Delta Green

Chapter Two

Major Frank Dimatta, tagged “Cancha” for a linguistic habit he had been trying to overcome for years, was the command pilot of Delta Green. In his mid-thirties, with short-cropped black hair and dark eyes, he was becoming more involved with mild exercise in order to alleviate the side effects of his favorite hobby, exotic food.

Dimatta took a walk at 6:15 A.M. after consuming a hearty repast of pasta swamped in a spicy tomato sauce that featured Italian sausage hot enough to warm Minneapolis in January. It wasn’t actually breakfast for Dimatta. His system was attuned to Washington, D.C.’s time zone, and his appetite thought it was 5:15 P.M. EDT.

He wouldn’t have selected pasta either, except that it was the one alternative to a traditional egg-based fare that the morning kitchen personnel at Merlin Air Base could come up with on short notice. Besides that, his eating habits irritated the hell out of his WSO, Captain George Wilson, who was as nutty as they came about nutrition, diet, and fitness. Dimatta sometimes went out of his way to irritate the redheaded “Nitro Fizz” Williams.

Merlin Air Base, called Wet Country by those assigned to it because of the humidity, didn’t offer much space for a walking tour. The complex was composed of three massive hangars, dormitories, warehouses, a two-mile-long single runway, and a launch complex. It was located on the island of Borneo, on the coast north of Sangkulirang. The government of the Indonesian Archipelago didn’t interfere with their operations, and the U.S. military personnel kept a low profile.

There was an extended finger-pier that accepted deep-draft vessels a mile away, on a shore peopled with palm trees. Around the small base itself, the rain forest had been trimmed back, but seemed to resent the intrusion. Orangutans and gibbons made threats from the protection of the jungle, and an occasional leopard made an appearance, glared at the inane activities of man for a moment or two, then loped away.

The Borneo base was one of three land bases supporting the 1st Aerospace Squadron, and it was the largest. Most of its operations were overt, though flights of the MakoShark were generally accomplished at night.

Dimatta left Williams in the electronic arcade in the recreation center, dubbed “Heaven on Earth,” which was centered among the four dormitories. Behind it was the dining hall where he had just finished his limited choice meal.

He eyed the coastal installation, gloomy through a low-hanging early morning haze, and decided against walking the whole mile down to it. He turned westward and sauntered toward the largest hangar fronting the runway. It was two stories tall, with administrative offices and storage space on the second floor. When he and Williams had parked Delta Green in it two hours before, it had contained two C-123 Providers, three business jets, two Bell JetRangers, and a single Mako — the unstealthy, unarmed version of the MakoShark.

Ignoring a curved asphalt sidewalk, Dimatta crossed uneven, weedy ground toward the flight line. He walked easily, content with his world despite the perspiration breaking out on his forehead. It was already eighty degrees, with a humidity reading to match. The armpits of his blue flight suit were beginning to darken.

Looking up at the glass-enclosed control tower that topped the hangar, he didn’t see the normal head or heads moving about. The tower was manned twenty-four hours a day, even if only by one man. Or woman.

By the time he reached the hangar, no one had appeared in the bronze-tinted windows, and Dimatta thought the absence might be worth investigating. He picked up his pace, arrived at the door in the corner of the building, and shoved it open.

He entered the darkened hangar, feeling for a light switch, and stepped on something soft.

Found the switch and cut in one bank of the overhead fluorescent lights.

Looked down to see that his right foot was resting on the thigh of an airman second who was sprawled on his back in a pool of blood. A ravine had been gouged deeply into his forehead.

Dimatta dove to his right, slamming his back into the standing door, rolled twice, and came to rest behind a roll-away tool chest.

He looked up to see what else, or who else, was in there with him.

And what wasn’t.

Delta Green.

The passenger cabin of the Cessna Citation (assigned to the Commander, United States Air Force, Space Command) contained the commander, General Marvin Brackman; his intelligence deputy, Brigadier General David Thorpe; Senator Alvin Worth of the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee; Representative Marian Anderson of the House Armed Services Committee; and a Marine major manning a jury-rigged radar console.

Both Worth and Anderson were staunch foes of what they called Department of Defense spending sprees. In a world of loosening tensions and warming relationships, they were especially disenchanted with purchasing additional MakoSharks at a cost of three-quarters of a billion dollars per copy. Twice, since leaving Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, scathing comments had been made in regard to some hotdog pilot named McKenna losing the original Delta Blue in the Greenland Sea during the German fracas.

Brackman’s 1st Aerospace Squadron still had seven Makos and five MakoSharks — Blue, Green, Yellow, Red, and a backup craft being completed at Jack Andrews Air Base in Chad, but the general thought it important to maintain his long-term acquisition plan.

That plan was on Worth and Anderson’s cutting block, and the two of them were gaining converts on their own committees, as well as on the appropriations committees.

There were those within Brackman’s command who thought it might be better to cut Worth and Anderson. The world would be a far better place, the philosophy went, and Brackman wasn’t certain just how serious some of those people were.

McKenna, for instance.

Thorpe and the two congressional representatives were standing in the narrow aisle, bent over the shoulders of the major at the radar console, and Thorpe was trying to explain to them how to read the screen.

The airplane hit some turbulence and bounced a little. Marian Anderson grabbed Thorpe’s arm to steady herself. Her face was a trifle pale.

Brackman sat in one of the thickly cushioned seats and waited. At sixty years of age, the commander was in good shape. He was five-feet, eleven-inches tall, and he weighed 178 pounds. He figured he had eight pounds to go before he would be happy, but those last eight pounds were tough ones to eliminate. His hair was fully gray and thinning, and his face was elongated with a thin, aristocratic nose and a wide mouth that smiled more frequently than expected. The smile was in direct contrast to hound dog eyes that were brown and saddened.

Senator Worth reached out and tapped the screen. “There it is!”

“I’m afraid not, sir. That’s a United 767 in-bound for Salt Lake City, Senator,” the Marine major told him. “Oh.”

For a Marine, the major was fairly diplomatic, Brackman thought.

Brackman headed a strange organization. Though it was in the Air Force section of the Department of Defense’s chart, the Space Command was staffed by members of all the services. His priority had always been to obtain the best-qualified people, regardless of the service branch, and his headquarters corridors and offices were filled with inconsistent uniforms. A rear admiral headed his administrative section, and an Army colonel, who probably should have been making millions in the Silicon Valley, ran the tightest computer ship in the industry.

Through the porthole beside his seat, Brackman saw mountains, forests, a few wispy clouds, and a bright blue sky. He kept checking the direction of the sun.

Marian Anderson gave up on the radar and came back to take the seat across the aisle from him. She was twenty years his junior and thin enough to be emaciated. Her cheeks had a hollow quality to them, and Brackman sometimes thought that her eyes appeared just as hollow. She wore a dark gray skirted business suit and high heels.

“Your pilot has probably missed the rendezvous,” she said.

“Colonel McKenna doesn’t miss a rendezvous, Congresswoman”

“There’s always a first time”

“Oh, he’s out there, somewhere,” Brackman insisted.

He had grabbed McKenna out of the test program at Edwards almost six years before and put him in command of the 1st Aerospace Squadron, and he had yet to be disappointed by the decision. McKenna’s grasp on protocol and regulations was a little loose at times, but the results were more than satisfactory.

She waved her hand at the console. “I believe you when you say we aren’t going to see him on the radar.”

“Thank you. That’s why we’re giving this little demonstration during the day. So you’ll see the MakoShark with your eyes. I wouldn’t want you to think we’d try to fake it.”

“I think it’s pretty much a waste of time, General. The cost-benefit ratio of this program just doesn’t add up.”

“Today, maybe,” Brackman admitted. “But, Congress-woman, I’m trying to think twenty years down the road. For reasons of self-preservation, I wouldn’t admit this to Strategic Air Command or Tactical Air Command people, but can you imagine an Air Force composed primarily of, say, six MakoShark squadrons?”

She pursed her lips. “No SAC? No TAC?”

“As I say, I wouldn’t mention it out loud.”

“Six squadrons?”

“Fifty MakoSharks.”

“To do the job of the thousands of aircraft and pilots you now have?”

“The MakoShark has air superiority, air defense, and attack capability. We’re combining mission performance with this machine,” Brackman said. “I’m trying to be longsighted, but it requires a continuing program of build-up and replacement. I believe your cost-benefit analysis might change in light of that philosophy.”

“Do Mays and Cross know about this… philosophy?” General Harvey Mays was the Air Force chief of staff, and Admiral Hannibal Cross was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“I have not discussed the concept with either of them. All I’m saying is that it’s something to think about.”

“You see Congress as being shortsighted, General?”

“I think Congress is sincere,” he sidestepped.

“There are hungry people out there. And people who need homes.”

“I know that, Miss Anderson.”

Senator Alvin Worth and David Thorpe came back and took seats. Worth was an unkempt, homey, oversized legislator, reminiscent of Everett Dirkson in some ways. His longish hair was gray and rumpled, and his eyes were blue and direct. He was a strong contrast to the natty and meticulous Thorpe whose appearance reflected his precise and analytical mind.

“We might as well head back to the Springs,” Worth said. “This demo has already proven what I thought it would.”

“I don’t think so, Senator,” Thorpe told him. “I’d keep an eye on the sun. That’s where it’ll come from.”

Brackman’s spine itched suddenly as the chilling thought passed through his mind that McKenna and Munoz could eliminate a hell of a lot of Congressional opposition to their primary love with one Wasp missile. That they might also lose their favorite flag officer and most endearing commander might not mean much.

He leaned against the fuselage side and peered through his window toward the descending sun.

The overhead speakers abruptly blared. “BANG! BANG! Splash one Citation.”

“What! Where…?” Worth exclaimed.

Brackman searched the skies.

No MakoShark.

He glanced down.

And there was Delta Blue, just below the Cessna’s wingtip.

Flying inverted.

An upside-down Tony Munoz waved at them.

McKenna rolled upright and took up a station a few feet off the wing so that the VIPs could look them over.

At 100 feet, the MakoShark was over twice the length of the Citation, and her 60-foot wingspan was 13 feet greater than the Cessna’s.

The MakoShark’s parents were SR-71 Blackbirds, but the Lockheed, Martin Marietta, Boeing, Hughes, and Rockwell design team had gone far beyond the 1964 design of the Blackbird.

The MakoShark was delta-winged like the SR-71, with an elongated fuselage that appeared flattened because of the chines along the side of the narrowing forward fuselage which finally blended in with the wings.

Unlike the Blackbird, she did not have rudders. The wingtips canted upward at seventy-degree angles, leaning outward, to serve as rudders. The engine and motor nacelles were elongated rectangles with rounded edges, rather than cylindrical, and the wing appeared to pass through them. At the bottom of the wing’s leading edge, the nacelle curved upward to its opening. Jutting out of the opening was the ramjet cone which was not actually a cone, as on the SR-71s, but a very wide and flexible triangular piece.

The trailing edge of the delta wing was curved, and contained the oversized flaps, elevators, ailerons, and trim tabs. Every surface was finished in the deep midnight blue paint that made the MakoShark disappear into the night a hundred yards from an observer. In appropriate locations near control surfaces were the tiny exhaust nozzles of the thruster system. The thrusters were utilized where the atmosphere was rarefied and the craft’s attitude unaffected by the movement of control surface. The surface finish was as smooth as silk. There were no exposed rivets; every joint was bonded.

There were also no insignia or aircraft numbers identifying the craft. Brackman supposed he would get a comment from Worth or Anderson about the clandestine appearance: Spy plane.

He glanced at the congressional representatives, but despite their earlier skepticism, they now seemed enraptured. Anderson had crossed the cabin to the seat behind Brackman’s and had her nose pressed against the porthole. Brackman was reminded of kids at Christmas outside the toy store.

Thorpe gave him a grin, and Brackman returned his attention to Delta Blue.

The cockpits were located just behind the needle nose, and the tandem canopies were flush with the lines of the fuselage. The technician-accessible compartment containing the bulk of the avionics and the computers was aft of the cockpits. Behind that compartment was the payload bay, then the primary JP7 fuel tanks for the jet engines in the remainder of the tapering fuselage.

The payload bay was multipurpose. Bomb and missile rack modules, cargo modules, and up to two passenger modules could all be jacked into place. The passenger modules, used primarily with the civilian-oriented Mako, were nine feet long, containing four airline-type seats, environmental control, and a large TV screen on the forward bulkhead. Passengers didn’t care much for the windowless, plastic tubes, complaining of claustrophobia.

Though Delta Blue was currently not fitted with them, four pylons could be attached to the wings inboard of the engine nacelles. Either the short or the long pylons added to the multi-mission capability of the MakoShark. They accepted external fuel tanks, cargo pods, electronics modules, and a variety of lethal weaponry.

Brackman thought she was the most beautiful and functional craft the Air Force had ever acquired, well worth the number on its price tag.

“What do you think, Marian?” Alvin Worth asked.

“It doesn’t look like it should cost seven hundred and fifty million dollars,” she said.

Thorpe sighed audibly.

The phone in Brackman’s armrest beeped softly and he picked it up.

“Sir,” the communications specialist in the cockpit said, “you have a priority one radio call. You should probably take it up here.”

“Be right there, Sergeant,” Brackman said, then excused himself and walked forward, bending to clear the low ceiling height. He supposed McKenna wanted a private conversation. In the cockpit, he closed the door and took the headset handed to him by the specialist.

“Semaphore,” he said, giving the code name for Commander, Space Command.

“Semaphore, Delta Green One”

That was Dimatta.

“Go ahead, Green.”

“We’ve got a problem, sir.”

“What kind of problem?”

“Delta Green’s gone.”

“Gone? What the hell do you mean, gone?”

“Hijacked, I guess, General. She’s disappeared.”

“That can’t happen,” Brackman said, trying not to let the heat of his temper carry over into his voice.

“I know, sir, and that’s what really pisses me. It did happen. And I’ve got four dead.”

“Goddamn it!”

“Sorry, sir.”

Brackman nudged the communications specialist’s shoulder. “Get Delta Blue on a secure frequency.”

Lieutenant Colonel Amelia Pearson was strapped into her office. It was probably the most efficient, technologically supported, and tiniest office ever designed. It was a four-by-four-by-seven-foot cubicle with padded walls and no windows. The door was a gray nylon curtain fastened to plastic balls sliding in tracks at the top and bottom. It was intended to provide the occupant with a psychological sense of privacy and an environment which enhanced concentration.

A computer and communications console with three cathode ray tube displays was recessed into one wall and served as the “desk.” It allowed for visual access to three documents simultaneously, or if she split the screens, to six documents. Additionally, she could tap into any of the radar or video monitoring systems.

There were four such offices in the command module located on Spoke One of Themis, the Space Command’s space station. Besides herself, they were assigned to the commander of Themis, Brigadier General James Overton; the deputy commander, Colonel Milt Avery; and the 1st Aerospace Squadron commander, Colonel Kevin McKenna. Pearson thought the expenditure for McKenna’s office had been wasted. He used his cubicle for sleeping as often as he used it for duty chores.

Across a roughly hexagonal-shaped corridor from the smaller cubicles was a much larger compartment staffed twenty-four hours a day by one of the three communications operators on board. The nooks and crannies left over were fitted with other compartments housing computer and electronics gear, safety equipment, and emergency environmental suits.

The entire module was forty feet in diameter and sixty feet long, and the command center, on the outboard end of the module, was twenty feet deep by almost the full diameter of forty feet. A four-foot diameter, round porthole provided a view of the earth and was the central focus point of the control room. Not much thought had been given to aesthetics. Conduit and ducting was a fiberglass and steel maze against the gray bulkheads. Consoles and black boxes were secured where they were functioned. Velcro tethers, rather than chairs, were placed in appropriate locations to keep the people operating consoles from floating away.

“Amy!” General Overton didn’t use the intercom system when people were within shouting distance.

“Coming, sir,” she called back, then saved the report she was writing to the mainframe computer’s laser disk storage.

Pearson released the strap holding her to the padded wall and pushed out into the corridor. Using one of the many grab bars spaced throughout the station, she deflected her flight toward the command center.

She had become so accustomed to the environment of Themis by now that the acrobatic methods of getting around were second nature. She had not planned on becoming a gymnast. With a doctorate in international affairs from the University of California at Los Angeles, she had also read at Trinity College before signing on with the Air Force. In her mid-thirties, Pearson was unmarried and intensely devoted to her career. The devotion did not interfere with the confidence and grace with which she traversed the corridors of either the Pentagon or Themis.

She was tiny at five-feet, four-inches and gave the impression of atomic particles on the move. McKenna sometimes called her hyperactive. Her dark red hair was cut somewhat longer than the Air Force cared for, and in zero-gravity, she kept it in place with a denim headband. She had pale green eyes that seemed constantly in search of clues, reasons, and solutions. The light blue, zippered jumpsuits favored by station personnel didn’t disguise much of her lush figure.

Floating into the command center, she found several technicians manning monitoring stations and Overton at the main console near the port. The view through the porthole was currently centered on the Caribbean Sea, glowing with hazy greens and blues. An eruption of Mauna Loa the week before had sprinkled ash in the atmosphere, resulting in a diminished clarity.

The space station’s commander had gray overtones — hair and eyes, but he was slim and fit and long at six-four. He was forty-four years old. Aggressive and ambitious, Overton was also loyal to his subordinates, and his decisioning was always weighted with a concern for their welfare.

As Overton turned his head to look for her, she saw that the creases in his forehead had deepened.

Pearson glided across the center, pulled her knees down to assume a head-up position similar to Overton’s, and took hold of a grab bar on the side of the main console.

“Problem, General?”

“Damned big one, Amy. Delta Green’s been hijacked.”

That had to be impossible. “How?”

“We don’t know, yet. Brackman said it was on the ground at Wet Country”

“Dimatta and Williams?”

“They’re all right, but I understand there are some other fatalities. Damn!”

Overton didn’t usually display much emotion. Part of his job was to observe the attitudes and behavior of his subordinates and transfer them off the station if it appeared that the delicate balances in human relationships were in jeopardy.

“Brackman wants to keep a lid on this for as long as possible,” Overton continued.

“Where’s McKenna?”

“On the way to Wet Country. And I’ve scrambled Delta Yellow out of Jack Andrews. For the time being, we’ll keep Delta Red in reserve here.”

“Space Command is handling it?” she asked.

“At least until the Joint Chiefs say otherwise. Thorpe will be putting out a silent alert, and you’re to check in with him if you have any ideas. Right now, I want you to get hold of Dimatta and get the details”

“Right away, General”

Pearson pushed off from the console, headed for the communications compartment. She used the doorjamb to stop her momentum.

Tech Sergeant Donna Amber, a bright but mousy woman with close-cropped brown hair from Birmingham, Alabama, looked up from her console. “I heard, Colonel.”

“Let’s see if we can run Major Dimatta down, Donna.”

“Will do.”

Milt Avery shot by in the corridor as Pearson positioned herself behind Amber. The crisis team was moving into action, and it was a good team. Pearson was proud of being a part of it.

The communications console was a complex piece of equipment, incorporating the latest technologies in multiband and microwave voice and data transmission. A confusing array of touch-sensitive pads, light-emitting diode indicators, quartz digital readouts, and display terminals was spread over a five-foot span. Donna Amber was as skilled with its concept and operation as any surgeon.

She first checked the readout that gave her Themis’s celestial coordinates. Because of the satellite’s orbital characteristics, it was not always in contact with various communications networks, such as the Air Force Communications System (AFSATCOM) or the Critical Communications Net.

“I can get a link through CRITICOM,” she said, and did. “We’re scrambling both ends, Colonel.”

Dimatta was in the control tower. “Alpha, Delta Green One.”

Pearson, who was the intelligence officer, was actually Alpha Three, after Overton and Avery. “Brief me, Green”

“There were two of them, Alpha. Intruders. They came in by hang glider over the north boundary… “

“Did you backtrack the radar tapes?”

“Affirmative. No radar contacts. The hang glider structural members are fiberglass. Both were abandoned two hundred yards north of the main hangar. They took out the two guards in the hangar… “

“Took out?”

“Killed them, goddamn it! Airman Vrdlka and army buck sergeant Aaron Stein.” Dimatta’s tone carried his rage. “The fatalities in the control tower were Lieutenant Ellen Powers and a civilian contract employee named Jay Guidon.”

Pearson was absorbing some of Dimatta’s anger, but managed to keep it out of her voice. “Weapons used?”

“Blunt instrument on one of the guards. The other three were shot. Silenced, I’d guess, and probably about nine millimeter. One slug each. This guy was a pro, Am… Alpha.”

“All right. Now, Delta Green. She was fueled?”

“Full load, topped off right after we landed. That’s SOP.”

“No radar track on the departure?”

“Radars were shut down.”

“No one heard the takeoff?”

“The ship was towed about a third of the way down the runway. We found a tractor in the drainage ditch off the runway. If anyone heard the start-up or the takeoff, it was subconsciously.”

“What was the flight configuration?” Pearson asked.

“Shit. She had four pylons rigged. They got a photo recon pod, an M230 Chain Gun pod, two Phoenix missiles, and four Wasp IIs.”

“My God!” Pearson said. “McKenna’s going to come unglued”

“Not exactly unglued,” Dimatta said, “but he’s not happy.”

“Payload?”

“We had two cargo modules of fuel pellets.”

“It took off heavy,” she said.

“Near the max. We had added it up to one-seven-eight-point-four.”

That was 178,400 pounds.

“That would take a pilot that knew what he was doing,” Pearson said.

“This son of a bitch knew what he was doing,” Dimatta agreed.

Which defined Pearson’s method of investigation. She knew what she was doing, too.

“Checklist comin’ up on D-3, jefe. That’s the tiny little TV-like thing on your left panel.”

“I know what the damned D-3 is, Tiger.”

“Lighten up, will you, Snake Eyes?”

“I don’t want to lighten up. Call it.”

“Roger that,” Munoz said.

McKenna glanced at the four-inch CRT to the left of the main display on the instrument panel. Normally, it was used as a rearview mirror, displaying true video or infrared views to the rear of the MakoShark since, due to the cockpit configuration, the pilot and WSO did not have adequate vision behind them. Munoz had switched the display to the scrolling checklist for landing.

Outside the cockpit, the mid-morning sun was absorbed by the matte green jungle canopy of Borneo. It looked hot, and it would be hot when they got on the ground. Off to his right, McKenna saw the serene blue of the Celebes Sea.

Ahead, nothing but green.

Munoz called off the systems checks, and McKenna eyeballed the switch positions and light indications and responded the way the checklist wanted him to respond.

“Air speed?”

“Four-two-five knots,” McKenna said. A scan of the HUD showed his altitude at nine hundred feet above the terrain.

The DME — Distance Measuring Equipment — told him he was seven miles from Merlin.

“Traffic, Tiger?”

“I show a southbound blip, our bearing one-five-seven, eight miles away. Probably an island-hopping DC-9. Nobody’s seen us, amigo.”

Six miles out, Munoz went on the air. “Merlin, Delta Blue.”

“Blue, we read you, but we don’t see you.”

“Six out. Requesting straight in.”

“Blue approved straight in on ought-one. No traffic. Wind is two knots out of the east. Barometric pressure of two-nine-point-one. Temperature nine-two and climbing.”

McKenna backed off the turbojet throttles and watched his speed decay to 380 knots. The landing speed of the MakoSharks when coming in heavy, as he was, was high at 248 knots, or 285 miles per hour.

“Flaps, Snake Eyes.”

“Twenty degrees.” McKenna reached for the lever below the throttle quadrant and lowered his flaps for more lift. Despite the heavy, humid air which provided more lift than, say, Peterson Air Base in Colorado Springs, the MakoShark was designed for ultra high speeds. At landing speed, she handled like a Mack truck on a hockey rink.

A rent in the jungle canopy suddenly appeared directly ahead.

“Got visual, Tiger.”

“Sumbitch was right where she’s supposed to be. Gear?”

McKenna thumbed the landing gear switch and watched the HUD for his three green LEDs.

“Gear down and locked,” he told the WSO when they blinked on.

“Do it like a feather.”

McKenna used his hand controller to bring the nose up a tad and watched the speed bleed down.

The jungle quit abruptly and the black asphalt of the single long runway appeared.

He retarded the throttles, and the MakoShark sagged downward, the main gear touching with a screech of rubber, then the nose gear settling onto the pavement.

Pulling the throttles inboard and back, he neutralized the turbine blades, then eased them into reverse thrust. The big craft slowed, but he didn’t use his brakes until he was three-quarters of the way down the two-mile strip, coming up on the hangar complex to the right of the runway.

Two C-123s and a Learjet had been moved out of the large hangar to make room for Delta Blue. Inside, he could see a Mako and Delta Yellow.

He toed the brakes, reducing the ground speed to a crawl, then linked the ground steering to the hand controller.

He turned off the runway toward the hanger and a blue tow tractor moving toward them. Fumbling with the catch on his helmet, he pushed his helmet visor up, automatically closing off the oxygen/nitrogen supply feed.

After depressurizing the cockpit, McKenna raised the canopy. The humid air floated in and slapped him in the face. The moan of a hydraulic line told him that Munoz had raised his own canopy.

It took four minutes to shut down the engines and electronics systems, then McKenna turned his helmet one-eighth turn in the track of the environmental suit’s collar to free it, lifted it off, and placed it on the instrument panel shroud. He stood up in the cockpit and stretched his muscles.

A ground crewman fitted the ladder to the side of the MakoShark, and he slid over the cockpit coaming, found the ladder with his feet, and worked his way out over the wide chine, then down to the ground.

Dimatta, Williams, Conover, Abrams, and the new base commander, a brigadier named Del win Cartwright, were waiting on the tarmac for him.

“What the hell happened to your security, General?” McKenna demanded.

“Ease off, Colonel. You don’t question my security.”

“I’ll damned well find someone who will,” McKenna told him, then turned his back on the man and headed for the ready room.

The members of the 1st Aerospace Squadron followed him, curiously quiet for that bunch.