Delta Green - [19]

“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.