Delta Green

Chapter Fourteen

As soon as they got back to Wet Country, Pearson left for Themis aboard Mako Three. Ken Autry also had two nuclear physicists aboard, so McKenna figured she would have someone to talk to during the trip.

He certainly hadn’t been able to talk to her on their sojourn to Kampuchea.

He waved goodbye as she and the two extremely apprehensive scientists disappeared into the passenger module. She didn’t wave back.

After the Mako took off, McKenna walked back to Hangar One and took the elevator to the control tower. He had a call in to Brackman and wanted to stay close to a secure phone. As he might have expected, Munoz had found a place to cuddle up with a pillow.

Captain Marcia Eames, the duty officer in the tower, told him, “That’s a fine-looking shirt, Colonel.”

McKenna plucked at the collar of the flowered shirt. “These are the best abstract drawings of orchids I’ve ever seen, Marcia.”

“Oh, they’re orchids?”

“Aren’t they?”

“I thought they were orange blossoms,” she said. “I’ve never seen orange orchids.”

“Maybe I was robbed?”

“I don’t think they’ll give you your money back. They’ve been trying to sell that shirt for three years.”

He had to wait for twenty minutes before Brackman called back.

“Sorry, Kevin. I’ve been tied up.”

McKenna reported on their trip. “Jet engines at ground level in the jungle aren’t all that usual. What I’d like to do, General, is mount a recon pod and do a low-level pass over the area. I expect you’ll also be hearing from Pearson in regard to dropping sensors.”

Though the world was mostly his oyster, McKenna didn’t make routine decisions on his own about low-level flights over sovereign countries with the MakoShark.

“The recon is approved,” Brackman said. “Do it as soon as it gets dark there. On the sensors, I’ll have to check with Cross. These little countries tend to get testy in the UN if they discover they’re being spied on.”

“Thank you, General. We’ll go ahead and set it up.”

“One more thing, Kevin. Before you can get off, you may be grounded.”

“What!”

“General Delwin Cartwright has put in his papers for retirement.”

That was a pleasant thought, but McKenna was diplomatic enough to remain silent.

“And he has apparently had lengthy and detailed conversations with Senator Alvin Worth and Congresswoman Marian Anderson. Worth is raising hell in the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee and Anderson has the House Armed Services Committee in an uproar.”

“About what?” McKenna asked.

“About a colonel who’s allowed to ride roughshod over generals.”

“That’s not worthy of a response, Marv. Nor worthy of a congressional hearing.”

“And about poor organizational structures and controls in the Space Command which result in the loss of expensive spacecraft.”

“That little prick! That’s bullshit.”

“That’s two of us who are aware of it,” Brackman said. “However, the motions before both committees are calling for a suspension of activities in 1st Aerospace Squadron until the Congress can investigate.”

“That could take years,” McKenna said. “What’s the response?”

“The White House and the SecDef are rallying, going after the other committee members to squash the motions.”

“Will they get it done?”

“They might have, except that the Washington Post got the story somehow. Reporters are calling everyone in the book for confirmations. It’ll be common knowledge in a few hours, and that will add to the pressure.”

“Jesus Christ. I should have pumped a Wasp II into Worth and Anderson when I had the chance.”

“That thought had traipsed across my mind, McKenna. I’d rather find a better way to deal with it.”

If the American Space Shuttle was a semi-truck, the MakoShark was a pickup truck. Because the space fighter was multi-tasked and smaller than the Shuttle, it could not handle the same amount of cargo load. Both payload bays together would not accept the SS-X-25 ICBM.

“When you have a smaller truck,” General Druzhinin was fond of saying, “you simply make more trips.”

Aleksander Maslov wished it were not so. The more often he made the journey to Soyuz Fifty, the more likely he would be detected by the pilots of the 1st Aerospace Squadron. Their original plan called for eight flights in eight nights, but though he had not voiced his concerns to Druzhinin, since the attempted ambush off the coast of Vietnam, he was disturbed by the rapidity with which the American aerospace command was narrowing its search area. It was much sooner than they had projected.

In the early evening, after having dinner in the pilot’s mess, Maslov watched the loading of the warhead. The MakoShark’s cargo bays together were 5.8 meters long, but to utilize both as a single unit, interior structural members between the fore and aft bays had had to be unbolted and removed. The loss of the members greatly weakened the fuselage, and abrupt, high-G maneuvers would have to be curtailed until the supports were replaced.

The SS-X-25 ICBM was 11.5 meters in length, almost twice as long as the cargo bay. However, since the rocket would not require a launch from the Earth’s surface, the first stage booster component could be removed and discarded. Separating the warhead from the secondary rocket motor and electronics stage resulted in two units: a warhead of 3.3 meters in length and a second stage of 5.4 meters in length. The small stabilizing fins on the second stage had to be removed in order to gain sufficient clearance in the bay, but they were unnecessary in the missile’s new role.

In calculating the takeoff weight, Maslov did not find a problem with the warhead. With the second stage propulsion component as his cargo, though, he would be able to arm the MakoShark with only Wasp II missiles in order to stay under the maximum weight. He would also be required to leave behind one-third of his solid fuel propellent.

That problem was for tomorrow night. Tonight, he and Nikitin would lift the first warhead into orbit.

Maslov watched until the warhead was hoisted into place and the workers began fitting short pieces of wood between structural members and the warhead to secure it, then he crossed the runway to the command center.

Kasartskin was not in the communications room, and Maslov shooed the corporal on duty out of his chair, sat down, and selected the channel incorporating the MakoShark’s altered scrambler.

“Commander, Commodore.”

He waited, repeated the signal, and waited some more.

“Commodore, this is Commander,” Bryntsev finally responded.

“Status report, please.”

“Commodore, we are perhaps thirty minutes behind schedule. I allowed us an extra half-hour of sleep in order to reduce the stress level.”

“That is understandable,” Maslov said. “How is the modification proceeding?”

“We removed all of the biological laboratory equipment in the end module and sealed it off from the rest of the station, then pumped out the atmosphere and opened the rocket mating hatch to the exterior.”

Maslov could picture it clearly, having seen it for himself. The last module in the string of modules incorporated a special airlock and hatch which mated with the passenger-carrying rockets transporting cosmonauts between the station and the Baikonur Cosmodrome. If additional components were to be added to the station, the airlock was designed to be moved to the end of the new module.

“Then with the atmosphere evacuated,” Bryntsev continued, “we drilled a hole through the hull and inserted the umbilical cable connector.”

“There are no leaks?” Maslov asked.

“We will not know until we have restored the atmosphere in the module, but it has been sealed well and bolted into place. I believe it will hold the pressure.”

“Good,” Maslov encouraged him.

“The corporal is now moving the fire control console into the module from the outside. The passage through the hatch is a close fit, and we have removed the legs of the console. They are unnecessary, anyway. As soon as that is accomplished, we will close the hatch and begin pressurizing the module.”

“Very good, Captain. Commodore out.”

The system they had decided on, for lack of space, utilized only one fire control and launch programming console taken from a mobile ground launcher, so only one rocket at a time could be connected by a fifteen-meter umbilical cable to the console. The other three rockets would be tethered to the space station and be required to await their turns for programming. If all went well, the other three would never have to be used anyway.

Maslov was relatively certain the first would be launched. Some governments would need evidence.

Deadly evidence.

He heard the telephone ring back in Druzhinin’s office and pushed himself out of the chair. In the corridor, he turned right and walked back to the office.

The general waved him inside, continuing to listen intently to the caller.

“Yes, thank you, Doctor.”

Druzhinin replaced the receiver in its cradle.

“Puzzling,” he said.

“What is that, Comrade General?”

“Doctor Lemesh had a visit from a United Nations medical inspection team today. In the morning.” Druzhinin related the particulars.

“They were flying an American Air Force airplane?” Maslov asked.

“Yes. And the three inspectors were all U.S. Air Force officers.”

“I do not like it,” Maslov said.

“Nor do I. Do you have an interpretation, Aleksander Illiyich?”

Maslov thought about the timing. “I believe that Boris and I should take off immediately with the warhead. We can be back here by three or four in the morning, load the propulsion stage, and take off again before dawn. We will wait out the day in space.”

“That would be extremely wearing on you, Aleksander. Fatigue causes mistakes.”

“It must be done, General. If we get caught with the warheads here, the cause will be lost. We cannot protect ourselves with ground-based nuclear weapons.”

Druzhinin nodded slowly. “I agree.”

“I slept for most of the morning. Were we conducting any unusual activities during the time the Americans were at the hospital?”

“There was some personnel drilling. The usual training schedule.”

Pilot training schedules only occurred at night because the New World Order fighter aircraft might draw unwanted notice during the day.

“One other thing,” Druzhinin said. “The mechanics tested the new turbojet engine installed in one-eight.”

One-eight was a MiG-27.

Maslov shook his head. “I believe, General, that we cannot take chances the test went unheard.”

“You are correct.”

“If they are suspicious at all, they will come tonight to take photographs, both night vision and infrared.”

“As soon as you take off,” the general said, “I will put the counterintelligence plan into operation.”

“Good. I will get Nikitin, and we will prepare for an immediate departure.”

As he left the command center, Maslov reminded himself of the base commander’s thoroughness. Druzhinin was an intelligent leader, and he had already formulated a scheme to deny substantial evidence to anyone attempting photographic surveillance.

Machines and motors emitting heat would be shut down, including the electricity generators. A minimal amount of electric power would be drawn from the hospital’s generators to meet the requirements of water pumps and dormitory lights. After the motors or engines cooled for awhile, they would be washed down with water to cool them further. The steel-plank runway, which held the day’s heat for longer than the surrounding earth, would we well-doused with water so as not to provide an infrared image of an elongated rectangle.

All of the base’s personnel would be ordered to their beds. The human body heat which produced infrared images would be confined to dormitories which appeared to be part of the hospital’s complex.

Crossing the runway in the gathering darkness, Maslov felt as if his senses were more acute, his awareness on the rise. The adrenaline was rushing through his veins, making his reality clearer, his grasp on life less certain, and his purpose stronger.

The infinite chasm of danger was close to his feet, and he loved it.

The sense of urgency aboard Themis had died away, if not the concern.

After consultations with Brackman and Overton, Kevin McKenna had reduced the patrol circling the station to one, currently alternating between Haggar and Conover. Delta Orange had been dispatched to Wet Country.

Conover and Abrams had been serving as guardian for the last five hours, staying within forty miles of the mother ship, but darting from one position to another with short bursts of the main rocket motors or small taps of the OMS.

Several times, they had cruised close to the station, where they could see white-suited men on Extra-Vehicular Activity mounting additional external video cameras on the modules. In the past, external vision had been limited to remote-controlled cameras primarily concerned with the arrival and departure of Mako craft and HoneyBee rockets. Now, they were setting up for visual defense, practically the only immediately available defense against a rogue MakoShark.

Ken Autry with Mako Three and Jerry Dahlgreen in Mako Six were also flying cover, but with orders to skedaddle if they spotted an intruder. They just weren’t equipped for confrontation with Delta Green.

Mako Five was on the ground at Jack Andrews for routine overhaul. The other Makos (One, Two, Four, and Seven) had returned to the standard chores of servicing satellites and transporting people and cargo between the station and Jack Andrews or Merlin.

“Hey, Do-Wop! You still awake?” Conover asked.

“Hell, yes. Quiet for a minute; I’m tuning in a new station.”

Peter, Paul, and Mary, relayed through a few communications satellites, came up in the background of Conover’s helmet phones, singing about magic dragons.

“There we go,” Abrams said, “right on!”

“I don’t mind it, as long as you don’t sing along.”

“Hum?”

“No.”

But Conover found himself on the verge of humming himself as he scanned the empty spaces surrounding them.

“Delta Yellow, Red.”

“Go Country Girl.”

“Swede took all my money at bridge, so we’re coming on a little early. You can come back and try Del O’Hara’s new entree.”

“What is it?” Abrams asked.

“Kentucky Fried Bites. No mess, no fuss, no chicken,” Haggar said.

“No chicken? Come on.”

“Honest,” she insisted. “It’s all made from peanuts, he says.”

“I’ll stick to hot dogs,” Abrams said. “You ready to go home, Con Man?”

“Why not?”

They passed Delta Red launching from her hangar cell as they were inbound, aimed for the yawning cell that belonged to Delta Yellow.

They were in the hangar with the doors closing before Conover realized he’d been snookered.

“Goddamn it!”

“What’s wrong, Con Man?”

“Damned Country Girl conned us.”

“What? How?”

“McKenna’s about to launch from Merlin. If he finds trouble and calls for help, she’s in position to go.”

“I tell you, Will, you just can’t trust a woman.”

The lift-off from Merlin Air Base was smooth, and McKenna retracted his gear and flaps, then went into an immediate right turn. The turbojets hummed behind him, and the altimeter readout steadily climbed.

“We want to boost soon as we’re feet wet, Snake Eyes?”

“Roger, Tiger.”

When they had cleared the Borneo coastline, they went quickly through the checklist and kicked in the rocket motors until they had achieved a velocity of Mach 4.5 with the turbojets shut down.

“Altitude angels thirty, jefe.”

“That should be good enough. We’re not going far.” Forty minutes into the flight, the Tac Two channel sounded off.

“Wet Country, this is Semaphore.”

McKenna recognized Brackman’s voice.

“Semaphore, Wet Country.”

“Find the CO for me,” Brackman said.

Four or five minutes went by before Milt Avery responded, and McKenna nearly cut in to talk to Brackman, but he didn’t. There was something in Brackman’s tone that said he wasn’t open to casual conversation.

“Semaphore, Wet Country One.”

“Yeah, One. Is Delta Blue One around?”

“Uh… not just now, Semaphore.”

“Well, damn. I guess I missed him.”

“I could…”

“Tell you what,” Brackman said, “when you see him again, tell him he and Major Munoz are wanted in Washington for talks with some important people. It’s urgent. Have him give me a call.”

“Roger that,” Avery said.

The channel went silent.

“That was strange,” Munoz said on the ICS.

“I think we want to maintain radio silence, Tiger.” Brackman could be awfully indirect when he wanted to be. He’d never normally use Tac Two for that kind of message.

“It sounds as if they haven’t grounded us anyway, amigo.”

“The brass and the Hill people probably reached a compromise position,” McKenna said.

“Yeah, like grill McKenna over a hot charcoal fire. Flip once for even brownin’. Thing I don’t like, Snake Eyes, is havin’ my name mentioned by generals and politicians. Munoz doesn’t grill well.”

“I don’t want to go to Washington.”

“Let’s go to Cambodia instead, Snake Eyes.”

“Kampuchea.”

“My history’s kinda slow.”

“Let’s have a map, Tiger.”

Munoz brought up a map of Southeast Asia on the screen, then overlaid it with a grid. He programmed the coordinates of the children’s hospital, and a small red circle appeared on the screen.

“See if you can find that, compadre.”

“Do my best.”

McKenna flipped a switch and brought up the screen image on the HUD. He eased into a slight left turn and the red circle swung to the top of the HUD. Squat blue lettering told him: 180M TO TARGET.

The velocity was down to Mach 2.2. McKenna pulled the nose up and bled off more speed while climbing to forty thousand feet. After he had it below the sonic barrier, he rolled inverted and pulled the nose toward him, diving in a shallow plane.

“I mean, I like it, jefe, but somehow I missed the warning.”

McKenna snapped the MakoShark upright with the hand controller.

“I’m returning to normal flight,” he warned.

“Muchas gracias.”

At twenty-five thousand feet and sixty miles from the target, McKenna restarted the turbojets and let them idle while the MakoShark continued to coast downward. He set up the rocket motor ignition checklist and went partially through it, so the rockets would be available if needed.

“All right,” Munoz said. “We don’t want the hospital.”

“Correct.”

“What I heard sounded like it was to the east of the hospital, Snake Eyes.”

“Sound is tough in the jungle, but that’s where I’d put it, Tiger.”

“So we make our first pass a mile east?”

“Good show, chappie.”

“Come right a couple points, and on my mark, go to three-four-five.”

“Going right.”

“Mark.”

McKenna eased into the new heading.

“Distance to target, six-one miles. Altitude, angels nine. Speed four-six-four knots. Let’s increase the glide, Snake Eyes.”

“Going down. How’s the camera?”

“You wanna see?”

“No, just tell me.”

On the outboard starboard pylon was mounted one of the reconnaissance pods. It was capable of capturing true video, night vision, and infrared images.

“I’m runnin’ night and infrared, monitorin’ the infrared on my CRT. Looks good to me. Got a nice shot of a truck motoring into Kampong Thum.”

“That’ll thrill Amy.”

“Anything for a good cause. Angels five, distance to target four-six.”

McKenna concentrated on keeping the MakoShark steady. The cameras were gimbal-mounted and gyro-stabilized, but a smooth shooting platform helped. He kept an eye on the radar altimeter, monitoring altitude above ground level.

“Flatten the glide,” Munoz said. “We’re at four-thousand, two thou AGL, and that’ll give us a wide picture.”

McKenna nudged the hand controller back and eased the turbojet throttles forward to maintain his speed. The HUD reported airspeed at 420 knots.

“Distance now one-nine miles.”

“See anything yet, Tiger?”

“Some hot spots ahead on the left. That’s gonna be our hospital.”

A few seconds later, McKenna glanced through the left side of the canopy. Down in the blackness of the jungle, a few lights winked at him. Those would be the exterior lampposts around the hooches and dormitories that he had noticed while walking the grounds. At midnight, he didn’t expect many of the patients to be up and around. He hoped not, anyway. A patient up in the middle of the night meant pain and crisis.

“I don’t see shit,” Munoz said.

“Nothing?”

“No. Let’s make another pass. Hell, let’s make a buncha passes. Get the hospital, too.”

They made four passes over the region, then headed back toward Borneo.

Munoz, having monitored what the camera was seeing, wasn’t optimistic about the results.

And when Munoz wasn’t optimistic, neither was McKenna.

Amy Pearson received copies of the surveillance tapes at two in the afternoon, two in the morning in Borneo. She put Val Arguento and Donna Amber on two of the monitors in the radio shack, and the three of them went through the tapes at ultra slow speed, looking for any anomalies at all.

Then they switched monitors and double-checked each other.

Then they ran side-by-side comparisons of the night vision and infrared tapes.

She pointed out the reference points she was aware of from her visit to the site. “There. That’s the administration building”

“Still some heat in those shingles,” Arguento said. “Makes a nice rectangle.”

“And the cross on the roof is easily identified on the night vision shot,” Amber said.

“That building right there handles blood diseases,” Pearson said.

They went over the tapes slowly, heading east.

“Now, these buildings, we didn’t see,” Pearson said.

There were four of them, and a little farther east were a half dozen small pale spots that could have been anything.

“They’ve got the crosses on their roofs,” Amber said. “They must belong to the complex.”

“And they’re large,” Arguento added. “How about housing for the medical personnel?”

“That’s possible,” Pearson admitted. “We saw a few places that Lemesh said were dedicated to staff, but maybe not all of them. We weren’t invited to tour them.”

“Now, wait!” Arguento said. “Freeze it there.”

The night vision image displayed a variegated series of greens depicting jungle, a few small hills, and several clearings. The infrared picture alongside it showed blues, oranges, yellows, and red, in a similar pattern. There wasn’t much blue; it appeared in rambling strings only where several small streams ran.

“Look here,” Arguento said, using his finger to trace an area on the photo. “See the shape of this orange area? It’s just barely out of the reds, just a little cooler”

“I see it,” Pearson said.

It was an irregular pattern, without definite shape, except that it was elongated.

“So the ground’s a little cooler down the center of the clearings?” Amber asked.

“Right. It should be cooler back under the jungle canopy. Then, here’s another problem. The cool area runs right under the hills.”

Pearson glanced back at the night scope shot. There were four small, foliaged hills that prevented the area from being one large, long clearing.

Or did they?

“Camouflage, you think, Val?”

“I’m not staking my stripes on it, Colonel. Hell, there’s nothing else in the photos that causes alarm. No vehicles, no tanks, no nothing.”

“Just four hills that shouldn’t be cool,” she said.

“That’s it,” he agreed.

“If the Air Force gave out bonuses, I’d see that you got one.”

“Maybe you can talk to the President, or something,” Arguento said.

The Chief of Staff of the Air Force was on his way to Capitol Hill, summoned to a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee. He was in his car when Brackman reached him.

“What’ve you got, Marv?”

“Colonel Pearson thinks she’s found a covert airstrip.”

“Where?” Harvey Mays asked.

“Kampuchea. Northwest of Phnom Penh, way out in the jungle.”

“Good a place as any, I guess. Better than most. She’s sure of it?”

“I think she is, yes.”

“And you?”

“Hell, Harvey. I looked at the pictures. It could be. And then again, maybe not.”

“Give me odds that will buy us some time with the people I’m going to be talking to, Marv.”

“You bastard,” Brackman said. “Sixty-forty might be pushing it.”

“I don’t think they’re good enough, but I’ll try it. McKenna on his way?”

“Haven’t reached him yet, Harvey.”

“Well, get on it. They want to talk to him.”

“Do you really want me to take a commander out of the field in the middle of a crisis?” Brackman asked.

“No. But we haven’t yet declared a crisis, and I don’t see another choice, Marvin.”

Anatoly Shelepin, whose codename was “Admiral” now that the operation was underway, spent a restless night. He got up in the early morning and had fruit and tea for breakfast.

He kept looking at the telephone, but it would not ring for him.

He kept waiting for Yelena’s footsteps to tell him that she was awake.

And then he could wait no longer.

He placed his call and waited for the interminable connections to be made. He really needed to have one of the scrambled radios of his own.

“Yes?”

“It is a beautiful morning,” he said.

“And promises to be a grand day.”

“What word?”

“Captain just took off with the second component.”

“The second? Already?”

“We have decided to accelerate the program,” Oleg Druzhinin told him.

“Then the first is already in place?”

“Connected to the umbilical. Within six or seven hours, we will have a complete system.”

“Thank you.”

Shelepin hung up, not quite believing that they were a day ahead of schedule.

The New World Order was a superpower.