Delta Green - [2]

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.