Delta Blue

Seven

Col. Pyotr Volontov chose the early morning, three-thirty in Leningrad, for his first flight over the oil fields. It was also three-thirty in Murmansk, where General Sheremetevo had temporarily deployed the 5th Interceptor Wing. Even based at the relatively primitive facilities at Murmansk, 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, the western side of the target area was over 1,800 kilometers away, requiring refueling from an airborne tanker en route.

On the first flight, Volontov flew cover for the unarmed MiG-25 reconnaissance aircraft, staying at 10,000 meters, 3,000 meters above the MiG-25.

Volontov’s MiG-29, which NATO had codenamed Fulcrum, was a full Mach number slower than the MiG-25, which could accelerate to Mach 3.2. He considered the MiG-29 the superior attack aircraft, however. The older plane was 20,000 kilograms heavier, constructed of steel, and many models still carried vacuum tube-based electronics. In comparison, the MiG-29 was ultramodern, with Pulse-Doppler multimode radar capable of lookdown/shootdown and an infrared search and tracking sensor. His craft was armed with a 30-millimeter cannon and six AA-11 air-to-air missiles. In a head-to-head confrontation with a MiG-25, Volontov thought he would emerge the survivor as a result of his airplane’s greater agility.

Maj. Anatoly Rostoken, who commanded Volontov’s 2032nd Squadron, was flying the reconnaissance plane, somewhat gingerly since he had not flown the MiG-25 for a couple years.

Six hundred kilometers northwest of Murmansk, in the wavery light of a summer night, the Ilyushin tanker replenished the thirsty fighters, then climbed away to orbit and await their return. While Rostoken could now complete the homeward leg to Murmansk, the MiG-29 had only a 1,200-kilometer combat radius. If Volontov were required to use afterburners or expend fuel at a high rate in low level, high speed flight, he would need to meet the tanker once again.

After the hectic transfer of his wing to the northern base — requiring the use of six transports to transfer his ground support personnel and the wing’s equipment, Volontov was happy to be almost by himself. Doing something worthwhile for a change.

The members of his two squadrons, the 2032nd and the 2033rd, were also elated at the change in routine, though somewhat mystified by the lack of detail he had provided them in briefings. General Sheremetevo, however, had ordered him to provide them with minimal information. Operation Artie Waste was simply an exercise in combined operations over the icy waters and glacial ice, with innocuous oil wells utilized as the simulated targets.

“Condor One, this is Vulture One,” Rostoken radioed.

“Proceed, Vulture One.”

“I have Svalbard Island on radar. Bearing three-five-four, nine-two kilometers.”

“Very well, Vulture One. Go to five thousand meters and initiate mission.”

Volontov reached out to switch his radar to the active mode for three full sweeps. He found the outline of the island immediately and the blip of Vulture One a half second later. Returning the radar to inactive, he nudged the stick forward and went into a shallow dive, intending to lose 3,000 meters of altitude, staying close to the MiG-25.

The HUD readout indicated a rise in his speed to 550 kilometers per hour, and he backed the throttles off to keep it from rising higher. The HUD in the MiG-29 was not as sophisticated as those in American aircraft, but it provided him with basic readings.

Rostoken was thirty kilometers ahead of him, almost to the coast of Greenland, when the radar threat alarm sang its shrill syllables.

“Condor, flight of two, bearing one-five-five, four-zero kilometers.”

“Vulture, turn to zero-one-zero and climb to two-two-thousand meters,” Volontov ordered.

“Confirmed.”

The MiG-25 was one of the few aircraft in the world with a ceiling exceeding 24,000 meters. The American SR-71 Blackbird could do it, but it had been retired.

Feeling that the MiG-25 could protect itself with altitude, Volontov made a tight left turn and began to climb. He used the radar momentarily and found the two blips at 6,000 meters. The ground clutter from the sea was difficult to read, but he picked out a few of the wells and several ships before switching the set to passive mode.

Flying in formation like that, they would be the Tornados or Eurofighters that Sheremetevo had warned him about, rather than a commercial flight.

Volontov would have liked to buzz them, purely for the exhilaration of it, but he had been told to steer clear of patrols.

The threat receiver sounded again, and a moment later, the alarming warning appeared in red letters on the HUD — HOSTILE MISSILE LOCK-ON.

Volontov grinned to himself, tasting the rubbery tang of his face mask. The bastards thought to scare him off, locking on with an infrared-seeking missile.

Switching to the international frequency, he heard the end of a sentence in English. “… aircraft, identify yourself.”

He did not respond.

“Unidentified aircraft, I will fire a warning shot in one minute unless you identify yourself.”

To hell with General Sheremetevo, Volontov thought. He would test the resolve of these Germans.

With right stick and rudder, Volontov banked over into a dive. He activated the radar, then the armaments panel, selecting two AA-11 missiles.

He found the two aircraft quickly on the radar screen, their blips almost merged, and lined up his dive. Pushed the throttles forward.

Speed rose quickly. The airframe shuddered as he passed through the sound barrier.

Mach 1.1.

Distance to objective, twenty kilometers.

His missiles locked on to the lead aircraft. Radar-homing. The low buzz in his earphones and the HUD readout told him so.

The Germans scattered, the lead plane diving away to the left, the trailing aircraft to the right. The hostile LOCK-ON message flickered and died as the German plane lost his angle on the MiG-29.

Volontov shut down his own missiles and chuckled to himself.

The Americans would call them chickenshits.

Easing back on the stick, he pulled out of his dive at 3,000 meters above the sea, turning slightly to the right, toward a homeward course.

On the radar, the German aircraft were regrouping almost ten kilometers behind him.

“Wha-wha-wha-wha!”

The missile threat receiver sounded in his ear.

The HUD blinked at him: HOSTILE MISSILE LOCK-ON.

This one had been launched.

Slapping the stick left, Volontov rolled the plane inverted, looking up through the canopy.

Black dot circled in rosy, fiery white.

Surface-to-air, rising from a ship.

“Bastards!”

Tracking him on infrared.

He retarded his throttles, then pulled the nose on over and aimed for the missile, to get his hot exhaust out of its line of sight.

Closing fast.

Seconds away.

He opened up with his cannon, a futile gesture.

Rolled the left wing up, tugged the stick back to his crotch, shoved the throttles to military thrust.

The MiG strained as it pulled out of the dive. The G-forces drained the blood from his face.

The missile abruptly diverted its course away from him.

As Volontov regained control and began climbing, he wondered about the sincerity of the missile battery commander aboard that ship.

He was not certain that it was only a warning shot.

“Yes, General Eisenach, we launched a missile. Purely a warning. It was diverted in the last moments.”

Adm. Gerhard Schmidt was in his flag plot, one deck below the bridge of the Hamburg. The large, thickly padded chair in which he sat was fastened to the deck, but it could swivel between the large port which gave him a view of the sea to the two-meter electronic plotting screen mounted on the interior bulkhead. The screen was now relatively quiet. The wells were indicated as yellow squares. His battle group, comprised of the Hamburg and two destroyers, was shown in green. The two Tornados were just leaving the screen, headed south.

Eisenach mulled that over. “First a Greenpeace ship, now an airplane.”

“There were two airplanes.”

“Visible on radar. American aircraft?”

“No, General. They were Soviets. Most likely a Foxbat and a Fulcrum, according to the radar and infrared signatures.”

“Damn it, Gerhard! The Soviets, now?”

“They were far off their normal reconnaissance runs over the North Sea.” Schmidt sat low in his chair, his elbows placed firmly on the soft armrests. He tapped a forefinger against the earlobe of his jutting left ear. “My assumption was that the Foxbat was taking pictures. This is the first time we have encountered aircraft, and we followed standing policy in challenging them, but the Fulcrum pilot was exceptionally aggressive. He attacked the Tornados.”

“He fired on them?”

“No. But he was not frightened by our airborne tactics. Tactics devised by the air force, I remind you.”

“So you took it upon yourself to order a launch?” Eisenach’s tone carried his agitation.

“They are no longer here.”

“But, Gerhard, rest assured that they will be back.”

Schmidt was left listening to the carrier wave.

He shrugged to himself. He had a large number of missiles available.

Developing photographs aboard Themis was not a simple task. Specialized equipment had been devised which allowed the film to be placed in small compartments, a door closed, then the chemicals released into the compartment. After the prescribed amount of time, the chemicals were sucked out of the compartment. It was time-consuming, and Amy Pearson had spent most of her morning developing the hundreds of pictures — each of them marked with time and coordinates in the upper right-hand corner-brought back by the three Makosharks.

After they were developed, she passed them under a video camera, transferring the images to the more manipulative medium of computer-based imaging. Then she followed the corridors and hatchways back to the Radio Shack in the Command Center to pore over them on one of the consoles.

Donna Amber was standing the morning communications shift, succeeding Sgt. Don Curtis. As soon as Pearson appeared in the hatchway, Amber said, “Colonel, Don Curtis left me a message for you. Says you might want to review the radar tapes.”

“For when, Donna?”

“Uh, let’s see. Nine to nine-fifteen our time, concentrating on the Greenland region.”

“Okay, bring it up, please.”

The radar aboard Themis, with its ninety-foot-wide antenna housed in the massive fiberglass pod on Spoke Fifteen, could radiate up to fifteen million watts of energy, drawing on the nuclear reactor. At full output, it had over 400 miles of range, but that energy usage also dimmed all of the lights and slowed all of the electronic devices aboard the station. It also affected the sensitive instruments on aerospace craft within fifty miles of the satellite.

It was normally operated, from the radar operator’s compartment in the hub, at low power settings, with a range of 215 miles, almost the same distance as the altitude of Themis above the earth. Using I-Band for lateral tracking and G-Band for altitude tracking, the radar was chiefly useful for guiding HoneyBee rockets to docking slots. A few high-flying aircraft or a few rocket launches from Vandenburg Air Force Base, Cape Canaveral, or Baikonur Cosmodrome were sometimes recorded when the Department of Defense had a particular interest. The radar’s computer could scan and track simultaneously, tracking up to 120 targets at the same time. The radar was a key ingredient in the Satellite Defense Initiative system, though that program had now taken on a lower priority.

At 220 miles of scan, the ground clutter reflections, unless over relatively uninhabited areas, could be confusing. The computer filtered out much of the clutter, but with so many targets at surface level, a radar operator could get dizzy.

Because of the orbital rate of Themis, there was a continual movement of the tracking area above the earth. The Greenland region would have been under radar surveillance for less than twenty minutes.

Amber touched an intercom button. “Macklin, you awake?”

“Radar, Mizz Amber.” The title was drawn out, reflecting Sgt. Joe Macklin’s attitude toward the spat he and Donna Amber were having. Pearson had been monitoring it, alert to undue personnel problems.

“Colonel Pearson wants to see last night’s tape. Start it at nine o’clock.”

“Right. Coming up on channel twelve, Sergeant.”

Pearson grabbed a floating tether and pulled herself close to the terminal. She tapped “one-two” into the channel selector board.

The image was manic, radar sweep and blips zipping as the tape was backed up in high-speed reverse.

It stopped, jerked forward, then ran at normal speed.

Amber watched a duplicate on her own screen.

The operator last night had extended the range as soon as he saw radar returns that looked suspicious to him. They appeared on the bottom left of the screen, slowly crossing the screen upward and to the left as Themis moved inexorably toward the south and the earth rotated.

An airborne blip just west of well number fifteen abruptly turned and started climbing fast. Well over Mach 2, Pearson thought. The altitude readout next to the blip showed forty, then fifty, then sixty thousand feet.

“That’s got to be a Foxbat,” Amber said.

“I think you’re right, Donna. And he’s running from something.”

A second aircraft, some twenty-five miles behind the first, turned left, making almost a full circle.

Two blips, so close together they were almost melded, appeared at the bottom of the screen.

“That’s what they’re running from,” Amber said.

“A patrol flight.”

The images were now centered on the screen. Pearson could count all of the wells. Perhaps twelve ships in the area, though the background was snowy.

The single blip dove on the German planes.

Attack?

No. Maybe. The Germans planes parted and dove away.

Seconds later, a new target appeared, separating from one of the ships. It climbed quickly, leaning toward the single aircraft.

“Seaborne missile launch,” Pearson said.

“Damn.”

Then there was a flurry of darting blips, which merged, then separated. Finally, the radar return of the missile faded away as it apparently exploded harmlessly. The single aircraft, now at a much lower altitude, accelerated toward the east, climbing.

Pearson touched the intercom button.

“Radar.”

“Sergeant Macklin, get me a speed and heading on each of the aircraft.”

“Right away, Colonel.”

As she waited, the two German planes joined up again, and the whole scenario drifted off the screen.

Macklin came back to her. “Colonel Pearson, the two in formation are at five hundred knots, heading three-five-oh. Five-two per cent probable Tornados. The aircraft in the north is nine-five percent probable MiG-25. Heading zero-nine-nine, speed Mach two point six. The other aircraft is seven-five percent probable Fulcrum, heading zero-nine-four, speed Mach one point nine.”

“Give me an intersecting vector on the MiG’s, Macklin.”

He read off the coordinates. “That’ll be in the Barents Sea, north of Sereya, Norway, Colonel.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. That’s all.”

“Now the Soviets are involved?” Amber asked.

“Looks that way, Donna. You want to raise General Thorpe for me at Cheyenne Mountain?”

Ten minutes passed before Thorpe was located.

“Hello, Amy. Something up?”

She told him about the confrontation. “We think they were Soviet aircraft. It seems likely that they were on a reconnaissance mission.”

“That would be right,” Thorpe said. “Colonel Volontov’s people are probably on the job.”

“You don’t trust our information?”

Thorpe laughed, but it was hollow. “Not that at all, Amy. You like to make decisions based on the most information available, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said reluctantly.

“That’s all that’s taking place here. But you said there was a missile fired?”

“Yes. Surface-to-air, ship-launched.”

“All right, I’ll look into that. One other thing, here. The CIA interviewed the captain of that Greenpeace ship. Boat, really.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Yes and no. The captain, a guy named Nichols, is a pretty ardent fellow, from the reports. And he wants to bring charges against some German major for firing a missile at him.”

“He say why they were that far north?” Pearson asked. “Chasing a rumor. We’ve only got secondhand hearsay on this, Amy, but apparently Nichols talked to some fishing boat captain from Greenland who said the fish were migrating out of the Greenland Sea. Nichols suspects oil spillage, and he was trying to take water samples.”

“Maybe we should get the samples for him?” Pearson said. “Or for us.”

“General Brackman’s going to take it up with the Joint Chiefs. I think that we’ll try to get a submarine in there, Amy.”

“If they’re shooting at airplanes, the Germans may attempt to run a submarine off, too, General. They might get pretty upset.”

“Well, yeah, that’s got us a little worried.”

Compartment A-47, the exercise room, did not have a screen, so the squadron members crowded into the Command Center for their briefing.

All of the available tethers were in use, and several people floated free, drifting with the air-conditioning currents. South America, verdantly bright, slithered across the porthole.

McKenna hung onto the curtain outside his office cubicle and watched as Overton raised his hand to silence the babble. Donna Amber had her head stuck through the curtained doorway to the Radio Shack.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and weapons system operators,” Overton said, drawing a laugh. The general had once been a WSO. He had also ejected from a Phantom hit by a SAM-7 over Hanoi and spent a couple of hours bobbing in the South China Sea. “Our interest in the Greenland Sea in the last few days seems to have generated a lot of activity. Colonel Pearson will tell us about it.”

Pearson quickly went through the details of the Greenpeace boat, the State Department’s inability to elicit information from the Germans in regard to the wells, and the Soviet overflight. McKenna had been aware of all but the Red Air Force’s mission.

Tony Munoz asked, “This a cooperative thing, Amy? With the Soviets?”

“All I know, Tony, is that General Sheremetevo has assigned the Fifth Interceptor Wing to gathering information. During their first flight this morning, the Hamburg launched a missile at Colonel Volontov, the wing commander. It was apparently meant as a warning.”

Munoz spun to look at McKenna. “This is gonna get out of hand, Snake Eyes.”

“I talked to General Brackman this morning,” McKenna said. ‘The President has signed a contingency order for us.”

“Fire if fired upon?”

“Yes, except that it has to be cleared through me. Everybody keep that in mind.”

“We going to have to dodge a bunch of Soviet airplanes?” Conover asked.

Pearson responded to the question. “The 5th Interceptor Wing has been moved to Murmansk, and the unit flies Fulcrums. I understand that there are also a couple of Foxbats assigned to the wing, and there will be tankers in the area of the Barents Sea. Yes, you need to watch out for them.”

Dimatta looked more than a little pained. “We’re buddy-buddy, now?”

“For the time being, Frank, yes,” Pearson said.

Dimatta turned to McKenna, the question still in his raised eyebrow.

“That’s right, Cancha. For the time being.”

The look that Pearson gave him suggested that she didn’t think much of the requirement for McKenna’s squadron to double-check her information with the squadron commander.

They all seemed a little disgruntled, but they settled down as Pearson went through selected pictures from the recon flight of the night before. One by one, she brought them up on the screen, pointing out features. She started with Dimatta and William’s run over the oil fields.

“There’s nothing new to report on the wells themselves, but there has been an interesting change in the makeup of the naval ships. We got photos of fifteen ships, including three seagoing tugs, which we hadn’t seen before. New, also, is the fact that the missile cruiser Stuttgart has joined the fleet. Further, the naval force has been reconfigured into battle groups of three ships. Either a missile cruiser or a missile frigate accompanied by two destroyers. Something has changed the philosophy, but this is the kind of thing I would expect, after reading the bios on Admiral Gerhard Schmidt. The posture is a great deal more defensive.

“On the sonobuoys that Delta Green deployed, we haven’t yet picked up much. A couple ships passing close to number six. Number eight picked up a submarine, the Black Forest, according to the screw signature, which is their newest nuclear sub. We aren’t certain that every sonobuoy is located exactly on the pipeline route, but the Black Forest could well be patrolling the pipeline.”

“You said the navy is going to send a sub in there?” Overton asked.

“Yes. I passed this information on to General Thorpe at NORAD. He is forwarding it to CINCSUBLANT.”

“Good.”

“All right, on to Delta Yellow’s flight. Overall, we didn’t find much changed in the industrial or military centers. New Amsterdam has enough parked aircraft to support the information that four wings are stationed there.” Pearson brought up a new picture, an enlarged photo of the runways at New Amsterdam. McKenna had landed there once, but it seemed like a long time ago.

With a collapsible pointer, she indicated the alert shack at the end of Runway 27. “This is the twenty-four-hour standby facility, with, as you’ll notice, revetments for two aircraft. There have been alterations since our last photos of New Amsterdam, which were about three months ago. Back to the bottom right, here, about two hundred yards from the alert shack, new revetments have been built, and nine house trailers have been moved into position. Judging from the number and type of equipment deployed — Tornadoes, Eurofighters, transports, and helicopters — we believe that this is the 20th Special Air Group.”

“From appearances,” Nitro Fizz Williams said, “you’re saying the whole damned wing is on twenty-four alert status, Amy?”

“It would appear that way, George,” Pearson told him. “There were two brand new ships, a destroyer and an amphibious landing craft, in the naval section of the harbor at Bremerton. Any questions, so far?”

There were none.

“All right. Delta Blue. This was the most interesting flight, from the standpoint of changes.”

A new series of pictures began to appear and disappear on the screen.

“There has been a lot of new construction in the industrial areas at Rostock, Halle, Leipzig, and Dresden. It’s rapid expansion, but still, something we might have expected, given the stated intention of expanding employment and developing the eastern economy. And, yet again, some of it is disturbing. Military units on the borders appear to have a full complement of equipment, most of it appearing new. Tanks, trucks, jeeps, artillery pieces. New, though, are large truck parks, identified by the tracks leading into them. We don’t know what is stored in the parks, however, because they have been hidden under camouflage netting.”

Pearson pointed to a photo on the screen, dim because of the low-light film used. It looked like a big, empty field next to a gravel road. Severed churned-up turn-ins from the road, crossing over culverts, provided the perspective.

“This one was taken a few miles east of Dresden. The camouflage nettings covers seven acres.”

“Jesus!” Munoz said. “That’s a lot of tanks.”

“Some of the markings on the road are from tracked vehicles, but it’s also a lot of howitzers, or fuel tankers, or ammunition storage or something else. We don’t know what.”

Another picture.

“Here, outside Leipzig, is a new tank farm. East Germany is expecting to sell its citizens a lot of automobiles, or it’s storing a great deal of fuel. We’re estimating a half billion gallons of liquid fuel stored here alone. At Rostock, there’s another tank farm.

“Last, but not least, Colonel McKenna and Major Munoz shot some pictures of an expanded installation west of Peenemünde. It is clearly a launch site, but we don’t know what kind of vehicle it is intended to launch.” McKenna studied the picture, much clearer than the tape he had reviewed on the return trip.

“It looks to me, Amy,” he said, “as if the shell of the launch facility is designed to be moved away from the gantry on tracks.”

“Exactly, Colonel.”

“Which would leave an exposed gantry at least as large as any on the pads at Canaveral.”

“Yes”

“Which means a vehicle designed for entry into space.”

“I would agree with that.”

“I wonder if it has a warhead,” he mused.

Gen. Marvin Brackman was cautious on the phone, still feeling out the relationship between himself and Vitaly Sheremetevo. Adm. Hannibal Cross had passed the Sheremetevo contact on to Brackman, and they had communicated by telephone several times. The last time they had talked, they had advanced to the use of first names, but the usage was still tentative.

“Is your government going to lodge a complaint against the Hamburg, Vitaly?”

There was a long pause. “No, Marvin, it is not. In fact, my government does not know about the strike attempt. I am keeping that information within the PVO Strany.”

“I see. Any particular reason?”

“For the moment, I wish to see if the strike was a rash move by an excitable commander. We will know more if it happens again.”

“Admiral Schmidt is not particularly excitable,” Brackman pointed out.

“No, he is not. But a subordinate may have been responsible.”

“That is possible,” Brackman said, though he felt as if something was being held back.

“And to tell you the truth, my airplane commander may have been a little rash, himself. His actions may have provoked the response he received.”

Which was the way David Thorpe had interpreted the radar tape from Themis.

“All right, then. Well leave it there for the time being. Did you learn anything of interest from the flight pictures, Vitaly?”

“Not very much. They are quite similar to the photographs you forwarded to me, and my analysts say the same as your analysts. There is too much heat being generated for them to be simply oil wells.”

“What do you suggest as our next step, then?” Brackman asked.

“I believe we have learned all that we are to learn from infrared pictures, Marvin. I am going to attempt to interest Admiral Michy in a subsurface excursion.”

Brackman considered the implications of American and Soviet submarines encountering the Black Forest in the Greenland Sea simultaneously.

“I have a suggestion, Vitaly. Call me back after you have talked to Admiral Michy, and I will arrange for him to communicate with Admiral Lorenzen, who is the commander in chief of submarines for our Atlantic fleet. We don’t want our boats bumping noses.”

“Ah, I understand. Yes, that is a good idea.”

“And then, if I may ask, has your Colonel Volontov ever been to Chad?”

“I do not believe so, Marvin, and I am quite certain that he would find no interest in such a trip. But I will convince him that he will enjoy it.”

“Good, Vitaly. Then, one last point. What are we going to do about that launch complex?”

“While I do not know for certain, it seems to me that the GRU will have persons in closer proximity to Peenemünde than will the CIA or the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

“That is probably true,” Brackman said, “though, like yourself, I couldn’t say for sure”

“I will make the first inquiries, then,” Sheremetevo told him.

McKenna put the MakoShark on the runway at Jack Andrews Air Force Base while it was still light out, just before seven o’clock. He taxied immediately into Hangar One and parked next to Delta Orange. The technicians working on final systems checks for the newest MakoShark abandoned their tasks to handle the after-flight inspection of Delta Blue.

They bitched about the hangar doors opening for Delta Blue’s entrance, also bringing in a heat wave and a cloud of hot dry sand from the desert.

“Damn, Colonel,” Tech Sergeant Prentiss said, “couldn’t you have come in a little later, like in November?”

“Is it any better in November, Sarge?” McKenna asked as he descended the curving ladder Prentiss had attached to the fuselage.

“No. But it sounds cooler.”

McKenna paced in a small circle. After several days in space, it always took him a while to reacquaint his leg muscles with gravity.

Munoz didn’t wait for his own ladder to be placed, but stood up on the rear cockpit coaming, slipped around the raised forward canopy, and slid down McKenna’s ladder.

“Thirsty, Tony?”

“I’m gonna have just one Bloody Mary and two bottles of Dos Equis, jefe.”

“Sounds good to me, too, but you’ve got to wait.”

“No shit? I’ve been waitin’ days and days.”

“All in your mind, Tony. I want you to meet this guy, too.”

They changed into khakis in the pilots’ dressing room and waited until eight-fifteen in the control tower atop Hangar One, drinking Cokes with the air controller.

At eight-fifteen, the radar beeped.

The controller jumped up and ran for his console, pulling the headset over his head. He told McKenna, “I’ve got an inbound sixty miles out.”

The radio speaker overhead squawked.

“Andrews Air Control.”

“Andrews, this is Soviet MiG-29 eight six four seven.”

“Go ahead, four seven.”

“I am one hundred kilometers out, requesting permission to land.”

“Preapproved, four seven. You are cleared for straight-in on Runway 18 left. Temperature one-one-three, wind four knots from two-six-two. No other traffic in the area.”

“Thank you, Andrews Control. I will also require a remote parking space.”

“Also preapproved, four seven. When you are on the ground, I will direct you.”

McKenna and Munoz descended from the tower, pushed through the ground-level door onto the tarmac, and winced as the heat hit them.

“Hell, compadre, I might as well have stayed in Tucson all my life.”

“Chasing señoritas?”

“It is my dedicated vocation.”

McKenna slid behind the wheel of a golf cart painted air force blue and topped with a white, fringed sunshade.

“Does this Russian outrank me?” Munoz asked.

“By a couple grades.”

“I’ll ride in back.”

Munoz scrambled into one of the two narrow seats on the back of the cart.

They watched as the MiG-29 came in, gear and flaps extended. Reminiscent of a twin-ruddered Eagle. It was a smooth landing and a short runout. The airplane turned around and came back toward them. Half a mile away, it turned off the strip, rolled for a hundred yards, turned 180 degrees, and braked to a stop. The whine of its engines died away, and McKenna turned the key on the electric cart and pulled away from the hangar.

“He doesn’t want anyone taking a close look at that thing, does he, Snake Eyes?”

“Can’t say as I blame him. We don’t often park one of our top fighters on a Soviet air base. We’re going to station an air cop in a pickup for him. And he demanded that he be allowed to refuel it himself.”

“Paranoid SOB,” Munoz said.

McKenna stopped the cart twenty yards from the Fulcrum and watched as the pilot left his helmet in the cockpit, slid out of it, and worked his way to the ground, stabbing his toes into steps behind spring-loaded doors. He closed the canopy, bent to pick up a valise he had tossed out, then approached the cart in a stiff-legged walk.

McKenna and Munoz got out and saluted. The Soviet colonel returned the salute, then shook their hands when they were offered.

“Colonel Volontov, I’m Colonel Kevin McKenna. Kevin, if you prefer. This is Tony Munoz.”

Volontov had a handsome, somewhat angular face, and he smiled easily enough, but there was some rigidity in his eyes. “My superiors say we are being friendly, so, yes, let us try first names. Mine is Pyotr.”

McKenna grinned at him. “Good deal, Pyotr. You want to shed that pressure suit? Before you reach boiling point?”

“I will do it here,” he said and started unzipping zippers. He stripped to underwear, opened his small valise, and found a jumpsuit affair to don, then topped it with a service cap.

A blue Chevy pickup pulled up, and the air policeman driving opened his window. “Colonel McKenna, I was to report to you.”

“See that aircraft, Airman? This is as close as you get to it. And no one else on this base, no matter the rank, gets any closer than you are now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have any trouble with anyone, beep me.”

McKenna turned back to Volontov. “Is that satisfactory, Pyotr?”

“Quite satisfactory, Col… Kevin.”

Munoz climbed into the back of the cart. “How about a drink, Pyotr?”

The man smiled again, his eyes a little softer. “That would be welcome.”

On the ride back down the runway toward the dining hall, McKenna said, “You had a hell of a flight. Thirty-seven hundred miles.”

“Yes. It required two in-flight refuelings.”

“What time did you leave?”

“Late this afternoon.”

McKenna grinned. Volontov wasn’t going to reveal his time aloft or his speed, but McKenna figured it took him about two-and-a-half hours at around Mach 2.

The Soviet pilot openly examined the base as they left the runway and followed a ragged asphalt road. There wasn’t much to be seen in the open. A Honey Bee on a flatbed was en route to a launch pad.

“You are one of the MakoShark pilots, Kevin?” Volontov asked.

“I’ll have to respond ‘classified,’” McKenna said.

“Of course,” the pilot said. “I must admit to some envy. I have been attempting to transfer to our Rocket Forces for some years.”

“Someday, you get some time off, maybe we can arrange a ride in one of the Makos,” McKenna offered.

“I would like that.”

The dining hall was deserted, the off-duty personnel crowding the rec room. Rather than accept the available entrees from the cafeteria line, Munoz chased down a mess sergeant and had him grill three large T-bones. He introduced Volontov to Bloody Mary.

Volontov pulled the celery stalk out of his oversized glass. “What is this?”

“Don’t worry, Pete. It’s got vodka in it.”

After a tentative, short sip, Volontov said, “And so it does.”

Over dinner, they all got to know each other. McKenna briefed the Soviet wing commander on the data that Pearson had been accumulating, and Volontov provided the details of his single flight over the oil fields.

McKenna said, “Our people don’t really think they’re pumping oil up there, you know?”

“General Sheremetevo seems to have his doubts, also. He has said that the Germans imported twice as much oil from the rodina, the motherland, last year as they have in the past. I should think that Soviet oil imports would diminish with the discovery of new sources.”

McKenna made a mental note of that item to pass on to Pearson. “That’s a point, Pyotr.”

They were working on large chunks of warm apple pie when Lynn Marie Hagger entered the dining room to pick up a mug of coffee from the cafeteria line. When she spotted them, she walked over to the table.

McKenna noted Volontov’s appraisal of her slim figure, heart-shaped face, and silky dark hair. She was dressed in a flight suit. His blue eyes lightened and the corners of his mouth lifted a trifle.

Haggar spoke to McKenna as the men stood up. “Am I interrupting anything, Colonel?”

“I think we’ve covered it, Lynn. Would you like to join us?”

“I have an hour until flight time.”

“Have a seat,” McKenna said, then introduced her. “Colonel Pyotr Volontov, Major Lynn Haggar. Pyotr’s a wing commander, Lynn.”

“It is nice to meet you, Major Haggar.”

“Make it Lynn, would you?”

Volontov nodded toward the pilot’s wings embroidered over her left breast pocket. “You are a pilot, Lynn?”

She was sitting with her right side to Volontov, so he had not seen the left shoulder patch, a silver blue, blocky “1” on a black background, a miniature satellite and orbital line circling it. Haggar looked to McKenna for guidance in her response.

He said, “Lynn’s in my squadron, Pyotr. She flies the Mako.”

Volontov smiled widely, revealing good, even teeth. “I am impressed. A cosmonaut.”

“When I get tired of McKenna,” Munoz said, “I’m gonna be Lynn’s systems officer. She needs the benefit of my experience.”

McKenna noted that Munoz left the “weapons” off the “systems officer” tag. The Arizonian could be subtle when he wanted to be.

Haggar smiled at him. “Tony, your experience is primarily with hot food and spicy women. Why would I need it?”

“What more is there?”

Even Volontov laughed at that.

Haggar asked him, “Do you have many women flying in your wing, Pyotr?”

“None, I’m afraid. And none in any unit of the PVO Strany. The generals at Stavko are reluctant to place women in combat roles.”

“The generals at Stavko are not alone,” Haggar said to him, but she gave the dirty look to McKenna.