Delta Green

Chapter Nineteen

McKenna got the call at eleven o’clock in the morning, Themis time, considerably later than he had wanted, but somewhat earlier than he had expected.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff asked, “What’s your status, Colonel?”

“All but ready to roll, Admiral. The equipment has been modified and is being tested now.”

“It’s a go, McKenna. As soon as you can.”

“Roger that, sir.”

The runway lights blinked out behind them as the MakoShark rolled into a sluggish right turn. The weight of the SS-X-25 solid-fuel stage, taking up both cargo bays, made the craft feel ponderous and, Maslov thought, very susceptible to hostile action.

He retracted the landing gear and flaps, but left the throttles in their full-forward position. He was in a steep climb, and the velocity crept upward with apparent slowness, achieving three hundred knots, then 325.

Looking back over his shoulder, he could no longer see the runway, though there were a few lights at the southern end of the clearing. General Druzhinin had terminated the night training flights now that he felt they were a recognized military force. From now on, he had declared, their flight training would be accomplished in the light of day, afraid of no one.

“This, Boris, is becoming much like the schedule of a freight train.”

“Four more flights and we will have all of the rockets in space, Aleks. Then we can relax.”

“You are beginning to sound much like Druzhinin” Maslov said. “Do you really think the Americans will stand around and watch that happen?”

“What do you mean?”

“Chairman Shelepin seems to think that since the United Nations has not responded to his declaration, the New World Order is now a fact of life.”

“And you do not, Aleks?”

“I think we should not have advertised the existence of New World Air Base, nor our control of Soyuz Fifty, until all four rockets were usable. In other words, Boris, we should not yet become complacent.”

“Perhaps I should perform a few scans with the radar,” Nikitin said, his voice betraying a regained nervousness.

“You would not see them anyway,” Maslov said. “We will just have to remain alert.”

The velocity had topped six hundred knots, and the Head-Up Display altimeter read thirty-two thousand feet.

“Right now, Boris, let us prepare for rocket ignition.”

“Of course, Aleks. We want a two-minute burst of the rockets at one hundred percent thrust, then we have an eleven minute wait for the window.”

“Amy, Walt MacDonald.”

“Are you working every shift, Walt?”

“When it gets interesting, I like to stick around the old fort.”

“And it’s getting interesting, is it?”

“Your Delta Green just took off from whatever the hell they’re calling it, the base in Kampuchea.”

“You’re certain?”

“The satellite picked out a MakoShark shape in the runway lights, and she disappeared right after takeoff. Six minutes later, we picked up an infrared signature for two minutes. She’s off the ground.”

“Thanks, Walt.”

Pearson disconnected by pressing the keypad, then checked the time readout on the panel that had been set for Kampuchea. The time there was 0013 hours.

She was the duty officer in the Command Center while Overton caught up on his sleep. With the loss of Will Avery, she and Overton had revised their schedules. Giving up her view through the porthole of the white-capped and cloud-swirled Himalayas, she spun around to look at the compartment status board on the interior bulkhead.

The board listed every compartment aboard Themis, and variously colored LEDs indicated vacancy, occupancy, and environmental conditions. Of the six dedicated MakoShark hangars, four were reported as occupied. All of the MakoSharks were still in residence, though they were due to launch at any minute.

She depressed the public address keypad for the hangar section.

“Colonel McKenna, Command.”

A few minutes later, McKenna called her back, “What’s up, Amy?”

“Delta Green. NSA just reported her takeoff from Kampuchea.”

“Damn it!”

“You’d better hold off,” she said.

“Call the crews to the exercise room, would you?”

She hit the PA button. “1st Aerospace air crews to Compartment A-47 immediately.”

She made the announcement a second time, then told Donna Amber that she would join the briefing. Amber promised to wake Overton.

Traversing the spoke, the outer rim of the hub, and the main corridor, Pearson arrived at the exercise room before the stragglers pulled themselves inside. Munoz was last.

They were all dressed in their white environmental suits, minus helmets. McKenna, however, appeared Darth Vaderish. Benny Shalbot had wrapped his suit with matte black tape. It wasn’t a very good job, and he looked a trifle ragged. Munoz had dubbed him the stealth version of humankind.

Pearson found a place against one bulkhead next to Lynn Haggar.

“Anything new on the United Nations demands, Amy?” McKenna asked.

“No,” she said. “The Kampuchean government has not responded in any way to the expulsion request, and the New World Order has not responded to the demand to relinquish the space station.”

McKenna told them about the NSA surveillance.

“When’d she take off?” Dimatta asked.

Pearson looked at her watch. “About fifteen minutes ago, Frank.”

“We could still go,” he said.

“And possibly get caught right in the middle of the operation,” Haggar said. “We agreed to time it for when all the weaknesses were aligned. And Delta Green was the primary concern.”

“If we wait much longer,” McKenna said, “they end up with two half-fledged ICBMs in place. The odds say Delta Green’s transporting the rest of the second rocket. The odds also say the longer we wait, the worse it gets.”

Pearson realized that she had been hoping he would put it off until they could positively identify Delta Green on the ground once again.

She felt her heartbeat pick up tempo. McKenna appeared menacing in his doctored environmental suit, but also vulnerable.

“Tony,” McKenna said, “what’s the timing?”

“Last time I checked, jefe, we can catch Soyuz in about fifty minutes. Dependin’ on the window they caught, Delta Green is probably a couple hours away from a rendezvous. It’ll be tight.”

“Should we check with Admiral Gross?” Pearson asked.

“No,” McKenna said. “It’s my call. We’re going.” McKenna rolled a half-dozen cut-off straws into his fist, then coasted his way to each of the spacecraft commanders. Conover, Dimatta, and Haggar each pulled one straw from the bundle.

“Let’s see them,” McKenna said.

They each held up the various lengths.

“Okay, Lynn. You’re flying cover for me. Will, you’ve got Target One, and Frank, you’ll be lead for Target Two.” Dimatta said, “Trade you straws, Lynn.”

“No way.”

“Green’s going to be up there.”

“My luck holds,” she said.

Dimatta sighed. “What about the kids, Kevin?”

“All we can do is our best, Frank. I think that anyone in a position to make a decision is going to say that a few kids are an even trade for a city full of people.”

“Shit.”

Pearson spoke up. “Maybe I can do something about the kids.”

“We set, Swede?” Haggar asked.

“Go, Country.”

She fired the forward thrusters, and Delta Red backed slowly out of the hangar. Glancing through the canopy, she saw the other MakoSharks sliding out of their cells alongside her. It could have been thrilling, the four spacecraft flying in formation, but the tremendous weight of the mission killed the thrill.

“Hot mikes,” McKenna ordered, and she pressed the corresponding keypad.

“Red.”

“Yellow.”

“Orange, here.”

“Spread it out a little, Deltas. We don’t want accidental collisions.”

As Themis grew smaller, Haggar tapped the thrusters, easing into a new attitude and direction. Delta Red rose away from the other three MakoSharks.

She checked the wings of the others; Blue wore white triangles, Yellow was adorned with squares, and Orange sported somewhat sloppy circles. Her own wings carried triple bars.

The taped symbols on Yellow and Orange wouldn’t survive the reentry heat.

She and Olsen went quickly through the checklist, and he programmed the computer with the data they had developed aboard the space station.

“Who have we got on the net?” McKenna asked.

“Semaphore” David Thorpe’s voice.

“Alpha,” Overton said.

“Wet Country,” Milt Avery replied.

“Welcome to McKenna’s Flying Circus,” Olsen said, but he said it on the ICS.

“Semaphore, Blue. Any last-minute changes from the diplomatic corps?”

“None, Blue,” Thorpe said. “Weapons are released, and you are cleared to engage”

“Deltas Yellow and Orange will operate on Tac Three,” McKenna said. “You may proceed to reentry now, but do not, repeat not, go into phase two until you hear from me or from Delta Red.”

“Roger,” Conover said.

“Roger that, Orange is gone.”

Haggar leaned to the side of the cockpit and watched as both MakoSharks turned end-over-end and fired their rockets. Both of them immediately dropped behind and out of sight.

“On Tiger’s mark, Country,” McKenna said.

“Roger.”

“Computer’s set,” Olsen said. “At your command.”

She saw the celestial coordinates listed on the HUD readout. They were supposed to be a mile away from those of Delta Blue. She poised her forefinger over the “RKT THRST” pad on the keyboard.

“Countin’,” Munoz said. “Five, four, three, two, one, mark!”

She pressed the keypad and, seconds later, felt the thrust of the rocket motors. The nose lifted, and the MakoShark closed on Themis once again, climbing high over the station. On her left, a half-mile away, she saw Delta Blue keeping pace, but slowly drifting away from them.

The rocket motors shut down after fifty seconds, and the silence of space enveloped her. Somehow, the quiet was tremendously reassuring, despite the lethal nature of the journey.

Haggar took several deep breaths and tried to relax. It would be a little while yet.

The MakoShark entered her orbit precisely on the required track. Maslov once again felt slightly awed by the power of the on-board computers. To not have them would make everything else impossible.

And he vowed to treat them right. As soon as they had completed the next four necessary flights, he would ground the MakoShark for a thorough examination of all of her systems. He knew that the maintenance program at New World Air Base had many shortcomings when it came to the MakoShark, but he would see that all that could be done was done.

“We have lost two more Wasps,” Nikitin said.

Maslov glanced at the armaments panel.

“They also have had too many reentries, Boris. In the future, we will change out missiles after two reentries.”

“It would be the best course, I think, Aleks. Perhaps the nose cones can be rebuilt.”

“I will jettison these.”

Maslov pressed the pads to eject the defective missiles and checked his remaining configuration. When they had taken the MakoShark, it had been equipped with a rotary launcher in the forward bay, but that had been dismounted and left behind because of the cargo.

It had also been equipped with two long pylons, capable of mounting two Phoenix or two Wasp II missiles each, as well as one of the accessory pods. The two short pylons could accommodate a single pod or four of the smaller Wasp II missiles. Because of the cargo weight requirements, he had elected to abandon the heavy Chain Gun pod and the reconnaissance pod. Since they no longer had Phoenix missiles available, which were much heavier anyway, they had taken off with twelve Wasp IIs. And now they were down to ten.

“What is our time to rendezvous, Boris?”

“One hour and thirty-seven minutes,” Nikitin replied. “In fourteen minutes, we need to use the rocket motors for a twelve-second adjustment burst.”

“Very well, I will allow myself a twelve-minute nap. Isn’t it amazing, Boris, how we must adapt to the technology?”

“It begins to rule our lives, yes.”

Before closing his eyes, Maslov checked in with Commodore and Commander. Both the land base and the space base reported no activity near them.

“One sweep, jefe?”

“One, Tiger.”

Munoz switched the radar to active, and McKenna watched as the scan made an agonizingly slow revolution. Two targets appeared.

“You hit me,” Haggar complained from her orbital position a mile away.

“Sorry, enamorada. Won’t happen again. I show one MakoShark and one foreign-import space station, well-used, Snake Eyes, all in matched velocity. The station is three-four miles below us.”

The MakoSharks had departed Themis fifty-two minutes before.

McKenna deployed the cargo bay doors.

“Decompressing, Tiger.”

He switched his oxy-nitro feed hose to the emergency bottle, then started the cockpit environmental pumps.

“Now that it’s come to this,” Munoz said, “I’ve decided I don’t want to split up.”

“Just a short business trip, dearie,” McKenna said. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Problem is, compadre, you’re taking the car. How am I supposed to get around town?”

“There’ll be a bus along, Tiger, sure as hell.”

When the panel indicators told him that the cockpit atmosphere had been vacated, he opened the cockpit. Releasing his straps and communications cord, he clipped the snap fastener of a nylon line to the D-ring on his equipment belt, then pushed lightly on each side of the seat.

He rose slowly out of the cockpit, switching his microphone and earphones from the cockpit interface to the helmet’s internal radio. It had a range of less than five miles.

“Testing,” he said.

“Well-tested,” Munoz replied.

Using the coaming as a handhold, McKenna rolled out of the cockpit and aimed himself across the chine toward the leading edge of the wing. He had performed EVAs before, and he knew how enticing the view of the Earth could be, so he focused on the wing. He kept his movements slow and precise.

The wing approached, and McKenna raised the back of one gloved hand and deflected himself beneath it. His loose air bottle banged into his side, and he clutched it with his right hand.

He was headed outboard, toward the nacelle, but he managed to reach out for the nose of a Wasp II missile and stop his flight. He used the Wasp II as his launching pad toward the extended bay doors. His tethering line trailed after him.

The Earth below was a glowing ball that seemed to tug at him. He ignored it and grabbed the bay door, then shoved himself past the first bay, which contained the Wasp II launcher, and up into the aft bay.

“Snake Eyes?”

“Here, Tiger, donning my tuxedo.”

He first changed his air hose from the cylinder to the EVA backpack, then slipped the pack around to his back and strapped it on. The EVA gauges were on a short cable, and he pulled it over his shoulder and hooked it to the chest strap so that he could glance down and monitor his air and fuel levels. The EVA thruster controls were on another, longer cable with a bracelet-like anchor that he snapped to his right wrist.

He strapped the second EVA set to his chest. It was large and cumbersome, and it interfered with his arm movement, but he wasn’t about to leave it behind.

Benny Shalbot had taped the EVA packs in black also. He had used so much tape that there wasn’t a spool of it left on the station.

Unzipping the dozen Velcro strips holding it in place, McKenna freed the black equipment box from its position against the internal ribs. Earth-side, the box would have weighed close to three hundred pounds. Here, it was easily movable, but he had to be careful of its momentum and inertia. If he got it moving too fast, and he was between it and some other object, the weight wouldn’t matter. The inertia would still crush him.

Using a rib for leverage, McKenna pushed himself and the box downward. He drifted slowly, and as he cleared the bay doors and the nacelles, he unsnapped the tether from his D-ring.

Now, nothing connected him to the real world, and he immediately felt the loss. He had never gone extra-vehicular before without a tether.

It was almost disorienting. He swivelled the small control panel for the EVA thrusters underneath the tips of his fingers. Then, gripping the equipment box tightly against the EVA pack on his chest, he tested the maneuvering system by lightly tapping one of the six buttons under his fingertips.

Through the suit, he heard the soft whish of the thruster firing.

Almost imperceptibly, his downward velocity slowed.

He tapped several more times, and his body went parallel to the wing, then began to move out from under it, away from the MakoShark.

“Where’s my guidance counsellor?” he asked.

“Right here, compadre. I’m going active, to see what kind of reading I get off the equipment pack.”

McKenna continued to coast away from the space craft. He could turn his head enough to see the MakoShark. At a hundred yards, he could barely pick it out except for the patch of tape and the way it blotted out a section of stars.

“Semaphore says good luck, Snake Eyes.”

“Thank Semaphore mightily, Tiger, and give me a damned vector.”

“I read you well on the short scan,” Munoz said. “Let’s give it a little nose down. Or head down, if you prefer. Keep goin’. Good, hold there. Now, you want some more forward velocity.”

“Keep me under a ten-foot-per-second closure rate, Tiger. I want to arrive unannounced, not slam through the damned hull of the station.” McKenna hoped his taut nerves weren’t revealed in his communications.

“Roger that. Hit it again. Come to your right just a tad. Okay, Snake Eyes, that should do it. You want me to keep chatting you up?”

“No. Take a nap, Tiger.”

“Believe this or not, amigo, I don’t think I’m going to sleep today.”

The faraway horizon of the Earth had tilted up toward him, then steadied as he followed Munoz’s instructions. Ahead, he couldn’t see much of anything.

Soyuz Fifty was supposed to be there somewhere, and he hoped that Munoz had put him on the right street.

Frank Dimatta’s primary channel was Tac Three, but he knew Themis would be monitoring it also.

“Alpha, Delta Orange.”

“Go, Orange,” Pearson said.

“Any contacts on Delta Green?”

“Negative, Orange.”

“Roger. Okay, Alpha, we’re at angels one-two-oh, velocity Mach three-point-eight. That’s supposed to be China down there. You want to order out?”

“Copy, and we’re not hungry,” Pearson said.

“Give me one squawk, Cancha. I’m a few thousand above you,” Conover said.

Dimatta hit the IFF for a second.

“Okay, got you. Maintain course, and I’ll close.”

“Roger. Maintaining.”

Williams came up on the ICS. “And now we just coast.”

“In great big circles, Nitro.”

“I’ve been monitoring Tac Two,” Williams said.

“And?”

“Nothing. Nobody talks to us anymore.”

“We shouldn’t have lost the damned spacecraft,” Dimatta told him.

Pearson and Overton weren’t alone in the Command Center. Brad Mitchell, Polly Tang, Val Arguento, Don Curtis, Donna Amber, and Joe Macklin were hanging around or manning consoles, trying to look like they should be there.

Pearson had relented and let Benny Shalbot join them. It was, after all, his equipment and his plan that they were all relying on.

The tension was thick in the compartment. It was as if some of them were afraid to breathe, much less speak.

She depressed the transmit button on her console. “Blue Two, Alpha.”

“Blue.”

“Sitrep, please.”

“You just asked for one, amorcita.”

“Another, please.”

“You sure you ain’t sweet on the guy?”

“Tiger”

“Sitrep. Same as before. Snake Eyes is out of radio and radar range. I won’t try a radar sweep at longer range and get myself detected and inspected. Couldn’t see him on the video if I tried. No change in Blue or Red. No sign of Green on the video. It’s gettin’ lonely.”

Pearson couldn’t imagine what it would be like never to see McKenna again. To have him just float out into space and cease to exist.

Her chest constricted when she thought about it.

Her palms were sweaty.

She wished she hadn’t been so bitchy toward him the past few days.

She glanced upward at the clock. Far too many minutes had gone by.

They should have known something by now. Either the flare from McKenna or the SS-X-25’s rocket motor igniting, hurtling five hundred-kiloton warheads toward distant cities.

She looked over at Jim Overton, and he was wearing a fatherly expression. He winked at her.

She tried to wink back, but couldn’t bring it off. Damn McKenna for screwing up my life.

And for not being here.

The elongated tube of Soyuz Fifty had revealed itself to McKenna at around twenty miles of distance. The sun reflecting off the upper surfaces of the station made it look like a silver ballpoint pen dropped by God.

It appeared to be in the wrong place, and McKenna had had to overcome the urge to change his course. He had to rely on Tony Munoz, but that was fairly easy for him.

He checked the EVA pack’s fuel and oxy/nitro levels. They looked good, and unless he had to utilize the thrusters extensively to slow his momentum and to maneuver around the station, he probably wouldn’t need the second backpack.

Still, it was reassuring to have it, and he wouldn’t abandon it just yet.

At around fifteen miles out, he was able to see the modified intercontinental ballistic missile. It was still in the same position alongside the station, and he assumed the umbilical cable was still intact.

When his distance had closed to what he guessed was eight miles, he could see the second missile, still just a nose cone minus its booster stage. Delta Green had not yet returned, but he didn’t feel overconfident about how long he had.

After the first pangs of what he admitted to himself was nearly abject terror at being alone and possibly lost in space, he had concentrated on his breathing and on slowing his heart rate. With the slowly approaching space station to focus on, his fear had subsided. Now he had a singular objective in life, and he could think about the tasks he had to accomplish.

Maybe five miles.

He could see the station’s radar antenna turning. His radar cross section would be so small that he didn’t think they would paint him as Munoz had, simply because the Tiger was looking for him. There probably wasn’t anyone tending to the radar set anyway.

Four miles.

The video camera located forward of the antenna cluster was visible. As Munoz had noted, it wasn’t moving, and it was pointed away from him.

Even if he had been in its eye, his matte black camouflage would have prevented visual contact. He was a pretty small target against the stars.

Nothing he had ever done in his life before had so clearly made him aware of his microscopic significance.

Three miles?

He used the thrusters gingerly, first to turn himself feet-first toward the station, then to introduce short blasts of retro fire, slowing his momentum.

The maneuvers pushed him off course, toward the rear of the station, and he used the right thruster for correction.

The equipment box stayed With him, easily controllable as long as they were both headed in the same direction.

Another spurt of retro fire. The vapor produced by the nitrogen gas thrusters flared briefly in the vacuum.

Two miles. Maybe.

The station appeared to be coming up too fast, and he used the retro thrusters again.

Now, it crawled toward him, gradually assuming more mass and size.

He turned his body over again as he passed inside what he judged was the one-mile marker, heading toward the station headfirst. The radar antenna continued to rotate. The video camera hadn’t moved.

He reminded himself to thank Munoz for aiming him in the right direction.

Buy him a beer, maybe.

When he was a hundred yards away, he diverted toward the ICBM. Its umbilical cable snaked lazily to the space station. They were about thirty yards apart, enough to protect the station from exhaust blast when the rocket was fired.

McKenna slowed his closure rate once again.

He imagined a pulsing white fire radiating from those warheads, was certain he imagined it.

The rocket body was a dull gray, and stylized red letters descended along one side. CCCP. This one had never been relabeled from the old Central Committee of the Communist Party. Small access hatches also were stenciled with directions and warnings, all in the Cyrillic alphabet.

He glanced toward the station. The video camera was still stationary, aimed above him. The porthole wasn’t visible; it was on the lower side. Maybe they were asleep inside.

He hoped so.

He hoped they slept through it all.

Drifting toward the rocket, he twisted his body to keep Benny’s equipment package away from the metal hull. His hand brushed against the solid fuel rocket stage, and his momentum kept carrying him forward.

He bounced against the smooth shell of the rocket, gradually losing speed.

Came to a stop near the juncture of the rocket and the nose cone.

You may think you’re getting damned good at EVA, McKenna, but let’s not go and make a habit off it.

Glanced again at the station.

It looked dead.

Took a deep breath.

And swung the equipment box toward the nose cone.

The magnets epoxied to the plastic case practically reached out and grabbed the smooth metal of the cone. With four solid clicks, the box adhered to the warhead container.

He hoped to hell the warheads weren’t booby-trapped like the nuke experts thought they might be.

He reached for the large switch in the back of the box and wondered what it would be like to be at the core of a nuclear detonation.

Wouldn’t ever know, even if I were at the core, probably.

Snicked the switch upward.

And heard the electromagnetic generator begin to wind up. It was powered by five twenty-eight volt batteries inside the box.

According to Benny Shalbot, the one thing that hard disk drives, Read Only Memory chips, and Random Access Memory devices hate is magnetic fields. It scrambles their electronic brains. We give the damned warhead computer enough electromagnetic impulses, it won’t remember it’s a bunch of bombs, much less the bombs’ targets.

Nothing apparent to McKenna took place. Nothing exploded, but he didn’t know whether or not the ICBM now had scrambled eggs for a mind.

I hope to hell you’re right, Benny.

With a couple jets of nitrogen, McKenna crossed the gap between the rocket and the station. He banged into it a triple hard, and corrected his own impression of his EVA agility.

He heard movement inside.

If they’d been asleep, they were now wide awake.

Looking up, he saw the camera start moving, spinning around, angling up and down.

He worked his way down the side, then below the station, and found himself staring at another camera he hadn’t known was there.

Tapped a thruster button and moved forward, toward the porthole.

The camera followed him.

Found the raised edge of the porthole with his hand and stopped his progress.

Reached down to his leg and ripped off the Velcro strap holding the shaped plastic charge to his thigh.

Slapped it against the thick glass of the porthole.

Looked up and saw widened eyes staring back at him from the other side of the glass. The man started scrambling around, panicky, looking for his space suit.

Twisted the timer stick buried in the plastic, then hit the thrusters and shot away from the space station.

A hundred yards from the station, he reversed his thrust to come stationary and looked back.

Waited.

The explosion was pitifully small. He couldn’t hear it, of course, but the visual impact was tiny.

A small white flash.

And then the contents of the station burst forth, spewing through the smashed port in a stream of paper, one body, pieces of plastic, monitors, plastic containers, clothing, unidentifiable flotsam, and another body.

The stream came to a standstill in seconds, then floated lazily away from him.

He didn’t look at the bodies.

He looked upward and saw a MakoShark approaching slowly.

It looked inviting at first.

But it didn’t have symbols on the wings.

Aleksander Maslov was concentrating on his usage of the Orbital Maneuvering System to bring the MakoShark as close to the warhead as possible when the station porthole erupted.

“Oh, my God! Aleks!”

He looked up to see the debris exploding outward from the station.

He scanned the region quickly, but saw nothing else, nothing to account for the sudden deaths of Bryntsev and Filatov.

The ICBM didn’t move. He noted the black box fastened to the nose cone, and he wondered what it might be.

But he didn’t have the time to wonder for long.

He moved the rocket throttles forward and felt the acceleration as the motors fired.

“Aleks! We can’t leave them.”

“They’re dead, Boris. As is the New World Order.”

“But Aleks…”

“Prepare to jettison the cargo.”

“How did they…”

“I don’t know, Boris. I know that I am not dying in space. Jettison the bloody cargo.”

“Of course. Right away,” Nikitin said.

In the War Room of the Pentagon, all of the Joint Chiefs had gathered with the civilian secretaries. The National Security Advisor, the White House Chief of Staff, and a few members of the security council were also present. Most of them talked in low voices or maintained a respectful silence.

Since it was his command involved in the operation, Brackman had control of one communications console, and he and Thorpe had been trading places at it every half-hour. He had drunk far too much coffee.

“Alpha, Red. We have visual on an explosion at the station.”

Not nuclear, please.

“Go Country! Dig in the spurs!”

That sounded like Major Munoz.

“Red’s hot.”

A long, long silence.

Brackman tapped Thorpe on the shoulder and took his place at the console.

“Red’s closing. Two-two out.”

“Hey!” Must be the backseater, Olsen. “Delta Green!”

“Delta Red, Semaphore. Take out the MakoShark.” “Semaphore, I’ve got to find Blue One.”

“Take out the MakoShark,” Brackman repeated.

And heard the release of a dozen lungfuls of air behind him.

“Roger, Semaphore,” Haggar said, reaching for the armaments panel. “Everything’s lit, Swede. Take what you want.” Delta Green had started her rocket motors. In seconds, she was gaining momentum.

Haggar dragged back on the control stick, firing thrusters and trying to get a lead on the maverick space craft.

“One-seven miles to target, Country. I’m launching two Wasp IIs.”

They screamed off the pylon, reaching out, probing the darkness.

The direct visual image of Delta Green went off the screen.

A few flickers, and the image was regained by one of the Wasp IIs camera eyes.

“He’s accelerating fast,” Olsen said. “It’s going to be close.” The screen view showed the Wasp II was narrowing the gap. The rocket exhausts of the MakoShark loomed larger and hotter.

“I see ’em, hot exhausts,” Munoz cut in. “Go, Swede!”

The screen seemed to fill with exhaust as the Wasp II pursued the accelerating spacecraft from behind.

And then the exhaust dimmed, still producing at one hundred percent, but getting smaller.

“My Wasp flamed out,” Olsen said. “No more fuel.”

“Goddamn it!” Haggar blurted. “Semaphore, he outran the missile.”

“You still have him visual, Red?”

“Negative.”

“How about you, Blue Two?”

“Negative, Semaphore. He ran off my screen.”

“Very well. You may now join up on Yellow and Orange. Semaphore out.”

On the ICS, Haggar said, “You suppose he meant right away, Swede?”

“Probably. They’re worried about ground launch of the other SS-X-25s.”

“Semaphore can wait for one damned minute,” she said.

She hit the thrusters and flipped Delta Red end-over, then tapped in rocket power for a second.

Forty seconds later, she was laying on the forward thrusters to slow the MakoShark as it approached the ruptured Russian space station.

“Blue One, can you give me a locator beacon?”

“Coming up, Country. I’m a couple hundred yards off the station.”

“Want a ride, soldier?” she asked.