There was comfort in their relationship. Each had an escort for the more important social events, and neither had to devise excuses for an unmarried state to parents or friends. On long weekends at Admiral Davidoff’s dacha outside Moscow, they had each other.
Several times, they had set a wedding date, but acceptable delays had intervened. Volontov was sent on temporary duty to Afghanistan or Egypt or Iraq. Martina had a closely watched experiment of one kind or another under way. Her research absorbed her time like a sponge, and Volontov had his airplanes and the responsibility of his wing command.
The telephone rang, startling him out of his review.
“Colonel Volontov.”
“Colonel, this is Major Petrov.”
“Yes, Micha, what is it?”
“We have a message from General Sheremetevo’s office. Permission is granted for the use of eight MiG-29s, two tankers, and one Airborne Early-Warning craft.”
“Very well, Micha. We will utilize seven aircraft from the 2032nd. I will fly as lead of the first flight. Tell Major Rostoken that he will lead the second flight and that he is to select the pilots. We will brief at… what time did General Sheremetevo give?”
“None, Comrade Colonel. We are waiting on a United States Air Force sergeant.”
Benny Shalbot had bitched for most of the reentry flight from Themis to Merlin Air Force Base. He didn’t like his seat in the passenger module, couldn’t see a damned thing, didn’t like the environmental suit, didn’t like leaving his responsibilities aboard the space station in the hands of his junior, and most of all, he didn’t like Borneo.
It was too isolated.
There were none of the right kind of women around. Shalbot did not define his kind of woman.
What there was at Merlin Air Force Base, however, were the electromagnetic measuring electronics necessary for Pearson’s mapping project. They were not designed for use with the MakoShark, however, and Benny Shalbot also became necessary to Pearson’s project.
Once on the ground, though, Shalbot ran around Hangar One three times to recondition his leg muscles to gravity, rounded up a large bunch of technicians, confiscated most of the tools and electronic black boxes in sight, and disappeared into the hangar with the three MakoSharks.
Complaining all the while. He wasn’t happy with the magnetometers they would have to use. “Shoddy, sum-bitchin’ low-tech shit.”
McKenna and his five squadron members ate lunch in the dining hall.
McKenna took a long shower.
Munoz and Abrams went down to the beach to swim with the sharks.
Nitro Fizz Williams took a short jaunt into the jungle, looking for fruit right off the tree, and arguing with the monkeys. He collected a lot of exotic flowers, and he saw a leopard. He decided to return to the base early.
The squadron got together again in the evening for dinner, and McKenna sent boxed meals over to the hangar for the technicians. After dinner, they spent an hour going over the mission.
McKenna and the others found a dormitory bunk room, turned the air conditioning on high, and crawled under the sheets after taking half-hour showers. McKenna tried to invent a shower that would work in space.
At five-thirty in the morning, the intercom buzzed, and McKenna rolled out of his top bunk, hit the floor on his feet, and pressed the button.
“This had better be good.”
“I got you set up, Colonel.”
“We’ll be there in ten minutes, Benny.”
Munoz was bright-eyed and ready to go and the others complained bitterly and almost meaningfully when McKenna roused them. They dressed and crossed the dark grounds, still hot and humid, to the hangar.
Unlocking and slipping through the judas door, McKenna saw the three MakoSharks lined up, noses out, ready to go. Each had two pylons mounted, one gun pod, and four Wasps. Underneath them, the crewmen that Shalbot had bossed were flaked out, slumped against crates and tractors, spread out on the floor. Coke and Pepsi cans, lunch boxes, and candy wrappers were scattered around on the floor and on castered toolboxes. The normal aroma of JP-7 fuel was augmented with the acrid odor of sweat.
Shalbot, grimy and stained and baggy-eyed, grinned at him. “The sumbitch works, Colonel.”
“Guaranteed, Benny?”
“Fuckin’-A.”
“How’d you do it?” Munoz asked.
“Wanted to put ’em in a pylon pod, but we couldn’t route the cables. Ain’t enough room without screwing up the pylon mounts. So what we did, we made ourselves some bird cages outta plastic tubing and suspended the magnetometers inside the cage. The cage fits into the pay-load bay, hooks right onto the module-securing hardware. Then we ran the cables through the avionics bay and into the rear compartment. The control setup looks like shit, but it works okay.”
“Sounds good, Benny,” McKenna said.
“Yeah, well, I got to get the WSOs up on Delta Blue and explain how to make this stuff work.
While Shalbot conducted his tutoring session, the weapons systems officers standing on the wing around the open cockpit, McKenna went to a phone on the hangar wall, called the duty officer, and dictated a message to him for the base commander. All of the technicians who had worked for Shalbot on the retrofit were to get three-day passes and a free round-trip flight to Singapore.
Then he composed a message for Volontov in Murmansk, using the codes he and the Russian had agreed upon when they met in Chad.
“This goes to Murmansk, Colonel?” the duty officer said. “In the USSR?”
“That’s right, Lieutenant.”
“I, uh, I wonder if, uh, maybe I should wake the base commander?”
“Not necessary, Lieutenant. If that message isn’t on its way in five minutes, I’ll have the chairman of the Joint Chiefs give you a call to confirm it.”
“Yessir. Right away, sir.”
When Shalbot was through with his teaching session, he and the backseaters slipped down the ladder from Delta Blue’s rear cockpit. The technicians began to groan and moan, then crawled to their feet.
McKenna thanked them for their work and said, “You all get the rest of the day to sleep, then you’re off to Singapore for a couple days.”
“All right!.. way to go… damn sure!”
“Not me,” Shalbot said.
McKenna looked at him.
Shalbot poked a thumb over his shoulder at the MakoShark behind him. “Those boxes won’t take the ride outta the atmosphere, Colonel. Ain’t designed for it. You’re going to have to recover at Chad. If you get me a ride on a Lear, I’ll meet you there and pull the tape cartridges. We’ll leave the magnetometers at Chad.”
“Damn, that sounds sensitive. How well are they going to stand up under normal flight, Benny?”
“They weren’t designed for use on attack planes, Colonel. I don’t want you pulling more than three G’s.” McKenna looked to Munoz. “What’s that do to our flight schedule, Tiger?”
“No more than three G’s? Hang on.”
Munoz scrambled up the ladder and into his cockpit to use the computer. Four minutes later, he stood up and leaned out of the cockpit.
“We can still do it tonight, if we hustle out of here, Kev. We’re gonna lose sixteen minutes, acceleratin’ that slowly. But we can still hit the objective before dawn. We’re gonna come out the other end nice and bright, though. It might be a little dicey.”
“Okay, we’ll do it, anyway,” McKenna decided. “Suit up, guys. Benny, you’re an ace.”
Shalbot looked at the stained concrete. “Just get me a Learjet, Colonel. I always wanted my own Lear.”
McKenna went back to the phone on the wall and called the duty officer again to send a second message to Pyotr Vorontov. He also issued orders to wake up two pilots for Shalbot’s Learjet.