Delta Blue

Five

Col. Pyotr Volontov stood at attention in front of the general’s desk. He could have been a prototype for the ideal Soviet officer. Almost six feet tall, he was slim, blond, and blue-eyed. The planes of his face had hard angles that reflected the overhead fluorescent lights. More than that, he was an intelligent man, and a thinking one. He did not often bow to impetuous and blind authority. Volontov kept his eyes fixed firmly on the photograph of the President mounted on the wall behind Sheremetevo.

Though Gen. Vitaly Sheremetevo struggled to maintain the same image as his subordinate, his age of sixty-two was catching up with him. His hair was much thinner and graying rapidly. The waist was thicker, though still successfully disguised by his uniform jackets. Less well disguised was his biting commentary for incompetence whenever he came upon it. Unlike the younger man, Sheremetevo, as deputy commander in chief of the Soviet air forces, was allowed to make whatever comments he might like to make, as well as to expect immediate reform.

Among the general’s responsibilities was the PVO Strany. The START agreements had not detracted from his forces since they were so clearly defensive in nature. The PVO had over 5,000 early-warning radars, 2,500 interceptor aircraft, and 50,000 surface-to-air missiles at its disposal.

Colonel Volontov was also at Sheremetevo’s disposal. The colonel commanded the 5th Interceptor Wing, comprised of MiG-29s and located at Leningrad. Sheremetevo had followed Volontov’s career with greater than normal interest. More than once, he had quietly, and unknown to the man, intervened on Volontov’s behalf when the colonel had balked at ridiculous orders and come close to insubordination. Sheremetevo did not want such a promising officer shunted off into some oblivious air force job.

“You may stand at ease, Pyotr Mikhailovich.”

The use of the patronymic caused just a flicker of surprise in the colonel’s blue eyes. He relaxed only a trifle, locking his wrists behind his back.

“We have met but once before,” Sheremetevo said. “I gave you some decoration or another.”

“I remember, Comrade General. Very likely undeserved.”

“On the contrary. I do not pass out medals that are undeserved.” Sheremetevo himself was a Hero of the Soviet Union. He wore the honor with pride.

“Pyotr Mikhailovich,” the general continued, “what is the condition of the Fifth Interceptor Wing?”

“It is excellent, General. Of my twelve aircraft, eleven are currently airworthy. The morale and capability of my pilots is not surpassed by any unit in the air force.”

“Are you boasting, Colonel?”

“I am stating a fact, General Sheremetevo.”

The deputy commander suspected that that was true. “Your wing would be prepared, then, for a special exercise?”

The blue eyes enlarged by several millimeters. “In fact, Comrade General, my pilots would welcome a deviation in their routine.”

“And you?”

“And myself, General. I always support a need for training, but the current schedules are… boring and repetitious.”

“So you alter them?”

“Only in small ways, General.” Volontov offered a brief smile.

“Very well. The exercise is to be called “Arctic Waste.” The Fifth Interceptor Wing is temporarily assigned directly to my office. You will report only to me.”

Volontov nodded his acceptance and did not betray any curiosity, but Sheremetevo thought that the commander was pleased.

“I will see that an additional two MiG-29s are made available to your wing by tomorrow morning, so that you will be at full aircraft strength, with one reserve airplane. Two reserves, if your twelfth interceptor is repaired. Additionally, two Ilyushin II-76 tankers and two MiG-25 reconnaissance aircraft will be attached to your command.”

“This begins to sound quite interesting, General Sheremetevo.”

“But it will be interesting only to ourselves, Pyotr Mikhailovich. You are not to relate the details of the exercise to anyone. Is that clear?”

“Absolutely.”

“Air controllers in the affected area will also be under my command, and not fully aware of the objectives. Beyond them, no one is to know the nature of the exercise. Should anyone ask you, Colonel, it is simply training in combined aircraft operations.”

“As you wish, General.”

Volontov’s face was a bit more active now, a grim smile in place, the hard, reflective knobs of his cheekbones appearing a bit higher.

“In reality, we are doing a favor for someone.”

“For someone in the Politburo, General?”

“For Admiral Hannibal Cross.”

Sheremetevo saw the flicker of Volontov’s eyes once again as he tried to place the name.

“But General, he is the American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff!”

“Exactly.”

Dr. Tracy Calvin floated underneath Mako Two, waiting while the technician opened the hatch into the passenger module. She hung onto one of the payload doors, and her face was radiant, showing no concern about the reentry flight. Her dark hair was cut short, but still drifted about her head, like an errant halo.

She wore the blue jumpsuit that would now become a souvenir of her two weeks in space, performing arcane experiments in the name of her employer, Lilly Pharmaceuticals. The jumpsuit was very well filled.

The technician backed out of the passenger module, holding an environmental suit, then helped her struggle into it. He slipped the helmet over her head and locked it into the suit collar.

When she looked back toward the hangar’s control station window, McKenna waved at her. She smiled and waved back, perhaps thinking about other experiments accomplished in zero gravity.

McKenna thought he might miss her for a while. Or maybe even look her up the next time he was earth side.

The suit secured, the technician helped her slide inside the module, then followed her to make certain she was strapped in and all of the connections properly made. When he was done, the hatch closed and locked, he darted around the hangar, releasing the restraining straps from the Mako. The matte-white paint reflected the hangar lights, rather than absorbing them, like its sister. McKenna thought of the Mako as a virgin MakoShark. Pristine and sleek and naive.

Maj. Lynn Haggar and Capt. Ben Olsen, Mako Two’s crew, closed their canopies. McKenna figured that sometime in the next month or two, he would take Haggar and Olsen aside and explain the MakoShark to them. They were going to be a good team. McKenna also figured he might have a little trouble convincing generals Overton and Brackman of the wisdom of putting a female pilot in a position with combat potential. Brackman would make some comment about McKenna increasing the size of his harem, but despite his social reputation, McKenna could be very objective when professional competence was concerned. Lynn Marie Haggar was a hell of a pilot.

The payload doors closed.

First Lt. Polly Tang, the station operator tethered to the console beside McKenna, flipped a toggle to activate the speaker in the hangar. Punching a PA button, she said, “Willy, you want to clear the bay?”

The technician, Willy Dey, gave her a thumbs-up, shoved off the wing, and came zooming through the hatchway. Arresting his flight by grabbing the door frame, he tapped the red square, and the big door swung shut, rotated, and locked down. A green light above the door confirmed the seal.

“Locked and sealed, Lieutenant,” the tech called out.

She still double-checked the indicators on her console, then tapped a radio button. “Mako Two, how are your seals?”

“All green, Beta Two.”

Polly Tang was Brad Mitchell’s chief assistant.

On the console in front of her, a small screen showed a radar readout of the immediate space around Themis. The revolving scan lit up a dot on every sweep.

“Mako Two, you’ve got a HoneyBee inbound. Six-zero-zero miles and closing at two hundred feet per minute.”

“We’ll dodge it, Beta.”

“Ready to clear gas.”

“Go.”

Tang lifted a protective flap and switched a toggle. She concentrated on the readouts as the atmospheric gas in the hangar was pumped into holding tanks. Themis did not waste anything, especially something as precious as its atmosphere. Rather than bleeding the oxygen/nitrogen blend into space, it was pumped under pressure into reserve bladders and held until the next time the hangar was used. McKenna heard the snap of the safety deadbolts locking the hatchway door as the atmosphere went below the level of livability.

As soon as the readout indicated almost zero pressure and atmospheric content — it never reached zero and they lost some of it — Tang raised another guard flap and inserted her key. Turning the key allowed the circuit to go active. She snapped the toggle switch.

The hangar doors were segmented into eight polyhedrons, the outside edges matching the eight-sided hangar cell. From the center, they began to slowly open outward.

Dull thumps could be heard and felt in the structure when the doors reached their full open position.

“Mako Two, you are cleared for departure.”

“Bye-bye, Beta Two. See you in a couple days.”

The thrusters on the nose of the Mako flared brightly as the compressed nitrogen hit the vacuum. The craft began to move backward. The thrusters flared again, and Mako Two drifted out of the hangar, Haggar and Olsen both waving.

As soon as the craft cleared the bay, Tang closed the doors, cut the lights in the hangar, and secured her console. She pulled loose the Velcro tether at her belt.

McKenna grinned at her and said, “Now that you’ve got some free time, Polly… ”

Her almond eyes smiled at him. She said, “Go away, McKenna.”

“Well, hell. I have to keep trying.”

“And I appreciate it. I really do. But not in this lifetime, huh?”

“How about the next one?”

She smiled as she pushed off the console. “As soon as I get to it, I’ll think about it, okay? Right now, I’ve got to dock a HoneyBee. Go do whatever it is that you do.”

As she sailed down the corridor, toward the rocket-docking facilities nearer the rim, McKenna snagged a grab bar and launched himself in the opposite direction. His pursuit of Polly Tang was once again in limbo, but his reputation, and hers, were still intact. They had enjoyed the repartee for nearly two years, since she came aboard. Tang had two children and was married, her husband the chief HoneyBee engineer at Wet Country.

He reached Delta Blue’s hangar a minute later and found Shalbot and Sgt. Bert Embry, the ordnance specialist, already waiting for him.

“Goddamn, Colonel” Shalbot said, “this rinky-dink outfit can’t even get its pilots to a meeting on time.”

“Your watch must be fast,” McKenna told him.

“No way.” But he checked his wrist.

Embry checked the pressure and atmospheric readouts on the console, then opened the massive door. When the MakoSharks were hangared, the interior hatchways were kept closed and the control station windows were blacked out to keep the Mako crews and the contract visitors innocent of the MakoShark’s characteristics.

The three of them pulled themselves through the hatchway and floated below the MakoShark. The two camera pods were still mounted on the inboard pylons, but the access doors to the pods were open, ready for the insertion of new film cartridges.

“All right, Benny. I want to move those pylons and the camera pods to the outboard hard points, then mount two weapons pylons inboard. The long pylon on the starboard and a short pylon on the port side. Same setup on Delta Yellow and Delta Green.”

“Delta Red?” Shalbot asked.

“No. We’ll keep the reserve ship clean for now.”

“You got weapons clearance, Colonel?” Embry asked.

“We have part of it,” McKenna told him. Permission to mount weapons had to come from General Brackman at Space Command, and except for a training flight when missiles were fired into the Chad desert or the Celebes Sea, the weapons approval request also followed a laborious route through the JCS and the Oval Office.

As soon as McKenna had returned from his recon flight over the ice, he had called Brackman’s office. “General Brackman is in conference.”

“Ah, Milly, my love, my beautiful… ”

“Can it, Colonel.”

“Please.”

“That’s better. Let me see if I can break in.”

Brackman came on the line a minute later. “What’s up, Kevin?”

“I want to install some ordnance for these recon flights, General.”

“Rationale?”

“I haven’t seen the photos yet, but I got a visual on a couple ships and two Tornados. Those people are armed to the teeth.”

“But they can’t see you.”

“We could debate that point,” McKenna said. “Summertime, there’s a lot of light in the area. Low on the ice, we’re vulnerable to overhead aircraft.”

Brackman was not afraid to make decisions, one of the reasons that McKenna respected him. “Okay, Kevin. You can mount defensive missiles. You can mount guns. Weapons release is not authorized, but I’ll get on the horn to Washington and see if I can get a Presidential directive. It’ll be ‘fire only if fired upon,’ if I get it.”

“That’s all I’m asking for, General.”

Now, McKenna told Embry, “On the left inboard, let’s install the gun pod. On the long pylon, I want one Phoenix, one Sidewinder, and two Wasps.”

“Nothing like wide-ranging preparation, Colonel.”

“Nothing like it, Bert.”

Embry pushed off for an intercom station, to order his assistant to start moving pylons and missiles from the storage lockers, and Shalbot began to remove the access panel to the right outboard hard point. Each hard point had a number of alternative electronic hookups, depending on which pylon, and which pod was to be utilized.

McKenna had selected the longer pylon for the missiles in order to have room for the thirteen-foot-long, fifteen-inch-diameter Phoenix, as well as the nine-foot-long Sidewinder and the shorter Wasps. On the shorter pylon, they could mount the gun pod, four Wasp, three Sidewinder, or two Phoenix missiles.

It was, as far as McKenna was concerned, the minimal ordnance load. Despite the heat shielding on the modified missiles, some did not survive the temperatures of reentry. On average, they lost 12 percent of their missiles to heat-caused malfunction. So far, they had never had one of the 20-millimeter M61 rotating barrel guns fail. But McKenna had been in the air force for too many years. He knew there was a first time for everything.

“Colonel McKenna,” the PA blared. “Colonel McKenna, please report to the Command Center.”

“You set that up, didn’t you, Colonel?” Shalbot called to him.

“Set up what, Benny?”

“Get yourself paged, just when the work is supposed to start.”

“Damned right.” McKenna grinned at him.

It took him four minutes to make the passage, and he found Overton, Pearson, and Sgt. Donna Amber waiting for him, gathered around the primary console below the port.

Amy Pearson had one of his reconnaissance photographs up on the main screen.

“Damn. I’m a pretty good photographer,” McKenna said. “The best I know, in fact.”

Amber smiled at him.

Pearson said, “The photos are okay.”

“Just okay?”

“They’ll do. This is the close-up of well number twenty-three. In configuration and dimension, it matches all of the others. The offshore units, of course, are on somewhat triangular platforms with three protruding leg mounts. The ice-based units have a similar, though smaller, subplatform, and they are also fitted with three short legs. That allows them to adjust for irregularities in the terrain.”

McKenna saw that the platform was actually several feet above the ice, rather than placed directly on it. The one platform leg that was clearly visible in the picture appeared to have a spade-footed base that dug into the ice.

“We used the helicopter on well number twenty as a dimension reference,” Pearson said. “It was an MBB B0105, marked for the navy, and it has thirty-two-foot rotors. The helicopter pad is seventy-five feet by seventy-five feet. They could actually get three or four choppers on it with a little juggling.

“On the ice is a twenty-by-twenty shed, which I am assuming contains equipment, storage, and perhaps a couple of tracked vehicles. Except for the leg-adjustment motors and several antennas on top of the dome, all equipment is contained within the dome. The dome has a two hundred and twenty-foot diameter.”

Which was close to what McKenna had guessed. “Is that tall enough for a drilling rig, Amy?”

She nodded. “More than enough. I’d guess, however, that the dome skin is particularly thick, for insulation purposes. The antennas on top suggest VLF, UHF, VHF, and FM radio frequency capability. Additionally, the offshore platforms also have radar antennas. From the antenna design, we’re estimating something similar to the High Lark radar used on the MiG-twenty-three. It would have an effective radius of forty-five miles.”

“All of the offshore wells?”

“All of them.”

“They’re operating on I-Band,” McKenna said. “We picked up a few of them on the threat receiver.”

“As a guess,” General Overton said, “they’d have to stay alert to drifting icebergs. There’s a lot of those this time of year. And if they protrude out of the water far enough, radar might help spot them.”

“Which suggests that their fleet should include a few ocean-going tugboats,” McKenna said.

Pearson agreed. “I would think so, but we haven’t seen one as yet”

“Some of those big bergs would be damned hard to divert,” Overton said.

“Still, three or four tugs working at the same time could effect enough deviation in course to clear a well,” Pearson countered.

“Probably. The wells are all still there.”

“Back to the platforms,” Pearson said. “On the side of the dome opposite the helicopter pad are five storage tanks, perhaps with ten thousand gallons capacity each. On each well, tank number five vents a white, almost translucent, vapor. I’m going to run a spectrograph on it, but I suspect that the tank contains a heating apparatus of some sort.

“And that’s about all that we’ve learned from these pictures.”

Pearson tapped a few keys, and one of the infrared photos appeared on the screen.

“This is well number eight, but all of the offshore platforms have essentially the same characteristics.”

There wasn’t much to the picture. A hot red center expanding into lighter shades of red, then orange, then yellow, then blue.

“Given the film we used,” McKenna said, “doesn’t that thing look hotter than it should be?”

Amber grinned at him. “Right on, Colonel.”

Pearson looked up, then said begrudgingly, “Yes. It does. I would expect the dome to be exceptionally well-insulated, to allow men to work in that environment, but we’re seeing more heat loss than we should. Then, too, there’s some heat loss into the sea that surprises me.”

“There might be some heat generated by the pumping of oil through the casing,” Overton suggested.

“Or from rotating drills, if they’re still drilling,” McKenna added.

“But not that much, McKenna,” Pearson said.

“So you want more IR?”

“Yes. We’ll use Type thirty-fifty on one camera and Type thirty-ninety on the other. Maybe I can extrapolate from the two sensitivities.”

“When?”

“The sooner the better.”

“Donna, you want to page the troops for me? We’ll meet in the exercise compartment.”

“Sure thing, Colonel”

As McKenna waited for the door to open, he heard Amber’s voice on the PA. “First AS flight crews report to Compartment A-four-seven.”

On board Themis, the flight crews were assigned to separate residential spokes, again for safety reasons. When they met as a squadron, they used the large exercise space in the hub as a briefing room.

When he floated through the hatchway into the exercise compartment, he found all but Munoz accounted for. The fitness maven, Nitro Fizz Williams, was pumping spring-loaded iron, his feet planted firmly against a wall. Dimatta was upside down, chinning himself on the upper bar of a Nautilus machine, which might have required a couple ounces of effort. Will Conover was dressed in a pair of blue shorts and a T-shirt, the scars on his arms white against otherwise tanned flesh. He had ridden an F-16 into Edwards with landing gear that collapsed on touchdown. He tore up his arms getting out of the flaming wreckage. Do-Wop Abrams had a cassette stereo pounding out Bo Diddley’s “Detour.”

This was the first time they had all been together in over a week. Since most of their assigned missions could be accomplished by one MakoShark, they frequently missed each other in the transit between the space station and the earth side bases.

Dimatta aimed a pouch of Coke at him, then gave it a nudge with his finger. “Here you go, Kev.”

“Thanks, Cancha. Where’s Tony?”

“Where else?”

“Asleep. We’ll give him a couple minutes.” McKenna caught the floating soft drink, pulled the flexible straw loose from the side of the pouch, and sucked on it. The Coke was cold.

When Munoz arrived a few minutes later, bright-eyed from plenty of sleep, McKenna said to Abrams, “Jack, you want to put Bo on hold?”

Abrams killed the tape.

McKenna briefed them on Pearson’s concerns about the oil wells in the Greenland Sea, as well as his and Munoz’s earlier flight.

Though all of the men in the room would rather be at the controls of a MakoShark, McKenna strictly enforced a Space Command regulation limiting the number of flight hours per week. A groggy or fatigued pilot or systems officer could easily destroy a MakoShark. At three-quarters of a billion dollars per copy, they weren’t expendable. Delta Red was the only reserve machine, though a MakoShark coded Delta Orange was in the final stages of completion at Jack Andrews Air Force Base in Chad. It wouldn’t be ready for flight trials for another month, or even two.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty agreements allowed for one more craft, but appropriations had not been forthcoming from Congress. Under START, the U.S. had given up forty of a planned seventy-two B-2 Stealth bombers, but had been allowed to develop six MakoSharks. In McKenna’s mind, the six aerospace fighters were the equivalent of all seventy-two B-2s.

“Any questions on where we stand so far?”

“Nope,” Conover said. “Who gets the next shot?”

“You and I, Will, are close to max on flying time, so Frank gets the next one. I want you and Jack to hit the sack and stand by, just in case we need another run.”

“I get to sack out, too?” Munoz asked.

“Your turn to play operations officer, Tiger. The paperwork awaits you.”

“Shucks.”

“Hot damn,” Dimatta said. “And we go armed? I saw Shalbot and Embry working on Delta Blue.”

“You’re armed, Cancha, but only I get to pull the trigger. We clear on that?”

“Clear, Snake Eyes.”

Nitro Fizz Williams, the backseater, said, “Do we finish the run at Jack Andrews?”

“I hope so,” Dimatta said. “I could use a decent meal.”

“Right back here,” McKenna told them. “Amy wants her film.”

“Well,” Dimatta said, “we both want something.”

The leer on Dimatta’s face made halfway clear his own desires, though McKenna wasn’t certain whether the pilot would rather have a shot at Pearson or at some hostile aircraft.

Malcolm Nichols spun the helm, and Walden heeled hard to the left. The small ice floe, protruding barely eighteen inches out of the water, but probably weighing ten tons, passed by on the starboard side.

“Jesus, Mal. That was close.”

“It’s okay, Jennifer. Danny saw it in time.”

Danny Hemmings was up on the bow, watching for such things. He was dressed in a fur-lined parka, but Nichols could see him shivering from time to time. It might be summer above the Arctic Circle, but any breeze at all dropped the relative temperature considerably.

Nichols kept his eyes on Hemmings, halfway fearful of missing some urgent signal from his lookout.

The Walden was a forty-two-foot sport fisherman, an old Hatteras with a wooden hull and thirty years of creaks, but it handled rough seas well. The seas were, in fact, relatively calm, with just a slight chop moving before a ten-mile-per-hour wind.

The boat’s name and home port — Boston — were roughly stenciled on the aged white paint of her transom. The more important identification was painted in two-foot-high green letters along both sides of the hull: GREENPEACE.

Nichols had given up the open flying bridge the day before, when the winds became more frigid. He manned the secondary controls behind the windshield of the salon. It was warmer, but his vision was severely restricted, and Danny Hemmings and Margot Montaine, the French girl Danny had met in Cherbourg, had been taking turns on the bow.

Jennifer Pearl brought him a fresh mug of coffee. “Thanks”

“What do you think we’re going to find, Mal?”

“Damned if I know, but the captain of that Greenland fishing boat said something’s fucking with the marine life. Well just cruise by those German wells, maybe sample the water a little.”

The Walden had been taking on supplies in Trondheim, Norway, when Nichols met the fishing boat’s master in a waterfront dive. They shared a bottle of aquavit, and Nichols learned that large gams of whales were migrating out of the Greenland Sea. It was not a normal migration, the captain told him. Additionally, the fleets were finding that the fishing had become less bountiful over the last few years. The captain eagerly pointed a finger in the direction of the Germans, detailing the two times he had been turned away from the oil fields by German naval vessels.

“You think an oil spill?” Jennifer asked him.

“It’s been known to happen,” he said unnecessarily. “Damn sure, we’ll know soon.”

“If we find the wells.”

No one aboard the old cruiser was a navigator. Old charts, dead-reckoning, and flipped coins were the height of the Walden’s technology.

“We’ll find them,” Nichols vowed.

Maj. Wilhelm Metzenbaum commanded the Zweit Schwadron of the 20.S.A.G. His pilots flew the Eurofighter, a single seat, delta-winged air defense fighter. Similar in appearance to the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon, it also had attack capabilities, able to transport ten 454-kilogram bombs in addition to two external fuel tanks. The prototype had first flown in late 1990, and Metzenbaum’s squadron had been the first to be fully outfitted with the new fighter.

Metzenbaum and his wingman, Hauptmann Mies Vanderweghe, were currently armed in the interceptor mode, with Skyflash 90 air-to-air missiles. They had completed their circuit of the oil fields, and Metzenbaum flew alongside the tanker, waiting while Vanderweghe approached the tanker’s boom. Metzenbaum had topped off first.

Metzenbaum was an eighteen-year veteran of the Luftwaffe. He had flown any aircraft the commanders had put in front of him, and he had flown it well. A short and dark man, with a thick black mop of hair, he was married and had two children, twin boys, who were about to enter the University of Frankfurt. Behind his back, the men in his squadron called him “Bear,” not only because of his gruff demeanor, but because of the dense mat of dark hair that covered his chest and back.

He listened to the boom operator: “That is good, Panther Two. A little more to your left… ”

A voice on his tactical frequency interrupted. “Panther Leader, this is Platform Six.”

The speaker from Bahnsteig Seeks sounded agitated.

Metzenbaum depressed the transmit button. “Platform Six, Panther Leader.”

“Are you still in my area, Panther Leader?”

“Affirmative. Two hundred kilometers away.”

“We have a small boat approaching, estimated at four kilometers distance.”

“That close?”

“It must be a wooden boat, without a radar reflector in operation, Panther Leader. Radar picked it up only moments ago.”

“Panther Leader to Platform Six. I will investigate. Panther Two, you will return to base.”

Metzenbaum was at 7,000 meters. He eased the stick to the right, brought his left wing over, and went into a turning dive, stopping the turn when he reached a heading of 245 degrees. The speed climbed from 450 kilometers per hour to Mach 1.2. He leveled out at 1,000 meters.

Thirteen minutes later, Metzenbaum saw the red strobe light atop Bahnsteig Sechs, and to the south of it by a couple of kilometers, the white cruiser. A minute later, he made out the letters on the side of the boat.

Ah, damn.

Metzenbaum had no quarrel with the goals of some of the environmental groups, but some of the more fanatical groups utilized tactics that irritated him. Ramming a nuclear aircraft carrier with a small boat seemed to him both ineffective and suicidal.

Throttling back, he reduced his speed to 400 kilometers per hour and dove on the boat. On the first pass, he went by at thirty meters of altitude, the noise of his passage rocking the man standing on the bow. He grabbed for the bow rail and hung on for dear life. The boat slowed.

Metzenbaum dialed the international marine channel on his secondary Navigation/Communication radio.

He spoke in English. “Greenpeace boat, this is Major Metzenbaum of the German air force.”

There was no response.

“Greenpeace boat… ”

“What do you want, Major?” The voice was nasal, with just a twang of anxiety in it.

“You are cruising in restricted waters. You must turn back.”

“That’s damned nonsense, Major Whoever-you-are. We are in international waters, and we’ll go where we want to go.”

Metzenbaum circled wide to the south, climbing a few meters.

“Greenpeace boat, I inform you that you are in waters under control of the Bremerhaven Petroleum Corporation. It is dangerous to go too close to the well. You must turn back immediately.”

“It’s a free sea,” the male voice told him.

Metzenbaum had only air-to-air missiles with him, but he was not going to hit anything, anyway, he hoped. With his rudder, he tightened his turn and lined up on the boat. Arming one of the Sky flashes, he dropped the nose of the Eurofighter until the cruiser appeared in the bottom left of the gun sight. He would not use the computer-targeting mode.

The fighter dove and closed rapidly on the boat, and Metzenbaum aimed fifty meters to the right of it, then pressed the commit button on the stick. The missile leapt from its guiding rail.

Flash of white-hot exhaust.

Plume of seawater.

Silent thump of explosion under the surface of the sea.

Another, taller plume erupted from the ocean.

“Jesus Christ! Hey, you son of a bitch! You’re shooting at us!”

“You must turn back now,” Metzenbaum said.

The cruiser went into a wide turn toward the south as Metzenbaum gained altitude and prepared for a long series of figure eights.

He called New Amsterdam on the squadron’s frequency. “Second Squadron, Panther Leader.”

“Go ahead, Panther Leader”

“Prepare to scramble Panthers Seven and Eight. They will need to relieve me in approximately forty minutes.”

Metzenbaum heard the klaxon sound over the open radio circuit.

It was eight o’clock at night, still very light over the Greenland Sea.

Delta Green had been circling at 40,000 feet, taking the high-altitude infrared shots that Pearson wanted, and waiting for the two fighters and the tanker to clear the area before making the pass at 5,000 feet. The WSO had picked them up much earlier on the 200-mile scan. He had then gone passive with the radar, and just now activated it for three sweeps.

“Well, shit!” Williams said. “The guy just fired a missile into the sea.”

Doing what we do to unsuspecting Super 18s, Dimatta thought. “No target?”

“None that I could see on the screen. I’ll go active in a minute for another sweep.”

A few minutes later, Williams told him, “The one on the deck is taking the lazy way back, Cancha. He’s flying figure eights, moving toward the south at around twenty knots. The tanker and the other fighter are now two-five-zero miles south of us.”

“Must be, he’s got a boat down there, Nitro.”

“We going to look?”

“Maybe just a quick peek.”

Dimatta pulled his throttles back and eased the hand controller forward. The nose of the MakoShark angled downward, and he put it in a wide left turn, spiraling downward.

Williams changed the range of the radar to the fifty-mile sweep, and the target appeared at the very edge of Dimatta’s CRT.

As they reached 8,000 feet, Dimatta began to level out and line up on the target. It was dead ahead on a heading of 188 degrees. It was forty-four miles away at 2,000 feet above the sea. The HUD readout showed his own speed at 600 knots.

The screen blanked out as Williams cut off the radar.

“We want to make the pass to our left,” Williams said. “That’ll put dark sky above us. We go in straight, he may get a visual.”

“Roger, Nitro.”

Dimatta made a shallow S-turn to the left.

“I’m staying passive,” Williams said, and the screen went to a direct visual. Dark seas, darkening skies.

Stealth aircraft, or no stealth aircraft, radar that actively sought targets — emitting signals — was detectable by opposing forces. The electronic countermeasures package aboard most military aircraft was capable of locating signals generated in most radar bands, from D to K. As they passed over the wells, they picked up a few chirps on the I-Band threat receiver from active radar operating from the wells. Williams squelched them out.

The threat receiver chattered.

“The German down there has a J-band,” Williams said. “May be a Foxhunter radar.”

“Tornado,” Dimatta said.

“Or Eurofighter. They’re supposed to have them, too.”

“Cancha do an IR check?”

“Coming up.”

Five miles away from the fighter, Williams did a quick infrared scan, picking up several heat sources. He fed them all to the computer.

“The airborne target has twin turbofans and a six-five percent chance of being a Eurofighter, Cancha. No read on the others. Behind us, we’re getting a couple of the wells. The small target to the south is probably a small boat.”

“He’s escorting it out of the area.”

“Good bet.”

“How badly do we want to know details, Nitro?”

“Amy’ll want to know all about it.”

“Okay,” Dimatta said. “I’m going to turn right onto the target. You go full mag on visual.”

“Roger. Go two-six-zero. Let’s take it down some.” Dimatta turned right until the HUD gave him 260 degrees. He bled off power and the MakoShark began to descend.

The cruiser had its running lights on, and Dimatta easily picked it out of the gloom that was magnified twenty-five times on the screen. Between the fore and aft lights, however, was a grayish white blob.

The HUD showed him at 3,000 feet.

“Where’s that German?” Dimatta asked.

“Damned if I know. I’ll put IR on the small screen… Okay, got him still at two thousand, six miles at bearing three-four-one.”

That put him on Dimatta’s right.

“Soon as we get an ID, Nitro, I’m climbing out of here to the left.”

“Chicken.”

The cruiser grew rapidly on the screen.

“Got it!” Williams said. “Hit it, Cancha!”

Dimatta advanced his throttles and started a climbing left turn.

“Greenpeace, was it?” Dimatta asked.

“Yeah. I’ve got it on tape.”

Dimatta pressed the transmit button on the hand controller. “Alpha One, Delta Green.”

“Delta Green, Alpha reading.” It was Overton’s voice. “Alpha, we had a visual on a Greenpeace boat being run out of the target area. We suspect that it was fired on by a Eurofighter.”

“Green, you have a description of the boat?”

Williams broke in. “Estimate forty feet, probably wood, white with large letters spelling Greenpeace along the hull. Current position seven-seven-degrees, nine-minutes north, four-degrees, three-minutes east.”

“Roger, Delta Green. Well see if someone from NATO or the CIA can’t run them down and talk to them. Alpha out.”

On the intercom, Dimatta said, “If that boat captain took a missile off the bow, he’s probably running damned scared.”

“And the crew,” Williams said, “is busy cleaning the decks.”

Milly Roget’s soft voice came over the intercom. “General, you have a call on direct line two.”

“Thank you, Milly.” Marvin Brackman punched the button on his oversized desk set and picked up the receiver. “Brackman.”

It would be Hannibal Cross or Harvey Mays. Line two was direct to the Pentagon.

It was Cross, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Marv, I just got back from State.”

“Were they diplomatic, Hannibal?”

“Oh, yes. And just as ineffective as usual.”

“The Germans wouldn’t respond?”

“They responded, but they didn’t. The oil fields are a private enterprise of Bremerhaven Petroleum, and certainly, the German Department of Foreign Affairs could not interfere in the workings of a private corporation. They know none of the details. They claim.”

“What about all the security the German High Command is providing?” Brackman asked.

“That’s only a normal precaution extended to any German national company. We ought to apply for citizenship, Marv.”

“Not damned likely, Hannibal. My grandmother on Mommy’s side was Jewish.”

“You hearing those rumors, too?” the chairman asked. “Are they rumors? I talked to Appleton over at DIA a couple weeks ago. He thinks the German military is quietly culling its ranks.”

“Maybe I’ll invite him up here for a chat.”

“Did our State people try Bremerhaven directly?” Brackman asked, to get back on track.

“Yes, but without success. The company professes to be utilizing new methods of exploration, and they’re restricting knowledge of their process. They say they’re afraid of industrial espionage.”

“Do we have anything out of the CIA on the oil company yet?”

“Hold on, Marv. I’ve got a sheet here somewhere. Yeah. The corporation itself is privately held, with some thirty shareholders. There are no public records, but the Agency estimates a total investment of close to twenty-five billion U.S. dollars. They have no idea of what the debt structure looks like. All of the officers of the corporation have clear records and histories.”

Brackman thought that over. “When it’s that clean, and that private, with that many bucks involved, Hannibal, I tend to suspect a facade.”

“The Agency does say something along the same lines. Here it is. Best estimate is that there are other investors, unnamed.”

“Uh-huh. So what do we do about it, Admiral?”

“Looking for a decision, are you?”

“If you’ve got one handy.”

“What’re your Themis people doing now?”

Brackman checked his watch. “Should be in the middle of another reconnaissance mission.”

“You find out what they learn, then get back to me. Personally, I think we ought to step up our surveillance.”

“I do, too, Hannibal.”

“They’re not oil wells, General Brackman.”

“You’re certain of that, Colonel Pearson?”

“I am, sir.”

“What are they?”

“That, I don’t know. But the heat generation is far too high for the typical drilling or pumping platform. I ran comparisons with data from offshore wells in the North Sea and off the California coast.”

On his end of the scrambled radio circuit, Brackman went silent.

In the Command Center, McKenna, Overton, and Pearson waited. T.Sgt. Donna Amber was tending the console in the communications space, monitoring the satellite system relays.

Brackman came back. “Kevin, you still there?”

From the look on her face, Amelia Pearson still didn’t think that full generals should be on a first-name basis with lowly squadron commanders. It only went one way in public, however.

“Still here, General.”

“I want a nightly surveillance on those wells. Continue taking infrared. Maybe we’ll catch a door open, and get better readings.”

Maybe, but McKenna didn’t think so. “Got it, sir.”

“And I want a full update on all military installations, forces, and equipment on the German mainland. Make whatever flights are required. Let’s drop some sonobuoys along that underwater pipe.”

McKenna did some hasty calculations. “General, I need a couple more pilots in order to stay under the maximum hours. I want to move Haggar and Olsen into the MakoSharks.”

That alerted Overton, and his face reddened. “No way, Kevin.”

“I don’t think so, either,” Brackman said.

Pearson had a smirk on her face. Whether she was happy that McKenna wasn’t getting his way again, or unhappy that a female colleague was running into opposition, McKenna couldn’t tell.

“Sir, we can’t get you the coverage you want and still meet the regulations.”

“To hell with the regulations,” Brackman said. “You manage to ignore them, McKenna, unless you can use them in your favor. You can go ten per cent over on flying hours. I’ll follow that up with a written directive.”

“Still… ”

“Besides, you’re going to get some additional help from the Fifth Interceptor Wing.”

McKenna struggled with the designation. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place it, unless…

“The Soviets, General?”

“That’s it. Your contact will be the wing commander, a Colonel Pyotr Volontov.”

“No shit. Uh, no shit, General.”

“No shit, McKenna.”