Delta Green - [31]

“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.