Delta Green - [5]

He entered the darkened hangar, feeling for a light switch, and stepped on something soft.

Found the switch and cut in one bank of the overhead fluorescent lights.

Looked down to see that his right foot was resting on the thigh of an airman second who was sprawled on his back in a pool of blood. A ravine had been gouged deeply into his forehead.

Dimatta dove to his right, slamming his back into the standing door, rolled twice, and came to rest behind a roll-away tool chest.

He looked up to see what else, or who else, was in there with him.

And what wasn’t.

Delta Green.

WESTERN COLORADO

The passenger cabin of the Cessna Citation (assigned to the Commander, United States Air Force, Space Command) contained the commander, General Marvin Brackman; his intelligence deputy, Brigadier General David Thorpe; Senator Alvin Worth of the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee; Representative Marian Anderson of the House Armed Services Committee; and a Marine major manning a jury-rigged radar console.

Both Worth and Anderson were staunch foes of what they called Department of Defense spending sprees. In a world of loosening tensions and warming relationships, they were especially disenchanted with purchasing additional MakoSharks at a cost of three-quarters of a billion dollars per copy. Twice, since leaving Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, scathing comments had been made in regard to some hotdog pilot named McKenna losing the original Delta Blue in the Greenland Sea during the German fracas.

Brackman’s 1st Aerospace Squadron still had seven Makos and five MakoSharks — Blue, Green, Yellow, Red, and a backup craft being completed at Jack Andrews Air Base in Chad, but the general thought it important to maintain his long-term acquisition plan.

That plan was on Worth and Anderson’s cutting block, and the two of them were gaining converts on their own committees, as well as on the appropriations committees.

There were those within Brackman’s command who thought it might be better to cut Worth and Anderson. The world would be a far better place, the philosophy went, and Brackman wasn’t certain just how serious some of those people were.

McKenna, for instance.

Thorpe and the two congressional representatives were standing in the narrow aisle, bent over the shoulders of the major at the radar console, and Thorpe was trying to explain to them how to read the screen.

The airplane hit some turbulence and bounced a little. Marian Anderson grabbed Thorpe’s arm to steady herself. Her face was a trifle pale.

Brackman sat in one of the thickly cushioned seats and waited. At sixty years of age, the commander was in good shape. He was five-feet, eleven-inches tall, and he weighed 178 pounds. He figured he had eight pounds to go before he would be happy, but those last eight pounds were tough ones to eliminate. His hair was fully gray and thinning, and his face was elongated with a thin, aristocratic nose and a wide mouth that smiled more frequently than expected. The smile was in direct contrast to hound dog eyes that were brown and saddened.

Senator Worth reached out and tapped the screen. “There it is!”

“I’m afraid not, sir. That’s a United 767 in-bound for Salt Lake City, Senator,” the Marine major told him. “Oh.”

For a Marine, the major was fairly diplomatic, Brackman thought.

Brackman headed a strange organization. Though it was in the Air Force section of the Department of Defense’s chart, the Space Command was staffed by members of all the services. His priority had always been to obtain the best-qualified people, regardless of the service branch, and his headquarters corridors and offices were filled with inconsistent uniforms. A rear admiral headed his administrative section, and an Army colonel, who probably should have been making millions in the Silicon Valley, ran the tightest computer ship in the industry.

Through the porthole beside his seat, Brackman saw mountains, forests, a few wispy clouds, and a bright blue sky. He kept checking the direction of the sun.

Marian Anderson gave up on the radar and came back to take the seat across the aisle from him. She was twenty years his junior and thin enough to be emaciated. Her cheeks had a hollow quality to them, and Brackman sometimes thought that her eyes appeared just as hollow. She wore a dark gray skirted business suit and high heels.

“Your pilot has probably missed the rendezvous,” she said.

“Colonel McKenna doesn’t miss a rendezvous, Congresswoman”

“There’s always a first time”

“Oh, he’s out there, somewhere,” Brackman insisted.

He had grabbed McKenna out of the test program at Edwards almost six years before and put him in command of the 1st Aerospace Squadron, and he had yet to be disappointed by the decision. McKenna’s grasp on protocol and regulations was a little loose at times, but the results were more than satisfactory.

She waved her hand at the console. “I believe you when you say we aren’t going to see him on the radar.”

“Thank you. That’s why we’re giving this little demonstration during the day. So you’ll see the MakoShark with your eyes. I wouldn’t want you to think we’d try to fake it.”