Delta Green

Chapter Sixteen

Amy Pearson and Donna Amber developed the photographs from Delta Orange’s reconnaissance cameras themselves, using the specialized equipment designed for a weightless environment. The processing vats were sealed, the chemicals pumped in, then evacuated into holding tanks. It took some time to produce the positive images and then run them under the scanner in order to convert them to the more manipulative medium of computer processing.

Frank Dimatta and George Williams hung around, literally, in the corridor outside the compartment, waiting to see the results of their recon run over the hospital in Kampuchea. They had returned directly to Themis at Brad Mitchell’s request so the maintenance chief could create and update a maintenance file for Delta Orange.

Benny Shalbot, having his first chance at the new MakoShark, was bossing a technical crew that didn’t believe anyone at Jack Andrews Air Base, where the craft had been assembled, had progressed beyond the eighth grade. Shalbot would make certain that Delta Orange had been put together properly and that her systems met his standards, which were slightly higher than those of the Air Force.

Pearson opened the hatch to the photo processing compartment.

“Okay, guys, you can come in.”

Dimatta and Williams sailed inside and grabbed handholds near the monitor Donna Amber was operating. She brought the photos up on the screen in the order in which they had been taken.

Pearson held onto Dimatta’s arm and studied the screen intently as each individual frame appeared.

“All right,” Williams said, “this is our first pass, heading east. We’ve all seen the hospital before. Zip forward a few frames, Donna.”

In the first photographs, around the hospital buildings, there were a few faces looking upward. The MakoShark had come in silently at about a thousand feet above ground level, but something, maybe a shadow, had alerted people on the ground, and a few of them had glanced upward in time to catch themselves on film.

Amber advanced the photographs.

“Here’s the four buildings that are east of the hospital proper,” Williams said.

“Looks to me,” Dimatta said, “like they’re about three hundred yards from the administration building. That seems a little far for efficient operations.”

“But then,” Amber said, “there are other buildings at least that far north and south of the administration building. Maybe they just want to give the medical personnel some distance from their jobs?”

“Click it forward a couple more frames, Donna,” Pearson said.

The next two frames moved east of the four structures and showed more jungle and a small clearing.

Pearson concentrated on the image, looking for anything that was incongruous.

And there it was.. Straight lines didn’t happen normally in nature.

“Right there,” she said, tracing her fingernail down the face of the screen.

“You’re right, Amy,” Dimatta said. “That’s a definite line.”

It was barely visible, just a difference in the shading of one part of the photograph with another part.

“Focus on that line, Donna, and blow it up as high as you can,” she said.

With a few keystrokes, Amber instructed the computer to enhance the image.

The vague line in the floor of the clearing zoomed up at them.

“PSP,” Williams said. “Pierced steel planking. It’s been painted to blend with the ground cover, but what makes it stand out is the reflection of the sun. It just doesn’t absorb the light like weeds and grass.”

They searched through all of the photographs and eventually found enough of them to piece together a picture of an elongated clearing divided by camouflage hills. The PSP runway was nearly two miles long. With careful scrutiny, they found other evidence: partial prints of aircraft tires, small ruts leading from the runway back into the jungle. In two shots east of the airstrip, Dimatta saw what he interpreted as parts of camouflaged roofs below the jungle canopy.

“I’d guess,” Pearson said, “that there are a number of revetments along both sides of the runway, hiding aircraft of one kind or another.”

“Delta Green?” Amber asked.

“The strip is long enough,” Dimatta said. “And more worrisome is the fact that it looks as if they have additional aircraft.”

“The hospital worries me,” Pearson said. “If we were approved for an attack on the airstrip, could we avoid the hospital?”

“No sweat,” Williams said.

“Send one MakoShark down each side of the strip, peppering the jungle with Wasp IIs,” Dimatta added. “They’ll never know what hit them.”

“What would it take,” Pearson asked, “ten minutes to move several hundred of those children from the hospital to the airfield?”

“Ah, damn, Amy,” Dimatta said.

“You don’t think they’ve got the kids there for a purpose, Frank?”

Dimatta groaned, but said, “You’re probably right.”

Pearson, Dimatta, and Williams all started giving Amber directions on assembling a composite picture of the entire site for a printout.

“Hey, come on!” Amber said. “Let me do it once, and if you don’t like it, you can all do your own.”

The intercom sounded off. “Photo lab, Command.”

Pearson pushed off Dimatta for the intercom panel. “Colonel Pearson here, General.”

“Amy, we’ve just been ordered to full alert by Brackman. I need you down here. Is Dimatta there?”

“He’s here.”

“He’s to launch immediately.”

Dimatta and Williams had already pushed off for the corridor.

Pearson followed them through the hatchway and deflected herself down the corridor toward Spoke One.

She wondered what the problem was now.

McKenna had probably antagonized the wrong people, but that was nothing new.

Lynn Haggar had been on her latest patrol of Themis for two hours when the alert was sounded. Ben Olsen gave her directions, and she closed on the station, then took up a position twenty-five miles away. Within half-an-hour, both Delta Yellow and Delta Orange launched and moved into defensive postures.

An hour and ten minutes after the first alert, McKenna checked in.

“Deltas, Delta Blue.”

“Red,” she said.

“Yellow.”

“Orange.”

“Alpha, you there?”

“We copy, Blue,” Overton said.

McKenna filled them in on possible takeover of Soyuz Fifty and the destruction of the Russian Mako.

“Volontov,” she asked.

“Yes,” McKenna said.

“Damn. I liked him.”

“So did I, Country Girl. So did I.”

“Blue, Alpha. Where are you now?”

Munoz answered, “We’re ninety miles south of Nassau, climbin’ through angels one-fifty. In six minutes, we’ll have an ignition window.”

“And what’s the plan, if I might be so bold?” Overton asked.

“I don’t like the plan,” McKenna said, “but for now, the priority is the defense of Themis.”

“I think that part’s okay,” Overton said.

“If we’re continually on the defensive, we’re not going to get much sleep, much less attack the problem. Mako Five is on the ground, but I’m calling in the other six Makos, and well put them all on guard duty, three at a time, with one MakoShark to carry the ordnance. That will free up two MakoSharks.”

“That’s a little risky,” Overton said.

“Priorities at stake, General. One Mako or one Themis?”

“We’ll work with your order of battle, Snake Eyes.”

That troubled Haggar. She would be responsible, not only for Delta Red, but also for the crews of three Makos.

Over the ICS, Olsen said, “I know what you’re thinking, Lynn.”

“You don’t.”

“Sure I do. Keep in mind that we’re also protecting the station.”

She thought about it. “Okay, Ben. Thanks.”

“Deltas, you’re to stay in position until relieved by the Makos. As soon as we achieve orbit, Tiger and I are going to visit Soyuz Fifty.”

Maslov descended on the New World Base in a wide spiral from ninety thousand feet of altitude. It was daylight, but he felt that they were running out of time. Waiting until nightfall was a luxury they could no longer afford.

By the time he and Nikitin had started the jet engines and reached twenty-five thousand feet, they had seen no suspicious aircraft.

He depressed the transmit stud. “Commodore, this is Captain.”

Sergeant Nikita Kasartskin replied, “Proceed, Captain.”

“We will be landing in five minutes.”

“But, Captain…”

“Immediately,” Maslov ordered.

“As you wish, Captain”

By the time Maslov was on his final approach from the north, the magnified video view of the airstrip showed him that the final hill was being winched off the runway.

The landing was quickly accomplished, and the men waiting on the ground at the end of the strip pushed the MakoShark into her revetment immediately.

Maslov and Nikitin were descending from their cockpits when General Druzhinin came rushing up to them.

“Maslov! Is there a problem?”

“None that haste will not solve, Comrade General. Boris and I will take two hours to sleep while the craft’s jet engines are refueled and the next warhead is loaded. Then we will take off again”

Druzhinin signalled the crew chief and joined Maslov and Nikitin as they left the revetment.

“The space station?”

“Is secure for the moment. Not, however, for very long, I think,” Maslov said.

“Why do you think this?” Druzhinin asked.

Maslov told him about the missed radio contact with Baikonur Cosmodrome and his attack on the Mako.

“There was not another option open to us, General. And now, the Rocket Forces will have strong suspicions. They may enlist the aid of the Americans.”

“Yes, you are correct, Aleksander. We must get the second missile into orbit as soon as possible.”

“And, Comrade General, in order to protect Soyuz Fifty, it is time for Chairman Shelepin to deliver his speech.”

“Hey, compadre, we’re flat cruisin’. Mach two-two-point-six. I’m gonna paint the sky.”

“Go,” McKenna said.

The radar came up on McKenna’s screen, showing a 360 degree scan. The HUD reported their altitude at 276 miles.

“There’s that dead Molniya satellite,” Munoz said. “Someday, we’ll have to shoot the damn thing. It’s takin’ too long to reenter the atmosphere.”

Every few minutes, McKenna rolled the MakoShark to a new position so they could maintain a visual search in all quadrants.

He rolled again as new targets began to show on the outer fringe of the 220-mile scan of the radar.

“See them, Tiger?”

“Yeah, jefe. Should we check it out?”

“Hate to.”

“Me, too.”

“But we’d better.”

“Go left one-five.”

McKenna used the OMS to alter the nose fifteen degrees to the left, then kicked in the rocket motors to boost them onto the new course.

Twelve minutes later, he had to flip the MakoShark over and use the rocket motors to retard their velocity. As soon as the fifteen-second burn was completed, he flipped back to a nose-forward attitude.

They drifted slowly into the debris field.

“Jesus Christ,” Munoz said.

“Yeah.”

The largest single piece was the upper right wing skin, still virgin white, with the large black letters “C I S” inscribed on it.

McKenna hit the forward thrusters to slow the MakoShark enough to match velocity with the remains of the Mako.

Fractured and snapped structural members were everywhere, appearing like a three-dimensional forest, with the leaves stripped from every tree.

“The debris field is a little over half-a-mile wide,” Munoz said.

“The missile caught her in the aft end and set off both fuels.”

“No doubt,” Munoz said. “I’m scannin’ the rear.”

McKenna saw the rearview video come up on the small screen as Munoz checked the area behind them. He felt an itch along his spine and thought about the thousands of pounds of fuel contained in Delta Blue’s wings and fuselage.

And about their lack of armament. They had come straight from Washington, without a stop to arm the bird.

Munoz was thinking along the same lines.

“I’m shuttin’ down the radar.”

“Good idea, Tiger”

Using the OMS, McKenna cruised slowly around the debris field. They found a few recognizable pieces: landing gear, half of a rear canopy, part of a turbojet engine, a cargo bay door, a radar antenna.

“Oh, shit!” Munoz said.

“What?”

“One o’clock high, twenty yards.”

“Use the camera.”

Munoz deployed the nose camera, focused it, and aimed at the object he had spotted.

Helmet.

All by itself.

The camera zoomed in.

The visor was shattered.

Above the visor in Cyrillic lettering that McKenna could interpret was the legend: VOLONTOV.

“That’s enough, Tiger.”

“Roger that.”

McKenna backed away from the debris.

“Give me a vector for Soyuz.”

“Goin’ active three sweeps.”

Munoz gave him the celestial coordinates for the Commonwealth station, and McKenna keyed them into the computer. When he activated the start program, the computer shifted their attitude and ordered a twenty-eight second burst of the rocket motors.

As soon as he could take back control, McKenna began rolling the MakoShark again.

“We want to stay on our toes here, Tiger.”

“What if my toes are crossed, Snake Eyes?”

“Use something else then.”

“Everythin’ is crossed, amigo. Closure rate twenty feet per second.”

When they were within thirty miles of the station, McKenna began using bursts of the nose thrusters to slow their progress.

Munoz tested the area with radar, infrared, night vision, then true video.

He ran the magnification up to full zoom.

McKenna saw the image at the same time Munoz said, “Holy shit!”

The elongated space station took up most of the screen. Behind it, he saw the remains of the HoneyBee rocket.

And floating just below the tube of the station was a fairly good-sized rocket body.

“I don’t like the looks of that, Tiger.”

“Nor me. I don’t think Delta Green’s around.”

“Your intuition better be good,” McKenna told him.

The MakoShark continued to close slowly on the station, and at fifteen miles distance, the magnified image on the screen revealed that the rocket was attached to the space station by a thick cable.

“That’s an umbilical, don’t you think?” McKenna asked. “Damned sure looks that way, Snake Eyes. They’d be able to program it from inside the station.”

“You recognize the rocket?”

“No, but I’ve got the recorder goin’ for Amy-baby.”

“You think it’s nuclear?”

“This ain’t Vegas, buddy, and I ain’t placin’ bets.”

“Two bits they don’t know we’re out here,” McKenna said. “Not even for two bits.”

“If we had a Wasp II, we could take out the station.”

“We don’t have a Wasp II. And what if it’s programmed to go if interior power is lost?”

“Can they do that?” McKenna asked.

“I don’t know. Benny Shalbot could do it.”

“Benny’s on our side.”

“Thank God.”

They were still closing on Soyuz Fifty, now at about seven hundred feet per minute.

McKenna weighed the situation.

“Tony, it’s nuclear.”

“Yeah, I think so. Blackmail.”

“The instructions for ignition and targeting are controlled inside the station.”

“Agreed, jefe.”

“Whether somebody pushes a button, or whether a failsafe booby trap goes off, the signal originates from inside.”

“I’ll buy that.”

“So nothing will happen if they lose the umbilical.”

“I don’t want to buy into that concept, but I guess I have to.”

“I should call Brackman.”

“Damn betcha, Snake Eyes. You should do that.”

“If he’s still with that bunch of Hill people, we’ll get an answer on January first.”

“If by then.”

“I’m going to need a very precise line of flight, Tiger. Knife-edge flight.”

“Rely on me, Snake Eyes. Hell, I’m the brains behind this duo, right?”

“Have I ever said otherwise?”

“I’m still a major.”

“That’s it? You want a promotion?”

“Not a posthumous one, amigo. Silence, please. I’m calculatin’.”

After four minutes, Munor said, “We want to increase our closure rate by fifty per second. That’ll take a six second main motor boost. If they’ve got visual in this direction, they’ll see it.”

“But too late.”

“Maybe. Probably. Slow reaction time. They’re in the wrong part of the station. They’re asleep. Lot of reasons. Give it ten-to-one.”

“What else?” McKenna asked.

“Soon as the rockets ignite, roll left ninety degrees, then bring the nose up three degrees. That should do it.”

“We don’t want the computer to do it,” McKenna said.

“No, you’re the man. You may have to make some adjustments along the way.”

“I’m bringing up the rockets.”

“Go.”

McKenna abandoned the screen and focused on the small, sunlit tube of the approaching space station, now less than eight miles away. It was angled slightly away from them, but was on the same plane as the MakoShark. The tethered rocket was slightly below the station and to its left by twenty yards.

Sixty feet apart.

He shoved the throttles in and started counting.

Felt the push of the rockets.

Rolled left, so that his wing was perpendicular to the line of the umbilical cable.

Pulled the nose back a bit to align his path between the station and the rocket.

Munoz was counting, also.

“Now!”

McKenna pulled the throttles back to their stops.

The station accelerated toward them, growing larger in the windscreen.

He nudged the nose down a little.

Then up a little.

The station grew.

The rocket became visible to the naked eye.

Then the umbilical.

Nudged the nose sideways, down in relation to the station.

Speeding at them now.

The MakoShark felt stationary; Soyuz Fifty was accelerating rapidly.

They sliced between the station and the rocket, the left wing snagging the umbilical.

McKenna barely felt the contact.

The MakoShark may have altered her track a tad, but it was imperceptible.

“Nice cut, amigo. We got it. Damage to the left wing, too.”

McKenna looked out of the canopy. There was a dent, but not a large one, in the leading edge of the wing, about eight feet from the tip.

“Mitchell and Tang are gonna cuss you for two weeks, Snake Eyes. And Shalbot. Geez, I don’t wanna be around when Shalbot sees that.”

“In the meantime, Tiger, they can’t fire that thing. You suppose they’ve got another cable around?”

“If they’ve got another cable, it’ll take them two hours to replace it. If not, if they have to splice the one we just severed, I’d call it four hours.”

“Let’s go home and load ordnance”

“I’d appreciate that,” Munoz said.

The MakoShark crossed the coast of Vietnam at fifty thousand feet and Mach 1.5.

“We must wait four minutes, then accelerate on rockets for three minutes,” Nikitin said.

“I am keying it in,” Maslov said, tapping his keyboard. “After that, we wait eleven minutes, then utilize the rockets for seven-point-three minutes. That will give us an orbital track for the space station.”

“Very good, Boris. I think you are now a veteran.”

“Thank you, Aleks.”

Two minutes later, Maslov heard the voice on the altered radio. “Captain, Commander.”

“Yes, Commander, proceed.”

Bryntsev’s voice was extremely excited. “We have just been attacked!”

“Bloody hell! How?”

“It must have been a MakoShark. They destroyed the umbilical cable.”

“But the station? The rocket?”

“Secure as yet.”

“Where is the MakoShark?”

“We do not know. We cannot see it. There is nothing on radar, nothing on the video camera.”

“Hold on, Commander. Do not panic. We are coming.” But Maslov was worried.

Damn Shelepin for waiting.

General Anatoly Shelepin had recorded the message on video tape months before. Twice, he had redone it, after considering new directions, new demands, and new inflections of his voice that might make it more convincing.

There were four copies of the tape to be delivered. He had decided upon three extra copies, just in case one country or another attempted to suppress it.

One copy, the primary one, was to go to the General Secretary of the United Nations. The other copies would be delivered to the American State Department, the British Foreign Office, and the French Foreign Ministry.

Nothing would go to the Commonwealth of Independent States. He did not consider them worthy of the information. They would do whatever they were told to do.

He looked across his living room at Sergei Pavel, who nodded at him.

Shelepin picked up the telephone and asked for the telephone number in New York City.

It took eight minutes for the connection to be made. “This is Vulcan Three,” he said.

“My name is Flower.”

“The aroma is that of the rose.”

“Very good,” the contact said. “It is time?”

“It is time. Deliver the tape.”