Activating the nose wheel steering and connecting it to the hand controller, McKenna turned the craft to the right and saw a shaded blue flashlight blinking at him. He eased the controller back to center to follow it.
Releasing the catch, he flipped his helmet visor up, which automatically closed off the oxygen/nitrogen supply.
With his left hand, he found the switch to depressurize the cockpit, then raised the canopy. He heard the hydraulic whoosh! as Munoz raised his own canopy. The cool air rushed in, coated with the aroma of pine and JP-4 jet fuel. It smelled good to him after so many hours in artificial environments.
Ahead, the flashlight blinked again, and McKenna guided the MakoShark directly into her hangar.
Two
For a man approaching sixty, Gen. Marvin Brackman was fit, if a trifle overweight. He was five-feet, eleven-inches tall, and he weighed 180 pounds, almost all of the excess wrapped around his waist. Bordering on portly, some would say, though not directly to him. His hair was exceptionally thin and fully gray, topping an elongated face with sad brown eyes, a thin, aristocratic nose, and a straight, wide mouth that surprised people when it smiled as often as it did.
Brackman was commander, United States Air Force Space Command, which included the North American Aerospace Defense Command. His headquarters was located deep inside Cheyenne Mountain southwest of Colorado Springs, and the nearly five acres of space hollowed out of solid granite contained a maze of passages and facilities resting on a sea of steel springs. The springs were supposed to reduce the shock effects of a nuclear attack.
NORAD was one of the “C-cubed” systems — command, control, and communications — operated by the Department of Defense. Like the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon and the Alternate NMCC at Fort Richie, Maryland, NORAD handled normal crisis situations with ease, but would probably remain utilitarian only during the first stages of a nuclear war. All of the command centers were prime targets, and after they were obliterated, command and control would shift to airborne command posts, Boeing E-4Bs known as National Emergency Airborne Command Posts, or NEACPs, or “Kneecaps.”
Brackman had learned to live with his potential fate, but many visitors to the NORAD headquarters appeared to him to be overly nervous.
The heavily fortified antenna compound on the exterior of the mountain gathered signals from all over the world. The Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS), with its over-the-horizon radars, the Defense Early Warning System (DEWLine), Teal Ruby and KH-8 and K-11 satellites in space, and submarines and ships at sea fed their intelligence pickings to NORAD. The results were filtered, combined, and stored in the computers, ready for instant display on one of the plotting screens. At any particular moment, NORAD and her sister command centers could pinpoint the location of most ballistic missiles, aircraft, and naval ships in the world.
The massive operations center controlled the flow of trillions of bits of information, the operators manning rows of complex consoles on the main floor. Brig. Gen. David Thorpe was in charge of the operations center, and he oversaw it, along with the shift duty officers, from an enclosed and windowed platform raised above the center floor. Through the windows, they had an unobstructed view of the massive screen mounted on the far wall of the center.
Brackman opened the door and entered Thorpe’s aerie. None of the three men and two women at the command consoles leaped to attention for the commander, and he didn’t expect it. Brackman didn’t believe in diverting attention from the task at hand.
Thorpe, a natty and meticulous man, checked his watch, climbed out of his upholstered chair, and met Brackman by the door.
“I hope you’re not running a search-and-destroy mission for me, Marv. I lost track of time.”
“No. I’m running late myself, David. I’ve been putting out congressional fires.”
“Bonfire?”
“More like an overheated toaster.”
The two generals slipped out into the corridor and headed for the conference room.
“Any anomalies?” Brackman asked.
“None. Red Banner Fleet is running a war game in the Baltic, but we were notified of that last month. The Persian Gulf is quiet.”
“Almost boring, huh?”
The intelligence officer laughed. “Damned boring.”
“I hope you’re not going to put me to sleep,” Brackman said.
“ ’Fraid so.”
The half-dozen officers waiting for them in the conference room came to attention as they entered, and Brackman told them, “As you were.”
He took a seat at the table and let Thorpe proceed with the meeting. The weekly Intelligence Briefing stayed on Brackman’s schedule whether or not there were noteworthy developments in the previous week. He needed to maintain a consistent overview at all times, just in case — like today — some senator called with a question.
David Thorpe went to the head of the room and stood at a lectern next to the wall-mounted screen. One by one, he introduced the series of intelligence professionals who reported on the status of hostile, or potentially hostile, armed forces in the world. Numbers, numbers, numbers. ICBMs, SAMs, strategic bombers, naval fleets and task forces, reconnaissance satellite tracks altered, the logistics of supply.
Thorpe was right. It was boring as hell.
Finally, the brigadier introduced the single woman in the room.
Brackman had met her on several occasions, but mostly knew her through her personnel file. Amelia Pearson was a tiny woman, four inches above the five-foot mark, and gave the impression of a small package of frenetic dynamite, instantly ready to detonate. She had dark red hair cut delightfully longer than air force expectations and pale green eyes. Even in a summer uniform, her figure invited exploration, but General Brackman had given up exploration at Pamela Brackman’s command thirty years before. At thirty-three, Pearson was unmarried and intensely devoted to her career. She held a doctorate in international affairs from the University of California at Los Angeles and had also read at Trinity College.
She also wore the silver oak leaves of a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force.
“Gentlemen,” Thorpe said, “Lieutenant Colonel Pearson, intelligence officer of the First Aerospace Squadron.”
Pearson got up and moved to the lectern. She moved with confidence and grace, Brackman thought, and maybe a trace of overconfidence. Her eyes surveyed her audience with unflinching calm.
Tapping a few keys on the lectern’s control panel, Pearson changed the screen from the last briefer’s view of Kuwait to an almost bare map. The eastern coast of Greenland was shown, along with the Greenland Sea, the island of Svalbard, which was Norwegian, and part of the Barents Sea. North to south, the map ran from the North Pole to the Arctic Circle.
As soon as the map was in place, Pearson entered another code, and twenty-four yellow dots appeared on the map. Nine of them were sprinkled in a rough line along the southern edge of the Arctic ice pack, and fifteen of them dotted the northern Greenland Sea.
“General Brackman, gentlemen, in yellow, you see the empire of the Bremerhaven Petroleum Corporation.”
Brackman looked over at Thorpe, but the intelligence chief was studying Pearson. Thorpe had told him last week, when Pearson requested a chance to present her case, that it might be a little off-the-wall, but was worth hearing.
“Bremerhaven Petroleum Corporation was formed in unified Germany three years ago, and the company went into operation almost immediately. The charter states that its primary business is the exploration for new oil sources and the transportation of that oil to the German mainland by way of subsea pipelines.