Delta Green

Chapter Twelve

“Take it, Tiger”

“Uno momento, amigo. They didn’t make me a pilot, remember?”

“They made you an electronics watcher. Watch the autopilot.”

“Ah!”

The Gates Learjet was at twenty thousand feet above the South China Sea, purring like a kitten, and even if she turned into a wildcat, McKenna had faith in Munoz’s ability to handle an emergency.

He crawled out of the left seat, pushed through the curtain separating the cockpit from the cabin, and crouched as he made his way back to Pearson.

He sat in the rear-facing seat opposite her. The small table between the seats was raised, and she had a dozen files spread over it.

She watched him with grave green eyes.

“Not now, Kevin.”

He tried a smile. “Now’s a good time.”

“No.”

“Look, Amy, it’s my fault.”

“I’d like to blame you,” she said, “but I can’t. I’m like a damned schoolgirl when I get near you. So stay away”

“Look, hon, we’ve got a nice chemistry…”

“No longer.”

She was right. This wasn’t a good time to discuss themselves. Her mouth was frozen into a straight, grim line, and her pale eyes were opaque.

“All right, we’ll talk about it later.”

“Not now, not later.”

McKenna sighed. He liked her even better.

“How about business then?”

“What business?”

“Why are we going to Phnom Penh?”

“That’s where Shelepin and Pavel are,” she said.

“We’re going into the spy business? I thought that’s why Uncle paid the guys in the CIA.”

“We’re not going anywhere together. You’re the pilot, you wait at the airport for me.”

“That’s not going to happen, Amy”

“It sure as hell is.”

“Are you trying to prove yourself to Overton and Brackman? Overcome the little lapse? Is that it?”

“Of course not,” she said, but her voice faltered.

“Okay, you do what you want to do, but plan on having me with you.”

“No. You don’t outrank me anymore, Colonel McKenna.”

“But my date of rank precedes yours,” he said. “All that means is that I don’t let you do something foolish.”

“Go fly the airplane.”

He went back to the cockpit to fly the airplane.

“Little spat, compadre?”

“Go to hell, Tony.”

Munoz grinned at him. “She’ll get over it.”

McKenna started his letdown when he saw the southern tip of Vietnam, the Pointe de Ca Mau. He passed well south of it, staying out of Vietnamese airspace, then turned north toward Kampuchea.

He crossed the coast at twelve thousand feet.

“Feet dry,” Munoz said.

“Let’s try to keep them that way, Tiger.”

Despite her earlier protestation, Pearson was glad to have McKenna and Munoz with her. Even dressed in civilian slacks and horribly flowered sport shirts, they looked tough enough to scare off muggers or other thugs.

The streets of Phnom Penh were a maelstrom of pedestrians, bicycles, minibuses, smoke-belching trucks, and randomly aimed automobiles. Munoz drove their rented Renault with dedication, irreverence for any international driving regulations, and a creative vocabulary. There was also a sign language that she thought was generally obscene.

The turmoil of decades of revolving governments, ranging from socialist to communist to anarchist to professed democratic, was evident in the faces of the shoppers and the shopkeepers. Their faces were stoic masks, afraid that the next interrogation would be from another resurgence of the Khmer Rouge who, in 1975, seized control of the government. They corralled all of the noted members of the previous regimes, hostile Cambodians, and pro-Vietnamese citizens and executed them all. Renamed from Cambodia to the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, the government? was composed of various political factions which maintained an uneasy coalition and frequently charged that Vietnam had left troops behind disguised as soldiers of Kampuchea.

The economy was in chaos. Under Pol Pot in 1975, banks had been closed and currency abolished. Foreign trade vanished. Now, after the drawn-out Vietnamese with drawal, the economy was undergoing refurbishment, and help was accepted anywhere it was offered. From the expatriot Shelepin and his colleagues, for example.

Foreigners with money to invest in business and industry were readily accepted, and close looks at their backgrounds were forsaken.

Pearson had researched that much. Now, she was going to take a close look at the reality.

Munoz dodged a bicycle that shot out of an alley, and the car slammed into a chuckhole. Pearson bounced high off the backseat, hitting her head on the roof.

“¡Puta!”

“Wasn’t a woman, Tony,” McKenna, who was sitting in the front seat, said.

“Drove like one.”

Normally, Pearson would have had a retort for Munoz’s chauvinism, knowing his statements were meant good-naturedly. Today, she didn’t have one. She was still coming down from her self-recrimination high.

They crossed an intersection so jammed with vehicles that McKenna suggested bailing out and walking, but Munoz finally got them through it, then turned left at the next intersection and followed a street that paralleled the Tonle Sap River, north of its junction with the Mekong.

The maze of streets, many of them unmarked, was so confusing that, once again, she was glad to have the two men with her. They had both been here before.

“How close do we want to get?” Munoz asked.

“Not too close with the car,” Pearson told hint.

“You happen to see somethin’ looks like a parkin’ place, hit me in the head, will you?”

“Try the next alley,” McKenna said.

Munoz whipped a hard right, bounced over the sidewalk, and slid to a stop next to a plaster-walled building. Overflowing garbage cans swarmed with flies. Washing was hung out to dry on lines strung high over the alley. Small children rushed to greet them, hands out.

Pearson couldn’t open the door on the right because the wall of the building was four inches away. They all got out on the left, locked the car, and McKenna gave four kids a handful of riels to watch the car.

“They’ll watch it until we’re gone, jefe, then steal the hubcaps.”

“You like those hubcaps?” McKenna asked.

“Hell, no.”

“So we won’t buy them back.”

The stench of urine and excrement in the alley was almost overpowering, and when they reached the street, the smell was simply overlaid with an aroma of herbs and spices offered for sale in an open-fronted kiosk. The sidewalk was composed of broken slabs resting at odd angles. Parts of the curbing had disintegrated, allowing weeds to grow in compacted dirt. A few scrawny sugar palms were spaced along the street.

They walked for almost a mile, Pearson becoming aware of sore muscles in her thighs and calves, before McKenna said, “There you go, Amy, across the street.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

All she could see was a plaster wall, painted cream, about twenty feet high, that extended for perhaps a block.

“How do we see inside?”

“Let’s walk around it.”

She wasn’t looking forward to more walking, but stayed between the two men as they jostled through the crowds. They turned left and crossed the street at the next corner.

Halfway down the north side of the compound was a massive wrought iron gate as tall as the walls. There were two heavyset Asians guarding it from the inside.

The interior looked a lot more inviting than the outside. Gravel and shrubs and trees appeared to have been placed by design. She saw a few doors to houses half-hidden by the landscaping. She didn’t see anyone out and about except for the guards.

“Don’t stare, Amy,” McKenna said.

“What?”

“Spies don’t stare.”

They kept walking down the cracked sidewalk and turned left at the next corner.

Turned left again at the next block and crossed along the southern boundary of the compound back toward the street on which they had parked the car. There was another wrought iron gate in the wall.

And nothing to be seen.

“What now, Amy?” McKenna asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What would you like to find?”

“A connection of some kind.”

“To?”

“To something.”

“You’ve got a list of the businesses?”

“Yes.” She had to dig around in her purse — she hadn’t carried a purse in months — to find it.

McKenna took a long look at the handwritten roster, then passed it to Munoz.

“Can you find those addresses, Tiger?”

“Most of ’em, maybe. It’s been awhile.”

They walked back to the car, found it intact, and McKenna passed out more riels to the squealing kids. Most of them looked malnourished, and Pearson felt guilty about it.

The afternoon passed, without lunch, and without learning much more. The businesses they examined from a distance all appeared legitimate. There was a chemical factory, a tire plant, a couple pharmacies, a furniture factory and attached store, a welding and fabrication shop, a car dealership, and several restaurants.

By six o’clock, they had covered every enterprise on her list with a Phnom Penh address.

“Is that it, enamorada?” Munoz asked.

“There are probably more, but that’s all I have. Except for the children’s hospital.”

“Well, let’s check it out before it starts gettin’ dark,” Munoz said.

“It’s not here. Somewhere to the north, by the Tonle Sap Lake.”

“Well, then,” McKenna said, “let’s find a place to sleep for the night and get some dinner. We’ll work up a cover story and go see the hospital in the morning.”

Pearson wasn’t eager to spend the night in the same hotel with McKenna, but she couldn’t think of a logical reason to do anything else. It had been her idea to start this goose chase, after all.

“We can probably find somethin’ spicy to eat,” Munoz said, “and somethin’ cold and alcoholic to drink.”

“Dimatta would trade places with you,” McKenna said. “He’s not finding much in the way of exotic food in Chad.”

“We deserve it. After all, compadre, it’s his aerospace craft we’re lookin’ for.”

“In the middle of Phnom Penh,” McKenna observed.

“It’s gotta be somewhere. Might as well be here.”

Wilbur Conover was so rested he was restless. While he waited for his turn to relieve Lynn Haggar on what they were calling Really High Combat Air Patrol (HICAP), he went to the Command Center, borrowed McKenna’s office cubicle, and had Val Arguento collect copies of the last twenty-four-hour’s worth of satellite infrared coverage.

There was one Rhyolite and one Teal Ruby satellite each in geosynchronous orbits 22,370 miles above the equator, and their sensors had been aimed toward the southern Asian mass. Conover ran their tapes at high speed, using the computer to give him a beep and stop the tape if an anomalous infrared emission appeared. All he found was the retro bum of Delta Blue reentering the atmosphere and, several times, the orbit track of Themis. The space station had a number of hot spots generated by the nuclear reactor, the warm side of the satellite, and the solar collectors. Since she moved in the sensor’s eye, she was an anomaly. Once, the Soyuz Fifty, which was in an orbit of different altitude and characteristics than Themis, passed through the sensors. Each time the tape stopped, Conover automatically glanced at the green lettering in the upper right corner which denoted the time and location of the shot.

Lower, at the Earth’s surface, the cities, towns, and villages generating heat didn’t move much. The tiny pinpricks of heat emitted by vehicles and ships at sea had been filtered out of the image.

It was a boring exercise, but he managed to waste a couple hours.

Conover hit the intercom button for the radio shack.

“Val, what else have we got in the vicinity?”

“Hold on, Major. The NSA gave us an updated celestial map a few hours ago… here we are. The closest thing is a KH-11, but she’s way north, covering China and Korea.”

“See if you can get a copy of her tape for me, will you? Maybe I’ll watch a Ping-Pong game in Beijing.”

It took twenty minutes to retrieve the tape and transmit it from the National Security Agency’s complex at Fort Meade, Maryland.

He was halfway through it when the speaker beeped and the tape stopped.

He had an unusual infrared radiation.

If he could have sat up, he would have, but he was already upright in the cubicle.

Checking the ID in the upper right corner, Conover saw that the location was northern China. The time was 0140 hours local, 1740 hours Zulu (Greenwich Meridian Time).

He ran the tape at normal speed and watched the change in the time.

The burn lasted for eight minutes and twenty seconds. The track was easterly.

He dumped the data to the computer and entered the codes asking for a calculation of velocity, trajectory, and anticipated orbit.

Then he hit the intercom, “Val?”

“Right here, Major.”

“Where’s the CO?”

“Asleep.”

“Rouse him, will you? And wake Captain Abrams, too. Right away. Then try and track down Colonel McKenna. Hook me into Tac Two.”

“Coming up.”

When he had the link, Conover pressed the keypad, “Delta Red, Alpha”

“Go Alpha.”

“Delta Green’s in orbit. I want you back at Alpha to fly cover.”

“Roger, Alpha. Red’s on the move.”

General Overton’s voice came over the intercom. “What’s up, Will?”

Conover reported what he had seen on the tape. “I’m going to launch Yellow, too, and take up a position off the station along with Red. He’s been in space for over twelve hours, General, and we don’t know what for.”

“You think he’d attack Themis?”

“The thought crossed my mind, General. All of a sudden.”

“We’ve never sounded general quarters on a space station before, Hannibal. I’m not sure they know what it means,” Brackman said.

“At least Major Conover has been thinking of possibilities,” Cross said. “They’re damned scary possibilities.”

“Ten or twelve direct hits by Wasp IIs would take out most of the modules and the hub,” Brackman said. “We’d lose her, sure as hell.”

“Along with our most advantageous base for the MakoSharks. A hell of a lot of years and effort down the drain, Marv. What’s the defensive posture?”

“All Themis can muster is her radar and infrared sensors, none of which are much good against a MakoShark. They’ve activated all of their out-looking video cameras. Deltas Red and Yellow are stationed fifty miles off. That’s the extent of it.”

“Where’s McKenna?”

“We gave him permission to accompany Pearson to Phnom Penh. She’s got a lead that’s promising.”

“Dimatta?”

“They’ve got one more trial to run on Delta Orange.”

“What do you think of scrapping it and commissioning Orange for active duty?”

“I’ll go with Dimatta’s recommendation,” Brackman said.

“Are you going to recall McKenna?”

“If we go completely defensive, Hannibal, and put all of the MakoSharks around the station, we’ll never get to the end of this. My suggestion is to let McKenna and Pearson have a few more hours.”

“All right, Marv. But this hijacking of one space craft suddenly seems a great deal more serious than we may have been taking it. I’m going to have the CNO move the Seventh Fleet’s southern task force down into the South China Sea. And I believe the Eisenhower is steaming in the Indian Ocean. We’ll move her east.”

“For what purpose, Hannibal?”

“We can get a hell of a lot more recon aircraft in the air, and we can up the odds of spotting Delta Green if she returns to the area.”

“Okay, good,” Brackman said.

He had Milly Roget track down Dimatta at Jack Andrews Air Base, which took ten minutes.

“This is Major Dimatta, General.”

“How do you feel about the new MakoShark, Major?”

“Well, sir, good, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“We’ve had a few glitches to correct, but all of the systems seemed to be tuned in now.”

“But you have reservations?” Brackman asked.

“Nothing substantial, sir. It takes awhile to make the fit.” Brackman knew what he meant: the fit between human and machine.

“You have one more trial scheduled for weapons and countermeasures?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you omit it, Major?”

“Well, yes, sir, we could.”

Brackman told him about the potential threat to Themis. “We can be wheels up in fifteen minutes, General.”

“Go, Major.”

McKenna was sprawled on the narrow bed in his tiny hotel room, thinking about going down the hall and tapping on Pearson’s door, when a timid hand rapped on his own door.

He got up, thinking she had come to her senses, and opened the door.

It was the desk clerk. “Sir, you have telephone call.”

McKenna followed him down the one flight of stairs to the claustrophobic lobby and to the single telephone the hotel could boast. He leaned on the counter and picked up the receiver. There was a buzz on the line.

“McKenna.”

“Milt Avery, Kevin.”

“What’s up?”

“I’m going to be cryptic since your phone system doesn’t sound all that secure. Our missing child has climbed to new heights.”

“Got that.”

“And there’s a concern that the goddess might be the subject of the child’s attention.”

Themis a target? McKenna chastised himself for not considering the likelihood of that scenario.

“I’ll get the others and we’ll head right back, Milt.”

“Not just yet, Kevin. The boss has activated the new baby and there will be three in attendance. The boss suggests that you pursue your present course. Just check in with me every few hours, okay?”

“Will do,” McKenna said.

He went back up the stairs to his room, but he didn’t think he would sleep well, and it wouldn’t be for thinking about Pearson.

The refueling had not gone smoothly.

Nikitin had located the HoneyBee rocket in the orbit where they had left it, and Maslov had easily negotiated the course to reach it, using deft pulses of the Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) to match the rocket’s velocity and track.

The problems arose as a result of Bryntsev’s and Filatov’s inexperience with working in a weightless environment. Bryntsev, who had been a command pilot on Tupolev Tu-26 bombers, which NATO codenamed Backfire, had once been in the Mako program, but he had not lasted long enough for a check ride into orbit.

The two men had had a rough ride into orbit, ensconced in space suits in the jury-rigged seats of the payload bay. The inability to see anything other than bulkheads and structural members had raised their apprehension during the insertion, and when Maslov had opened the payload doors next to the HoneyBee, both men had become immediately disoriented.

He had talked to them calmly and reassuringly over the intercom connection, telling them to examine their backpack readouts, the amount of gas in the cylinders, the fuel supply for the thrusters, the security of the tethers.

He had to coax them into releasing their restraints and pushing themselves down out of the bay into the limitless void of space.

Once they were clear of the craft, Maslov had fired the MakoShark’s thrusters and rolled it slightly, so that he could see through the canopy the two men floating near the HoneyBee rocket. The Earth was low to his left, and it tended to capture the attention of the two, distracting them. They were connected to the MakoShark by long, snaky tethers of nylon rope and intercom cables. The intercom cables precluded the use of the space suit radios, which might be overheard by eavesdropping radio scanners. They took a full twenty minutes to become accustomed to using the miniature thrusters of their EVA packs to maneuver their bodies into working positions.

He supervised their work, frequently becoming impatient enough to consider depressurizing his cockpit and going outside to urge them on. The only thing that restrained him was his lack of an EVA pack. He had only an emergency, thirty-minute supply of air in a portable cylinder.

They did not have the specialized tools and pumping equipment utilized by the Americans for loading and unloading the HoneyBee payload modules, and they were therefore forced into more violent disassembly methods. Following Maslov’s directions and using cutting torches, it took them nearly four hours to separate the rocket stage of the HoneyBee from the payload capsule. Once, they had to stop to refill their air supplies from the tank in the aft bay. With some effort, Bryntsev and Filatov were able to separate the two components of the rocket by several meters, allowing them access to the flexible bladder inside the payload capsule which contained the solid fuel pellets.

Another two hours were required to retrieve the equipment from the aft cargo bay pallet and connect hoses and pumps between the bladder and the MakoShark, then pump the pellets aboard the space craft.

“We are fortunate to have our own gasoline station, are we not, Boris?”

“It is not fast service, Aleks,” Nikitin replied.

“It will become much better with practice,” Maslov assured him.

Bryntsev disconnected the hoses from the MakoShark, but left them attached to the bladder, ready for the next use. He and Filatov had then worked their way back into their seats and strapped in.

“Have you pulled your tethers in, Yuri?” Maslov asked.

“A moment more, Aleks. There. It is clear.”

Maslov closed the bay doors.

Though he was frustrated at the loss of time, Maslov said, “A wonderful job, comrades.”

“It is awe-inspiring,” Bryntsev said. “Concentration is difficult, and I am sorry for the delays.”

“There is no rush. Are you now back on the craft’s air supply?”

“I am helping Filatov.” After a minute, Bryntsev added, “Yes, we are both connected. After so much infinity, Aleks, this compartment feels both secure and claustrophobic.”

“I know the sensation,” Maslov said, then tested the availability of his ordnance. At the lower edge of the Head-Up Display, eleven green lights appeared along with one red light.

“Boris, I show a malfunction of a Wasp II. Right inboard pylon, number two.”

“Yes, I see it, Aleks. We have probably burned the nose cone”

“It is supposed to be adapted for high temperatures.”

“But it has been subjected to orbital insertion or reentry three times,” Nikitin said. “Perhaps there is a limit to the lifespan of the nose cones.”

“Yes, you are probably correct, Boris. Perhaps we will leave our good Phoenix missiles in orbit before we return this time.”

“A good idea,” Nikitin said.

“Very well, Boris. Now, I need a course for our next objective.”

“I have had several hours in which to program it. We will require a reversal of our attitude, then a twelve-second retro burn in order to reduce velocity and decrease altitude to the proper orbit.”

Maslov used the OMS to back away from the HoneyBee, then said, “You may proceed, Boris.”

After a few seconds, the computer took over, inverted the MakoShark, and fired the rockets for twelve seconds. It all seemed to Maslov to be accomplished in slow motion and wonderful silence.

“Time to target?” he asked.

“Forty-two minutes,” the weapons system operator said.

They waited it out, saying little to each other. Maslov forgot about his two passengers.

Thirty-five minutes later, he armed all of his Wasp II missiles.

Thirty-nine minutes later, he saw the target, the sun glinting brightly off the silver sides of the space station.