William H. Lovejoy

Delta Green

This one is for my son,

the new graduate,

David Lovejoy

Chapter One

DELTA BLUE

“Mach two-zero, jefe.”

“I’m still with you, Tiger” McKenna said, his eyes performing the automatic cockpit scan. The digital numbers reported the angle of attack at the correct forty degrees, so he figured that, once again, he’d let the computer play commander of the craft. As a pilot who had flown anything from Stearman bipes to F-16 Fighting Falcons and loved them all, the most difficult thing he had learned to do was to let some magic box of silicon take his job away from him.

He had relied on the computer almost four hundred times in this segment of the flight, and the computer had accomplished the leg correctly every time, adjusting controls and length of burn for any variance that cropped up. McKenna couldn’t help thinking that, given the chance, he would be just as accurate. He couldn’t help thinking, either, that if he was just slightly in error, it would be fatal.

The MakoShark prepared to enter the denser atmosphere facing forward and nose high just like her larger cousins, the Space Shuttle Orbiters.

“Altitude nine-zero,” the weapons system officer reported from the rear cockpit. Major Tony “Tiger” Munoz didn’t have to mention that the unit of measurement was miles. They had been flying together for so long, since Munoz had spent a year as a weapons system trainee in McKenna’s squadron, that certain procedures and expectations had become intuitive and automatic. Back then, McKenna and the feisty WSO in the backseat of his F-4D had taken second place in their class in the Red Flag combat exercises out of Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

McKenna felt the first drag of the thicker atmosphere pulling at the MakoShark. Two amber indicators in the lower left corner of the Head-Up Display, the HUD, confirmed that the computer had ordered coolant pumped through the heat shields, as well as the cockpit air conditioning level increased.

“Damned computer remembers everything,” he muttered over the interphone.

“What’s that, Snake Eyes?”

“Nothing, Tiger. I’m complimenting a box on a job well done.”

“Gettin’ bitter, are we, amigo? You seat-of-the-jeans people are too damned romantic. Can’t live with the demise of the Spad.”

“It died?” McKenna asked, forcing wonder into his voice.

“Couldn’t take the heat. Skin temp four-five-zero Fahrenheit. Leading edges comin’ up on seven-ought-ought”

“Copy that,” McKenna said, “coolant running.”

The leading edges of the wings and nose were composed of a second skin combining reinforced carbon-carbon, Nomex felt, and a ceramic alloy that resisted the temperatures that rose to 2700 degrees Fahrenheit on the leading edges of the wings. Additionally, the nose cone and the wing leading edges contained an arterial network of cooling tubes through which super-cooled fluids were pumped. McKenna thought the system was considerably better than that of the Space Shuttle’s individual tiles, and there had been relatively few failures, none of which were critical.

Munoz transmitted the warning message on the Tactical One frequency. “Alpha, Delta Blue. We’re goin’ black.”

“Copy, Delta Blue.”

The surrounding atmosphere was ionized when the heat shield temperatures topped 2300 degrees Fahrenheit, resulting in a blackout of communications.

McKenna could feel the heat in the cockpit, but it wasn’t particularly uncomfortable. To the uninitiated, the visual impact was more disconcerting. A red-orange film slipped up the nose and enveloped the cockpit canopy. All visual contact with the black and starry environment was lost, and claustrophobic tendencies were heightened.

As the windscreen began to clear nearly five minutes later, the colors worked their way down through burnt orange to amber to yellow.

Munoz hit his radio button. “Alpha, Delta Blue. Altitude two-three-eight thousand feet, velocity Mach twelve-point-seven, two-seven minutes to objective.”

“Alpha copies, Delta Blue.”

Passing through the blackout still made McKenna’s adrenaline pump, despite the number of times he had accomplished it. It was one of his personal addictions, far better, he thought, than anything he could buy off the street in Miami.

The computer brought the nose down to thirty-one degrees.

When the HUD readout indicated Mach 6.2 speed and 130,000 feet of altitude, McKenna said, “I’m taking over, Tiger.”

“Damned hotdog,” Munoz told him.

“Isn’t it time for your nap, kid?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

Munoz could sleep anywhere, at any time, and most often did.

McKenna didn’t know how the WSO could pass up the view. It was different every time they came out of blackout, and it was just as spectacular every time.

They were almost directly over the international dateline that slashed through the Pacific. Behind him, the band of night was moving westward, crawling toward the Philippines, the blackness of space punctured with the bright, unblinking lights of stars. Ahead, the curvature of the Earth was clearly discernible, and while the sun — high to his right oblique — was spreading its illumination over the globe, the backdrop of the sky from this altitude was just as black.

The Pacific Ocean was so blue it seemed jewel-like. Near the shores of the North American continent, the color shaded into teal. White, puffy cumuli disguised the Central American coastline and dotted the far horizon. The state of Washington, low on his left, was also obliterated by cloud cover. California and Oregon were brownish from haze, dissolving into lighter shades of green as the MakoShark lost altitude.

McKenna squinted his eyes, picking out the central Rocky Mountains.

Colorado was the target.

Disengaging the computer, McKenna assumed control, fitting his hand to the stubby control stick fitted to the end of his right armrest. The “fly-by-wire” control system, which he had first encountered in the F-16, had taken some getting used to, but McKenna now thought of any other control system as inordinately primitive.

As the MakoShark coasted without power, losing speed and altitude and slowly bringing her nose down, McKenna ran through his post-reentry checklist, double-checking the readouts on the HUD and the instrument panel. The skin and leading edge temperatures were coming down fast. He shut down the coolant pumps, lapping a simple code into the keypad next to the control stick, he ordered the computer to run diagnostic checks of all systems.

One by one, green indicators appeared across the top of the cathode ray tube in front of him, in the instrument panel below the Head-Up Display. Hydraulics, electrical, battery status, flight controls, radar, electronic countermeasures, radios, weapons control, the computer itself — everything was humming as it should, ready for instant use. That was typical of the maintenance program headed by Lieutenant Colonel Bradley Mitchell. He was an activist when it came to the safety and operation of his birds.

McKenna loosened the shoulder and lap belts he had snugged down before the reentry burn. He manually examined the oxygen/nitrogen feed tube fittings. Rotating his shoulders against the gray-blue environmental suit, he forced some of the tension from his shoulders. The protective suits were constructed with a fabric which was a combination of Kevlar, silicon, and plastic, very tear-resistant and very flexible. When inflated, there was less than an inch of space between the fabric and the skin. In the pressurized cockpits, the suits were not inflated, but they would automatically fill if the cockpit seals failed. The helmet-to-suit fitting was comprised of a pair of collars with a series of meshed grooves, allowing almost full freedom in head rotation. Men’s fashion in environmental wear had evolved considerably since Alan Shepard’s day.

“Goin’ through sixty thousand, Snake Eyes. Mach four-three.”

“I thought it was siesta time.”

“Nah. I’m playin’ with my firin’ solution.”

“You told me that was a piece of cake”

“It is. Unless we could make it more of a challenge.”

“How’s that, Tiger?”

“Forget comin’ down out of the sun. Everybody does that.”

“Up from the deck?”

“Why not?” Munoz said.

“We’ll do it your way,” McKenna told him.

“Hot damn! I get my way at last. Angels four-oh, Kevin.”

“Let’s light ’em up.”

Forty thousand feet was the prime altitude for starting the jet engines. The MakoShark operated on both rocket motors and turbojets, depending on the need at the time. Additionally, for high altitude missions, there was a ramjet mode.

McKenna retracted the ramjet cones — triangles, actually — in the turbojet intakes, and Munoz intoned the start checklist, which also scrolled down the smaller, four-inch CRT on McKenna’s instrument panel.

The HUD showed the RPMs coming up on both engines, and at 25 % RPMs, he activated the ignition and fuel flow. A few seconds later, the tailpipe temperature readout told him he had operational turbojets. He let them warm a minute before running them up to 100 %.

Mach 3.1. Three times the speed of sound. The high-pitched roar of the turbojets was behind him, leaving the cockpit in relative quiet. Except for the slight whisper of the increasingly dense atmosphere sliding over the craft’s skin that penetrated the insulation of the cockpit.

And except for the toothy, under-the-breath whistle of Tony Munoz, working his way off-key through the “Colonel Bogey March.”

The California coast came up quickly, pretty inviting on an October afternoon. McKenna knew, though, that his view from eight miles up was considerably more scenic than the close-up reality. The beer cans, fried chicken wrappers, and french fries sacks could be distracting.

Sometimes he wondered how he had been so fortunate. He was being paid for this. Originally, after achieving his engineering degree from the Air Force Academy, McKenna’s sole objective had been to become a general. It seemed like the thing to be from a twenty-two-year-old’s perspective. Now, he didn’t give a damn if he never advanced beyond the silver eagles he wore on the right occasions. Generals didn’t get to fly much.

The MakoShark passed into the coastal Air Defense Identification Zone, the ADIZ, without a challenge from one radar site, civilian or military.

The explanation was simple enough. The MakoShark was invisible to radar.

Every facet of stealth technology had been utilized in her construction. The internal ribs of her wings and fuselage were cast of honeycombed carbon-impregnated fiberglass that reflected radar probes at odd angles, and not back to the radar transmitter. The skin of the craft was also carbon-impregnated plastic and was coated in a midnight blue paint containing microscopic iron balls which conducted electricity and deterred radar reflection. Instead of bouncing back, radar signals slithered around on the surface of the MakoShark. The radar cross section (RCS) was so slim that the craft had to be within five miles of a powerful conventional radar before she returned a signal the size of a California Condor, and that signal was weak enough to go unnoticed.

The turbojet engines were not directly behind the intake duct; they sucked their air supply from an upward-curving tunnel. In that configuration, the spinning turbine blades were diminished as radar reflectors. To limit the RCS additionally, the turbojet blades were not made of metal. They were plastic, combined with carbon fiber for strength. While some designers had experimented with engines made of ceramics — not detectable on radar — the MakoShark’s designers had elected to stay with the more reliable and higher output metal-encased engines, which were enclosed in a honeycombed structure that diffused and absorbed radar probes.

The jet engines were mounted nearer the forward end of long nacelles, and their exhaust was channeled slightly downward in another curving tunnel that was wrapped with tubing carrying Freon gas. The refrigerant cooled the exhaust considerably, so that by the time it exited the exhaust pipe, its infrared signature was practically nonexistent at seventy per cent throttle settings. Infrared tracking sensors just might pick up a small signal at ninety per cent throttle, and would at a hundred per cent.

The rocket motors were mounted inboard of the jet engines, in the same nacelles, and were also protected from radar by the honeycomb layer.

“Maybe we could do Palm Springs tonight, jefe? Or Vegas? We haven’t been to Vegas in a long time.”

“If we don’t pull off this attack, Tiger, the CO will fire us, and then we can’t afford Palm Springs.”

“Good damned point, Snake Eyes. I’ll make sure my computer is counting right. You happen to see Needles, go to three-oh.”

McKenna saw Lake Havasu first, retarded his throttles, and began a slow descent. The speed came down to Mach 1.8.

He dialed in a Denver radio station on the Nav/Com radio and used it to verify the position reported by the inertial navigation system, which obtained its information from the NavStart Global Positioning Satellite system. Using triangulating information from at least three of the eighteen satellites in the GPS system, the computer usually knew within a few feet their exact position on the globe.

As usual, the MakoShark’s brain was correct. The coordinates were printed at the lower edge of the HUD, to the right of the readout for the craft’s heading.

078 34° 55’ 14” 114° 49’ 55”

At the top of the HUD, the crucial data of speed and altitude were dominant figures. By the time the Grand Canyon crossed beneath them, he had reached Mach 1.5 and thirty thousand feet of altitude.

“Take a big, lazy S-turn, Snake Eyes, and bleed off another tenth of a Mach, then go to heading zero-seven-four. We’re ahead of schedule.”

“Always hated being late for a date,” McKenna said.

The sun was behind them at 3:15 P.M. when they crossed the Colorado border west of Durango. As soon as he passed over the 14,000-foot Mount Wilson, McKenna eased the throttles back. The velocity rolled back until the Mach numbers on the readout changed to knots. He didn’t want to leave a sonic footprint.

Easing the side-mount stick, which was computer-adjusted for the tensions McKenna favored forward, he put the MakoShark into a shallow dive.

“Unless you want C. W. McCall to see us, Kev, you’d better grab a couple points to the right.”

The man who had given the world “Convoy” and “Wolf Creek Pass” was the mayor of Ouray, Colorado.

McKenna banked to the right to give Ouray plenty of room and lined up to the right of Uncompahgre Peak. The MakoSharks were only infrequently brought into populated areas during daylight hours since, despite all of their stealthy characteristics, they were still visible to the naked eye, and they were still mostly classified.

The Uncompahgre National Forest came up quickly on the left, a thick blue-green blanket of Ponderosa Pine and Blue Spruce peppered with the pristine white of the year’s first snowfall a week before.

When the peak lined up with the craft’s left wingtip, which was actually the slanted-up rudder, Munoz said, “Target four-five miles, beadin’ zero-zero-five. Put her on the deck, jefe.”

McKenna could have used the terrain-following radar on his invasion of the mostly deserted Gunnison National Forest, but that might have taken the fun out of it. He rolled hard to the left, pumped in some rudder, and dove toward the earth, pulling out on a northerly heading.

The landscape was rugged and undulating between six to eight thousand feet above sea level, and he used his radar altimeter to monitor his distance above the peaks, mesas, and valleys. Rollercoasting at five hundred feet above the earth, he maintained a speed of five hundred knots.

Highway 50 and the Blue Mesa Reservoir shot past.

“We got a target yet?” he asked.

“I don’t want to go active and give ourselves away,” Munoz told him.

A transmitting radar revealed itself to an enemy.

“You’re the one who picked up the moniker Snake Eyes,” Munoz added. “Prove it.”

McKenna had already picked out the white dot against the slate blue of the sky.

“One o’clock high,” he said.

“Jesus! I don’t believe it.”

Thirty seconds went by before Munoz found the airplane for himself. He quickly aimed the video camera in the nose with his hand controller, shunted the image to the main CRTs, and zoomed the magnification to twenty.

On McKenna’s screen, the sharp image of a Cessna Citation business jet appeared. It had United States Air Force markings.

“That’s the hummer,” Munoz said. “Let me have a couple of Wasp IIs.”

McKenna reached for his armaments panel, opened the bomb bay doors, and lowered the missile rack. He selected missiles one and two, armed them, and was rewarded with two green LEDs.

“All yours, Tiger. Happy hunting.”

Chapter Two

MERLIN AIR BASE, BORNEO

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.

WESTERN COLORADO

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.”

USSC-1, THEMIS

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.

MERLIN AIR BASE

“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.

Chapter Three

MERLIN AIR BASE

Colonel Kevin McKenna took up a station near the Mercator projection world map on one wall of the ready room. Even in the environmental suit which disguised the finer points of form, he appeared hard and fit. He was six feet tall, and Conover judged that his weight hadn’t varied five or six ounces from 175 pounds in all the time he had known the commander. His skeletal structure was composed of heavy bones, and his cheekbones were prominent in a lean and tanned face. Conover supposed — hell, he knew — that women found the gray/green eyes and slightly long and rumpled black hair enticing. The only change Conover had noted in almost three years was a minor deepening of the lines between the outer edges of McKenna’s nostrils and the ends of his mouth, and Conover attributed that to the weight of command. He smiled just as frequently, though. Perhaps there were a few more wrinkles in the pilot’s squint at the corners of his eyes. He thought, though, that McKenna’s eyes were as sharp as ever. And Snake Eyes was still willing to take a gamble, another reason for his nickname.

McKenna had never talked much about his history, but Conover knew that he had flown with the Thunderbirds demonstration team, had done some liaison work with the Saudis and Israelis in F-15s and F-16s, and had been assigned to Edwards as a test pilot before Brackman selected him to head the 1st Aerospace Squadron.

McKenna had the demeanor and the credentials to demand loyalty and trust, and he got both from the people in his squadron.

He also didn’t pussyfoot around.

“Do-Wop, close the door.”

Jack Abrams closed the door, then took a seat in one of the armed desk chairs.

“Frank, run it down for everyone.”

Dimatta took four minutes to brief them on what he knew of the disappearance of Delta Green and the murders of four people. “Hell, Kevin, I assumed we still had the same old security plan in effect. Bad assumption on my part.”

“We’re not going to sweat the security problems,” McKenna said. “That’s history, and you can be damned sure the arrangements will change. Have you talked to Pearson?”

“I briefed her right after I talked to Brackman. She’s putting together some kind of plan.”

“All right, we’ll adapt our mission as her information comes in. First things first. I’ve ordered the radio encryption boxes removed from all MakoSharks, and the Mark IV boxes installed. We don’t want whoever’s got Delta Green to be listening in on our scrambled radio communications. Space Command will be making the same change. Next, we’re short a MakoShark. As soon as we’re done here, Frank, you and George grab one of the Lears and head for Hot Country. Delta Orange is about ready for flight testing, and we’ll boost the schedule on her. I’ll talk to Brackman and get an approval on that”

George “Nitro Fizz” Williams, Dimatta’s backseater, frowned. He wouldn’t like giving up the Delta Green designation. It was a superstitious trait — even McKenna had renamed his new craft Delta Blue after the original Delta Blue had been shot down.

“George?” McKenna asked.

“Whatever you say, Colonel”

Williams wouldn’t normally call McKenna “Colonel,” except in a public setting. He was pretty much reality-based, though he went overboard on the nutrition thing. He was thirty-three, tall at six-two, and the startlingly red hair and deep green eyes had come from some Irish ancestry, though he denied it to Conover, who was Irish. When he wasn’t messing around with all of his electronic gadgetry in the backseat of a MakoShark, he was messing around with the electronic gadgetry he built as a hobby. His cubicle aboard Themis and his apartment landside were stuffed with stereos, television sets, computers, bar code readers, VCRs, radar detectors, and even radars he had designed and built himself.

“Spit it out, George,” McKenna ordered.

“Well, damn. We ought to rename the new bird Green.”

“No,” McKenna said. “As far as we know, Delta Green is still operational. She’ll stay Green until we know one way or the other.”

Williams shrugged.

“Next. Will, what’s your status?”

Conover sat up in his hard wooden seat and said, “We’re topped up and ready to go.”

“Weapons?”

“We’ve got practice Wasp IIs aboard, Kevin. We were just starting our training series in the desert when Overton diverted us here.”

“Change them out for live missiles, just in case, and install a Chain Gun pod.”

“We’ve got permission?” Conover asked.

“Not yet, but we will have by the end of the day.”

Jack “Do-Wop” Abrams, Conover’s WSO, broke in. “We’re going to shoot her down, Kevin?”

Dimatta groaned.

“That’ll be up to the brass, Jack. My immediate priority is to locate her. Based on the assumption that it’s not wise to let anyone — whoever it is — have a spacecraft that is equal to our own and can be used against us, I recommended to Brackman that we destroy it.”

Williams groaned.

“The general, however, read me a minor riot act which included items such as cost-per-bird, public relations, and congressional thumbs which might be turned down on our whole act.”

“So Brackman’s kicking it upstairs for a decision?” Abrams asked.

Abrams’s bushy mustache had grown even longer, now covering his upper lip, and just then, it seemed to quiver. The mustache was compensation for the hair which had disappeared before he reached the age of forty. His pate was smooth, but his face was lined with the worry he devoted to almost any issue. He was chronic about worrying, and it was reflected in his sharp hazel eyes. Originally a New Yorker, Abrams had graduated from the University of California at Berkeley prior to entering the Air Force. Conover thought that Berkeley had been the root of his worrying. The only thing that took his mind off his imagined troubles was outdated music, the source of his nickname, “Do-Wop.”

“Let’s just say, Jack, that my recommendation, along with General Brackman’s observations, will be considered by the appropriate commands.”

“He kicked it upstairs,” Abrams concluded. “We can figure on somebody making a political decision”

“Which will likely be the wrong one, amigos.” Munoz added. The Arizonian was slouched in a corner chair, missing his normally ready grin.

“Our current mission is purely location,” McKenna said. “Tony, why don’t you go make sure Delta Blue is getting her service? And hot weaponry.”

McKenna was definitely in a bad mood, Conover thought.

“Will, you get your ordnance changed out, then stand by for an operational plan from Pearson. I’ll call Country Girl and brief her. Frank, head for Hot Country.”

The group broke up, more glum than they had been in a long time. Generally, they were a happy-go-lucky bunch, which Abrams worried about, of course. One of the great things about working for 1st Aerospace, outside of flying the best damned bird ever built, was flying with the best damned pilots and backseaters around. They had come to know each other so well that they had learned to anticipate the actions and reactions of one another.

Conover knew exactly what Dimatta and Williams were feeling.

Trailed by Abrams, he wandered out to the hangar proper, found the ordnance specialist, and ordered the missiles and pods changed out on Delta Yellow. Communications technicians had the access doors to the avionics bays open on both Delta Yellow and Delta Blue and were installing the radio frequency encryption boxes with the new electronics.

Abrams got Cokes from the machine in the corner and brought him one.

“What do you think, Will?”

Conover took a long drag from the can and let his eyes trail over the graceful lines of his — his! — MakoShark. “I think we got a damned nearly impossible task, Jack. How’re we going to find something that disappears so easily?”

“Yeah”

The depression of the others was settling on him. Conover was by nature a happy man. He loved to laugh and to design practical jokes which always seemed to backfire on him, but were nevertheless worth the effort. His nickname, “Con Man,” arose from his hobby of using Air Force computers to design elaborate and fiscally rewarding scams that he never put into operation. He feared that, like his practical jokes, they would misfire, and he would end up viewing Kansas from within Leavenworth. He couldn’t imagine anything more dismal than Kansas, unless it was Leavenworth.

He had been raised in New York City by an aunt and uncle after his parents had been killed in a boating accident near their home in Albany. His Air Force ROTC program helped him through Columbia University, then into the fixed wing course at Randolph Air Force Base. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, Conover thought of himself as at least presentable to the many women he chased whenever he had a chance, but he always wore long-sleeved shirts to cover the scars on his arms. He had mangled them getting out of the flaming cockpit of an F-16 when its landing gear collapsed on landing at Edwards.

As the live Wasp missiles were rolled under the MakoShark on a dolly, Abrams said, “You want to sit in the ready room or go over to Heaven and get a sandwich?”

“Let’s go to Heaven and eat something more than a sandwich,” Conover told his WSO. “It may be a while before we get another chance.”

They turned away from the activity under Delta Yellow, circumnavigated am introspective Tony Munoz and Delta Blue, and headed for the door.

Conover was acutely aware of the blood stains in the concrete near the door. Someone had done some scrubbing, but not enough.

Stan Vrdlka’s blood.

Abrams pulled the door open and nearly ran into General Cartwright.

“Where’s McKenna?” the general asked.

Conover came to attention, something he did for generals he didn’t like. This one had been in the command less than five weeks. And already blown it. His head was on the line for a three-quarter billion dollar craft.

“He may have gone up to the control tower, sir,” Conover said.

“He had some calls to make,” Abrams added. “Probably doesn’t want to be interrupted, sir.”

“Listen up, Captain. I’ll interrupt anyone I want to interrupt.”

“Uh… yes, sir,” Abrams said.

This general didn’t yet understand that Merlin Air Base, Jack Andrews Air Base, and the detachment at Peterson Air Base in the Springs were operated solely to support USSC-1, which was the space station Themis, and the 1st Aerospace Squadron, which for all purposes was Kevin McKenna.

They stood aside to let the base commander pass, then went outside.

“Let him learn the hard way,” Abrams said.

QUARTERS COMPOUND,

GENERAL ANATOLY SHELEPIN

Anatoly Guryanovich Shelepin had once been a colonel general in the Soviet Ground Forces. His record was impeccable. He had done what the Army and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had asked of him, from field command in Afghanistan to training commands to staff positions at Stavka. In his last assignment with the General Staff, he had been responsible for managing and doling out to clandestine projects the Army’s foreign hard currency reserves.

From his earliest memory, Shelepin had shared the goals and the ideology of the CPSU, assisted in those tenets by a father who had known both extreme deprivation and ardent heroism in the Great Patriotic War.

And now the foundation of his existence had slipped from under him. The CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) was gone, and the disappearance — so quickly accomplished! — had left him reeling like a Vodka-soaked drunk for weeks. The newest Soviet Mem was one he did not recognize and could not fathom.

Fortunately for him, Shelepin was intelligent. He had foreseen the end, and though he had sympathized with the coup plotters, he had not participated with them in the attempt to overthrow the leadership. By virtue of his reputation, however, he knew that he would have been automatically grouped with the conspirators, and so he chose the only course open to him. On the night that the President was placed under house arrest, Shelepin took his wife of thirty-five years, Yelena, and five loyal subordinates, commandeered an Antonov An-72 transport, and flew south out of Moscow.

Under cover of a military inspection trip, and sufficiently preceding the days of tension, his credentials and his flight had not been contested. Nor had the flights of other aircraft he had ordered into the air been contested.

They had escaped through Afghanistan, and they had not been pursued. Whether out of embarrassment or out of relief, the defections of Shelepin and his associates — and of many others — had not been publicly recorded or reported. He could be certain that the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti and the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye, the party and the military intelligence organizations, were quietly searching for a number of airplanes that had disappeared from inventories all over the Union. In the hectic days of the coup attempt, many things and many people had evaporated, but the economic and political chaos that now existed had diverted high-level authorities toward more pressing crises.

Anatoly Guryanovich Shelepin felt comfortable where he was.

He was comfortably lost in a city of a half-million people where he had purchased a block-square, walled compound and renovated it to meet his needs. Accessible through two wrought-iron gates on the northern and southern ends of the block, the center of the compound was spacious, gravelled, and overgrown with sugar palm and shrubs. Surrounding the center courtyard were modest-sized two-story residences, favoring French architectural design. Railed balconies overlooked the courtyard, and wide, red-tiled eaves shaded the balconies. In almost every room of every residence, lazily moving ceiling fans kept the air in motion. Khmer servants glided quietly about.

From the window of his second-floor office overlooking the street, Shelepin could see, a half-mile away, the convergence of the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers.

His associates were comfortable also. He had assigned them to quarters in the compound, and he provided them with monthly stipends from the nest eggs of German Deutschemarks, French francs, British pound sterling, Spanish pesos, and American dollars he had secreted in Switzerland, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore. Since it was he that had managed the secret funds, Shelepin did not think that the Soviet government, or whatever government that survived, would ever miss the hard currencies he had transferred over a span of years into his own accounts.

Depending upon the day’s exchange rates, his nest eggs amounted to about seven billion American dollars.

Shelepin was not the only one to provide for his future, of course. He had not been surprised after his arrival in Phnom Penh to find that Sergei Pavel, once a general and a KGB directorate secretary, and who now resided in the compound, also had access to over four-and-a-half billion dollars.

Between the two of them, Shelepin and Pavel were certain they could overcome the ennui that was rapidly consuming their ex-patriot countrymen.

It seemed a shame, however, that their new world must originate from Kampuchea rather than the rodina, the motherland.

NORAD, COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO

General Marvin Brackman’s command was located, not only in space, but in Borneo, Chad, part of Peterson Air Force Base and in the new Space Command facilities east of Colorado Springs. He preferred, however, to maintain his own headquarters in conjunction with the North American Air Defense (NORAD) facilities located deep inside Cheyenne Mountain southwest of Colorado Springs. The Department of Defense operated NORAD as one of the “C-cubed” systems: command, control, and communications. NORAD, the National Military Command Center (NMCC) in the Pentagon, and the Alternate NMCC at Fort Richie, Maryland, handled normal crisis situations with ease, but would probably remain utilitarian only during the first stages of a nuclear war. After they were obliterated, command and control would shift to airborne command posts, Boeing E-4Bs known as National Emergency Airborne Command Posts (NEACPs, or “Kneecaps”).

Physically, the NORAD center took up nearly five acres of space hollowed out of solid granite. Resting on a bed of steel springs intended to reduce the shock effects of a nuclear attack, the underground facilities were a rat-defying maze of corridors and compartments. Above ground was a heavily fortified antenna compound which gathered communication signals from all over the world. The Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS), with its over-the-horizon radars, the Defense Early Warning System (DEWLine), a variety of spy and reconnaissance satellites in space, aircraft and listening posts around the world, and vessels at sea fed their intelligence to NORAD. There, the computers analyzed the data and stored it for instant display on one of the plotting screens. NORAD and her sister command centers could pinpoint the location and movement of most ballistic missiles, aircraft, and naval ships in the world.

It was nearly eleven o’clock at night, and one o’clock in the morning in Washington, when the phone call came. Brackman was nursing an uncounted cup of coffee in his spacious, but modestly furnished office. His longtime secretary, Milly Roget, had gone home long before, and a duty sergeant transferred the call.

“Admiral Cross on your line two, General.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

Brackman punched the button for the secure line.

“Brackman”

“Good morning, Marvin”

“Not quite morning here, Hannibal. I thought you’d given up and gone to bed”

Admiral Hannibal Cross had been Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for almost four years, a position he took very seriously and which he filled well. He was as adept at political strategy and tactics as he had been of the military counterparts while in command of carriers off Vietnam. TV loved his crisp military appearance, with a deep-water tan and weather wrinkles at his eyes, and he was frequently interviewed on the Sunday morning shows.

“Why is it, Marvin, that I lose sleep every time I get a call from you?”

“Can’t be love, can it?”

“I doubt it,” Cross said. “Your congressional delegation still there?”

“No. We gave them a nice dinner and put them back on their VIP plane.”

“They have any suspicions about this?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Good. Harvey and I spent some time with the SecDef and the National Security Advisor.”

General Harvey Mays, whom Brackman regarded as a highly capable commander, was the Air Force Chief of Staff. Mays had flown F-4 Phantoms in Vietnam, and he had shrapnel and burn scars on the left side of his face to prove it.

“And?”

“We want to contain the PR damage as much as possible, and for as long as possible.”

“That means,” Brackman said, “we’ve got about forty-eight hours.”

“If that. I expect the rumors will begin to leak before that, and then the Secretary will have to inform the appropriate congressional committees. He will inform them, in any event, within three days. We’re buying time here, Marvin, in order to come up with some hard data on what happened, and why.”

“No conjecture?”

“None at all. Before he goes to the Hill, I’ll want to put a fact sheet in his hand that tells the whole story.”

Brackman sighed. He didn’t object to laying out the truth, but he was afraid the truth was going to eradicate the inroads he had made with Senator Worth and Congresswoman Anderson. He could see his 1st Aerospace Squadron composed of “doddering old men” flying machines held together with baling wire and Band-Aids.

“I talked to McKenna a little while ago,” Brackman said, and related the details of the hijacking.

“Jesus. Four dead.”

“McKenna wants funerals with full military honors. Line of duty deaths, not accidents. Purple Hearts.”

“That will draw the media, Marvin.”

“We can wait four days.”

“All right. We’ll give them the best we can.”

“What about McKenna’s and my recommendations?”

“There was a lot of thought given to that,” Cross said. “The President was involved.”

I’ll bet he was.

“The first priority is to recover the MakoShark intact.”

“Good.” Saving me from the appearance of shooting myself in the foot with a three-quarter billion dollar bullet.

“If that is not possible, we will destroy it, rather than let someone else have it, or copy the technology.”

“The big question, Hannibal, is where do we cross the line from priority one to priority two?”

“You are not to put at risk your remaining craft or crews. As far as we know, this is not an event equivalent to the accepted danger levels of war.”

“That doesn’t give me, or McKenna, much leeway.”

“I know, Marvin, but that is the way it has to be.”

“I can free my weapons systems then?”

“The rules of engagement are that MakoShark crews only are allowed to fire if fired upon. The one exception to that, of course, is if they find Delta Green and must shoot it down. They may fire without warning in that case.”

“And Delta Red?” Brackman asked, aware of previous administrative reticence to endangering unduly the pilot of that MakoShark.

“I think Major Haggar proved her, and Colonel McKenna’s, point at Peenemünde. She’s a combat-capable pilot, and McKenna may assign her any normal squadron duty.”

Brackman assumed that Mays and Cross had had to argue for equal treatment, and he appreciated their support. McKenna would also.

“All right, Hannibal. We’ll go looking.”

“Don’t look too long, Marvin, before you start hunting.”

USSC-1

It was two o’clock in the morning aboard Themis when Pearson called Wet Country and had someone there go rouse McKenna from a nap.

Army Sergeant Don Curtis was manning the communications console, but Donna Amber was still hanging around after her shift. General Overton, Colonel Avery, Major Haggar, and Captain Olsen, her WSO, were also crowded into the compartment called the radio shack or floating outside the hatchway.

Lynn Marie Haggar was stylishly slim and four or five inches taller than Pearson, and her dark hair was trimmed short, framing a heart-shaped face. Her eyes were a clear, clean aqua blue, and her ivory smile might have moonlighted for toothpaste ads. Pearson pictured her as a short-haired Naomi Judd. She appeared completely at ease in the light blue jumpsuit that was so convenient to living aboard a space station.

Amy Pearson was not jealous of her, but she sometimes wondered what it would be like to be in a more active role, flying hot combat craft instead of probing the innards of computer data bases.

Ben Olsen, her backseater, was short and wiry-muscled, with Scandinavian fairness in flesh, eyes, and hair. He wore a lopsided grin most of the time, as if he found most of life amusing in some way. Today, he wasn’t grinning.

McKenna’s voice finally came through, echoing slightly as a result of the radio scramblers on both ends of the transmission.

“McKenna here, Amy-baby.”

Pearson let her voice drop a tone or two toward icy. “Colonel McKenna, we have present General Overton, Colonel Avery, Major Haggar, and Captain Olsen.”

“And I’ve got the rest of the gang here, Amy, all waiting for you to give us the word.”

He sounded a little too flippant, but she wouldn’t say anything about it just now, naturally. Her relationship with McKenna had become more complicated than she had ever planned, and Amelia Pearson believed in maintaining professional protocol.

“What is your situation, Colonel?”

“Cancha and Nitro Fizz have departed for Hot Country to start flight trials on the new bird. Delta Yellow and Delta Blue are hot and ready to go, except for a minor hitch.”

“Hitch?” Pearson asked.

“General Cartwright has sealed the base, and us on it, until his security problem is resolved. I expect that will be resolved as soon as he gets off the phone with Semaphore.”

Pearson glanced at Jim Overton, who simply raised one eyebrow.

“Country Girl?” McKenna asked.

“We can launch within ten minutes, Colonel,” Haggar responded.

“Colonel Pearson?” McKenna asked, finally getting to the formality she expected with so many people in hearing range.

“I’ve had to work with several assumptions,” she said. “First, the window of opportunity existed for about an hour. Cancha landed at four-oh-three, and Delta Green was serviced by a few minutes before five. The intruders took off with her some time between five and six. It was already getting light by then, and the assumption is that they headed west to stay under cover of darkness.”

“But they could have entered the base earlier than that, couldn’t they?” Overton asked.

“Certainly, General. Any time during the night. Then just waited until Delta Green landed.” She knew what he was getting at. If they rode their hang gliders into the base sifter Delta Green’s unannounced arrival, then they likely had been signalled by someone from within the base. The security examination would have to determine whether or not there had been an insider involved. She looked to him for other questions.

“Go on, Colonel.”

“We’ve backtracked the tapes for our infrared sensors, as well as for those of the reconnaissance satellites in the area at that time. There is no indication that the rocket motors were utilized.”

There was no technological development yet available for disguising the infrared signature of the MakoShark’s rocket exhaust, especially when full thrust was required for orbital insertion. Most rocket burns, however, lasted for about four minutes, with the maximum burn around nine minutes. Observers on the ground probably mistook the burns for meteorites entering the atmosphere.

“My second assumption, then, is that Delta Green was not taken into orbit. At least, not yet. We will be searching to the west of Borneo, and we will be looking for landing strips of concrete or asphalt, which are at least two miles long. They will not be in populated areas, of course, and they will have available some form of cover: hangars, jungle canopy, camouflage netting.

“I have designated three search areas.” Pearson nodded to Curtis, and he pressed a button sending the maps to receivers at Wet Country.

“Coming up on the printer now,” McKenna said.

“Zone One is Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Zone Two is the Indian Subcontinent. Zone Three is, I’m afraid, the entire continent of Africa.”

“What are we going to do for the rest of the day, enamorada?” Munoz asked.

Pearson cleared her throat. “The crosshatched portions of the maps are areas you can eliminate for population, political, or other reasons. The yellow areas are probably iffy for geographical or topographical reasons. The blue-shaded areas are the most suspicious. Those are where a MakoShark could be landed and hidden.”

“Nice job, Colonel,” McKenna said without being condescending, a tone she sometimes searched for in his voice.

“On short notice, it’s the best I could come up with in order to initiate a physical search.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “Country Girl, you’ve got Zone Three. Con Man, you’re on Two, and we’ll take One. We’re going to have daylight for much of this, so we’ll keep the altitude high. Stay around five-zero-thousand and use your video cameras on magnification.”

“Do we want to mount recon camera pods?” Abrams asked.

“I don’t think so,” McKenna said. “We’re not trying to document anything just yet. If we run into something, the video tape will be sufficient. Also, let’s avoid air traffic, people. We don’t want anyone spotting us and alerting some trigger-happy air defense force. Questions?”

There were none and McKenna told them to take off.

Haggar and Olsen pushed their way out of the radio shack, eager to be on the way and doing something.

Pearson followed them out of the compartment, aiming herself toward her office cubicle.

Now that she had the squadron started on one segment of the search, she was impatient to get her own intelligence investigation under way.

Her search, she was certain, would be more fruitful than shooting around in the skies, looking for a tiny MakoNeedle in an earthen haystack.

MERLIN AIR BASE

McKenna, Munoz, and the Delta Yellow crew were already dressed in their environmental suits, and they left the ready room and turned into the hallway leading to the hangar proper.

Emerging into the brightly lit aircraft area, McKenna saw that the ground crews were lolling around the workbenches at the back, sitting on the floor or the benches themselves. Both of the MakoSharks had their canopies closed and appeared to be all buttoned up.

General Cartwright and the aide he had brought with him from his last assignment, Major Mikos Pappas, stepped from the elevator to the upper floor and control tower.

McKenna took one look at the crewmen, then told his squadron members, “Wait here.”

He crossed the hangar and caught up with Cartwright near the exit door.

“General.”

Cartwright stopped and turned toward him. “Colonel?”

“Have you spoken to General Brackman yet?”

“No, Colonel. I have nothing to report to him as yet.”

Despite how he often felt about petty officiousness in the military, McKenna did not often go around superior officers. He had asked Cartwright to talk to Brackman, rather than going directly to the Space Command boss himself.

Pappas smiled at him.

McKenna suppressed the urge to turn the major’s smile inside out. His patience was wearing thin enough to produce some verbal heat when Munoz came up beside him.

Tony Munoz was only five-nine, but the Tucson-born Arizonian was a tight bundle of sinew. Hard-ridged muscles lined his arms, legs, chest, and stomach. He had dark brown hair that matched his eyes and a smooth, almost round face that many people had misjudged as complacent. He didn’t worry about much, but when his fires were stoked, the cold fury appeared in his eyes.

It was there now.

Munoz spoke to the general’s aide, “Mikos, lets, you and me take a little walk.”

“What? I don’t think…”

“I know you don’t. But the colonel and the general want a few moments together.”

Munoz put his arm around Pappas’s shoulders and led him away.

“What the hell’s going on, McKenna?” Cartwright asked.

McKenna saw the flush creeping up the base commander’s throat.

“Whatever your problems are, General, they’re yours. I have my own. Right now, you’re going to tell those men over there to get these birds in the air.”

“The hell I am!”

“If you don’t, sir, then I will.”

“Bullshit!”

“And do you want to take a wild-assed guess about which one of us they’re going to respond to, General? What I’m doing here, I’m giving you a chance to save face before you lose it.”

Judging by the changing shades in Cartwright’s face and the flickering in his eyes, the decision was having a tough time surfacing.

But it finally did.

Cartwright called to a master sergeant, “Bristol, let’s get those craft ready to roll.”

“Thank you, sir,” McKenna said.

Chapter Four

DELTA RED

Lieutenant Polly Tang, Brad Mitchell’s number two, waved through the glass port that overlooked the hangar. Over the radio, she said, “All clear, Delta Red. Good luck.”

Lynn Haggar clicked her transmit button. “Until next time, Beta.”

Over the intercom, Olsen reported, “All systems on line, Country.”

When she and Olsen had been formally adopted by the squadron, she had been given the nickname of Country Girl, but Olsen tended to shorten it.

She fired the nose thrusters, and spurts of nitrogen gas nudged Delta Red slowly backwards out of the bay. The motion was relative, of course, since the MakoShark was hurtling through space at the same 18,000 miles per hour as the space station, which orbited the earth at a mean altitude of 220 miles. The orbital period was 3.6 hours.

The craft reversed slowly from the hangar cell, and as soon as it was clear, she added two more bursts from the nose thrusters, then said, “All right, that’s enough. Close them up, Swede.”

Olsen punched the pad that sealed the carbon-carbon/Nomex/ceramic alloy panels over the nose thrusters. Without the protective doors in place, the nozzles would not survive the intense heat of reentry.

“Nose thrusters passive, panels closed,” he reported.

The gap between the satellite and the MakoShark increased steadily. The hangar doors closed with deliberate slowness, like flower petals folding, and the hangar’s interior lights winked out. And Lynn Haggar was left with the sight that brought her to the brink of awe every time.

When the doors of all twenty-eight cells were closed, twenty-foot-high black letters identified the station as:

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

SPACE STATION THEMIS

USSC-1

The hub of the station was a cylinder three hundred feet in diameter and two hundred feet in width. One half of it (this side) was constructed like a honeycomb, made up of eight hangar cells large enough to accept a Mako or MakoShark behind closed doors. Resupply rockets, fuel, and other stores could be ported in the smaller cells. Additionally, the module on Spoke Twelve was utilized for HoneyBee maintenance as well as for refurbishing satellites which were already in space. One of the tasks of the Mako vehicles was to collect faltering communications or surveillance satellites and bring them to Themis for repair or retrofit.

An unbalanced set of spokes (balance being unnecessary in zero gravity) reached out from the hub and were capped with variously sized modules that housed command, energy, residential, and experimental spaces. The other side of the hub, called the “hot” side since it was exposed to the sun, mounted a massive solar array. The energy developed from the solar panels supplemented that which was provided by the nuclear reactor in Spoke Nine, and the heat bled from the collectors was pumped through exchangers to maintain a constant temperature within the station.

From Delta Red’s current position, Haggar couldn’t see the utilitarian solar panels. Her view was less functional and more impressive. The outer skin of the station was laminated with white plastic for its reflective quality, but the visual effect was that of a single, cold, and massive star projected forward from a movie screen filled with distant stars.

Her significance in the totality of the universe was always dramatically apparent to her in these moments. The calculated output of significance would have a lot of zeros and a decimal point ahead of her number.

“Reentry attitude, Country.”

“Coming up,” she said and eased back on the control stick, firing thrusters that slowly brought the nose up and the tail down, inverting the MakoShark until she was sailing her orbit in reverse. Above her head was the Earth, shimmering with diffused color. She tapped the hand controller forward a couple of times, initiating thruster bursts that counteracted, then canceled the motion.

“I have a reentry track and time,” Olsen said. “Eighteen minutes, Lynn. Time for a few hands of bridge.”

Olsen was a bridge fanatic and was good enough that opponents were hard for him to find.

He was also an expert with the weapons systems and computers. In addition to the variable weight data of personnel, cargo, fuel load, and pylon loads, he had keyed in their desired altitude and geographical coordinates over northern Africa, and the computer had determined their final weight and center of gravity. In a weightless environment, the weight of various objects that could be carried aboard a HoneyBee or a Mako were derived from a master list maintained on the space station’s mainframe computer.

The spacecraft computer ran a test profile of the reentry flight, casually determining just what was possible, and if it accepted the data, planned the initial reentry burn, its duration, the angle of attack, and the trajectory.

Since, unlike the Space Shuttle, the Mako craft could achieve powered flight after reentry into the atmosphere, the windows of opportunity were larger and more frequent.

“I already owe you twelve dollars,” Haggar told him. “Let’s set up the rocket checklist instead.”

“How mundane,” Olsen said, but brought up the checklist on the small screen.

Haggar activated the rocket control panel. The two rocket motors operated on solid-fuel propellent and were considerably safer than liquid-fueled engines. The drawback to solid-fuel rocket motors had always been the lack of control. Typically, the solid fuel was encased in a cylinder, and once ignited, burned at a steady rate, raising pressures and exhausting through a nozzle, until the fuel was expended. For the MakoShark, the designers had developed a pelletized solid fuel which was stored internally in wing-mounted tanks. Under the pressure of compressed carbon dioxide, the pellets were forced into the combustion chambers at a rate determined by the opening of non-blowback valves. The valves were the throttle control, and Haggar could vary the thrust output from fifty-five percent to one hundred percent, from sixty-eight thousand to one hundred twenty-five thousand pounds of thrust on each of the two nacelle-mounted rocket motors.

Olsen double-checked her, using the same checklist on his own screen.

“How’s the fuel supply?”

“Ten-point-one thousand pounds,” Haggar said. “We’re showing two-two time.”

“And the CO-two reserve?”

“Twelve thousand, six hundred PSI.”

“Igniter test?”

“I’m testing now. We’ve got one, now two and three. There’s four.”

“Activate igniters one and two.”

Haggar flipped the toggles for the primary igniters in each of the rocket motors. Igniters three and four were backup systems.

“The igniters are hot, Swede”

“Open CO-two valves”

Haggar opened the valves, pressurizing the solid-fuel pellet tanks.

“Done.”

“Activate throttles, Country.”

“Active.”

“Throttles at standby position.”

She pushed the outboard throttle levers to their first detents.

“Throttles in standby,” Haggar reported.

“Comp Control?”

“Punching in one-zero-zero per cent” Haggar tapped the pad in the top row of buttons that read “RKT THRST,” keyed in the one and two zeros, stored the data in Random Access Memory, then tapped the “STDBY” pad.

With another code entered into the keyboard, she turned control of the MakoShark over to the computer. The computer thought about it for nearly a second, then reported out, via blue letters displayed in the upper left corner of the CRT.

REENTRY PATH ACCEPTED

REENTRY SEQUENCE INITIATED

TIME TO RETRO FIRE: 0.18.11

“You’re eleven seconds off, Swede.”

“I hate it when you insist on precision, Country Girl” That was because the precise numbers were always available somewhere in his brain, and he felt it unnecessary to verbalize them. At a bridge table — like the ones in the dining/recreation areas of the space station which utilized lightly magnetized cards on a magnetic surface — she suspected that Olsen knew within three plays where all of the other cards were and who was holding them. She keyed her helmet microphone, “Alpha, Delta Red.”

“Go Red.” Milt Avery was tending the command station. She reported their status, and he wished them luck. They waited out the time rechecking systems — twice was never enough for decent safety margins — and tightening straps. Olsen picked up the count near the end: “Six, five, four, three, two, one.”

The CRT countdown readout went to zero.

The mild vibration in the craft’s frame and the thrust indicators on the HUD rising to one hundred per cent told her when the computer ignited the rockets.

The view of Themis in the rearview screen diminished and slid off the top of the screen as white fire encroached on each side of the screen.

The display of Mach numbers began to move, decreasing rapidly.

The burn lasted for three-and-a-half minutes, until the speed was down to Mach 20, then the computer turned Delta Red over again, heading into her line of flight, with her nose held high.

Lynn Haggar had always thought the attitude very haughty and deservedly so. She herself always felt humbled and grateful for the Fates that had selected a woman from Georgia and dropped her into the cockpit of a MakoShark.

She was also grateful to Colonel Kevin McKenna, Earth-side representative of the Fates.

DELTA YELLOW

Directly ahead of Conover, the red digital numerals of the Head-Up Display floated in space. His altitude was reported at fifty thousand feet above sea level and his heading at 091 degrees. The readout for airspeed indicated that Delta Yellow was cruising at a meager 650 knots. The tailpipe temperatures were well down in the green.

Below the HUD, the instrument panel provided readouts in blue digital numerals and letters, many of them duplicates of what appeared on the HUD. The eight-inch cathode ray tube was centered in the panel and repeated the imaging mode selected by the weapons system operator in the backseat of the tandem cockpit. The screen had direct visual, map overlay, radar, infrared, and night vision capability and currently was displaying the magnified (images picked up by the nose-mounted video camera.

The pilot’s and WSO’s seats were semi-reclining lounges. Conover’s seat had four-way adjustable armrests on which his forearms rested. Near his left hand were the short throttle levers, and above them, the switch panels related to engine, radio, and environmental control. On his right were the armaments, electronics, trim, flaps, and landing gear control panels. To the rear of the panels on both sides of the cockpit were the less frequently used control panels and circuit breakers. The aerospace craft’s attitude was controlled from the stubby, ergonomically-designed handle that fit smoothly into the palm of his hand.

To his left, he could see the snow-capped Himalayas, most of the peaks wreathed in misty white. The bronze-tinted canopy took some of the hard edges off the blindingly white and awe-inspiring view.

Abrams had a Creedence Clearwater Revival rendition of “Bad Moon Rising” playing low in their earphones.

Much as he hated to admit it, Conover was becoming a convert to Do-Wop’s golden oldies. There was something soothing about listening to rhythms and lyrics which were familiar enough to stay in the background. He didn’t have to concentrate on understanding words hidden between clashes of metal.

“Here’s a possible location coming up, Con Man,” Abrams said.

Conover scanned the HUD one more time, then switched his attention to the main CRT. The new video cameras allowed them a magnification of forty times normal, though at the higher numbers, the resolution was a trifle fuzzy. Their east-west crisscrossing of the subcontinent had begun to the north, encompassing parts of Afghanistan and China, and Abrams had maintained a camera magnification of twenty, giving them a screen view that was about 150 miles wide. Now, Abrams had jumped the telescopic effect, reducing the width of the coverage to several miles.’

The nose camera was at full depression, aimed downward forty degrees from their line of flight. What they were seeing was a long way ahead of them, and in this case, was across the Indian border into northern Bangladesh. The rain forest disguised almost everything, including the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra River.

Conover didn’t distinguish anything unusual.

“You actually see something, Do-Wop?”

“Upper left corner.”

“Sure.”

“Here, I’ll center it.”

Abrams changed the camera angle with his controller, and a brownish swatch in the jungle centered itself on the screen.

“That’s not in Pearson’s data banks,” Abrams said.

Over the years they had been circling the globe, the MakoShark pilots had been accumulating tons of valuable information, including the location of clandestine airstrips. The data was fed into Space Command computers and retained against the time when, Conover hoped, the Department of Defense turned the 1st Aerospace Squadron loose against drug manufacturing and smuggling operations. He figured the stealth craft could put a dent in the drug trade that would shock the world and put much of it into withdrawal pangs.

During their search, they were reviewing and updating the data files on known airstrips as well as adding new information to the data base.

“Suppose Bangladesh will care if we invade their airspace?” Conover asked.

“I’ll let you know if they shoot us down,” the backseater said.

“You might try an earlier warning.”

“Chicken.”

Conover eased the controller over and went into a shallow right bank, adding a little right rudder. The MakoShark began a slow turn to the right. When the Brahmaputra River, a blue/brown scar in the green jungle, passed under, he started a slow turn back to the left so as to come back on their target from the east.

“I wish to hell it was dark,” Conover said over the intercom, “so we could get down in the bushes and get some real shots”

“Patience, Con Man. Soon as Amy-baby reviews all this stuff, she’ll be sending us back for close-ups of the really suspicious spots”

“Yeah, I hope so.”

The 1st Aerospace Squadron crews, while not veterans of Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, or the Persian Gulf, had tasted combat in the New Germany crisis. None of them talked much about it to each other, but Conover knew they were all seasoned, and he suspected that all of them now had some addiction for operating on the edge, for inducing adrenaline production to ever higher levels.

As he made the last half of his turn, Conover eased in power and gained five thousand feet of altitude.

“Video tapes running,” Abrams reported.

The computer constantly tested the craft’s navigational position and the angle and magnification of the camera lens, then automatically imprinted the bottom right corner of the video recording with the date, the time, and the geographical coordinates of the area they were filming. That precluded having the photo interpretation people making a lot of guesses.

The river, and the brown spot on the other side of it, came up fast. Because of the dense, triple-canopied layer of jungle, an oblique camera shot of the target from ten miles away and ten miles high wouldn’t reveal much. In these cases, Conover brought the MakoShark almost directly overhead, then put her nose straight down on the target while Abrams controlled the camera. They only needed a few inches of good video tape. Pearson could always freeze it and study it for as long as she wanted.

The picture on his main screen was now almost entirely of blue sky for Abrams had centered the camera.

“Two seconds, Con Man.”

“Two.”

A couple heartbeats.

“Mark.”

Conover put the nose down and eased back the throttles. The screen flashed from blue into green into brown. The river appeared, and he neutralized his controls.

“Shit,” Abrams said.

The image steadied, then cleared a little as the magnification was backed off a few notches.

“Lumber operation,” Abrams said.

The comment clarified what he was seeing on the screen, the image fuzzed by the high magnification. A thin tributary to the Brahmaputra was jammed tight with logs chained into rafts for floating down to the coast. The rafts stretched up the river for over a mile.

The HUD read forty-eight thousand feet when Conover pulled out of his dive.

“Lot of damned wood,” he said.

“Not going to land a Mako on it,” Abrams said.

“Doubt it.”

“Let’s go south and take up the next leg”

“Why not?”

Flying search patterns could be tedious as hell, but Conover loved flying the MakoShark so much that he didn’t mind a bit. His conscience zinged him a little when he thought about poor old Dimatta and Williams chugging along in a clumsy Gates Learjet.

NEW WORLD BASE, KAMPUCHEA

Aleksander Maslov did not care for either the temperature or the humidity. Both played havoc with, not only human biology and temperament, but also with the sensitive devices invented by man. Delicate electronic circuitry misbehaved and mechanical systems that were not carefully maintained and lubricated gathered rust. Those conditions were potentially life-threatening, and he thought often that lazy ground crewmen did not fully appreciate the threat. He was an ardent supervisor of ground crew operations.

The air conditioner in Maslov’s small house trailer had failed once again, and the interior was sweltering despite his opening the three windows and the single door. If it were not for the privacy he enjoyed in his tiny residence, he would have moved into the new dormitory which boasted central air-conditioning.

Maslov pushed himself off the single narrow bed and stood up. He was tall (186 centimeters) and he had to duck his head slightly to stand upright. He bent over in the tiny lavatory and used the mirror to brush his short-cropped blond hair. When he turned the tap, the cold water, which was all that was available, came out in a clear, slow dribble. He used the washcloth to swab his face, chest, and arms, then toweled off. Passing his palm over his square jaw, Maslov decided he could forego shaving, but double-checked that decision in the mirror. He had sharp green eyes, a result of some long-ago heritage that had invaded his Ukrainian ancestry. His facial skin was taut, normally fair, and now reddened by exposure to the sun. Maslov did not have much experience with southern latitudes, and the sun did not care for him.

He was already wearing khaki shorts and steel-soled shoes, and he pulled on a short-sleeved, khaki shirt as he pushed open the screen door and exited the trailer.

His trailer was one of six parked side-by-side under the jungle canopy that fringed the west side of the clearing. They were backed right up against a wall of dense foliage and thick tree trunks. Twisted clusters of liana climbed high overhead, dripping downward from the branches of trees. In some places, gatherings of exotic flowers added splashes of red and orange and blue.

Twenty meters to the north, a pathway which was more like a tunnel had been slashed into the jungle. It led to the dormitory structures that were less than a hundred meters away, but which was still invisible from his viewpoint. Still farther away was the tin-roofed, opensided structure that protected the water well pumps and the electrical generators. Even from this distance, he could hear the throaty murmur of the diesel engines that powered the five generators. It was a constant drone with which he had come to terms. The lazy calls of parrots and the angry chatter of monkeys drew more attention. There were tigers out there, too, rumored to be man-eaters, but he had not seen one. He had seen a rhinoceros and two elephants, but that had been from the air and many kilometers away.

The clearing that was open to the sky, not counting the space under the overhanging canopy, was only a couple hundred meters wide, but it was over twelve thousand meters long, running north and south. It was not level. There was a definite rise toward the north, and near the center was a disconcerting hump that had not been totally leveled by the engineers, primarily because there was a shortage of engineers. Laid over the mushy ground was a narrow lane of interlocking steel planks. Maslov thought they had originally come from Vietnam, from the Cam Ranh Bay area, but they were now painted in variegated shades of green that disappeared into the jungle when seen from above. At random intervals down the length of the runway were placed four flimsy, tall structures that supported camouflage netting peppered with live vines and plants. From an aerial view, they added contours to the terrain, leaving the impression of a series of small openings in the jungle cover rather than one long clearing. When the runway was needed, they were pulled back under the jungle canopy.

Maslov crossed the runway, walking east. Looking up and down the clearing, he was pleased with the result of their work. Even on the ground, at the south end of the clearing, all he could see were the six trailers and the mottled green wall of the command center which was snuggled back into the eastern edge of the jungle. It had large windows all along this side, overlooking the runway.

Though he knew they were there, he could not see a single one of the aircraft. Revetments had been hacked out of the jungle on the east side. Several of the reinforced parking spaces had been given camouflaged roofs, and the rest had roofs now under construction.

There were four Mikoyan MiG-27 ground attack planes, one MiG-25 interceptor currently in reconnaissance configuration, and six Sukhoi Su-24 attack fighters hidden in the jungle, along with three assorted civilian aircraft. Perhaps the greatest achievement had been their ability to hide the monstrously large Antonov An-72 belonging to Shelepin. Maslov had been in favor of abandoning the huge transport, crashing it into the sea, but had been outvoted. Or out-ordered. And on reflection, Shelepin and Druzhinin had been correct. The transport had been necessary for ferrying in their supplies. There had been millions of kilograms of material carted in from all over southeast Asia. Maslov did not know the details, but he supposed that much of it had been purchased and that much of it had also been surreptitiously acquired from old Soviet caches around the southeast region of the Asian continent.

On the west side of the airstrip, two more revetments were under construction, one of them housing the Tupolev Tu-124 that had been converted to a tanker. Several dozen trips with the tanker had been required to fill the underground fuel tanks located a half-kilometer out in the jungle. The tanker made at least three trips a week to a shifting schedule of destinations to take on fuel and transport it back here.

At the far north end of the runway, off to the west side, they had excavated large bunkers in which to store the ordnance. There were ground-and air-launched missiles of Soviet, Chinese, French, and American manufacture. Iron bombs and guided “smart” bombs were stacked in one bunker. Another held ammunition of various calibers, ranging from that for 9-millimeter personal weapons to 7.62-millimeter rounds for automatic weapons.

When he reached the command center, Maslov skirted the building to the left and entered through a side door. The value of the four ceiling-mounted air conditioners was immediately apparent. The perspiration on his forehead dried quickly. He felt chilled.

No-air operations were planned for the day — their necessary training flights for the pilots took place at night — and the chairs in front of the radar and communications consoles were vacant. He crossed the control room and entered the narrow corridor leading to the back of the building.

At the rear were offices for the base commander and his assistants, as well as a large space for pilot briefings. Along the corridor were smaller cubicles set aside for storage, hygiene, and dedicated tasks. Maslov turned into the one identified as “Global Communications.”

General Oleg Druzhinin, the base commander, was seated in one of the two chairs available in the small room. He was not an imposing man. With moderate stature, bland facial features, and mousy brown hair, he was the kind who disappeared in the crowds of nearly any city in the world. His mind was sharp, however, and his reflexes, while slowed somewhat as he approached sixty years of age, were still capable of commanding MiG-25s and MiG-29s.

With the general was Sergeant Nikita Kasartskin, a lumbering bear of a man whose massive hands were extremely adroit with computer keyboards. Kasartskin was their top communications and computer specialist. He was seated before the massive global communications console which, with its super secret encryption devices, had accompanied Anatoly Shelepin on his flight from Moscow. The antenna complex required for the machine, along with the antennas for the radars, was located two kilometers to the south, at the top of a hill in the jungle. The antennas were finished in matte camouflage paint and would never be seen by the human eye. Only search radars might detect them at a time when they were radiating energy.

“Good afternoon, Comrade General,” Maslov said. “Sergeant Kasartskin.”

“Come in, Colonel Maslov,” the general said. “We were about to review the morning’s tapes.”

“I wonder if they will be informative?” Maslov asked.

“Who knows? I doubt it. Proceed, Sergeant”

Against one wall was a bank of forty tape recording drives. The technician could assign them to monitoring forty of the thousands of frequencies in the Commonwealth satellite system. That they could still tap into the old Soviet satellite communications was a wonder, but not an awesome wonder. The breakup of the state, with various republics assuming control of bits and pieces of the Soviet military, communications, and intelligence apparatus, had resulted not only in confusion, but also in trust. The new commanders in the Commonwealth assumed that the security of the system was still intact. Kasartskin, too, was circumspect in his use of the system.

Normally, he only drew information from it. Only rarely was it used for transmission of data or voice communications, and then on unused channels. The likelihood of the Commonwealth members discovering the usage was not high, and the system provided them with, as the sign outside the door said, a global communication and listening ability that was worth billions of rubles.

Maslov leaned against the doorjamb as Kasartskin played his nimble fingers over the keyboard. All of the tape drives began to whir, searching forward until finding a transmission, then halting to wait until the transmission was replayed over the speaker mounted in the ceiling. The replays were automatically queued, and once one drive had disgorged its data, it searched forward again while another drive was replayed.

The sergeant watched a readout on his cathode ray tube, commenting on the source of the transmission: “That is Molniya I in polar orbit… here is Salyut 7 over the eastern United States…”

If the message transmitted was graphic, rather than vocal, it appeared on the console CRT as well as on the screen of a monitor placed near General Druzhinin. All of the messages were in the clear, decoded by the encryption devices. If the message appeared innocuous in the beginning, Kasartskin tapped one of his keys, and the machine jumped to the next message. For such reasons, the review went quickly.

The session still required two hours, and by the time it was done, Maslov had settled to an uncomfortable seat on the linoleum floor.

“That is all there is, Comrade General,” Sergeant Kasartskin said.

“Very well. You may reset the machines,” the general said as he rose from his chair.

Maslov pushed himself to his feet and followed the commander back to his office.

It was a tiny office. Prefabricated buildings were not intended to be spacious.

Druzhinin sat down behind his small, gray metal desk. “Well, Aleksander Illiyich?”

“The segments which eavesdropped on American communications were the most interesting, General.”

“Even while undecoded?”

Indirectly, their eavesdropping on Commonwealth satellites provided them with some intelligence about American activities through U.S. communications that were being monitored. They were neither staffed nor equipped to decode the American messages, but frequently, that was not necessary.

“There is no change in tone, urgency, or frequency from earlier messages,” Maslov said. “My interpretation is that the Americans have not increased their level of defensive alertness. I suspect that they are acting as if nothing of import has occurred.”

Druzhinin smiled.

And Maslov smiled back at him.

DELTA BLUE

Because he had faith in Tony Munoz and the WSO’s equipment, McKenna was covering his search area at sixty thousand feet of altitude and twice the speed of sound. They could cover a lot more area at Mach 2.

They were conserving the turbojets, boosting on rocket motors, then shutting them down to coast in parabolic curves. Munoz had set their search pattern on a north and south grid, and they had already covered all of Vietnam and part of Laos, stretching their area between the Chinese border on the north and latitude ten degrees North on the southern end. When they were finished with their portion of the Asian continent, they would cover Malaya and Sumatra.

“I’m changing tapes again, jefe.”

“Amy’s going to have a year’s worth of video,” McKenna told him over the ICS, the Internal Communications System.

“I’m just shootin’ everythin’ in sight, pilgrim. Don’t want to miss anythin’ at all.”

“You make a lousy John Wayne.”

“Do not”

“Do, too. Wayne didn’t have an Arizona border accent.”

“Wayne didn’t know what he was missin’,” Munoz told him.

“Do you think we’ve gotten anything worth having yet?”

“I doubt it. There were a few possibles in South Vietnam. Probably old strips from the war.”

“It’s lousy terrain,” McKenna said. “I’m glad I missed those games.”

“Me, too, amigo. Me, too.”

From a tactical point of view, McKenna couldn’t help thinking he might have made a difference if he had been flying at the time. From a more practical point of view, he figured the politicians had made victory impossible. It happened all too frequently, though he had been impressed by the President’s allowing the military to conduct the war in the Persian Gulf. He suspected, however, that the decision to end it at one hundred days was a political and public relations decision that would increasingly haunt the political hacks.

McKenna noted that the speed was down to Mach 1.8 as they approached the end of their northbound run.

“We’ll make the turn, Tiger, then boost again.”

“Roger. We can go at any time. That’s Dien Bien Phu off the right wingtip. Another couple minutes and we’ll be hittin’ the Chinese border.”

“Is that politically correct?” McKenna asked him.

“Don’t think so.”

“Turning now” McKenna eased in left stick and rudder, keeping the nose down to maintain speed. When the gyro compass read 270 degrees, he leveled out.

Using the Global Positioning System (GPS) as an aid to his navigation, Munoz ticked off twenty-five miles before telling him, “Come to one-eight-oh, Snake Eyes.”

By the time he had completed the turn, the airspeed was down to Mach 1.6, and the video screen was displaying a bleak picture of the high plateau area of northern Laos. This leg would take them across central Thailand and western Kampuchea.

“Let’s goose her a little, Tiger.”

“Roger. Checklist coming up.”

Munoz put the checklist on the rearview screen and read it off quickly.

The rocket motors ignited smoothly, and McKenna used sixty-five percent power to accelerate to Mach 2.2, climbing to an altitude of 63,000 feet.

He left Munoz alone as the WSO studied the terrain on the screen, cutting in the video tape any time something suspicious appeared.

“Shutting down rockets,” he said.

Pulling the rocket power levers back past their detents, he watched the readouts. The starboard motor came quickly to zero, the igniter cut off, and the anti-blowback valve position displayed as closed. The CO2 pressure in the pellet tank measured 10,294 PSI.

The port motor power readout came slowly down to twelve percent. And stayed there.

The igniter remained operative.

The anti-blowback valve remained open.

McKenna jiggled the throttle handle.

Still twelve percent power on the motor, and nearly eleven thousand PSI of pressure in the tanks, feeding the pellets to the combustion chamber.

“Tiger.”

“I see it, jefe. Anti-blowback valve’s stuck open. The interlock is keepin’ the igniter on.”

“I’m going to try the emergency valve shut down.”

“Go.”

McKenna had to lean to his right and shift his shoulders in order to tilt his helmet enough to see the circuit breaker panels on the left side. He found the correct switch and closed it.

“No change, compadre. We’ve got us a real stuck valve.” Already, he was having to balance the power on the left side against the drag on the right by correcting with the rudders.

He ran the power lever forward.

No change.

“We ever run a simulation on this before, Tiger?”

“Nothin’ like it, Snake Eyes. Everythin’ we guessed could happen was power loss at critical moments. This is power on at an uncritical moment.”

McKenna pulled the nose up, to keep the speed from building up on him.

“We’ve got several choices, Tiger.”

“I’ve been flashin’ on them. One, we can just burn off the fuel load, but that’ll leave us way out of balance — five thousand pounds in the starboard tanks. And at one-two per cent, it’ll take over an hour.”

“The slow combustion may also, clog the rocket nozzle.”

“That happens, we’ll get a pressure buildup in the combustion chamber.”

“Which we don’t want,” McKenna said.

“At least I don’t. Maybe I’ll call Mitchell.” “Why don’t you do that?”

USSC-1

Strapped into her cubicle office, Amy Pearson reviewed the photo and dossier scrolling down her screen. General Vitaly Sheremetevo had once been the Deputy Commander in Chief of the Red Air Force. He was sixty-two years of age, with well-deserved gray hair. Under the new regime, he had been recognized as a patriot, and he retained his responsibility for the Protivo-vozdushnaya Oborona (PVO Strany), the largest air defense force in the world. The PVO had over five thousand early-warning radars, twenty-five hundred interceptor aircraft, and fifty thousand surface-to-air missiles at its disposal. Ostensibly, it reported to the Commonwealth, but many of the republics were claiming ownership of parts of the command.

Donna Amber’s voice came over the intercom. “I’ve got a connection for you, Colonel. Channel four.”

“Thank you, Donna.” Pearson tapped the pad for channel four. “General Sheremetevo?”

“Yes, Colonel Pearson.”

“I would like you to know, General, that I have permission from General Marvin Brackman to speak with you. If you would like, I can have him call you to confirm that.”

“I do not believe that will be necessary, Colonel. How may I help you?”

“I have some questions regarding Colonel Pyotr Volontov’s 5th Interceptor Wing.”

The Red Air Force’s 5th Interceptor Wing had been allied with the 1st Aerospace Squadron during the New Germany crisis and had performed exceptionally well.

“Yes?” Sheremetevo said. “Go ahead.”

“After our… joint venture, the United States Department of Defense approved the sale of two Mako aerospace craft to your country for use with the wing. They are still operational, of course.”

She knew they were.

“Very much so, Colonel. And Colonel Volontov is quite pleased with them. Though naturally not as pleased as he might have been with the stealthy version.”

“Yes, I understand that,” she said. McKenna had told her about Volontov.

“We have assured both the United States and the United Nations of the peaceful mission assigned to the Mako, both before and after the changes in our national administration,” Sheremetevo told her.

“I do not have doubts in that regard, General. Rather, I would like to know the names of the pilots who have trained in the Mako, in addition to their current assignments.”

“May I inquire as to why?”

“I would prefer not to say at this time,” Pearson said. “General Brackman would be a far better source.”

After only a moment’s hesitation, Sheremetevo said, “I will talk with Colonel Volontov and then call you back.”

Chapter Five

DELTA BLUE

Lieutenant Colonel Bradley Mitchell, Beta One, was Chief of Maintenance for the 1st Aerospace Squadron fleet. He considered every Mako and MakoShark to be his exclusive property, merely on loan to their flight crews and the United States Air Force. Of course, every maintenance section member, enlisted or commissioned, felt the same way. If the craft were ever divided among their owners, no one would have much. Except Master Sergeant Benny Shalbot, maybe. The electronics specialist was meaner than many of his co-owners.

On the frequency McKenna had assigned to his Tactical Two radio channel, Mitchell said, “Delta Blue, you can clear your port side CO2 storage tank, then open the pressurization valve between it and the fuel storage and take the pressure off the pellet feed.”

“If I do that, Beta, we may get a backfeed of pellets into the carbon dioxide tanks.”

“We worried about my bird or about one contaminated tank?” Mitchell asked.

“It means stripping the bonded skin off the wing to repair it,” McKenna told him, “and that means three or four days. I don’t want the downtime. Can’t have it.”

“Damn it, Blue! Let’s weigh the cost of the craft and the cost of a CO2 tank…”

“And lost air time,” McKenna broke in. “Delta Green is the priority now.”

“Ah, hell.”

“We need a design change so we can depressurize the pellet tank without backing into the CO2 tanks,” Munoz said, thinking ahead.

“I’m already thinking about it,” Polly Tang, the maintenance deputy, said, “but that’s future. Right now, I’ve got the schematic up on my screen. I don’t think the anti-blowback valve is the problem. The problem is going to be in the actuator that controls the valve, or in the actuator relay. You tried the redundant system, Snake Eyes?”

“Already closed, Beta Two.”

The MakoShark was flying nose high, but when he glanced through the canopy to his left, McKenna saw the coastline passing below. The South China Sea was a pretty blue, leaning toward emerald.

“All right, Delta Blue,” Mitchell said, “we can override the igniter interlock and shut down the igniter. The pellets will continue to flow.”

“And jam up the combustion chamber and nozzle,” McKenna noted.

“Maybe. Still, we can change those without stripping bonded skin,” Mitchell said.

“Give me another option, Beta.”

“Jesus Christ! What thrust are you developing?” Mitchell asked.

“One five thousand indicated.”

“Hold one, I’m calculating now,” the maintenance officer said.

On the intercom, Munoz asked, “Snake Eyes, you thinking of trying to land with an active rocket motor?”

“I want to see if Brad is thinking along the same lines. You want to get out here, Tiger?”

“Nah. I’ve been along when you’ve done worse.”

“Okay, Delta Blue,” Mitchell said. “Start your turbojets twenty minutes out of Wet Country. On the approach, we want forty per cent power on the right engine and five per cent power on the left. That should balance the power development, but you’re going to come in hot, fifty-five or sixty knots above normal. On the flareout, go immediately to a hundred percent reverse thrust on the left engine. That’ll maybe neutralize the rocket thrust. No more than ten per cent reverse thrust on the right engine.”

“And lay into the brakes?” Munoz asked.

“We’ll probably burn out the brakes,” Mitchell said. “And we’ll likely be thinking about new tires also.”

“I’m alerting the crash crews now,” Polly Tang said. “We’ll have mechanics on the runway, ready to open the nacelle and shut down the anti-blowback valve.”

“Sounds good to me,” McKenna said. “Alpha One, you listening in?”

“I’ve got a copy,” General Overton said.

“Comments?”

“It’s your call. Take your time, Delta Blue.”

“Good luck, Snake Eyes,” Amy Pearson said.

Everyone on board Themis seemed to be listening in on the conversation. Probably holding their collective breath.

Munoz spoke up on the ICS. “You just watch, amigo. In about five minutes, Big General Cartwright is goin’ to come on the air and tell us he doesn’t want any rubber strips left on his runway.”

“He’d really scream about large pieces of MakoShark, wouldn’t he?” McKenna asked.

“Let’s go back to talkin’ about smoked tires instead, Snake Eyes.”

McKenna spent the next half hour concentrating on keeping the nose high in order to bleed off speed. Munoz developed an approach pattern for them and coordinated it with the tower personnel at Wet Country.

Coming out of supersonic flight was a rattler, with the craft bobbing around her part of the sky for a few minutes. McKenna whispered nice things to her, and she finally came around and resumed her nose high attitude.

“Goin’ active, Snake Eyes.”

“Go.”

Munoz switched his radar from passive to active mode in order to check the immediate vicinity for air traffic.

“Passive,” he reported when he had switched back. “No traffic to sweat.”

They went through the turbojet start-up sequence more carefully than usual. Both engines started without problems after he put the nose down enough to get a clear airflow through the intakes.

McKenna didn’t feel any unusual tension. It would be an abnormal landing, but he had been in tighter spots.

Munoz handled the radio chores, leaving McKenna free to manipulate the throttles and concentrate on the approach to the runway.

“Wet Country, Delta Blue,” the backseater called.

“Gotcha, Blue. Give me a status.”

“We’ve got seven-zero-zero knots, angels ten, sixty miles out.”

“Squawk me once.”

Munoz turned on the modified IFF, Identify Friend or Foe, briefly to give the controller an identified blip on his radar screen.

“I see you. You’re clean straight in on ought-one. Wind is normal, meaning nothing. Barometric pressure two nine point eight.”

McKenna didn’t bother sight-seeing. He kept his eyes scanning the HUD and the instrument panel, watching for delicate imbalances that he could control with the throttles. Easing the nose up, he bled speed off by approaching stalling speed, but he didn’t want to raise the angle of attack so high that he cut into the airflow for the turbojets and stalled them out.

“Four-three-five knots,” Munoz reported. “We’re looking for about three-ten, right?”

“In that neighborhood, Tiger. Altitude?”

“On the radar altimeter, we’re showing two-five-five-zero.”

Munoz’s instrument readouts agreed with his own, which was reassuring.

The MakoShark kept lowering her tail, pancaking toward the earth at over four hundred miles per hour. The stall warning buzzer and panel light ignited once, and McKenna brought the nose down a trifle.

“Three miles, jefe.”

“Good a guess as any.”

“Hey, man! I say anythin’ about give-or-take a few feet?”

“Just checking.”

Mitchell’s numbers were just numbers. They didn’t feel right to a pilot who had learned to trust his instincts as well as his instruments. Old barnstormers never die.

“Outer marker,” Munoz reported, then told the tower the same thing.

“We’ve got visual on you,” the air controller called back.

Far ahead of Mitchell’s recommendation and two miles out, McKenna eased the left throttle into reverse thrust, beginning to counteract the rocket motor. He pulled the right throttle back to twenty per cent power, until the rudders felt balanced.

The MakoShark settled abruptly.

“Five hundred ground clearance,” Munoz said, his voice steady and firm.

McKenna nudged the nose down.

The airspeed picked up for a few seconds then began to fall off.

“Three hundred feet.”

The airspeed dropped to 320 knots. The controls felt iffy. The right wing dropped, and he brought it back up with minor pressure on the controller.

“Fifty feet, airspeed three-one-zero.”

The noise of the rocket motor all but drowned out the sound of the turbojets now. He didn’t hear the shriek of rubber when the main gear tires touched down.

McKenna had to use the brakes to bring the nose down, and it hit hard and bounced. He pulled reverse thrust into both engines, but at different rates, and the MakoShark slewed from side to side as he sought the right adjustments.

Halfway down the runway, with the MakoShark still moving too fast, the emergency vehicles roared onto the runway alongside him, but quickly fell behind.

He was standing on the brakes now, the MakoShark’s path straightening as she slowed.

Easing off the reverse thrust of the right engine to maintain his line.

Drifting to the right side of the runway.

And rolling off the concrete onto the hard-baked soil of Borneo.

And slithering to a stop.

Dust boiled the air around them.

The scream of the left turbojet countering the thrust of the rocket motor threatened to deafen him. He killed the starboard jet engine.

“Come on, people,” Munoz urged.

Several seconds later, red foam trucks and blue pickups came sliding up beside them, spilling firemen and mechanics dressed in silver heat-resistant suits.

MOSCOW, RUSSIA

Vitaly Sheremetevo looked up from his desk when he heard the tap on the door frame.

Corporal Petrovsky, his secretary, said, “Colonel Volontov has arrived, General.”

“Send him in, Corporal.”

Sheremetevo took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes as Volontov entered the office and came to attention.

“At ease, Pyotr Mikhailovich. Please have a chair.”

Colonel Pyotr Mikhailovich Volontov was almost 180 centimeters tall, slim, blond, and blue-eyed. Hard angles in the planes of his face reflected the overhead fluorescent lights. He was an intelligent man, and he did not often concede to impetuous authority. He was based in St. Petersburg (once Leningrad) and commanded the 5th Interceptor Wing, comprised of Mikoyan MiG-29s and the two Mako aerospace craft. Sheremetevo had adopted the man early in his career and protected him occasionally when he had balked at ridiculous orders and had come close to insubordination.

“I came as soon as I could, General”

“I appreciate that,” Sheremetevo said. He considered taking a walk along the parade ground for this conversation, but reminded himself that his office had been swept for eavesdropping devices that morning. Electronic eavesdropping had been a constant under the old Soviet regime, but he had yet to discover similar tactics used by the Commonwealth members. The jockeying for power among republic presidents and politicians remained the focus of the political arena for the time being. The military chiefs were currently more concerned with walking the tightropes strung between the republics — and keeping the payrolls coming in — than with risking their own power bases within the air force and army.

He told Volontov about Colonel Pearson’s request.

“She wishes to have the names of the men who have trained in the Mako?”

“Yes.”

“For what purpose, General?”

“That was not revealed to me, and I have not bothered guessing at it. Our last report to the United Nations stated that the Makos were being utilized solely for support of the Soyuz Fifty space station, and that we retain one craft on the ground until the other has returned from space. Is that not so, Colonel?”

“That is correct, in addition to their training roles,” Volontov said. “In fact, both are on the ground now while we await a shipment of fuel pellets.”

“And the status of the space station?”

“Operations are going quite well, General. There are seventeen scientific experiments under way at the moment. We have three men permanently assigned, and next month, we will embark our first female member of the station crew.”

Sheremetevo nodded thoughtfully. He had not fully supported the training schedule for the woman, but Volontov had been impressed by some female pilot of McKenna’s squadron and had insisted upon a trial period for a woman.

“How many pilots have washed out of your program?” he asked the colonel.

Volontov closed his eyes, thinking. “Without the records available, I estimate that we have trained thirty-two or thirty-three. I know that nine have qualified. All excellent pilots, General.”

“That is above a twenty-five per cent qualification rate,” Sheremetevo said. “General Brackman would be impressed, I think, since the Americans only qualify twelve per cent of their pilot candidates”

“Our training development is always on-going. We can always be better than we are now.”

“I agree. Do you have any objection to providing the list of disqualified candidates to Colonel Pearson?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Volontov said, “No, although we should keep in mind that many of those men have returned to assignments in other fighter aircraft. They are still capable pilots, General, though not suited to the requirements of space flight.”

“I think the current state of affairs between the Commonwealth and the United States allows us to be a bit more candid than we have been in the past. You said, ‘many’ of the pilots, Pyotr Mikhailovich. What of the others?”

“During the unrest, five or six officers in my command defected. You have that report, General.”

“Yes. I had forgotten.”

There were many reasons for the high number of defections, Sheremetevo knew. Many men had not been paid for months. Many had assembled their families and fled to other sanctuaries for idealistic, religious, and ethnic protection. There had been no pattern to the desertions: conscripts, company, field, and general grade personnel had eventually been erased from the active duty rolls. The political instability had kept everyone scrambling, and no effort had been made toward seeking out the deserters and setting examples. An unstated policy of “let bygones be bygones” had prevailed.

Sheremetevo scrawled a quick, handwritten order and passed it across the desk to Volontov. “Very well. Send Colonel Pearson a complete listing of your pilots, and indicate the ones who have failed or who have defected. Except for your currently active pilots, send her the complete file on each man.”

“Should we provide that much information, General?”

“I think that she will not disseminate the data irrelevant to her purposes among the intelligence agencies,” Sheremetevo said. “Especially if I ask her not to do so.”

Volontov started to say something, then clamped his mouth shut.

“A comment, Pyotr Mikhailovich?”

“No, General.”

“Come, now.”

“How far are we going to trust our new allies?” Volontov asked.

“Would you fly wing for Colonel McKenna? Or trust him on your wing?”

“I… yes, General, I would.”

“As long as we are dealing with his command, I will expand my trust somewhat. Could you do the same?” Volontov nodded and allowed a grim smile. “I can do that, General.”

JACK ANDREWS AIR BASE

Koro Toro, the nearest village, was over a hundred miles away from Jack Andrews Air Base. “Hot Country” was located in the middle of Chad in Northeast Africa. It was forbidding territory, located on the southern edge of what was known as the Bodelo Depression. The clay and sand sediment of the landscape stretched for miles in every direction. The temperatures routinely climbed to 124 degrees. At night, the terrain surrounding the base had the appearance of a lunarscape. Wind-eroded rock and sand formations seemed to change daily. The air was clear, though, and the stars were brilliant without a layer of pollution to block their light.

Like Merlin Air Base in Borneo, the base in Chad was semi-covert. The MakoSharks could operate freely in the barren desert during daylight hours, and the base had been selected as the site for training and flight trial missions.

To protect them from overflight surveillance, the MakoSharks were parked and serviced inside Hangar One. Three more hangars and a massive three-story residential building comprised the rest of the main base.

“Let’s have a picnic,” George Williams said.

“You’re shitting me,” Dimatta told him.

“It’s almost five o’clock.”

“And the damned temperature is ninety-five.”

“Be brave.”

“The hell with being brave,” Dimatta said.

But they got two box lunches from the kitchen (a huge chef’s salad for Williams and meatball heros for Dimatta) and a six-pack of iced beer. Williams selected the direction, and they walked west.

Dimatta spread a blanket at the foot of a small dune and they sat down. The sweat was pouring off his forehead. The sun was off in the west, reconsidering its impulsive decision to go down.

“There should be a launch in about twenty minutes,” Williams said.

“Nitro, this is nuts, sitting out in the middle of the damned desert, watching a launch that’s so routine it’s like watching a dishwasher.” He chomped into his sandwich and thought that the cook could have been more generous with the spices used in the meatballs.

Hot Country, like the Borneo base, provided launch and recovery services for the HoneyBee resupply rockets. The launch complex, located west of the main base, was linked to it by a twin set of railroad tracks. Behind them in the gigantic hangars were specially fitted C-130 Hercules aircraft utilized as the recovery vehicles for the rockets. The C-130 made its first attempt to capture a HoneyBee descending by parachute at about thirty thousand feet. That way, if it missed, the aircraft would have time for a couple more passes. A loop of cable trailing from the aircraft snared the parachute shrouds, then the rocket was winched aboard, sliding into a rollered cradle in the plane’s cargo bay. When the Hercules missed its prey, which happened infrequently, and the HoneyBee splashed down in the sea or crunched down in the desert, the Chinook helicopters were used to recover the hulk.

The HoneyBee vehicle was forty-six feet long and nine feet in diameter, segmented into four compartments: nose cone, which contained the electronics; payload bay; fuel compartment; and propulsion system. For launch, there was an additional, non-recoverable booster engine that was jettisoned at three hundred thousand feet. The reentry shroud over the nose cone, cast in ceramic, was good for six or seven return trips into the atmosphere and was then replaced.

In a typical mission profile, supplies stored in Hangar Four were packed into the cargo modules. At the back of Hangar Three, a recovered rocket was examined and refurbished, then moved to Hangar Two for final calibration, fueling with the solid-fuel pellets, and insertion of a cargo module. The HoneyBee was then moved to one of the three launch pads on a small railroad flat car.

Upon launch, a HoneyBee generally achieved rendezvous with Themis in about three hours. In ten years, only four HoneyBees had been destroyed during launch, and nine had malfunctioned in space. Six of them had disintegrated upon reentry.

Many of the HoneyBees returned to Earth with cargo aboard. Pharmaceutical formulas and electronic components assembled in the zero gravity and nearly pure vacuum of space were making new inroads on technological frontiers. The Air Force’s contract clients performed biological experiments and shot fantastically clear telescopic photographs. The fees charged by the Air Force for these services were extremely high, as were the first-class tickets aboard a Mako for biologists, chemists, engineers and other scientists who wanted short stints of duty aboard Themis.

Dimatta and Williams had spent quite a few months transporting snotty passengers in a Mako before McKenna recruited them for the hot aerospace fighter. Neither wanted to go back to the mundane duties of a shuttle crew.

“What do you think,” Williams asked cautiously.

“What do I think of what?”

“The new bird, asshole!”

They had taken Delta Orange on its first hop in the afternoon, a round trip that lasted less than ten minutes. The objective was only to test takeoff and landing profiles and instrumentation. Dimatta had not exceeded five hundred knots.

“It’s all right,” he said. “They’re all a little different, and I haven’t quite found the controller touch I want.”

“Yeah. I wonder how they’re doing?”

“Who’s doing?”

“The search. Maybe we should call Snake Eyes.”

“I bet he’ll let us know if there’s any progress,” Dimatta said.

“I wish we weren’t sitting around here.”

“Soon as we get Orange straightened out, we’ll be back in the fray.”

“I find the son of a bitch who took her, I’m going to take him apart one organ at a time,” Williams vowed.

“Not without my help.”

Williams nodded morosely and forked a chunk of lettuce into his mouth. He chewed slowly and thoroughly.

Dimatta figured Williams’s mother had told him to do it that way.

Williams said, “It’s not the same, Gancha. Can’t come up with a name for her.”

Dimatta didn’t have to ask for clarification. Williams had always called Delta Green’s computer Josie for undisclosed reasons.

“Don’t try so hard, George. It’ll come.”

“I don’t think so.”

Their combined depression was interrupted by the squawk of a siren from the vicinity of Launch Pad Two. Red and blue strobe lights erupted in the gathering dusk. Figures in silver protective suits scattered for bunkers.

The squat HoneyBee sitting on the pad lost its only companion as the gantry tower slid away.

Seven minutes elapsed.

Dimatta finished his first sandwich, opened another beer, and started on the second sandwich. For some reason, the meatballs tasted spicier.

Since the rockets used the pellet form of solid fuel, launches were much safer than in the past, and the countdowns were considerably foreshortened.

White-hot flame spewed from beneath the pad, and the rocket lifted off, slow as heavy cream. After a moment’s indecision, the rocket abruptly accelerated, now trailing white vapor. The roaring thunder of ignition rolled across the dunes, and by the time it reached them, the HoneyBee was a mile high. In minutes it was a mote on the darkening sky, indistinguishable except for the vapor trail.

“I wish to hell I was on board that thing,” Williams said.

“No, you don’t,” Dimatta told him. “It’s all remote controlled. You wouldn’t have a damned thing to do.”

MAKO THREE

McKenna caught a ride back to Themis on a milk run Mako carrying foodstuffs to replenish the stores of Army Staff Sergeant Delbert O’Hara, the chief Steward aboard the station. Almost all of the station’s food was pre-prepared Earth-side, brought up in refrigerated bins, and stored in the hub. It was transferred to the dining modules as needed by O’Hara, who reported to Deputy Commander Milt Avery. O’Hara did a credible job with what he had to work with, making frequent changes in his offerings and developing new recipes of his own for the specialists on Earth to develop into pouchable products.

Though it pained him to do so, McKenna rode in the cargo bay, in one of the passenger modules, since he would never usurp the flight command of one of his pilots, in this case, Navy Commander Art Ingram. McKenna used the Mako craft as the screening and training program for pilots — or in the naval tradition of Ingram’s case, aviators — who might eventually graduate to command of the MakoShark. The Mako pilots never got close to a MakoShark until McKenna was ready for them to do so, and he knew that all of them yearned to do so. If Brackman had been successful in obtaining a new MakoShark this year, he had already selected Ken Autry, commanding Mako Three, as its pilot. Now, with Delta Green gone, it appeared as if the schedule was again going to be delayed.

Benny Shalbot directed the docking, then closed the hangar doors and pressurized the hangar with breathable atmosphere. While he waited for technicians to free him from his cocoon, McKenna unbuckled his harness and spoke on the intercom, “Nice ride, Art. You, too, Glenn.”

Glenn Farrell, the backseater, was a Marine major.

“Thanks, Colonel. Do you have any pointers for us?” Ingram asked.

“None. You get gold stars on your OERs.”

The Officer Efficiency Reports, completed by supervising officers, were the primary sources of information for promotion boards.

With the craft’s payload bay doors open, one of the technicians unlocked and opened the hatch to the passenger module, and McKenna pushed himself downward through it. Momentum kept him going until he reached a hangar cell wall — every surface of every compartment aboard the station was a wall. Flexing his knees at contact, he straightened them with a snap and ricocheted off the wall toward the hatchway in the center of the inside bulkhead, sailing under the nose of the Mako.

The old hands aboard the station, practice making perfect, zipped around in the zero-gravity environment with alacrity. Strategically placed handholds and the textured plastic surface of bulkheads were launch, diversion, and landing points. The veterans found comic relief in the flight patterns of newcomers who learned quickly that momentum did not die away and that accuracy in launch meant fewer heads bumped against the wall next to a hatchway.

McKenna stopped himself by grabbing the edge of the hatchway and eased into the corridor. Benny Shalbot was tethered by Velcro straps to the hangar control console below a window that overlooked the inside of the hangar cell. He was double-checking the content of the atmosphere he had pumped into the cell and shutting down the control systems.

Shalbot looked like a weight-lifting leprechaun. Nearly bald, with a bulbous nose and a large head, he was muscled and fit. And beneath all that pate was a brain that not only remembered most of the formulas and schematics involved in radio, radar, computer, and weapons systems electronics, but also understood them.

“How you doing, Benny?”

“This fucking job is driving me crazy, Colonel.”

“Maybe it’s time to go Earth-side for awhile,” McKenna suggested.

“What! And lose my hazardous duty pay?”

Shalbot was among the first to bitch about the Air Force, the station, and his chores, but he would also be the first to stand ankle-deep in the gore and blood running from his wounds, and defend it.

“You okay, Colonel?”

“Fine, Benny.”

“Grapevine says an actuator relay cut out on Blue.”

“That’s what they told me.”

“Goddamn it! I should have caught it.”

Shalbot ran the electronics diagnostics tests on all of the aerospace craft, every time they docked at Themis, updating Brad Mitchell’s centralized computer maintenance files.

“It was probably fine when you tested it, Benny. Hell, you can’t catch all the glitches.”

“I can damn sure try”

“Don’t sweat it, Benny.”

McKenna grabbed a handhold on the console and pushed off toward the “down” end of the corridor. “Down” was toward the outer rim of the hub, and toward the spokes, and “up” was toward the core.

The hub was divided like two onion slices into the hangar/storage half and another half that was a maze of corridors, offices, and more storage spaces. Technicians swam along the corridors, appearing from and disappearing into labs and maintenance areas.

McKenna waved through a window at Mitchell as he went by the maintenance office, then slowed to peek into the exercise room. It was Compartment A-47, but outside of the station commander and the maintenance officer, McKenna didn’t know anyone who called it that.

It was fitted on all walls with specialized equipment for maintaining muscle tone. On the wall opposite the door was a small centrifugal weight machine. All of those aboard who did not regularly return to the Earth’s surface were provided with an exercise regimen by the station’s doctor. And everyone spent ten or fifteen minutes a day spinning in the artificial gravity of the centrifugal weight machine.

As he watched, the centrifugal machine spun down to a stop, and Polly Tang unbuckled herself from the seat.

“Hi, Kevin.”

“Want to come along and watch me change out of my flight suit?”

“No.”

“Want to join me for lunch?”

“Sure. My treat.”

Tang was wearing the blue jumpsuit with built-in boots that everyone aboard Themis wore for its practicality. It did not disguise the trim curves of her petite figure. That view, however, would be as close as he would get. Though the two of them had enjoyed their repartee for a long time, Tang was married to the chief HoneyBee engineer at Wet Country and had two children she adored.

She waited while he slipped into the pilots’ locker room, doffed his environmental suit, and pulled on a fresh jumpsuit. Aboard the space station, no one wore insignia or badges of rank.

He pulled himself through the curtain back into the corridor. “Ready, lover?”

“After you,” she said.

“The view’s better if I follow you.”

“After you,” she said.

McKenna grinned and asked, “Do you have a dining preference?”

“The Skylight Room in Sixteen today, I think.”

“A charming place,” McKenna agreed, and shoved off the hatchway jamb. Tang followed.

The corridor bisected the hub, and when McKenna reached the curved hallway that went clear around the outer diameter of the hub, he caromed off the outer wall, pushing off again. He heard Tang’s feet slap at the bulkhead as she pursued him.

Self-sealing round doors that led into the spokes were spaced irregularly off this pathway. There were seventeen spokes at the moment, though the corridor also had an additional seven doors, sealed and painted red, to accommodate future spokes. There were also airlocks on opposite sides of the hub to allow access to the exterior for repair and maintenance.

The colors were vibrant and important. Amy Pearson had designed the color scheme which designated that red-painted hatches were verboten and orange hatches were keypad locked and restricted except for particular authorized personnel. The entries to nuclear reactor, communications, ordnance, fuel, MakoShark hangar, and computer spaces were orange. Yellow hatches defined those areas where civilians might be invited under escort, such as the Command Center, the Mako bays, and the HoneyBee docks. Blue signified military-only, and green or blue/green denoted spaces accessible to the civilian scientists who regularly inhabited the station.

Colored stripes ran along the corridors to indicate what kind of a space the transient was in. If unescorted civilians didn’t see green somewhere in the vicinity, they were out of bounds. Station military personnel frequently had to remind civilians who transgressed the color scheme.

Protected by a yellow hatchway, Spoke One led to the Command Center module.

Seven of the spokes were open to civilians, Two through Eight, and offered three residential modules and four laboratory modules. Additionally, civilians were welcome in some of the hub compartments: the clinic, laundry, exercise room, and the contractor communications compartment.

Spoke Nine contained the nuclear power plant. Like the spokes containing fuel storage and ordnance, it was secured to the hub with explosive bolts so that it could be jettisoned in an emergency.

Spoke Nine B was the most recently constructed, and its large module was utilized for repairing KH-11, Teal Ruby, and other satellites retrieved from their orbits by Mako workhorses. Major Kenneth Autry was McKenna’s chief pilot on that shuttle service.

Spokes Ten through Sixteen were military-only, housing laboratories, repair and storage areas, fuel and ordnance, and the like. It was assumed that civilians would not take kindly to knowledge of the kinds of weaponry that were aboard the station. And civilians as well as much of the military complement were denied up-close looks at the MakoShark.

At the end of their spokes, four modules were residential, containing sixteen individual sleeping quarters, recreation/dining spaces, kitchens, and personal hygiene stations. The personnel complement was divided into separate dormitory areas for safety, rather than for organizational reasons. With an accidental blowout in one of the residential modules, three-fourths of the space station’s human contingent would still be intact. Orientation lectures stressing those kinds of safety measures for temporary residents, like a physicist or biologist, brought an ashy shade to their faces.

McKenna and Tang took hold of grab bars at Spoke Sixteen to stop their momentum, and he tapped the large green button mounted on the bulkhead. The automatic door rotated two inches to free itself from the locking tangs, then swung open on its massive hinge. The hinge was mounted solidly to the bulkhead, and two bars from the top and bottom of the hinge met in a “V” at the center of the round door, which pivoted on an axle at the point of the “V” Every door on the station automatically closed in the event of decompression.

McKenna offered a hand to Tang and pushed her through the hatch. Once he was clear, he tapped the red button on the other side. The door closed behind them as they tugged their way down the spoke. It was twelve feet in diameter and double walled. Between the walls ran the ventilation ducting, electrical conduits, heating and cooling coils, and thick insulation. Since the satellite did not rotate, there was a hot side and a cold or night side. One mainframe computer was dedicated to the task of cooling and heating the satellite’s skin in order to keep the variance of several hundred degrees bearable to the inhabitants.

Along the spoke’s thirty-foot length were access panels for maintenance and two yellow hatches; they were the only decorative aspect of the tube. The only windows, large portholes, on the station were located in the Command Center and in each of the three dining rooms. They were positioned so as to prevent the client contractor’s visiting scientists from viewing MakoShark arrivals and departures on the hangar side of the hub.

Visitors also were unaware that the yellow hatches in the residential spokes provided access to lifeboats. The boats attached to the spokes were nothing more them capsules with thirty days of oxygen and edibles, but knowledge of their presence could be upsetting to delicate academic minds.

McKenna and Tang floated past the section of sleeping and hygiene compartments and into the dining room. These spaces were also the only recreational areas, and they had actual tables and chairs to which people could fasten themselves. Board and card games were available. Electronic games were attached to one bulkhead.

The kitchen was against yet another bulkhead in the form of O’Hara’s three dispensing stations, which he had labeled “Junk,” “Back Home,” and “Cuisine.”

They perused the offerings in each specialty.

“Light lunch for me,” Tang told him, selecting a salad encased in a plastic pouch.

McKenna opened a clear plastic door in the “Back Home” dispenser and picked up a chicken-fried steak sandwich. He floated across to the microwave oven and zapped it for two minutes.

Tang retrieved coffee pouches, sailed them to him, and he heated them, also.

Then they towed their luncheon to a table and strapped themselves down.

Two off-duty techs were zapping asteroids or something at one of the electronic games, but otherwise the compartment was deserted. A pink, dawnish view of Antarctica dominated the porthole. Streaks of dark gray crevices ran like veins through the pink ice.

McKenna ripped the tape from the straw for his coffee pouch and took a sip. The coffee was as good as that in any American truck stop.

“How are the kids, Polly?”

She gave him one of her great smiles. “Danny likes his school, or so he says. And I’m going Earth-side next week for Maggie’s fourth birthday.”

“It’s about time for you to stay Earth-side, isn’t it?”

“I’m going to do one more six-month tour. God, I’m going to miss it, Kevin.”

He opened his sandwich pouch and took a bite out of it. There was no gravy, and it wasn’t as crumbly as it should have been, but it wasn’t bad. Most of their food lacked textures and liquefaction that was natural on Earth. Gravy and crumbs tended to float around and get in the way of other activities.

“You haven’t reported in,” Tang accused.

“They’ll find me if they need me.”

“Tell me about Amy,” she said. She had soft gray eyes that laughed a lot, and they were amused just then.

“Amy?”

“Come on, McKenna. You two got a thing going?”

“Hey, where do you get that?”

“Everyone knows the relationship has changed. Since the New Germany bit.”

He was spared answering by the PA system.

“Colonel McKenna, contact the Command Center,” Overton ordered.

“Excuse me, Polly.”

He released his Velcro seatbelt and shoved off the chair for a wall-mounted intercom.

Pressing the pad labeled “Cmd Cntr,” he said, “McKenna”

Overton responded, “You want to come over here, McKenna? We’ve got a UFO closing on a HoneyBee.”

Chapter Six

NEW WORLD BASE

Comrades Shelepin and Pavel were late and arrived at the airfield just a few minutes before the encounter was to take place.

As the two generals deplaned from their civilian-marked Dassault MD.315, a thirty-year-old, twin-engined transport that could traverse Southeast Asia without raising eyebrows, the ground crews were already winching the camouflaged hills back into place over the pierced steel plank runway.

Oleg Druzhinin crossed the field to the runway’s edge to meet them.

Druzhinin always felt diminutive and colorless when confronted with the mass of Shelepin. He could have been obese, but his immaculately tailored gray suit made him a block of granite. His face was beefy, and his piercing blue eyes were magnified by the lens of his wire-rimmed spectacles. His hair was full, trimmed carefully over the ears, and barely tinged with gray.

Sergei Pavel was several centimeters shorter than the Chairman of the New World Politburo. The Deputy Chairman had watery, pale eyes and sunken cheeks, and he was almost completely bald. He favored dark fedoras, even in the sweltering heat of Kampuchea. He, too, was dressed in a suit, but one which was fitted loosely to his emaciated frame. Both men wore ties, which Druzhinin thought demonstrated their inability to adapt to the climate.

Druzhinin greeted them warmly, and with only a modicum of deference. As Commander of the New World Defense Force, he also served in the role of defense minister on the Politburo.

“Oleg Vladimirivich,” Shelepin said, “the days have slipped by so quickly.”

They had not met as a group for three weeks. “And still they seem to drag, Anatoly. I had hoped you would arrive earlier so that I could show you the most recent accomplishments we have made here.”

“Perhaps later,” Shelepin said.

Anatoly Shelepin was a man who cared little for the details. He dreamed in global proportions, and he expected others to take care of the minutia. He did not see MiG-25s and Su-24s; he saw air power.

He also did not acknowledge defeat. As a younger officer in command of ground troops in Afghanistan, he had never suffered a defeat. Rather, he had redirected his forces into new offensives. Perhaps that was why he had achieved his stars so early in his career.

While their Dassault was manhandled back into the cover of the jungle, Druzhinin led the two leaders back to the command center. Once inside, he observed the mild relief on their faces as they encountered the air-conditioning.

Deputy Chairman Pavel pointed to the cold air vent and said, “You have indeed made changes since my last visit. Welcome changes.”

“We try to bring a little civilization to our hideaway, Sergei.”

Two technicians manned the radar and the communications consoles in the center, and Druzhinin had arranged three chairs behind them. Additionally, a small table held tea glasses and pastries.

Sergeant Nikita Kasartskin stood in the corridor leading to the back. He said, “Comrade Chairman, it is good to see you again.”

Kasartskin had served on Shelepin’s support staff for twelve years.

Anatoly Shelepin smiled warmly at him, “And you, also, Sergeant.”

The computer specialist grinned happily and turned back to his cubicle.

Druzhinin knew that Shelepin did not recall Kasartskin’s name. The Chairman did not see soldiers; he saw manpower.

The three of them took seats, and Druzhinin poured the iced tea.

He asked the corporal at the communication console, “What is the latest report from Colonel Maslov, Corporal Fedorchuk?”

The corporal turned to face him, “Comrade General, he reports that he is seven hundred kilometers away and closing rapidly.”

USSC-1

When McKenna reached the Command Center, he deflected himself off a bulkhead to miss Val Arguento, who was suspended outside the radio shack. Arguento was an Army Master Sergeant who served as both a communications specialist and the security NCO, deputy to Pearson.

Overton, Pearson, and Sergeant Joe Macklin, the radar expert, were gathered around the main console. No one was paying attention to the serene view of South America scrolling upward in the porthole.

McKenna almost reached for Amy Pearson to stop his flight, decided quickly that that might be a mistake, and bypassed her for a grab bar on the side of the console.

The master screen, the largest in the console, displayed the radar mode. Themis’s powerful main radar antenna was housed in a fiberglass radome on the end of Spoke Fifteen. The ninety-foot-wide antenna radiated up to fifteen million watts of energy, enough to fry humans in its path. The range was four hundred miles, though it was normally set to 215 miles, about five miles above the Earth.

The radar was chiefly used for tracking incoming and outgoing HoneyBee rockets and Mako spacecraft, using I-Band for lateral tracking and G-Band for altitude determination. With its ability to scan and track up to 120 targets simultaneously, the Department of Defense utilized the system during combat war games or missile launches from Vandenberg and Kennedy. Additionally, the radar was incorporated into the Space Defense Initiative program.

Reading over Macklin’s shoulder and across the line of data at the top of the screen, McKenna noted the four hundred-mile range setting and the direction of the antenna — to the space station’s west, the normal inbound track for HoneyBees. The oscillating sweep left six blips behind as it flip-flopped back and forth. Each of the blips was identified in small white letters and numerals. He read them quickly.

“I see five satellites in lower orbit and one HoneyBee,” he said. “What’s the status, Joe?”

“She’s three hundred and sixty miles out, Colonel, altitude one-eighty, and closing on us at ten miles a minute. In sixteen minutes, she’s scheduled to reduce speed to a five-mile-a-minute closure rate.”

McKenna scanned the screen once again. “So where’s the bogie?”

“It’s not showing now, sir. I picked it up when it was radiating radar emissions.”

“So it’s got to be Delta Green.” The stealth aerospace fighters were only visible to other radars when they were utilizing their own radars.

“The pilot will be an ex-Soviet,” Pearson said.

McKenna glanced at her.

“Pyotr Volontov’s report said that six of the men he washed out of his Mako training program defected. It’ll be one of them,” she said.

“Good work, Amy.”

She blushed. She was beginning to take his compliments as compliments, rather than as cute ways to put her down.

“And,” McKenna went on, “we’re fresh out of MakoSharks. Damn it!”

“There!” Macklin said.

McKenna saw the radiation pattern appear on the screen, a pulsating “V” erupting out of nowhere, but capturing the resupply rocket in its path.

“Lock it in, Joe.”

Tapping the computer keyboard, Macklin said, “Position locked. The emissions are low, Colonel. About a ninety-mile scan. I put him eighty miles from intercept.”

“Where’s Autry?” McKenna asked.

“He was chasing down a Rhyolite satellite for service,” Overton said.

Macklin worked the controller that changed the direction of the radar antenna, raising it a fraction. Two more blips appeared. He tapped in a command, and the blips grew tags — the satellite was identified, as well as Mako Three.

“Altitude two-four-seven,” Macklin said. “Two hundred and seventy miles out.”

McKenna picked up the microphone stuck to the console top with Velcro.

“Give me a frequency, Val,” he ordered.

Arguento pulled himself into the radio shack, and a few seconds later, his voice came through the bulkhead speakers. “He’s on Utility Two, sir.”

Along the top of the console were keypads for selecting primary-use communications channels. McKenna poked his finger at Utility Two. “Mako Three, Alpha.”

“Alpha, Three.”

“Ken, this is McKenna. Kick your radar to one-twenty and see if you can pick up an in-coming HoneyBee.”

“Roger that, Alpha,” Dennis Bogard, Kenneth Autry’s backseater, replied.

McKenna waited.

“Alpha, the rocket’s about seventy miles below us. Total track from us is one-five-five miles.”

“Divert from your mission and close on the HoneyBee,” McKenna ordered. “Stay about forty miles away.”

“Roger, diverting,” Autry said. “What’s the problem, Alpha?”

“She may be under attack. Watch yourself, Ken. The unidentified hostile is probably armed.”

“And stealthy?” Bogard asked.

“And stealthy. Don’t take any chances, but see if you can get a visual”

“Roger, Alpha.”

McKenna punched Tac Two.

“Deltas, Alpha.”

“Delta Yellow,” Conover came back.

“Red,” Haggar said.

“Fuel status?”

“Yellow’s got one-six minutes on rockets, twenty minutes on turbojets,” Abrams reported.

“Red,” Ben Olsen said, “one-three on rockets, one-eight on the jets.”

He briefed them on the situation. “We don’t know what’s coming down, but I want you ready to take intercept positions if we can track Green on an Earth-bound course.”

“Yellow here. Any idea, Snake Eyes, of a destination?”

“None, Con Man. Take a general aim toward the Andaman Sea.”

“Roger, Delta Yellow out.”

“Red.”

McKenna had been watching the screen, and the radar emission had again ceased to display.

“Is that wise, Colonel McKenna?” Pearson asked. “To put Mako Three in jeopardy?”

McKenna felt good about Autry’s sense of judgment. He said, “Don’t second-guess me, Amy.”

Her pale green eyes darkened with fire.

“Please,” he added.

DELTA GREEN

Aleksander Illiyich Maslov had been destined for stars. His grandfather had been a general during the Great Patriotic war, and his father surely would have attained the same status had he not been killed in an artillery accident when he was only a major.

His father left him the legacy of Colonel General Anatoly Shelepin, however. The two of them had attended, Schevchenko University together and entered the Red Army directly after graduation. After the elder Maslov died from the erupting shells inside a resupply trailer, then Major Shelepin had taken it upon himself to shepherd young Aleksander Illiyich, like a godson, through his academic training and his military career. Maslov had been posted to units where his abilities could shine. He had the proper staff schools as well as a combat stint with MiG-29s in Afghanistan listed in his dossier. When General Sheremetevo had obtained the Mako aerospace craft from the Americans, Shelepin had arranged Maslov’s transfer to the 5th Interceptor Wing’s training squadron. In a career path ever ascendant, Maslov had been stunned by two successive failures. The first came at the hands of Colonel Pyotr Mikhailovich Volontov, commander of the 5th Interceptor Wing, who had been assigned authority for the aerospace transport training program. Volontov, without allowance for excuse or a second chance, had terminated Maslov as unsuitable as a Mako command pilot. Though they shared the same ranks, Volontov was senior, and he had the full weight of General Vitaly Sheremetevo, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Red Air Force behind him. Even Shelepin’s intervention had not abrogated the orders.

His second failure, similar to the first as he perceived it, was also beyond his control. The Red Air Force had abruptly ceased to exist.

Maslov had been assigned to an interceptor wing near Sevastopol, on the tip of the Crimean peninsula when Anatoly Shelepin called him on the telephone: “If you value your life, Aleksander Illiyich, you must see that you are assigned to the next patrol flight. And when you are airborne, continue south to Aleppo in Syria. You will be allowed to land, and I will contact you later with instructions.”

He had known nothing of the coup attempt, but Maslov had learned long before to obey his adopted uncle. He and his friend, Major Boris Nikitin, also a failure of the Mako program, had taken off at midnight in their MiG-29s, and they had flown half their patrol, topping up their fuel bladders from an airborne tanker before diving below radar coverage. They had followed a low and straight course across the Black Sea, then illegally over Turkey before landing in Aleppo with only drops of jet fuel left in the tanks.

The minute he had made the decision to go, Maslov knew he had given up his arduous quest for a general’s stars.

He would not have them, but he had now proven Volontov wrong…

He had the stars!

They were all around him, starkly brilliant against the utter nothingness of space. Only twice before in the training program had he achieved orbit in space, and that was with another’s hands at the controls. This time, he was responsible, and it was exhilarating. Ecstasy beyond any he had ever known.

“Boris?”

Nikitin was in the rear seat of the MakoShark. He had been there almost around the clock since they had obtained the craft, learning the secret systems, voicing his amazement of the MakoShark advancements over the Mako subsystems practically on the hour.

“I still wish we had Cyrillic and metric equivalents for the instruments and computers, Aleks. My head spins from making constant translations.”

“You will become accustomed to it,” Maslov promised. Already, his own mind was accepting feet and miles and pounds without undue concern. Perhaps it was because he had had more training in English than Nikitin.

“Sixty-two miles from us, Aleks. Three minutes until contact.”

“I have armed the propulsion system of one of the Wasp II missiles for you.”

“No warhead?” Nikitin asked.

“The warhead is not to be armed. You must be delicate, Boris.”

“I will… Aleks! I have another contact.”

Maslov looked down at his cathode ray tube. There was another target painted.

“Shut off the radar, Boris.”

“But the—”

“It will be a Mako, since we can see it. It is unarmed and will not challenge us.”

“You are certain of this?” Nikitin asked, disbelief in his voice.

“I am certain. But I will arm the second Wasp on Pylon Four for you. If the Mako moves on us, you may shoot it.”

In space, nothing was shot down. It was simply shot.

Maslov lifted the plastic protective cover and armed the second missile.

“Now, Boris, carefully.”

He could hear Nikitin’s breath slowing over the open intercom as the man concentrated on his shot.

The cathode ray tube suddenly flashed as Nikitin activated the video lens. It portrayed stars that zoomed closer as the weapons officer advanced the magnification.

Then, out of the magnificent spectacle, Maslov saw the HoneyBee rocket emerge. It was very white, with the large blue letters, “USAF,” imprinted vertically on its side. He had been briefed once on the supply rocket, and he understood its systems in general.

An orange target rose appeared on the screen, danced a little jig, then moved over the rocket.

“Precisely on the nose cone, Boris.”

“I know, Aleks. I understand.”

The image of the rocket continued to expand on the screen as they closed on it, and the target rose slipped along the missile’s length and found the nose cone.

Nikitin locked it on, using the small radar in the nose of the Wasp. The radiation of the missile radar would be visible to the Mako.

The blue letters on the screen appeared in confirmation: LOCK-ON.

Immediately, Nikitin launched the Wasp II missile.

Maslov closed his eyes to protect his vision.

When he opened them again and peered through the windscreen, the missile was miles away, a tiny streak of white light.

“It is an amazing missile,” Nikitin said, “adaptable to space or atmospheric flight.”

That was true. The Wasp II had retractable fins for stabilization and directional control in dense atmosphere, but in its space role, the stabilization and control was accomplished by small jets spewing nitrogen gas.

Assisted by the magnification of the screen, he saw the impact.

The slim attack missile slammed into the side of the HoneyBee’s nose cone, penetrating the skin easily, and likely destroying all of the sensitive electronics contained within the cone, even without a detonation. It did not go clear through the rocket; nothing emerged from the other side.

And Maslov thought that the impact had not shaken the HoneyBee far off its course.

It would just no longer follow its programmed computer instructions or listen to instructions passed to it by remote control.

And the cargo was intact.

USSC-1

McKenna and the others in the control room had a clear picture of the interception.

Mako Three, standing off the action by forty miles and shooting it with her video camera at full zoom, transmitted the video image to Themis.

“No warhead detonation,” Overton said.

The intercom blared, “Command, Docking!”

It was Brad Mitchell’s voice. He would have been standing by to take control of the HoneyBee and dock it. His screen would be displaying the radar picture.

Overton pressed the correct keypad on the intercom. “Go ahead, Brad”

“We’ve lost control of the HoneyBee, sir.”

“Yes, I copy that. There’s been an interception, Brad. You can stand down.”

“Interception! Sir, may I come to the Command Center?”

“Certainly, Brad. But don’t bring a contingent of maintenance people with you. It’s starting to get crowded.”

“There it is!” Pearson said.

As McKenna watched the screen, he saw Delta Green ease into view, closing on the HoneyBee. The bomb bay doors (or payload bay doors, depending on the mission) on the underside of the fuselage were open.

“He’s using the grapplers,” Macklin said.

The forward bay in both the Mako and MakoShark contained remotely operated grappling arms used to capture and hold malfunctioning satellites that were too large to pull inside the bay. Secured by the arms to the underside of the space craft, the satellite could be moved into orbit with Themis and the sick satellite rejuvenated in the huge lab the personnel complement called Cosmos Clinic.

Delta Green paused directly over the rocket, and the grappling arms descended and hugged the rocket body. The rocket was too large to be pulled inside the cargo bay, of course, but with the two vehicles mated, the MakoShark could control both of their courses and velocities.

McKenna didn’t like the fact that Delta Green was aimed almost directly at Mako Three. The old fighter pilot’s instinct told him someone was on the verge of launching another missile. He punched Utility Two and keyed the microphone.

“Mako Three, get out of there.”

“Ah, Alpha, we could still…”

“Now, Ken! Full rocket throttles. Go for the Earth.”

They had about two more seconds’ view of the hijacked MakoShark before the camera lens abruptly dropped, found the Earth, and accelerated toward it.

“Mako Three, when you have four hundred miles distance, change course and return to Themis.”

“Roger that, Alpha”

McKenna was relieved to hear Autry’s voice. He talked to him several more times until he was certain that the Mako was out of range of the Wasp.

“Now what?” Pearson asked.

“Now I call the boss and complain about our working conditions,” McKenna said. “Sergeant Arguento, can you find me a secure channel to the Springs?”

“There’s bound to be one or two, Colonel.”

“And Joe,” McKenna said to Macklin, “that bird’s not so stealthy with a HoneyBee hung on her. Track them as far as you can.”

PENTAGON

Marvin Brackman was meeting with Admiral Hannibal Cross and General Harvey Mays in Cross’s second floor, firing office in the Pentagon when McKenna’s call caught up with him.

He picked up the secure phone on the credenza by the window and stood looking out at the Potomac as the connections were made. The sky was heavily overcast, a dull slate that absorbed joy and diminished the grandeur of the Washington Monument. The river moved sluggishly along, dragging winter and more than a few pollutants behind it.

His conversation with McKenna was brief, and after he ordered McKenna to suspend all HoneyBee launches, he hung up and turned back to his superiors.

Brackman thought of Harvey Mays, the Air Force Chief of Staff, as extremely capable, moving as effectively as he could to adapt the Air Force to new political and world realities. He knew, too, that a large number of senior commanders resented both Mays and the requirement to adapt the Air Force to new ways of thinking. An organization as large as the Air Force changed directions ponderously when it came to the obliteration of old traditions.

As an aircraft carrier skipper in the South China Sea, Hannibal Cross had probably appeared much the same then as he did now: lean and crisp. He was a fine image of the military, and he was politically astute. The boys in the back rooms knew about his decisions before he made them public. Cross believed firmly in the concept of never surprising anyone who counted, and it was a good philosophy, one that assured survivability.

“Well, Marvin?” Cross asked.

“We found Delta Green.”

“Hot damn!” Mays said.

“But she’s gone again.”

“Shit.”

“And she took a load of solid fuel pellets with her.”

“What the hell?” Cross said.

Brackman related McKenna’s report. “The MakoShark and the HoneyBee have both passed out of radar range now.”

“They must have known what they were after, didn’t they?” Mays said.

“I imagine so,” Brackman said. “The MakoShark isn’t of much use without propellent.”

“What does this give them?” Cross asked.

“Delta Green was fully fueled when she was hijacked, and she had a cargo pod of pellets. With the HoneyBee cargo, McKenna says they’ve got two hundred and nine minutes of rocket flight available.”

“Jesus,” Cross complained. “How many space trips is that?”

“It depends on the trajectories and a few other variables, but, into and out of orbit, they could manage maybe twelve flights. That doesn’t count using the motors in suborbital flight. Suborbital, too, the MakoShark’s extended glide characteristics give them a hell of a lot of time.”

“You’ve stopped resupply launches?” Mays asked.

“For the time being, yes. We may have to detail a MakoShark to accompany them if we need to make a launch or two. McKenna had already given orders to not ship ordnance. We don’t want to lose a shipment of Wasp II missiles.”

“But they could still utilize other missile types,” Mays said.

“True. Phoenix, Sidewinder, AMRAAM can all be mounted on the missile rack in the payload bay, though not on the pylons. Only our modified missiles like the Phoenix II and the Wasp II, with the heat shields, can be hung externally. And the standard missiles won’t fly in space, either. They won’t fly true, at any rate.”

“So,” Cross said, “we have one advantage. Any engagement in space leaves Delta Green practically unarmed. They’ll only be able to rearm with atmospheric ordnance.”

“Eventually, maybe,” Brackman said. “She’s still got three Wasp IIs, two Phoenix IIs, and a Chain Gun.”

Brackman walked back to the small conference table and sat down. He refilled his coffee cup from the Thermos pitcher in the middle of the table.

“That’s all we know for now, then?” Cross asked.

“Yes sir. McKenna will let me know if anything else develops. He’s trying to set up for an intercept if she comes out of orbit, but he doesn’t have much hope for it.”

“All right, then, back to the agenda.”

The agenda was short, and they had already covered the first item. The next day, at one o’clock, the SecDef, with the President’s concurrence, was going to the armed services committees of both houses to report the hijacking. Though both Mays and Brackman wanted to hold off for another two or three days, they had been overruled by the Secretary.

“Number two,” the admiral said, “the identity of the aggressor.”

“David Thorpe has talked to Lieutenant Colonel Pearson several times,” Brackman said. “She has a theory that whoever stole the bird must have had prior experience in it. Or at least in the Mako. She’s got it pinned down to about thirty possible names, with six that are highly suspect.”

“And those six are out of the Russian training program?” Mays guessed.

“That’s right, Harv. I think she’s probably on the right track.”

“I don’t read this program as the work of one maniac pilot,” Cross said.

“No, Hannibal, I don’t think so, either. There’ll be an organization of some kind. And there’s got to be some big bucks involved.”

“Political considerations?” Cross asked.

“I’ve talked to the people at Langley and to Defense Intelligence,” Mays said, “but they haven’t heard anything out of the ordinary. They say they’ll refocus their efforts toward obtaining data about any maverick political or criminal organizations that might have the capability of pulling this off.”

“What’s the geography the agencies are talking about?” Brackman asked.

“Right now, just because it took place in Borneo, they’re concentrating on Southeast Asia, the subcontinent, Africa, and South America.”

“The whole damned southern hemisphere,” Cross said.

“We don’t have much to go on,” Mays said.

“Anyway,” Brackman said, “I believe Pearson will point us in the right direction soon.”

“Okay,” Cross said. “We’ve got about as much as we can get right now. The SecDef will meet the honchos on the Hill tomorrow and give them the facts we have as of noon tomorrow. McKenna and Overton are on top of a search program. We have one sighting, and McKenna’s taking a stab in the dark at an interception. Pearson and Thorpe are narrowing the suspects. That about it on the MakoShark, Marvin?”

“That’s it.”

Cross waved his copy of the agenda at them. “The rest of this got shoved back from our regular meeting. Any reason why we can’t delay it?”

Brackman said, “I’d like to deal with number six, and I’d like to add one item.”

“Six? That’s yours. Del Cartwright?”

“I want him off Merlin Air Base. Yesterday would have been a good time for it.”

“Now, hold on a second, Marvin,” Mays said. “He’s a good commander.”

“For a wing, maybe. You foisted him off on me, Harv, and he’s not working out. He wanted to make his imprint on the base right away, and he changed programs and systems to make that imprint. Without analyzing them.”

“Like security?” Cross said.

“Like security. He approached Merlin as if it were Homestead or Randolph. It isn’t.”

“Where do I send him?” Mays asked.

“Frankly, Scarlett—”

“Who do we put in there?” Cross interrupted.

“Milt Avery. He’s got two years aboard Themis, and I should rotate him Earth-side. He’s also on next month’s brigadier list, though he doesn’t yet know that.”

Mays looked to Cross, who nodded. “Ah, hell. Okay, Marvin. Do it”

“What’s your new item?” Cross asked.

“Now I’ve just created a vacancy for deputy commander of USSC-1.”

“And you know who you want to put in it, naturally?” Mays said.

“Amy Pearson.”

“Ahhh,” Mays said.

“She’s just a little light on rank, isn’t she?” Admiral Cross said.

“We, that is, the Air Force, moved her up on both the major list and the light colonel list because of her demonstrated abilities. She’s already ahead of her peers. That’s because she can do the jobs we give her and do them damned well.”

“I don’t know her file that well…” Mays started to say.

“She’s at least two years away from consideration for full bird,” Brackman said. “I’d like to have the SecDef recommend her to the President.”

“Now, damn, Marv…”

“We’ve never recognized her for her role in the New Germany crisis,” Brackman argued. “She saved us a hundred billion dollars’ worth of satellite, gentlemen. On her own initiative.”

“If we promote her on the basis of initiative, we’ll have to make McKenna a general,” Cross said. “That wouldn’t go over well with some people.”

“McKenna would turn it down, I’m afraid,” Brackman said. “He won’t risk losing a seat in a fighter aircraft. We gave him and his squadron Distinguished Flying Crosses (DFCs), which is about all any of them would accept.”

“You’ve worked this out, Marv. Do you have someone in mind for her current job?” Mays asked.

“No. She can handle both for the time being.”

“She reports to Jim Overton,” Cross said. “Do you have a recommendation from him?”

“I can have it in twenty minutes. Avery and McKenna will sign off on it also.”

“Get it,” the Air Force chief said, “and I’ll forward it to the Chairman.”

“Get it,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said, “and I’ll hand-carry it to the guys across the hall.”

USSC-1

Overton wrote the recommendation for promotion himself, keying it into the console in his tiny office. McKenna and Avery hung on to the hatchway jamb and watched him do it.

“Keep an eye on the hatch,” the general said. “We wouldn’t want her coming back and catching us.”

“You’re a pretty decent typist, Jim,” McKenna said. “You’ll be able to land any job you want once you leave here.”

“I wouldn’t want anything with a high stress-level.” Overton said as he finished his entry. “Okay, Milt, your turn.”

Avery switched places with the commander and added his comments, then McKenna keyed in his own. He wasn’t directly in line-of-command over Pearson, but he was happy that Brackman had asked for his input. He had gained a lot of respect for her in the last year, even though she could be humorless much of the time and didn’t take his teasing well.

“Anything else?” he asked Overton as he typed in his name and rank.

“That should do it.”

McKenna hit the “F-7” button which stored the document in station records and forwarded copies to all of the right offices. Independently, he sent a copy directly to the Office of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force as they had been directed.

“Brackman surprises the hell out of me sometimes.” McKenna said.

“You can’t say she doesn’t deserve it,” Overton said. “No, you can’t say that.”

McKenna hung around the Command Center the rest of the afternoon and evening, monitoring Delta Red’s and Delta Yellow’s search, but by nine o’clock, they hadn’t detected a reentry burn anywhere, even though they were utilizing many of the National Security Agency’s surveillance satellites. He ordered Conover and Haggar to put down at Wet Country for the night.

He checked with Dimatta at Hot Country. Delta Orange had taken her second flight, and the technicians were working overtime to correct a series of minor malfunctions and to complete fine-tuning.

The maintenance officer at Merlin told him that Delta Blue’s valve actuator had been replaced and was undergoing final testing. The orders came in at 9:30 P.M., and Don Curtis, the sergeant on the graveyard communications shift, printed them out and brought them into the Command Center.

“Hey, Colonel. Here’s something interesting.”

McKenna took the orders from him, scanned them, and whistled. “Damned interesting, Don. I’ll take care of it.”

The orders transferring Avery to command of Merlin Air Base were another surprise for the day. It meant Avery would get his star, and it meant that Cartwright was out. McKenna was glad he hadn’t complained directly to Brackman about the man. He had learned over time that Brackman could usually figure out things for himself.

He left the Command Center and scooted his way to Spoke Two, the residential spoke in which Overton was housed. He found the general engaged in a gin game with Brad Mitchell.

McKenna floated the papers in front of them.

“I’ll be damned,” Mitchell said.

“I’m happy for Milt,” Overton said, then looked at the other order. “Well. I get a new deputy at the same time.”

“Brackman didn’t bother consulting me on that.”

“Is that going to be a problem, Jim?” McKenna asked.

“Not for me. Probably why I wasn’t consulted.”

“Good. Okay if I tell her?”

Overton grinned at him, sharing knowledge that wasn’t supposed to be common. “Just this one time. Brad and I will go roust Avery.”

McKenna made his way through the locks to Spoke Sixteen. The lights in the spoke and in the corridor of the module were dimmed. A curtain had been drawn across the opposite end of the corridor, closing off the dining area, and he could hear subdued voices on the other side of it.

The space station observed Eastern Daylight Time, and quiet hours were enforced from ten at night until six in the morning. Still, operating the satellite was a twenty-four-hour chore and people were sleeping, eating, or working at all times of the day and night. McKenna and his squadron had the most irregular hours, dependent on their flight schedules.

McKenna bypassed the hygiene stations and his own cubicle: a four by four by eight foot compartment with his personal locker, a communications panel, a fabric pouch, and padded walls.

He arrested his flight next to Pearson’s cubicle.

“Amy, you awake?”

No response.

He pulled the curtain aside by a few inches.

“Amy?”

She was strapped against the padded wall opposite the communications panel. A Strauss waltz issued from the speaker. Her denim headband was missing, and her auburn hair floated lazily. She was dressed in the loosely fitting sleep suit that everyone called a potato sack, but one of the Velcro straps was cinched below her breasts, making them prominent.

“Amy?”

She opened one eye.

“Sorry to wake you.”

“Kevin?” she said, coming fully awake. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, smiling.

The pupils of her eyes enlarged in the dim light. “Kevin, not here!”

“Ah, honey…”

“Don’t honey me. There’s too many people around.”

“How about my place, then?”

“There’s nothing different about your place.”

“If you give me a kiss, I’ll give you a present,” he said.

She shook her head negatively, then released a strap and stuck her head out far enough to survey the corridor. When she saw they were apparently alone, she kissed him lightly on the lips.

They were soft and warm and slightly moist. They would have been more eager, he thought, if she weren’t so concerned about appearances.

“What’s the present?”

He gave her her promotion and reassignment order.

“What?”

She tried to read it in the darkness of her cubicle, squirming around to shift into the light from the corridor.

He reached across her to the control panel and turned on the interior light.

“My God! Really?”

“Really.”

“Come in here,” she ordered.

McKenna pulled himself into the compartment and zipped the curtain shut.

Chapter Seven

USSC-1

Colonel Amy Pearson… Colonel McKenna… Colonel and Colonel McKenna…

Pearson realized she had awakened. Her mind had been drifting aimlessly, not wanting to acknowledge the necessity of addressing a new day.

She opened her eyes slowly. In the dimness of the cubicle, it took her a moment to recognize the diffused mass of her potato sack floating near her head, against the hatch curtain.

She was sleeping naked.

She never slept in the nude on board Themis.

Never.

And then she realized that her back was warm, McKenna’s chest firmly and comfortably pressed against it. His left arm was wrapped around her waist, his hand flat against her stomach. They were held in place by the restraining straps, but the straps had not been designed to enclose two people, and the Velcro ends barely met.

After a moment’s panicked alarm, Pearson decided she was very content. Another twelve hours in the same place would be pleasant.

And then she glanced at the clock readout on the control panel: 0538. People would be moving around in the corridor soon. The panic returned in force.

Gripping the strap with her right hand, she used it to tug herself around to face McKenna.

“Kevin,” she whispered, “wake up.”

“I’m awake,” he smiled. “I just didn’t want to give up the position.”

“You’ve got to get out of here.”

He kissed her, and though she resisted for a moment, she felt herself falling forward, leaning into it despite the lack of gravity, her mind and body responding to the heat.

No!

She finally broke off, then kissed him again lightly, then released the strap and floated away from him, though not far in the confines of the compartment.

“We don’t have time for this,” she said.

“Did you ever notice how things float in space?” he asked, his eyes running over her. “I did.”

“I’ve noticed,” she said and did. “Come on, now. People will be waking up.”

“I’m awake.”

She grabbed her sleep suit and began pulling it on. In the tight space, her knees and elbows seemed to bump into everything, padded walls, control panel, McKenna.

“You promised me in Aspen,” she said.

“Aspen.”

“You did.”

“I have many fine memories of Aspen”

“You promised.”

“Remind me.”

“We aren’t going to do this where people will see us.”

“I did make that commitment, I suppose. It was in a very weak moment, and I have no willpower, darling.”

He continued to float naked in the corner of her tiny cubicle.

“Get dressed!” she hissed.

“It’s better the other way. Don’t be in such a big rush,” he said.

She zipped up her sleep suit, fished around in the fabric pouch attached to the bulkhead, found his jumpsuit, and shoved it at him. “Get dressed, damn it!”

She was trying to whisper.

“Why would I make a dumb promise like that? The one I made in Aspen?”

“There are three good reasons,” she said. “You don’t want to get married, I don’t want to get married, and I sure as hell don’t want a reputation that will affect my professional life and my career.”

“Oh. Those reasons.”

For all of her ability in analyzing intelligence data, she had never fully evaluated her relationship with McKenna since the time their personal lives had become irreversibly confused on a long weekend in Aspen, Colorado. Or perhaps she was simply avoiding the assessment. On the surface, he was too irreverent with regulations and too infatuated with skirting the edges of danger to qualify as a desirable mate. Slightly below the surface, she had been forced to admit that she liked him a little, but in a more basic, more sensual way. Certainly, he satisfied some of her physical needs, and she supposed that was reciprocal. For the immediate future, however, she didn’t intend to analyze it much further.

Despite his attractiveness, McKenna was just too damned independent to mesh with the other facets of her life, and she wasn’t going to allow trysts like this to dominate her mind or her behavior.

She just wasn’t. She had made that promise to herself the week after Aspen.

Pearson retrieved fresh underwear, a jumpsuit, and her hygiene kit from her locker, then unzipped the side of the curtain. “When I get back, you won’t be here, right?”

“Only if I get another kiss.”

She peeked out into the corridor, which was vacant, then turned back to him. He pulled her close.

Strength was very deceptive in a zero-gravity environment, but McKenna always radiated strength. She felt it in the way, however lightly, his hands gripped her upper arms. He could be tender when he tried.

She kissed him lightly on the lips, so as not to get anything started, then pushed through the curtain, got a toe on the hatchway jamb, and launched herself toward one of the hygiene stations, all of which were unoccupied according to the indicator lights.

After fifteen minutes with a sponge bath and the vacuumized accessories in the hygiene station, she emerged to find McKenna dressed and floating in the corridor near his own cubicle, which was across the corridor and two down from hers. He shoved off the bulkhead directly at her.

“McKenna!”

She dodged sideways, and he landed lightly on the wall beside her.

“Got something for you,” he said.

“Not out…”

He held up his hand. Between his thumb and forefinger was a pair of silver eagle rank insignia.

She fastened her eyes on his. The gray of his irises was light, maybe a little amused, but warm.

“I’d like you to have mine,” he said.

“Kevin…”

“These were my father’s,” he said. “He was Army, but they work about the same way.”

No one aboard the space station wore rank insignia except for those newly promoted.

“Thank you.”

He unzipped her jumpsuit a few inches — with her eyes darting back and forth for intruders — and inserted his left hand inside the suit’s left shoulder and used his right hand to position the eagle, then snapped the pin clasps in place. He reversed his hands to fasten the insignia on her right shoulder.

When he was done, he floated a couple feet away, then snapped a crisp military salute that she hadn’t known he was capable of performing.

“Congratulations, Colonel Pearson.”

She returned the salute smartly. “Thank you, Colonel McKenna.”

She felt like crying.

“Now, can we get back in the sack?”

“Damn you, Kevin.”

“I don’t want you to get maudlin,” he grinned.

MERLIN AIR BASE

The last of the Space Command’s Learjets at Merlin Air Base had taken off from the single runway at seven o’clock the night before, taking with it General Delwin Cartwright and his aide, Major Mikos Pappas.

Lynn Haggar didn’t know where the two of them were going, nor did anyone else as far as she could tell. The rumors had a new commandant coming in, but they might have been optimistic rumors.

Heaven on Earth was rampant with rumors, but then it was no different than any other military enclave in the world. There would be nothing to talk about if not for conjecture sworn to as fact.

She was eating breakfast with Olsen, Conover, Abrams, and Munoz after having succumbed to a four-hour nap which had rejuvenated her. Not, apparently, as much as a similar nap had revived Jack Abrams. He had poured half a bottle of picante sauce over his scrambled eggs.

“Tell me what in the hell is that supposed to be,” Ben Olsen said.

“That, Swede, is a Frank Dimatta Special,” Abrams said, working the sauce into the eggs with his fork.

“Aren’t you confusing excess with taste, Do-Wop?” Haggar asked.

“Of course not. I’ve seen him do this many times.” Abrams took one forkful, savored it, closed his eyes in pain, then proceeded gamely on with his breakfast.

“Looks good to me,” Munoz said and dumped the rest of the jar’s contents over the two eggs on his plate.

Haggar decided to ignore the two of them and finished her orange juice, then her grapefruit while half-listening to the banter.

She liked all of them, much as she liked and loved the three brothers she had grown up with in Atlanta. Sometimes, she found humor in the way they struggled to be macho fighter jocks and still obviously tried to avoid what they thought might be interpreted as sexual harassment. Only Tony Munoz was unconcerned about what he might say to her, and he was so good-natured, she would never have taken anything he said as anything but the good humor it was.

Breakfast over, they left the room full of people who were eating roast beef and steaks for dinner and walked back to Hangar One.

Deltas Red, Yellow, and Blue were all prepared for flight. As soon as they saw the flight crews enter the hangar, the ground crews began to assemble for final chores.

“I wish to hell Snake Eyes would quit screwin’ around and get back here,” Munoz said morosely.

“Go back to bed, Tony,” Olsen told him. “The search is the boring part. If it gets interesting, I’ll give you a wake-up call.”

Munoz stood to one side and watched while the Yellow and Red crews slipped into their environmental suits.

Haggar stood still while her crew chief vacuumed her, then climbed the ladder to her cockpit, slid over the coaming, and settled into the reclining seat. The crew chief followed her and helped connect the communications and nitrogen/oxygen fittings.

“I’m buttoned in,” Ben Olsen told her over the intercom system.

“Ditto,” she said. “Okay, Sergeant, how about giving us a tow?”

“Coming right up, ma’am,” he said, then scampered down the ladder.

Olsen was right. This was projected to be another boring day, in terms of contact possibilities. Since not one of the high-tech surveillance systems roaming the skies had detected a reentry burn in the last hours, McKenna had put them back on search patterns. Conover and Abrams were going to cover the area of Southeast Asia that McKenna and Munoz had abandoned when their fuel feed valve stuck open, and Delta Red was headed back to Africa.

After she and Olsen completed their pattern, they would put down at Jack Andrews in Chad for a rest break.

And listen to Dimatta and Williams moaning over their loss, no doubt.

She felt the MakoShark shudder gently as the tractor took a strain on the tow bar. Releasing the brakes, Haggar cleared her mind for the checklist.

Delta Yellow moved slowly out of the hangar, eager for her task.

And looking back over her shoulder, Haggar saw Munoz standing in the middle of the hangar, looking as downcast and lost as he possibly could.

She wondered if he were acting.

DELTA GREEN

Colonel Aleksander Maslov had planned this mission carefully.

General Shelepin had always told him that knowledge was power, and his knowledge of the American aerospace capabilities, though limited in detail, was precise enough to give him an advantage.

He knew, for instance, that the massive radar aboard the American space station had a range of around four hundred miles or 643 kilometers.

He and Nikitin had boosted the HoneyBee attached to the MakoShark to an altitude of three hundred miles and then accelerated slowly, conserving fuel, until they had, seven hours later, slowed and parked the HoneyBee in an orbit on the other side of the Earth from the space station. Like Themis, the supply rocket was in a polar orbit. The American satellite completed a revolution around the North and South poles every 3.6 hours. Though it was in a higher orbit, the rocket’s velocity had been increased until it, too, required the same amount of time to complete an orbit. The computer calculations developed by Boris Nikitin had been very precise.

They had then slept for several hours because Maslov knew also that the Americans would have been looking for his reentry into the atmosphere. Their surveillance satellites were everywhere.

As a copilot trainee, Maslov had accomplished the reentry into the atmosphere twice, and he had an excellent mind. He forgot nothing, and even if he had, the checklist on the small screen kept him honest. The first reentry of the New World Order’s MakoShark into the atmosphere above northern China was flawless.

At twenty-five kilometers of altitude, Nikitin said, “Altitude is… sixteen miles, Aleks. The velocity is Mach four-point-six. All systems are cooling down.”

“Excellent, Boris. We are now veteran spacemen.”

“I am relieved to have the maiden flight completed. I admit it.”

“Nonsense, Boris. We accomplished our mission exactly as planned. Proper planning will always tell.”

Conserving rocket fuel, Maslov put the MakoShark into a long, shallow parabolic curve toward the south. It was after nine o’clock at night when they crossed the northern border of Kampuchea and started the turbojets.

With the use of the GPS navigational system and the night vision lens, they found New World Base without problem. Sixty kilometers to the south, Maslov could see the lights of Kampong Thum.

For the first time in their entire flight, he used the radio. Soon after he had acquired the MakoShark, he had learned that the Americans must have changed the radio packs in their other craft because he no longer heard them on any of the available scrambled frequencies.

Similarly, because he was certain that American listening posts would be monitoring the scrambled frequencies on this craft’s radios, he bypassed the scramblers and utilized a clear frequency. That would change as soon as the communications technicians had altered the radios.

He depressed the transmit button and used English rather than Russian. “Commodore, Commander.”

“Proceed Commander.”

“Five minutes.”

That was all. Just the necessary information that he was close, and that the camouflage over the runway must be shunted aside.

Like his reentry into the atmosphere, the landing was flawless, and the second they were down and slowed, the runway lights were turned off. He was not yet familiar enough with the MakoShark’s special systems to attempt a landing utilizing the night vision capability. Even as he turned off the engines and the electrical systems, a tow tractor had latched onto the nose wheel and was pushing the MakoShark back into its hidden revetment on the west side of the runway.

The jungle canopy closed over them, making the darkness even blacker.

A gaggle of flashlights approached while he and Nikitin raised their canopies and rose awkwardly from the reclining seats, stretching unused muscles. Disconnecting their umbilicals, they eased over the coaming, found the makeshift ladders, and descended to the ground.

Anatoly Shelepin was the first to greet him.

“Aleksander Illiyich!”

“Comrade General.”

“You were successful?”

“Very much so,” Maslov said.

“I am so proud of you. I knew that I would be.”

Maslov was proud of himself also.

He could still be a general.

In the Air Force of the New World Order.

USSC-1

By ten o’clock in the morning, Pearson had toured the station — as security officer, she kept an eye on the military personnel as well as the visiting civilian scientists working in the laboratories — and met with Overton and Avery to accept their congratulations and to discuss her new duties. She congratulated Avery on his transfer and promotion.

“But let’s not sweat the routine stuff for now, Amy,” Overton told her. “The first priority on our list is Delta Green.”

“Yes, sir. I should have the information I requested from the CIA by now.”

“We’re putting a lot of credence in your theory of an ex-Soviet pilot,” Overton said.

“I know,” she admitted, “but the incident with the HoneyBee yesterday supports the theory. That pilot simply had to have had more training in Mako systems than someone with a background in, say, fighter aircraft.”

“Astronaut?” Avery asked.

“Well, maybe, Milt. Still, I want to run down my current leads first.”

“Go for it,” Overton said.

She left the Command Center for her office cubicle, strapped herself in, and powered up the console.

Entering her access code, Pearson checked her electronic mail file and found a great deal of information queued up. The first document was a long message taken by Don Curtis from Commonwealth Colonel Pyotr Volontov. He verified the whereabouts of twenty-eight of the pilots on the original list of thirty-four who had gone through his Mako training program. She didn’t know Volontov, but he seemed to have a mild sense of humor. He had added his own name to the list: “Volontov, Pyotr Mikhailovich, Colonel, Russian Air Force, 5th Interceptor Wing, Present and accounted for.”

That left the six defectors.

The electronic copies of dossiers compiled on the pilots by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) were as disappointing as she had thought they might be. Until a man achieved high rank, or was placed in a command or policy-making position, the intelligence agencies did little more than track his assignments when they learned them, or paste odd tidbits in the file.

She culled out the twenty-eight that were accounted for, storing the information for possible later use in one of the mainframe computer laser disk files. Cutting and pasting, she merged the CIA and DIA files with those she had received from General Sheremetevo, leaving her with six files.

And six names: Averyanov, Bryntsev, Maslov, Nikitin, Pronnikov, and Yevstigneyev.

Tapping the intercom pad to the communications room, she said, “Anyone there?”

Donna Amber responded, “Amber, Colonel. And congratulations.”

“Thank you, Donna. Would you toss a hot coffee pouch my way?”

“Coming up.”

Two minutes later, Pearson leaned out of her cubicle and arrested the flight of coffee soaring toward her from the radio shack.

By noon, after reading carefully through each of the six files several times, she had compiled a long series of notes on her right console screen. She had Amber complete a communications hook-up with General David Thorpe, Brackman’s deputy for intelligence.

“It’s nice to drop the ‘lieutenant’ part of it, isn’t it, Amy?”

“Would it be a major breach of protocol to write a thank-you letter to General Brackman?” she asked.

“Not necessary. He’s thanking you.”

“But…”

“Be better to do it in person sometime, Amy. What have you got?”

“My possibilities for the pilot are still six, but the other twenty-eight possibles are firmly rejected now. In examining the files, I’ve come up with some repetitive names that we should explore, and I’d like to have the CIA track down some rumors. That request should probably come from you, General.”

“I’ve got my pencil handy,” Thorpe said.

Pearson read off all six names. “Averyanov and Pronnikov, according to the Commonwealth files, are rumored to be somewhere in Germany. Nikitin might be in Italy. Bryntsev and Maslov were last reported to have been seen in Syria. Yevstigneyev was supposedly in Iraq at one time. I wonder if our friends at Langley could check those out?”

“We’ll find out. What about the other names?”

“I’ve been looking for patterns involving the names of higher-ranking men,” she said. “I don’t think a pilot dreamed up this escapade by himself.”

“You don’t have a very high opinion of pilots, Amy?”

“You know what I mean, General.”

“Sure. Who have you got?”

“Chestnoy, Guriev, Shelepin, and Dneprovsky. They are all generals at this time, and their names appear more than three times in various pilot dossiers. They were commanders or recommenders or signed letters of commendation. I’d like copies of their files as well as some indication of their current assignments.”

“Those dossiers are frequently cross-referenced by their known close associates, Amy. How would it be if I asked for those, too?”

“That’s a good idea, General. Please. How long do you think?”

“Oh, this will be a national first priority. It shouldn’t take long at all.”

USSC-1

McKenna assigned Kenneth Autry to a round-trip flight to Wet Country, and Benny Shalbot and his technicians mounted one of the passenger modules in the payload bay of Mako Three.

McKenna and Avery arrived at the Mako hangar cell together. Polly Tang was tethered to the control console which, with its window, overlooked the hangar interior. The MakoShark cells had windows that could be darkened so that visiting civilians could not get a close look at the space fighters.

Avery was towing a stuffed plastic bag.

“Not much in the way of personal items accumulated over two years, is it?” Avery said.

“There’s not a hell of a lot of places to go shopping, Milt.”

“True.”

“Let me take that, sir, and I’ll stow it,” Benny Shalbot said.

Avery gave him the bag, and Shalbot arced across the hangar to the Mako, which was held in place in the center of the hangar by bungee cords. Since the craft’s velocity was matched to that of the space station, only the reaction to a technician pushing off her skin would change her attitude.

Polly Tang gave Avery a kiss on the cheek. “We’ll miss you, Milt.”

“Can I have one of those?” McKenna asked.

“You’ll get yours, for sure, McKenna,” she said. “And besides, you’re not leaving for good.”

He gave her a grin, then gripped the hatchway, tugged, and floated across to the Mako.

Autry and his backseater were already in the cockpit. McKenna gave them a thumbs-up, deflected himself off the nose, and sailed beneath the Mako.

The bay doors were wide open, and Shalbot was tending the module.

“You stock up on my favorite magazines, Benny?”

“National Geographic was the best I could do, Colonel.”

“That’s it? You wouldn’t want me to get too excited now, would you?”

“That’s the way the guys on Spoke One run this place,” Shalbot complained. “Bastards don’t want us to appreciate the finer things in life.”

McKenna grinned at him, then pulled himself up into the passenger module. Avery followed him, and Shalbot started sealing the hatch, then the bay doors.

There were four airline-type seats in the module, and a video screen was mounted on the forward end. That was the end of the amenities.

McKenna and Avery buckled into the seats, connected the communications and nitrogen/oxygen lines to the proper receptacles, then helped each other settle and lock their helmets.

Avery’s helmet was general purpose, finished in white and utilized by many passengers. McKenna’s was a personal helmet in Air Force blue, with the accessory visor used for infrared and night sight targeting, and with “Snake Eyes” painted in half-inch-high white letters on the right side.

Avery went right to the intercom. “Ken, you suppose we could see something? Anything.”

The backseater linked their video screen to the video lens, and they had a view of the inside of the hangar. Shalbot was following the last of the technicians through the hatchway, then turning to close and dog the hatch. Polly Tang stared at them through the window.

McKenna watched as Tang evacuated the atmosphere in the hangar; the gases required for the survival of humans was never wasted; it was sucked into holding tanks.

After she opened the hangar doors, Autry backed the craft out of the cell.

They had a twenty-three minute wait for a reentry window, then Autry completed the retro burn, flipped back over to forward flight, and positioned the Mako in its nose-high reentry attitude.

The view on the screen was of stars.

McKenna reached between the armrest and the seat cushion and found a magazine.

“Benny wasn’t kidding,” he said. “It really is National Geographic.”

He offered it to Avery.

“I’ve read that copy three times, Kevin.”

“How about some entertainment back here?” he asked on the intercom. “Otherwise, I’ll have to come up there and fly this thing.”

The backseater gave them Elmore Leonard’s Mr. Majestyk, with Charles Bronson handling the melons. McKenna had seen it twice before, but went ahead and lost himself in it a third time.

Autry landed the Mako at Merlin Air Base in the late afternoon.

Munoz was there to meet them when they crawled down the ladder from the passenger module.

“Damn, I’m glad to see you, Kevin,” Munoz said. “Sittin’ around this burg watching the sweat run isn’t my idea of real racing.”

“Hey, Tony, meet the new base commander.”

“No shit? Milt? Damn, you gonna be a general and everything?”

“There’s been a few hints, Tony,” Avery said.

“You think you’re still gonna talk to us working-class people?”

“Most of the time, I suppose.”

“In that case, congratulations.”

Munoz gave Avery a salute, then shook his hand.

Avery headed for the administration section, and Munoz asked, “What now, jefe.”

“Now, we go hunting again, Tiger.”

“Hot damn!”

By the time they got off the ground, Conover and Abrams were inbound from their search, ready for a rest break and a refueling of the turbojet tanks. Delta Red was already on the ground in Chad. McKenna took up the search pattern over India where Conover had abandoned it the day before. After six hours of back-and-forth searching, they had located one possible clandestine airfield.

And though he checked in frequently with Semaphore (the code name for Space Command in Colorado Springs) and with Alpha, there had been no new or promising information on the whereabouts of one HoneyBee, one MakoShark, or any organization interested in either.

After the last pass over the lower tip of India, McKenna said, “Let’s go home, Tiger.”

“Which one, Snake Eyes?”

“The closest one.”

“Programmin’ for Wet Country. I could use a San Miguel.”

“Not this trip, I’m afraid. We’re flying again in about four hours.”

“You got some new ideas, compadre?”

“No, but Amy-baby’s bound to have some by then.”

“I been meanin’ to talk to you about Amy-baby.”

“No, you haven’t,” McKenna said.

“I thought so.”

NEW WORLD BASE

When General Anatoly Shelepin and General Sergei Pavel left New World Base at eight o’clock in the morning, it was only for a short hop. Their pilot took them north for a few hundred kilometers, turned back, and landed on the short strip at the hospital.

The hospital’s airstrip was less than a kilometer from that of New World Base, located directly west of the base.

Shelepin had founded the hospital with ten million American dollars, an amount that was quickly matched by the Kampuchean government.

As the old Dassault transport taxied toward a parking spot midway down the single asphalt strip, Pavel said, “It goes very well, Anatoly Guryanovich.”

“Yes, Sergei. I am pleased.”

“Maslov has but one more operation to complete before we make the final thrust.”

“We may count our blessings,” Shelepin said, “but not too loudly as yet.”

Shelepin’s handpicked hospital administrator, Dr. Geli Lemesh, met them with a white Land Rover when they deplaned. The Land Rover had a red cross painted on its hood.

They shared greetings, then crawled into the Land Rover for the monthly inspection visit that Shelepin liked to make. The hospital was, after all, his undertaking, and no one objected to his visits in the least.

The Khmer Hospital and Clinic boasted some of the finest laboratory and treatment equipment in the world. A medical staff of internationally trained doctors and nurses maintained an educational program intended to develop an eventual cadre of Khmer medical personnel.

The facility was situated in inhospitable jungle territory, a long distance from villages or more civilized cities, and that was one of its charms for the Kampuchean government. Since the hospital specialized in treating the diseases of almost hopelessly afflicted and abandoned children, the politicians preferred having the sightless, limbless, mentally-deficient wretches, most of them casualties of the war between Kampuchea and Vietnam, out of the view of tourists.

There was no main structure, unless one considered the administration building as a primary facility. The hospital was spread throughout the nearby jungle in specialized treatment clinics, small cottages, and slightly larger dormitories. Each building was simply constructed of wood painted white. The dark brown shingled roof of each building had a white circle with a red cross painted on it.

And three hundred yards through the jungle to the east, the buildings of New World Base that were visible through the jungle canopy were similarly painted.

It was a simple philosophy, worthy of a Ho Chi Minh. No aggressor would attack a hospital filled with children.

Anatoly Shelepin thought of his concept as brilliant.

Chapter Eight

DELTA ORANGE

“Okay, Cancha, there’s our window. Punch it.”

“Punched, Nitro.”

Dimatta keyed the “RKT THRST” button on the top row of the keyboard and let the computer take over.

On Tac Two, he said, “Delta Blue, Orange.”

“Go Orange,” McKenna said.

“We just hit the go button and crossed Nitro Fizz’s fingers.”

“We’re right beside you and igniting rockets,” McKenna told them.

Proximity was relative. Delta Blue, as trail plane, was over a mile away, to allow plenty of room for error on Delta Orange’s first excursion above 250,000 feet.

The nose came up by computer magic, nudged through the thin atmosphere by bursts of the Orbital Maneuvering System, and the rockets ignited.

The MakoShark had already been cruising at Mach 7, and the new acceleration gently pushed Dimatta back into his reclining seat. The gravitational pull, monitored on a HUD readout, rose to 3.5. The velocity increased rapidly and steadily: 9.2, 10.4, 12.7, 14.9, 16.2, 17.0.

The radar altimeter provided similar readings, switching at three hundred thousand feet to the simpler indication of miles: seventy-two, eighty-five, 120, 170, 190.

Mach 20.4.

There was no unusual vibration in the fuselage, in his seat, or under his hand, which Dimatta kept loosely fitted to the control stick.

The rocket motors shut down after an eight-minute burn, right on the computer’s schedule.

Though he knew the sensation was only in his mind, everything smelled new.

His environmental suit was new, and the collar ring felt stiff when he turned his head.

His and Williams’s well-worn and well-fitted suits and helmets, loved like his Uncle Albert’s funeral suit, had disappeared along with Delta Green. It had ticked him off to no end.

“Mach two-six-point-one,” Williams intoned, “escape velocity. Still in one piece, Cancha.”

“You, or the bird?”

“Both of us, which is a damned good deal. I uncrossed my fingers.”

At over seventeen thousand miles per hour, the sensation of speed was dulled into almost no motion at all. The globe below them did not seem to move. He picked out the Caspian Sea, the projection of India.

He wondered where, in all of that landscape, his Delta Green was.

“She’s got a good feel to her,” Williams said.

Dimatta couldn’t quite bring himself to think of this MakoShark as “her.”

He tested the control stick, which was finally attuned to the pressures he liked. Easing it sideways to the left, the wingtip thrusters fired, and Delta Orange rolled smartly to the left. He fired the reverse thrusters to stop the roll when the Earth was directly above them.

“Looking good, Orange.”

Just above Dimatta’s head, Delta Blue coasted in. McKenna used his forward thrusters to retard her forward speed and matched velocities with Delta Orange.

“You want me to go clear around you, Cancha, or are you going to give me a roll?” McKenna asked.

“Rolling, Snake Eyes.”

Dimatta rolled around his longitudinal axis three times, slowly, so McKenna and Munoz could examine the aerospace fighter’s skin and fittings.

“Not even a drop of spit on her,” Munoz said.

“We’ll give you an ‘A’ this trip,” McKenna said. “How are the readings, Nitro?”

Williams read off the pertinent temperatures, pressures, and capacities, all of which were also being recorded at Jack Andrews and aboard Themis by telemetry transmissions. “Hell, Snake Eyes, I think we’re getting better mileage than Green got. Even Marla is impressed.”

“Who’s Marla?” Munoz asked.

“My calculating machine.”

“Oh, oh, I think you’re in love, Nitro,” Jack Abrams broke in.

“Where the hell are you, Do-Wop?” Williams asked.

“Cruising the main drag of Calcutta. Just listening in on your test hop, buddy.”

“Red is ditto, Orange. Congrats,” Lynn Haggar said.

The whole squadron had been tracking this maiden flight, and Dimatta felt a little humbled by their concern.

“Everything’s green, Snake Eyes. Smooth as anything you can buy at Frederick’s,” he said.

“Ready to take her back?”

“Nitro?” Dimatta asked.

“Any time. I’m eager.”

“Cancha give me a window?”

“Coming up.”

“We’ll trail you through reentry,” McKenna said, “then split off. You go on back and get hot on the weapons trials.”

“Roger that, Blue.”

“We want you back on active duty as soon as we can get you,” McKenna added.

“Hell, yes,” Munoz chimed in. “You’ve had enough R&R, sittin’ around in paradise, suckin’ up the beer.”

The reentry flight came off without a hitch, and after they came out of the blackout, they were again congratulated by all of the MakoShark crews, by the control towers at Jack Andrews, Merlin, and Peterson, and by General Overton on board Themis.

Brackman, too, wherever he was, came in on the frequency, “Delta Orange, Semaphore.”

“Semaphore, Orange. Got you.”

“Nice going, gentlemen. We applaud you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Dimatta said, hoping Williams wouldn’t pipe up with anything, like asking for a pay raise. He remembered too well his last conversation with the commanding general, when he had had to report the hijacking.

Their reentry had brought them in over Moscow at two hundred thousand feet.

“Want a vector, Cancha?” Williams asked on the ICS. “Hell, no.”

He brought the right wing up in a wingover, dropped the nose, and dove, picking up speed beyond Mach 6, rather than losing velocity.

“Hot shit pilot,” Williams said.

“Want to get out here?”

“Not just yet.”

“We’re going for a ride.”

“One that’s not on the test schedule?”

“Probably not,” Dimatta said.

“Go for it.”

The Earth climbed directly at him, and at ninety thousand feet, he eased back on the controller, pulling very slowly into level flight. At those speeds, abrupt maneuvers tended to leave things behind, like wings.

At Mach 4.5, with the MakoShark still coasting, Paris came into view.

He snap-rolled twice.

“All right!” Williams said.

Pulled into a high-G right turn that shoved him toward the left side of the cockpit. The pressure suit built into the environmental suit inflated and deflated as the gravitational force rose and fell, keeping his blood circulating more or less normally. His vision dimmed a couple times when the Gs got too high.

Made a circle fifty miles in diameter.

Lost speed by zooming into the vertical.

Pulled the nose on over and dove again, the Mediterranean peeking at him from several hundred miles away.

More snap rolls.

Dives.

High-G, missile-avoidance turns.

The G-suit ebbed and flowed.

Started the turbojets.

And did it all again, on the jets this time, slowly working toward the Mediterranean.

When he finally leveled out at thirty-five thousand feet and headed south toward Chad, Williams said, “Nothing fell off, Cancha. At least, as far as I can tell.”

“You’re sure?”

“Well, that’s just me I’m talking about. I’ve got to get out and check out the bird yet.”

“Yeah, I think she’s going to be all right.”

NORAD

Marvin Brackman called Vitaly Sheremetevo himself. They were peers in that each was responsible for a major command, and Brackman thought that, during the New Germany crisis, they had become strong acquaintances, if not good friends.

Milly Roget, Brackman’s secretary of so many years that neither of them mentioned them, announced the completion of the call on the intercom. “General Sheremetevo is on line two, General.”

“Thank you, Milly.”

He punched the blinking button and picked up the phone. “Hello, Vitaly.”

“Hello, Marvin. It is good to hear from you.”

“I’m afraid I only make a call to you when it involves business.”

“Yes, I know. Does this relate to the information we provided to Colonel Pearson?”

“It does. I won’t keep you in the dark, Vitaly, but I’d like our discussion to remain confidential.”

“For as long as we might keep it so?” Sheremetevo asked.

“Yes. That’s the way it usually works.”

“I will attempt to keep my lips sealed, as the Americans say.”

“One of our MakoSharks was stolen.”

After a short pause, Sheremetevo said, “Ah, yes. And you now have five or six suspects.”

“Plus we have some other names we’d like to know more about.”

“I will help if I can.”

Brackman pulled the yellow legal pad with Thorpe’s notes close. “General Chestnoy?”

Sheremetevo laughed. “A doddering old fool. He is retired, Marvin. A forced retirement at that. The last time I saw him, it was in a restaurant in Moscow where he was attempting to convince a waiter that he was an air marshal.”

Brackman drew a line through the name.

“General Guriev?”

“The opposite of Chestnoy. He has just received his second star, and he has the difficult position of military liaison to the Ukraine government. He is an intelligent man.” Another line.

“How about Shelepin?”

“Anatoly Guryanovich Shelepin” Sheremetevo said. “I know the man. Or rather, I knew him.”

“He is no longer on active duty?”

“No, he is not. There was speculation that he might have played a role in the… unpleasantness, or at the least, supported the position.”

“Is he being prosecuted?”

“No. I don’t believe there was sufficient evidence, Marvin, and at any rate, he is no longer with us.”

“I see,” Brackman said, drawing a line through the name on the pad.

“He disappeared while on an inspection tour.”

“Crash?”

“Who knows? The airplane, an Antonov An-72, its crew, his wife Yelena Shelepin, and several of his aides all disappeared at the same time.”

Brackman circled the name.

“I see. Without a trace?”

“Without a trace.”

“What was his job, Vitaly? If I might ask?”

“Your CIA probably has more information than I do. He was at Stavka, and to my knowledge, had something to do with clandestine projects. Beyond that, I’m afraid that I cannot help you.”

Brackman scanned down through the notes. It helped that David Thorpe had a precise handwriting, infinitely superior to his own.

“Shelepin seems to have had a strong influence in the career of Alekander Maslov.”

“Maslov. I recognize the name from the list provided by Colonel Volontov, Marvin, but I do not know the man or his connections with Shelepin. It is common, however, for persons of influence to adopt a protégé.”

“It happens here, too, Vitaly,” Brackman said, thinking about how often he had kept McKenna out of trouble. “The last name I have is Dneprovsky.”

“Igor Dneprovsky. He is currently the military attaché to the ambassador to Great Britain.”

“All right, good. Thank you, Vitaly. This is quite helpful.”

“I appreciate your not asking for it,” Sheremetevo said, “but it may be possible for me to obtain a copy of Shelepin’s file. If so, I will forward it to you. Or to your Colonel Pearson?”

Documentation on general officers would be difficult for a peer officer to obtain.

“I wouldn’t want you to go out of your way,” Brackman said, meaning take a risk. “But I’m sure it would be of some value to Pearson.”

“It might be interesting if we could resolve the mystery of his disappearance. As well as some other mysteries.”

“Others?”

“Shelepin associated with other persons of influence in the past years, many of whom also escaped the prosecutor’s examination.”

“I see.”

“There are several, but generals Sergei Pavel of the KGB and Oleg Druzhinin of the Air Force come immediately to mind. All are of the same philosophical leanings.”

Meaning political leanings, Brackman understood.

“There are some,” Vitaly Sheremetevo continued, “in our central government and in several of the republics who strongly believe that we should pick up after our own dogs, if you understand?”

“I understand”

“I would therefore appreciate knowing of anything you might learn.”

“I just made up a calling list, Vitaly. You’re at the top of it.”

USSC-1

Army Master Sergeant Val Arguento accompanied Amy Pearson on her first security tour of the station as deputy commander. The physical — environmental and structural — integrity of the satellite was the responsibility of Brad Mitchell, but the command officers were assigned to the once-a-day inspection duties. It was a frequently shifted roster since Kevin McKenna managed to foul it regularly by being absent when his turn came up.

Every seam, every hatch, and every fuel cell was inspected, along with the readings on the localized sensors intended to detect leakage. The orange hatchways to the specialized spokes, with entries and exits recorded by the keypad access panels, were inspected for utilization by military personnel and for attempts at unauthorized entrance.

At one time, the inspectors initialed sheets of paper placed near each inspection point. Now, however, since Polly Tang had devised the new electronic system, the inspection team members each keyed in their personal access code on a remote communications box, and the report went directly into the mainframe computer.

In the module on the end of Spoke Nine, Pearson said hello to the two technicians manning the controls of the nuclear reactor, then floated about the small space — the reactor occupied most of the sixty-foot-long module — and checked conduit, bulkhead seals, and the access log. Arguento surveyed the pertinent reactor readouts among the controls, monitors, and status lights on the complex console and went over the past day’s log with Navy Lieutenant Otis Rogers. When Pearson and Arguento had each completed their portion of the inspection, they keyed their codes into the computer system, then pressed the pad labeled “INSPECTION OKAY.”

The computer automatically assigned the date and time and recorded the information in its data banks, simultaneously updating the visual readouts in the Maintenance Office and the Command Center.

As Arguento opened the hatch into the spoke, the speaker on the communications panel on the bulkhead blared, “Colonel Pearson, are you there?”

She pulled herself close to the panel, “I’m right here, Donna.”

“We’ve got all kinds of classified data starting to come in for you.”

She looked at the clock on the panel. “It’ll be another hour before I’m finished. Anything pressing?”

“I can’t tell,” Amber said.

Arguento said, “I can finish the tour, Colonel.”

Pearson longed to dig into the fresh information, but shook her head. The station came first.

“In an hour, Donna”

An hour and twenty minutes passed before they completed checking the last civilian laboratory and residential spaces. In the far end of Module Six, contracted to Dow, she had to caution the three chemists about securing unattended lab equipment, but otherwise the inspection was routine.

By the time she got back to her office in the Command Center, Donna Amber had transferred all of the incoming data files to Pearson’s work station and she began scanning them immediately.

A CIA field agent in Berlin had located Yuri Pronnikov working incognito as a waiter in a relative’s restaurant, and that left Pearson with five suspected Mako pilots.

There were no more reports on the other possible pilots as yet, but Pearson was more interested in the names turned up by Brackman.

Shelepin, Pavel, and Druzhinin.

The first name had been one of hers, but the other two were new. Accompanying the names were the CIA dossiers on all three men.

In a separate batch of records, already translated from the Russian, were the old Soviet military records for the three. There was no source identifier on the copied records, and she supposed Brackman or Thorpe had been in touch with General Sheremetevo.

She spent over an hour reading through the extensive files, eliminating items that had been guesswork by the CIA and combining the factual items.

The three men had a number of things in common. They were all in their sixties; they had all held flag rank in the old Soviet military; they had all been staunch members of the Communist Party; they had all grown up together, professionally and politically.

And they had all departed Mother Russia hurriedly at the same time.

Pearson thought that was very interesting.

The details in their military records outlined the times they had been assigned to common commands, which was frequent, and the times they had been decorated or commended by superiors, many of whom were now doing hard time as a result of Commonwealth trials for traitorous activities. The resulting picture in Pearson’s mind was one of men tightly bonded by similar interests and pursuits.

It was not a hell of a lot of convincing evidence, of course.

Also interesting was the fact that Anatoly Shelepin had been assigned as Stavka liaison to the military intelligence directorate for clandestine activities, the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye (GRU). He had been the paymaster for covert funds. The position not only gave him access to cash, but to military and political intelligence gathered from all over the world.

Sergei Pavel, also, had had the same opportunities for funds and information. As an assistant secretary in the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, he had been in direct contact with foreign intelligence gathering. Within the First Chief Directorate, he had been assigned to Directorate K, foreign intelligence and security penetration, and had been especially active in the Sixth Department, which had been responsible for China, Vietnam, Kampuchea, and Korea.

Oleg Druzhinin was an ex-Red Air Force commander of fighter interceptor groups. He had been with Shelepin in Afghanistan, and Maslov had been assigned to both of them at one time or another.

Pearson liked what she was seeing. On her left console screen, she typed a new listing:

LEADERSHIP: Shelepin, Favel, Druzhinin

RANK AND FILE: Maslov, Averyanov, Nikitin Bryntsev, Yevstigneyev

She looked at the names and thought about their files, then added:

PURPOSE: Unknown (Communist?)

FUNDING: Shelepin access to funds, Pavel access to funds

Reading through the files again, she noted that, except for Pavel, none of the men had served for any length of time outside the boundaries of the old Soviet Union, discounting Afghanistan. Pavel had done extended temporary duty tours in each of the countries covered by the Sixth Department. She keyed in the possibilities.

LOCALE: China, Vietnam, Kampuchea, or Korea

Although she fully realized that she was still working with a general theory, based on little substantiated evidence, Pearson felt as if she were getting somewhere. There were enough common ties and capabilities revealed in documentation about the principals, as well as the general factor of their defections, to begin outlining an organization.

She switched to the center screen and quickly wrote a memorandum:

CLASS: TOP SECRET

TO: David Thorpe, Gen., G2, USAFSC

FROM: Amelia Pearson, Col., Dep Cmdr, G2, USSC-1

REF: Operation FIND

1. The attached outline is still speculative, but sufficient evidence exists to suggest a higher than normal probability for such an organization.

2. A location in China or Korea seems unlikely, given current political situations, and Kampuchea and Vietnam should be given higher priority.

3. Request NSA redeployment of satellite surveillance to affected target countries.

4. Request CIA and DIA intensified effort in affected target countries relative to location of principals.

Pearson hit the intercom button for the radio shack. “Amber, Colonel.”

“Coming your way, Donna,” she said and sent the memo and outline for encoding and transmission.

PHNOM PENH, KAMPUCHEA

Anatoly Shelepin crossed the gravelled center of his compound in Phnom Penh and entered the second house on the west side. This house had been renovated into office, work, and laboratory areas, and he found his chemists at work on the second floor.

“What is your progress, Comrade Weiss?” he asked the head chemist.

Weiss, nearly seventy years old, had once headed a major chemical complex in East Germany. He waved his hand at the pile of fuel pellets on the stainless steel table. They had been retrieved from the MakoShark as soon as Maslov had returned with it.

“The composition is amazingly simple, Comrade Shelepin. We have determined all of the elements, and now we are conducting random tests to be certain that the proportions are consistent and exact.”

“Excellent. And production?”

“Production will be much less complex than I had expected. We will require a site for the factory.”

“As soon as you provide me the specifications,” Shelepin said, “I will arrange for an appropriate plant.”

Weiss trudged to a desk at the side of the room and picked up several sets of paper. He handed them to Shelepin with a small smile of satisfaction.

“Already complete, Comrade.”

“Again, excellent, Comrade Weiss. I will have Sergei Pavel locate a suitable site.”

“If we could find an abandoned chemical factory,” Weiss said, “we can be producing as much fuel as you will need within three weeks.”

NEW WORLD BASE

The four camouflaged hills had been rolled away from the runway.

The late morning shadows spread purplish-black tones over everything in sight. Beneath the fringes of the jungle, ii was still black, almost frightening.

General Oleg Druzhinin left the control center and crossed to the runway. The humidity was high, and the perspiration gathered quickly on his forehead. He took his cap off and wiped the sweat away with his forearm.

The MakoShark was sitting in the middle of the runway. Several ground crewmen moved about it as it was prepared for flight. The small tanker truck with the jet engine fuel started its engine and drove slowly away.

Druzhinin approached the craft and found Maslov and Nikitin ready to start up the ladders to their cockpits. He saw that the former names on their helmets had been removed and their own names had been precisely painted in white paint against the blue plastic coating.

“Comrade Shelepin wishes you well,” he said.

“Thank the Chairman for us,” Maslov said.

“I will, Aleksander Illiyich. This is probably your most crucial mission. Certainly, it is the most dangerous, flying into the heartland of the enemy.”

“It is only one of our enemies, General.”

“Still, it is the one to be most feared.”

Maslov smiled, his teeth perfectly white in his handsome face. He held his hand out and demonstrated its steadiness. “I find myself unperturbed, General. In fact, I look forward to this operation.”

Boris Nikitin did not provide the same demonstration. Druzhinin suspected all of the nervous anxiety for the crew would reside with the man in the backseat. Still, Nikitin was the only man, besides Maslov, with experience in the Mako’s rear cockpit. The MakoShark’s electronics systems were more varied and more advanced than those of the Mako, and Nikitin was still learning their intricacies.

“Our comrades will be waiting for you,” Druzhinin said. “The timing should be perfect.”

“And the equipment?”

“The boxes have been constructed exactly to your specifications. I have been assured of that.”

“That is all that I require,” Maslov said. “Will that be all, General?”

“Of course. Be on your way.”

Druzhinin backed away, then turned and walked to the side of the runway.

Nine minutes later, with the turbojet engines screaming, and yet issuing very little flame from their exhausts, Maslov saluted him from the cockpit.

Druzhinin returned the salute.

Maslov released the brakes, and the MakoShark shot down the runway. The steel planks bounced and rattled.

Then the craft rotated, climbing steeply away to the northeast, and the roar of the engines receded. Only two pinpricks of light identified her against the morning sky, and they were soon gone.

Druzhinin was still in awe of the MakoShark. One of them was enough to make the rest of his air force obsolete. As soon as they had a spare hour, he would have Maslov take him for a test ride.

“You see something, Snake Eyes?”

“Maybe, Tiger. Probably a meteorite”

“We’re supposed to look like meteorites.”

“Let’s go look,” McKenna said.

They were cruising eastward at sixty thousand feet over the border between Thailand and Kampuchea, following new orders issued by Brackman’s office to concentrate on the area. Conover was flying a pattern over Vietnam, and Haggar was down at Wet Country for a breather.

“Time?” he asked.

“Ten-five-eight local, jefe.”

“Run the checklist,” he ordered as he pulled into a left turn and started to climb. They weren’t powered and the speed started to bleed off right away, down to Mach 1.2. “Running. What’d you see, Snake Eyes?”

“A momentary burn, could have been any thing.”

“Direction?” Munoz asked.

“Call it zero-four-five, maybe twenty degrees above my horizon. I don’t have a clue as to distance.”

“Going active.”

McKenna followed the checklist scrolling up his small CRT, checking switches and readouts, then ignited the rocket motors. He keyed in a ninety percent thrust and two minutes of time in the keyboard, and let the computer balance the throttles during the acceleration. Manual control of the twin rocket throttles during high percentage burns tended to skid the craft around the skies.

By the time the rocket motors shut down at Mach 4.4, Munoz had completed a radar search of most of their forward quadrants, at various altitudes and at ranges of thirty, one hundred, and 220 miles. The 220-mile range wasn’t absolutely reliable at their altitude.

“Nothing, compadre.”

“Absolutely positive?”

“Absolutely.”

“That’s her, then.”

“Yeah, I think so, too. I trust your eyes.”

“But where do we go from here, Tiger?”

“I think we go back to Wet Country and wait for the news reports. We’re not gonna see anythin’ else before we hear about it.”

“Too damned true,” McKenna said, rolling into a right turn. Damn, he hated being on the other side of the fence, with the hostiles flying stealth craft. It made him appreciate how the German pilots he had faced must have felt.

“See if you can find Borneo.”

“How big is it?” Munoz asked.

Chapter Nine

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

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.

DELTA GREEN

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.

USSC-1

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.

MERLIN AIR BASE

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.”

MERLIN AIR BASE

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.

NORAD

“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.”

DELTA BLUE

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.

Chapter Ten

JACK ANDREWS AIR BASE

Dimatta and Williams were shooting pool in the recreation center. Dimatta had a cold bottle of Michelob and a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich at hand, and Williams was sipping occasionally from a stemmed glass of Chablis.

They had been combining weapons trials on Delta Orange with the shakedown schedule for preoperations certified craft, and they still had two more three-hour flights to complete. But they had come up against the Space Command’s imposed maximum flying time of fifty hours per week, and they were grounded for the next twenty-four hours.

Dimatta didn’t think of himself as particularly tired, but General Brackman had a thing about fatigued pilots making errors with expensive, tax-supported vehicles.

He leaned over the table and lined up his shot. “Four ball in the cross-side pocket.”

“On your grandmother’s wedding day, maybe.”

“No sweat”

“You realize how much grease and fat are in that bacon?” Williams asked.

“I got a lab analysis before I ordered it,” Dimatta said. “It wasn’t quite up to my standards, but I figured I could live with it.”

Dimatta stroked the cue stick tenderly, the cue ball snapped forward, ticked the four ball, which caromed off the side rail, crossed the table, inched toward the side pocket, slowed… slowed… slowed… then dropped in.

“Shit! Unbelievable luck,” Williams said.

Dimatta loved a good shot, whether it was on a pool table, or from the cockpit of his MakoShark, aiming twenty millimeter tracers at something elusive.

“They missed Green,” Williams said.

Both of them had listened to the radio net during the pursuit, but neither had spoken about it until now.

“Yeah, they did.”

“It’s too bad,” Williams said, “especially if they’ve got all those Wasp IIs now.”

“Oh, I don’t know, George. We may yet get a chance to get her back in one piece. That’s what Brackman and McKenna really want.”

“You’re into reading minds, now?”

“When they’re that easy to read, yeah, I am.”

Dimatta took plenty of time to line up his next shot, a short, straight giveaway. He put lots of reverse left spin on the cue ball, and tapped it.

“Bingo,” he said, picking up the chalk and caressing the cue tip with it.

“You listened to them, Frank. The guy’s good. We won’t get her back easy.”

“Maybe.”

“If she has to go down, I hope to hell we’re the ones who do it.”

“You went and named the computer,” Dimatta accused.

“Marla. It’s a good name, Frank. Fits her.”

PHNOM PENH

In the house in the compound, Shelepin and Pavel had dinner together. Shelepin had urged Yelena to go out to dinner so that they could be alone.

He was nervous, and he could tell that Pavel was nervous also.

They were drinking iced vodka, and the levels in the glasses were dropping faster than the dinner courses could be served by the Khmer servants.

A telephone on a long cord had been placed on the table near his elbow, and though Shelepin kept an eye on it, it refused to ring.

Earlier, Sergeant Kasartskin, who was monitoring radio and television in the United States, had reported no news stories about stolen missiles. They were keeping it quiet. The Americans did not like to stir up media hornets’ nests.

Maslov had not been seen since morning. He was almost four hours past the time of his expected return. The pilot seemed to make up his own schedules once he was in the air.

“It could all fall apart, Sergei.”

Pavel smiled, but weakly, “Anatoly. You worry too much. There will be a simple explanation.”

“Oleg Druzhinin believes in these space craft. He thinks they are infallible. What if he is wrong?”

“You have taken a close look at it, as I have,” Pavel replied. “I, for one, was truly impressed. It is all we need to accomplish our ends.”

“What if Maslov had a heart attack? The craft may be invincible, but humans are not.”

“Aleksander Maslov’s and Boris Nikitin’s physical examinations showed their health to be flawless, Anatoly. You are grasping for straws of excuse. It is something we do not tolerate in our subordinates.”

“You are a true friend, Sergei. You will keep me on the correct course.”

“Remember how we discussed this very issue?” Pavel said. “Not the specific case, but the lack of flexibility in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”

“I remember. And I still believe that the party’s insistence upon adhering to strict standards and timetables led to its downfall.”

“Exactly! And we were part of the system; it is ingrained. However, we must choose flexibility, Anatoly. We have excellent people, and we must rely on them. You watch. Colonel Maslov will achieve his mission, but we must allow him his own decision making.”

“You truly believe that, Sergei?”

“Of course I do,” Pavel said. “In the meantime, as the Americans do, I have my fingers crossed.”

USSC-1

The Central Intelligence Agency came up with two more interesting pieces of data. Copies of the two cables were forwarded to the G-2, USSC-1. The first short message dealt with the Soviet defector Yevstigneyev:

TOP SECRET 10170935Z

TO: PEARL

FROM: AARDVARK

SUBJECT Y-l DEPARTED BAGHDAD 07/12 FOR TRIPOLI. RUMORED TO BE AERO CONSULTANT LAF. WANT MORE?

Pearson pondered the information. There were two ways to go with it. One, she could work up a theory which put Libya in the middle of a plot to steal the MakoShark and increase its share of power in the world. She wouldn’t put it past the madman to think he was capable of establishing a presence in space.

Or two, she could put it on the electronic spindle for the time being.

She favored the spindle since Yevstigneyev’s file had not contained cross-references to General Anatoly Shelepin, and she thought that following the trail of the general staff defector was a more promising direction.

Pearson wrote a quick memo to herself, then consigned it to her suspense file.

Then she called up the second cable to the screen:

TOP SECRET 10171421Z

TO: PEARL

FROM: MOSQUITO

PER WATCHLIST 10/16, POS ID EX-SOV SERGEI PAVEL THIS CAP CITY. FOLLOWED TO APPARENT RES W/ OTHER SOV EMIGRES. NOCONTACT MADE.

A note at the bottom, apparently entered by the processing analyst at Langley, identified MOSQUITO as resident in Phnom Penh.

Much more promising.

General Sheremetevo had identified Pavel as buddy-buddy with Shelepin and a fellow deserter.

She typed a quick memo to the Deputy Director of Operations at Langley requesting further detail on the other Soviet émigrés living in Phnom Penh, along with the location of their residences.

If nothing else, she could send McKenna on an overflight to get a few recon photos.

DELTA BLUE

After spending six hours losing track of Delta Green, and since they were already in space, McKenna had ordered the three MakoSharks back to Themis for maintenance, refueling, and rearming.

Deltas Blue, Yellow, and Red were each docked in their own hangar cells since the MakoSharks were kept out of the view of satellite eyes and Earth-bound telescopes. Beyond the attempt to keep them from view, servicing the craft inside the mother ship was much easier than dancing around in clumsy space suits outside the space station.

Delta Blue floated in the middle of her hangar, secured by eight long bungee straps. The dark blue finish seemed to absorb light from the surface-mounted light fixtures in the gray-finished bay.

Technicians with vacuum hoses attempted to capture all traces of dirt or dust caught in the crannies of the MakoShark’s compartments. The space station’s recirculated atmosphere needed all of the help it could get, despite its complex filtration system.

During the refueling process, a low-toned chime kept sounding while a red strobe light pulsed at the same rate. The aural and visual alarms tended to make technicians concentrate while volatile fuels were transferred from the feeder outlets of the hub to the craft.

When the refueling of both the liquid JP-7 and the pelletized solid fuel was complete, McKenna floated into the cockpit, powered up the computer, and called up the MakoShark’s maintenance log which kept track of the hours used on all of the critical sub-systems. Future maintenance requirements were noted, but none were currently pressing. McKenna scrolled the log up the screen, but did not see anything that might affect safety or performance.

Tapping in the frequency for Themis’s maintenance office on the radio pad, McKenna said, “Beta Anyone, Delta Blue”

“Beta Two.”

“Polly, my dear. You want my log?”

“Why not, if it’ll keep you happy. Hang on a minute while I set up.”

He waited until she gave him the order to proceed, then tapped the command into his keyboard. All of the updated maintenance files were transferred immediately into Beta’s computer storage, which also contained data on the other MakoSharks, the Makos, and the HoneyBees.

With the maintenance requirements met, McKenna met with Tech Sergeant Bert Embry, whose tiny office in the hub guarded an orange-painted security hatch. The compartment was labeled A-61, and most visitors thought that it simply contained additional fuels.

In a way, it did, but the fuels were loaded in canisters attached to warheads. The ordnance section stored Wasp IIs, Phoenix IIs, laser-guided bombs, and other goodies that would only bother the consciences of some of the civilian scientists who lived aboard the station for a few weeks at a time.

“Mornin’, Colonel,” Embry said.

“Hi, Bert. I want you to re-rig all the birds.”

“Will do, sir. What’s the setup?”

“Short pylons outboard, each with two Phoenix, and long pylons inboard, each with four Wasp IIs.”

“Pull the Chain Guns?” Embry asked.

“Yeah. We’re not going to get close enough to use them. Let’s set up the forward bays with eight Wasp IIs also.”

Each of the two cargo bays on the MakoShark could accept a specially designed missile launcher which rotated, like the cylinder on a pistol, one missile after another into firing position.

“How about the aft bays, Colonel?”

“We’ll leave them empty for now. The way things are going, something else may come up.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Embry promised.

McKenna pulled himself out into the B-l corridor, which traversed the hub between the hangar side and the working and office spaces side. He headed down the corridor, away from the center of the hub.

“I’m afraid not, sir. You’ll have to turn around and go back.”

McKenna caught a grab bar and stopped himself at a cross corridor when he heard Benny Shalbot’s voice. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Shalbot speaking with such politeness. Looking down the well-lit passageway, he saw Shalbot’s squat body blocking access to one of the contract scientists, identifiable by the white jumpsuit the civilians wore.

“Not only are my taxes subsidizing your salary, Sergeant, but my company is being charged exorbitant fees for use of laboratories we already own as taxpayers. I’m entitled to see what we’re paying for.”

“Yes sir, I’m sure that’s right. However, sir, I’m not in the finance section, and you’ll have to talk to General Overton about that.”

“Sergeant…”

“They just pay me to do my part in national defense,” Shalbot said. “Right now, sir, that’s keeping classified information classified.”

McKenna glanced down the B-l corridor and saw that the window overlooking Delta Blue’s hangar was darkened, but the hatchway was open as technicians moved in and out.

He was about to go to Shalbot’s assistance when the civilian abruptly grabbed a handhold and pushed off in the opposite direction.

Shalbot put his toe against the same grab bar, flexed it, and came drifting back toward McKenna.

“That was an amazing display of diplomacy, Benny.” Shalbot jerked his head up. “Oh, Colonel. Didn’t know you were there.”

“You handled that very well,” McKenna said.

“What we need, we need signs posted that say, ‘Any egghead beyond this point gets his ass shot off.’”

“Less tactful, Benny, but it makes a point.”

“Or this chickenshit outfit could spring for some of those expanding gates, that keep kids from falling into the basement. Put’em up at the end of the corridor.”

“They would probably open them up anyway.”

“Only once, if I electrify ’em”

“Another good point, Benny.”

Shalbot shoved off up the B-l tunnel, and McKenna continued on down it, stopping to check on Haggar and Conover, who were overseeing the maintenance of their MakoSharks.

McKenna told them about the ordnance configuration he had ordered.

“New tactics, Kevin?” Haggar asked.

“Maybe. We’ll see if Amy has come up with anything new. Right now, get the birds bedded down, then yourselves. We’ll brief at 1700 hours in the exercise room.”

With a powerful kick off a hangar control console, McKenna shot on down the corridor to the perimeter hallway, trying to make up his mind whether to go left to Spoke Sixteen and crawl into his cubicle for a long nap or go right and check in with Overton, then crawl into his office for a long nap. He went right.

He traversed the Number One spoke and entered the Command Center. He stuck his head into Pearson’s office and found her concentrating on three screens full of data. “Hi, gorgeous.”

“McKenna,” she said in a low, deadly voice.

“Something wrong?”

“I’m trying to work.”

He was about to attempt a soothing reply when Overton turned from the main console and spotted him.

“Okay, everyone!” Overton said. “Go take a coffee break.”

The three technicians monitoring systems looked up, then unfastened their tethers, and headed for the hatch.

“Sergeant Amber,” Overton called, “you, too.”

Donna Amber emerged from the radio shack, smiled at McKenna, and slipped out the hatch.

McKenna looked to the commander.

“I want all colonels in here with me”

Pearson gave McKenna a dirty look, released her straps, and pushed out of the compartment.

McKenna followed her and took up a station opposite Overton, hanging onto a wire conduit.

The general didn’t look happy, McKenna decided.

“The size of my general staff being what it is,” Overton said, “I’m also the G-l. Right?”

“Right, sir,” Pearson said.

McKenna nodded.

The G-l was responsible for personnel, and Overton’s job was tougher than most. He had to be sensitive to the relationships within his command, and because of its claustrophobic nature, eliminate problems before they caused severe fluctuations in morale.

“I find that I’ve got a couple of pressing personnel problems,” he said.

Pearson nodded her head. She seemed to know what the problems were.

“Sergeant Joe Macklin and Sergeant Donna Amber,” Overton said, “have apparently overcome whatever differences they had that were causing friction between them.”

There had been some loud arguments between the two, McKenna recalled.

“That’s good,” he said.

“Not good,” Overton countered. “Polly Tang found them overcoming their differences in the laundry room.”

“Ah.”

“While we thus have two sergeants in harmony, the effect on the rest of the complement is less harmonious. Little jealousies arise. There are those who become, shall we say, envious of another’s ability to find sensual activity in a limited environment. The effect on morale is debilitating.”

McKenna understood what Overton was saying, understood it completely and felt just a twinge of guilt.

“Would you like to have me speak to them, General?” Pearson asked.

“Certainly not you, Colonel Pearson.”

Her face flushed a bright red that did not go well with her hair.

“Lieutenant Tang is going to have a heart-to-heart with Sergeants Macklin and Amber, and if we don’t have immediate cooperation, one or the other, or both, of them are going Earth-side permanently.”

Overton looked at Pearson, then at McKenna.

McKenna knew what was coming.

“That brings me to my second personnel problem. Ironically, it appears to be the same as my first problem.”

“Jim…”

Overton held up a hand. “I don’t give a good goddamn what you two do away from the station. In fact, I’m happy you’ve reconciled some of your own differences. But, Jesus Christ! The two of you are supposed to demonstrate some leadership ability. Set examples.”

“This is my fault,” McKenna said.

“I’m sure it is, Kevin. But you do have an accomplice. You report to Brackman, and I can only make a recommendation. If it comes down to a battle between us over who’s more necessary, Amy’s the one who will have to be transferred”

Pearson’s face went from red to white.

“And I don’t want to lose my brand-new deputy,” Overton said. “She’s too good.”

“General, I—”

“Wait until I’m finished, Amy. I also don’t want to start more tongues wagging by moving one of you from Module Sixteen. As I see it, that leaves me one alternative. I want promises of zero-gravity celibacy from each of you.”

“You’ve got it, General,” McKenna said.

“Yes, sir”

“McKenna, you’re supposed to be sleeping.”

“Roger, sir.”

McKenna shoved off the bulkhead and headed for the spoke. He glanced once at Pearson and saw pale green eyes full of fire that told him she had been right all along.

He had had his share of reprimands throughout his Air Force career, most in response to his loose interpretation of the rules. He didn’t mind accepting responsibility when he was wrong, but in most of the earlier cases, he had been damned certain he was right.

He was wrong this time.

And he felt much like the time his father had caught him with a pack of Marlboros in the chicken coop on the family farm near Haxtun, Colorado. He’d received his last spanking at age fourteen.

But he felt as if he’d just been spanked again.

Jesus, McKenna! When are you going to grow up?

NORAD

“General Thorpe is on line three.”

“Thank you, Milly.”

Brackman tapped the button and picked up the receiver.

“David?”

“It’s a right proper muck-up, as our cousins would say, Marvin.”

“It figured to be. What have you got?”

“The contractor, with his DOD orders downsized, cut his overhead by decreasing his security to one man on the gate, now dead, and two men on roving patrol, neither of whom reached the scene until after the missiles were gone.”

Brackman sighed. He had envisioned as much.

“The FBI got the cooperation of the California and Nevada state police, as well as the Civil Air Patrol, and one of the planes located a moving van parked in the middle of a dry lake northeast of Reno. That’s where I am now.”

“A moving van?”

“Yes. Four dead men, too,” Thorpe said.

“Jesus Christ!”

“Each of them shot twice, once in the head, the forensic people here say. No ID on any of them except for one with a driver’s license, and I’d bet it’s forged. This early in the investigation, Marv, I’d still guess all four were in on the heist.”

“No sign of the missiles?”

“Not the missiles themselves, but the crates are here. The missiles were transferred to some other kind of container for loading aboard the MakoShark.”

“You’re certain about that, David? That it was the MakoShark?”

“Absolutely. I personally measured the distance between the tracks of the main landing gear and found a match. And I recognize the tire tread. I’ll bring you a plaster cast of the tread if you want, Marv.”

“Not necessary, David. Come on back.”

Brackman had Milly put in a call to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but an hour-and-a-half went by before he called back.

“I just got back from the Hill, Marv.”

“How did it go?”

“As well as could be expected, I suppose. The SecDef laid out the facts for the combined armed forces committees and pleaded for time.”

“Will he get it?”

“They promised to keep it quiet for a week, but you know how that goes.”

“We’ll see it in the Washington Post by morning,” Brackman said.

“You’re a damned pessimist,” Cross said. “You called for a reason?”

He updated Cross on the FBI’s investigation.

“This tell you anything, Marvin?”

“A couple things, Hannibal. First of all, there’s a relatively large organization involved.”

“Tell me about it, would you?”

“They had assets inside CONUS to stage the missile theft, and they feel they can waste manpower by killing off these guys, probably to prevent interrogation.”

“That’s one,” Cross said.

“Then, every incident has been well-planned, and there’s a sequence to the events. One, grab the MakoShark. Two, divert a shipment of fuel for it. Three, arm it.”

“That’s good planning, but not necessarily an organization, Marv.”

“No, but I don’t see one renegade pilot taking it on by himself.”

“You go along with Pearson on the pilot angle?”

“I have to, after McKenna briefed me on Delta Green’s evasion tactics. The pilot has experience in the machine, Hannibal.”

“All right, I’ll buy it, too. What next?”

“If it’s a terrorist group, we can expect attacks on something important and attention-getting, say, commercial air liners.”

“Jesus, Marv! Don’t tell me that”

“I don’t want to, believe me,” Brackman said. “It’s a scenario we have to consider, though.”

“Okay, you’re right. So let’s say we’ve got an organization of some kind involved,” Cross said. “Whether it uses terrorist tactics or something else, there’s got to be a political ideology involved.”

“I’m with you, Hannibal.”

“They go to the trouble of stealing themselves a massive piece of firepower.”

“You know my position,” Brackman said. “I see each MakoShark as equivalent to a squadron. At least.”

“They do this for one of two reasons. To protect the organization or to impose their ideologies on everyone around them.”

“Or both,” Brackman said.

“Right. We need to know the objectives of the organization, Marv.”

“Pearson’s scenario has ex-Soviet pilots involved. And she has leads, through connections to the pilots, on ex-Soviet general officers. Right-wing types.”

“People who don’t think the Party’s dead and buried, you suppose, Marv?”

“It’s probably worth investigation, Hannibal.”

“I’ll spread that word among the right agencies,” Cross said.

NEW WORLD BASE

Aleksander Maslov and Boris Nikitin returned to New World Base after moonset.

After spending so many hours parked in orbit, waiting for darkness to return to Southeast Asia, Maslov was rested and he thought that Nikitin had come down from his fear high.

The former Soviet major had become irritatingly repetitious, recounting a dozen times their amazing escapes from violent and explosive death. He could not commend Maslov enough on his skill as a pilot.

Maslov had modestly accepted the praise, well aware that it was indeed his skill at the controls, rather than technology, that had allowed them to evade six Wasp II missiles. The MakoShark was equipped with radar and infrared threat sensors that sounded warning beeps in the helmet earphones and illuminated alert notices on the Head-Up Display when the craft was under attack by missiles homing on its heat emanations or by missiles utilizing semi-active or active radar. The attacks on them, however, had not initiated any alarms. The Wasp II missiles had been guided visually by the weapons system operators in the pursuit craft, and the metallic content of the small Wasp IPs body was not sufficient to trigger the radar alarm. Maslov’s keen eyes spotting the missiles in flight and his acute sense of timing before wrenching the MakoShark into violent evasive maneuvers were the basic factors of their survival.

Maslov had allowed Nikitin the luxury of endless reconstructions of the episodes, not for Maslov’s ego, but for Nikitin’s personal development. The weapons officer had not served in Afghanistan, had never been in combat, and had never been under attack except for simulations. Now he knew the edge of fear and the lure of battle.

Maslov, too, had learned. He had discovered that the Americans were far more cunning than he had expected. Someone, somehow, had very rapidly made the connection between the theft of missiles in California and his expected return to the Southeast Asia region. And whoever they were, they had estimated the timing very well. In the future, he would not be so easily predicted.

He had also discovered, not only the capabilities of the MakoShark fighter, but its limitations when it was visible to the naked eye. Both factors must be weighed in his future decisioning.

He had also learned about luck. Despite Nikitin’s praise, Maslov knew that his skills as a pilot had been reinforced by luck.

They did not use the radar on the approach to New World Base this time. He relied strictly on the inertial navigation system to pinpoint the destination and issued only one radio message to prepare the airstrip for their arrival.

The landing was uneventful, and as soon as the MakoShark was parked in its revetment and the ground crews were unloading the missiles, General Oleg Druzhinin came across the runway to greet them.

Portable work lights lit the underside of the craft, and Maslov was overseeing the lowering of the crates from the payload bay. He was quite protective of his craft for there were no replacement parts available if a clumsy mechanic damaged a cargo door or access hatch.

Druzhinin walked under the wing and stood next to him.

“Comrade General.”

“We are very happy to see you again, Aleksander. I had to place a call to Chairman Shelepin, for he has been quite anxious.”

“We are here, General, and complete.” Maslov waved a hand lazily at the crates. “Complete with sixty of the advanced missiles.”

“That is excellent! And what of those who delivered them to you?”

“No one will mention an inappropriate name. Ever”

“That is good,” Druzhinin said.

“However, events may have proceeded beyond that point, General. They were waiting for us.”

“They?”

“I assume the pilots of the 1st Aerospace Squadron, on which I was once briefed. A colonel named Kevin McKenna is the commander. The chief pilots are Franklin Dimatta and Wilbur Conover.”

Standing under the wing in the humid night, slapping at the growing population of mosquitoes seeking bare skin, Maslov briefed his superior on the mission, from the loading of the cargo to the ambush by the MakoSharks to his decision to await darkness in orbit.

“I don’t believe it will be long before they pinpoint this base, General.”

Druzhinin pointed westward, toward the hospital.

“And I don’t believe the ruse of the hospital will hold them back for long.”

Druzhinin nodded slowly. “You are suggesting, Aleksander Illiyich, that we move up the schedule?”

“The third phase must be accomplished immediately if we are to protect this base, Comrade General. As well as protect the objectives of the Party.”

“I suspect that you are correct. I will speak to the Chairman.”

“As soon as possible, I think. Where are the warheads?” Maslov asked.

Druzhinin evaded the exact answer. “I could have them here in a matter of days.”

“Or sooner,” Maslov suggested. “We have now lost the luxury of time.”

Chapter Eleven

USSC-1

All of the letters or comments in Amy Pearson’s personnel file were commendatory. The adjectives describing her in Officer Efficiency Reports were “superior,” “responsible,” and “outstanding” She couldn’t remember once having harsh words directed at her orally or in writing as a result of her action or inaction.

Until now. And I’m a full colonel in the United States Air Force, for God’s sake.

Worst of all, General Overton’s reprimand was fully justified.

She could not and would not shift the blame on McKenna. It was she who let her knees get watery and let her resolve melt when McKenna touched her or kissed her.

It was my weakness.

And others knew about it.

She felt entirely humiliated.

Pearson was busily composing new resolutions about the rest of her professional and social life when her office intercom sounded.

“Colonel Pearson?”

She pressed the keypad. “Yes, Donna.”

“Colonel Pearson, there is a Top Secret message coming in for you. It’s a long one.”

Donna Amber was being very formal, and Pearson could understand why. She wondered what Polly Tang had said to Amber and Macklin.

“Thank you, Donna. Please send it over on my data channel one.”

She selected the middle screen and called up the message which was directed to, “G-2, USSC-1.” It was a response to her query of MOSQUITO in Phnom Penh.

The CIA agent had been busy. He had identified a half-dozen Russians among an estimated thirty living in a compound of twenty-two residences in the northern part of the city. There was a listing of fourteen companies, businesses, shops, and restaurants in which the Russians appeared to have a proprietary interest.

Of the six people identified, none was using the name with which he was born. Sergei Pavel, who had been followed to the compound, was going by the name of Treml. And — there it was! — Anatoly Shelepin was using the name of Konstantin Paramanov.

The Russian émigré now named Paramanov was, in fact, well known in Phnom Penh as a benefactor. He appeared to be quite wealthy, and he had endowed a hospital for children as well as given freely to an orphanage, to an arts center, and to museums. MOSQUITO suspected he had also given freely to various levels of bureaucrats.

In response to her specific questions, the agent replied that, yes, the Russians had appeared in Phnom Penh shortly after the coup attempt in the Soviet Union, and no, the Russians did not appear to be involved in local politics. They stayed primarily to themselves or engaged in their various businesses. Paramanov/Shelepin travelled infrequently and apparently owned an old twin-engined aircraft.

While reading through the message, Pearson almost forgot about herself. And consciously, to keep her attention directed outward, she decided she needed action. Not the kind of action Lynn Haggar thrived on, but definitive motion in her own line of intelligence-gathering.

She needed to know more about Anatoly Shelepin and his friends.

And for that, she needed Overton’s permission to leave the station. Which made her think about her transgression once again.

God, I feel like a teenager, asking to go to the movies after being grounded.

NEW WORLD BASE

Aleksander Maslov had slept deeply for a solid eight hours, far more than was normal for him, and he was alert when he awakened.

Crawling naked out of his narrow bunk, he turned on the single overhead light, then moved to the tiny sink and gave himself a sponge bath before shaving. He dressed in a flight suit, grabbed a flashlight, and stepped to the ground outside his trailer.

The ground was moist and mushy under his feet. Crickets and unknown insects created a symphonic buzz in the jungle. Mosquitoes swarmed toward him immediately, only mildly put off by the repellent he had rubbed over his neck, arms, and hands. He could not see the sky through the jungle canopy, but it felt to him as if rain were imminent.

In the dark, he could not see the other side of the runway either, but to the north, there was a whitish haze peeking through the trees. Switching on the flashlight, he used it to avoid the tangled vines and weeds creeping along the ground, rounded the trailer to the runway and walked along it, headed toward the muted light.

The revetment hacked out of the jungle was covered by a green and gray camouflage net peppered with live foliage and suspended seven meters above the Earth. Below it, the MakoShark was bathed in hazy light from four worklamps. Six mechanics were working on the craft.

Boris Nikitin was already there, standing on a short scaffold next to the juncture of the fuselage and the left wing, supervising the last stages of preparation. He looked down when he heard Maslov’s footsteps on the steel mat used as a foundation.

“Good evening, Colonel. Did you sleep well?”

“Quite well, Boris. Have you eaten?”

“I waited for you.”

“Good. We will gorge ourselves shortly. Are the radios working?”

“The transmissions are excellent, at least at short range. We will know for certain when we achieve orbit. Sergeant Kasartskin is a genius.”

The man kneeling on the: wing, with his head and shoulders stuck into the compartment behind the cockpit, scooted backward and sat up.

“I am told that you are a genius, Sergeant,” Maslov called up to him.

“I must be, Comrade Colonel, to have achieved the modifications with the tools we have available.”

“Explain the alterations to me, please.”

Kasartskin rolled backwards to sit on the wing and wiped his hands with a rag. “There are five communications radios in this aircraft, selected on the keypad as Tac One through Tac Five. The first four are tunable to various frequencies, and the last is permanently set to two-four-three-point-zero, the emergency channel. The first, called tactical one, is utilized for normal military and general aviation communications. The second through fourth would be used for communications with headquarters or other craft in the squadron or wing.”

All of which Maslov had guessed.

“The first four radios have scrambling circuits which may be switched on. I left the first radio alone, removed two, three, and four, and reworked the integrated circuit boards so that the scramblers are all the same, but not the same as they were before.”

“These three radios will only work with each other?” Maslov asked.

“That is correct, Colonel. They are discrete from any other that the Americans, or anyone, has available. And they will also use the Molniya I satellite channels we are pirating from the Commonwealth network. We will now have communications with you, wherever you might be.”

“That is wonderful, Sergeant,” Maslov said, though he really did not mean it. He preferred being left alone when he was flying.

“I have reinstalled the number two radio in the craft, so that you will have Tac One, Tac Two, and Tac Five on the keypad. The other two radios will be installed here and at our other necessary contact point.”

“Very well, Sergeant Kasartskin. You will be finished soon?”

“Within the hour, Comrade Colonel”

Nikitin climbed down from the scaffolding, and the two of them walked together beneath the MakoShark. The four curved payload bay doors were lowered, and Maslov could see that the aft bay now contained an elongated pallet of equipment, with a large spherical tank painted white and labeled, “OXYGEN/NITROGEN, COMPRESSED,” and a clear-plastic-wrapped electronics console dominating the pallet.

In the forward bay, on a wooden floor, the mechanics had rigged two uncomfortable-appearing seats and restraining harnesses. Two space suits (part of a shipment of six stolen from the space program at Baikonur Cosmodrome) rested on the seats as the technicians modified the life-support and communications connections between the suits and the interior receptacles of the American craft. They did not yet have the materials and tools to fabricate one of the passenger modules normally used in the Mako and MakoShark, and so they were adapting what they had.

Two Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) backpacks, with self-contained batteries, air tanks, and propulsion systems rested on the steel mat at his feet, ready to be lifted into place in the bay.

“Has General Druzhinin determined who our passengers will be, Boris?”

“He has selected Captain Yuri Bryntsev and Corporal Filatov,” Nikitin said.

Bryntsev was a good choice, since he had already been in space as part of the Mako program. He did not know Filatov, except that he had once been a part of Soviet ground forces, and he supposed that the man had more brawn than brains, the opposite of what was necessary in zero-gravity.

The two of them checked the weapons pylons next. The space-modified Phoenix missiles, the only two they had, were mounted on the outboard pylons. Maslov would be very conservative about using them because he was not likely to obtain replacements soon.

Eight Wasp II missiles had been attached to the inboard pylons. He checked them over carefully, making certain that the safety pins were still in place.

“The on-board environmental and electronic systems have been examined, and the oxygen-nitrogen tanks refilled,” Nikitin said. “Both fuel types have been replenished. We are all but ready to go.”

“Are you nervous, Boris?”

Nikitin grinned weakly. “Not as much as I have been, Aleks. Our last flight may not have cured my uneasy nerves, but they are certainly more numb.”

Maslov grinned and slapped him on the back. “You will be fine, Boris. Let us go find dinner.”

Following the lead of Maslov’s flashlight, they started onto the pathway leading to the dormitory.

The flimsy rumble of one of the camouflage hills being towed from the runway stopped them, and they turned around and walked beneath the MakoShark and along the short taxiway to the edge of the runway.

“Do you know if we were expecting an airplane to arrive?” Maslov asked.

“No.”

A single flashlight winked on near the control center, then began to bob across the runway toward them.

It was within ten meters of them when the runway lights illuminated and Maslov recognized General Druzhinin.

He was smiling broadly.

“General?”

“Our warheads are coming in, comrades”

“The nuclear warheads?” Maslov asked.

“Exactly!” Druzhinin exclaimed. “We are now a superpower, and the world will soon know of it.”

PHNOM PENH

Anatoly Shelepin was in bed when the telephone rang. It rang three times before he managed to rise from the bed without waking Yelena and get to the living room.

“Yes?”

The voice on the other end, attesting to the quality of the Kampuchean telephone system, was tinny and more than slightly distorted.

“It is a grand evening.”

“And a balmy one,” he replied to Oleg Druzhinin’s code phrase.

“The packages have arrived.”

“All of them?”

“Three of them. The fourth is expected within fifteen minutes,” Druzhinin said. “However, I report that the first three are in excellent shape.”

The four SS-X-25 missiles had Multiple Independently Retargeted Vehicle (MIRV) warheads. Each of the nose-cones on the missiles contained ten five hundred-kiloton nuclear warheads. With four rockets at his disposal, forty targets could be designated. The missiles were solid fuel-based, and not as volatile as earlier liquid-fueled rockets. These four, in fact, had once been mounted on trailer-truck launchers.

“Thank you. I appreciate the notice,” Shelepin said and hung up.

It was going to happen.

He would make it happen.

If the former general secretaries and — terrible title! — the presidents of the Soviet Union had had the same resolve as Colonel General Anatoly Shelepin, there would still be a Soviet Union, and she would be the supreme and only government of the world.

USCC-1

Lynn Haggar hooked her elbow around one of the stanchions of the spring-loaded exercise machine and floated with her legs straight out in front of her.

The exercise room, which was also the 1st Aerospace Squadron’s briefing room, was slowly filling up with the crew members. Tony Munoz sat upside down — to her — in the centrifugal machine and yawned widely. Ben Olsen and Will Conover were trying to arm wrestle each other, but neither of them was going to win since they were floating in midair, without a solid surface to brace against.

McKenna came in, looked over his team, and slowly soared to the top bulkhead.

Jack Abrams ushered Amy Pearson through the hatchway, then closed the hatch.

“Three-quarters of the squadron present and mostly accounted for,” Abrams said.

“It’s all yours, Amy,” McKenna said.

“Thank you, Colonel.”

Uh oh, Haggar thought. Just when it looked as if Pearson and McKenna were getting along better, something had happened to spoil the progress. By the reddish flush coating Pearson’s throat, Haggar guessed that the new deputy commander was embarrassed about some incident. Maybe McKenna had made a pass at her?

She looked upward at the squadron leader. He seemed to be a little more reserved today. And he appeared just as handsome as ever.

Pearson was an idiot.

McKenna could make a pass at Lynn Marie Haggar any time, and he could expect an interception.

“All right,” Amy Pearson said, “here’s what we’ve got so far.”

She read off a bunch of names, most of which sounded Russian to Haggar.

“Shelepin and Pavel once held flag-rank positions in the Red Army and the KGB. They are both considered extremely right-wing as well as capable strategists. We… that is, I think they are involved in the hijacking of Delta Green. The motive is unknown at this point, but both men have been spotted in Phnom Penh.

“Of the five possible Soviet Mako pilots who could have hijacked the MakoShark, Aleksander Maslov appears to be the strongest candidate because of his past associations with Shelepin. He has a strong record in MiG-23 Floggers and MiG-29 Fulcrums, and he has combat experience in Afghanistan. He washed out of the Mako program because his superiors didn’t think he had enough self-discipline. He was too willing to risk his backseater and his passengers. We’re still trying to track the remaining four pilots, and one or more of them could also be involved.

“That’s good, Amy,” Haggar said. “But there’s no hint about motivation yet?”

“Not yet, Lynn.”

“We know one thing,” McKenna said. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be space-based.”

“How so, jefe?” Munoz asked.

“They went to the trouble of capturing a shipment of fuel pellets. That suggests to me that a few trips into orbit are planned.”

“The odds,” Haggar said, “favor the HoneyBee still being in orbit. Somewhere.”

“So they’ve got to come out here to refuel,” Will Conover added.

“The odds also favor,” Pearson said, “a land base somewhere in Southeast Asia for three reasons. It’s close to the hijack site, Colonel McKenna spotted them once in the area, and they nearly flew into a trap we set off Vietnam.”

“So we’re going to adopt a lie-in-wait philosophy,” McKenna said. “We can’t take Themis stationary, but the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is going to reposition some infrared-detecting satellites over Southeast Asia. We’re going to put a MakoShark out there, too, watching for an eight-or nine-minute rocket burn. That, we can see.

“It’ll be boring as hell, but we’ll set it up in six-hour shifts, rotating back here for rest periods. Will, you and Do-Wop get the first shift, and Lynn and Ben go second. Tony and I will do the wrap-up.”

“Except,” Pearson said, “I need to go Earth-side, and none of the Makos are available. I also need someone to pilot a Lear for me once I get there.”

McKenna studied her for a moment, then said, “That’s us, then, Tony. Get suited up.”

Haggar thought Pearson was going to protest for some reason, then decided to keep her mouth shut.

Which was usually the best course.

USSC-1

McKenna had Benny Shalbot install a passenger module in the aft bay of Delta Blue, and by the time he was finished, Pearson appeared, all dolled up in a unisex environmental suit and helmet.

Shalbot helped her get settled in the module while McKenna and Munoz pulled themselves down into their cockpits and began to strap in and hook up.

“Hey, compadre?”

“Yeah, Tony.”

“There’s somethin’ I’ve been meanin’ to ask you. What the hell…?”

“Don’t ask, Tony. Put your helmet on.”

He locked his own helmet in place and then secured his shoulder restraints and connected the environmental and communications lines. He powered up the instrument panel and computers.

Shalbot, rising from below, appeared alongside him. “You can close the bay doors, Colonel.”

He did so. “Thanks, Benny.”

“Have a good trip,” Shalbot said and pushed off for the hatchway.

“You on the line, Amy?” Munoz asked on the intercom.

“I’m here.”

She wasn’t going to be very talkative, McKenna thought, and didn’t blame her. He was assuming she had permission from Overton to go to Wet Country, but he wasn’t going to ask her about it. He was a trifle leery of the temper that came with the red hair.

Polly Tang worked them out of the hangar, and Munoz and his computer came up with the reentry solution. They had a sixteen minute wait for the window.

Sixteen minutes of silence.

Munoz offered to put Silence of the Lambs or Raise the Titanic on her video screen.

“No, thank you, Tony.”

“Geez,” Munoz said.

The reentry was exceptionally smooth, except for burning the nose cone off of a Wasp II, and the landing at Merlin Air Base was accomplished at 0712 hours, Borneo time.

Once they were towed inside Hangar One, and the passenger module opened, Pearson climbed down the short ladder and stretched muscles that hadn’t been subjected to gravity for some time.

It was a nice stretchy despite the environmental suit, McKenna thought.

She had all the help she needed from a half-dozen technicians in getting her helmet off.

“Are you going to fly the Lear, Colonel?”

“Of course, Amy. Where are we going?”

“Phnom Penh.”

“Damn,” Tony Munoz said. “I’ve gotta go check my log and see if that’s one of the cities I’ve been told not to come back to.”

Chapter Twelve

USAF LEARJET

“Take it, Tiger”

“Uno momento, amigo. They didn’t make me a pilot, remember?”

“They made you an electronics watcher. Watch the autopilot.”

“Ah!”

The Gates Learjet was at twenty thousand feet above the South China Sea, purring like a kitten, and even if she turned into a wildcat, McKenna had faith in Munoz’s ability to handle an emergency.

He crawled out of the left seat, pushed through the curtain separating the cockpit from the cabin, and crouched as he made his way back to Pearson.

He sat in the rear-facing seat opposite her. The small table between the seats was raised, and she had a dozen files spread over it.

She watched him with grave green eyes.

“Not now, Kevin.”

He tried a smile. “Now’s a good time.”

“No.”

“Look, Amy, it’s my fault.”

“I’d like to blame you,” she said, “but I can’t. I’m like a damned schoolgirl when I get near you. So stay away”

“Look, hon, we’ve got a nice chemistry…”

“No longer.”

She was right. This wasn’t a good time to discuss themselves. Her mouth was frozen into a straight, grim line, and her pale eyes were opaque.

“All right, we’ll talk about it later.”

“Not now, not later.”

McKenna sighed. He liked her even better.

“How about business then?”

“What business?”

“Why are we going to Phnom Penh?”

“That’s where Shelepin and Pavel are,” she said.

“We’re going into the spy business? I thought that’s why Uncle paid the guys in the CIA.”

“We’re not going anywhere together. You’re the pilot, you wait at the airport for me.”

“That’s not going to happen, Amy”

“It sure as hell is.”

“Are you trying to prove yourself to Overton and Brackman? Overcome the little lapse? Is that it?”

“Of course not,” she said, but her voice faltered.

“Okay, you do what you want to do, but plan on having me with you.”

“No. You don’t outrank me anymore, Colonel McKenna.”

“But my date of rank precedes yours,” he said. “All that means is that I don’t let you do something foolish.”

“Go fly the airplane.”

He went back to the cockpit to fly the airplane.

“Little spat, compadre?”

“Go to hell, Tony.”

Munoz grinned at him. “She’ll get over it.”

McKenna started his letdown when he saw the southern tip of Vietnam, the Pointe de Ca Mau. He passed well south of it, staying out of Vietnamese airspace, then turned north toward Kampuchea.

He crossed the coast at twelve thousand feet.

“Feet dry,” Munoz said.

“Let’s try to keep them that way, Tiger.”

PHNOM PENH

Despite her earlier protestation, Pearson was glad to have McKenna and Munoz with her. Even dressed in civilian slacks and horribly flowered sport shirts, they looked tough enough to scare off muggers or other thugs.

The streets of Phnom Penh were a maelstrom of pedestrians, bicycles, minibuses, smoke-belching trucks, and randomly aimed automobiles. Munoz drove their rented Renault with dedication, irreverence for any international driving regulations, and a creative vocabulary. There was also a sign language that she thought was generally obscene.

The turmoil of decades of revolving governments, ranging from socialist to communist to anarchist to professed democratic, was evident in the faces of the shoppers and the shopkeepers. Their faces were stoic masks, afraid that the next interrogation would be from another resurgence of the Khmer Rouge who, in 1975, seized control of the government. They corralled all of the noted members of the previous regimes, hostile Cambodians, and pro-Vietnamese citizens and executed them all. Renamed from Cambodia to the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, the government? was composed of various political factions which maintained an uneasy coalition and frequently charged that Vietnam had left troops behind disguised as soldiers of Kampuchea.

The economy was in chaos. Under Pol Pot in 1975, banks had been closed and currency abolished. Foreign trade vanished. Now, after the drawn-out Vietnamese with drawal, the economy was undergoing refurbishment, and help was accepted anywhere it was offered. From the expatriot Shelepin and his colleagues, for example.

Foreigners with money to invest in business and industry were readily accepted, and close looks at their backgrounds were forsaken.

Pearson had researched that much. Now, she was going to take a close look at the reality.

Munoz dodged a bicycle that shot out of an alley, and the car slammed into a chuckhole. Pearson bounced high off the backseat, hitting her head on the roof.

“¡Puta!”

“Wasn’t a woman, Tony,” McKenna, who was sitting in the front seat, said.

“Drove like one.”

Normally, Pearson would have had a retort for Munoz’s chauvinism, knowing his statements were meant good-naturedly. Today, she didn’t have one. She was still coming down from her self-recrimination high.

They crossed an intersection so jammed with vehicles that McKenna suggested bailing out and walking, but Munoz finally got them through it, then turned left at the next intersection and followed a street that paralleled the Tonle Sap River, north of its junction with the Mekong.

The maze of streets, many of them unmarked, was so confusing that, once again, she was glad to have the two men with her. They had both been here before.

“How close do we want to get?” Munoz asked.

“Not too close with the car,” Pearson told hint.

“You happen to see somethin’ looks like a parkin’ place, hit me in the head, will you?”

“Try the next alley,” McKenna said.

Munoz whipped a hard right, bounced over the sidewalk, and slid to a stop next to a plaster-walled building. Overflowing garbage cans swarmed with flies. Washing was hung out to dry on lines strung high over the alley. Small children rushed to greet them, hands out.

Pearson couldn’t open the door on the right because the wall of the building was four inches away. They all got out on the left, locked the car, and McKenna gave four kids a handful of riels to watch the car.

“They’ll watch it until we’re gone, jefe, then steal the hubcaps.”

“You like those hubcaps?” McKenna asked.

“Hell, no.”

“So we won’t buy them back.”

The stench of urine and excrement in the alley was almost overpowering, and when they reached the street, the smell was simply overlaid with an aroma of herbs and spices offered for sale in an open-fronted kiosk. The sidewalk was composed of broken slabs resting at odd angles. Parts of the curbing had disintegrated, allowing weeds to grow in compacted dirt. A few scrawny sugar palms were spaced along the street.

They walked for almost a mile, Pearson becoming aware of sore muscles in her thighs and calves, before McKenna said, “There you go, Amy, across the street.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

All she could see was a plaster wall, painted cream, about twenty feet high, that extended for perhaps a block.

“How do we see inside?”

“Let’s walk around it.”

She wasn’t looking forward to more walking, but stayed between the two men as they jostled through the crowds. They turned left and crossed the street at the next corner.

Halfway down the north side of the compound was a massive wrought iron gate as tall as the walls. There were two heavyset Asians guarding it from the inside.

The interior looked a lot more inviting than the outside. Gravel and shrubs and trees appeared to have been placed by design. She saw a few doors to houses half-hidden by the landscaping. She didn’t see anyone out and about except for the guards.

“Don’t stare, Amy,” McKenna said.

“What?”

“Spies don’t stare.”

They kept walking down the cracked sidewalk and turned left at the next corner.

Turned left again at the next block and crossed along the southern boundary of the compound back toward the street on which they had parked the car. There was another wrought iron gate in the wall.

And nothing to be seen.

“What now, Amy?” McKenna asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What would you like to find?”

“A connection of some kind.”

“To?”

“To something.”

“You’ve got a list of the businesses?”

“Yes.” She had to dig around in her purse — she hadn’t carried a purse in months — to find it.

McKenna took a long look at the handwritten roster, then passed it to Munoz.

“Can you find those addresses, Tiger?”

“Most of ’em, maybe. It’s been awhile.”

They walked back to the car, found it intact, and McKenna passed out more riels to the squealing kids. Most of them looked malnourished, and Pearson felt guilty about it.

The afternoon passed, without lunch, and without learning much more. The businesses they examined from a distance all appeared legitimate. There was a chemical factory, a tire plant, a couple pharmacies, a furniture factory and attached store, a welding and fabrication shop, a car dealership, and several restaurants.

By six o’clock, they had covered every enterprise on her list with a Phnom Penh address.

“Is that it, enamorada?” Munoz asked.

“There are probably more, but that’s all I have. Except for the children’s hospital.”

“Well, let’s check it out before it starts gettin’ dark,” Munoz said.

“It’s not here. Somewhere to the north, by the Tonle Sap Lake.”

“Well, then,” McKenna said, “let’s find a place to sleep for the night and get some dinner. We’ll work up a cover story and go see the hospital in the morning.”

Pearson wasn’t eager to spend the night in the same hotel with McKenna, but she couldn’t think of a logical reason to do anything else. It had been her idea to start this goose chase, after all.

“We can probably find somethin’ spicy to eat,” Munoz said, “and somethin’ cold and alcoholic to drink.”

“Dimatta would trade places with you,” McKenna said. “He’s not finding much in the way of exotic food in Chad.”

“We deserve it. After all, compadre, it’s his aerospace craft we’re lookin’ for.”

“In the middle of Phnom Penh,” McKenna observed.

“It’s gotta be somewhere. Might as well be here.”

USSC-1

Wilbur Conover was so rested he was restless. While he waited for his turn to relieve Lynn Haggar on what they were calling Really High Combat Air Patrol (HICAP), he went to the Command Center, borrowed McKenna’s office cubicle, and had Val Arguento collect copies of the last twenty-four-hour’s worth of satellite infrared coverage.

There was one Rhyolite and one Teal Ruby satellite each in geosynchronous orbits 22,370 miles above the equator, and their sensors had been aimed toward the southern Asian mass. Conover ran their tapes at high speed, using the computer to give him a beep and stop the tape if an anomalous infrared emission appeared. All he found was the retro bum of Delta Blue reentering the atmosphere and, several times, the orbit track of Themis. The space station had a number of hot spots generated by the nuclear reactor, the warm side of the satellite, and the solar collectors. Since she moved in the sensor’s eye, she was an anomaly. Once, the Soyuz Fifty, which was in an orbit of different altitude and characteristics than Themis, passed through the sensors. Each time the tape stopped, Conover automatically glanced at the green lettering in the upper right corner which denoted the time and location of the shot.

Lower, at the Earth’s surface, the cities, towns, and villages generating heat didn’t move much. The tiny pinpricks of heat emitted by vehicles and ships at sea had been filtered out of the image.

It was a boring exercise, but he managed to waste a couple hours.

Conover hit the intercom button for the radio shack.

“Val, what else have we got in the vicinity?”

“Hold on, Major. The NSA gave us an updated celestial map a few hours ago… here we are. The closest thing is a KH-11, but she’s way north, covering China and Korea.”

“See if you can get a copy of her tape for me, will you? Maybe I’ll watch a Ping-Pong game in Beijing.”

It took twenty minutes to retrieve the tape and transmit it from the National Security Agency’s complex at Fort Meade, Maryland.

He was halfway through it when the speaker beeped and the tape stopped.

He had an unusual infrared radiation.

If he could have sat up, he would have, but he was already upright in the cubicle.

Checking the ID in the upper right corner, Conover saw that the location was northern China. The time was 0140 hours local, 1740 hours Zulu (Greenwich Meridian Time).

He ran the tape at normal speed and watched the change in the time.

The burn lasted for eight minutes and twenty seconds. The track was easterly.

He dumped the data to the computer and entered the codes asking for a calculation of velocity, trajectory, and anticipated orbit.

Then he hit the intercom, “Val?”

“Right here, Major.”

“Where’s the CO?”

“Asleep.”

“Rouse him, will you? And wake Captain Abrams, too. Right away. Then try and track down Colonel McKenna. Hook me into Tac Two.”

“Coming up.”

When he had the link, Conover pressed the keypad, “Delta Red, Alpha”

“Go Alpha.”

“Delta Green’s in orbit. I want you back at Alpha to fly cover.”

“Roger, Alpha. Red’s on the move.”

General Overton’s voice came over the intercom. “What’s up, Will?”

Conover reported what he had seen on the tape. “I’m going to launch Yellow, too, and take up a position off the station along with Red. He’s been in space for over twelve hours, General, and we don’t know what for.”

“You think he’d attack Themis?”

“The thought crossed my mind, General. All of a sudden.”

NORAD

“We’ve never sounded general quarters on a space station before, Hannibal. I’m not sure they know what it means,” Brackman said.

“At least Major Conover has been thinking of possibilities,” Cross said. “They’re damned scary possibilities.”

“Ten or twelve direct hits by Wasp IIs would take out most of the modules and the hub,” Brackman said. “We’d lose her, sure as hell.”

“Along with our most advantageous base for the MakoSharks. A hell of a lot of years and effort down the drain, Marv. What’s the defensive posture?”

“All Themis can muster is her radar and infrared sensors, none of which are much good against a MakoShark. They’ve activated all of their out-looking video cameras. Deltas Red and Yellow are stationed fifty miles off. That’s the extent of it.”

“Where’s McKenna?”

“We gave him permission to accompany Pearson to Phnom Penh. She’s got a lead that’s promising.”

“Dimatta?”

“They’ve got one more trial to run on Delta Orange.”

“What do you think of scrapping it and commissioning Orange for active duty?”

“I’ll go with Dimatta’s recommendation,” Brackman said.

“Are you going to recall McKenna?”

“If we go completely defensive, Hannibal, and put all of the MakoSharks around the station, we’ll never get to the end of this. My suggestion is to let McKenna and Pearson have a few more hours.”

“All right, Marv. But this hijacking of one space craft suddenly seems a great deal more serious than we may have been taking it. I’m going to have the CNO move the Seventh Fleet’s southern task force down into the South China Sea. And I believe the Eisenhower is steaming in the Indian Ocean. We’ll move her east.”

“For what purpose, Hannibal?”

“We can get a hell of a lot more recon aircraft in the air, and we can up the odds of spotting Delta Green if she returns to the area.”

“Okay, good,” Brackman said.

He had Milly Roget track down Dimatta at Jack Andrews Air Base, which took ten minutes.

“This is Major Dimatta, General.”

“How do you feel about the new MakoShark, Major?”

“Well, sir, good, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“We’ve had a few glitches to correct, but all of the systems seemed to be tuned in now.”

“But you have reservations?” Brackman asked.

“Nothing substantial, sir. It takes awhile to make the fit.” Brackman knew what he meant: the fit between human and machine.

“You have one more trial scheduled for weapons and countermeasures?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you omit it, Major?”

“Well, yes, sir, we could.”

Brackman told him about the potential threat to Themis. “We can be wheels up in fifteen minutes, General.”

“Go, Major.”

PHNOM PENH

McKenna was sprawled on the narrow bed in his tiny hotel room, thinking about going down the hall and tapping on Pearson’s door, when a timid hand rapped on his own door.

He got up, thinking she had come to her senses, and opened the door.

It was the desk clerk. “Sir, you have telephone call.”

McKenna followed him down the one flight of stairs to the claustrophobic lobby and to the single telephone the hotel could boast. He leaned on the counter and picked up the receiver. There was a buzz on the line.

“McKenna.”

“Milt Avery, Kevin.”

“What’s up?”

“I’m going to be cryptic since your phone system doesn’t sound all that secure. Our missing child has climbed to new heights.”

“Got that.”

“And there’s a concern that the goddess might be the subject of the child’s attention.”

Themis a target? McKenna chastised himself for not considering the likelihood of that scenario.

“I’ll get the others and we’ll head right back, Milt.”

“Not just yet, Kevin. The boss has activated the new baby and there will be three in attendance. The boss suggests that you pursue your present course. Just check in with me every few hours, okay?”

“Will do,” McKenna said.

He went back up the stairs to his room, but he didn’t think he would sleep well, and it wouldn’t be for thinking about Pearson.

DELTA GREEN

The refueling had not gone smoothly.

Nikitin had located the HoneyBee rocket in the orbit where they had left it, and Maslov had easily negotiated the course to reach it, using deft pulses of the Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) to match the rocket’s velocity and track.

The problems arose as a result of Bryntsev’s and Filatov’s inexperience with working in a weightless environment. Bryntsev, who had been a command pilot on Tupolev Tu-26 bombers, which NATO codenamed Backfire, had once been in the Mako program, but he had not lasted long enough for a check ride into orbit.

The two men had had a rough ride into orbit, ensconced in space suits in the jury-rigged seats of the payload bay. The inability to see anything other than bulkheads and structural members had raised their apprehension during the insertion, and when Maslov had opened the payload doors next to the HoneyBee, both men had become immediately disoriented.

He had talked to them calmly and reassuringly over the intercom connection, telling them to examine their backpack readouts, the amount of gas in the cylinders, the fuel supply for the thrusters, the security of the tethers.

He had to coax them into releasing their restraints and pushing themselves down out of the bay into the limitless void of space.

Once they were clear of the craft, Maslov had fired the MakoShark’s thrusters and rolled it slightly, so that he could see through the canopy the two men floating near the HoneyBee rocket. The Earth was low to his left, and it tended to capture the attention of the two, distracting them. They were connected to the MakoShark by long, snaky tethers of nylon rope and intercom cables. The intercom cables precluded the use of the space suit radios, which might be overheard by eavesdropping radio scanners. They took a full twenty minutes to become accustomed to using the miniature thrusters of their EVA packs to maneuver their bodies into working positions.

He supervised their work, frequently becoming impatient enough to consider depressurizing his cockpit and going outside to urge them on. The only thing that restrained him was his lack of an EVA pack. He had only an emergency, thirty-minute supply of air in a portable cylinder.

They did not have the specialized tools and pumping equipment utilized by the Americans for loading and unloading the HoneyBee payload modules, and they were therefore forced into more violent disassembly methods. Following Maslov’s directions and using cutting torches, it took them nearly four hours to separate the rocket stage of the HoneyBee from the payload capsule. Once, they had to stop to refill their air supplies from the tank in the aft bay. With some effort, Bryntsev and Filatov were able to separate the two components of the rocket by several meters, allowing them access to the flexible bladder inside the payload capsule which contained the solid fuel pellets.

Another two hours were required to retrieve the equipment from the aft cargo bay pallet and connect hoses and pumps between the bladder and the MakoShark, then pump the pellets aboard the space craft.

“We are fortunate to have our own gasoline station, are we not, Boris?”

“It is not fast service, Aleks,” Nikitin replied.

“It will become much better with practice,” Maslov assured him.

Bryntsev disconnected the hoses from the MakoShark, but left them attached to the bladder, ready for the next use. He and Filatov had then worked their way back into their seats and strapped in.

“Have you pulled your tethers in, Yuri?” Maslov asked.

“A moment more, Aleks. There. It is clear.”

Maslov closed the bay doors.

Though he was frustrated at the loss of time, Maslov said, “A wonderful job, comrades.”

“It is awe-inspiring,” Bryntsev said. “Concentration is difficult, and I am sorry for the delays.”

“There is no rush. Are you now back on the craft’s air supply?”

“I am helping Filatov.” After a minute, Bryntsev added, “Yes, we are both connected. After so much infinity, Aleks, this compartment feels both secure and claustrophobic.”

“I know the sensation,” Maslov said, then tested the availability of his ordnance. At the lower edge of the Head-Up Display, eleven green lights appeared along with one red light.

“Boris, I show a malfunction of a Wasp II. Right inboard pylon, number two.”

“Yes, I see it, Aleks. We have probably burned the nose cone”

“It is supposed to be adapted for high temperatures.”

“But it has been subjected to orbital insertion or reentry three times,” Nikitin said. “Perhaps there is a limit to the lifespan of the nose cones.”

“Yes, you are probably correct, Boris. Perhaps we will leave our good Phoenix missiles in orbit before we return this time.”

“A good idea,” Nikitin said.

“Very well, Boris. Now, I need a course for our next objective.”

“I have had several hours in which to program it. We will require a reversal of our attitude, then a twelve-second retro burn in order to reduce velocity and decrease altitude to the proper orbit.”

Maslov used the OMS to back away from the HoneyBee, then said, “You may proceed, Boris.”

After a few seconds, the computer took over, inverted the MakoShark, and fired the rockets for twelve seconds. It all seemed to Maslov to be accomplished in slow motion and wonderful silence.

“Time to target?” he asked.

“Forty-two minutes,” the weapons system operator said.

They waited it out, saying little to each other. Maslov forgot about his two passengers.

Thirty-five minutes later, he armed all of his Wasp II missiles.

Thirty-nine minutes later, he saw the target, the sun glinting brightly off the silver sides of the space station.

Chapter Thirteen

DELTA ORANGE

“Marla says the closure rate is two-four-oh feet per second, Cancha,” Williams said.

Dimatta had already spotted the reflection of the sun off the space station, probably around forty miles away, but depth perception was deceptive in space.

“We ought to slow down just a tad,” Williams said, “or we’re going to end up in a higher orbit.”

They had taken the most rapid course into orbit that the computer could find, with a rocket burn that lasted over ten minutes.

“All right, Nitro, give me a solution.”

Dimatta scanned the HUD and instrument panel. Greens everywhere. As always, with any new edition of the same model, refinements and modifications had been made to previous systems, so that Delta Orange was not exactly the same as her sisters. She was supposed to be better. And maybe she was. In all of the flight trials, the only adjustments made were in the fine-tuning of control movement rates and the calibration of instruments.

He was beginning to like her.

An emotion which made him feel somewhat traitorous toward Delta Green.

“Any time you’re ready, Cancha.”

“Roger, activating.”

Dimatta punched the code into the keyboard and let the computer take over, following its calculations for course alterations that would align the craft with the space station’s celestial coordinates. Within seconds, the nose and tail thrusters ignited, the MakoShark went tail-over into an aft-facing attitude, and the rocket motors both fired for less than a second. As soon as the reduction in velocity was accomplished, Delta Orange again flipped over, her nose leading the way, and the message readout on the HUD flashed, “MORE INSTRUCTIONS?”

Dimatta tapped the keyboard cancel pad and took back control.

The DME indicated they were 32.4 miles from the station.

On the communications panel, he selected Tac Two, then said, “Delta Orange checking in.”

“That was quick,” Conover came back.

“Hey, Con Man, the cavalry always comes through. Who do we shoot?”

“No one, at the moment,” Conover said. “Take up a position five miles off Alpha, below her, and on your side. Country Girl, you want to move above Alpha now?”

“Roger that, Con Man,” Haggar said.

“Deltas, Alpha. As soon as you’re in position, give us a squawk so we know where you are.”

Dimatta deflected his course toward a point slightly below the approaching space station while Williams put a 360-degree radar sweep on the screen.

The station appeared on the screen, as well as a small surveillance satellite sixty miles above, but there was nothing else, threatening or not.

When he was in position, Dimatta used the nose thrusters to match velocity with the station, then flipped the MakoShark once again so they were facing away from the station. Back to the wall, so to say.

He activated the IFF for a second.

“Got you, Orange,” Overton said. “And Yellow and Red. Stay sharp, please.”

On the ICS, Williams said, “Radar passive; I’m going to video.”

The screen reverted to the video image, and Williams set the automatic scan. The lens began to slowly traverse in a 120-degree arc.

There wasn’t much to be seen: faraway stars, the curve of the Earth when the lens reached the far right side of its traverse.

Despite their protective coloration, the MakoSharks were visible in space to the eye at about seven to eight miles if the viewer was looking down on them. Without the diffusion of dirty atmosphere to blunt the sun’s rays, and if the craft were in the right attitude in relation to the sun, the skin surfaces gave off a warm sheen that clearly defined them. With the video lens at full magnification, they had a chance of picking up Delta Green when she was still thirty or thirty-five miles away. And if she was in the right position relative to the sun. There were a lot of ifs involved.

Dimatta scanned the area through the canopy, then refocused on the screen.

“All we have to do now is watch, Nitro.”

“And wait,” the backseater said.

DELTA GREEN

Maslov drifted the MakoShark slowly toward the space station from above. The Earth beyond the station was a huge, vari-colored ball, well saturated with cloud cover. The Pacific Ocean was a muted blue that trapped the eyes.

“Closure rate five feet per minute,” Nikitin said.

“I am going to open the bay doors,” Maslov warned his passengers. “Are you prepared?”

“We are ready,” Bryntsev said. “It will be much easier, and much faster, this time, Aleks. I promise you.”

“Speed is secondary to accuracy and stealth, Yuri. There is no need to rush.”

The view of the station was clear in his windscreen, and Nikitin had also deployed the video lens, placing an image on the instrument panel’s cathode ray tube.

He was approaching the station from above and behind, out of the eye of its single porthole looking down on earth and of its space telescope. He was absolutely confident that the satellite’s radar and infrared detectors did not know of his presence.

The Soyuz Fifty space station did not appear anything like that of the Americans. It was one elongated tube, composed of sections of A2e rockets that had been launched over the years, then bolted together in space. The diameter was about six meters, and with nine components, the entire length amounted to nearly thirty meters. The component on this end was the nuclear reactor, a modification of the Topaz Two reactor that the Soviet Union had been injecting into space for many years. Various components had antennas, solar arrays, and other appendages extending from them. The finish was a bright aluminum, designed to reflect the sun’s rays and decrease the heat build-up within the station.

Maslov had once received a briefing on this space station, and he knew that the other eight components housed laboratories, presidential spaces, communications and surveillance electronics, and work areas. The center module, the first one injected into space, had an airlock fabricated into its side, and the module on the end opposite the nuclear reactor had a forward bulkhead that could be opened, in order to accept additional add-on modules.

“Be very careful, Yuri,” he cautioned. “Do not cut cables unless it is necessary.”

“I have been over this mission many times in my mind, Aleks”

“I am sorry. I want to get it right.”

“We will.”

Maslov nudged the nose thrusters one time to stop their forward progress directly above the nuclear reactor segment. The body of the station was less than six meters away.

Moments later, Bryntsev and Filatov appeared, jetting toward the skin of the satellite from under the nose of the MakoShark and trailing their tethers behind them.

Bryntsev, probably because he was a pilot, had learned the finer points about controlling his thrusters. He touched down lightly on the aluminum of the rocket.

“The skin is hot,” he reported. “I can feel it through my boots.”

Maslov did not reply.

He watched as Bryntsev first studied the VHF, UHF, and HF antenna array, then tracked their cables to where they entered the station.

“They are simply connectors,” Bryntsev said. “I will have to unscrew them, then pull them loose.”

“Do it quickly, Yuri.”

Bryntsev’s body blocked Maslov’s view, but the man apparently unscrewed each of the cable lead’s ferrules first, then rapidly pulled each one free and let them hang in space.

The station was now deaf and dumb.

Isolated.

Filatov signalled from further forward, where he had just disconnected the video lead from the remote-controlled camera mounted on the exterior.

The station was now blind except for its porthole, radar, and infrared detectors.

If the three men inside had been conversing with someone. on Earth at the time communications were lost or watching some exterior view on a monitor, they would now be a little concerned, though probably not yet alarmed.

“All right, Yuri, that is good. Let us go on.”

Maslov applied a spurt of rear thruster, and the MakoShark eased forward, following the two spacemen as they aimed for the center module and the airlock. He raised the MakoShark away from the satellite a couple meters in order to clear several large antennas.

Filatov reached the airlock first. “As you said, Colonel, it can be opened from the outside.”

“Proceed,” Maslov said.

Filatov began spinning the large wheel.

The men inside would now be alarmed.

The large hatch was raised easily by Bryntsev, then the two men detached their tethers and communication cables. Bryntsev waved, then pulled himself into the airlock. The corporal followed, and the hatch closed behind them.

A tense fifteen minutes followed. From what Maslov knew, the airlock could be pressurized from within the lock. It remained to be seen whether the cosmonauts would be frightened enough by events to attempt to keep the inner door locked.

Apparently not.

The hatch opened again, and Bryntsev stuck his head out and waved a bulky hand.

Maslov waved back, then found his emergency air cylinder and changed his nitrogen/oxygen feed line to it.

“I am depressurizing my cockpit now, Boris”

“Be careful, Aleks. I do not wish to lose my pilot.”

“There is Yuri.”

“Yuri has never performed a reentry.”

“You and your computer do that, Boris.”

“Still.”

When the panel readout reported that the cockpit was fully depressurized, Maslov opened the canopy. He took the hook of the twenty-meter nylon line stuffed between the seat and the fuselage and snapped it to his belt, then released his harness. A push with his hands lifted him straight up out of the seat.

Dodging the raised canopy, he pulled himself outside of the craft.

And became so dizzy that he almost vomited.

Without the security of a familiar seat and cockpit, hanging over an infinity of nothingness, the mind rebelled. That slim nylon line was all that connected him with reality.

He hung onto the edge of the canopy, closed his eyes, and fought back the nausea. It took several minutes.

Maslov looked back, and the sight of his weapons system officer strapped securely under his canopy helped to reorient him.

Through the faceplate of his visor, Nikitin appeared very worried.

Maslov nodded to reassure both Nikitin and himself, then carefully placed the soft soles of his boots against the coaming and shoved with his hands. His body rotated forward and down, and when the airlock appeared to be in the right place, he flexed his toes.

He sailed softly across the abyss between the station and the craft.

Almost too slowly.

He thought he might not reach his destination and would have to pull himself back with the tether and attempt it again.

And then he realized he might have aimed too high.

The airlock passed by below him and he could not reach it.

But Bryntsev rose out of it and extended a hand. Maslov grasped it thankfully.

Together, they descended into the lock. It was an extremely tight fit for two men in bulky space suits, especially with Bryntsev’s EVA pack in place. Bryntsev pulled the hatch down and spun the wheel to seal it. He fumbled at a control panel, and Maslov heard the hiss of gas being forced into the lock.

It was unlit and so dark inside the lock that they could not see each other. Maslov almost violated his own rule and activated the environmental suit’s radio in order to talk to Bryntsev. The chances of their unscrambled conversation being overheard were too great, however, and he fought back the impulse.

A green lamp illuminated on the panel, then Filatov opened the interior hatch and Maslov straightened out his legs and floated into the station.

The interior was brightly lit, but the finish was rudimentary and crude, and everything was painted gray. Conduit and venting pipes ran along the bulkheads. In seemingly random locations were consoles and control panels. Life aboard Soyuz Fifty was not intended to be luxurious.

He looked toward the rear, into the next component, and saw four bodies floating. One of them was Corporal Filatov, still in his space suit, but with his helmet removed.

Following Filatov’s lead, Maslov removed his own helmet.

“Are they dead, Corporal?”

“Not yet, Comrade Colonel.”

Bryntsev and Filatov had utilized dart pistols armed with tranquilizing darts. Explosive firearms might have punctured the hull of the station. And they had brought along the tank of nitrogen/oxygen in the MakoShark’s cargo bay just in case they had had to breach both hatches of the airlock and had lost the atmosphere inside. The station had an atmospheric recycling system, but they would have had to re-prime it.

Yuri Bryntsev got his helmet off.

“It went very well, Aleks.”

“So I see. You are both to be congratulated, and I will see that the Chairman knows of your heroic efforts.”

They both nodded their gratitude.

The three of them toured the station, noting where controls and monitoring equipment were located. Each of the eight components beyond the reactor could be sealed off, apparently in case of a loss of pressure in one of the modules. There was a full library of manuals which would be of great assistance in learning the many sub-systems. Several complex scientific experiments appeared to be underway in the laboratory modules, but they could be ignored.

“All right,” Maslov said, “I think we should finish the transfer. Yuri, you appear to have mastered the EVA suit. If you would reconnect the antennas and the video leads, then begin unloading the equipment in the bay of the MakoShark?”

“Of course, Aleks.” Bryntsev did a forward flip. “I am beginning to like this place.”

“Good. We would like to have the radio scrambler first, so that Corporal Filatov can hook it into the system. Then, we will have communications, and I suspect the Chairman would appreciate that.”

Bryntsev pointed to the three sedated cosmonauts. “And them?”

“I will take care of it.”

Maslov took care of it by taking one man at a time into the airlock with him and pumping the atmosphere out of the lock. Without light in the lock, he did not have to look at the man’s face as he died, his blood boiling in the vacuum of space.

Then he opened the outer hatch, and nudged the body outside, giving it a final push in the direction of the Earth.

He did not watch the bodies drift away.

NEW WORLD BASE

General Oleg Druzhinin was startled when the radio finally blurted, “Commodore, this is Commander.”

He had been waiting so many hours for that statement that it seemed as if days had passed. Sergeant Kasartskin had been waiting with him in the communications room also, and he grabbed the microphone. “Commander, this is Commodore.”

Maslov’s tone was jubilant. “Commodore, the station is ours. All of the cargo transfers have been made, the personnel complement is in place, and the craft will be departing within the hour.”

“Acknowledged,” Kasartskin said.

He turned to Druzhinin, grinning, and said, “The radios seem to work very well, General.”

“Everything works well, Sergeant,” Druzhinin smiled, then stood and left the room for his office down the hall.

He placed a call to the compound in Phnom Penh.

There was no answer.

He tried another telephone number.

And Sergei Pavel answered.

“It is a grand evening,” he said.

“And a balmy one,” Pavel answered.

“I call to report full success.”

“Excellent! That is excellent, comrade!”

PHNOM PENH

As soon as he awoke at five o’clock in the morning, McKenna went downstairs to the hotel lobby and called Milt Avery in Borneo. He learned that there had been no confrontations and no sign of Delta Green. Jim Overton had begun relieving the MakoShark sentinels one at a time.

He went back up to his room to shave and pack his Dopp kit, the only luggage he had with him. The tan slacks and tropical shirt had been last minute purchases at the small base exchange at Merlin, and he was already tired of them. He sat on the bed and waited.

Munoz knocked on the door at 5:22 A.M., and they waited together.

“You could go down and bang on her door, jefe.”

“I’m not an alarm clock, Tony.”

Munoz threw up his hands in exasperation.

At 5:30 A.M., Pearson rapped on the door, and McKenna let her in.

“You had to pick a hotel without a shower,” she said.

“We’re being low-profile, remember?”

She grimaced, then said, “We go to the consulate first, to pick up some paperwork.”

“What kind of paperwork?”

“Cover. It makes us members of an international health organization’s investigation team. We’re looking at children’s hospitals to see if we should provide funding.”

“I see,” McKenna said. “When did you order this up?”

“I called the CIA contact at the consulate last night.”

“Using the hotel’s phone?”

“No one’s eavesdropping on this hotel,” she said, probably with truth.

“But they’re damned sure eavesdropping on the consulate, Amy.”

“Give me some credit, McKenna. I had the CIA guy leave the consulate and call me back.”

“Yeah, McKenna,” Munoz said, “give her some credit.”

“Let’s go,” he said.

The Renault was parked on a side street next to the hotel, and when they reached it, they found it missing a window, the radio, and the hubcaps.

“Hated those hubcaps,” Munoz said as he crawled behind the wheel. “When I was growin’ up in Tucson, we only took hubcaps worth takin’.”

He drove them to the consulate, where Pearson got out and went in for the forged papers, then to the airport where they checked in the rental car and had breakfast consisting of some egg concoction with a curry spread over it and lots of weak coffee.

McKenna didn’t finish his breakfast. He went to flight operations, pinned down the location of the hospital, and received assurances that the landing strip would accept a Learjet.

When he came back to the table in the small restaurant, Pearson asked, “Did anyone wonder why you wanted to go there?”

“No. And I didn’t offer any excuses. I’m not cut out for this snoopy stuff”

Munoz scooped up the last of his and then McKenna’s breakfast offerings, shoveled it into his mouth, and said, “Let’s do it”

They walked out to the Learjet and Munoz unlocked it while McKenna made an inspection tour. It appeared to have gone the night without interference or vandalism. Satisfied, he climbed aboard, went through the checklist with Munoz, and started the turbofans.

After a wait for an Air India passenger liner, they were given approval for takeoff, and twelve minutes later, were climbing through fifteen thousand feet, headed northwest.

He leveled off at sixteen thousand feet, cruising along at 350 knots, following the Tonle Sap River.

Pearson came forward and knelt on the floor between the pilot seats, keeping her balance by gripping both seat backs. She was wearing a pale green pants suit, also purchased from the Merlin Base Exchange, but it seemed more appropriate for casual jungle wear than a dress. It also matches her eyes, McKenna noticed.

“Shelepin put up ten million dollars American for this hospital,” she said.

“He’s a rich Russian émigré,” Munoz said. “Maybe he’s an old Romanov?”

“Somehow, Tony, I doubt it,” she said. “He either left Moscow with a planeload of currency or he transferred it earlier.”

“You don’t think he’s a committed philanthropist?” McKenna asked.

“Not judging by his record.”

“So he got away with some cash, and he’s bankrolling all these little businesses and factories we looked at yesterday. The Kampucheans need the industries and the jobs. They slip him some favors in the way of tax breaks, and he reciprocates by endowing a hospital. He’s a changed man.”

“That’s not the way I see it,” she said.

“Gut feeling?” he asked.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Nice gut,” McKenna said, regretting the words as soon as he said them. He was falling back into old routines.

Pearson got to her feet and went back to her seat.

“You’re in big trouble, man,” Munoz said.

“You think so, Tiger?” McKenna said, feeling belligerent.

“She isn’t a MiG or Tornado you’re try in’ to shoot down. Got more class than that, amigo.”

McKenna went back to flying the airplane.

The Tonle Sap Lake, which fed the Tonle Sap River, was over a hundred miles long and twenty miles wide, appeared in the windscreen, and he trimmed in some down elevator and began a gradual descent. The jungle was thick, crowding the river, and to the north, the chart showed very few villages or townships.

Munoz was scanning the chart. “Hospital doesn’t even show here, Snake Eyes. You sure they’ve got a strip?”

“That’s what the guy in Phnom Penh said. We’re supposed to follow the east shore of the lake about two-thirds of the way up, then turn northeast. If we happen to see a village named Kompong Kleang…”

“There a sign on it?”

“Doubt it, Tiger. Then we go to one-three-five for seventy klicks. Lo and behold, there will be an asphalt strip.”

“Sounds like a heroin transfer point to me.”

“Maybe it is.”

“What’s it doin’ way out in the boonies?”

“The guys said these kids were bad off. Maimed from the war, all kinds of diseases.”

“Jesus, compadre, this is not how I want to spend my morning.”

Tony Munoz went back to his chart. “Got the village here. Put her a couple points to starboard, and we’ll take a shortcut.”

McKenna eased the yoke to the right and began to edge away from the lakeshore.

Ten minutes later, they found the village, and McKenna made a wide circle around it, coming out of the circle on the recommended heading.

Four and a half minutes after that, Munoz said, “Lo and behold!”

McKenna retarded his throttles and started a slow circle, continuing to lose altitude.

“Walter Reed, it’s not,” Munoz said.

McKenna leaned close to the side window and peered down. The runway took up most of a long, narrow clearing. He could see the red crosses painted neatly on the tops of dozens of small buildings spread about in the fringes of the jungle. Near one wall-less structure was a car park. He counted a half-dozen buses and a similar number of surplus army trucks.

“I wonder why the buildings are so far apart,” Munoz said.

“Maybe they isolate them by disease,” he said.

“I said I didn’t want to hear this”

Coming around to the north, McKenna said, “Runway looks all right to me, maybe a trifle short.”

“Can you be more objective than ‘a trifle?’”

“How about forty-two feet?”

“You’re the boss.”

He made his approach from the north, lowering the flaps and gear as they neared what he estimated to be the two-mile boundary.

Munoz called out the altitude and speed.

The Lear whisked over the last tall trees, McKenna hauled the throttles back, and the airplane settled onto the pavement with a hefty bounce or two.

“You get your pilot’s license from Sears?” Munoz asked.

“Ten dollars and ninety-nine cents plus tax and shipping.”

McKenna had the brakes on hard by the time they reached the opposite end of the runway, and they finally stopped ten feet short of the end of the asphalt.

“Guy in Phnom Penh must have been talking about some other Lear,” he said.

“I think we’re gonna get off the ground all right,” Munoz said. “We just won’t clear the trees, is all.”

McKenna turned the business jet around and taxied back up the strip. When he reached the midpoint, where a small parking area had been tamped into the earth with gravel and dirt, he turned off the pavement, taxied to the end of the park, then whipped the plane around in a 180-degree circle.

“Plannin’ on leavin’ in a hurry, Snake Eyes?”

“I don’t know what I’m planning, but this whole thing doesn’t feel right.”

McKenna shut down the engines, a stoic Pearson unbuckled herself, and the three of them used the airstep to make their way to the ground. It was hot, and a flurry of insects gathered quickly. The jungle was cut way back, but its chattering, clicking sounds were audible.

“There’s nothing here that scares away the monkeys or birds,” McKenna said.

“That’s reassuring,” Pearson said.

He heard an engine revving and turned to see a white Land Rover approaching from the north end. It too had a red cross painted on it.

It pulled to a stop near the tail plane, and a distinguished-looking man slipped from behind the wheel. He had long white hair combed back over his ears. He was tall and lean and dressed in tan slacks, a blue button-down shirt open at the throat, and a white lab coat.

“Hello,” he said in Russian.

McKenna didn’t acknowledge that he understood a few words in the language. He offered a blank stare, then said in English, “Good morning.”

“Ah, yes, hello.” The man’s English was clipped, learned in a British setting or from a British teacher perhaps. “What can I do for you, please?”

Pearson took over as the man surveyed the airplane, noting, McKenna was certain, the USAF identification number on the fuselage.

“We’re United States Air Force officers,” she said, producing her plastic-laminated ID card.

McKenna and Munoz dug into their pockets for their own cards.

“We’re attached temporarily to the United Nations, and we’re touring hospitals and clinics devoted to the care of children.” She handed the man the papers that supposedly attested to that fact.

“Ah, yes, I see. Colonel Pearson. Well, I am Doctor Geli Lemesh, the administrator here. If I had but known that you were coming, I…”

“We try, Dr. Lemesh, to arrive unannounced. We do not wish to have special preparations made for us.”

“Yes, of course. However, I do not understand the nature of your visit.”

“In recent years, the plight of children internationally has become a concern, and our organization hopes to learn where increased funding might most effectively be channeled. The excellent reputation of your hospital came to our attention, and we wanted to see it for ourselves. If that will not inconvenience you?”

The mention of increased funding was all that was required. McKenna also noted the doctors increased interest in Pearson’s pants suit.

Pang of jealousy?

Of course not.

“It is not an imposition at all, Colonel, not at all. I am at your disposal.”

“Simply, Doctor, we would appreciate a quick tour of your facilities.”

“I am happy to show you”

They all got in the Land Rover, Pearson in front with the administrator, and the doctor turned it around and headed up the slight hill toward the main cluster of buildings.

They parked in front of an unmarked building that was identified by Lemesh as the administration building. Inside, he showed them a pair of laboratories that appeared well-outfitted to McKenna. Offices, record-keeping sections, and a lounge made up the rest of the two-story structure. They were introduced to staff members as they ran into them in the halls. Many nationalities seemed to be in residence, but it was evident that most of the menial jobs had gone to Khmer citizens. Several Khmer medical students and interns were introduced.

McKenna and Munoz made many notes in small notebooks, acting the inspection team, and recording points of interest. McKenna didn’t note anything of military interest.

The tour of the out-buildings was precisely what Munoz hadn’t wanted to see. Two dormitories, new but already overcrowded, housed refugee and orphaned children of the war with Vietnam. Most were missing a limb or two. Many were sightless. Some had what McKenna would have described as profound psychological problems.

Other small wards were devoted to the diseases — typhoid, dysentery, malaria, leprosy, muscular dystrophy, smallpox, and others that McKenna lost track of — that plagued nations whose children did not receive the inoculations and health care that were commonplace in the United States.

The children, who looked up at him from cots and wheelchairs, appeared to be receiving excellent care. Their bodies were not emaciated, and their wounds were cleanly dressed, and the bustling native nurses seemed solicitous, but the children’s eyes were big and brown and hopeless. That lack of zeal, that matte-brown deadness, affected him the most.

After two hours of enduring the tour, he was relieved when Lemesh let them out of the Land Rover back at the airstrip.

“I think, Doctor Lemesh,” Pearson said, “that you can be proud of what you have achieved here.”

“I thank you, Colonel Pearson. Perhaps, if there were not so many, we could do more.”

“How many children are in residence?” she asked.

“There are now 1,612. I have applications for hundreds more.”

“Thank you, Doctor, for putting up with our surprise visit, and for your courtesy.”

“I do wish you would stay for lunch.”

Lemesh was clearly enamored of Amelia Pearson. Throughout the tour, he had been constantly at her side, continually solicitous of her comfort. He opened doors for her.

“We really must be on our way,” she told him, “though I hope to return some day.”

“Nothing would make me more happy,” the doctor told her.

None of them said anything as Munoz closed and locked the door. Pearson dropped into her seat. McKenna took his time starting the engines.

They cleared the treeline on takeoff, but just barely.

Heading south at fifteen thousand feet, Pearson came forward.

“What do you think, Amy?” he asked.

“I’m going to write a report for the United Nations, whether they want one or not.”

“I’ll sign it” Munoz said.

“What did you think of the hospital, Kevin?” she asked.

He figured she wasn’t asking about the doctor. Maybe she had already made her judgment there.

“The hospital’s fine,” he said. “But on the walk between the blood diseases compound and the respiratory diseases ward, I heard something I didn’t expect to hear.”

“What’s that?”

Munoz answered, “Turbojet engine spooling up.”

Chapter Fourteen

MERLIN AIR BASE

As soon as they got back to Wet Country, Pearson left for Themis aboard Mako Three. Ken Autry also had two nuclear physicists aboard, so McKenna figured she would have someone to talk to during the trip.

He certainly hadn’t been able to talk to her on their sojourn to Kampuchea.

He waved goodbye as she and the two extremely apprehensive scientists disappeared into the passenger module. She didn’t wave back.

After the Mako took off, McKenna walked back to Hangar One and took the elevator to the control tower. He had a call in to Brackman and wanted to stay close to a secure phone. As he might have expected, Munoz had found a place to cuddle up with a pillow.

Captain Marcia Eames, the duty officer in the tower, told him, “That’s a fine-looking shirt, Colonel.”

McKenna plucked at the collar of the flowered shirt. “These are the best abstract drawings of orchids I’ve ever seen, Marcia.”

“Oh, they’re orchids?”

“Aren’t they?”

“I thought they were orange blossoms,” she said. “I’ve never seen orange orchids.”

“Maybe I was robbed?”

“I don’t think they’ll give you your money back. They’ve been trying to sell that shirt for three years.”

He had to wait for twenty minutes before Brackman called back.

“Sorry, Kevin. I’ve been tied up.”

McKenna reported on their trip. “Jet engines at ground level in the jungle aren’t all that usual. What I’d like to do, General, is mount a recon pod and do a low-level pass over the area. I expect you’ll also be hearing from Pearson in regard to dropping sensors.”

Though the world was mostly his oyster, McKenna didn’t make routine decisions on his own about low-level flights over sovereign countries with the MakoShark.

“The recon is approved,” Brackman said. “Do it as soon as it gets dark there. On the sensors, I’ll have to check with Cross. These little countries tend to get testy in the UN if they discover they’re being spied on.”

“Thank you, General. We’ll go ahead and set it up.”

“One more thing, Kevin. Before you can get off, you may be grounded.”

“What!”

“General Delwin Cartwright has put in his papers for retirement.”

That was a pleasant thought, but McKenna was diplomatic enough to remain silent.

“And he has apparently had lengthy and detailed conversations with Senator Alvin Worth and Congresswoman Marian Anderson. Worth is raising hell in the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee and Anderson has the House Armed Services Committee in an uproar.”

“About what?” McKenna asked.

“About a colonel who’s allowed to ride roughshod over generals.”

“That’s not worthy of a response, Marv. Nor worthy of a congressional hearing.”

“And about poor organizational structures and controls in the Space Command which result in the loss of expensive spacecraft.”

“That little prick! That’s bullshit.”

“That’s two of us who are aware of it,” Brackman said. “However, the motions before both committees are calling for a suspension of activities in 1st Aerospace Squadron until the Congress can investigate.”

“That could take years,” McKenna said. “What’s the response?”

“The White House and the SecDef are rallying, going after the other committee members to squash the motions.”

“Will they get it done?”

“They might have, except that the Washington Post got the story somehow. Reporters are calling everyone in the book for confirmations. It’ll be common knowledge in a few hours, and that will add to the pressure.”

“Jesus Christ. I should have pumped a Wasp II into Worth and Anderson when I had the chance.”

“That thought had traipsed across my mind, McKenna. I’d rather find a better way to deal with it.”

NEW WORLD BASE

If the American Space Shuttle was a semi-truck, the MakoShark was a pickup truck. Because the space fighter was multi-tasked and smaller than the Shuttle, it could not handle the same amount of cargo load. Both payload bays together would not accept the SS-X-25 ICBM.

“When you have a smaller truck,” General Druzhinin was fond of saying, “you simply make more trips.”

Aleksander Maslov wished it were not so. The more often he made the journey to Soyuz Fifty, the more likely he would be detected by the pilots of the 1st Aerospace Squadron. Their original plan called for eight flights in eight nights, but though he had not voiced his concerns to Druzhinin, since the attempted ambush off the coast of Vietnam, he was disturbed by the rapidity with which the American aerospace command was narrowing its search area. It was much sooner than they had projected.

In the early evening, after having dinner in the pilot’s mess, Maslov watched the loading of the warhead. The MakoShark’s cargo bays together were 5.8 meters long, but to utilize both as a single unit, interior structural members between the fore and aft bays had had to be unbolted and removed. The loss of the members greatly weakened the fuselage, and abrupt, high-G maneuvers would have to be curtailed until the supports were replaced.

The SS-X-25 ICBM was 11.5 meters in length, almost twice as long as the cargo bay. However, since the rocket would not require a launch from the Earth’s surface, the first stage booster component could be removed and discarded. Separating the warhead from the secondary rocket motor and electronics stage resulted in two units: a warhead of 3.3 meters in length and a second stage of 5.4 meters in length. The small stabilizing fins on the second stage had to be removed in order to gain sufficient clearance in the bay, but they were unnecessary in the missile’s new role.

In calculating the takeoff weight, Maslov did not find a problem with the warhead. With the second stage propulsion component as his cargo, though, he would be able to arm the MakoShark with only Wasp II missiles in order to stay under the maximum weight. He would also be required to leave behind one-third of his solid fuel propellent.

That problem was for tomorrow night. Tonight, he and Nikitin would lift the first warhead into orbit.

Maslov watched until the warhead was hoisted into place and the workers began fitting short pieces of wood between structural members and the warhead to secure it, then he crossed the runway to the command center.

Kasartskin was not in the communications room, and Maslov shooed the corporal on duty out of his chair, sat down, and selected the channel incorporating the MakoShark’s altered scrambler.

“Commander, Commodore.”

He waited, repeated the signal, and waited some more.

“Commodore, this is Commander,” Bryntsev finally responded.

“Status report, please.”

“Commodore, we are perhaps thirty minutes behind schedule. I allowed us an extra half-hour of sleep in order to reduce the stress level.”

“That is understandable,” Maslov said. “How is the modification proceeding?”

“We removed all of the biological laboratory equipment in the end module and sealed it off from the rest of the station, then pumped out the atmosphere and opened the rocket mating hatch to the exterior.”

Maslov could picture it clearly, having seen it for himself. The last module in the string of modules incorporated a special airlock and hatch which mated with the passenger-carrying rockets transporting cosmonauts between the station and the Baikonur Cosmodrome. If additional components were to be added to the station, the airlock was designed to be moved to the end of the new module.

“Then with the atmosphere evacuated,” Bryntsev continued, “we drilled a hole through the hull and inserted the umbilical cable connector.”

“There are no leaks?” Maslov asked.

“We will not know until we have restored the atmosphere in the module, but it has been sealed well and bolted into place. I believe it will hold the pressure.”

“Good,” Maslov encouraged him.

“The corporal is now moving the fire control console into the module from the outside. The passage through the hatch is a close fit, and we have removed the legs of the console. They are unnecessary, anyway. As soon as that is accomplished, we will close the hatch and begin pressurizing the module.”

“Very good, Captain. Commodore out.”

The system they had decided on, for lack of space, utilized only one fire control and launch programming console taken from a mobile ground launcher, so only one rocket at a time could be connected by a fifteen-meter umbilical cable to the console. The other three rockets would be tethered to the space station and be required to await their turns for programming. If all went well, the other three would never have to be used anyway.

Maslov was relatively certain the first would be launched. Some governments would need evidence.

Deadly evidence.

He heard the telephone ring back in Druzhinin’s office and pushed himself out of the chair. In the corridor, he turned right and walked back to the office.

The general waved him inside, continuing to listen intently to the caller.

“Yes, thank you, Doctor.”

Druzhinin replaced the receiver in its cradle.

“Puzzling,” he said.

“What is that, Comrade General?”

“Doctor Lemesh had a visit from a United Nations medical inspection team today. In the morning.” Druzhinin related the particulars.

“They were flying an American Air Force airplane?” Maslov asked.

“Yes. And the three inspectors were all U.S. Air Force officers.”

“I do not like it,” Maslov said.

“Nor do I. Do you have an interpretation, Aleksander Illiyich?”

Maslov thought about the timing. “I believe that Boris and I should take off immediately with the warhead. We can be back here by three or four in the morning, load the propulsion stage, and take off again before dawn. We will wait out the day in space.”

“That would be extremely wearing on you, Aleksander. Fatigue causes mistakes.”

“It must be done, General. If we get caught with the warheads here, the cause will be lost. We cannot protect ourselves with ground-based nuclear weapons.”

Druzhinin nodded slowly. “I agree.”

“I slept for most of the morning. Were we conducting any unusual activities during the time the Americans were at the hospital?”

“There was some personnel drilling. The usual training schedule.”

Pilot training schedules only occurred at night because the New World Order fighter aircraft might draw unwanted notice during the day.

“One other thing,” Druzhinin said. “The mechanics tested the new turbojet engine installed in one-eight.”

One-eight was a MiG-27.

Maslov shook his head. “I believe, General, that we cannot take chances the test went unheard.”

“You are correct.”

“If they are suspicious at all, they will come tonight to take photographs, both night vision and infrared.”

“As soon as you take off,” the general said, “I will put the counterintelligence plan into operation.”

“Good. I will get Nikitin, and we will prepare for an immediate departure.”

As he left the command center, Maslov reminded himself of the base commander’s thoroughness. Druzhinin was an intelligent leader, and he had already formulated a scheme to deny substantial evidence to anyone attempting photographic surveillance.

Machines and motors emitting heat would be shut down, including the electricity generators. A minimal amount of electric power would be drawn from the hospital’s generators to meet the requirements of water pumps and dormitory lights. After the motors or engines cooled for awhile, they would be washed down with water to cool them further. The steel-plank runway, which held the day’s heat for longer than the surrounding earth, would we well-doused with water so as not to provide an infrared image of an elongated rectangle.

All of the base’s personnel would be ordered to their beds. The human body heat which produced infrared images would be confined to dormitories which appeared to be part of the hospital’s complex.

Crossing the runway in the gathering darkness, Maslov felt as if his senses were more acute, his awareness on the rise. The adrenaline was rushing through his veins, making his reality clearer, his grasp on life less certain, and his purpose stronger.

The infinite chasm of danger was close to his feet, and he loved it.

USSC-1

The sense of urgency aboard Themis had died away, if not the concern.

After consultations with Brackman and Overton, Kevin McKenna had reduced the patrol circling the station to one, currently alternating between Haggar and Conover. Delta Orange had been dispatched to Wet Country.

Conover and Abrams had been serving as guardian for the last five hours, staying within forty miles of the mother ship, but darting from one position to another with short bursts of the main rocket motors or small taps of the OMS.

Several times, they had cruised close to the station, where they could see white-suited men on Extra-Vehicular Activity mounting additional external video cameras on the modules. In the past, external vision had been limited to remote-controlled cameras primarily concerned with the arrival and departure of Mako craft and HoneyBee rockets. Now, they were setting up for visual defense, practically the only immediately available defense against a rogue MakoShark.

Ken Autry with Mako Three and Jerry Dahlgreen in Mako Six were also flying cover, but with orders to skedaddle if they spotted an intruder. They just weren’t equipped for confrontation with Delta Green.

Mako Five was on the ground at Jack Andrews for routine overhaul. The other Makos (One, Two, Four, and Seven) had returned to the standard chores of servicing satellites and transporting people and cargo between the station and Jack Andrews or Merlin.

“Hey, Do-Wop! You still awake?” Conover asked.

“Hell, yes. Quiet for a minute; I’m tuning in a new station.”

Peter, Paul, and Mary, relayed through a few communications satellites, came up in the background of Conover’s helmet phones, singing about magic dragons.

“There we go,” Abrams said, “right on!”

“I don’t mind it, as long as you don’t sing along.”

“Hum?”

“No.”

But Conover found himself on the verge of humming himself as he scanned the empty spaces surrounding them.

“Delta Yellow, Red.”

“Go Country Girl.”

“Swede took all my money at bridge, so we’re coming on a little early. You can come back and try Del O’Hara’s new entree.”

“What is it?” Abrams asked.

“Kentucky Fried Bites. No mess, no fuss, no chicken,” Haggar said.

“No chicken? Come on.”

“Honest,” she insisted. “It’s all made from peanuts, he says.”

“I’ll stick to hot dogs,” Abrams said. “You ready to go home, Con Man?”

“Why not?”

They passed Delta Red launching from her hangar cell as they were inbound, aimed for the yawning cell that belonged to Delta Yellow.

They were in the hangar with the doors closing before Conover realized he’d been snookered.

“Goddamn it!”

“What’s wrong, Con Man?”

“Damned Country Girl conned us.”

“What? How?”

“McKenna’s about to launch from Merlin. If he finds trouble and calls for help, she’s in position to go.”

“I tell you, Will, you just can’t trust a woman.”

DELTA BLUE

The lift-off from Merlin Air Base was smooth, and McKenna retracted his gear and flaps, then went into an immediate right turn. The turbojets hummed behind him, and the altimeter readout steadily climbed.

“We want to boost soon as we’re feet wet, Snake Eyes?”

“Roger, Tiger.”

When they had cleared the Borneo coastline, they went quickly through the checklist and kicked in the rocket motors until they had achieved a velocity of Mach 4.5 with the turbojets shut down.

“Altitude angels thirty, jefe.”

“That should be good enough. We’re not going far.” Forty minutes into the flight, the Tac Two channel sounded off.

“Wet Country, this is Semaphore.”

McKenna recognized Brackman’s voice.

“Semaphore, Wet Country.”

“Find the CO for me,” Brackman said.

Four or five minutes went by before Milt Avery responded, and McKenna nearly cut in to talk to Brackman, but he didn’t. There was something in Brackman’s tone that said he wasn’t open to casual conversation.

“Semaphore, Wet Country One.”

“Yeah, One. Is Delta Blue One around?”

“Uh… not just now, Semaphore.”

“Well, damn. I guess I missed him.”

“I could…”

“Tell you what,” Brackman said, “when you see him again, tell him he and Major Munoz are wanted in Washington for talks with some important people. It’s urgent. Have him give me a call.”

“Roger that,” Avery said.

The channel went silent.

“That was strange,” Munoz said on the ICS.

“I think we want to maintain radio silence, Tiger.” Brackman could be awfully indirect when he wanted to be. He’d never normally use Tac Two for that kind of message.

“It sounds as if they haven’t grounded us anyway, amigo.”

“The brass and the Hill people probably reached a compromise position,” McKenna said.

“Yeah, like grill McKenna over a hot charcoal fire. Flip once for even brownin’. Thing I don’t like, Snake Eyes, is havin’ my name mentioned by generals and politicians. Munoz doesn’t grill well.”

“I don’t want to go to Washington.”

“Let’s go to Cambodia instead, Snake Eyes.”

“Kampuchea.”

“My history’s kinda slow.”

“Let’s have a map, Tiger.”

Munoz brought up a map of Southeast Asia on the screen, then overlaid it with a grid. He programmed the coordinates of the children’s hospital, and a small red circle appeared on the screen.

“See if you can find that, compadre.”

“Do my best.”

McKenna flipped a switch and brought up the screen image on the HUD. He eased into a slight left turn and the red circle swung to the top of the HUD. Squat blue lettering told him: 180M TO TARGET.

The velocity was down to Mach 2.2. McKenna pulled the nose up and bled off more speed while climbing to forty thousand feet. After he had it below the sonic barrier, he rolled inverted and pulled the nose toward him, diving in a shallow plane.

“I mean, I like it, jefe, but somehow I missed the warning.”

McKenna snapped the MakoShark upright with the hand controller.

“I’m returning to normal flight,” he warned.

“Muchas gracias.”

At twenty-five thousand feet and sixty miles from the target, McKenna restarted the turbojets and let them idle while the MakoShark continued to coast downward. He set up the rocket motor ignition checklist and went partially through it, so the rockets would be available if needed.

“All right,” Munoz said. “We don’t want the hospital.”

“Correct.”

“What I heard sounded like it was to the east of the hospital, Snake Eyes.”

“Sound is tough in the jungle, but that’s where I’d put it, Tiger.”

“So we make our first pass a mile east?”

“Good show, chappie.”

“Come right a couple points, and on my mark, go to three-four-five.”

“Going right.”

“Mark.”

McKenna eased into the new heading.

“Distance to target, six-one miles. Altitude, angels nine. Speed four-six-four knots. Let’s increase the glide, Snake Eyes.”

“Going down. How’s the camera?”

“You wanna see?”

“No, just tell me.”

On the outboard starboard pylon was mounted one of the reconnaissance pods. It was capable of capturing true video, night vision, and infrared images.

“I’m runnin’ night and infrared, monitorin’ the infrared on my CRT. Looks good to me. Got a nice shot of a truck motoring into Kampong Thum.”

“That’ll thrill Amy.”

“Anything for a good cause. Angels five, distance to target four-six.”

McKenna concentrated on keeping the MakoShark steady. The cameras were gimbal-mounted and gyro-stabilized, but a smooth shooting platform helped. He kept an eye on the radar altimeter, monitoring altitude above ground level.

“Flatten the glide,” Munoz said. “We’re at four-thousand, two thou AGL, and that’ll give us a wide picture.”

McKenna nudged the hand controller back and eased the turbojet throttles forward to maintain his speed. The HUD reported airspeed at 420 knots.

“Distance now one-nine miles.”

“See anything yet, Tiger?”

“Some hot spots ahead on the left. That’s gonna be our hospital.”

A few seconds later, McKenna glanced through the left side of the canopy. Down in the blackness of the jungle, a few lights winked at him. Those would be the exterior lampposts around the hooches and dormitories that he had noticed while walking the grounds. At midnight, he didn’t expect many of the patients to be up and around. He hoped not, anyway. A patient up in the middle of the night meant pain and crisis.

“I don’t see shit,” Munoz said.

“Nothing?”

“No. Let’s make another pass. Hell, let’s make a buncha passes. Get the hospital, too.”

They made four passes over the region, then headed back toward Borneo.

Munoz, having monitored what the camera was seeing, wasn’t optimistic about the results.

And when Munoz wasn’t optimistic, neither was McKenna.

USSC-1

Amy Pearson received copies of the surveillance tapes at two in the afternoon, two in the morning in Borneo. She put Val Arguento and Donna Amber on two of the monitors in the radio shack, and the three of them went through the tapes at ultra slow speed, looking for any anomalies at all.

Then they switched monitors and double-checked each other.

Then they ran side-by-side comparisons of the night vision and infrared tapes.

She pointed out the reference points she was aware of from her visit to the site. “There. That’s the administration building”

“Still some heat in those shingles,” Arguento said. “Makes a nice rectangle.”

“And the cross on the roof is easily identified on the night vision shot,” Amber said.

“That building right there handles blood diseases,” Pearson said.

They went over the tapes slowly, heading east.

“Now, these buildings, we didn’t see,” Pearson said.

There were four of them, and a little farther east were a half dozen small pale spots that could have been anything.

“They’ve got the crosses on their roofs,” Amber said. “They must belong to the complex.”

“And they’re large,” Arguento added. “How about housing for the medical personnel?”

“That’s possible,” Pearson admitted. “We saw a few places that Lemesh said were dedicated to staff, but maybe not all of them. We weren’t invited to tour them.”

“Now, wait!” Arguento said. “Freeze it there.”

The night vision image displayed a variegated series of greens depicting jungle, a few small hills, and several clearings. The infrared picture alongside it showed blues, oranges, yellows, and red, in a similar pattern. There wasn’t much blue; it appeared in rambling strings only where several small streams ran.

“Look here,” Arguento said, using his finger to trace an area on the photo. “See the shape of this orange area? It’s just barely out of the reds, just a little cooler”

“I see it,” Pearson said.

It was an irregular pattern, without definite shape, except that it was elongated.

“So the ground’s a little cooler down the center of the clearings?” Amber asked.

“Right. It should be cooler back under the jungle canopy. Then, here’s another problem. The cool area runs right under the hills.”

Pearson glanced back at the night scope shot. There were four small, foliaged hills that prevented the area from being one large, long clearing.

Or did they?

“Camouflage, you think, Val?”

“I’m not staking my stripes on it, Colonel. Hell, there’s nothing else in the photos that causes alarm. No vehicles, no tanks, no nothing.”

“Just four hills that shouldn’t be cool,” she said.

“That’s it,” he agreed.

“If the Air Force gave out bonuses, I’d see that you got one.”

“Maybe you can talk to the President, or something,” Arguento said.

NORAD

The Chief of Staff of the Air Force was on his way to Capitol Hill, summoned to a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee. He was in his car when Brackman reached him.

“What’ve you got, Marv?”

“Colonel Pearson thinks she’s found a covert airstrip.”

“Where?” Harvey Mays asked.

“Kampuchea. Northwest of Phnom Penh, way out in the jungle.”

“Good a place as any, I guess. Better than most. She’s sure of it?”

“I think she is, yes.”

“And you?”

“Hell, Harvey. I looked at the pictures. It could be. And then again, maybe not.”

“Give me odds that will buy us some time with the people I’m going to be talking to, Marv.”

“You bastard,” Brackman said. “Sixty-forty might be pushing it.”

“I don’t think they’re good enough, but I’ll try it. McKenna on his way?”

“Haven’t reached him yet, Harvey.”

“Well, get on it. They want to talk to him.”

“Do you really want me to take a commander out of the field in the middle of a crisis?” Brackman asked.

“No. But we haven’t yet declared a crisis, and I don’t see another choice, Marvin.”

PHNOM PENH

Anatoly Shelepin, whose codename was “Admiral” now that the operation was underway, spent a restless night. He got up in the early morning and had fruit and tea for breakfast.

He kept looking at the telephone, but it would not ring for him.

He kept waiting for Yelena’s footsteps to tell him that she was awake.

And then he could wait no longer.

He placed his call and waited for the interminable connections to be made. He really needed to have one of the scrambled radios of his own.

“Yes?”

“It is a beautiful morning,” he said.

“And promises to be a grand day.”

“What word?”

“Captain just took off with the second component.”

“The second? Already?”

“We have decided to accelerate the program,” Oleg Druzhinin told him.

“Then the first is already in place?”

“Connected to the umbilical. Within six or seven hours, we will have a complete system.”

“Thank you.”

Shelepin hung up, not quite believing that they were a day ahead of schedule.

The New World Order was a superpower.

Chapter Fifteen

MERLIN AIR BASE

Frank Dimatta and George Williams met with McKenna and Munoz in the ready room. McKenna wasn’t in the best of humor. He hadn’t been for some time. He appeared a little tired, and there was a half-day’s growth of whiskers on his cheeks.

“How’s the bird doing?” he asked.

“It’s all right,” Dimatta said.

“She’s tip-top,” Williams said. “Next time out, we’ll drag race you.”

McKenna studied the two of them for a minute, then told them about the hospital and the anomalies in the infrared photos. “Go over the photos we’ve got, then you’ve got the next recon over Kampuchea. Pearson wants a daylight, low-level pass. Don’t take any chances, though. Go in high, zip down for the shots, and get out.”

Dimatta felt his pulse pick up rate. Finally, there was going to be some action.

“This is a real hospital, Kevin?” Williams asked.

“It’s real. And it’s damned unpleasant.”

“You ought to see those kids,” Munoz said. “Second thought, you don’t wanna see them.”

“Be careful,” McKenna said.

“Roger that,” Dimatta said. “Are you going to be here?”

“Tony and I have to make a quick trip to Washington.”

“Muy pronto,” Munoz said. “They can’t run the place without us.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Dimatta said. “While all of this is going on?”

“I’m tryin’ to get the coordinates on a couple of House and Senate offices,” Munoz said. “We’ll light ’em up with a couple of Wasp IIs.”

“While I think about it, Tony,” McKenna said. “Go out to the hangar and tell the guys to pull the ordnance.”

“Ah, hell, Snake Eyes! Just one?”

USSC-1

Pearson had tried to sleep for a few hours, but not successfully. She was impatient, waiting for the daylight photographs to be shipped to her.

After giving up on sleep, she had taken a sponge bath, then heated a hamburger for a midnight snack. She went back to her office in Spoke One and powered up the console.

Her incoming message board was lit, so she called up the messages.

CIA field agents had located two more of the defected Mako trainee pilots, Averyanov and Yevstigneyev. The former was flying cargo planes out of Buenos Aires under an assumed name, and the latter was being paid by la Sûreté, the French secret service, for all of the knowledge he presumably held. He had been in debriefings for the past four months.

Pearson updated their dossiers, then removed them from the batch in her suspense file. She called up her outline of the phantom organization and deleted the two pilots from the “Rank and File” line. That left Bryntsev, Maslov, and Nikitin unaccounted for.

Her outline was getting thinner, rather than filling out, and that was not what she wanted.

On the “Locale” line, she deleted China, Vietnam, and Korea. With the sightings of Pavel and Shelepin in Phnom Penh, she felt confident in pinpointing that location. She keyed in Phnom Penh as the location in Kampuchea, but felt that there had to be more than one site. They weren’t flying the MakoShark out of the capital city. She added the Khmer Hospital and Clinic with a question mark.

Her next message was a copy of an FBI report, forwarded to her by David Thorpe. Two of the four men found shot at the dry lake had been tentatively identified. One had been a waiter in a San Francisco restaurant for over two years. The other had recently entered the United States on an Israeli passport issued to one Iztak Milstein. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, had been asked to backtrack him.

The third message provided a manifest of the aides and military people who had disappeared along with Anatoly Shelepin when his aircraft departed the Soviet Union. On her outline, Pearson created a new line entitled “Staffing” and added the names and their specialties. They ranged in rank from corporal to major, and they were proficient in the fields of computers, communications, logistics, administration, and finance.

Now the outline was filling out, and unfortunately, it was padded with the kinds of people who made up military organizations. If Anatoly Shelepin had political aims, he was backing them up with a paramilitary group of some kind.

Not of some kind, she corrected herself. An air force. They had a MakoShark, and that was about all they needed. She wrote a quick cover memo, then sent the updated outline to Thorpe in Cheyenne Mountain.

SOYUZ FIFTY

The space station was in an elliptical orbit at forty-five degrees of inclination from the Earth’s poles. At the lowest point of the orbit, it was 290 miles above the Earth. The apex was at 340 miles. The orbital period was seven hours and twenty-two minutes.

One of the computers in the station kept track of the major satellites in orbits that came close to that of Soyuz Fifty. Of primary interest were a Chinese communications satellite and the American space station which were both in polar orbits. The Chinese satellite held a mean orbit of 270 miles, and the space station Themis was also in a circular orbit with an average altitude of 220 miles.

Because of the orbit characteristic of Themis and Soyuz Fifty, and because of the differing speeds at which they travelled, they were rarely in close proximity. Approximately at forty-day intervals, they closed to within fifty-eight miles of each other, but the pass was fleeting and usually went unnoticed and unremarked.

Maslov was not particularly worried about the United States satellite at this point in the operation. For one thing, the purpose of satellites was to focus on the Earth. Surveillance satellites rarely looked up; their designed intent was to look down. And communications satellites did not care one way or the other.

Even the porthole near which he was tethered was aimed downward, currently eyeing the ice mass of Antarctica. It was nearing summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and he could imagine the migrations about to take place, moving scientists onto the continent for their annual examination of things environmental and geologic.

The monitor next to the porthole displayed a view from the exterior camera. By working the joystick next to the monitor, he could aim the camera as he pleased. Turning the lens to the right and upward, he was rewarded with a view of the magnificent MakoShark. It was parked above the station and was attached to it by one slim nylon line. There was no one in it; Boris Nikitin had made his first journey across the abyss and into the station. He was sleeping now.

Aft of the station, secured by yet another nylon rope to the nuclear module, was the HoneyBee nose cone with its cargo of precious fuel. Maslov and Nikitin had moved it into orbit with the station, then refueled the MakoShark, as their final chore of the morning.

Maslov worked the camera controls and swung the camera to the left, then aimed it downward. He backed off the magnification, and the image of the warhead diminished in size.

It was tethered to the station by its umbilical cord, plugged into the receptacle that had been installed earlier. The second stage propulsion component was now reattached to the warhead with the sensitive explosive bolts. Access hatches all around the nose cone and the second stage were wide open. Bryntsev and Filatov floated near two of the hatches, occasionally poking their helmeted heads inside the hull as they reconnected cable connectors between the nose cone and the second stage.

Corporal Filatov was becoming less clumsy in his space maneuvers as his fear eroded and his reflexes became accustomed to the new environment. His progress was much quicker than Maslov had expected for the man had never been in the Air Force. He was a specialist in the SS-X-25 ground-launched missile system. It was he who would sit at the console in the end module and program the ICBM.

“Soyuz, this is Baikonur Flight Control.”

The radio call startled him.

Maslov used the video control joy stick as a foundation to turn himself toward the communications console. One radio was set to monitor the cosmodrome’s frequency, and other radios were tuned to other frequencies.

“Soyuz, this is Baikonur Cosmodrome. Come in.”

It had to happen sometime, and Maslov chose not to attempt faking a response.

The ground controller tried several more times over the next ten minutes. He then apparently went to another frequency because it was his voice which came up on another radio.

“Carrier, this is Baikonur Cosmodrome”

“Baikonur, Carrier.”

“Carrier, I want to talk to your commanding officer. Immediately.”

Several minutes went by, and Maslov waited. His anticipation built quickly.

“Baikonur Cosmodrome, Carrier. I am Colonel Volontov.”

Volontov. The bloody bastard who failed me in the Mako training course. If Volontov could but see me now…

“We may have an emergency, Colonel Volontov. Soyuz Fifty did not make its routine check-in, and we cannot raise them on the radio now.”

“Perhaps it is simply a communications problem,” Volontov said.

“The commanding general would like to know when your next resupply flight is scheduled.”

“It is planned, just a minute… for tomorrow morning at eight o’clock our time.”

“Is it possible to advance the time?” the ground controller asked.

“Certainly,” Volontov replied with his customary assuredness. “I can launch within the hour.”

“The commanding general requests that you prepare for the flight. He is now calling General Sheremetevo to confirm the request.”

“Very well, Baikonur. We will initiate preparations. I will pilot the craft personally.”

Maslov smiled to himself. Events could not have progressed better if I had planned them myself.

DELTA BLUE

“Andrews, Delta Blue.”

“Delta Blue? Uh, this is Andrews. Go ahead.”

“Delta Blue now squawking IFF. Requesting permission to land.”

“Ah, Blue, we see you. You got awfully close before we did.”

“That’s the idea, Andrews. I need a runway.”

“Well, ah, Blue, we don’t have a flight plan on you. I don’t think you’re authorized to land here.”

“We have been summoned, Andrews. What you do is divert traffic for fifteen minutes and shut down the lights on one of your runways. We’ll land in the dark and park in one of your hangars. We’ll want security on the craft.”

“Hold on, Blue.”

On the ICS, McKenna said, “Tiger, let me have the night vision.”

“Comin’ up, Snake Eyes.”

The navigational map disappeared from the CRT and was replaced by the green-tinged view from the night vision lens. The traffic on the Capital Beltway was clearly defined. Ahead were the lights and runways of Andrews Air Force Base, twenty miles away. On his right, through the canopy, McKenna saw the lights of Washington, D.C., with the Washington Monument impressively illuminated. At nine o’clock at night, with an October snow on the ground, the scene was clear and clean and pure. It wouldn’t be that way when they got into it.

“Delta Blue, Andrews Air Control.”

“Andrews, Delta Blue.”

“Blue, we’re going to give you two-seven-right. We’ll be cutting the lights in four minutes.”

“Roger, Andrews. Two-seven-right.”

“Somebody told him we’re welcome, jefe.”

The air controller gave him the visibility, wind, and barometric pressure.

“Delta Blue requesting right-hand approach, Andrews.”

“Blue, right-hand approach approved.”

“No sense in wasting all that fuel by going clear around, hey, Snake Eyes?”

“We may be wasting the precious time of important congressmen, Tiger.”

“Congresspersons,” Munoz said. “You gotta come of age, Snake Eyes.”

“Keep me straight,” McKenna told him.

“Doin’ my best.”

McKenna eased into a left turn to give himself some distance from the eastern boundary of the air base, and after covering ten miles, turned back to the right. He moved the throttles back and dropped the speed to 350 knots.

“Altitude one-two-hundred, amigo. There’s a plane goin’ over us by five hundred. He’s the one got kicked out of his landin’ approach, I’ll bet.”

“He’ll be cussing us,” McKenna agreed.

Through the windscreen, he saw the runway lights align themselves with the MakoShark as he sideslipped to the left, then abruptly, the lights went out. He refocused his eyes on the video image.

At Peterson Air Base in Colorado Springs, the runway had infrared lights, and they normally landed there using the infrared imaging. Here, it was enhanced night vision, but it was about the same as landing at early dawn. The runway was clearly visible, coming up fast.

“Flaps,” Munoz called.

“Twenty percent,” McKenna replied as he deployed the flaps.

“Gear.”

He hit the switch. Three greens.

“Down and locked.”

“Two-sixty… two-fifty. Put her down nicely now,” Munoz intoned.

The MakoShark settled onto the darkened runway easily and the rollout took them to the western end of the base. A pickup met them and led them back to a cluster of hangars, all of which had had their lighting doused. The operations officer wasn’t taking any chances on having the MakoShark seen on his turf. He didn’t want to respond to a disciplinary hearing if a picture of Delta Blue showed up in the morning papers.

With the engines shut down inside a hangar, and the massive doors rolling closed, McKenna and Munoz opened their canopies and unhooked. They left their helmets and environmental suits in the cockpits and descended to the floor on ladders designed for some other aircraft.

The welcoming committee consisted of one lieutenant and one grizzled master sergeant.

There were no lights on in the hangar. The sergeant carried a six-cell flashlight aimed at the floor, and in its reflected glare, the two of them saluted.

McKenna and Munoz returned the salutes and accepted the scrutiny. They were both in wrinkled flight suits and scuffed flight boots. They donned overseas caps during their examination.

Both of them sported a day’s growth of beard, which, judging by the distaste displayed on his face, didn’t seem to strike the lieutenant as appropriate for the center of the government and the military. McKenna suspected they smelled about as grubby as they looked.

The lieutenant said, “Colonel, General Madden has informed me that we are to keep this aircraft secure. I have guards posted, and we will keep the lights off.”

“Good, Lieutenant. We need a car right away.”

“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant unclipped a portable radio and spoke into it.

McKenna turned to the sergeant. “Sarge, we need to top off the JP7 tanks, but that’s all the service she’ll need.”

“I’ll take care of it personally, Colonel.”

“If you’ll go with Major Munoz, he’ll show you the access panels.”

The two of them walked under the MakoShark as Munoz led the man to the rear.

“We’ll have a car outside for you in about ten minutes, Colonel,” the lieutenant said. “Will you be needing anything else, sir?”

“If the car has a phone, no.”

“It is equipped with a telephone,” the young officer assured him.

McKenna patted the underside of the nose. “Take care of her, Lieutenant.”

“Uh, sir?”

“Yes?”

“Am I allowed to look?”

McKenna grinned, “As long as you don’t tell anyone what you’ve seen.”

“Yes, sir.”

He and Munoz were waiting outside the hangar when the Air Force blue Chevy sedan pulled up. McKenna waved the driver back into his seat, and they crawled in the back. The sergeant at the wheel asked, “Where to, sir?”

“I don’t know, yet. Head into the district and hand me the phone.”

McKenna took the telephone and dialed the general number for the Pentagon. He asked for the duty officer and told him he wanted to speak to anyone in the office of the Air Force Chief of Staff.

That happened to be a major who was flustered by their arrival. He gave them a number in Arlington Heights. McKenna dialed it.

After two rings, a voice said, “Mays.”

“General Mays, this is Colonel Kevin McKenna.”

“McKenna? Where in the hell are you?”

“Just leaving the main gate of Andrews, sir. Where do you want us?”

“Well, goddamn it, McKenna! It’s 9:30 P.M.”

“Yes, sir. We’ve got about two hours before we have to get back.”

“Get back? Listen, McKenna, these committee members who want to talk to you—”

“It may not seem like it here, General, but we’re in a combat situation in Southeast Asia. I’ve left my command to come here, and I’m not leaving it for long.”

After a long pause, Mays said, “Let’s make it the Joint Chiefs conference room on E-ring. I’ll have my people start making calls, and McKenna, you’d better call Brackman. He’s at the Mayflower.”

He had to call information for the number, and then he had to have Brackman paged in the dining room.

“This is General Brackman.”

“McKenna, sir. We’re on our way to a conference at the Pentagon.”

“No shit? In the middle of the night?”

“You said it wouldn’t wait, so here we are.”

Brackman laughed. “See you there.”

Their driver took them across the Potomac on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, then cut north on the Jefferson Davis Highway. Traffic was only half of what was required for gridlock, and it wasn’t long before they crawled out at the River Front Entrance to the Pentagon.

Their ID cards got them past the Marines and up to the Air Force Chiefs office. McKenna thought that the Marines didn’t think much of their appearance, either.

It turned out to be nearly midnight before most of the committee members belonging to the Senate and House armed services committees finally arrived at the Pentagon.

McKenna wanted to appear before them as he was, to demonstrate how a bunch of no-nothing politicos had pulled him out of a hostile theater, but Brackman nixed that.

“Bullshit, McKenna. We’re not trying to make unnecessary points. This is still the headquarters of our service, and you will appear before these committees as the officer and gentleman that we all know you are. You, too, Munoz.”

The two of them sat in their shorts in General Mays’s office while their flight suits were pressed and their boots were shined. They used the general’s private bathroom to shower and shave.

“Nice place, but I don’t think I wanna be a chief of staff,” Munoz said.

“You’re a man after my own heart, Tony.”

When they were called, they did it right, entering the conference room in lock step, coming to a stop, and saluting the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in unison.

Admiral Cross returned the salutes. “At ease, gentlemen. Thank you for coming. Please sit down.”

Cross, Mays, and Brackman were seated at the head of the table, and McKenna and Munoz took chairs opposite them. Cross introduced the senators and representatives who were randomly seated along both sides of the table. McKenna had met a couple of them over the years, but the two he fixed in his memory were Marian Anderson and Alvin Worth. Senator Worth was actually on the intelligence committee, but had wormed his way into this meeting somehow.

“This is not,” Cross said, “a formal hearing of either committee. It is a briefing for the members. Does anyone have a problem with that?”

Apparently not.

Two stewards moved around the table, offering a choice of decaffeinated coffee, the regular stuff, or soft drinks. Munoz took coffee, and McKenna declined.

“Colonel McKenna,” the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said, “there have been concerns raised about the operations and the cost of the 1st Aerospace Squadron.”

“Yes,” McKenna said.

“Do you want to elaborate on that?”

“I don’t know what the concerns are, Congressman. I just got here.”

“Your squadron,” Marian Anderson intervened, “has lost spacecraft worth one-and-a-half billion dollars in the past several years. And that’s only two spacecraft.”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s correct.”

“How do you do that?”

“In one case, Congresswoman, you put your life on the line, and you get shot down,” which was how he had lost the first Delta Blue. “That will happen when there are a lot of antiaircraft missiles in the air with you. In the other case, you change the accepted security procedures.”

“Why?”

“Excuse me, ma’am, why what?”

“Why change the procedures?”

“For the sake of change, perhaps. I don’t know. I wasn’t there, and I didn’t make the call.”

McKenna could sense Brackman’s extrasensory warnings: Don’t antagonize anyone. Don’t offer more than you’re asked. Respond to the question as simply as possible.

“What gives you, Colonel,” Anderson said, “the right to overrule a superior? A general?”

These confabs never did follow logical trails.

“I may question my superiors from time to time, Congresswoman, but I never overrule them.”

“What! General Cartwright says…”

“I am not privy to what General Cartwright may have said,” McKenna told her, “but General Cartwright has never been my superior. Currently, I report to General Brackman. General Cartwright was caretaker of an operating base, and not a very good caretaker.”

Oops. Munoz nudged him in the ribs with his elbow at the same time Brackman fired eye-daggers at him. Mays and Cross didn’t appear very happy with him, either.

Marian Anderson started some retort, but Worth interrupted her.

“If I may,” Senator Worth asked the armed services committee chairman, “I’d like to ask Colonel McKenna just why we should be spending eleven billion dollars a year on Space Command operating costs alone, when those dollars might better benefit the American people.”

Are you campaigning Senator?

The chairman nodded.

McKenna said, “As commander of one small part of the Space Command, Senator, I am not qualified to comment on activities of the entire command.”

Brackman smiled.

“But I could offer a couple of observations.”

Brackman frowned.

Worth said, “If you would, Colonel.”

“In my opinion, the Space Command provides an excellent return on investment, sir. Your intelligence committee should be aware of the enormous increase in the American intelligence database since Themis and the 1st Aerospace Squadron came on-line. I don’t know how you attach a dollar value to that.

“Beyond intelligence gathering, the command’s support of private enterprise developments in medicine, pharmaceuticals, electronic technology, and biological and psychological studies has uncalculated value. If we look beyond the shortterm, the results of those activities are going to have tremendous benefit, not only for the American people, but for all mankind. Those advances would not take place without Themis and her supporting Space Command.

“And then, relative to the 1st Aerospace Squadron, our job is to support all of that. We provide the transportation, intelligence-gathering, and protection elements for Themis and the command.”

Only short-sighted people would fail to see the value, Senator.

When he saw Brackman relax, McKenna was glad he had not voiced the last statement.

“That has all been argued before, Colonel. You’re not telling us anything new.”

Are you too dense to understand it, Senator? What the hell am I doing here?

McKenna glanced at the clock on the wall. It was already twelve-thirty, and this looked like an all-nighter.

RUSSIAN AIR FORCE MAKO

As they approached within four hundred lateral kilometers of the space station, Pyotr Volontov attempted once again to establish radio contact.

“Soyuz, this is Carrier Two. Come in, please.”

There was only the ether for response.

On the intercom, Major Arkady Mishkov said, “Perhaps it is only their antennas that have been damaged, Colonel.”

“Perhaps,” Volontov said, but thought that Mishkov was indulging in wishful thinking.

There were many dangers in space travel, so many complicated systems that could fail. A seal or hatch could have failed, and the station might have lost its environmental integrity.

He grimaced at what they might find when they achieved a rendezvous.

“That is Themis that has appeared on the scan, Colonel.” Volontov glanced at the screen. The radar was set at the 350 kilometer scan, and a new major target had appeared.

“It is well below us, and its track will fall behind us,” Mishkov said.

Volontov looked at the screen and remembered the woman pilot, Lynn Marie Haggar, whom he had met during his first meeting with Kevin McKenna in Chad. He had often hoped that he would meet her again.

“What are our approach parameters, Arkady?”

“We are now closing at thirty meters per second. Our track is perfect.”

“Go to the video scan, Arkady. And keep your eyes open.”

“What is it that we are looking for, Colonel?”

“A MakoShark.”

Pyotr Volontov had not forgotten that the Americans had lost a spacecraft and that three of his very own former pilots were unaccounted for and were capable in the Mako.

He advanced the rocket start checklist and kept his hand hear the throttles.

The unreliability of mechanics and hydraulics and electronics could have caused a malfunction aboard Soyuz Fifty.

Then again, so could a disenchanted human being.

The Mako was tracking toward the station in an inverted attitude, and the huge, bluish globe of the Earth was above their heads. With the controller, Volontov slowly rotated a full 360 degrees, scanning the emptiness around him.

“There!” Mishkov yelped.

“Where?”

“It is not on the radar. Above us. At two o’clock.”

Volontov found the triangular speck, its shape barely defined by the sun’s rays reflecting off it.

He slammed the throttles forward.

DELTA GREEN

Aleksander Maslov saw the Mako’s rockets ignite. They went immediately to one hundred percent thrust, judging by the white trail spewing from the nozzles.

Simultaneously, he heard the call on the frequency used by the Baikonur Cosmodrome: “Baikonury Carrier Two. We are under attack by a MakoShark.”

“Fire the missile,” Maslov ordered.

“Missile launched,” Nikitin replied.

The Wasp II missile whisked away from its pylon, its infrared seeker head curving it into a long arc as it pursued the accelerating Mako.

The radar screen showed the Mako forty miles away when the Wasp II slammed into it. He glanced up from the screen in time to see the detonation.

It was a small nova, a bright white flash with orange overtones. In all of space, it did not seem to be a large or significant event.

WASHINGTON, D C

Brackman could tell that the forced civility and protocol was getting to McKenna. His shoulders had slowly straightened, and his back was becoming more rigid.

The backseater, Tony Munoz, seemed to be getting a kick out of it. He kept a straight face, but his eyes carried the light of amusement. In the future, Brackman would not invite backseaters to these soirees.

The Senate committee chairman had finally steered them away from Cartwright’s complaints, which Brackman thought would now die an unremarkable death, and into the immediate crisis of Delta Green’s disappearance.

McKenna had done fairly well with the Cartwright bitches, trying not to attack a retired Air Force officer, and letting the man’s allegations wash off him. Anderson and Worth weren’t happy, of course. They had thought they had insider information that would expose a major scandal in the command. They hadn’t done their homework well, but their lack of preparation wouldn’t dawn on them for some time. Now, they were just mad.

“What would you have done, Colonel McKenna,” Anderson asked, “to prevent the theft of the spacecraft?”

It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, and Brackman figured they were getting close to the end of McKenna’s patience. He wished Cross would put an end to this, but knew that he could not.

“Congresswoman, what I would, or would not, have done, is immaterial at this point. What’s important is that some group, possibly the one suggested by Colonel Pearson, and on which you have been briefed, has a MakoShark. That is the danger, and we should be addressing the danger.”

“Tell me how, Colonel.”

“You have also been briefed on our activities to date,” McKenna said. The heat of his temper was beginning to show in his voice.

“As far as I can tell,” Worth said, “you’re not doing much more than we could be doing with aircraft from the Eisenhower. There’s no reason in the world why the 1st Aerospace Squadron shouldn’t be grounded until we can determine what’s wrong with the command.”

Brackman couldn’t resist responding to that one. “Excuse me, Senator, but you’re begging the question there.”

Harvey Mays got into it, too. “I agree. Please don’t assume a problem in the squadron, or in the command, until it’s been proven, Senator.”

“My apologies,” Worth said, “for giving credence to what appears obvious.”

No wonder the Congress was in such trouble with the electorate, Brackman thought. These cretins had their own sense of logic.

“If I might continue,” McKenna said, “the capability of the MakoShark has just been proven for us. We have never had to imagine what it would be like if the opposition — whatever opposition — had a weapons system like the MakoShark. Now we know. We can’t see her and finding her is difficult, though I don’t think it will be insurmountable. Ironically, this episode only serves to show us how valuable the MakoShark is. If an F-14 or F-18 off the Eisenhower happened to spot Delta Green, there is no way in hell they could do anything about it. Grounding our only counterweapon to the MakoShark, the MakoShark, is not the answer.”

Admiral Cross, who had painstakingly maintained a neutrality, entered the fray, perhaps to give McKenna time to back off a little. “I have to agree with Colonel McKenna, ladies and gentlemen…”

An Army colonel in the comer of the room beckoned Brackman with quick circles of his hand. Brackman slid away from the table and approached him.

The colonel opened the door behind him, and Brackman followed him into an anteroom.

“General, there’s a Russian general on the telephone for you. He says it’s extremely urgent.”

“Thank you, Colonel.”

Brackman crossed to the phone and picked it up. “Brackman.”

“Marvin, this is Vitaly.”

“Yes, Vitaly. Is something wrong?”

“Until an hour ago, I did not know that our Rocket Forces had lost contact with Soyuz Fifty.”

“Damn. You don’t suppose…?”

“And at that time, I learned that a MakoShark had just destroyed one of our Mako craft.”

“Oh, shit!”

“Colonel Volontov was piloting it, and he was on approach to the space station. Our surveillance satellites show the station in orbit, but there is no response to radio queries. The Mako appears as a cloud of debris.”

“I’m sorry as hell, Vitaly.”

“Yes, I am, too. He was a good man, Marvin. And I am afraid the station may be in the hands of those who stole your spacecraft.”

“Vitaly, let me take this to a group I’m meeting with now. I’ll call you back in an hour or so.”

Brackman went back to the conference room and interrupted a mini-speech by a junior congressman.

He stood at the head of the table until all of the eyes had turned to him, and then he related what he had learned from Sheremetevo.

McKenna stood up, followed immediately by Munoz.

“Sir, request permission to leave.”

“Hold on, McKenna,” Worth said. “We’re not done here.”

“Senator, a friend of mine has just been killed. My immediate evaluation of the incident suggests that the Commonwealth space station is under hostile control and that Themis is therefore endangered. My sworn duty is to protect the station, not sit in some goddamned room and listen to people bitch all night.”

Munoz spoke up for the first time. “Roger that.”

Worth spluttered, “Now, just a goddamned minute.”

“You are dismissed, gentlemen,” Admiral Cross said.

Chapter Sixteen

USSC-1

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

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

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

Pearson opened the hatch to the photo processing compartment.

“Okay, guys, you can come in.”

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

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

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

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

Amber advanced the photographs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Delta Green?” Amber asked.

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

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

“No sweat,” Williams said.

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

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

“Ah, damn, Amy,” Dimatta said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He’s here.”

“He’s to launch immediately.”

Dimatta and Williams had already pushed off for the corridor.

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

She wondered what the problem was now.

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

DELTA RED

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

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

“Deltas, Delta Blue.”

“Red,” she said.

“Yellow.”

“Orange.”

“Alpha, you there?”

“We copy, Blue,” Overton said.

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

“Volontov,” she asked.

“Yes,” McKenna said.

“Damn. I liked him.”

“So did I, Country Girl. So did I.”

“Blue, Alpha. Where are you now?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You don’t.”

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

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

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

DELTA GREEN

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

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

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

Sergeant Nikita Kasartskin replied, “Proceed, Captain.”

“We will be landing in five minutes.”

“But, Captain…”

“Immediately,” Maslov ordered.

“As you wish, Captain”

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

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

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

“Maslov! Is there a problem?”

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

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

“The space station?”

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

“Why do you think this?” Druzhinin asked.

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

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

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

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

DELTA BLUE

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

“Go,” McKenna said.

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

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

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

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

“See them, Tiger?”

“Yeah, jefe. Should we check it out?”

“Hate to.”

“Me, too.”

“But we’d better.”

“Go left one-five.”

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

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

They drifted slowly into the debris field.

“Jesus Christ,” Munoz said.

“Yeah.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Munoz was thinking along the same lines.

“I’m shuttin’ down the radar.”

“Good idea, Tiger”

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

“Oh, shit!” Munoz said.

“What?”

“One o’clock high, twenty yards.”

“Use the camera.”

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

Helmet.

All by itself.

The camera zoomed in.

The visor was shattered.

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

“That’s enough, Tiger.”

“Roger that.”

McKenna backed away from the debris.

“Give me a vector for Soyuz.”

“Goin’ active three sweeps.”

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

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

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

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

“Use something else then.”

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

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

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

He ran the magnification up to full zoom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You recognize the rocket?”

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

“You think it’s nuclear?”

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

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

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

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

“Can they do that?” McKenna asked.

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

“Benny’s on our side.”

“Thank God.”

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

McKenna weighed the situation.

“Tony, it’s nuclear.”

“Yeah, I think so. Blackmail.”

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

“Agreed, jefe.”

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

“I’ll buy that.”

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

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

“I should call Brackman.”

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

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

“If by then.”

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

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

“Have I ever said otherwise?”

“I’m still a major.”

“That’s it? You want a promotion?”

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

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

“But too late.”

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

“What else?” McKenna asked.

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

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

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

“I’m bringing up the rockets.”

“Go.”

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

Sixty feet apart.

He shoved the throttles in and started counting.

Felt the push of the rockets.

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

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

Munoz was counting, also.

“Now!”

McKenna pulled the throttles back to their stops.

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

He nudged the nose down a little.

Then up a little.

The station grew.

The rocket became visible to the naked eye.

Then the umbilical.

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

Speeding at them now.

The MakoShark felt stationary; Soyuz Fifty was accelerating rapidly.

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

McKenna barely felt the contact.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Let’s go home and load ordnance”

“I’d appreciate that,” Munoz said.

DELTA GREEN

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

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

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

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

“Thank you, Aleks.”

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

“Yes, Commander, proceed.”

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

“Bloody hell! How?”

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

“But the station? The rocket?”

“Secure as yet.”

“Where is the MakoShark?”

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

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

Damn Shelepin for waiting.

PHNOM PENH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“My name is Flower.”

“The aroma is that of the rose.”

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

“It is time. Deliver the tape.”

Chapter Seventeen

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Marvin Brackman had not been home in a week. That wasn’t anything new in his profession, but he found himself thinking about sitting in front of a good log fire with Sheila, with the lights turned low, and with that bottle of Napoleon brandy he had bought fifteen years before finally uncorked. His Irish setter, Sparky, would be curled up at his feet, keeping a wary eye open for the possibility of a treat.

That homey scene was on his mind when he went to bed at the Mayflower at five in the morning, after leaving a wakeup call for 10:00 A.M.

The same scene was on his mind when the phone rang at 8:20 A.M.

He let it ring twice as he sat up on the edge of the bed and scratched the top of his head. Then he picked it up, knowing it was not going to be good news.

“Brackman.”

“Sir, this is Captain Johnson, duty officer, Office of the Air Force Chief of Staff.”

“Go on, Captain.”

“Sir, you have an urgent message to contact Colonel Kevin McKenna on a secure channel.”

“Damn.” It meant driving out to the Pentagon.

“Sir?”

“Send a car for me, will you, Captain?”

“Right away, sir.”

Brackman had taken a shower and had half his face shaved when the phone rang again.

“Brackman.”

“General, White House Chief of Staffs office. You’re wanted in the Situation Room in twenty minutes.”

Something was really going bad, he thought.

“I’ll be there.”

He finished shaving and dressing in a clean uniform, then grabbed his topcoat and briefcase and took the elevator to the lobby. The military sedan was waiting for him directly outside the front doors, the driver standing at attention by the open rear door.

Brackman returned the salute and said, “Change of plans, Sergeant. We’re going to the White House.”

“Yes sir”

His name had been left at the gate, and the driver whisked on through to let him off at the East Wing, right behind the car depositing Harvey Mays.

“What’s up, Harv?” he asked as he got out and joined the Chief of Staff.

“McKenna sent a message about Soyuz Fifty having potential nuclear capability.”

“Shit.”

“My thought, too. Then, I got the call to come here, so I haven’t talked to him.”

As more cars drove through the gate behind them, the two generals entered the door and were met by a Marine who led them downstairs to the Situation Room.

Technicians were coming in, firing up the consoles at the back wall. The Chief of Naval Operations and the National Security Advisor were huddled with a deputy secretary from the State Department. Military aides circled the room like vultures. The buzz of background conversations was ominous. The chairmen of the armed services committees, whom he had spent most of the previous night with, were also in attendance.

It looked like it might be a few minutes before whatever was going to take place did take place, so Brackman headed for a console tended by an Army lieutenant.

“Sir?”

“I want a secure line to Space Command, then a patch to our Tactical Two frequency.”

The connection took less than a minute.

Brackman took the handset from the lieutenant and said, “Delta Blue, Semaphore.”

“Semaphore, this is Alpha,” Pearson said. “PH get him for you.”

Brackman checked his watch. Time seemed to be running by much faster.

“Semaphore, Blue.”

“Tell me.”

McKenna related the details of the Mako wreckage as well as those of their assault on Soyus Fifty.

“Colonel Volontov?”

“We found his helmet.”

“Goddamn. FU have to call Sheremetevo. You think it’s nuclear?”

“The G-2 identified it on the video tapes as the payload and second stages of an SS-X-25,” McKenna said. “Ten MIRVs, five hundred kilotons each.”

Hannibal Cross arrived and was apprehended by the deputy from State.

“Right now, you think it’s disabled?”

“For maybe another hour, if they have a replacement cable. Tony estimates another three hours if they have to repair what we tore up.”

“Recommendation?” Brackman asked.

“I’m taking Blue and Yellow back, and we’ll see if we can’t capture it intact.”

“Themis?”

“Still covered,” McKenna said.

“Approved. Stay in contact.”

Brackman gave the phone back to the lieutenant, then turned to the big boat-shaped table that dominated the middle of the small room.

People were taking seats, security council people and service chiefs at the table and aides on chairs at the wall. Harvey Mays signalled him, and Brackman walked over and sat at the table next to Mays. He quickly and quietly recapped his conversation with McKenna.

Hannibal Cross sat across from him, next to the National Security Advisor who was at the head of the table. He called the room to order, and the buzz died away.

“The President has been at Camp David and is now on his way back, gentlemen. I will go ahead and open the meeting.”

Everyone waited patiently.

“Half an hour ago, a package was delivered to the State Department. It is, supposedly, a copy of a video tape which was to have been delivered to the General Secretary of the United Nations, but we have not yet been able to confirm that. The deputy secretary viewed the tape, then called me. Right now, I want you all to see what’s on it, then we’ll open it up to discussion. Major?”

A Marine major at a podium dimmed the room lights, then started a video tape machine. A large screen against one wall filled with the image of a man seated in a wing-backed, brown leather chair placed in front of a wall papered with a bamboo design.

Because he had only recently reviewed the dossier, Brackman knew the face. It was chunky and hard, the cheekbones padded with extra flesh. The hair was smoothed back from the forehead, and the bright blue eyes were framed by wire-rimmed glasses. He was dressed in a severe dark gray suit, white shirt, and maroon tie.

Brackman leaned toward Mays and said, “Shelepin.”

“No lie? I’d have thought Brezhnev.”

“Same philosophy, Harv.”

The audio was a little scratchy, which detracted from the force of the words, delivered in a stiff English. But not by very much.

“My name is Anatoly Shelepin. I am the General Secretary of the New World Communist Party, and I am Chairman of the Politburo.”

Somebody’s assistant something-or-other at the side of the room laughed. And someone else hushed him.

“By way of this video tape, I address the community of nations so that you will know of our existence, our sincerity, and our resolve.

“The New World Communist Party is now assuming the leadership role for international communism that was abrogated by the traitors of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. We will serve as the rally point for our comrades everywhere in the world.

“Our geographical location should concern no one. We are as much a spirit of the word of Lenin as we are a physical presence. Believe this, however. What we have, we will defend. The New World Communist Party will not lie down in defeat as did the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. We have taken nothing which did not belong to us by right, and we will use whatever force is necessary to protect that which is ours.”

“Like a MakoShark?” Mays asked Brackman.

“I’m waiting for the punch line.”

“Toward that end, and in demonstration of our resolve, we have assumed control of the space station Soyuz Fifty, which was designed and built by communists, and which belongs to communists. Soyuz Fifty is the command center of the New World Orbital Command, and the station is currently home to forty nuclear warheads of five hundred kilotons destructive power each”

“Forty?” Mays asked.

“That’s four missiles,” Brackman said.

“We will go our way in peace,” Shelepin continued, “but should any nation threaten our existence, please know that forty capital cities of the world are already targeted.

“You will be hearing more of the New World Communist Party.”

The man faded from the screen.

“Forty!” Cross said from across the table. “Damn it! What more do we know?”

“You tell them, Harvey,” Brackman said. “I’ve got to get hold of McKenna.”

USSC-1

Coming up the corridor from Spoke One, Pearson noted all of the activity.

In her hangar, Delta Yellow appeared ready to go. Conover and Abrams were doing something under one wing.

She peeked through the window into the Maintenance Office and saw Tony Munoz wafting behind a computer console, sound asleep.

At the next hangar, she slowed herself to look through the window over the control console. Bert Embry and two techs had mounted four pylons on Delta Blue, and they had four Phoenix IIs rigged to the outboard pylons. They were installing the last of eight Wasp IIs on the inboard mounts.

Benny Shalbot and his big floating black box were hooked into the MakoShark, running final diagnostic checks on the electronic systems. He was also profanely overseeing a technician who was double-checking the grappler arms in the forward cargo bay.

McKenna and Polly Tang were just inside the hangar hatchway, talking. When they, saw her, Polly’s face flushed the tiniest bit, so Pearson figured they had been talking about her. Tang is too damned concerned about my social well-being.

“Amy?” McKenna said.

“General Overton just talked to Brackman.” She told him about the Shelepin tape and the group in the Situation Room. “We should have a copy of the tape soon.”

“Confirms your theory, doesn’t it?” McKenna said.

“It makes me very happy,” she said. “More important, General Brackman says there are supposed to be four SS-X-25s, with forty MIRVs.”

“Where?”

“Soyuz Fifty. That’s what Shelepin claimed.”

“You saw our video tapes, Amy. We count one. Maybe three of them are in ground-launch profile?”

“He said they were in orbit.”

“Damn, he’s never lied to us before.”

“Don’t be smart, McKenna. Brackman wants you to be extremely careful approaching the station. He wants the other three rockets located before you take action. He also wants to know how long it will be before you get there.”

“Off-hand, I don’t know. I can’t keep up with the orbital characteristics of Soyuz Fifty. Tony’s down-loaded them from the mainframe to Delta Blue’s computer, and we’ll know as soon as we launch. It could be up to an hour, probably a little more.”

“Well, all the honchos are in the Situation Room, and they want information fast.”

“Funny. Last night, they wanted us grounded.”

He smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. Damned fighter jock, trying to make light of an intensely serious event.

“They also want to know more about the airstrip in Kampuchea,” she said.

McKenna clucked his tongue. “I’ll leave Dimatta and a couple Makos on Themis, and send Lynn Earth-side.”

“You’d better get going,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll go rouse Tony the Tiger.”

McKenna shot away.

Tang said, “Amy, could we talk for a minute?”

“Not now, Polly, I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

She turned and put her foot against the hatchway jamb, as Tang said, “Of course, Colonel.”

DELTA GREEN

“You are becoming very proficient, Boris. Your calculations are perfect,” Maslov said.

“It is becoming easier, Aleks. But to be honest, one should really have months in which to learn all of these systems.”

“We will take it one step at a time. And your steps have all been certain.”

The problem Nikitin had been faced with was to calculate the velocity necessary to maintain pace with Soyuz Fifty while in an orbit thirty miles (forty-eight kilometers) above the space station. They had achieved it with only mild jockeying.

They were, in fact, slightly ahead of the station, and the MakoShark was traveling backwards with its nose aimed downward. They were far enough away to elude visual sighting, and in a matter of seconds, Maslov could ignite the rocket motors and blast his way down to the station.

The attitude of the craft allowed them to maintain surveillance of the satellite with the video camera. The magnification gave them a clear and concise picture. From time to time, Nikitin swiveled the camera in order to search the regions close to the station.

In the view now on the screen, Maslov could see two ants — Bryntsev and Filatov in the white space suits — as they floated between the rocket and the station and installed the new umbilical cable that Maslov had delivered along with the new warhead. The second warhead was tethered by rope to the opposite side of the station. It awaited its propulsion stage, and Maslov was beginning to worry about when he would have a chance to retrieve it.

It was important to have the first rocket operational, so as to stave off intrusions by the 1st Aerospace Squadron. Silently, he urged Bryntsev to greater speed.

His communication with the station was encrypted, but the link from the station to the men in the space suits was not. At this point, however, with Chairman Shelepin’s announcement already released, simple communications being overheard was probably a moot point. The world, or most of it, now knew the ownership of Soyuz Fifty.

Maslov keyed the transmit button. “Commodore, this is Captain.”

Bryntsev’s voice contained a trace of stress, and his breathing rate seemed accelerated. “Commodore.”

“Progress?”

“It goes well. Another twenty minutes perhaps, then we will return.”

“Good.”

Maslov and Nikitin were falling behind on sleep, and that was not good for either of them. A groggy mind made fatal mistakes.

“Boris, I will keep watch for a few hours. You must sleep now.”

“Sleep comes hard when one is on the edge of hostile action, Aleks.”

“I know, but try.”

Maslov loosened his straps a little and resettled his body in the reclining couch.

Most of the systems were in a passive mode, reducing the draw on the batteries. The armaments panel displayed all green LEDs. All of his Wasps and the remaining Phoenix missile were armed and ready for launch.

Now it was a matter of waiting.

He knew they would come, especially after the amazing feat of severing the umbilical cable. The saving grace, as Maslov analyzed it, was that the attacker had not been armed. It might have been a Mako. Otherwise, there would no longer be a rocket or a space station to watch on the video.

And there would no longer be a New World Communist Party. The station was essential to maintaining the Party’s balance of power in the world. With the station and its nuclear capacity, the NWCP was the equivalent of the United States or China. The party did not yet control the same geography, but that would come with time.

He and Druzhinin had agreed that Maslov would not attempt to take on any of the 1st Aerospace pilots at Maslov’s own instigation. The American pilots had far too much experience in the aerospace craft for him to engage in direct combat just yet, and they could not afford to lose their only transportation between New World Base and Soyuz Fifty.

It was better to play the wait-and-see game, to allow the fly to come to the spider.

They would come and the spider would unleash its missiles from ambush.

He looked forward to it.

NEW WORLD BASE

General Oleg Druzhinin and Sergeant Nikita Kasartskin had been in the Global Communications room for hours. The communications specialist had all of the scanners operating in tandem with the tape recorders.

Kasartskin had been jumping in at intervals, randomly testing frequencies in the HF, UHF, and VHF spectrums.

Once every hour, Druzhinin had left the center to walk the runway. All of the air crews were in the cockpits of their MiG and Sukhoi fighters, and their ground crews and start carts rested in close proximity. The teams who winched the camouflage hills from the runway remained close to the winches, slapping at mosquitoes. Druzhinin had called the alert as soon as Chairman Shelepin had gone public.

But now it seemed the grand announcement was less public than planned.

“Nothing, Comrade General,” Kasartskin said for possibly the twentieth time. “None of the major networks has broken the news to the world.”

Druzhinin picked up the telephone beside his chair and called Phnom Penh.

After the formalities of code recognition, Sergei Pavel asked, “You have heard something?”

“No, we have not. I suspect the recipients of the tape are attempting to verify conditions before calling press conferences.”

“The problem,” Druzhinin said, “is one of feedback. We do not know whether the intended recipients actually received the tapes, and if they did, whether they have bothered to view them as yet.”

“Or if they believe their eyes,” Pavel added. “They may simply be trying to verify the information. Hold on while I talk to our friend.”

The telephone transmitter on the other end of the line was muffled while Pavel spoke to Shelepin.

Druzhinin was very concerned that the Americans did not yet know of the nuclear threat. They had already attacked the space station once, according to Bryntsev. They might foolishly attack again, precipitating a launch. Ten cities might die. London, Paris, Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Beijing, Rome, Bonn, and Geneva were the first targets.

And that was not the intent.

The intent was to maintain that precarious balance of power. If they were required to expend their first ten warheads, everyone lost. Certainly, before they could bring the next rocket on-line, Colonel McKenna’s raiders would overpower Maslov and destroy Soyuz Fifty.

They desperately needed to have the world’s governments in a state of disarray and fear, giving them the time to lift the remaining rocket components into orbit.

Pavel came back to the telephone, “We are going to send tapes to the major news services.”

“Excellent. We should have done that in the beginning.”

“Yes. The media has less restraint than diplomats.”

DELTA YELLOW

Wilbur Conover watched the HUD as the rocket motors shut down, seeking the proper green indications and the expected readouts.

“Altitude three-one-one miles, Con Man,” Abrams reported. “Velocity two-two-point-nine. That should do it.”

“Roger, Do-Wop. I’m giving you two Phoenix IIs and four Wasp IIs. Be careful with them.”

Conover reached for the armaments panel and activated the missiles.

“Got ’em,” Abrams said. “Going visual.”

The video came up on the screen. Just stars.

“Delta Blue, Yellow,” he said on Tac Two.

“Blue.”

“We’re in position, tracking.”

“Roger that,” McKenna said. “We’re seventeen out.”

“Copy seventeen minutes.”

Delta Blue was on a direct course for the Soyuz space station, exposing herself as bait. Delta Yellow had taken an odd-numbered orbit. People — and hopefully the opposition — generally and subconsciously selected even numbers, 280, 290, three hundred, and the odd orbit might give Conover and Abrams a slight edge over being seen or expected.

“We’re sixteen-point-two away from the coordinates,” Abrams said.

That put them a long way ahead of Delta Blue, but because of her lower orbit, Delta Blue had a shorter track to follow and she was moving at a slower velocity.

“I hope the son of a bitch is there,” Abrams said.

“Roger that,” Conover said.

According to Pearson, the pilot was likely some ex-Soviet named Bryntsev or Maslov or Nikitin. She had put them in alphabetical order.

“And it’s nice to finally know who the bad guys are,” Conover added.

“New World Order? Stupid name, Con Man.”

“Are we on full magnification?”

“Hey, guy. Right beside the screen is this…”

“I know. It just doesn’t look right.”

The screen still displayed only stars.

They were inverted, and the Earth filled their overhead view. With the sun currently on the bottom of the MakoShark, the canopy and upper wings were in deep shadow. He could barely see Shalbot’s markings.

The ID factor had been Benny Shalbot’s idea. Just before they had launched, he had approached McKenna, “Colonel, you guys may fuck each other over.”

“How’s that, Benny?”

“No markings on the birds. You get in a rough-and-tumble dog fight, Delta Green looks like anybody else. We need to splash some paint on you.”

“Not very stealthy, Benny,” Munoz had said.

“If you got to see each other to fight anyway, Major, who gives a shit about stealth?”

“Do what you will, Benny,” McKenna had said.

Since painting didn’t work well in a weightless environment, Shalbot had used six-inch-wide white tape. On the top and bottom of each wing, he had created a large symbol, visible for miles in sunlight. Delta Blue was adorned with triangles, and Delta Yellow carried squares. As Red and Orange docked for service and rest, Shalbot would dress them up, too.

“You ready for this, Do-Wop?”

“Soon as I find a decent radio station,” Abrams said.

DELTA BLUE

McKenna rolled the left wing down toward the Earth.

“Good damned idea, jefe. I wouldn’t have thought about it.”

“It just now crossed my mind, Tiger”

With the wing-down attitude, the sun didn’t directly light up the symbols on the wings. The upper wingtip was directed at the sun. If Bryntsev, or whoever it was, was in the area, and above them, the symbols gave away the strategy They were there only to identify the spacecraft to an ally, and therefore, there must be another American MakoShark around.

It would make the New World Order pilot suspicious and more cautious.

If he was even there.

“Delta Blue, Semaphore.”

“Go Semaphore.”

“Sitrep?”

Munoz responded, “One-one-two miles to target, based on expected celestial coordinates of the target. We’re not using radar. Closure rate ten miles per minute”

“Roger approximately ten minutes to contact,” Brackman said. “We now have a crisis committee, Blue.”

Wonderful, McKenna thought.

“I am the liaison with you.”

“Some wishes are granted, Semaphore.”

“Don’t get persnickety.”

“That’s a current-usage word?” McKenna asked.

“Dates me, doesn’t it?”

“Has the committee looked at Delta Orange’s daylight pictures?”

“Roger. They acknowledge the existence of a clandestine base in Kampuchea. They have asked the United Nations to send a direct message to the Kampuchean government, requesting that Shelepin and the New World Order be expelled. They’re also weighing some other pros and cons at the moment.”

“Whether or not the airstrip belongs to New World?” McKenna asked.

“Less that than the proximity of the hospital.”

“Copy that, Semaphore.”

It was a concern, no doubt. McKenna didn’t relish the thought of an attack run on the base that had to dodge little kids on crutches and in wheelchairs.

“Four-one miles,” Munoz broke in. “Let’s retard velocity some, Snake Eyes.”

“Semaphore out,” Brackman said. He was good about not interfering in a local commander’s decisioning.

“Yellow, go hot mike.”

“Yellow. We’re hot.”

McKenna tapped the forward thrusters several times, slowing their forward momentum.

“Got a visual, Snake Eyes. Tally the station.”

The tube of the Russian station — now the New World Order station — was on the screen. It was still too far away to make out very many details, other than the single rocket parked near it.

“I’m gonna abandon that shot for a moment, compadre.”

“Go ahead.”

Munoz used the camera to scan the area around the station. Nothing showed up.

“Go high, Tiger. They always like to come out of the sun, remember?”

Munoz aimed the camera lens upward and panned back and forth.

Nothing.

“I never realized how invisible we are, Snake Eyes.”

“Wish to hell it was only us, Tiger. Try the station again.” McKenna retarded his speed once again as Munoz trained the camera.

When Soyuz Fifty slid into view again, the magnified image was much closer.

“New umbilical in place,” Munoz said.

“Roger that, and just below, you see the nose cone?”

“Another warhead?”

“Could be, Tiger. You recording?”

“Roger.”

McKenna leaned forward, as if that would give him a closer view of the station.

Tac One sounded off.

“American spacecraft, you are trespassing the defense zone of the New World Order space station, Soyuz Fifty. You must retreat to a one-hundred-mile limit.”

“Jesus!” Munoz said, “Where did that come from?”

“I repeat, American spacecraft. You must immediately reverse your course.”

Munoz was swivelling the lens, searching space for the source of the warning.

“Maybe from the station, Tiger?”

“Maybe.”

McKenna didn’t reverse course and didn’t slow his closure rate.

“Two-nine miles, Snake Eyes.”

“Hot missile!” Conover yelled.

“Where, Con Man?” McKenna asked.

“Hell, I can’t see you.”

McKenna rolled ninety degrees, putting the Earth directly below them and the sun directly on the taped symbols of the upper wings.

“Gotcha!” Conover said. “Your one o’clock. Do-Wop painted it at Mach two-point-five velocity. We’re accelerating toward the origin of ignition.”

McKenna scanned the ether above. He couldn’t pick out a missile trail against the background of stars.

“See it, Snake Eyes?” Munoz asked.

“Negative.”

“Me neither. We probably ought to do something else. Real quick.”

DELTA YELLOW

“Ignition point locked in,” Abrams said. “Four away.”

As soon as he had seen the missile exhaust flare, Conover had put the nose down and slammed the throttles forward. Abrams had pinpointed on the computer the point in space where the missile had ignited.

The hot trails of four Wasp IIs snaked away from them.

“Five-four miles to target, Con Man. We’re closing fast.”

The Wasp IIs were flying independently of each other; none were slaved. They spread apart as they closed on their unseen prey. Conover’s screen seemed to have gone crazy as Abrams jumped from one missile’s camera view to another, guiding each Wasp, attempting to find Delta Green in the eye of one missile or another.

View of stars.

Another view of stars.

One more view of stars.

Another… delta-winged space craft. “No symbols, Do-Wop.”

“Got him, babe.”

DELTA GREEN

The approaching MakoShark had been thirty miles from Soyuz Fifty when Maslov had spotted it on the video screen and pointed it out to Nikitin.

“Eight-one miles, Aleks.”

“Use the Phoenix.”

Nikitin launched their last Phoenix.

The image on the screen changed to the view from the lethal missile.

The MakoShark grew larger and larger on the screen as the missile closed.

The MakoShark rolled upright.

Maslov noted the white triangles on the wings. Triangle for Delta?

Closing.

Growing on the screen.

Soon.

Then, abruptly, the MakoShark flipped end-over.

Its rocket motors fired whitely.

Its velocity toward the station immediately slowed, and the MakoShark disappeared from the picture.

Nikitin tracked the Phoenix upward.

The MakoShark appeared again, larger.

And suddenly went end-over-end again.

The rocket motors ignited a second time, the MakoShark back on its original course, shooting out of the picture.

Nikitin tried to track the Phoenix down, to capture the image again, but it was gone.

“I have overshot, Aleks.”

He looked through the canopy, but couldn’t spot the MakoShark or the Phoenix.

And then a tiny white explosion indicated where the Phoenix, its fuel expended and its proximity detector not finding a target, had detonated itself.

“Four missiles incoming!” Nikitin yelped. “Eleven o’clock high!”

Maslov shoved the throttles in and felt the rocket motors surge into life.

Then he looked up.

Four white streaks.

Three would clear them.

One was dead-on.

“Five miles!” Nikitin warned.

Maslov slapped the control stick left and stomped hard on the left rudder pedal, and the Orbital Maneuvering System shifted his attitude into a head-on position. He countered the thrusters to neutralize the turn. He kept the rocket motors at full thrust.

“Three miles!”

He had provided the weapons system operator guiding the missile with a tinier target. The aggressor would be watching his screen through the missile’s eye.

“Two miles!”

Maslov tugged lightly at the controller.

Through the Wasp II’s view, the weapons operator saw the MakoShark’s upward thrusters flare.

And turned the Wasp II upward in anticipation of the move.

Maslov slammed the controller forward.

And dove beneath the Wasp II.

DELTA BLUE

“Shit!” Abrams yelled on the hot mike. “Lost him.”

McKenna said, “Anyone got an eye on him?”

“Negative, jefe.”

“He’s above the station by about thirty miles, but I’ve lost him,” Abrams said.

“Take two Wasps, Tiger. We’ll take a shot at the station.”

“Two ready, Snake Eyes. Distance to target, two-two miles and closing.”

Delta Blue’s nose camera steadied on the station, the image magnified enough now that the fore and aft ends of the station were off the screen.

“The station itself, or the warheads?” Munoz asked.

Tac One, which was not scrambled, sounded off. “Soyuz Fifty, this is Captain. Launch now!”

“Secure weapons, Tiger. Yellow, veer off.”

McKenna turned hard ninety degrees to the left.

“Deltas, Semaphore. Abort, abort, abort!” The tension in Brackman’s voice was apparent to McKenna.

“Aborting now, Semaphore.”

During the hard turn, Munoz tracked the station with the camera.

“No launch, Semaphore,” he reported.

“RTB Deltas,” Semaphore ordered.

“Return to base, copy,” McKenna said.

“Yellow copies RTB,” Conover called.

On the ICS, Munoz said, “Damn, amigo, I think they’ve got us now.”

Chapter Eighteen

USSC-1

Pearson and Overton were in the Command Center with Amber and Arguento, listening to the cryptic messages voiced on the tactical channels.

Intelligence specialists were supposed to be able to read between the lines, and this situation wasn’t difficult to decipher.

They were stalemated.

McKenna wouldn’t have broken off the attack unless he was certain the New World Order nuclear warheads were capable of being launched.

Don Curtis reported from the radio shack. “The National Security Agency and NORAD haven’t detected any launches from space.”

Pearson realized she had been holding her breath, and she let it out slowly.

“Alpha Two, Semaphore.”

It took her a second to remember that she was Alpha Two now, then she pulled herself close to the microphone.

“Semaphore, Alpha Two.”

“What’s your reading?” Brackman asked.

“Impasse, sir. I don’t have a report from Delta Blue yet, but I think we can assume they have at least one SS-X-25 on-line.”

“That’s affirmative” McKenna broke in. “One complete and apparently ready to go, and there’s now another warhead, less propulsion stage, anchored nearby.”

“Semaphore Two here,” David Thorpe said. “Delta Blue, is that second warhead on an umbilical?”

“Negative, as far as I could tell,” McKenna said. “We’ll try to get a closer look on the video replay.”

“So they can only prepare one vehicle for launch at a time?” Thorpe asked.

“Hold on,” Pearson said.

She turned to an auxiliary console and called up the video of McKenna’s first run on Soyuz Fifty, when he had severed the umbilical cable. When she found it, she ran it forward until the camera picked up the best and closest view of both the station and the SS-X-25.

“Semaphore Two,” she said, “on the video of the last run, I see only one receptacle for an umbilical. I cannot, however, see the other side of the station.”

“Fifty-fifty odds, then,” Thorpe said, “that they can launch more than ten MIRVs at a time.”

“Which means,” Brackman added, “that the threat is quartered. We lose ten cities instead of forty because we can take out the station before another rocket is in place.” “Correct,” Thorpe said.

“Are we actually talking about taking the risk on ten cities?” McKenna asked.

“Call it five,” Brackman said. “I think the 1st Aero can intercept at least half of the MIRVs while they’re en route. You think you can do better than that, Blue?”

“Maybe six,” McKenna said.

“The problem, if we wait,” Brackman said, “is that they may actually get all forty warheads on-line. Then we’ve got a larger problem.”

“Agreed,” McKenna said.

“Well, we’re not making the decision. Blue, you get on back and stand by, in case we come up with one. Alpha Two, you have any more on the Kampuchea base yet?”

“We’re waiting on photos,” Pearson said.

“Delta Red, Blue. You listening in?”

“Roger that, Blue. Red here.”

“Country Girl, what’s your status?” McKenna asked.

“Six minutes from the recon run.”

“Red, Semaphore. Take absolutely no chances. Go high the first time, and don’t rile any tempers.”

“Roger, sir,” Haggar said.

“Semaphore out.”

Pearson closed the circuit and looked over at Jim Overton.

He shook his head. “Doesn’t look good, Amy.”

She didn’t think so, either.

DELTA RED

Lynn Haggar leveled out at thirty-five thousand feet and scanned the HUD. Everything was in the green.

“Swede?”

“One sweep?”

“Go.”

She waited while he scanned the area on radar.

“Jumbo jet to the south,” he said. “A pair to the west, probably Thai Royal Air Force. That’s it.”

“Roger. Set it up.”

“Angels thirty would be best.”

“When?” she asked.

“Your choice from now until a minute from now.”

“Thanks.”

Haggar eased the nose down and idled the throttles. They had been on the turbojets for the last four minutes.

She checked the rocket panel. All switches were set for an immediate rocket boost if it was necessary. She tapped the ignition information into the keyboard, then pressed the standby pad.

At thirty thousand feet, she leveled out and checked her heading. The readout displayed 005 degrees.

“Want to monitor, Country?”

“Of course.”

The copy of the video from the reconnaissance pod appeared on her screen.

Lots of green jungle, some craggy peaks, a stream.

Nothing to get excited about.

“One minute,” Olsen said.

She had the speed down to four hundred knots. At this altitude and velocity, the pictures they got would be steady and sharp.

She was checking the HUD when Olsen said, “My God!”

She glanced down at the screen.

The New World Order’s clandestine air base was no longer covert.

The camouflage hills had disappeared, and the two-mile-long airstrip, though painted to blend into the landscape, was clearly visible on the screen, along with nine or ten aircraft parked along its length. A fighter was taking off.

“They feel secure now,” Haggar guessed.

“I’d think so. I see MiG-27s and Sukhoi Su-24s. There’s an Antonov An-72, also.”

The picture changed to jungle once again.

“One more pass?” Olsen asked.

“One more, then we’ll get back to Wet Country and get these shipped to Amy.”

“This is kind of scary, Country. Why would they show their strength now?”

“Maybe to keep a suddenly reluctant host country at bay. I don’t imagine Phnom Penh is happy about the recent revelations”

“Or maybe they’re just showing their arrogance, having blocked McKenna?”

“That may be, Swede. Damn it, I wish we could take out those MiGs.”

“If we have to wait on a UN resolution,” Olsen said, “we could be waiting for a year.”

NEW WORLD BASE

General Oleg Druzhinin stood out in front of his control center and watched the activity on the field. For the first time, it appeared to be bustling and real. Fuel crews moved their tankers in close to the MiGs and Sukhois. Ordnance specialists rolled dollies of AA-6 and AA-8 air-to-air missiles beneath the wings. He felt as if he had a true command once again.

Another MiG rolled down the runway and took to the air with a high-pitched scream of its afterburners. He had stepped up the training schedule this morning since the restricted night training had allowed the skills of many of his pilots to become dulled.

There had not yet been a complaint from Kampuchean air controllers about the unauthorized flights in central Kampuchea. He did not expect one to be voiced.

According to Pavel, who had read the major newspapers, and to Nikita Kasartskin, who had copied many of the radio and television broadcasts, the existence of the New World Order was now widely known.

They should have gone to the media in the first place, Druzhinin reflected.

Now, there was apparent activity around the world. The United Nations Security Council was meeting in emergency session. Most governmental leaders appeared to be closeted with their close advisors, according to their spokesmen.

They would be evaluating the threat, and they would turn to the United States for information, and they would learn that the American MakoSharks had been turned away from Soyuz Fifty, sent home with their tails between their legs.

With Shelepin’s concurrence, Druzhinin had opened New World Base to the world’s scrutiny. There was no longer anything, or anyone, to fear.

The Kampucheans had, naturally, recognized Shelepin as soon as they saw the video replayed on television, and they had put two and two and the hospital together. Twenty minutes before, a flight of two Kampuchean Chinese-made F-6s had flown over the base, probably taking pictures.

The Kampuchean air force consisted of six or seven operable F-6s, which were versions of the MiG-19, a few AC-47 gunships, and some UH-1H helicopters. They were the remnants of the former Khmer forces, and they had been dormant for many years before their resurrection. The New World Air Force could eradicate them in half an hour.

Druzhinin did not think it would be necessary, but he was happy that Phnom Penh now knew what it could be up against if the government did not submit to the threat from the skies.

Hot though it was, the sun felt good on his face. He no longer had to slink through life. Anatoly Shelepin and Sergei Pavel and their vision had made it possible for Druzhinin to hold his head high.

He turned and went back inside the control room. A lieutenant smiled at him.

“Comrade General, Captain reports that he will be landing in two hours.”

“Very good, Lieutenant. He has instructions?”

“The jet engines will have to be refueled, and he would like to have the propulsion stage of the second rocket loaded while he and Major Nikitin sleep.”

“You make certain that Colonel Maslov gets what he wants, Lieutenant.”

He would have to discuss with Shelepin the possibility of striking a medal for Hero of the New World Order. Maslov certainly deserved it.

PHNOM PENH

Shelepin and Pavel had been sitting for most of the day in Shelepin’s office watching the television news programs picked up from all over the world by the satellite antenna.

CNN appeared to have the most comprehensive coverage, but Shelepin was put off by the tone of the anchorpersons and the reporters. There was an undercurrent of skepticism in their reports, as if they thought that Shelepin and his colleagues, and their New World Order, were insane.

Bob: Well, Sally, when do you think we’ll hear from this bunch again?

Sally: It’s difficult to tell, Bob, from what our sources tell us. Here in Britain, we understand that Foreign Office officials are still trying to verify that Soyuz Fifty has fallen into, for want of a better word, terrorist hands.

Bob: That’s as good a word as any, Sally. For those of you just joining us, we will shortly rerun the video tape delivered to many news services this morning. On it, a man named Anatoly Shelepin, who we understand was a defector from the old Soviet Union, has proclaimed his leadership of a communist sect to be called the New World Order.

“Idiots!” Shelepin exclaimed.

“These people think,” Pavel said, “that because the Soviet Union folded her hands and died, so must the premier social order.”

“These people do not think, Sergei. They react. They react to what they think is the popular fad of the moment. They cannot understand that communism has not died. It has been forced into retrenchment, perhaps, but our followers are everywhere in the world, and they only seek leadership. We will give them that. The world will soon know.”

“That is true, Anatoly. They may scoff now, but we are a power.”

“Wait until the U.S., French, and British leaders emerge from their secret meetings and tell the world that we must be accommodated.” Shelepin laughed. “I expect an invitation to address the United Nations.”

“What they won’t understand, Anatoly, is that we will not lay claim to a geography, as the Palestinians do. We only wish to exist, and that cannot be denied.”

“We take our lessons from Jesus Christ and Mohammed and Buddha,” Shelepin smiled. “Each came to own a large portion of men’s minds without owning chattels.”

Pavel raised his vodka glass high in toast. “To a better world.”

“Even if we are required to destroy part of it,” Shelepin agreed.

PENTAGON

“Do we want this asshole to have parity in the world?” Brackman asked.

Admiral Hannibal Cross stood by his office window looking down on the street. The weather was making a valiant attempt at changing from a snowstorm to a blizzard. The wind had been increasing throughout the night, and to Brackman, the snow beyond the window appeared to be moving as much horizontally as vertically.

“There must be fifty TV vans down there.” Cross said. “These guys will brave desert heat or tropical monsoons or arctic temperatures in order to be the first to manipulate the story.”

“The hijacking of Delta Green has become a media footnote, anyway,” Harvey Mays said. “And in response to your question, Marv, no. Comrade Anatoly Shelepin is not my idea of a friendly force.”

“Nor mine,” Cross said, turning back to the room. “However, the politicos may have to decide otherwise.”

He moved back to his desk and sat down heavily.

The Chairman wasn’t sleeping too well either, Brackman decided.

“Do we have anything recent out of Phnom Penh?” Brackman asked.

“Nothing,” the Chairman said. “The State Department has sent strongly worded messages demanding that Shelepin and his associates be expelled, but the government’s either stonewalling or they’re well-bribed, or they’re scared of him.”

“Or all three,” Mays said.

“That end is up to the diplomats,” Cross said. “The UN is meeting, too, but I expect a lot of word-slinging there for awhile.”

“They’ll chat about it, while we seem to have a more pressing need,” Brackman said.

“We’re getting down to the wire, Marv” Cross said. “In three hours, the National Security Council wants a plan of action. What are we going to give them?”

“It has to be two-pronged,” Brackman said. “Something we can give to the press, to settle them down, and something we can give to McKenna and his people.”

“The President has the Strategic Planning Group working on a theory,” Mays said.

“We aren’t going to be bound to whatever they come up with, are we?” Brackman asked.

“Not if we’ve got something better.”

“Hell, we don’t even have a clear executive directive,” Brackman said. “There’s too many people hemming and hawing around. They don’t know whether to believe us about Shelepin’s takeover of Soyuz Fifty or to continue praying for a more peaceful world.”

“There’s also a lot of people leaving town,” Mays said. “The radio stations are reporting clogged highways all over hell.”

After the Shelepin video had hit the television outlets, the commentators had been speculating on which large cities might be targeted by an unstable madman. The mass population excursions from New York, Washington, and Chicago had begun immediately thereafter. Reports coming in from the embassies indicated similar reactions in London, Paris, and Bonn.

“I hope Alvin Worth is stranded in the middle of the Arlington Memorial Bridge,” Brackman said. “He can test the first five-hundred KT shock wave for us.”

Worth had held a press conference, blaming the current world instability on the Air Force’s inability to protect its supersecret spacecraft. Because of the fervor over Shelepin’s announcement, Worth hadn’t gotten a lot of coverage. Still, it indicated to Brackman the man’s state of mind and how he might be influencing others on the armed services committees. Worth and those like him wanted a scapegoat because they couldn’t dream of a solution.

Marian Anderson, on the other hand, had been uncharacteristically quiet. Maybe she was realizing that, Soviet Union or not, there were still others in the world to warn about, people who required the U.S. to maintain some semblance of military readiness.

“You guys are engaging in hope,” Cross said. “What the hell are we doing?”

“The Air Force strategists are in session,” Mays said “They’re looking at the capabilities of the SS-X-25 and the ways in which we might counter it. Marv said it was possible that we might have to let them launch the first one and try to intercept the MIRVs on the way down. It’d be a damned sight easier if we knew the targets.”

“In what way?”

“Washington is a likely priority, Hannibal. I’d put up a hundred fighters. We see it coming in, we counterattack with four hundred air-to-air missiles. At least one of them’s going to hit it. With luck, it might still be high enough that the altimeter switch hasn’t armed the warhead.”

“That leaves nine cities unprotected,” Brackman said.

“Yeah, unless we can spook Shelepin into revealing the targets. Anyway, that’s one scenario. The strategists are also looking at ways to attack both the space station and the base in Kampuchea.”

“When are they going to have something for us?” Cross asked.

“Soon. All they’ve said so far is that we don’t want to put a missile into either the space station or the SS-X-25.”

“Why?”

“They’re likely to be booby-trapped. Try to hit one or the other, the sensors detect the incoming threat, and the ICBM takes off.”

“Shit. What would you do, Marvin?”

“Since the Oval Office hasn’t yet told us to lay off and let the diplomats work it out, I’d turn McKenna loose. First, we all know the 1st Aero is the only unit we have that can handle a space offensive. Second, most of us trust McKenna. Third, he and his people have the experience. Fourth, they have common sense. On top of all that, when or if we get offensive strategies, I think we’re going to get plans loaded with qualifications and restrictions and limitations from the Strategic Planning Group and from the Air Force people who will be covering their asses, just in case their plans don’t work out.”

“Why?” Cross asked.

“Not one of the members of those groups has been in space and understands the specialized environment for conducting warfare.”

Mays nodded his agreement.

Cross said, “Ask McKenna for a strategy. He’s not to implement anything without our say-so.”

“What if McKenna comes up with something we can believe in and the power brokers in the Security Council turn us down, Hannibal?”

“We’ll do our best to blow up that bridge when we come to it, Marv.”

Brackman got up and crossed the room to the telephone on the credenza.

USSC-1

McKenna had napped in his office cubicle, upside down for variety, for several hours while Delta Blue was undergoing her maintenance. Benny Shalbot had cussed a black-and-blue streak for twenty minutes after he saw what McKenna had done to his wing. Brad Mitchell had thought it could be fixed in a couple of hours, if Shalbot would divert his energy into the proper machine tools.

He took his microwave-relayed telephone call from General Brackman upside down, also.

“McKenna.”

“Marv Brackman, Kevin. They said you were actually sleeping, and I halfway hate to disturb you.”

“Only halfway?”

“Yeah. I don’t want to pamper you.”

“I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“The reason I’m calling, I want you to know what’s going on here.”

“I’m all ears,” McKenna said.

“The UN is demanding that Kampuchea expel the New World Order, but no one believes that’s likely to happen. The State Department is picking up pre-message vibrations that a number of countries will ask the United States not to be precipitate in mounting an attack. They don’t want to test Shelepin’s resolve on their capital cities.”

“Can’t say as I blame them, General.”

“The President is back-stopping all of the diplomatic efforts by having the Strategic Planning Committee and the Air Force Planning Group prepare offense scenarios.”

“That’s wonderful. I don’t—”

“Don’t jump to any conclusions, Kevin. They might come up with something we can use. In the meantime, Admiral Cross has given his approval to your developing a plan of your own. Have you been thinking about something?”

“Hell, I’ve been dreaming about it, Marv. Nothing clicks, right off, though.”

“You want to put something together for me?”

“By yesterday, no doubt?”

“Oh, hell, no. You’ve got an hour, give or take fifteen minutes.”

“Jesus, Marv! You’re not kidding.”

“I’m afraid not. The Security Council is already scheduled.”

“Okay. I’ll get back to you.”

McKenna cut off the connection, then called the radio shack. Don Curtis was on the console.

“Don, track down Munoz, Conover, and Abrams for me.”

“Delta Yellow went on patrol, Colonel. Orange is back, though.”

“Fine. Wake up Dimatta and Williams instead. We’ll meet in the exercise room.”

McKenna unstrapped and pushed out of his cubicle, got a hot coffee from the radio shack, then headed for the hatch. Sailing down the spoke, he rubbed his cheeks, judging the growth of beard. He decided he should shave, but after the meeting.

Halfway to the exercise room, he met Benny Shalbot, who gave him a dirty look.

“I said I was sorry, Benny.”

“Yeah, but don’t let it happen again, Colonel.”

“Come with me, Benny. I may need your expertise.”

“You bet, Colonel.” Shalbot executed a half-flip, bounced off a grab bar, and reversed his course.

Eight minutes after Brackman’s call, his three available squadron members were gathered in the exercise room.

“We’ve got fifty-two minutes to decide how we’re going to take out the New World Order, gentlemen. I suspect the people who count want us to do it without prompting the launch of a multiple warhead.”

“We aren’t in a jokin’ situation then, compadre?”

“No, Tony, we’re not. Let’s start with known weaknesses. George, you want to list them on something.”

“Will do, Kevin,” Williams said, digging in his pocket for a pen and notebook.

“First,” Conover said, “if we’re dealing with the space station, they’re vulnerable when Delta Green isn’t in attendance.”

“That’s one, and it’s probably the primary item. What else?”

“They may have some blind spots on the station,” Munoz said. “They’ve got one porthole aimed at Earth, and they’ve only got one video camera that I saw, though there may be another on the bottom side. When reviewin’ the tapes, I noticed that the one I saw doesn’t automatically scan. The automatic mode is either shut down, or the camera’s got to be aimed by someone from the interior.”

“Good point, Tony.”

Shalbot stuck up his hand.

“Benny”

“I’ve been thinking about it some, Colonel. In a command and control sort of way, because that means electronics, and I know electronics. If I can get a couple pieces of equipment, I can stop the fuckers.”

“We want to hear this, Benny.”

“I don’t mean I can do it, but I can give you the means to do it.”

The Delta Blue and Orange crews listened intently as Benny Shalbot went over the technological details of his plan.

“Goddamn, Benny. That’s good.”

“I mean, Colonel, you still got to figure out how to get there, but it’ll work.”

“Damned right,” Munoz said. “If we put all the vulnerable aspects together, we can make it work.”

“Tony,” McKenna said, “get on a secure channel to Wet Country. Tell Lynn and Ben to load up a couple electromagnetic generators and every battery they can find and hustle back here. I’ve got a call to make”

McKenna went back to Spoke One and his office. He placed his call to the Office of the Chairman on a scrambled phone circuit.

The duty officer put him right through, and the Chairman himself answered.

“Cross.”

“Admiral, this is Colonel McKenna. Is General Brackman there?”

“He’s in the can. Maybe it’s something I can answer for you?”

“We don’t need answers, Admiral. I’ve got an attack plan for you.”

“Jesus, McKenna. Already?”

“We spent nearly twenty minutes on it,” McKenna said.

“Sorry. I thought maybe you’d rushed through it. Tell me about it.”

McKenna told him.

“Son of a bitch. You’re sure it’ll work?”

“I’m sure.”

“It requires a volunteer,” Cross said.

“Already taken care of, sir.”

“Who?”

“Me.”

“Shit. We don’t want to lose you, Colonel.”

“You won’t. Promise.”

“Go ahead and get your stuff together. But no go until I personally give you the word.”

“How soon could that be, Admiral?”

“Another two, three hours, anyway. We’ve got to push it through the committees. You understand that, don’t you?”

“All too well, Admiral.”

NEW WORLD BASE

Until he stepped from the ladder to the steel matting, Aleksander Maslov had not realized how tired he was.

He and Nikitin had been getting their rest in short spurts, frequently in the confines of their environmental suits, and he knew it was inadequate. Fatigue would creep up on him at the most inopportune moment.

But there was so much yet to be done, and there was no one else to do it. Maslov stood at the bottom of the ladder and worked his helmet loose.

General Druzhinin was walking across the runway toward him, beaming.

“Aleksander Illiyich!”

“Comrade General.”

“You and Boris are wonderful! Look around us! We are a viable and a visible force, and it is because of your magnificent efforts.”

“I admit that I was surprised to see such a welcoming runway, Comrade General,” Nikitin said.

“And it gets better from here on, Major. Our position is secure.”

“It will be more secure,” Maslov said, “when we get the next propulsion unit into space. I believe, also, that we should add a second umbilical cable. The more I think about it, we could be vulnerable for nearly an hour after a launch, while the next rocket is being prepared.”

“But, Aleksander, we shall never have to launch the first,” Druzhinin said.

“I am not so certain, General.”

Druzhinin peered intently at Maslov’s eyes and apparently read his sincerity.

“You need a long rest, Aleksander. How would it be if you and Boris took an airplane and flew to Phnom Penh for twenty-four hours of recreation?”

“Perhaps, Comrade General, after we have the second rocket in place. That is essential, I believe.”

Druzhinin nodded slowly.

“We will sleep for… for six hours while the spacecraft is serviced and the rocket segment loaded aboard.”

“If you think that best, Aleksander.”

“We have a toehold on the beach, General, but we need to have both feet firmly planted.”

USSC-1

Pearson received a call from her friend at the National Security Agency, a civilian analyst named Walt MacDonald. She had never met him in person, but the two of them had worked together on several projects.

“I understand there’s been a change,” he said.

“What’s that, Walt?”

“Am I supposed to address you as ‘Full Bird,’ now?”

She laughed. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Congratulations, anyway. You owe me a beer.”

“Come on up and get it.”

“Ah, well, we’ll wait until you’re down sometime. Look, Amy, my section’s been monitoring a piece of Southeast Asia at your request, particularly a brand-new airfield that showed up today.”

“Right.”

“We’ve got a Teal Ruby in geostationary orbit for that task, and we just picked up something interesting.”

“How interesting, Walt?”

“One of your MakoSharks just landed on this airstrip. In broad daylight. Didn’t give a damn who saw it. I suppose it’s the one that went AWOL.”

“Damn. You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. Pretty arrogant, as far as I’m concerned. We ought to complain to the UN.”

“They don’t belong to the UN,” she said.

“There’s always a hitch, isn’t there?”

Chapter Nineteen

USSC-1

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.”

DELTA GREEN

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.”

USSC-1

“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.”

DELTA RED

“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.

DELTA GREEN

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.

DELTA BLUE

“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.

DELTA ORANGE

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.

USSC-1

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.

SOYUZ FIFTY

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.

DELTA GREEN

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.

PENTAGON

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.

DELTA RED

“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.

Chapter Twenty

DELTA BLUE

“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.”

USSC-1

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.”

NEW WORLD BASE

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 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.”

PHNOM PENH

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.

DELTA BLUE

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.

DELTA ORANGE

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!”

DELTA GREEN

“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!”

DELTA BLUE

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.

Chapter Twenty-One

“You sure you don’t wanna go to Singapore, compadre?”

“I’m sure, Tony. You and the others go ahead and take off.” McKenna peeled two hundred-dollar bills from a roll in his pocket and handed them to Munoz. “I’m buying the first round.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Munoz said.

“Probably.”

Munoz shrugged and left the ready room. McKenna could hear the excited voices as they headed for the Learjet. He had given the whole squadron leave at the same time, for the first time.

The nuclear warheads at Soyuz Fifty had been recovered by Makos and were under control. A team of Kampuchean and United Nations inspectors were combing the jungle around the New World Base, hunting for the remains of the other two ICBMs.

There had been no word, one way or the other, from the Kampuchean government about the demolition of a residential compound in northern Phnom Penh. He didn’t expect to ever hear anything about it. Somebody somewhere was gathering up the remnants of the Shelepin financial empire.

He waited around for an hour after the Lear had departed, then got up and went out into the wet heat when he heard Mako Three put down.

Standing at the side of the huge hangar, he watched as she was towed inside. It took a few minutes to open her up and release the passenger.

Pearson descended to the concrete floor and McKenna crossed over to meet her.

“Welcome Earth-side, Colonel.”

“Hello, McKenna.”

“That’s all? Just hello McKenna?”

“General Brackman said to tell you that the Senate committee had restored his request for an additional MakoShark plus the funds to replace Delta Green. He expects the House to go along with it.”

“If General Brackman’s happy, I’m happy.”

“You look tired,” she said.

“Busy week.”

“You ought to take some R&R”

“Still got a job to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Overton said you were going to visit the hospital.”

“That’s right, I am.”

“You need a pilot,” he said.

“You?”

“Just the two of us.”

Her face seemed to soften a little.

“Off base,” he said.

“Way off base?”

“I made reservations in Bangkok.”

“Probably the cheapest hotel you could find,” she said. “It’s rated the best in the world.”

“Damn you, McKenna.”