Delta Blue

Nine

The telephone jangled shrilly in the middle of the night. Felix Eisenach detested phone calls in the middle of the night.

He rolled over and sat up, shaking his head.

The telephone rang again.

“What is it, Felix?”

“I do not know yet, Marta. Go back to sleep.”

His wife was good at taking orders. She rolled over, away from him, as he picked up the receiver.

“Eisenach.”

“Diederman here. We have a problem, General.”

“So, tell me, Hans, what is the problem.”

“The dome of Platform Eight has been blown out.”

“What! How?”

“I’m at the platform now, General. I have one man dead, and five injured by falling debris. We’re sending them… ”

“What damage?”

A long pause, then Diederman responded, “There are three very large holes in the upper dome, fifty meters above the deck. That is in what we call attic space. But large pieces of debris crashed through the ceiling of the upper dormitory, and that is where the casualties… ”

“The equipment, Hans? Is it still operating?”

“Yes, of course. Structural and engineering damage is minimal.”

“The cause?”

“Obviously an attack from outside sources, General. Nothing else would explain the kind of damage I see. The dome imploded.”

“The Soviets?”

“I have no idea, General Eisenach. No one saw the intruders. No radar contacts, no visual sightings.”

“You have talked to Weismann?”

“Two of his aircraft were in the area. They saw nothing, but they complained of running through heavy turbulence.”

“It is the Americans, then. It was their stealth aircraft.” Diederman did not respond.

“This will require investigation.”

“You will tell the High Command?” Diederman asked.

“I will leave here shortly. I want you to prepare a full report.”

“Of course, General. Perhaps you would visit the hospital at Bremerhaven and speak to the injured men.”

“Yes, perhaps. Later.”

It was eleven o’clock at night, Themis time, before Amy Pearson and Donna Amber got the film packs from Delta Yellow.

It was one in the morning by the time the two of them had developed the film and run the video comparisons with similar wells in California, Italy, Mexico, Japan, and New Zealand. They worked on the computer terminals in the Radio Shack, and McKenna, Munoz, Conover, and Abrams hung around in the Command Center, poking their heads into the Shack every few minutes to check on progress.

“What do you think, Donna?” Pearson asked.

There were two images on the monitor, the screen split to show the infrared image of well number eight situated next to an infrared image of a well located near the Sierra Nevadas and operated by the California Power Company.

“Well, Colonel, the sites are different. The California well is located on land and doesn’t have the same spread of heat in the soil as the German well has in the water. Ignoring the outer edges, though, and concentrating on the core, they look just about the same.”

McKenna floated through the hatchway, took one look at the screen, and said, “You were right, Amy. Geothermal tap.”

“Damned right, McKenna.” Even though it rankled a little, she felt as if a compliment were in order and added, “You did a good job.”

“Not all my doing. Tony pulled the trigger. And while I think about it, I’d like to have you send Mabry Evans one or two of those pictures, so he gets some feedback on how his ordnance worked.”

“All right, I’ll do that.”

Donna Amber said, “I don’t get it, at all. If we’ve got geothermal wells in California, why can’t the Germans have them?”

“On the legal side, you’re probably right, Donna,” McKenna said.

“The purposes will be the same,” Pearson said. “It’s an energy source. Tap into superheated steam and boiling water, and use it to run turbines coupled to generators, transforming the steam energy into electrical energy. Typically, there’s a primary well, extracting the steam and boiling water. It’s run through the turbines, then the cooled water is injected back into the earth’s crust through a secondary well. The spectrograph shows some steam containing earth elements. Sulphur, primarily. Lots of condensation. There’s no excessive salt content, so it’s fresh water, rather than seawater.”

“The California wells exhaust a lot of steam,” Amber pointed out.

Pearson pointed to the storage tanks mounted to the back side of the dome. “I suspect that is what these tanks are for, a series of traps used to reduce the quantity of byproduct steam. It disguises the true nature of the well.”

“There’s still some vapor emitted from the fifth tank,” McKenna said.

“Yes. And then again, perhaps they’ve developed a method to extract yet more energy from equipment placed in those external tanks,” Pearson said. “That would give them a primary source and several secondary sources, plus hiding the vapor output.”

“It’s a hell of an undertaking. As I recall most of those wells have to go down twenty-some miles,” McKenna said. “Plus doing it offshore. Some geologist discovered the right location.”

“Maybe they found some undersea geysers?” Amber said.

“I doubt it, in that area,” Pearson told her. “But obviously, like Kevin says, the Germans have a geologist who guessed right. And Donna, a geyser is useful if it’s hot enough, but a geyser produces both steam and water. Steam alone is better, and that’s called a fumarole. Down in the earth’s crust are fractures which collect the steam and trap it in place. The objective of drilling a well is to hit one of those fractures.”

“If they’re just energy taps,” Amber asked, “why hide them at all?”

“Two reasons,” Pearson said.

“We’d better put in a call to Cheyenne Mountain,” McKenna told her.

She checked her watch. “It’s eleven-thirty there.”

“Hell, Amy, I’ll make the call. It’s the best time of all to get a general out of bed,” McKenna said. “It gives you a chance to see them operating at their best.”

Gen. Marvin Brackman called Hannibal Cross at his home in Arlington Heights.

“You know what the hell time it is, Marvin?”

“I know, Hannibal. But you’ll want to hear this. I’ve got a set of pictures, and they’re being transferred to your office by data link.”

“You’ve confirmed that the wells are geothermal taps, then?”

“We think so, yes. Pearson says she’s ninety-nine percent sure.”

“Generating electricity?” Cross asked.

“Almost certainly.”

“That fits in with some information the CIA has developed. Quite a bit of German industry has been converted to electrical usage. New plants are driven by it. Older plants have been switched to coal from fuel oil. What do you suppose the electrical output is, Marvin?”

“We’ll have to get some of the academics busy on it, Hannibal, but for the moment, Thorpe and Pearson have an estimate. One complex of several geothermal wells in California generates three-quarters of a million kilowatts. That’s enough to run a small city. That’s also slightly better than the output of Hoover Dam.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Not in the least. Pearson and Thorpe argue that, given German ingenuity and engineering and strong thermal sources, each platform could develop five hundred thousand kilowatts at minimum. That’s twelve million kilowatts for twenty-four platforms. Equal to two Coulee Dams. And that’s the minimum, Hannibal. Thorpe thinks it might run to fourteen or fifteen million on the top end of the estimate range.”

“That’s a hell of a lot of power, Marvin.”

“And it gets cheaper every day they’re in operation. In no time at all, the Germans will not be dependent on imported energy.”

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs grunted, as if he were finally climbing out of bed. “Worse than that, in a conflict situation, they’ve got a strong source of energy that allows them to divert petroleum fuels to military usage. They may, in fact, already be doing that.”

“You’ve seen the tank farms.”

“What would be the next step, Marvin?”

“If it were me, preparing for war on a long-range plan? I’d start hardening the storage sites. Bury the tank farms. For all I know, some of the fuel storage is already underground. I’d probably have pre-sited some kind of platform defenses. SAM and AA units that could be quickly shipped out to the platforms and set up on those oversized chopper pads. It’s a rationale for the large pads. To stave off the superpowers, I’d have some long-range hardware in reserve.”

“Peenemünde?”

“Maybe. We have anything back on that, Hannibal? I haven’t heard from Sheremetevo.”

“Nothing from the CIA or DIA, yet. I’ll put some matches under a few butts. I did see a CIA report that said travel to Germany was becoming more difficult. Stricter controls on issuing visas.”

“The countdown may have started, Hannibal, and all we’re doing is accelerating it.”

“We’ll know when we see what the response is to the attack on the well. If Bonn doesn’t scream like a stuck pig, I’m going to worry.”

“They won’t have any evidence, no place to point a finger, and that may keep them quiet.”

“Perhaps. Okay, any other implications?”

“Yes, a major one. One of the reasons for disguising the wells is to hide the development of a tremendous new power source. But there’s another reason, too. If the court of world opinion knew about the risks of geothermal taps at sea, the Germans would never have gotten the first well drilled.”

“Tell me about the risks, Marvin.”

“First, there’s simple accident. A number of years ago, one of the California geothermal wells blew a wellhead. It’s difficult to control unknown pressures from five miles down. They had steam, boiling water, red-hot mud spewing all over the landscape. Quite a few personal injuries”

“We still drill,” Cross said.

“Sure, because the risks of drilling on land are acceptable. A blowout mostly goes straight up and dissipates. I don’t know about seaborne platforms, Hannibal. Pearson says those wells have anywhere from six hundred to seventeen hundred feet of probably unsupported well casing. Get a major storm in the area, lose an anchor on a platform, break a casing.”

“And?”

“And turn loose an uncontrolled spigot of steam into the Arctic. Up to six hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit,” Brackman said.

“Damn. That high?”

“That high. I don’t know what one broken wellhead would do to the ecology, but it wouldn’t help it.”

“And we shot missiles at the son of a bitch?”

“Shot high, Hannibal. But that’s the other risk. Attacking those wells could unleash a catastrophe. Can you imagine twenty or twenty-four uncapped wells pouring hot gases and water into the Arctic?”

“Meltdown?”

“My contact at the University of Colorado, who is also grumbling about being awakened at night, says yes. Within a year, we’d see rising water levels on all Northern European coasts. Half asleep, he still estimated a couple of feet of increased water level, and probably more. That might put some ports out of commission. It would disrupt the North Sea oil fields. The low-lying countries — Holland, the Netherlands — would have long refugee lines. Not to mention the damage to underwater life, both fish and plant life. There’d be environmentalists crawling over the steps of every capital in the world.”

Hannibal Cross was silent for a long moment, then said, “Marvin, I’m going to roust out a few of the heavy brass and a few of the heavier civilians. You get McKenna hot trying to locate a few of the weak spots. If we can’t attack the wells, we’ve got to find somewhere else where the system is vulnerable.”

“That might work for us, Hannibal, but what about Mother Nature? If we just leave the wells alone, sure as hell, someday there’s going to be an earthquake, a tidal wave, a Force Ten gale that will take out those wells and upset a lot of balances.”

Oberst Albert Weismann and Direktor-Assistent Daniel Goldstein climbed down from the scaffolding gingerly. Weismann did not like heights, unless he was in a cockpit, and the top of the scaffolding was eight meters above the concrete floor. His fingers trembled slightly until he reached the floor.

The banks of bright fluorescent lights overhead gave his face an ashen pallor. It made the rosy rash of his skin more noticeable, but Weismann did not think that Goldstein noticed his discomfiture.

When his feet were once again firmly planted on cement, Weismann looked back up at the rocket for several minutes to regain his composure. The rocket was long and sleek, finished in a matte gray, the diameter growing by phases from the tip of the nose to the base. Stubby wings protruded from the first and second stages. The German flag was imprinted on each of the three stages and the nose cone. The rocket was reclining on its side, half encased in a steel-wheeled cradle that mated to the pair of railroad tracks leading under the massive doors on the end of the building.

There were four cradles in this building, two each side by side, and four more in the adjoining building. Six of the cradles were occupied by the thirty-meter-long rockets, but only this one had been certified by the scientists as ready for launch.

Possibly certified.

Every time he had toured the complex, Weismann had been confronted with, “… just one more little problem. A simple glitch, Herr Colonel.”

In the control thrusters or control surfaces. In the hydraulic system. In the fuel pumping system, in the inertial navigation system, in the computer backup software linkage, or in… the list went on forever. There were many complex systems, thousands of places open to potential failure, he had been told more than once.

It was difficult to believe Goldstein when he said, “It is absolutely functional, Colonel. A tribute to those who have designed it and worked upon it.”

“It is more a tribute to the Russians, and perhaps, the German who acquired the blueprints from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, would you not say, Herr Director-Assistant?”

Goldstein gave him a pained look. “There was much to be improved upon over the Soviet design.”

“Is that true? The Russian rocket has been operational for three years, Herr Goldstein. This one has yet to perform a maiden voyage.”

“The Russians have experience and a capable work force, Colonel.”

“Another excuse?”

Weismann was at least twenty-five centimeters taller than the scientist. He looked down on a shaggy mop of gray hair that made him feel much cleaner with his own close-cropped blond hair. The scientist’s face sagged at the jowls, making Weismann feel less than his fifty-two years.

Weismann was in uniform. He was always in uniform because he was proud of it. The Jew wore baggy brown slacks covered with a dirty gray lab smock. There was never a display of pride.

“The warhead, Goldstein?”

“Is operational, also. It is not, of course, a nuclear warhead. We have five Multiple Individually Retargeted Vehicles stored in the bunker a half kilometer from here. The MIRVs are composed of eight separate twenty-mega-ton nuclear warheads. Ghost One is armed only with high explosive, for the test flight.”

Gespenst I was almost a year behind its scheduled test flight. The High Command had been frustrated in its desire to publicize a successful intercontinental/space orbital vehicle capable of delivering Germans into space or destruction to the other side of the world. Like his superiors in Bonn and Berlin, Weismann also wanted to put Moscow and Washington and London and Paris on notice, notice that those capital cities fell under the shadow of yet another nuclear threat. Notice that their interference in German national matters was subject to extreme reaction.

The Gespenst program had been considered essential to the German reemergence as a power to be reckoned with, and Albert Weismann was very gratified that the program had been placed under his command, an adjunct to the 20 S.A.G. The constant delays had naturally brought pressure upon himself, but now, now he was nearly ready.

“How long, Goldstein, until we are ready for a test flight?”

“Herr Colonel, it only requires some four hours to transport the rocket to the launch pad, to raise it in place, and to fuel it. In a crisis, the countdown could be shortened, perhaps, to an hour.”

“How long?”

“There is the matter of the nose-cone mating, of course, Herr Colonel.”

“The no… what now?”

“For the test flight, we have had to fabricate a nose cone not designed for the Ghost. At the moment, it does not mate properly with the third stage. A matter only of days, Herr Colonel.”

Maximillian Oberlin was correct. This Jew was more a bottleneck than an asset. It was quite possible the man was sabotaging the project in subtle ways. Oberlin had wanted to get rid of him immediately and let Direktor Schumacher assume the tasks of final preparation. Weismann had had to explain that Schumacher was not a scientist, merely the son of a banker who was a major underwriter of the VORMUND PROJEKT. The son was in dire need of a respectable job title.

“And of course, Colonel Weismann, we have yet to complete the debugging of the flight software.”

Weismann’s shoulders slumped. Mein Gott!

The intrusion of the Russians. The destruction of the dome on Bahnsteig Acht. The platforms seemed suddenly vulnerable, and the supreme weapon was not available to protect them.

“As of this moment, Goldstein, the Ghost Project is on sixteen-hour shifts. If I do not see sufficient progress within the next few days, we will increase that to twenty hours.”

“That seems unduly harsh, Herr Colonel.”

Weismann drilled the stubby scientist with his eyes. “Not as harsh as it could be.”

Spinning on his heel, he marched to the office built into the corner of the building, ignored the secretary who looked up to him, and picked up her telephone. He dialed the number of the Zwanzigste Speziell Aeronautisch Gruppe operations office.

When the officer on duty answered, he said, “Get me Major Zeigman.”

A five-minute, intolerable wait.

“Zeigman.”

“Major, your squadron has tonight’s patrols?”

“That is correct, Colonel.”

“From midnight on, I want four aircraft on each patrol. Do not group them. One pair at two thousand meters, one pair deployed at ten thousand meters above the first pair. The higher aircraft are to separate by five kilometers. Reverse the direction of the patrol circuit.”

“Understood, Colonel. Are we to anticipate hostile aircraft?”

“Expect the American stealth planes.”

The Themis Command Center felt deserted. Everyone except McKenna and Sergeant Arguento, who was manning the Radio Shack, had gone to their dining compartments for dinner.

The intercom buzzed.

McKenna pulled himself close to the main console and pressed the keypad. “Command.”

“Radar, Command. I’ve got Mako Two one-five-zero out, closing at one-seven-five feet per second.”

“Copy that, Radar.”

Mako Three was docked aboard Themis, and Mako One was at Peterson Air Force Base.

McKenna punched the general public address system. “Lieutenant Polly Tang. Lieutenant Tang to hangar bays for docking.”

On the Tactical 1 frequency, the primary frequency used by the MakoSharks, Dimatta said, “I’ve got her here, Colonel, pushing me out. You want me to hold?”

McKenna thought about it, but only for two seconds. The orbit of Themis had been calculated into this mission. “No, Cancha. Proceed as planned.”

On the intercom to the hangars, he said, “Lieutenant Tang, Command. Mako Two inbound.”

“Roger, Command. I’ve got it.”

He switched to Tac-3, the chief frequency utilized by the Makos. “Mako Two, Alpha One.”

“Go ahead, Alpha.”

“What’s your manifest, Mako?”

“In order of importance, Alpha?” Lynn Haggar asked.

“Why not?”

“Foodstuffs, solid fuel pellets, circuit boards for Honeywell, chemicals, Colonel Avery.”

“Hey, damn,” the deputy commander of Themis said. “I’m gone for a week, and get shoved to the bottom of the list?”

Haggar laughed.

“Mako, reduce velocity to one-six-zero FPS.”

“Complying, Alpha.”

McKenna searched the monitor selector board and found the key for the camera mounted on the exterior of the pod of Spoke Fifteen. He tapped it, and the screen gave him an exterior view of the hangar side of the hub. He moved the image to a secondary screen and brought up the radar image on the main screen.

On the visual monitor, one set of hangar doors were open, and Delta Green slowly emerged from her bay. As he watched, another set of doors opened as Polly Tang had an assistant prepare for Mako Two’s arrival.

Tac-1. “Delta Green, you’ve got a Mako inbound.”

“We’ll keep our eyes wide open, Alpha. You think this is wise?”

“Had to happen some time, Cancha.”

“Command, Radar. Mako Two six-five miles out.”

“Copy, Radar.”

Tac-3. “Mako Two, stay alert for an outbound vehicle.”

“Roger, Alpha. We’ve got it on radar.”

McKenna found the remote camera adjustment stick, keyed if for the right camera, and aimed the Spoke Fifteen camera outward, following Delta Green.

Dimatta was turning the MakoShark stern-forward, when the Mako drifted past him. The MakoShark was already becoming invisible against the blackness of space. The white Mako was a complete study in contrast.

Haggar hit her transmit button, “That’s it, Kevin!”

“Let’s maintain radio protocol,” McKenna said into his microphone.

“Roger that, Alpha,” Haggar said.

Twenty-five minutes later, just after Delta Green ignited her rockets for the reentry sequence, Lynn Haggar and Ben Olsen, her WSO, shot into the Command Center. Both of them were still in pressure suits, and McKenna figured she was making about fifteen miles an hour when she grabbed onto Val Arguento to halt her flight.

Arguento, at the doorway to the Radio Shack, grinned at her.

“Requesting permission to enter the Command Center,” she said.

“Come on in,” McKenna told them.

“My God, Kevin, it’s beautiful!”

Olsen had a grin that threatened to eclipse the room. “She was armed, Colonel. I saw pylons with two Sidewinders and four unknowns.”

“You got a peek, huh?”

“You let us,” Haggar said.

“Oh, no! If Brackman or Overton should ever ask you, it was purely by accident.”

Haggar’s face sobered. “Ah. I see.”

“Step at a time, okay?”

“All right, Kevin. I appreciate it.”

“Now, I want you both to grab a bite to eat, then go to Ben’s cubicle. I’m going to accidentally leave Tac-1 open on Ben’s intercom circuit. I want you to listen in. Sergeant Arguento.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Could you print out a copy of Map GS-1014 and accidentally drop it?” That map pinpointed the wells.

“Damn right, sir.” Arguento turned back into the Radio Shack.

“And no one talks to anyone about these accidents,” McKenna ordered.

He got three affirmative responses.

They were right on the deck, five hundred feet above the coast north of Bremerhaven, holding 500 knots.

The screen displayed a flickering green land-and-sea-scape. Zipping beneath them.

“I’m not seeing shit, Cancha.”

“Still four or five miles, Nitro Fizz.”

They were looking for the first mainland pumping station on the Germany end of the supposed pipeline. The aerial photos of the past several years all displayed a rather innocuous group of five large buildings and three five-foot-diameter pipes emerging from the sea.

“Camera set for side view,” Williams said.

“Roger.”

Instead of the traditional view from above, they were coming in low and to the seaward side of the complex, taking photographs from the side. Amy Pearson wanted side-view elevations.

On the highway below and inland, a dozen sets of headlights cut the night. Out to sea on his left, Dimatta saw several ships, but couldn’t tell whether they were German naval vessels or not.

McKenna had forbidden the use of radar. No alerting the ground installations.

“Got it, Cancha. Give me two points right.”

Dimatta tapped the hand controller.

The right side of the screen showed the group of tall buildings sitting at the top of a short cliff.

“Snap, snap, snap!” Williams said, “I got twenty each of low-light and IR.”

Twenty-six miles later, they got photos of the second pumping station, located on the headland near Coxhaven, then Dimatta applied left rudder and started a climb. He took the MakoShark to 12,000 feet of altitude, but stayed subsonic on turbojets.

A leisurely ride.

“We set on the sequence, Nitro?”

“Cut straight across the offshore wells on a heading of three-zero-five. We’re looking for anything associated with the wells, but not directly attached to a platform. Cables, pipelines. We want close-ups of well number one. Then, on the ice, headed east, we’re also looking for exposed pipelines and cables.”

“You and I may eventually get along,” Dimatta said.

“Not if you keep eating pasta and Hollandaise and that Greek stuff.”

“Hey, you’re going to start me dreaming about it, and we got an hour to target.”

“Think about broads.”

“I’ll think about taking them out to dinner.”

“Radar, Command.”

“Radar here.”

“We over the horizon, yet?”

“Over, and target area coming up, General.”

Overton switched the screen display to the repeat image from the radar. McKenna, Pearson, Milt Avery, and Arguento all moved closer for a better view. Donna Amber was in the Radio Shack, monitoring the satellite relays for voice communications. No one wanted to lose contact with Delta Green.

“Command, Radar. I’m going to extend the range to two-two-zero.”

There was some clutter over the Arctic Ice Pack. The dark screen flickered with snow.

“Radar, Command. Back it off a little.”

The radar operator shortened the range, and much of the false radar return disappeared.

They waited twelve minutes until the edge of the ice, and the ice platforms appeared. The orbit was a bit two far to the west, and platforms twenty-two and twenty-four, on the east end, did not display on the screen. Svalbard Island wasn’t present, either.

Delta Green was not displayed, of course.

McKenna moved to a microphone. “Delta Green, Alpha One.”

“Go Alpha.”

“Squawk me once.”

“Roger.”

As the radar sweep passed the lower-left corner of the screen, a bright blip appeared as Dimatta flipped on the IFF, then flashed out.

“I’ve got you,” McKenna said. “Just making your turn to the east?”

“Roger, Alpha. We’re coming up on well number twenty-three.”

McKenna found himself counting silently, trying to keep pace with Dimatta while looking at a nearly blank screen. Blank as far as friendlies were concerned.

Three minutes.

“Command, Radar. I’ve got bogies.”

Two of the Tornados were at 2,000 meters, headed west over the ice. Mac Zeigman had reversed the normal course, and was covering the ice platforms before turning south to the offshore wells.

As was his preference, Zeigman was flying alone in Tiger Führer, having left his weapons system officer depressed and alone on the tarmac at New Amsterdam.

Zeigman and his wingman were at 10,000 meters. He could not see his wingman, some four kilometers to his right in the dark. Below, he had occasional glimpses of Tiger Drei and Tiger Vier when their silhouettes passed over white stretches of ice.

To keep his adrenaline level stable, Zeigman tried to think of this patrol as the typically boring routine of the past months. Still, something in Oberst Weismann’s tone had suggested that it might not be.

Despite himself, the adrenaline level was fluctuating. He felt keyed up.

Ready to unleash his tension on someone.

Or something.

“Tiger Leader, this is Platform Eighteen.”

“I hear you, Platform Eighteen.”

“We may have seen something on the dome camera.”

“What is that, Eighteen.”

“Unknown, Tiger Leader. A flash of darkness.”

The ground crews were also tense, Zeigman thought, but then again…

“All Tigers, Tiger Leader. Alert, now.”

He did not listen to the rash of affirmatives on the radio, but banked slightly to the right, to give himself a better view of the ice.

There. His two Tornados.

And there, two kilometers ahead of them, a shadow racing.

He could not make out the shape. It was a darkness fleeing along the ground.

“Tiger Three. Unidentified aircraft dead ahead of you, two kilometers. Come to the left four degrees.”

“Affirmative, Leader.”

“Tiger Two, let us engage.”

“Leader,” said Two, “I do not see it.”

“Join on me, Two.”

Zeigman rolled on over until he was inverted, then pulled the nose down. By the time he reached the proper altitude, the unidentified airplane would be east of him, and he would come down on it from its rear.

He flashed his wing lights once for the benefit of Tiger Zwei.

He had not taken his eyes off the phantom, and he cursed to himself when he saw his two low-level fighters pass right over it.

“Tigers Three and Four, reverse course. You have missed him.”

Only briefly did Zeigman think about trying to contact the unidentified airplane on an international frequency. If he did communicate with it, the pilot might give in quickly.

And ruin a perfectly good shot.

His speed climbed to Mach 1.

Altitude 2,500 meters. Pulling out of the vertical dive.

The shadow taking form.

Delta wing. Long, long fuselage.

It was alerted. Started a right, climbing turn.

Without thinking about it, his fingers had run automatically through the sequence of arming two of his Sky Flash missiles.

He switched his radar to active.

Nothing. Only the aircraft of his own flight.

He tried the IR seeker.

A bare flicker.

The missiles would not track on radar-homing or infrared.

He flicked the switch that selected guidance from the hand controller.

The aircraft — it had to be a MakoShark — almost centered in the gun sight.

Launch.

Flash of rocket fire.

Trails arcing toward the climbing delta shape.

Concentrating hard with the hand controller. Up, now, and to the right.

Homing in.

The four bogies had appeared abruptly from the right side of the screen, almost over well number twenty-one.

Pearson gasped, “Damn it!”

McKenna studied the screen readouts, checking altitudes, then thumbed the microphone. “Cancha, you’ve got bogies almost directly ahead. There’s a pair at six-two-hundred and another two spread out at three-zero-thousand. I don’t think they’ve spotted you.”

“Roger, Snake Eyes. Can we go radar?”

“Hold off. I don’t want them homing one in on you.”

Waiting.

No blip for Delta Green.

The two low-level targets changed course slightly.

The high-level fighters started to dive.

“Okay, Cancha. They’ve got you. Hold course twenty seconds, then go to one-one-zero and start climbing. Seven-zero percent throttles.”

Waiting.

The tension in the Command Center was palpable.

The blip of one German fighter was losing altitude fast, now moving back to the east.

“Command, Radar. Two missiles launched.”

“Scramble, Cancha!”

“We see ’em, Snake Eyes. No sweat. Can I punch this bastard out?”

McKenna sighed and looked at Overton. The general kept his face passive. Pearson’s eyes were wide.

“You’ve been fired upon, Delta Green. Fire at will.”

“Hot damn!” Dimatta said over the intercom.

“Give me two Wasps, Cancha,” Williams said.

Dimatta’s arm reached out for the armaments panel even as his helmet was levered full back against the collar of the flight suit so he could look upward. The two missiles coming at them were black pupils surrounded by harsh white eyes.

He glanced at the armaments panel, hit pylon two and missiles one and two.

Looked back at the missiles.

Now.

Slammed the throttles full forward.

The MakoShark accelerated abruptly.

The missiles flashed by behind them, headed for the ice. He didn’t watch for impact.

Roll hard right, pull the hand controller back.

On its side, the MakoShark looped back toward the first two fighters. The one that had fired its missiles at them slashed the night above, trying to pull out of its dive and regain altitude.

The enemy had to be up high, looking down, to spot them, unless they went to active radar.

“I need radar, Cancha.”

“Take it.”

The radar image flickered onto the screen.

The MakoShark radar could scan for new targets while simultaneously tracking and holding up to twelve targets. As Dimatta pulled out of his sideways loop, rolling upright, he saw the orange sight scooting across the screen, guided by Williams’s helmet.

“Lock on one,” Williams said. “He’s at three thousand. Next one’s higher.”

Dimatta pulled the hand controller and the nose went up.

“Lock on two.”

“Go, Nitro”

“Committed… launched.”

The tracks of the two missiles appeared on the screen, spreading out, homing on the active radars of the two fighters.

The fighters went into evasive action as their threat receivers detected the Wasps.

“They’re Tornados,” Williams said.

“Were,” Dimatta corrected him.

The radar screen indicated the other two were in a tight circle at five thousand feet. One of them started to dive toward them. More tentatively, the second one followed his leader.

Dimatta continued into a right turn, headed north.

On his left, a bright splash of white against the semidark sky partially killed his night vision.

“That’s one,” Williams said.

Another splash of light.

“And two.”

The threat receiver sounded in his earphones.

“Incoming locked on,” Williams said.

Dimatta hit the Tac-1 frequency. “Snake Eyes?”

“That’s enough, Cancha,” McKenna said. “Lesson taught.”

“Kill the radar, Nitro.”

“Done.”

Again, he rolled onto his right side and pulled the nose into a tight loop. The hostile missile, having lost its radar target, missed them by half a mile.

At Mach 1.8, they passed over the last well a few seconds later.

“That last picture’s going to be blurry, Cancha.”

“Way it goes, sometimes.”

Dimatta wasn’t going to review this mission in his mind for a while, not until they returned to Themis, but his blood felt as if it were singing in his veins.

He wasn’t even hungry.

And behind him, he thought that two German Tornadoes were frantically searching a barren landscape for him.

And finding only fragments of Tornadoes.