When all of the hangar doors were closed, twenty-foot high black letters were joined into the logo:
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
SPACE STATION THEMIS
USSC-1
Every time he saw it, McKenna felt a twinge of pride. There was nothing like it anywhere, nothing to match the capability and ingenuity of Americans with a purpose.
Soyuz Fifty, the Soviet space station initiated two years before, orbited some ninety miles higher than Themis, but it was a limited undertaking. To date, it was comprised of five modules strung together in a straight line, and it was manned by no more than three people at the same time. The radar antenna for the most powerful radar ever developed, and housed in Themis’s Spoke Fifteen, was larger than the entire Soviet space station.
The Soviet Rocket Forces were having funding problems.
As Delta Blue drifted away from her mother ship, McKenna studied the new spoke. It would be Nine-B, next to the nuclear reactor, and its segments were arriving steadily by HoneyBee. So far, it was about twenty feet long, appearing spindly in comparison with the completed spokes. Four unassembled sections floated close by, secured by single ropes. The crewmen assigned to fitting the prefab pieces together had been called back inside the station for a rest break. Coincidentally timed so that they would miss seeing the departures of the MakoSharks.
The perspective changed as Delta Blue increased the gap. Themis became smaller against the unending backdrop of space, and with her knob-ended spokes, looked like, first, a child’s Tinkertoy, than a star that had wandered in too close.
“Let’s upend her,” Munoz said. He had been programming the reentry data.
“Roger, Tiger.” McKenna keyed the radio pad for the squadron’s frequency. “Delta Blue to Delta Flight.”
“Yellow, here, Snake Eyes.”
“Green.”
“Reverse position.”
With the thrusters, he turned Delta Blue over and waited until the confirmations came from Dimatta and Conover. He could not see either of the MakoSharks, each thirty miles off his wing tips.
“Green ready.”
“Yellow’s set.”
“Delta Flight, program check.”
Abrams, Williams, and Munoz confirmed accepted reentry programs.
“Initiate sequence, Delta Flight.”
McKenna watched the CRT and saw the numbers appear.
“Sixteen minutes, Snake Eyes,” Munoz said. “I’m going to take a nap.”
“Delta Blue, Yellow. Seventeen minutes, twelve seconds.”
“Blue, Green. Fifteen minutes, twenty-two seconds.”
“Not too bad, guys,” McKenna told them. “See you on the other side.”
The reentry passage was almost flawless. Themis had been over the continent of Antarctica when they started, and the three MakoSharks emerged from blackout almost directly over Turkey, the spread between them expanded to 150 miles.
By the time they had joined up on turbojets at 40,000 feet and Mach 1.8, Warsaw, Poland, was the primary landmark.
“Systems check, Tiger?”
“All internal systems are showin’ number one, Snake Eyes. We lost the damned Phoenix.”
“Delta Flight, systems check.”
“Green reports a full complement, Snake Eyes.”
“Yellow’s all green.”
“We burned out a Phoenix,” McKenna told them, “but then it’s a moot point, anyway. We’ll go as planned.”
“Roger, roger,” Dimatta said, “Green’s northbound.”
Delta Green would make her run over the wells, looking especially for naval units. On the return, she would scatter sonobuoys along the estimated route of the undersea pipelines.
Conover’s voice came on the air. “Delta Yellow. We’re going to cruise the river.”
Conover and Williams would make a wide circle to the left as far as the North Sea, then take a meandering course south down the length of the old Federal Republic of Germany, shooting low-light and infrared film of the major military concentrations. Their primary concern was New Amsterdam Air Force Base and the naval port of Bremerhaven since Pearson had identified both as home bases for the 20th Special Air Group and the 3rd Naval Force.
McKenna was taking on the old German Democratic Republic. On the first run, they would come west down the Baltic into Mecklenburg Bay, then turn south and fly all the way to the Czechoslovakian border before turning north once again. Pearson was as interested in the new or expanded industrial sites as she was in military bases. Rostock, Magdeburg, Halle, Leipzig, Zwickau, Dresden, and Berlin were the chief photographic targets.
At 500 knots, to avoid trailing a sonic boom, the round trip over land took an hour and twenty minutes. Munoz used the radar randomly, and they made momentary contact with sixteen aircraft. Two were commercial flights into Berlin and Dresden, and the rest were patrolling Luftwaffe pairs. None of the aircraft, nor any of the coastal radars, spotted them. The radar threat receiver went off regularly as they passed active radar installations, and Munoz squelched out the noise in the lower bands.
After passing over Berlin at 10,000 feet, Munoz said, “You know, jefe, I count four new radars along the Polish border.”
“We know we’re dealing with paranoid personalities, Tiger. They’d like to move the USSR to Antarctica.”
“That’s for damned sure. Hey, babe, we’re out of targets. You want to punch it for home?”
“Let’s finish it out to the Baltic. Maybe well spot a couple more radar installations.”
“Roger. Let’s… uh, take it to heading four-five for two minutes, then back to oh-one-oh.”
McKenna turned to the new heading and watched the chronometer readout on the HUD. He also lost altitude to 7,000 feet. This stretch of Germany wasn’t heavily inhabited.
A few minutes later, back on his original heading, he saw the darkness of the Baltic coming up. The scattered lights of cities along the coast identified it.
Munoz had the screens showing night-vision interpretations of the landscape. There wasn’t much to be seen. A few villages along the Ucker River on their left.
Thirty miles to the Pomeranian Bay on the Baltic.
Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!
“Son of a bitch, Snake Eyes! That’s a big damned J-Band transmittin’.”
“Where?”
Munoz went to active radar for two sweeps.
“Headin’ two-eight-one,” Munoz said. “I put it on the coast five miles west of Peenemünde”
“Let’s take a look.”
“Let’s.”
McKenna eased the hand controller over and banked into the new heading.
“What’s the film load, Tiger?”
“Checkin’ now. I’ve got fifty frames of low-light, and twenty frames of infrared left. Ho-kay. The J-Band’s gone off the air.”
“Use up all you have,” McKenna said.
He saw the installation ten miles before he reached it because it was well lit. He altered course a couple degrees to pass right over it.
At the speed they were making, McKenna only got a quick look.
“I count four large buildings and a chopper pad,” he told Munoz.
“Ditto. Plus the radar antenna a quarter-mile to the east. One of the buildings, the largest, has been there for fifty years or more, Snake Eyes. We saw it, what, a year ago?”
“About that.”
“I’m backin’ up tape.”
As they left the coast behind and McKenna started a slow, turning climb, Munoz reversed the videotape until the installation appeared on the panel screen. He froze the frame.
The old and large building had once produced heavy machinery, McKenna thought. Tractors, maybe. It was now in full operation, light spilling from hundreds of small windows. Two of the new buildings were tall and wide, kind of like hangars, but short of windows. The last building was a narrow structure, but he guessed it at over fifteen stories in height. It had an aircraft warning strobe on top. In the green-hued picture, it was difficult to tell, but McKenna thought he saw a maze of railroad tracks running into the buildings.