“I’m pulling the radar-seeker guidance, which will balance the weight to some extent, so you’ll have to go with the visual guidance.”
“At night, with only a strobe light on the dome?”
“You’re the marksman,” Evans said.
“Well, hell, gringo, if that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is. I’ll get them in there.”
“We’ll still be overweight in the nose cone. You’re going to lose half a Mach of speed and fifteen, twenty miles of range.”
“That’s okay. On visual, I want to be close in, anyway,” Munoz had said.
Now the last of the revamped Wasps was jacked into place and fitted to the short pylon. Evans supervised the attachment, then walked out from under the wing and joined Munoz and McKenna.
“That’s it, Colonel. As much time as we spent on them, I have to guarantee they’ll work.”
“Thanks, Mabry. I’ll take your word.”
“So what happens now?”
“Now, it’s coffee time.”
McKenna and Munoz walked across the wide hanger and entered the pilots’ dressing room. Their pressure suits were spread out on a wooden bench, ready for donning. A fifty-five-cup coffeepot gurgled in one corner.
Munoz stretched out on a bench and went to sleep.
McKenna waited, a mug of strong coffee close by. He read the New York Times, a day old.
At eleven-fifteen, he called the dining hall and had them send over hot roast beef sandwiches. Munoz woke up the second he smelled hot gravy.
Chewing, Munoz asked, “What’s the time, amigo?”
“Eleven-twenty-five.”
“Ten-twenty-five in Bonn.”
“That’s right.”
“What’s holdin’ them up?”
“Based purely on experience,” McKenna said, “I imagine that an indecisive mind has been added to the chain of command. Oval Office, Pentagon, maybe Cheyenne Mountain. Worse, maybe one of the Congressional oversight committees got involved. There’ll be debates raging.”
“Figures.”
At eleven-forty, the intercom buzzed, and McKenna got up from his bench to punch the button.
“Relaying radio communication to you, Colonel,” the operator said.
“Go ahead.”
“Kevin, Jim Overton here.”
“We going, Jim?”
“Affirmative. I’ve just launched Delta Yellow. You can take off within the next half hour.”
“Roger.”
McKenna used the intercom to call operations. “Scramble my ground crew, Major. I want to be off the ground in twenty minutes.”
Munoz was already zipping into his pressure suit.
Delta Blue lifted smoothly off Runway 18 twenty-one minutes later, and McKenna immediately put the craft into a climbing left turn.
Munoz tried to contact Conover. “Delta Yellow, Delta Blue.”
“Delta Blue, this is Alpha One. Cancha hear me?” Dimatta was monitoring the operation.
“Go Alpha.”
“Delta Yellow is in blackout. Give him smother six minutes.”
“Geez. He coulda left his answerin’ machine on. Blue out.”
“Okay, Tiger, let’s go over.”
“Roger. Ignition checklist comin’ up on the small screen.”
Ten miles out of Jack Andrews, at 9,000 feet above the barren desert, the rocket engines ignited. McKenna let them run at 70 percent thrust for two minutes, then shut them down at 80,000 feet of altitude and at a speed of Mach 4.
“There’s the Med,” Munoz said. “I met a girl in Algiers, once.”
“Nice girl?”
“Out-damned-standing, compadre. She had one flaw, though.”
“Wanted to get married?”
“You read my mind, all the time?”
They were at Mach 3.5 over southern Greece when Conover called.
“Delta Blue, Yellow.”
“Go Yellow,” McKenna said.
“We breezed through. I’ve got greens on two camera pods and a gun.”
“Let’s go RS-three-three.”
“Gone.”
McKenna tapped at his communications keyboard, entering the code which installed the thirty-third of fifty available scrambling circuits into the VHF communications channel. Only Themis and the operations room at NORAD could monitor them on similar scrambling units.
“You there, Con Man?” McKenna asked.
“Most of me is.” Conover’s voice echoed a trifle, due to the scrambling.
“What’s your velocity?”
“Down to nine-point-six, Snake Eyes.”
“Okay, it’s easier if you pick the coordinates.”
“Hold one. Do-Wop?”
Abrams said, “How about six-five degrees north, two-zero degrees, seven minutes east? Seven-five thousand? We’ll still be coasting.”
“Tiger?” McKenna asked.
“Fine by me. You want to bet on this one, Con Man?”
“Ten bucks.”
“Roger that,” Munoz said, then switching to intercom, told McKenna, “Feedin’ the data in. I need a headin’ of zero-one-six, and I need a rocket boost of two-two seconds at six-five percent.”
“You’re going to waste two thousand dollars’ worth of Grandma’s high-test fuel pellets for ten bucks?”
“There’s a principle involved here, Snake Eyes. Hurry now, ’cause I’m tryin’ to keep my mind around two different trajectories.”
McKenna went through the checklist swiftly, ignited the rockets, and burned solid propellant pellets for twenty-two seconds.
“Beautiful, jefe.”
At 0109 hours, Delta Blue reached the established coordinates, but Delta Yellow wasn’t visible. McKenna flashed his running lights twice.
“Sumbitch, Blue. I see you.”
McKenna looked back and upward in time to see Conover flash his own lights, several thousand feet above and a couple miles behind them.
“You owe me ten bucks, Con Man,” Munoz said.
“You cheated. I can’t use turbojets yet.”
“Delta Flight, Alpha One.” Pearson’s voice.
“Go Alpha,” McKenna said.
“Are you people planning to play games all night?”
“Just passing the time, Alpha,” McKenna said. “Where we at, Tiger?”
“Moonrise in nineteen minutes, so we’d better hump it. I say we come in out of the dark side, headin’ two-eight-zero, angle of attack minus four-zero, speed Mach three. On my mark, make the turn. On my second mark, take the dive. Third mark, dump the speed brakes. We want four-five-zero knots on the pass. Yellow trails by two miles.”
“Con Man?” McKenna asked.
“We still on for number eight?”
“Eight it is,” Munoz said. “Number fourteen is the IP.”
“It’s good by Yellow.”
“On the pullout, Con Man,” McKenna said, “make a right turn to zero-one-five. That should take us over the ice between numbers seventeen and twenty-one. Give them ten miles’ distance before going to rockets.”
“Roger that, Snake Eyes.”
“Forty miles out,” McKenna continued, “Tiger will go to hot radar and see what kind of company we have. No other radar, Do-Wop.”
“Roger.”
McKenna pulled his straps tighter, turned the thermostat down a notch, and brightened the HUD. He held his course dead on true north, and let the speed bleed off to Mach 3 by inching the throttle levers back.
Munoz put the rearview on the small screen, aiming the camera up slightly.
“Give me a flash, Con Man.”
McKenna saw the lights on the screen.
“How’s your glide?”
“I’m going to have to put my nose down pretty soon.”
“Mark one!” Munoz called out.
McKenna eased the hand controller over and banked into a heading of 280 degrees. It was a wide turn. Sharp maneuvers weren’t accomplished well at three times the speed of sound. The heavy atmosphere tended to cling to control surfaces.