Delta Green - [42]

“Mach two-six-point-one,” Williams intoned, “escape velocity. Still in one piece, Cancha.”

“You, or the bird?”

“Both of us, which is a damned good deal. I uncrossed my fingers.”

At over seventeen thousand miles per hour, the sensation of speed was dulled into almost no motion at all. The globe below them did not seem to move. He picked out the Caspian Sea, the projection of India.

He wondered where, in all of that landscape, his Delta Green was.

“She’s got a good feel to her,” Williams said.

Dimatta couldn’t quite bring himself to think of this MakoShark as “her.”

He tested the control stick, which was finally attuned to the pressures he liked. Easing it sideways to the left, the wingtip thrusters fired, and Delta Orange rolled smartly to the left. He fired the reverse thrusters to stop the roll when the Earth was directly above them.

“Looking good, Orange.”

Just above Dimatta’s head, Delta Blue coasted in. McKenna used his forward thrusters to retard her forward speed and matched velocities with Delta Orange.

“You want me to go clear around you, Cancha, or are you going to give me a roll?” McKenna asked.

“Rolling, Snake Eyes.”

Dimatta rolled around his longitudinal axis three times, slowly, so McKenna and Munoz could examine the aerospace fighter’s skin and fittings.

“Not even a drop of spit on her,” Munoz said.

“We’ll give you an ‘A’ this trip,” McKenna said. “How are the readings, Nitro?”

Williams read off the pertinent temperatures, pressures, and capacities, all of which were also being recorded at Jack Andrews and aboard Themis by telemetry transmissions. “Hell, Snake Eyes, I think we’re getting better mileage than Green got. Even Marla is impressed.”

“Who’s Marla?” Munoz asked.

“My calculating machine.”

“Oh, oh, I think you’re in love, Nitro,” Jack Abrams broke in.

“Where the hell are you, Do-Wop?” Williams asked.

“Cruising the main drag of Calcutta. Just listening in on your test hop, buddy.”

“Red is ditto, Orange. Congrats,” Lynn Haggar said.

The whole squadron had been tracking this maiden flight, and Dimatta felt a little humbled by their concern.

“Everything’s green, Snake Eyes. Smooth as anything you can buy at Frederick’s,” he said.

“Ready to take her back?”

“Nitro?” Dimatta asked.

“Any time. I’m eager.”

“Cancha give me a window?”

“Coming up.”

“We’ll trail you through reentry,” McKenna said, “then split off. You go on back and get hot on the weapons trials.”

“Roger that, Blue.”

“We want you back on active duty as soon as we can get you,” McKenna added.

“Hell, yes,” Munoz chimed in. “You’ve had enough R&R, sittin’ around in paradise, suckin’ up the beer.”

The reentry flight came off without a hitch, and after they came out of the blackout, they were again congratulated by all of the MakoShark crews, by the control towers at Jack Andrews, Merlin, and Peterson, and by General Overton on board Themis.

Brackman, too, wherever he was, came in on the frequency, “Delta Orange, Semaphore.”

“Semaphore, Orange. Got you.”

“Nice going, gentlemen. We applaud you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Dimatta said, hoping Williams wouldn’t pipe up with anything, like asking for a pay raise. He remembered too well his last conversation with the commanding general, when he had had to report the hijacking.

Their reentry had brought them in over Moscow at two hundred thousand feet.

“Want a vector, Cancha?” Williams asked on the ICS. “Hell, no.”

He brought the right wing up in a wingover, dropped the nose, and dove, picking up speed beyond Mach 6, rather than losing velocity.

“Hot shit pilot,” Williams said.

“Want to get out here?”

“Not just yet.”

“We’re going for a ride.”

“One that’s not on the test schedule?”

“Probably not,” Dimatta said.

“Go for it.”

The Earth climbed directly at him, and at ninety thousand feet, he eased back on the controller, pulling very slowly into level flight. At those speeds, abrupt maneuvers tended to leave things behind, like wings.

At Mach 4.5, with the MakoShark still coasting, Paris came into view.

He snap-rolled twice.

“All right!” Williams said.

Pulled into a high-G right turn that shoved him toward the left side of the cockpit. The pressure suit built into the environmental suit inflated and deflated as the gravitational force rose and fell, keeping his blood circulating more or less normally. His vision dimmed a couple times when the Gs got too high.

Made a circle fifty miles in diameter.

Lost speed by zooming into the vertical.

Pulled the nose on over and dove again, the Mediterranean peeking at him from several hundred miles away.

More snap rolls.

Dives.

High-G, missile-avoidance turns.

The G-suit ebbed and flowed.

Started the turbojets.

And did it all again, on the jets this time, slowly working toward the Mediterranean.

When he finally leveled out at thirty-five thousand feet and headed south toward Chad, Williams said, “Nothing fell off, Cancha. At least, as far as I can tell.”

“You’re sure?”

“Well, that’s just me I’m talking about. I’ve got to get out and check out the bird yet.”

“Yeah, I think she’s going to be all right.”

NORAD

Marvin Brackman called Vitaly Sheremetevo himself. They were peers in that each was responsible for a major command, and Brackman thought that, during the New Germany crisis, they had become strong acquaintances, if not good friends.