Delta Green - [21]

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.”