Delta Green - [18]

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.