Delta Green - [38]

“I’m buttoned in,” Ben Olsen told her over the intercom system.

“Ditto,” she said. “Okay, Sergeant, how about giving us a tow?”

“Coming right up, ma’am,” he said, then scampered down the ladder.

Olsen was right. This was projected to be another boring day, in terms of contact possibilities. Since not one of the high-tech surveillance systems roaming the skies had detected a reentry burn in the last hours, McKenna had put them back on search patterns. Conover and Abrams were going to cover the area of Southeast Asia that McKenna and Munoz had abandoned when their fuel feed valve stuck open, and Delta Red was headed back to Africa.

After she and Olsen completed their pattern, they would put down at Jack Andrews in Chad for a rest break.

And listen to Dimatta and Williams moaning over their loss, no doubt.

She felt the MakoShark shudder gently as the tractor took a strain on the tow bar. Releasing the brakes, Haggar cleared her mind for the checklist.

Delta Yellow moved slowly out of the hangar, eager for her task.

And looking back over her shoulder, Haggar saw Munoz standing in the middle of the hangar, looking as downcast and lost as he possibly could.

She wondered if he were acting.

DELTA GREEN

Colonel Aleksander Maslov had planned this mission carefully.

General Shelepin had always told him that knowledge was power, and his knowledge of the American aerospace capabilities, though limited in detail, was precise enough to give him an advantage.

He knew, for instance, that the massive radar aboard the American space station had a range of around four hundred miles or 643 kilometers.

He and Nikitin had boosted the HoneyBee attached to the MakoShark to an altitude of three hundred miles and then accelerated slowly, conserving fuel, until they had, seven hours later, slowed and parked the HoneyBee in an orbit on the other side of the Earth from the space station. Like Themis, the supply rocket was in a polar orbit. The American satellite completed a revolution around the North and South poles every 3.6 hours. Though it was in a higher orbit, the rocket’s velocity had been increased until it, too, required the same amount of time to complete an orbit. The computer calculations developed by Boris Nikitin had been very precise.

They had then slept for several hours because Maslov knew also that the Americans would have been looking for his reentry into the atmosphere. Their surveillance satellites were everywhere.

As a copilot trainee, Maslov had accomplished the reentry into the atmosphere twice, and he had an excellent mind. He forgot nothing, and even if he had, the checklist on the small screen kept him honest. The first reentry of the New World Order’s MakoShark into the atmosphere above northern China was flawless.

At twenty-five kilometers of altitude, Nikitin said, “Altitude is… sixteen miles, Aleks. The velocity is Mach four-point-six. All systems are cooling down.”

“Excellent, Boris. We are now veteran spacemen.”

“I am relieved to have the maiden flight completed. I admit it.”

“Nonsense, Boris. We accomplished our mission exactly as planned. Proper planning will always tell.”

Conserving rocket fuel, Maslov put the MakoShark into a long, shallow parabolic curve toward the south. It was after nine o’clock at night when they crossed the northern border of Kampuchea and started the turbojets.

With the use of the GPS navigational system and the night vision lens, they found New World Base without problem. Sixty kilometers to the south, Maslov could see the lights of Kampong Thum.

For the first time in their entire flight, he used the radio. Soon after he had acquired the MakoShark, he had learned that the Americans must have changed the radio packs in their other craft because he no longer heard them on any of the available scrambled frequencies.

Similarly, because he was certain that American listening posts would be monitoring the scrambled frequencies on this craft’s radios, he bypassed the scramblers and utilized a clear frequency. That would change as soon as the communications technicians had altered the radios.

He depressed the transmit button and used English rather than Russian. “Commodore, Commander.”

“Proceed Commander.”

“Five minutes.”

That was all. Just the necessary information that he was close, and that the camouflage over the runway must be shunted aside.

Like his reentry into the atmosphere, the landing was flawless, and the second they were down and slowed, the runway lights were turned off. He was not yet familiar enough with the MakoShark’s special systems to attempt a landing utilizing the night vision capability. Even as he turned off the engines and the electrical systems, a tow tractor had latched onto the nose wheel and was pushing the MakoShark back into its hidden revetment on the west side of the runway.

The jungle canopy closed over them, making the darkness even blacker.

A gaggle of flashlights approached while he and Nikitin raised their canopies and rose awkwardly from the reclining seats, stretching unused muscles. Disconnecting their umbilicals, they eased over the coaming, found the makeshift ladders, and descended to the ground.