Delta Green

Chapter Nine

Iztak Milstein had once carried the name of Vladimir Systenko, but he had lost it many years before when, as a young member of the GRU he had been approached by General Anatoly Shelepin himself.

Milstein had been tutored for many long months before he entered the stream of Jewish dissidents allowed to relocate to Israel. He worked on a farm for several months, and then, with money sent to him, bought a taxicab and learned the streets of Tel Aviv.

He had, in fact, begun to enjoy his life immensely, chasing after the beautiful girls with many shekels in his pocket, when he received the only telephone call that could disrupt it. Again, it was General Shelepin himself, and he used the correct codeword. Shortly thereafter, a courier approached Milstein in his taxi and provided him with more money and the travel documents required.

And now he rode in the passenger seat of an Atlas single axle moving van, directing the driver along the narrow street. Like himself and the two men back in the van body, the driver remained nameless.

Though he had been here before, the lengthening shadows made him hesitant. He looked at the map to be certain of himself, then said, “The next street, a right turn.”

The light was green, and without responding, the driver turned at the corner, shifted down a gear, and picked up speed again.

It was still light, but the shadows were stretching across the street. Many of the warehouses and industrial plants had their interior lights on. Shift changes had already occurred where they were going to occur, and traffic on the four-lane street was light. The nearby airport had a steady stream of airplanes landing and taking off.

A mile later, Milstein pointed toward the small sign: NRC Industries.

“That is it,” he said. He had reconnoitered the site many times in the last two weeks.

The plant took up almost two square blocks, surrounded by acres of parking lots. It was, however, a ghost of its former self. With the downturn in military procurement, the employee force had been trimmed drastically, and one shift of workers now met the demand in place of three shifts.

The parking lots were empty.

The driver slowed the van and turned into the wide, grass-divided entrance, braking to a stop alongside the guardhouse.

Milstein was out of the cab, standing on the asphalt by the time the guard emerged from his shack.

“What you got?” he asked.

“This,” Milstein said, raised the silenced Browning automatic, and shot him through the heart.

The man gasped once and crumpled to the ground. His clipboard clattered on the asphalt.

Moving quickly, Milstein took four steps, retrieved the clipboard, bent and grasped the body under the arms, then dragged it back into the guardhouse. He dropped it on the

floor behind the desk, looked around, spotted several jackets hanging on wall pegs, and used them to cover the body.

Then he moved to the control box, pulled the lever, and watched the tall chainlink gate slide aside.

The van pulled through, Milstein slapped the lever back, and ran outside to beat the closing of the gate.

The driver was underway again even as Milstein pulled himself back inside the cab. Though he had patiently explained the layout and the route several times, he could not resist pointing it out with a forefinger.

“To the right, over there. We go to the bay at the far end.”

“I know,” the driver said.

The south side of the plant was composed of twenty-two loading docks. There were two semitrailers backed into two of them, but no more. Business was slow.

The driver made a wide, sweeping turn as he approached the last dock, braked to a stop, and slapped the gearshift into reverse.

Milstein slid out of the cab and raced toward the building, pulled himself up onto the dock, and crossed quickly to the small door between the large roll-up doors.

It was locked, as expected, and he used the Browning to fire two shots into the lock. Though silenced, they pounded as loud as fireworks to him. He glanced in both directions, but saw no one. The lock appeared sufficiently shattered, and he shoved the door open.

The truck stopped short of the dock, and the driver got out to lower the truck’s rear ramp to the dock edge.

It was dark inside the storage room. With his hand, he searched for the light switches, found them, and shoved them upward.

On the high ceiling, a dozen floodlights sprang to life, revealing stacks of wooden crates and, thank the Lord, a forklift tractor.

He stepped inside, closed the small door, then pressed the button to raise the large door. He stopped it when it was high enough to clear the forklift.

The driver had the ramp down and the double doors on the end of the van body swung wide. The two helpers emerged and the four of them went to work.

It would have gone faster with two forklifts, but in twenty minutes, they had transferred sixty of the crates to the van. Milstein shut off the lights and closed up the warehouse while the driver shut the van doors. He climbed back into the cab for the short trip to the gate, where he opened and closed the gate for the moving van, then scrambled through the side door into the van.

Under the glow of battery-powered lights, the two helpers were already at work with crowbars, prying open the elongated crates. It took him a few minutes to become accustomed to the sway and movement of the floor under his feet as the van traveled the street, seeking the on-ramp to the highway.

At the front end of the cargo body were two large wooden boxes, attached to heavy-duty, rubber-tired casters, and built to the specifications provided to him. Their lids were removed. A large stack of six-inch-thick foam rubber pads resting on the floor was available for cushioning.

One by one, the three of them opened crates, lifted out the single slim missiles, and lowered them into padded positions in the two large boxes.

It was difficult for Milstein, not being able to see outside the van, and he hoped the driver was by now on Interstate 80, headed east out of Sacramento.

The total flight distance was sixty-five hundred miles, and at an average of Mach 5.5, it took them almost two hours.

The local time on the west coast of the United States was 10:09 P.M.

Maslov had selected an Arctic route, over the top of the Earth, as his quickest transit line, and he approached his destination from the north.

The velocity read Mach 2.7, and the altimeter displayed sixty-seven thousand feet. He was certain that none of the radars of the American defense network had detected their intrusion. They had not been challenged on any of the radio frequencies.

“Do you have our position, Boris?”

“I do, Aleks. We are over the Washington state, in the eastern part, and the border to Nevada is just ahead.”

Maslov knew that there was software available for the MakoShark which provided map overlays on the cathode ray tubes, but they had not had a chance yet to experiment with it and learn to use it. He did not think he would need it.

He glanced at the chronometer readout, calculated his distance roughly, and eased the nose upward a little to flatten his glide and lose speed more rapidly.

A few minutes later, Maslov recognized the tiny dots of automobile headlights in a long and ragged string across the horizon.

“That will be the Interstate highway,” Nikitin said. “The larger grouping of lights is Winnemucca.”

Oriented now, Maslov said, “We must go about one hundred and twenty miles to the west.”

“That is correct, Aleks. You may turn now, and we can follow the highway.”

At forty thousand feet, Maslov started the turbojets and reduced his speed to five hundred knots. He continued to lose altitude steadily.

At 10:40 P.M., he saw a strong glow to the southwest.

“I suspect that is Reno, Boris.”

“Yes.”

Nikitin activated the night vision video camera and magnified the image. After a few seconds of dancing around while Nikitin aimed the camera, the screen displayed a variegated pattern of lights. The highway traffic was heavy, gamblers pouring into Sparks and Reno for a night of exuberance and excess.

Maslov eased into a right turn and the camera picked up the sheen of starlight reflecting off water.

“That will be Pyramid Lake, Boris.”

“Yes. The dry lake is east of it, closer to us, Aleks.”

Maslov retarded the throttles to idle, lowered the nose, and went into a shallow, diving right turn.

The lake disappeared from his view and was replaced by the flat, green-tinted surface of the dry Winnemucca Lake, which ran parallel to Pyramid Lake. It was about twenty-five miles north of the Interstate highway.

He made one low-level pass over it toward the north, watching the screen intently for any obstructions on the lake bed.

“I believe it is going to serve our purpose, Aleks.”

“We will make one more pass.”

He added power, made a wide circle, and headed south, reducing his altitude to five hundred feet above the earth.

“They should be on the south end,” Nikitin said.

As he crossed the center of the lake, Maslov flashed his landing lights.

Immediately, he saw headlights flash back at him.

Twice.

Maslov rolled left into another turn and went north to make another approach.

Nikitin read off the checklist, and as he passed over the northern end of the lake this time, his full concentration on the green image on the screen, rather than through the windscreen, he had his flaps and gear down.

“Two-five-five knots,” Nikitin intoned.

Throttles back.

The main gear touched down, followed shortly by the nose gear.

Maslov was prepared to slam the throttles forward if he detected any extreme resistance, if the heavy weight of the MakoShark began to dig into the hard sandy surface.

But it did not.

The craft slowed a great deal faster than normal.

He estimated that they were at least two kilometers short of the end of the lake by the time the ground speed was under twenty miles per hour.

Rather than risk going farther south and running into soft spots, Maslov decided to trust the surface he had already traversed, braked, then turned 180 degrees. He would let them come to him.

Leaving the turbojets idling, he locked the brakes, opened the canopy and the cargo bay doors, then unstrapped himself. Disconnecting the umbilicals and removing his helmet, he crawled out of his seat and sat on the edge of the coaming. Reaching into the leg pocket of his environmental suit, he felt for the butt of the nine millimeter Walther PPK. He did not know these men.

Nikitin raised his own canopy and lifted the visor of his helmet, seeking fresh air.

The van appeared three minutes later, traveling by the light of its parking lights.

It pulled up alongside the MakoShark and doors began to open. A ramp was lowered. The four men he had been told to expect scrambled about.

One of them brought an aluminium ladder and laid it against the side of the fuselage.

“Stay here, Boris. Watch the readouts.”

“Of course, Aleks.”

Maslov slid down the curve of the chine, found the ladder with his feet, and worked his way to the sandy surface of the lake. He would have to remember to wipe the sand from his boots before reentering the cockpit.

All four of the men were staring in awe at the blackskinned aerospace craft.

“Come, come! We must move quickly!” he said.

“Yes,” one of them said, then issued orders.

It took the strength of all five of them to push each of the cargo boxes on their wide-tired casters across the hard surface and position them below the cargo bays. Using a controller inside the bay, Maslov lowered the cables that were attached to cast-iron hooks on the sides of the boxes, then raised the boxes into the bays. They snugged up tightly against the top braces in the fuselage.

With a flashlight, he carefully examined the fit. It was not as good as with the cargo pods designed for the job, but it would do.

He stepped out from under the fuselage and aimed his flashlight at the faces of the four men watching him. They blinked their eyes against the bright light.

“It is good?” the apparent leader asked him.

“It is good,” he responded while fishing the Walther out of his leg pocket.

He shot the leader first, then the other three.

They plopped into the sand even as the echoes of the shots rolled across the dry lake bed.

He played the light over their forms, and when he saw a throat twitching, shot each of them once again.

Then he replaced the automatic in his pocket, climbed the ladder, and kicked it away from the chine.

He remembered to brush the sand from the soles of his flight boots before stepping into the cockpit.

Amy Pearson was strapped into her bed. Later, she would remember that she had been dreaming of hot, lathery showers, practically the one thing she loved that she couldn’t get aboard Themis.

Though she had secured the communications board for the night, to avoid unwanted intercom calls, the emergency channel was always alive, and it blared her out of her dream, “Colonel Pearson!”

It blared twice before she was alert enough to reach out and depress the talk button. “Pearson.”

“This is Sergeant Curtis, ma’am. You have an urgent call right now.”

“Put it through, please.”

“Go Four,” he said.

She activated the panel, then pressed the keypad for Four. “Colonel Pearson.”

“Amy, this is Marvin Brackman.”

That woke her up finally.

“Yes sir? Sir, there’s something I wanted to—”

“Amy, we’ve had another hijacking.”

“What!”

“NRC Industries,” he said.

“They manufacture the Wasp II for us.”

“Right. They lost sixty of them.”

“Oh, my God! How…”

“I don’t have much detail yet, just that the warehouse was broken into and that a gate guard was killed. Thorpe is on the way to the coast, and the FBI is already on the scene.”

“But we know who got them, don’t we, sir?”

“I would think so. Of course, anyone could adapt them for use in their atmospheric mode, but this is too much of a coincidence.”

“The Phoenix missiles?” she asked.

“We’ve contacted the Hughes people, and they’re doubling the guard on the modified Phoenix IIs.”

The Phoenix II, adaptable to either space or atmospheric firing, had an effective targeting range of 125 miles. The semi-active homing head of the Phoenix switched to active homing in the last ten miles of an interception track, so that the launching aircraft could forget it. The Phoenix was large, thirteen feet in length with a three-foot span with fins deployed. It weighed 975 pounds, with 132 pounds of that devoted to a high explosive warhead. The destructive potential was greater than that of the Wasp.

The Wasp II, designed especially for the MakoShark, had proven itself versatile. Its range was only seventy-five miles, but it accelerated quickly to Mach 2.5, guided by either an independent radar-seeker, by infrared homing, or by visual control through a video lens in the missile’s head. A twenty-one-pound high-explosive warhead was sheathed in machined metal containing depleted uranium. That allowed the warhead to pierce armor plate before detonating. The Wasp was much easier to store and handle than the Phoenix since it was only nine feet long and five inches in diameter and weighed 155 pounds.

“Stealing Phoenix missiles would require heavy equipment,” Pearson said. “I don’t think they will do that.”

“Let’s hope not, Amy. In the meantime, they’ve got enough firepower to scare the hell out of me. I keep thinking about 747s going down.”

Pearson hadn’t considered a terrorist role for the stolen MakoShark at all. She was shocked by that blank spot in her thinking.

“Give me your best, off-the-cuff thoughts, Amy.”

“Do we have any idea how they were taken, General?”

“There’s some witness who said something about a moving van, but that hasn’t been confirmed.”

“I don’t think,” Pearson said, “that they’d take them somewhere and hide them until they could get them out of the country.”

“Why not?” Brackman demanded.

“Did they leave missiles behind?”

“Yes, they did. There were another 112 in the warehouse.”

“Sixty of them total ninety-three hundred pounds, General Brackman. That’s just under the cargo capacity for the Mako.”

“So you think they brought Delta Green into the country? Pretty damned audacious.”

“There isn’t a better smuggling vehicle available, sir. What time did the theft occur?”

“They’re putting it around six o’clock Pacific Standard Time, just after the work shift departed for the day.”

Pearson checked the chronometer on the panel and did some rough calculations in her head.

“I’d bet the missiles are already airborne, General”

“Headed for?” he asked.

“I’m sticking by my educated hunch. It’s somewhere on the Pacific Rim or in Southeast Asia.”

After a short pause, Brackman said, “We have a chance to intercept.”

“Just a chance, sir.”

“I’ll let you get McKenna out of bed,” the commanding general told her.

She wondered if he suspected something.

McKenna wasn’t in bed. It was 1:30 P.M. in Borneo, and though he had rested in one of the guest rooms for a few hours, he had trouble keeping his eyes closed when the sun was shining.

He was in the control tower, monitoring Lynn Haggar’s flight, when Pearson was patched through to him.

“Hi, Amy!”

“How can you be so exuberant in the middle of the night?” she asked.

“Thinking about you.”

“McKenna.”

She could get so icy at times. So he shut up and listened while she repeated the details of Brackman’s call.

“So you’d put them airborne when?” he asked.

“I think they’d use one of the alkali flats or dry lakes in Nevada for the rendezvous with the truck. That’s going to be a drive of three hours out of Sacramento, minimum, maybe longer; I’d give it another hour. That’s ten o’clock from the time of the break-in. I don’t know how long it would take to load sixty missiles, but let’s say they took off around 11:30 P.M. or midnight, California time.”

McKenna was doing his own numbers. “The flight time could be anywhere from one to two hours, depending on the course, altitude, speed, and conservation of fuel. That doesn’t give us much time, Amy.”

“I think you ought to at least cover the eastern coast of Vietnam”

“Only that much?”

“There’s three of you, isn’t there? Go be a superman again, McKenna.”

“Bye-bye, dear.”

McKenna crossed to the tower’s main console, leaned around the airman tending it, and pressed the base-wide PA system button.

“Delta Yellow, Delta Blue. Scramble, scramble!”

He waited ten seconds then repeated the scramble order. Switching to the Tac Two channel, he called, “Delta Red, Wet Country.”

“Wet Country, Red.”

“Where you at, Country Girl?”

“Westbound, ninety miles west of Phnom Penh, Snake Eyes.”

“Turn it around, and head for Da Nang. We’ll rendezvous with you in about forty minutes.”

“Roger, turning.”

The Mako and MakoShark crews were rarely in one place for long enough to call it a true home. On board Themis or at one of the three support bases, a block of rooms was set aside for their use, but none of the rooms was personalized to any degree. Of them all, only George Williams managed to leave an imprint. His tools and electronic projects could be found in lockers at any of the four places he might be spending a day or a night.

Conover was in a visitor’s room with the shades drawn and the air-conditioning vents all wide open. He was on his feet, stumbling, clumsily trying to shove one leg into his flight suit before he realized he’d been awakened.

As he became aware that he’d heard something about Delta Yellow and scramble, the order came over the public address system once again.

He fumbled his way into his flight boots, pulled open the door, and ran smack into Munoz, in just about the same state of dress.

“What the hell, Tony?”

“Damned if I know,” Munoz said, hopping on one foot while he pulled a boot on.

Conover banged on Abrams’s door.

It whipped open to reveal Abrams standing stark naked with two socks in his hand. The thick fur of his chest gave him a bearish tone.

“I’m looking for my clothes, goddamn it!” he yelled.

“Snap to it!”

“Shit! We haven’t had a scramble in two years,” he complained.

Rushing down the hallway, pulling on their clothes, the three of them found the elevators already on the first floor, so they took the stairs for two flights.

By the time they emerged into the blinding brightness of day, they were more or less dressed.

Ground crewmen were racing across the grounds for Hangar One, and they fell in with them, passing through the pedestrian door and heading for the ready room, next door to the pilot’s dressing room.

McKenna was already there, pulling on his environmental suit.

He briefed them as they donned their equipment and found their helmets.

“I want us up around angels forty, fifty miles off the coast. We’ll advertise our presence with radar emissions and see if we can’t draw a response.”

“We’ll get a response from some Vietnamese SAM, maybe,” Williams said.

“You can handle a missile or two, can’t you, Nitro?” McKenna said.

“If I can just nudge these eyelids up another millimeter, yeah.”

They left the ready room on the run and found their crews putting the finishing touches on the MakoSharks, closing hatches, pulling the safeties on the missiles and Chain Guns.

Conover and Williams stopped at the base of the cockpit ladder and allowed themselves to be vacuumed. It had become an ingrained habit, even when they weren’t headed for the space station.

As soon as the airman patted him on the calf, Conover

went up the ladder. In the cockpit, he powered up the panels and systems as he hooked in.

The tow tractor was already in place, and as soon as Williams left the ladder, Conover signaled for the tow. He released the brakes, and the MakoShark began to roll, falling in behind Delta Blue.

He lowered his helmet over his head and locked it in place, then checked the face visor to be sure it was sealed.

“Nitro?”

“I’m in.”

“Checklist.”

“Coming up.”

Seven minutes later, Conover was running up the jet engines at the side of the runway. McKenna, on the runway, gave him a thumbs-up, then shoved the throttles in. Delta Blue lifted her nose a trifle and whisked away.

Conover rolled forward, steered into a left turn, and lined up on the center stripe. Delta Blue was already off the ground, her gear folding in.

“Merlin, Yellow.”

“You’re free, Yellow.”

“Nitro?”

“Hit it, Con Man.”

He ran the throttles forward, then came off the brakes.

Delta Yellow came alive.

And he was glad to be with her.

“That’s it, Hannibal, all I’ve got.”

Brackman waited while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs digested the information.

“Where’s Thorpe?”

“On his way to the coast.”

“Hold the line, Marvin. I’m going to make another telephone call.”

Brackman held the line. Milly Roget was gone for the night, and he had made his own coffee. He tasted it and wished he hadn’t.

Eleven minutes ticked off the big clock on his wall before Cross got back to him.

“Shoot it down, Marvin.”

“Just like that?”

“Too many missiles on the loose.”

“You’re right, Hannibal.”

He hung up, dialed the communications center, and said, “I want a link to 1st Aero’s Tac Two.”

“One moment, sir.”

When he had a connection to the communications net which spanned the globe over satellite relays, Brackman said, “Delta Blue, Semaphore.”

The response was immediate. “Semaphore, Blue.”

“All weapons are free, Blue. You are authorized first strike.”

“Copy weapons free and first strike authority. Will do, Semaphore.”

McKenna and Conover passed east of Ho Chi Minh City at 2:17 RM. The MakoSharks were in formation at fifty thousand feet and Mach 4.

McKenna had devoted most of the flight time to developing his tactics, then revising them after Brackman had changed the rules of engagement.

“Deltas, Blue.”

“Yellow.”

“Red.”

“Go hot mike.”

McKenna touched the keypad on his communications panel that would keep his microphone open. The six of them would be in continual voice contact, without having to depress a transmit button.

“Country Girl,” he said, “what’s your status?”

“One-six-point-three on rockets and, let’s see… one-two minutes on turbojets. We’ve been doing a lot of coasting, Snake Eyes”

“All right. I want you to fly an oval between Haiphong and Dong Hoi. That’s about two hundred miles. I’ll cover the center, from Dong Hoi to Quang Ngai, and Con Man, you cover Quang Ngai to Nha Trang.”

He got “rogers” from both pilots, and Conover peeled away from his right wing, rolling back toward the south.

McKenna went on, “If this guy is taking an Arctic route from the West Coast to somewhere on the peninsula, we should intercept him.”

“Just one little ol’ problem,” Munoz said.

“I know. Seeing him. What we’re going to do is fly at angels three-five, fifty miles off the coast. Keep it subsonic. We want the radars active, and we want everyone squawking all modes and codes. If you get any queries from Vietnam air controllers, make up some lie.”

In demonstration, McKenna turned on his modified IFF, tapping the keypads that would give him an identification on radar, along with his altitude and with a clear military affiliation.

“Gotcha, Snake Eyes,” Lynn Haggar said. “If he’s curious, and he’s got to be, he’s going to make a radar check as he approaches the continent. He’s going to see three military planes flying a funny security line, and he’s going to get more curious. Maybe he’ll use the radar a few times.”

“Let’s hope so, Country Girl. Alpha, are you copying?”

“Right here, Blue.” Overton’s voice was unmistakable.

“What’s your location, Alpha?”

“We’re still over the horizon, Snake Eyes. We can’t help you much just yet. When we do pop over, our track will take us east of the Philippines.”

“As soon as you’re in the area, heat up the radar. If this guy radiates, we want to triangulate him from all of our positions, then let the computers project his course.”

“Alpha copies. Will do.”

“And, Deltas,” McKenna added, “let’s also bring up the ADFs on the scanners. It’s a slim chance, but maybe we can catch him talking to someone on a frequency we don’t use. We know he hasn’t been using the on-board scramblers.”

In the backseat, Munoz turned on the UHF and VHR scanners that tested all their frequencies for voice transmission, along with the Automatic Direction Finder (ADF). On the ICS, so as not to confuse the Tac Two channel with lots of chatter, he said, “Got scanners and ADF, Snake Eyes. Going active on radar, full sweep at two-two-zero. What do you want on your screen?”

“I’ll stick to the radar,” McKenna said.

The full sweep image came up on his primary CRT. The MakoShark’s radar incorporated two antennas, one in the nose which oscillated back and forth 180 degrees, and a second antenna located in the tail, covering the aft 180 degrees. In search mode, the computer synchronized the two antennas, and the image on the screen was that of a full 360 degree circle. In an attack mode, the WSO would normally use only the forward antenna, narrowing its focus to an eighty or ninety degree sweep.

“He’ll come in high, won’t he, jefe?”

“I’d bet on it.”

On Tac Two, Munoz said, “Hey, Swede, Do-Wop?”

“Yo.”

“You selling something?” Olsen asked.

“I’m selling a forty degree upward deflection.”

“I’ll buy,” Olsen said.

“Yo yo,” Abrams replied.

As Munoz angled the antenna upward, most of the ground clutter and a few low-flying targets, which were probably commercial flights, disappeared from the screen.

Under a bright sun, the coast of Vietnam off his left wing was a verdant oasis. From McKenna’s altitude, the coastal hills appeared flattened. The South China Sea was a deep blue.

“What if he waits until it gets dark, Snake Eyes?” Conover asked.

“Then we wait until dark, and maybe we change our positions,” McKenna said. “I think, though, that he won’t waste the fuel. That had to be him that I saw at eleven this morning. He’s getting brave, flying daylight hours.”

“In order,” Munoz said, “to make a night landing in California.”

“Nevada,” McKenna said.

“Whatever. Somewhere.”

“Amy-baby thinks Nevada, Tiger.”

“Must be Nevada, then.”

McKenna maintained a shallow glide, and after he slowed to 450 knots at thirty thousand feet, he started the rocket motors for thirty seconds and climbed back to forty thousand feet and seven hundred knots, then shut down again.

He set up the navigation system to give him a beep warning when the MakoShark reached the limit of his northern search boundary, at 17° 30’ North.

When the computer beeped him, he turned right into a lazy turn back to the south, waiting for a beep at 15° 15’ North, the southern limit of his search area.

McKenna kept his attention on the instrument readouts and let Munoz worry about the radar contacts.

At 1424 hours, Munoz got a strong contact to the east, which they decided was a Quantas flight out of Hong Kong to Sydney.

Two minutes after three o’clock, Overton checked in.

“Delta Blue, Alpha One.”

“Go Alpha.”

“We’ve got coverage of your area now. Sigma One is on the set.”

“Roger that, Alpha. Thank you.” Sigma One was the call sign for Joe Macklin.

At 1522 hours, Delta Blue was approaching her northern boundary, and McKenna was preparing for yet another turn.

“Got him, Snake Eyes,” Munoz said.

“Zap!” Olsen said.

“Zap here, too,” Macklin added.

“Lock it in,” McKenna said. “Watch for another one.”

He had seen the radar emission appear briefly — less than a second — on his screen.

“Delta Red’s climbing,” Haggar reported. “Going to rockets.”

“About eighty thousand feet, compadre. Bearin’ zero-two-eight. One-nine-seven nautical miles.”

“Preparing for ignition.”

“Checklist on your screen,” Munoz said.

As McKenna brought the rocket motors up, the emission appeared again and radiated for nearly three seconds.

“He was too curious. Computer’s got a track on him now,” Munoz said.

“Let’s let Lynn make the initial probe. Send us down range, Tiger.”

“Calculatin’.”

The rocket motors ignited, and McKenna slammed both throttles to one hundred percent thrust. He sank into his seat as the Gs rose.

“Looks like he’s doin’ Mach 1.8,” Munoz said.

Easing back on the controller, the nose came to vertical.

“We want one-nine-four,” Munoz reported.

As the MakoShark climbed through sixty thousand feet, accelerating to Mach 2–5, McKenna retarded the throttles and eased back on the controller.

The MakoShark went onto her back, still climbing. He rolled into a heading of 194 degrees, and when he had it, rolled the craft upright.

At seventy thousand feet, he cut off the rocket motors.

“Sigma here. He’s radiating again. I read him turning west.”

“We scared him, jefe.”

“Red’s got a tally,” Haggar called. “Confirm visual of Delta Green.”

“Seven-four-thousand, heading two-six-five, range two-zero miles,” Ben Olsen added.

McKenna eased into a right turn.

“Red’s launching two Wasps IIs.”

McKenna counted to himself. One thousand one… one thousand two… one thousand…

“Both missed,” Olsen said. “This guy’s good. He’s gone for terra firma.”

McKenna put the nose down.

The HUD read Mach 2.6 and seventy-two thousand feet.

The radar altimeter reading dropped quickly through the numbers.

“Anything, Tiger?”

“Nothin’. He’s gonna stay off the radar now.”

And there he was.

A dot against the Earth, thirty miles away and twenty thousand feet lower. Trailing his eyes to the right, McKenna found Delta Red. Both craft were moving so fast it was difficult to track them.

A Vietnamese voice started chattering on the unscrambled Tac One channel. His view through the canopy explained the concern. They were a hundred miles inland over Vietnam.

“Deltas, kill the squawk.”

McKenna shut off the IFF transponder, keeping his eye on Delta Green.

“Launching two more,” Haggar said.

He was closing on them, but still seventeen or eighteen miles away. He saw the white vapor trails of the missiles as they leapt from Delta Red’s wing pylons.

Tracked them toward the target.

Munoz had gone to video on the screen.

Delta Green came up close in magnification.

Then rolled hard to the right, hauled her nose up, and almost tumbled.

The two Wasps IIs went sailing past her tail and finally exploded a half mile away.

“All I’ve got left is Phoenix,” Haggar said.

“We’ve got a tally,” McKenna told her. “Delta Blue’s moving in.”

“Roger, Blue.”

The radar altimeter had them at forty-two thousand feet.

“Cranking jets, Tiger.”

“Roger the jets.”

“Fix the position.”

After a few seconds passed, Munoz said, “Laotian border coming up.”

Delta Green had turned north, and as far as McKenna could tell from the video screen, was operating on her turbojets. He estimated the speed at slightly better than Mach 1. The distance had closed to twelve miles.

The jet engines fired, and he ran the throttles to the forward stops.

Altitude twenty-eight thousand feet.

Velocity Mach 1.8.

Closing fast.

Delta Green dove hard, turning right, toward the chain of the Annamese Cordillera mountains.

“We’ve turned him back, jefe.”

“Go visual with two Wasp IIs.”

McKenna reached for the armaments panel and selected pylons one and four, positions one on each pylon.

“All yours, Tiger.”

“Roger.”

The screen image came up, the point of view provided by the camera in one of the Wasp IIs.

An orange target rose appeared on the screen, moving around the screen at the will of Munoz’s helmet movements.

Delta Green, though over ten miles away and stretching for the six thousand-foot peaks of the mountain range, was clearly shown. He could tell now that her turbojets were operating.

The target rose centered over her.

Both Wasp IIs screamed away.

“Two missiles launched,” Munoz reported on the Tac Two channel.

The second missile was slaved to the guidance system of the first, and Munoz used his helmet targeting system to guide the first directly at the MakoShark.

Delta Green curved to the right.

The Wasp IIs curved to the right, chasing the fugitive.

Delta Green disappeared.

Behind a mountain peak.

Both missiles impacted the peak, making tiny orange explosions in the distance.

“Shit!” Munoz yelled.

“What does that tell me?” Haggar asked.

“Missed, goddamn it!”

“He’s hiding in the mountains,” McKenna said.

“Red’s with you.”

“Yellow’s coming on hard,” Conover said. “Give me an approximate location, Tiger.”

Munoz read off the coordinates as Delta Blue, now at eight thousand feet, made the turn around the peak.

Nothing.

McKenna scanned left to right.

Still nothing.

Looked up.

Delta Green was in the vertical, twenty thousand feet above them, on full rocket thrust.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled and started into the rocket checklist.

But he knew he was already too late.

Space was a big place.

And it was mostly dark.