Delta Green

Chapter Twenty

“Bout time, amigo. I was beginnin’ to think you didn’t love me anymore.”

“Unavoidably detained, Tiger,” McKenna said as the bay doors opened under his feet.

His own cockpit was directly below him, and Munoz was looking up at him from the backseat. He was already out of the two backpacks and breathing on an emergency cylinder. He had stripped most of the black tape from his arms and upper torso to give him more freedom of movement.

The two MakoSharks were nose to tail, Delta Red ten feet above Delta Blue. Nudging one of Delta Red’s internal ribs, he launched himself out of the bay. Two seconds later, he grabbed the edge of his own canopy and pulled himself into the cockpit. The surge of relief that washed over him was enough to make him want to go take a nap.

“Thanks for the ride, Country.”

“Anytime, boss.”

He hooked into the MakoShark’s communication system, then the air supply.

“Go, Country. See you on the other side.”

“Roger, Blue.”

Since Haggar’s craft was already facing the correct direction, she fired her aft thrusters to open the space between them, drifted away, then opened up the main rockets. The MakoShark quickly disappeared.

McKenna strapped himself in.

“We’re four minutes from a window, and the checklist is run right up to firing, Snake Eyes.”

“Flipping,” McKenna said and hit the controller.

The craft went over on her back, and McKenna turned the retro fire sequence over to the computer.

He went to Tac Two, “Delta Yellow and Orange, Blue.”

“Yellow.”

“Orange.”

Checking the chronometer on the panel, he said, “We’ll go to phase two in what, Tiger?”

“We need forty-six minutes,” Munoz said.

“Phase two in fifty minutes.”

“You want us to hold off?” Conover asked.

“Roger. Delta Green is probably inbound on you, and we want all four of us on that hummer. Keep an eye open”

“Roger that,” Conover said.

“Orange.”

Brackman’s voice broke into the net, “Delta Blue, Semaphore. Can we get a sitrep sometime?”

McKenna imagined all of the honchos sitting around in one war room or another, probably on pins and needles.

“Semaphore, Soyuz Fifty is disabled, but rebuildable. Two’ fatalities. ICBM is neutralized. The second ICBM was never online.”

“Very nice work, Delta Blue. We’ll remember it. Semaphore out.”

“Alpha, you there?” McKenna asked.

“Blue, Alpha,” Pearson came back.

“Make your phone call,” he told her.

The computer started its countdown to retro.

“You actually see who was flying Green?” Munoz asked on the intercom.

“Not clearly.”

“They see you?”

“I don’t think so. I was damned glad to be the man in black.”

It seemed to take forever before the connection was made, and then it took another seven minutes for someone, to get Dr. Geli Lemesh to the phone.

Pearson was so relieved about McKenna’s return to the MakoShark that she was having trouble concentrating.

“Hello?” he asked in Russian.

Pearson spoke in English. “Doctor Lemesh, I don’t know whether or not you remember me. I’m Colonel Amelia Pearson, with the United States Air Force.”

He switched to his stilted English, and she could hear the smile in his tone, “Of course I remember you, Colonel. I did so enjoy your visit. Are you coming back soon, I hope?”

“I may well do that, Doctor.”

“Please, it is Geli.”

“Geli, then. And I go by Amy.”

“Amy. Wonderful”

“I wonder if you could do something for me, Geli?”

“Anything.”

“I believe you feel as compassionate about the children as I do,” she said. She could summon up so many images of forlorn eyes and weak smiles.

“You know that I do”

“I would like to have you protect them”

“In what way would that be,” he asked, suspicion creeping into his tone.

“Load them on the buses and trucks, and drive them toward the lake.”

“But… but what for?”

“The children are not shields, Geli. And they will not be recognized as such.”

“I do not know what you are speaking about.” His voice had hardened.

“Yes, you do. Please, for the sake of the children, do as I ask.”

“Are you telling me…?”

“I’m not telling you anything more than what I have said. This may be your only salvation, Geli.”

“I cannot take such an action.”

“Think about it,” she said. “Think very carefully.”

General Oleg Druzhinin and Sergeant Nikita Kasartskin, along with a radar operator, were in the Control Center.

They had been there since Maslov had taken off, awaiting word of the deployment of the second ballistic missile. Outside the windows, the jungle was dark. The air-conditioning had been turned off, and gnats and mosquitoes bounced against the screening of the door.

He knew of Maslov’s reticence to talk on the radio. The man was a loner. But still, he could wait no longer.

“Sergeant, check on the communication relays, please.”

“Right away, Comrade General.”

Kasartskin rose from his chair and went back to the global communications room. When he came back, he said, “All is in order, General”

Druzhinin went to the console and raised the microphone. “Commander, this is Commodore.”

There was no response.

“Commander, this is Commodore.”

“Commodore, Captain.”

It was a relief to hear Maslov’s voice, even though it sounded half dead.

“What is your situation, Captain?” he asked.

“We have just come out of blackout.”

“You are on the return already?” Druzhinin could not believe it.

“Commander no longer exists, Commodore. The men are dead, the station out of operation.”

“What!”

“It is true. We are returning to base.”

It could not be. And if it was, the base was no longer safe, no longer clandestine.

“You must not come here,” Druzhinin said.

“But we must.”

“What you must do, Colonel, is remain aloft until I tell you otherwise.”

He dropped the microphone and turned to Kasartskin. “Sergeant, alert all aircraft crews. All interceptors are to take off immediately. I will take the MiG-25.”

Then he picked up the telephone and called the hospital.

“Delta Yellow, Delta Blue.”

“Go, Blue,” Conover said.

“Blue and Red are out of blackout and joining up at angels one-ten. We’ve got the CAP You are free to enter phase two.”

“Roger, Blue. Yellow’s going to phase two.”

On the intercom, Conover said, “You’ve got the weapons, Do-Wop.”

“Oh, goody,” Abrams said. “Taking four Phoenix. Come to two-seven-zero, Con Man, and let’s put her on the deck.”

“Coming two-seven-zero.”

The Phoenix II missiles were not ground attack weapons, but they would still play hell with most fortifications.

They were a hundred miles southeast of Phnom Penh, still on a rocket-assisted glide at forty-five thousand feet. Conover put the nose down and went through the turbojet start-up list.

A hundred feet off his left wingtip, he could see Delta Orange falling back a little.

On Tac Three, he said, “Cancha keep up with me, Cancha?”

“Whatever you can do, I can do better,” Dimatta said.

“Comes to eating, that’s true. Flying, that’s another matter,” Conover said.

“Now to three-five-five,” Abrams said.

Conover eased into the turn, keeping the nose down and the throttles at idle.

Altitude thirty-one thousand feet.

The speed was holding well at just under Mach 1.

Ahead, down in the darkness, were the sleepy lights of the capital city. They had taken video recordings on earlier passes, and Pearson had talked them through the frames until they had a positive ID on the target.

They were descending quickly now, the numbers spinning off the radar altimeter.

Passing through fifteen thousand feet.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever fired on civilians before,” Abrams said.

The screen went to a green-tinged night vision view. The Mekong River was clearly identifiable.

“They’re not civilians,” Conover said. “Snakeheads. That’s the way I think of them. Cut off the head of the snake, and the body goes into convulsions.”

“Good point, Con Man. AGL two-five-hundred. Hold it there.”

Conover eased the throttles forward. Even at that throttle setting, no one on the ground would ever detect them. Shadow in the night, passing over at four hundred knots.

He could no longer see Delta Orange, who was flying cover for him a thousand feet above.

“Two aircraft in formation six miles west,” George Williams reported from Delta Orange. “Must be Kampucheans, but they don’t know we’re here.”

“Roger, Nitro.”

The city’s lights were flashing past on the screen now. Abrams put the target rose on the screen.

“There’s the convergence of the two rivers, Con Man. Take the left fork. Up the Tonle Sap.”

“Without a paddle for someone.”

Anatoly Shelepin had been sleeping the peaceful sleep of a world leader when the telephone began to jangle, and he stumbled out of bed for the living room.

“A gentle night,” Druzhinin told him.

“And a cool one.”

“Ridiculous bloody code,” Druzhinin said.

“What!”

“The space station has been overrun, and—”

“It cannot be!”

“It is, Anatoly. I expect an attack here at any moment.”

“But, Oleg, they will…”

“They will.” Druzhinin was very firm.

“Call the hospital. Bring the children over.”

“No one is answering at the hospital, Anatoly. I have sent Kasartskin, but I fear the worst.”

Druzhinin hung up on him.

Shelepin was about to call Pavel when he saw lightning flash past the window, across the compound.

One of the houses exploded in a tremendous burst of concussion, white light, and orange-yellow flame.

Another streak of lightning.

An explosion that rocked the floor under his feet.

He ran for the front window.

But it imploded, driving shards of glass into his face and torso.

Shelepin was blown backwards across the room, landing on his back.

Looking down at his bare chest, he watched rivers of blood flowing from a hundred wounds.

From fifty-five thousand feet, Munoz had captured the northern part of the city on the screen. The angle of the night vision lens kept changing as the backseater struggled to keep the view static while the MakoShark coasted at six hundred knots.

“There we go, jefe.”

McKenna saw the white eruptions appear in the upper left screen. There were four of them.

“Yellow, Blue.”

“Yellow. We put four in the compound, Snake Eyes. Confirm the right compound.”

“Good show, sport,” McKenna said. “Cancha, you take the lead. Country Girl, take your look.”

Dimatta would now lead the attack on the air base, with Conover flying his wing. Lynn Haggar was positioned north of the base, and she would make a first run over the hospital and evaluate the conditions. If it appeared that the children had been moved to the airstrip, McKenna could still call off the attack.

With the leadership possibly decimated, and with the space station out of commission, McKenna’s priority now was the two remaining ICBMs, followed by the aircraft of the New World Order. He had told Admiral Cross he was more interested in destroying equipment than people, and Cross had agreed with him.

“Deltas, Red on approach. We’ve got aircraft in the region. Counting seven now, most flying ovals over the base.”

“Protection,” Munoz said on the intercom.

“And maybe bait, Tiger, if Delta Green is up there somewhere.”

“Go to three-four-five, compadre.”

“Going.”

The lights of Phnom Penh drifted away to the left, then off the screen. McKenna scanned the checklist on the small screen, making certain he was ready to start the turbojets.

They headed north, closing on the base. Through the windscreen, McKenna couldn’t see any aircraft.

“I want a sweep, Snake Eyes.”

“Take two.”

Munoz switched the screen to the radar output, and McKenna watched as the forward antenna, in the attack mode, painted targets. He counted the seven Haggar had reported.

“Eighth just taking off,” Munoz said.

“Deltas, Red. I see no activity at the hospital. Hold one while I make a pass on the road to the lake.”

“Deltas, hold,” McKenna said.

He eased the controller forward and began to bleed off some altitude.

Checked the armaments panel. All greens.

“Three-two miles to target, jefe.”

“All number twos,” McKenna said, “light up the radars and select your targets. Orange, you’re still making the strafing run.”

He got a chorus of “rogers” in reply.

The four newly activated radars suddenly alerted, and possibly alarmed, the pilots of the defending aircraft. They began to scramble in various directions.

“I’ve got two in the northwest quadrant,” Munoz said. As soon as he made the selection, he put two orange target symbols on top of them.

“Make mine the three south of the base,” Abrams called. “You draw ’em in, Orange, and we’ll pounce.”

“I want the two on the west side,” Ben Olsen radioed.

“We’ll get the one that’s climbing out to the north after our pass,” Williams said.

“Deltas, Red. I count seven buses and eight trucks near the lake. Going down… let me… yeah! We got kids!”

Everyone on the channel whooped.

“Delta Orange, make your run,” McKenna ordered.

With the turbojets idled to reduce the heat signature to almost nil, Dimatta started his approach from the south a four hundred knots.

“Altitude angels five,” Williams said.

“We drawn anyone yet, Nitro?”

“Not yet. Wait… here’s one coming our way.”

“Shut it down.”

“Hold one and see if we can pull another one in.”

“Not too damned long,” Dimatta said.

“The others have killed their radars now,” Williams reported.

The defenders of the base had likely begun to lock onto the active radars when they suddenly disappeared, leaving them to chase air.

The threat receiver sounded in Dimatta’s earphones and the HUD indicator flashed, “MISSILE LOCK-ON.”

“Goddamn it, Nitro!”

Williams switched the radar to passive.

Two seconds later, a missile of some kind flashed over their heads.

And a second after that, one of Delta Yellow’s Wasp IIs slammed into the aircraft that had fired it. A bright yellow-orange-red sunflower erupted high to their right.

“Hot damn!” Abrams yelled. “Down one! Sukhoi, I think.”

“One-two out,” Williams said. “AGL two thousand.”

In poring over the photos of the base, they had determined that, though they couldn’t see them, any aircraft had to be spotted in revetments to the left and right of the runway. Most of the aircraft were probably in the air by now. The more important facilities and supplies (control, ordnance, fuel, possibly the two ICBMs) were probably located at one end of the strip or the other.

Delta Orange’s targets were selected as points fifty yards from the runway ends and fifty yards out into the jungle on either side. Again, they were using the air-to-air Phoenix IIs for those targets, hoping to cause a lot of havoc, if not a lot of damage.

The firing point was to be ten miles out, and as they flew down the airstrip, they would unleash several Wasp IIs to either side.

“One-oh.”

“Let ’em go, Nitro.”

Dimatta squinted his eyes against the expected glare of missile exhaust in order to protect his night vision.

He heard Munoz claim a MiG-27 kill to the north.

One after the other, the Phoenix missiles dropped from their pylons, ignited, and raced ahead of them.

The first two impacted in the jungle on each side of the strip a few seconds before the MakoShark reached the head of the runway.

Geysers of light, smoke, and debris burst upward through the jungle canopy.

“We got something or other on the right,” Williams said. “Launching Wasp IIs.”

Four successive Wasp IIs whistled away as Dimatta steadied the MakoShark five hundred feet above the runway. He added throttle to maintain his air speed.

Ben Olsen claimed a kill.

The third Phoenix impacted at the far end on the left, and the Fourth of July arrived early.

“Christ, Cancha! Cut hard!”

Dimatta shoved the throttles against the forward stops, toed rudder, and leaned the controller hard to the right. The MakoShark whipped into a hard right turn as a fireball rose out of the jungle to his left oblique. Exploding ordnance created individual blossoms within the expanding fireball.

“Ordnance. I hope to hell the ICBMs were there,” Williams said.

“And that we don’t set off the nukes.”

Which wasn’t likely to happen.

Dimatta jigged back out of the turn, heading north again.

“Where’s that aircraft we got in the lottery, Nitro?”

“Going active.”

Half a sweep.

“Right in front of us,” Williams said. “Break right!”

“I cannot believe this, Aleks.”

They were at twenty thousand feet headed south when the fires began to sprout all around the airstrip.

Maslov immediately armed his remaining ten Wasp IIs.

A monstrous explosion told him the ordnance depot had been hit.

“Go active, Boris.”

He shoved the controller forward and went into a steep dive toward the burning base.

The radar showed aircraft all around them, along with streaking missiles. Off-and-on flashes of radars were probably the emissions of the American MakoSharks. They were there, then they were not.

At the south end of the base, he saw one continuous blip moving in toward the runway at two thousand feel and four hundred knots.

A second radar suddenly appeared, moving directly at the incoming aircraft.

“Got you!” General Druzhinin’s voice yelped on the Tac One channel tuned to the base frequency.

He would be flying the MiG-25.

On the screen, two missiles shot out from the MiG.

The MakoShark stopped emitting shortly after making a hard right turn.

The missiles lost their radar homing and tracked into the jungle, their tracks disappearing from the screen.

And out of nowhere, a single missile appeared. Coming from the south, it was homing on the MiG.

Maslov mashed the transmit button. “Oleg! Turn right!”

The blip started the turn, but it was too late. Maslov looked up through the canopy in time to see the detonation as the missile caught the Mig-25 in one of its turbojets. In the light from the fire at the ordnance dump, he saw the MiG shatter into several large pieces spinning into the jungle.

He was inexplicably saddened by the loss, though he had never cared strongly for Druzhinin. Everything he had believed in had, twice, evaporated. He would never be a communist general, but he would make a strong accounting of himself before he died. Some of the MakoSharks would go with him.

“Aleks! Radar emitting!”

He looked down at the screen and saw the radar directly ahead of him. It would be the craft that had shot down Druzhinin, following through its attack path.

“Fire two, Boris!”

McKenna eased back the controller, pulling out of the dive.

“Thanks, somebody,” Abrams called.

“This’s Blue,” Munoz said. “Any time.”

“Red’s got another,” Haggar said.

Munoz had an active radar going. “The rest are scattering, Snake Eyes.”

“Good for—”

“Blue! Two coming at you,” Abrams said. “Got visual, your four o’clock.”

McKenna spun his head around and looked up. He saw the two exhaust trails.

Munoz killed the radar as McKenna whipped the right wing up and went into a hard left, 180-degree turn, attempting to get his exhaust away from the heat seekers. He chopped the power.

The MakoShark lost altitude clear to the jungle top coming around to the east.

“Got to be Green, jefe.”

“I think so.”

“Uh, you want to try for space, man? I just grabbed a banana.”

McKenna advanced the throttles and lifted the nose.

“Blue, Orange. I want him,” Dimatta said.

“Sounds fair, Cancha,” McKenna said. “Take him. Tiger, light up.”

“Roger,” Munoz said. “Rear view comin’ up, too.”

McKenna’s screen illuminated with a full-power radar sweep, giving the pilot of Delta Green something to home on. The smaller screen displayed a night vision view of what they were leaving behind, mostly jungle.

He couldn’t see the attacker, but he sensed the maverick MakoShark descending rapidly on his left.

“Cancha, we’re going on rockets,” McKenna said.

“Roger that. We’re painting you.”

He eased the rocket throttles forward, saw the thrust indicators come up on the HUD, then slammed the throttles forward.

Delta Blue leaped forward, a few seconds before two Wasp IIs appeared from the left, rolling in behind them.

“Left, then hard right, amigo.”

He eased into a left turn, building his speed to Mach 1.5, letting the missiles track him while he gained altitude to nine thousand feet. Then he cut power to the rockets and turbojets and banged into a violent right turn.

The missiles whooshed past the tail, losing their heat source, and exploded a half-mile away.

McKenna brought the turbojets back to one hundred percent and headed south, still gaining altitude.

“We want to use the last four on the pylons?” Williams asked Dimatta on the radio net.

“Damn betcha. We miss, well go to the forward bay rotator.”

“See him, Cancha?” McKenna asked.

“Not yet, but he’s bound to be on your tail. He’ll go active any minute.”

And he did.

McKenna saw the radar emission on the screen as Delta Green tried to line up new shots.

“He’s one-seven behind us, jefe.”

“Six miles!” Williams yelled. “Four away!”

It would take the missiles fifteen seconds to reach the target. McKenna started counting.

“Two coming your way, Snake Eyes.”

McKenna snapped the nose up and shoved the rocket throttles full forward.

The acceleration shoved him back in the seat.

The HUD was reading Mach 1.8 when one of Delta Orange’s Wasp IIs thudded into the right nacelle of Delta Green.

“Got night vision visual,” Dimatta reported. “She’s lost a wing, the fuselage is breaking up, and she’s spinning in.”

“We lost our missile pursuit,” Munoz reported. McKenna killed the rockets and pulled Delta Blue onto her back at twenty-three thousand feet.

Looking up, he saw the flames rising from where Delta Green had interred herself in the jungle.