Delta Green

Chapter Ten

Dimatta and Williams were shooting pool in the recreation center. Dimatta had a cold bottle of Michelob and a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich at hand, and Williams was sipping occasionally from a stemmed glass of Chablis.

They had been combining weapons trials on Delta Orange with the shakedown schedule for preoperations certified craft, and they still had two more three-hour flights to complete. But they had come up against the Space Command’s imposed maximum flying time of fifty hours per week, and they were grounded for the next twenty-four hours.

Dimatta didn’t think of himself as particularly tired, but General Brackman had a thing about fatigued pilots making errors with expensive, tax-supported vehicles.

He leaned over the table and lined up his shot. “Four ball in the cross-side pocket.”

“On your grandmother’s wedding day, maybe.”

“No sweat”

“You realize how much grease and fat are in that bacon?” Williams asked.

“I got a lab analysis before I ordered it,” Dimatta said. “It wasn’t quite up to my standards, but I figured I could live with it.”

Dimatta stroked the cue stick tenderly, the cue ball snapped forward, ticked the four ball, which caromed off the side rail, crossed the table, inched toward the side pocket, slowed… slowed… slowed… then dropped in.

“Shit! Unbelievable luck,” Williams said.

Dimatta loved a good shot, whether it was on a pool table, or from the cockpit of his MakoShark, aiming twenty millimeter tracers at something elusive.

“They missed Green,” Williams said.

Both of them had listened to the radio net during the pursuit, but neither had spoken about it until now.

“Yeah, they did.”

“It’s too bad,” Williams said, “especially if they’ve got all those Wasp IIs now.”

“Oh, I don’t know, George. We may yet get a chance to get her back in one piece. That’s what Brackman and McKenna really want.”

“You’re into reading minds, now?”

“When they’re that easy to read, yeah, I am.”

Dimatta took plenty of time to line up his next shot, a short, straight giveaway. He put lots of reverse left spin on the cue ball, and tapped it.

“Bingo,” he said, picking up the chalk and caressing the cue tip with it.

“You listened to them, Frank. The guy’s good. We won’t get her back easy.”

“Maybe.”

“If she has to go down, I hope to hell we’re the ones who do it.”

“You went and named the computer,” Dimatta accused.

“Marla. It’s a good name, Frank. Fits her.”

In the house in the compound, Shelepin and Pavel had dinner together. Shelepin had urged Yelena to go out to dinner so that they could be alone.

He was nervous, and he could tell that Pavel was nervous also.

They were drinking iced vodka, and the levels in the glasses were dropping faster than the dinner courses could be served by the Khmer servants.

A telephone on a long cord had been placed on the table near his elbow, and though Shelepin kept an eye on it, it refused to ring.

Earlier, Sergeant Kasartskin, who was monitoring radio and television in the United States, had reported no news stories about stolen missiles. They were keeping it quiet. The Americans did not like to stir up media hornets’ nests.

Maslov had not been seen since morning. He was almost four hours past the time of his expected return. The pilot seemed to make up his own schedules once he was in the air.

“It could all fall apart, Sergei.”

Pavel smiled, but weakly, “Anatoly. You worry too much. There will be a simple explanation.”

“Oleg Druzhinin believes in these space craft. He thinks they are infallible. What if he is wrong?”

“You have taken a close look at it, as I have,” Pavel replied. “I, for one, was truly impressed. It is all we need to accomplish our ends.”

“What if Maslov had a heart attack? The craft may be invincible, but humans are not.”

“Aleksander Maslov’s and Boris Nikitin’s physical examinations showed their health to be flawless, Anatoly. You are grasping for straws of excuse. It is something we do not tolerate in our subordinates.”

“You are a true friend, Sergei. You will keep me on the correct course.”

“Remember how we discussed this very issue?” Pavel said. “Not the specific case, but the lack of flexibility in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”

“I remember. And I still believe that the party’s insistence upon adhering to strict standards and timetables led to its downfall.”

“Exactly! And we were part of the system; it is ingrained. However, we must choose flexibility, Anatoly. We have excellent people, and we must rely on them. You watch. Colonel Maslov will achieve his mission, but we must allow him his own decision making.”

“You truly believe that, Sergei?”

“Of course I do,” Pavel said. “In the meantime, as the Americans do, I have my fingers crossed.”

The Central Intelligence Agency came up with two more interesting pieces of data. Copies of the two cables were forwarded to the G-2, USSC-1. The first short message dealt with the Soviet defector Yevstigneyev:

Pearson pondered the information. There were two ways to go with it. One, she could work up a theory which put Libya in the middle of a plot to steal the MakoShark and increase its share of power in the world. She wouldn’t put it past the madman to think he was capable of establishing a presence in space.

Or two, she could put it on the electronic spindle for the time being.

She favored the spindle since Yevstigneyev’s file had not contained cross-references to General Anatoly Shelepin, and she thought that following the trail of the general staff defector was a more promising direction.

Pearson wrote a quick memo to herself, then consigned it to her suspense file.

Then she called up the second cable to the screen:

A note at the bottom, apparently entered by the processing analyst at Langley, identified MOSQUITO as resident in Phnom Penh.

Much more promising.

General Sheremetevo had identified Pavel as buddy-buddy with Shelepin and a fellow deserter.

She typed a quick memo to the Deputy Director of Operations at Langley requesting further detail on the other Soviet émigrés living in Phnom Penh, along with the location of their residences.

If nothing else, she could send McKenna on an overflight to get a few recon photos.

After spending six hours losing track of Delta Green, and since they were already in space, McKenna had ordered the three MakoSharks back to Themis for maintenance, refueling, and rearming.

Deltas Blue, Yellow, and Red were each docked in their own hangar cells since the MakoSharks were kept out of the view of satellite eyes and Earth-bound telescopes. Beyond the attempt to keep them from view, servicing the craft inside the mother ship was much easier than dancing around in clumsy space suits outside the space station.

Delta Blue floated in the middle of her hangar, secured by eight long bungee straps. The dark blue finish seemed to absorb light from the surface-mounted light fixtures in the gray-finished bay.

Technicians with vacuum hoses attempted to capture all traces of dirt or dust caught in the crannies of the MakoShark’s compartments. The space station’s recirculated atmosphere needed all of the help it could get, despite its complex filtration system.

During the refueling process, a low-toned chime kept sounding while a red strobe light pulsed at the same rate. The aural and visual alarms tended to make technicians concentrate while volatile fuels were transferred from the feeder outlets of the hub to the craft.

When the refueling of both the liquid JP-7 and the pelletized solid fuel was complete, McKenna floated into the cockpit, powered up the computer, and called up the MakoShark’s maintenance log which kept track of the hours used on all of the critical sub-systems. Future maintenance requirements were noted, but none were currently pressing. McKenna scrolled the log up the screen, but did not see anything that might affect safety or performance.

Tapping in the frequency for Themis’s maintenance office on the radio pad, McKenna said, “Beta Anyone, Delta Blue”

“Beta Two.”

“Polly, my dear. You want my log?”

“Why not, if it’ll keep you happy. Hang on a minute while I set up.”

He waited until she gave him the order to proceed, then tapped the command into his keyboard. All of the updated maintenance files were transferred immediately into Beta’s computer storage, which also contained data on the other MakoSharks, the Makos, and the HoneyBees.

With the maintenance requirements met, McKenna met with Tech Sergeant Bert Embry, whose tiny office in the hub guarded an orange-painted security hatch. The compartment was labeled A-61, and most visitors thought that it simply contained additional fuels.

In a way, it did, but the fuels were loaded in canisters attached to warheads. The ordnance section stored Wasp IIs, Phoenix IIs, laser-guided bombs, and other goodies that would only bother the consciences of some of the civilian scientists who lived aboard the station for a few weeks at a time.

“Mornin’, Colonel,” Embry said.

“Hi, Bert. I want you to re-rig all the birds.”

“Will do, sir. What’s the setup?”

“Short pylons outboard, each with two Phoenix, and long pylons inboard, each with four Wasp IIs.”

“Pull the Chain Guns?” Embry asked.

“Yeah. We’re not going to get close enough to use them. Let’s set up the forward bays with eight Wasp IIs also.”

Each of the two cargo bays on the MakoShark could accept a specially designed missile launcher which rotated, like the cylinder on a pistol, one missile after another into firing position.

“How about the aft bays, Colonel?”

“We’ll leave them empty for now. The way things are going, something else may come up.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Embry promised.

McKenna pulled himself out into the B-l corridor, which traversed the hub between the hangar side and the working and office spaces side. He headed down the corridor, away from the center of the hub.

“I’m afraid not, sir. You’ll have to turn around and go back.”

McKenna caught a grab bar and stopped himself at a cross corridor when he heard Benny Shalbot’s voice. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Shalbot speaking with such politeness. Looking down the well-lit passageway, he saw Shalbot’s squat body blocking access to one of the contract scientists, identifiable by the white jumpsuit the civilians wore.

“Not only are my taxes subsidizing your salary, Sergeant, but my company is being charged exorbitant fees for use of laboratories we already own as taxpayers. I’m entitled to see what we’re paying for.”

“Yes sir, I’m sure that’s right. However, sir, I’m not in the finance section, and you’ll have to talk to General Overton about that.”

“Sergeant…”

“They just pay me to do my part in national defense,” Shalbot said. “Right now, sir, that’s keeping classified information classified.”

McKenna glanced down the B-l corridor and saw that the window overlooking Delta Blue’s hangar was darkened, but the hatchway was open as technicians moved in and out.

He was about to go to Shalbot’s assistance when the civilian abruptly grabbed a handhold and pushed off in the opposite direction.

Shalbot put his toe against the same grab bar, flexed it, and came drifting back toward McKenna.

“That was an amazing display of diplomacy, Benny.” Shalbot jerked his head up. “Oh, Colonel. Didn’t know you were there.”

“You handled that very well,” McKenna said.

“What we need, we need signs posted that say, ‘Any egghead beyond this point gets his ass shot off.’”

“Less tactful, Benny, but it makes a point.”

“Or this chickenshit outfit could spring for some of those expanding gates, that keep kids from falling into the basement. Put’em up at the end of the corridor.”

“They would probably open them up anyway.”

“Only once, if I electrify ’em”

“Another good point, Benny.”

Shalbot shoved off up the B-l tunnel, and McKenna continued on down it, stopping to check on Haggar and Conover, who were overseeing the maintenance of their MakoSharks.

McKenna told them about the ordnance configuration he had ordered.

“New tactics, Kevin?” Haggar asked.

“Maybe. We’ll see if Amy has come up with anything new. Right now, get the birds bedded down, then yourselves. We’ll brief at 1700 hours in the exercise room.”

With a powerful kick off a hangar control console, McKenna shot on down the corridor to the perimeter hallway, trying to make up his mind whether to go left to Spoke Sixteen and crawl into his cubicle for a long nap or go right and check in with Overton, then crawl into his office for a long nap. He went right.

He traversed the Number One spoke and entered the Command Center. He stuck his head into Pearson’s office and found her concentrating on three screens full of data. “Hi, gorgeous.”

“McKenna,” she said in a low, deadly voice.

“Something wrong?”

“I’m trying to work.”

He was about to attempt a soothing reply when Overton turned from the main console and spotted him.

“Okay, everyone!” Overton said. “Go take a coffee break.”

The three technicians monitoring systems looked up, then unfastened their tethers, and headed for the hatch.

“Sergeant Amber,” Overton called, “you, too.”

Donna Amber emerged from the radio shack, smiled at McKenna, and slipped out the hatch.

McKenna looked to the commander.

“I want all colonels in here with me”

Pearson gave McKenna a dirty look, released her straps, and pushed out of the compartment.

McKenna followed her and took up a station opposite Overton, hanging onto a wire conduit.

The general didn’t look happy, McKenna decided.

“The size of my general staff being what it is,” Overton said, “I’m also the G-l. Right?”

“Right, sir,” Pearson said.

McKenna nodded.

The G-l was responsible for personnel, and Overton’s job was tougher than most. He had to be sensitive to the relationships within his command, and because of its claustrophobic nature, eliminate problems before they caused severe fluctuations in morale.

“I find that I’ve got a couple of pressing personnel problems,” he said.

Pearson nodded her head. She seemed to know what the problems were.

“Sergeant Joe Macklin and Sergeant Donna Amber,” Overton said, “have apparently overcome whatever differences they had that were causing friction between them.”

There had been some loud arguments between the two, McKenna recalled.

“That’s good,” he said.

“Not good,” Overton countered. “Polly Tang found them overcoming their differences in the laundry room.”

“Ah.”

“While we thus have two sergeants in harmony, the effect on the rest of the complement is less harmonious. Little jealousies arise. There are those who become, shall we say, envious of another’s ability to find sensual activity in a limited environment. The effect on morale is debilitating.”

McKenna understood what Overton was saying, understood it completely and felt just a twinge of guilt.

“Would you like to have me speak to them, General?” Pearson asked.

“Certainly not you, Colonel Pearson.”

Her face flushed a bright red that did not go well with her hair.

“Lieutenant Tang is going to have a heart-to-heart with Sergeants Macklin and Amber, and if we don’t have immediate cooperation, one or the other, or both, of them are going Earth-side permanently.”

Overton looked at Pearson, then at McKenna.

McKenna knew what was coming.

“That brings me to my second personnel problem. Ironically, it appears to be the same as my first problem.”

“Jim…”

Overton held up a hand. “I don’t give a good goddamn what you two do away from the station. In fact, I’m happy you’ve reconciled some of your own differences. But, Jesus Christ! The two of you are supposed to demonstrate some leadership ability. Set examples.”

“This is my fault,” McKenna said.

“I’m sure it is, Kevin. But you do have an accomplice. You report to Brackman, and I can only make a recommendation. If it comes down to a battle between us over who’s more necessary, Amy’s the one who will have to be transferred”

Pearson’s face went from red to white.

“And I don’t want to lose my brand-new deputy,” Overton said. “She’s too good.”

“General, I—”

“Wait until I’m finished, Amy. I also don’t want to start more tongues wagging by moving one of you from Module Sixteen. As I see it, that leaves me one alternative. I want promises of zero-gravity celibacy from each of you.”

“You’ve got it, General,” McKenna said.

“Yes, sir”

“McKenna, you’re supposed to be sleeping.”

“Roger, sir.”

McKenna shoved off the bulkhead and headed for the spoke. He glanced once at Pearson and saw pale green eyes full of fire that told him she had been right all along.

He had had his share of reprimands throughout his Air Force career, most in response to his loose interpretation of the rules. He didn’t mind accepting responsibility when he was wrong, but in most of the earlier cases, he had been damned certain he was right.

He was wrong this time.

And he felt much like the time his father had caught him with a pack of Marlboros in the chicken coop on the family farm near Haxtun, Colorado. He’d received his last spanking at age fourteen.

But he felt as if he’d just been spanked again.

Jesus, McKenna! When are you going to grow up?

“General Thorpe is on line three.”

“Thank you, Milly.”

Brackman tapped the button and picked up the receiver.

“David?”

“It’s a right proper muck-up, as our cousins would say, Marvin.”

“It figured to be. What have you got?”

“The contractor, with his DOD orders downsized, cut his overhead by decreasing his security to one man on the gate, now dead, and two men on roving patrol, neither of whom reached the scene until after the missiles were gone.”

Brackman sighed. He had envisioned as much.

“The FBI got the cooperation of the California and Nevada state police, as well as the Civil Air Patrol, and one of the planes located a moving van parked in the middle of a dry lake northeast of Reno. That’s where I am now.”

“A moving van?”

“Yes. Four dead men, too,” Thorpe said.

“Jesus Christ!”

“Each of them shot twice, once in the head, the forensic people here say. No ID on any of them except for one with a driver’s license, and I’d bet it’s forged. This early in the investigation, Marv, I’d still guess all four were in on the heist.”

“No sign of the missiles?”

“Not the missiles themselves, but the crates are here. The missiles were transferred to some other kind of container for loading aboard the MakoShark.”

“You’re certain about that, David? That it was the MakoShark?”

“Absolutely. I personally measured the distance between the tracks of the main landing gear and found a match. And I recognize the tire tread. I’ll bring you a plaster cast of the tread if you want, Marv.”

“Not necessary, David. Come on back.”

Brackman had Milly put in a call to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but an hour-and-a-half went by before he called back.

“I just got back from the Hill, Marv.”

“How did it go?”

“As well as could be expected, I suppose. The SecDef laid out the facts for the combined armed forces committees and pleaded for time.”

“Will he get it?”

“They promised to keep it quiet for a week, but you know how that goes.”

“We’ll see it in the Washington Post by morning,” Brackman said.

“You’re a damned pessimist,” Cross said. “You called for a reason?”

He updated Cross on the FBI’s investigation.

“This tell you anything, Marvin?”

“A couple things, Hannibal. First of all, there’s a relatively large organization involved.”

“Tell me about it, would you?”

“They had assets inside CONUS to stage the missile theft, and they feel they can waste manpower by killing off these guys, probably to prevent interrogation.”

“That’s one,” Cross said.

“Then, every incident has been well-planned, and there’s a sequence to the events. One, grab the MakoShark. Two, divert a shipment of fuel for it. Three, arm it.”

“That’s good planning, but not necessarily an organization, Marv.”

“No, but I don’t see one renegade pilot taking it on by himself.”

“You go along with Pearson on the pilot angle?”

“I have to, after McKenna briefed me on Delta Green’s evasion tactics. The pilot has experience in the machine, Hannibal.”

“All right, I’ll buy it, too. What next?”

“If it’s a terrorist group, we can expect attacks on something important and attention-getting, say, commercial air liners.”

“Jesus, Marv! Don’t tell me that”

“I don’t want to, believe me,” Brackman said. “It’s a scenario we have to consider, though.”

“Okay, you’re right. So let’s say we’ve got an organization of some kind involved,” Cross said. “Whether it uses terrorist tactics or something else, there’s got to be a political ideology involved.”

“I’m with you, Hannibal.”

“They go to the trouble of stealing themselves a massive piece of firepower.”

“You know my position,” Brackman said. “I see each MakoShark as equivalent to a squadron. At least.”

“They do this for one of two reasons. To protect the organization or to impose their ideologies on everyone around them.”

“Or both,” Brackman said.

“Right. We need to know the objectives of the organization, Marv.”

“Pearson’s scenario has ex-Soviet pilots involved. And she has leads, through connections to the pilots, on ex-Soviet general officers. Right-wing types.”

“People who don’t think the Party’s dead and buried, you suppose, Marv?”

“It’s probably worth investigation, Hannibal.”

“I’ll spread that word among the right agencies,” Cross said.

Aleksander Maslov and Boris Nikitin returned to New World Base after moonset.

After spending so many hours parked in orbit, waiting for darkness to return to Southeast Asia, Maslov was rested and he thought that Nikitin had come down from his fear high.

The former Soviet major had become irritatingly repetitious, recounting a dozen times their amazing escapes from violent and explosive death. He could not commend Maslov enough on his skill as a pilot.

Maslov had modestly accepted the praise, well aware that it was indeed his skill at the controls, rather than technology, that had allowed them to evade six Wasp II missiles. The MakoShark was equipped with radar and infrared threat sensors that sounded warning beeps in the helmet earphones and illuminated alert notices on the Head-Up Display when the craft was under attack by missiles homing on its heat emanations or by missiles utilizing semi-active or active radar. The attacks on them, however, had not initiated any alarms. The Wasp II missiles had been guided visually by the weapons system operators in the pursuit craft, and the metallic content of the small Wasp IPs body was not sufficient to trigger the radar alarm. Maslov’s keen eyes spotting the missiles in flight and his acute sense of timing before wrenching the MakoShark into violent evasive maneuvers were the basic factors of their survival.

Maslov had allowed Nikitin the luxury of endless reconstructions of the episodes, not for Maslov’s ego, but for Nikitin’s personal development. The weapons officer had not served in Afghanistan, had never been in combat, and had never been under attack except for simulations. Now he knew the edge of fear and the lure of battle.

Maslov, too, had learned. He had discovered that the Americans were far more cunning than he had expected. Someone, somehow, had very rapidly made the connection between the theft of missiles in California and his expected return to the Southeast Asia region. And whoever they were, they had estimated the timing very well. In the future, he would not be so easily predicted.

He had also discovered, not only the capabilities of the MakoShark fighter, but its limitations when it was visible to the naked eye. Both factors must be weighed in his future decisioning.

He had also learned about luck. Despite Nikitin’s praise, Maslov knew that his skills as a pilot had been reinforced by luck.

They did not use the radar on the approach to New World Base this time. He relied strictly on the inertial navigation system to pinpoint the destination and issued only one radio message to prepare the airstrip for their arrival.

The landing was uneventful, and as soon as the MakoShark was parked in its revetment and the ground crews were unloading the missiles, General Oleg Druzhinin came across the runway to greet them.

Portable work lights lit the underside of the craft, and Maslov was overseeing the lowering of the crates from the payload bay. He was quite protective of his craft for there were no replacement parts available if a clumsy mechanic damaged a cargo door or access hatch.

Druzhinin walked under the wing and stood next to him.

“Comrade General.”

“We are very happy to see you again, Aleksander. I had to place a call to Chairman Shelepin, for he has been quite anxious.”

“We are here, General, and complete.” Maslov waved a hand lazily at the crates. “Complete with sixty of the advanced missiles.”

“That is excellent! And what of those who delivered them to you?”

“No one will mention an inappropriate name. Ever”

“That is good,” Druzhinin said.

“However, events may have proceeded beyond that point, General. They were waiting for us.”

“They?”

“I assume the pilots of the 1st Aerospace Squadron, on which I was once briefed. A colonel named Kevin McKenna is the commander. The chief pilots are Franklin Dimatta and Wilbur Conover.”

Standing under the wing in the humid night, slapping at the growing population of mosquitoes seeking bare skin, Maslov briefed his superior on the mission, from the loading of the cargo to the ambush by the MakoSharks to his decision to await darkness in orbit.

“I don’t believe it will be long before they pinpoint this base, General.”

Druzhinin pointed westward, toward the hospital.

“And I don’t believe the ruse of the hospital will hold them back for long.”

Druzhinin nodded slowly. “You are suggesting, Aleksander Illiyich, that we move up the schedule?”

“The third phase must be accomplished immediately if we are to protect this base, Comrade General. As well as protect the objectives of the Party.”

“I suspect that you are correct. I will speak to the Chairman.”

“As soon as possible, I think. Where are the warheads?” Maslov asked.

Druzhinin evaded the exact answer. “I could have them here in a matter of days.”

“Or sooner,” Maslov suggested. “We have now lost the luxury of time.”