tested each time they arrived on Themis.

McKenna launched himself off Delta Blue and sailed through the doorway to grab a handhold and deflect his flight downward along a wide corridor. All “up” aboard the satellite was toward the center of the hub, and all “down” was away from it.

The side of the hub opposite the hangar/storage half was a maze of corridors, offices, and more storage spaces. Technicians darted along the corridors with purpose, appearing from and disappearing into labs and maintenance areas. He passed the maintenance office, waving at Mitchell as he went by, then slowed to peek into the exercise room. Technically, it was Compartment A-47, but outside of the station commander and the maintenance officer, McKenna didn’t know anyone who called it that.

It was a large space, fitted on all walls — there was no true ceiling or floor — with specialized equipment for maintaining muscle tone. In the center of the wall opposite the door was a small centrifugal weight machine. All of those aboard Themis who did not regularly return to the earth’s surface were provided with an exercise regimen by the station’s doctor. And everyone spent ten or fifteen minutes a day spinning in the artificial gravity of the centrifugal weight machine.

At the end of the corridor bisecting the hub, McKenna came to the curved hallway that went clear around the outer diameter of the hub. Gripping a grab bar for an instant, he deflected his direction and pushed off again.

At irregular intervals along this corridor were self-sealing round doors that led into the spokes. Currently, there were sixteen spokes, though the corridor also had an additional eight doors, locked and painted red, to accommodate the addition of eight more spokes. On opposite sides of the hub, there were also airlocks allowing passage outside the satellite for repair and maintenance.

Four of the modules at the end of their spokes were residential, containing sixteen individual sleeping quarters, recreation/dining spaces, kitchens, and personal hygiene stations. The personnel complement was divided into separate dormitory areas primarily for safety, rather than for social or organizational reasons. If there was an accidental blowout in one of the residential modules, three-fourths of the personnel complement would still be intact. Explaining that cut-and-dried safety consideration to temporary residents like a physicist or biologist brought an ashy shade to their faces.

Other spokes led to the nuclear power plant, the laboratories, the production plants, and the command section. Primary electronics, ventilation, and power were located in the hub, feeding the spokes, so that the loss of any spoke would not cripple the ship. The exception to that rule was the nuclear plant, but backup batteries and solar power sources would still be available for a limited time. The “hot” side of the hub, exposed to the sun, mounted a massive solar array.

McKenna arrived at Spoke One and tapped the large green button mounted on the bulkhead. The automatic door wheezed, rotated two inches to free itself from the locking tangs, then swung open on its massive hinge. The hinge was mounted solidly to the bulkhead, and two bars from the top and bottom of the hinge met in a “V” at the center of the round door, allowing the door to pivot around an axle at the point of the “V”. Decompression in any compartment automatically closed every door on the station.

Once he had clearance, McKenna pushed himself through the opening, pressing the red button on the other side. The door closed behind him, and he pulled himself along the spoke. It was twelve feet in diameter and double walled. Between the walls ran the ventilation ducting, electrical conduits, heating and cooling coils, and thick insulation. Since the satellite did not rotate, there was a hot side and a cold — night — side. The variation in temperature from one side to the other was several hundred degrees, and one computer alone was kept busy cooling and heating the satellite’s skin in order to keep the interior livable.

Access panels were irregularly spaced along the spoke’s forty-foot length. Spoke One was the longest of the spokes. The design of the station allowed for unexpected expansion, as well as for oversized modules at the end of a spoke. Including the largest modules and the spokes, Themis currently had a 470-foot diameter, the equivalent of more than one-and-a-half football fields. To those approaching the station from space, it was a speck in a vast emptiness. To first-time visitors aboard, it was an amazingly complex and huge city.

The interior of Spoke One was lit with three flush-mounted lamps, and there were no windows.

Windows were in short supply on Themis. There was one large round port in each of the four dining rooms and two in the command module. None of the portholes in the dining rooms could observe the hangar side of the hub. If visiting scientists from Air Force-client companies were aboard, they would never see any of the MakoShark arrivals or departures.

On the outer end of the spoke, McKenna negotiated an automatic door in order to reach the command spaces.

The module was forty feet in diameter and sixty feet long, divided into a number of compartments. As commander of the 1st Aerospace Squadron, McKenna rated an office here, if it could be called an office. It was a four-by-four-by-seven-foot cubicle in which he could strap himself to one padded wall and operate his “desk.” The desk was a computer and communications console with three cathode ray tubes recessed into the desk top. It allowed him visual access to three documents simultaneously, or if he split the screens, to six documents. Additionally, he could tap into any of the radar or video monitoring systems.

Except for the console, the cubicle’s arrangement wasn’t much different from his sleeping quarters, and McKenna frequently slept there.

The commander of Themis, Brig. Gen. James Overton, the deputy commander, Col. Milt Avery, and Amy Pearson had similar cubicles. A much larger compartment was utilized by one of the three communications/radar operators on board. Other compartments were designed for storage or contained computer and electronic gear, safety equipment, and emergency environmental suits.

McKenna pushed himself down the short corridor past the smaller cubicles and into the main control room. On the outboard end of the module, the command center was twenty feet deep by almost the full diameter of forty feet. The dominant feature was the centered four-foot, round port providing a view of the earth. At the moment, the focus was on the Mediterranean Sea. The earth seemed to glow, radiating her greens, blues, and tans. The cloud cover was particularly white this morning. It had a rose tint to it.

The command center was a functional place, without much thought given to aesthetics. Conduit and ducting was flattened against the bulkheads, snaking around consoles and black boxes. There weren’t any seats available, though there were a number of Velcro tethers spotted around to keep people operating consoles from floating away from the job.

Avery, the deputy commander, was earthside, on a week’s leave, and Overton was the man in charge. The commander of Themis was forty-four years old and carried the image of that fatherly airliner captain. He had dark hair graying nicely at the temples and steady gray eyes. At six-four, he was tall but solidly built.

He looked around from his station near the porthole as McKenna floated into the center.

“Your birds all sound, Kevin?”

“We may have to change a radio on Red, but otherwise, we’re in great shape, Jim.”

“Good. I think Colonel Pearson is going to want you to wring them out a little.”

McKenna grinned. “How come she always gets what she wants?”

Pearson stuck her head out of her cubicle, then pushed her way out of it. “Because I know what I’m doing, McKenna.”

The light blue jumpsuit did nice things for her.

And for McKenna.

She also wore a matching headband to hold all that gorgeous red hair in place since gravity wouldn’t do it for her.

“Of course you do, Amy. I trust you.”

“That’s a one-way street,” she told him.

McKenna sighed and thought, one of these days…

At eight in the morning, the sun was already high on Zeigman’s right shoulder. It was not as high as it would have been if he were flying at a normal altitude.

The sea was sixty feet below, the white caps visible, the spray glinting as a twenty-knot wind whipped the waves. On his left oblique, dark storm clouds were brewing, their tops roiling, but they were a couple hundred miles away. He would be long gone before the squalls hit.

He had picked up the crosswind half an hour before and had had to alter his course a little. The airplane was skittish at this altitude if he got his left wing too low.

Skittish airplanes never bothered Mac Zeigman. He had been flying since he was fifteen, taught by an uncle from Hannover in an old Aeronica. By the age of eighteen, he had commercial and instrument ratings, as well as some experience flying helicopters and jet aircraft. For six years, he had roamed the world, flying whatever presented itself, for whatever the client would pay.

Zeigman’s given names were actually Gustav Matthew, but an Australian he had met in Pakistan had decided on, “Hey, Mac,” and he had adopted it. He had never considered himself a Gustav or a Matthew, anyway.

Wherever he was in the world, Zeigman lived his life to the full, and it had aged him quickly. At thirty-two, his life was mapped in the small burst veins of his nose and upper cheeks. His face had a red glow resulting from rich food, Kentucky bourbon, Japanese wine, and good German beer. What had once been a relatively handsome face sagged a little now. There were bags under his washed brown eyes from late party nights and early flight mornings. His hair was thick and dark and widow-peaked. The body was still hard and lean, with only a bit of a paunch. He burned off calories with steady work and frequent high-adrenaline escapades. His work was what he loved.

And for the past five years, his work had been steady. Zeigman had been recruited by Oberst Albert Weismann to a direct commission as a hauptmann in the German air force, and a year later, promoted to major. Since he was already a squadron commander, he expected to be an oberstleutnant very soon.

Weismann commanded the Zwanzigste Speziell Aeronautisch Gruppe (20.S.A.G.), comprised of Zeigman’s Erst Schwadron, Metzenbaum’s Zweite Schwadron, a transport squadron, and a helicopter unit. The air group supported the GUARDIAN PROJECT and was based at New Amsterdam Air Force Base near Bremerhaven. The seaport offered Zeigman nearly any form of revelry he could have hoped for.

The Luftwaffe offered him the kind of flying he required.

Zeigman’s squadron was equipped with twelve Panavia Tornados. A multination, multicompany — Aeritalia, British Aerospace, and Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm — design and production effort, the Tornado met several combat roles. It was equally capable of battlefield interdiction, counter-air strike, close air support and air superiority functions. In the ADV (Air Defense Variant) model, originally built for the Royal Air Force, it took on the additional tasks of air defense and interception. The 1st Squadron of the 20th Special Air Group had ADV models.

It was a dual-seat fighter with variable-swept wings, adjustable from 25 to 67 degrees of sweep. A key characteristic was the exceptionally tall vertical stabilizer, also steeply swept back. With Texas Instrument’s forward-looking and groundmapping radar, Foxhunter Doppler navigation radar, and a GEC Avionics terrain-following radar, the Tornado could go almost anywhere its pilot wanted it to go, and in the worst of weather conditions.

And when it got there, it could use its IWKA-Mauser 27 millimeter cannon or any of up to 9,000 kilograms of free-fall, retarded and guided bombs or a variety of air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles. The 1st Squadron’s Tornados were generally armed with air defense weaponry such as the AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles.

And the Tornado got wherever it was going at 2300 kilometers per hour. Major Zeigman loved it.

Frequently, like this morning, Zeigman performed his patrol without his backseater. He preferred solitude when he was flying, and when the visibility was good, he didn’t need the radar or weapons control.

At sea level, Zeigman was using fuel rapidly, though he was holding the fighter at 600 knots, well below its top speed. He did not care. Somewhere, 9,000 meters above him, was his tanker.

When he saw the tip of Svalbard Island rise on the horizon, Zeigman turned to a heading of 340 degrees. Three minutes later, a ship appeared in his windscreen. He adjusted his heading once again, and headed directly for it.

Two miles out, he identified the silhouette as that of the missile cruiser Hamburg, the flagship of der Admiral Gerhard Schmidt. Grinning to himself, he lost yet more altitude, to less than twenty feet above the wave tops.

Obviously, since he had not been challenged, the cruiser’s radar had missed him, lost him in the clutter of radar return off the waves.

Dialing his radio to the frequency assigned to the marine division of the VORMUND PROJEKT, Zeigman thumbed the transmit button on the stick and yelled into his helmet microphone, “BANG!”

He pulled up abruptly, rolled inverted, and passed over the ship, in front of the bridge, fifty feet above the foredeck.

There was consternation on the decks, seamen running wildly about. White faces pressed against the bridge’s windshield, heads swiveling to follow him.

Zeigman gave them the finger, a gesture he had learned from American mercenaries in Zaire and Angola.

Rolling upright, he continued his patrol, and when the radio began to squawk with indignant German naval demands, he switched frequencies again.

Within five minutes, he reached the first of the platforms, Bahnsteig Seeks. Passing within a mile of it, he did not devote much of his attention to activity aboard the platform. He had seen them before, and they all looked alike.

Instead, he scanned the skies and the seas for intruders. That was the job, and the job, as always, was boring. Once in a while, he would see a few fishing boats out of Greenland, but unless they approached within a couple miles of a platform, they were left alone.

Only military vessels and aircraft of any nation were to be challenged, and though Zeigman often hoped for such a confrontation, none had yet materialized.

The routine route around the sea-based rigs was accomplished in twelve minutes. He saw two whales sounding in the slate-gray seas, moving toward the south. He called Bahnsteig Drei with the information that a large iceberg was drifting in their direction. From March through September, the ice pack spawned large and small chunks of ice, and three huge seagoing tugboats were stationed in the area to nudge them away from a platform if necessary.

The platforms on the ice were in a ragged row that stretched over seventy kilometers in distance from east to west and were about twelve kilometers from the edge of the ice shelf. They were visible from a few miles away because of the slight mist that seemed to hang over them, frequently pluming up and away with the wind. Zeigman assumed that heat converters within the domes created the mist.

The ice pack was not smooth. Pressure ridges jutted from it, in long, jagged replicas of lightning. Some reached an altitude of severed hundred feet. Crevasses that could swallow whole airplanes, much less a schneekatze, a snow cat, belonging to one of the rigs, appeared abruptly and unexpectedly. Pollutants from the atmosphere grayed the surface and took the edge off the whiteness, but the sun’s reflection was still dazzling, and Zeigman kept his tinted visor lowered.

He followed the row eastward, away from the storm brewing in the west. If there was much wind in that storm, to fling the snow crystals about, the ice-bound wells would be whited out. A helicopter from one of the resupply ships was landing at Bahnsteig Neunzehn. The men at Bahnsteig Vierundzwanzig were engaged in a volleyball game outside the dome, on the helicopter pad, and he waggled his wings at them as he shot overhead. He would not report the frivolity. Zeigman did not give a damn what they did on the rigs. Oil was oil, and only when it was refined into JP-4 to feed his engine did he pay attention to it.

As the last well passed under him, Zeigman advanced his throttle and pulled the nose up. Dialing the Nav/Com radio into the air group’s net, he triggered the transmit button. “Pelican One, this is Tiger Leader.”

“Go ahead, Tiger Leader,” the tanker pilot told him.

“Pelican One, in four minutes, my fuel state will be critical. Where are you?”

The pilot gave him the coordinates. “You are always near critical, Tiger Leader. You should plan better.”

“Ah, but it is more fun being on the edge,” Zeigman told him. And it was.