Brackman’s voice: “Delta Blue, you had an order.”
“Hey, Semaphore, if it gets hairy, we’ll boost out.”
A couple seconds of carrier wave.
“Very well, Delta Blue. Use your judgment.”
Airspeed 600, altitude 3,000.
“We’ve got to do some critical thinkin’ about our ordnance loads, jefe. All we got is air-to-air.”
McKenna reached out and armed all four of the Wasps and the gun. “Do the best you can, Tiger. Scare hell out of them, anyway.”
At one mile, the AA guns opened up.
Puffs of flak began to pop around them.
McKenna held course, speed, and altitude.
“Amy better kiss you for this, amigo.”
“Precisely.”
One of the SAM emplacements started to rotate, the missiles tilting over toward them.
Nothing happened.
“They can’t figure out where the hell we are on radar,” Munoz said.
He launched one Wasp, waited a count of three, then launched a second.
McKenna saw the rocket trail as the first one homed in on the SAM radar trailer. Munoz guided the second by hand toward the closest AA gun.
Germans scattered like ants in a Raid storm. McKenna saw two men go over the side of the platform into the sea. He thought it would be pretty damned cold.
Whump-whump.
The Wasps detonated, one after the other.
Whoosh.
Delta Blue flashed over the platform.
“Scratch one AA, one SAM radar,” Munoz said. “Hell, they never even got a missile off.”
Seconds later, they went by platform number five and found it unarmed.
Platform one was armed, but they passed it six miles to the west, and the dome was between them and the well’s defensive armament.
Platform seven wasn’t armed, either, but it had the Hamburg for company.
“I think we have all the electromagnetic readings we want to have,” McKenna said.
“I’m sure that’s true, compadre?”
“Shall we go home?”
“Chad, Chad, Snake Eyes. Beer and a Bloody Mary.”
“Right you are.”
The cruiser fired its first missile as McKenna went into a left turn, streaking over platform seven.
“Incoming,” Munoz said. The volume of his voice didn’t even raise.
McKenna tightened his turn, rolling his right wing vertical.
“The G’s, Snake Eyes! The G’s!”
“Oh, shit! I forgot.”
Pushing the hand controller forward, McKenna relieved the gravitational forces. He didn’t want to lose anything recorded by Shalbot’s sensitive equipment and have to rehash this flight.
The right wing was still up, the MakoShark in knife-edge flight.
The rearview screen showed the SAM homing on the flicker of heat it was getting from one of the engines.
“That one’s a heat-seeker. Another one launched,” Munoz said.
“Chaff.”
Munoz released a flurry of aluminized confetti intended to confuse the missile’s guidance system.
“Flare.”
The WSO punched out two magnesium flares. The brightly burning flares might draw off a heat-seeking missile.
McKenna touched the right rudder, turning right — climbing, and hiding his exhaust from the missile. He shoved the throttles full forward, watching the gravitational force readout.
When it reached 1.9, he backed off the throttles.
The SAM exploded just behind them.
“Jesus, that was close!” Cottonseed said. “You’ve got another coming, Blue!”
McKenna rolled upright, still climbing, passing through 9,000 feet. The airspeed indicator held at Mach.9.
The SAM was a deadly black eye in the rearview screen.
“Blow off a Wasp, Tiger.”
Instantly, the Wasp launched from its rail, then dove downward under Munoz’s guidance.
The SAM liked the hot exhaust of the Wasp better than the negligible one of the MakoShark. It curved away from them, disappearing from the rearview screen.
“Delta Blue, Semaphore. You all right?”
“A-one. Just taking care of the IO’s interests, Semaphore.”
At ten o’clock in the morning, Felix Eisenach appeared in Marshal Hoch’s office, as ordered.
Eisenach was accompanied by Oberst Maximillian Oberlin and Oberst Albert Weismann. All of them were in immaculate uniform, but the sleeplessness of an early morning was in their eyes.
Marshal Hoch had abandoned the discipline of military weight training fifteen years before. Eisenach judged him to be close to 135 kilograms, all of it hanging from a very short frame. His jaws bulged, and his eyes were recessed behind plump cheeks and overhanging eyebrows.
Despite the appearance, he was still a marshal, and he was still very intelligent.
His face was flushed with his indignation.
He stood behind his desk and said, “There are two things, Felix.”
“Yes, Herr Marshal?”
“This.” Hoch held out a sheet of paper, and Eisenach stepped forward to take it. Oberlin and Weismann remained near the door.
Eisenach read through it quickly. Another request from the American State Department, this time addressed to the High Command, demanding explanations for the activities in the Greenland Sea.
“I would direct them to the Bremerhaven Petroleum Corporation, Marshal Hoch.”
“Yes. And the next communiqué will be more fiercely worded”
“So be it,” Eisenach said. “By then, we shall have Ghost operational and flight-tested. Then, you will see a change in the American tone.”
Hoch glared hard at him from those deep-set eyes. “Perhaps.”
Eisenach waited in silence, not eager to hear of the second item.
The marshall turned his head on his bull neck to look at Oberst Weismann. “You have an explanation for this morning’s fiasco, Colonel?
Weismann’s red face became redder. “I have no excuses that are acceptable, Herr Marshal. I was at Peenemünde when the attacks came. My squadron leaders took it upon themselves to engage the Soviets.”
“Leaving the platforms without air cover.”
“Yes, Herr Marshal.”
“And not even, as a byproduct, managing to shoot down a single Soviet aircraft.”
“Yes, Herr Marshal. The MiG pilots were very good, and the plan well executed. As soon as our planes were drawn away from the platforms, the MiG’s turned and ran. Nine missiles were fired, six from our aircraft, but the distances were too great for accuracy.”
Hoch turned back to Eisenach. “Admiral Schmidt seems to have been the only one prepared to meet an enemy, General. Must we always rely on the navy?”
“No, Herr Marshall, not again.”
Twelve
“Depth charge missiles? Depth charge missiles!” Sergeant Bert Embry was a trifle outraged. “No way, Colonel.”
McKenna spoke into the open mike, “What do you think, Mabry?”
Lt. Mabry Evans at Jack Andrews Air Force Base said, “It’s an interesting problem, Colonel.”
Evans was looking at a photocopy of the same map that McKenna, Embry, and Pearson were scanning in the Command Center. Pearson had taken the electromagnetic mapping tapes and printed them on clear plastic. The map was fuzzy and highly irregular. The instruments had picked up anything that generated or carried electricity. The earth itself was a source in many places, creating false returns. High voltage sources were best defined, but factories and automobiles on the mainland had produced spots. The city, with its concentration of televisions, stereos, radios, washers, dryers, computers, and the like, was a dim, sloppy blur. At sea, especially along the coast in the shipping lanes, large ships could be pinpointed. In the north, the wells themselves stood out clearly, reinforcing the turbine-generator theory.