Delta Green

Chapter Thirteen

“Marla says the closure rate is two-four-oh feet per second, Cancha,” Williams said.

Dimatta had already spotted the reflection of the sun off the space station, probably around forty miles away, but depth perception was deceptive in space.

“We ought to slow down just a tad,” Williams said, “or we’re going to end up in a higher orbit.”

They had taken the most rapid course into orbit that the computer could find, with a rocket burn that lasted over ten minutes.

“All right, Nitro, give me a solution.”

Dimatta scanned the HUD and instrument panel. Greens everywhere. As always, with any new edition of the same model, refinements and modifications had been made to previous systems, so that Delta Orange was not exactly the same as her sisters. She was supposed to be better. And maybe she was. In all of the flight trials, the only adjustments made were in the fine-tuning of control movement rates and the calibration of instruments.

He was beginning to like her.

An emotion which made him feel somewhat traitorous toward Delta Green.

“Any time you’re ready, Cancha.”

“Roger, activating.”

Dimatta punched the code into the keyboard and let the computer take over, following its calculations for course alterations that would align the craft with the space station’s celestial coordinates. Within seconds, the nose and tail thrusters ignited, the MakoShark went tail-over into an aft-facing attitude, and the rocket motors both fired for less than a second. As soon as the reduction in velocity was accomplished, Delta Orange again flipped over, her nose leading the way, and the message readout on the HUD flashed, “MORE INSTRUCTIONS?”

Dimatta tapped the keyboard cancel pad and took back control.

The DME indicated they were 32.4 miles from the station.

On the communications panel, he selected Tac Two, then said, “Delta Orange checking in.”

“That was quick,” Conover came back.

“Hey, Con Man, the cavalry always comes through. Who do we shoot?”

“No one, at the moment,” Conover said. “Take up a position five miles off Alpha, below her, and on your side. Country Girl, you want to move above Alpha now?”

“Roger that, Con Man,” Haggar said.

“Deltas, Alpha. As soon as you’re in position, give us a squawk so we know where you are.”

Dimatta deflected his course toward a point slightly below the approaching space station while Williams put a 360-degree radar sweep on the screen.

The station appeared on the screen, as well as a small surveillance satellite sixty miles above, but there was nothing else, threatening or not.

When he was in position, Dimatta used the nose thrusters to match velocity with the station, then flipped the MakoShark once again so they were facing away from the station. Back to the wall, so to say.

He activated the IFF for a second.

“Got you, Orange,” Overton said. “And Yellow and Red. Stay sharp, please.”

On the ICS, Williams said, “Radar passive; I’m going to video.”

The screen reverted to the video image, and Williams set the automatic scan. The lens began to slowly traverse in a 120-degree arc.

There wasn’t much to be seen: faraway stars, the curve of the Earth when the lens reached the far right side of its traverse.

Despite their protective coloration, the MakoSharks were visible in space to the eye at about seven to eight miles if the viewer was looking down on them. Without the diffusion of dirty atmosphere to blunt the sun’s rays, and if the craft were in the right attitude in relation to the sun, the skin surfaces gave off a warm sheen that clearly defined them. With the video lens at full magnification, they had a chance of picking up Delta Green when she was still thirty or thirty-five miles away. And if she was in the right position relative to the sun. There were a lot of ifs involved.

Dimatta scanned the area through the canopy, then refocused on the screen.

“All we have to do now is watch, Nitro.”

“And wait,” the backseater said.

Maslov drifted the MakoShark slowly toward the space station from above. The Earth beyond the station was a huge, vari-colored ball, well saturated with cloud cover. The Pacific Ocean was a muted blue that trapped the eyes.

“Closure rate five feet per minute,” Nikitin said.

“I am going to open the bay doors,” Maslov warned his passengers. “Are you prepared?”

“We are ready,” Bryntsev said. “It will be much easier, and much faster, this time, Aleks. I promise you.”

“Speed is secondary to accuracy and stealth, Yuri. There is no need to rush.”

The view of the station was clear in his windscreen, and Nikitin had also deployed the video lens, placing an image on the instrument panel’s cathode ray tube.

He was approaching the station from above and behind, out of the eye of its single porthole looking down on earth and of its space telescope. He was absolutely confident that the satellite’s radar and infrared detectors did not know of his presence.

The Soyuz Fifty space station did not appear anything like that of the Americans. It was one elongated tube, composed of sections of A2e rockets that had been launched over the years, then bolted together in space. The diameter was about six meters, and with nine components, the entire length amounted to nearly thirty meters. The component on this end was the nuclear reactor, a modification of the Topaz Two reactor that the Soviet Union had been injecting into space for many years. Various components had antennas, solar arrays, and other appendages extending from them. The finish was a bright aluminum, designed to reflect the sun’s rays and decrease the heat build-up within the station.

Maslov had once received a briefing on this space station, and he knew that the other eight components housed laboratories, presidential spaces, communications and surveillance electronics, and work areas. The center module, the first one injected into space, had an airlock fabricated into its side, and the module on the end opposite the nuclear reactor had a forward bulkhead that could be opened, in order to accept additional add-on modules.

“Be very careful, Yuri,” he cautioned. “Do not cut cables unless it is necessary.”

“I have been over this mission many times in my mind, Aleks”

“I am sorry. I want to get it right.”

“We will.”

Maslov nudged the nose thrusters one time to stop their forward progress directly above the nuclear reactor segment. The body of the station was less than six meters away.

Moments later, Bryntsev and Filatov appeared, jetting toward the skin of the satellite from under the nose of the MakoShark and trailing their tethers behind them.

Bryntsev, probably because he was a pilot, had learned the finer points about controlling his thrusters. He touched down lightly on the aluminum of the rocket.

“The skin is hot,” he reported. “I can feel it through my boots.”

Maslov did not reply.

He watched as Bryntsev first studied the VHF, UHF, and HF antenna array, then tracked their cables to where they entered the station.

“They are simply connectors,” Bryntsev said. “I will have to unscrew them, then pull them loose.”

“Do it quickly, Yuri.”

Bryntsev’s body blocked Maslov’s view, but the man apparently unscrewed each of the cable lead’s ferrules first, then rapidly pulled each one free and let them hang in space.

The station was now deaf and dumb.

Isolated.

Filatov signalled from further forward, where he had just disconnected the video lead from the remote-controlled camera mounted on the exterior.

The station was now blind except for its porthole, radar, and infrared detectors.

If the three men inside had been conversing with someone. on Earth at the time communications were lost or watching some exterior view on a monitor, they would now be a little concerned, though probably not yet alarmed.

“All right, Yuri, that is good. Let us go on.”

Maslov applied a spurt of rear thruster, and the MakoShark eased forward, following the two spacemen as they aimed for the center module and the airlock. He raised the MakoShark away from the satellite a couple meters in order to clear several large antennas.

Filatov reached the airlock first. “As you said, Colonel, it can be opened from the outside.”

“Proceed,” Maslov said.

Filatov began spinning the large wheel.

The men inside would now be alarmed.

The large hatch was raised easily by Bryntsev, then the two men detached their tethers and communication cables. Bryntsev waved, then pulled himself into the airlock. The corporal followed, and the hatch closed behind them.

A tense fifteen minutes followed. From what Maslov knew, the airlock could be pressurized from within the lock. It remained to be seen whether the cosmonauts would be frightened enough by events to attempt to keep the inner door locked.

Apparently not.

The hatch opened again, and Bryntsev stuck his head out and waved a bulky hand.

Maslov waved back, then found his emergency air cylinder and changed his nitrogen/oxygen feed line to it.

“I am depressurizing my cockpit now, Boris”

“Be careful, Aleks. I do not wish to lose my pilot.”

“There is Yuri.”

“Yuri has never performed a reentry.”

“You and your computer do that, Boris.”

“Still.”

When the panel readout reported that the cockpit was fully depressurized, Maslov opened the canopy. He took the hook of the twenty-meter nylon line stuffed between the seat and the fuselage and snapped it to his belt, then released his harness. A push with his hands lifted him straight up out of the seat.

Dodging the raised canopy, he pulled himself outside of the craft.

And became so dizzy that he almost vomited.

Without the security of a familiar seat and cockpit, hanging over an infinity of nothingness, the mind rebelled. That slim nylon line was all that connected him with reality.

He hung onto the edge of the canopy, closed his eyes, and fought back the nausea. It took several minutes.

Maslov looked back, and the sight of his weapons system officer strapped securely under his canopy helped to reorient him.

Through the faceplate of his visor, Nikitin appeared very worried.

Maslov nodded to reassure both Nikitin and himself, then carefully placed the soft soles of his boots against the coaming and shoved with his hands. His body rotated forward and down, and when the airlock appeared to be in the right place, he flexed his toes.

He sailed softly across the abyss between the station and the craft.

Almost too slowly.

He thought he might not reach his destination and would have to pull himself back with the tether and attempt it again.

And then he realized he might have aimed too high.

The airlock passed by below him and he could not reach it.

But Bryntsev rose out of it and extended a hand. Maslov grasped it thankfully.

Together, they descended into the lock. It was an extremely tight fit for two men in bulky space suits, especially with Bryntsev’s EVA pack in place. Bryntsev pulled the hatch down and spun the wheel to seal it. He fumbled at a control panel, and Maslov heard the hiss of gas being forced into the lock.

It was unlit and so dark inside the lock that they could not see each other. Maslov almost violated his own rule and activated the environmental suit’s radio in order to talk to Bryntsev. The chances of their unscrambled conversation being overheard were too great, however, and he fought back the impulse.

A green lamp illuminated on the panel, then Filatov opened the interior hatch and Maslov straightened out his legs and floated into the station.

The interior was brightly lit, but the finish was rudimentary and crude, and everything was painted gray. Conduit and venting pipes ran along the bulkheads. In seemingly random locations were consoles and control panels. Life aboard Soyuz Fifty was not intended to be luxurious.

He looked toward the rear, into the next component, and saw four bodies floating. One of them was Corporal Filatov, still in his space suit, but with his helmet removed.

Following Filatov’s lead, Maslov removed his own helmet.

“Are they dead, Corporal?”

“Not yet, Comrade Colonel.”

Bryntsev and Filatov had utilized dart pistols armed with tranquilizing darts. Explosive firearms might have punctured the hull of the station. And they had brought along the tank of nitrogen/oxygen in the MakoShark’s cargo bay just in case they had had to breach both hatches of the airlock and had lost the atmosphere inside. The station had an atmospheric recycling system, but they would have had to re-prime it.

Yuri Bryntsev got his helmet off.

“It went very well, Aleks.”

“So I see. You are both to be congratulated, and I will see that the Chairman knows of your heroic efforts.”

They both nodded their gratitude.

The three of them toured the station, noting where controls and monitoring equipment were located. Each of the eight components beyond the reactor could be sealed off, apparently in case of a loss of pressure in one of the modules. There was a full library of manuals which would be of great assistance in learning the many sub-systems. Several complex scientific experiments appeared to be underway in the laboratory modules, but they could be ignored.

“All right,” Maslov said, “I think we should finish the transfer. Yuri, you appear to have mastered the EVA suit. If you would reconnect the antennas and the video leads, then begin unloading the equipment in the bay of the MakoShark?”

“Of course, Aleks.” Bryntsev did a forward flip. “I am beginning to like this place.”

“Good. We would like to have the radio scrambler first, so that Corporal Filatov can hook it into the system. Then, we will have communications, and I suspect the Chairman would appreciate that.”

Bryntsev pointed to the three sedated cosmonauts. “And them?”

“I will take care of it.”

Maslov took care of it by taking one man at a time into the airlock with him and pumping the atmosphere out of the lock. Without light in the lock, he did not have to look at the man’s face as he died, his blood boiling in the vacuum of space.

Then he opened the outer hatch, and nudged the body outside, giving it a final push in the direction of the Earth.

He did not watch the bodies drift away.

General Oleg Druzhinin was startled when the radio finally blurted, “Commodore, this is Commander.”

He had been waiting so many hours for that statement that it seemed as if days had passed. Sergeant Kasartskin had been waiting with him in the communications room also, and he grabbed the microphone. “Commander, this is Commodore.”

Maslov’s tone was jubilant. “Commodore, the station is ours. All of the cargo transfers have been made, the personnel complement is in place, and the craft will be departing within the hour.”

“Acknowledged,” Kasartskin said.

He turned to Druzhinin, grinning, and said, “The radios seem to work very well, General.”

“Everything works well, Sergeant,” Druzhinin smiled, then stood and left the room for his office down the hall.

He placed a call to the compound in Phnom Penh.

There was no answer.

He tried another telephone number.

And Sergei Pavel answered.

“It is a grand evening,” he said.

“And a balmy one,” Pavel answered.

“I call to report full success.”

“Excellent! That is excellent, comrade!”

As soon as he awoke at five o’clock in the morning, McKenna went downstairs to the hotel lobby and called Milt Avery in Borneo. He learned that there had been no confrontations and no sign of Delta Green. Jim Overton had begun relieving the MakoShark sentinels one at a time.

He went back up to his room to shave and pack his Dopp kit, the only luggage he had with him. The tan slacks and tropical shirt had been last minute purchases at the small base exchange at Merlin, and he was already tired of them. He sat on the bed and waited.

Munoz knocked on the door at 5:22 A.M., and they waited together.

“You could go down and bang on her door, jefe.”

“I’m not an alarm clock, Tony.”

Munoz threw up his hands in exasperation.

At 5:30 A.M., Pearson rapped on the door, and McKenna let her in.

“You had to pick a hotel without a shower,” she said.

“We’re being low-profile, remember?”

She grimaced, then said, “We go to the consulate first, to pick up some paperwork.”

“What kind of paperwork?”

“Cover. It makes us members of an international health organization’s investigation team. We’re looking at children’s hospitals to see if we should provide funding.”

“I see,” McKenna said. “When did you order this up?”

“I called the CIA contact at the consulate last night.”

“Using the hotel’s phone?”

“No one’s eavesdropping on this hotel,” she said, probably with truth.

“But they’re damned sure eavesdropping on the consulate, Amy.”

“Give me some credit, McKenna. I had the CIA guy leave the consulate and call me back.”

“Yeah, McKenna,” Munoz said, “give her some credit.”

“Let’s go,” he said.

The Renault was parked on a side street next to the hotel, and when they reached it, they found it missing a window, the radio, and the hubcaps.

“Hated those hubcaps,” Munoz said as he crawled behind the wheel. “When I was growin’ up in Tucson, we only took hubcaps worth takin’.”

He drove them to the consulate, where Pearson got out and went in for the forged papers, then to the airport where they checked in the rental car and had breakfast consisting of some egg concoction with a curry spread over it and lots of weak coffee.

McKenna didn’t finish his breakfast. He went to flight operations, pinned down the location of the hospital, and received assurances that the landing strip would accept a Learjet.

When he came back to the table in the small restaurant, Pearson asked, “Did anyone wonder why you wanted to go there?”

“No. And I didn’t offer any excuses. I’m not cut out for this snoopy stuff”

Munoz scooped up the last of his and then McKenna’s breakfast offerings, shoveled it into his mouth, and said, “Let’s do it”

They walked out to the Learjet and Munoz unlocked it while McKenna made an inspection tour. It appeared to have gone the night without interference or vandalism. Satisfied, he climbed aboard, went through the checklist with Munoz, and started the turbofans.

After a wait for an Air India passenger liner, they were given approval for takeoff, and twelve minutes later, were climbing through fifteen thousand feet, headed northwest.

He leveled off at sixteen thousand feet, cruising along at 350 knots, following the Tonle Sap River.

Pearson came forward and knelt on the floor between the pilot seats, keeping her balance by gripping both seat backs. She was wearing a pale green pants suit, also purchased from the Merlin Base Exchange, but it seemed more appropriate for casual jungle wear than a dress. It also matches her eyes, McKenna noticed.

“Shelepin put up ten million dollars American for this hospital,” she said.

“He’s a rich Russian émigré,” Munoz said. “Maybe he’s an old Romanov?”

“Somehow, Tony, I doubt it,” she said. “He either left Moscow with a planeload of currency or he transferred it earlier.”

“You don’t think he’s a committed philanthropist?” McKenna asked.

“Not judging by his record.”

“So he got away with some cash, and he’s bankrolling all these little businesses and factories we looked at yesterday. The Kampucheans need the industries and the jobs. They slip him some favors in the way of tax breaks, and he reciprocates by endowing a hospital. He’s a changed man.”

“That’s not the way I see it,” she said.

“Gut feeling?” he asked.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Nice gut,” McKenna said, regretting the words as soon as he said them. He was falling back into old routines.

Pearson got to her feet and went back to her seat.

“You’re in big trouble, man,” Munoz said.

“You think so, Tiger?” McKenna said, feeling belligerent.

“She isn’t a MiG or Tornado you’re try in’ to shoot down. Got more class than that, amigo.”

McKenna went back to flying the airplane.

The Tonle Sap Lake, which fed the Tonle Sap River, was over a hundred miles long and twenty miles wide, appeared in the windscreen, and he trimmed in some down elevator and began a gradual descent. The jungle was thick, crowding the river, and to the north, the chart showed very few villages or townships.

Munoz was scanning the chart. “Hospital doesn’t even show here, Snake Eyes. You sure they’ve got a strip?”

“That’s what the guy in Phnom Penh said. We’re supposed to follow the east shore of the lake about two-thirds of the way up, then turn northeast. If we happen to see a village named Kompong Kleang…”

“There a sign on it?”

“Doubt it, Tiger. Then we go to one-three-five for seventy klicks. Lo and behold, there will be an asphalt strip.”

“Sounds like a heroin transfer point to me.”

“Maybe it is.”

“What’s it doin’ way out in the boonies?”

“The guys said these kids were bad off. Maimed from the war, all kinds of diseases.”

“Jesus, compadre, this is not how I want to spend my morning.”

Tony Munoz went back to his chart. “Got the village here. Put her a couple points to starboard, and we’ll take a shortcut.”

McKenna eased the yoke to the right and began to edge away from the lakeshore.

Ten minutes later, they found the village, and McKenna made a wide circle around it, coming out of the circle on the recommended heading.

Four and a half minutes after that, Munoz said, “Lo and behold!”

McKenna retarded his throttles and started a slow circle, continuing to lose altitude.

“Walter Reed, it’s not,” Munoz said.

McKenna leaned close to the side window and peered down. The runway took up most of a long, narrow clearing. He could see the red crosses painted neatly on the tops of dozens of small buildings spread about in the fringes of the jungle. Near one wall-less structure was a car park. He counted a half-dozen buses and a similar number of surplus army trucks.

“I wonder why the buildings are so far apart,” Munoz said.

“Maybe they isolate them by disease,” he said.

“I said I didn’t want to hear this”

Coming around to the north, McKenna said, “Runway looks all right to me, maybe a trifle short.”

“Can you be more objective than ‘a trifle?’”

“How about forty-two feet?”

“You’re the boss.”

He made his approach from the north, lowering the flaps and gear as they neared what he estimated to be the two-mile boundary.

Munoz called out the altitude and speed.

The Lear whisked over the last tall trees, McKenna hauled the throttles back, and the airplane settled onto the pavement with a hefty bounce or two.

“You get your pilot’s license from Sears?” Munoz asked.

“Ten dollars and ninety-nine cents plus tax and shipping.”

McKenna had the brakes on hard by the time they reached the opposite end of the runway, and they finally stopped ten feet short of the end of the asphalt.

“Guy in Phnom Penh must have been talking about some other Lear,” he said.

“I think we’re gonna get off the ground all right,” Munoz said. “We just won’t clear the trees, is all.”

McKenna turned the business jet around and taxied back up the strip. When he reached the midpoint, where a small parking area had been tamped into the earth with gravel and dirt, he turned off the pavement, taxied to the end of the park, then whipped the plane around in a 180-degree circle.

“Plannin’ on leavin’ in a hurry, Snake Eyes?”

“I don’t know what I’m planning, but this whole thing doesn’t feel right.”

McKenna shut down the engines, a stoic Pearson unbuckled herself, and the three of them used the airstep to make their way to the ground. It was hot, and a flurry of insects gathered quickly. The jungle was cut way back, but its chattering, clicking sounds were audible.

“There’s nothing here that scares away the monkeys or birds,” McKenna said.

“That’s reassuring,” Pearson said.

He heard an engine revving and turned to see a white Land Rover approaching from the north end. It too had a red cross painted on it.

It pulled to a stop near the tail plane, and a distinguished-looking man slipped from behind the wheel. He had long white hair combed back over his ears. He was tall and lean and dressed in tan slacks, a blue button-down shirt open at the throat, and a white lab coat.

“Hello,” he said in Russian.

McKenna didn’t acknowledge that he understood a few words in the language. He offered a blank stare, then said in English, “Good morning.”

“Ah, yes, hello.” The man’s English was clipped, learned in a British setting or from a British teacher perhaps. “What can I do for you, please?”

Pearson took over as the man surveyed the airplane, noting, McKenna was certain, the USAF identification number on the fuselage.

“We’re United States Air Force officers,” she said, producing her plastic-laminated ID card.

McKenna and Munoz dug into their pockets for their own cards.

“We’re attached temporarily to the United Nations, and we’re touring hospitals and clinics devoted to the care of children.” She handed the man the papers that supposedly attested to that fact.

“Ah, yes, I see. Colonel Pearson. Well, I am Doctor Geli Lemesh, the administrator here. If I had but known that you were coming, I…”

“We try, Dr. Lemesh, to arrive unannounced. We do not wish to have special preparations made for us.”

“Yes, of course. However, I do not understand the nature of your visit.”

“In recent years, the plight of children internationally has become a concern, and our organization hopes to learn where increased funding might most effectively be channeled. The excellent reputation of your hospital came to our attention, and we wanted to see it for ourselves. If that will not inconvenience you?”

The mention of increased funding was all that was required. McKenna also noted the doctors increased interest in Pearson’s pants suit.

Pang of jealousy?

Of course not.

“It is not an imposition at all, Colonel, not at all. I am at your disposal.”

“Simply, Doctor, we would appreciate a quick tour of your facilities.”

“I am happy to show you”

They all got in the Land Rover, Pearson in front with the administrator, and the doctor turned it around and headed up the slight hill toward the main cluster of buildings.

They parked in front of an unmarked building that was identified by Lemesh as the administration building. Inside, he showed them a pair of laboratories that appeared well-outfitted to McKenna. Offices, record-keeping sections, and a lounge made up the rest of the two-story structure. They were introduced to staff members as they ran into them in the halls. Many nationalities seemed to be in residence, but it was evident that most of the menial jobs had gone to Khmer citizens. Several Khmer medical students and interns were introduced.

McKenna and Munoz made many notes in small notebooks, acting the inspection team, and recording points of interest. McKenna didn’t note anything of military interest.

The tour of the out-buildings was precisely what Munoz hadn’t wanted to see. Two dormitories, new but already overcrowded, housed refugee and orphaned children of the war with Vietnam. Most were missing a limb or two. Many were sightless. Some had what McKenna would have described as profound psychological problems.

Other small wards were devoted to the diseases — typhoid, dysentery, malaria, leprosy, muscular dystrophy, smallpox, and others that McKenna lost track of — that plagued nations whose children did not receive the inoculations and health care that were commonplace in the United States.

The children, who looked up at him from cots and wheelchairs, appeared to be receiving excellent care. Their bodies were not emaciated, and their wounds were cleanly dressed, and the bustling native nurses seemed solicitous, but the children’s eyes were big and brown and hopeless. That lack of zeal, that matte-brown deadness, affected him the most.

After two hours of enduring the tour, he was relieved when Lemesh let them out of the Land Rover back at the airstrip.

“I think, Doctor Lemesh,” Pearson said, “that you can be proud of what you have achieved here.”

“I thank you, Colonel Pearson. Perhaps, if there were not so many, we could do more.”

“How many children are in residence?” she asked.

“There are now 1,612. I have applications for hundreds more.”

“Thank you, Doctor, for putting up with our surprise visit, and for your courtesy.”

“I do wish you would stay for lunch.”

Lemesh was clearly enamored of Amelia Pearson. Throughout the tour, he had been constantly at her side, continually solicitous of her comfort. He opened doors for her.

“We really must be on our way,” she told him, “though I hope to return some day.”

“Nothing would make me more happy,” the doctor told her.

None of them said anything as Munoz closed and locked the door. Pearson dropped into her seat. McKenna took his time starting the engines.

They cleared the treeline on takeoff, but just barely.

Heading south at fifteen thousand feet, Pearson came forward.

“What do you think, Amy?” he asked.

“I’m going to write a report for the United Nations, whether they want one or not.”

“I’ll sign it” Munoz said.

“What did you think of the hospital, Kevin?” she asked.

He figured she wasn’t asking about the doctor. Maybe she had already made her judgment there.

“The hospital’s fine,” he said. “But on the walk between the blood diseases compound and the respiratory diseases ward, I heard something I didn’t expect to hear.”

“What’s that?”

Munoz answered, “Turbojet engine spooling up.”