“Has General Druzhinin determined who our passengers will be, Boris?”
“He has selected Captain Yuri Bryntsev and Corporal Filatov,” Nikitin said.
Bryntsev was a good choice, since he had already been in space as part of the Mako program. He did not know Filatov, except that he had once been a part of Soviet ground forces, and he supposed that the man had more brawn than brains, the opposite of what was necessary in zero-gravity.
The two of them checked the weapons pylons next. The space-modified Phoenix missiles, the only two they had, were mounted on the outboard pylons. Maslov would be very conservative about using them because he was not likely to obtain replacements soon.
Eight Wasp II missiles had been attached to the inboard pylons. He checked them over carefully, making certain that the safety pins were still in place.
“The on-board environmental and electronic systems have been examined, and the oxygen-nitrogen tanks refilled,” Nikitin said. “Both fuel types have been replenished. We are all but ready to go.”
“Are you nervous, Boris?”
Nikitin grinned weakly. “Not as much as I have been, Aleks. Our last flight may not have cured my uneasy nerves, but they are certainly more numb.”
Maslov grinned and slapped him on the back. “You will be fine, Boris. Let us go find dinner.”
Following the lead of Maslov’s flashlight, they started onto the pathway leading to the dormitory.
The flimsy rumble of one of the camouflage hills being towed from the runway stopped them, and they turned around and walked beneath the MakoShark and along the short taxiway to the edge of the runway.
“Do you know if we were expecting an airplane to arrive?” Maslov asked.
“No.”
A single flashlight winked on near the control center, then began to bob across the runway toward them.
It was within ten meters of them when the runway lights illuminated and Maslov recognized General Druzhinin.
He was smiling broadly.
“General?”
“Our warheads are coming in, comrades”
“The nuclear warheads?” Maslov asked.
“Exactly!” Druzhinin exclaimed. “We are now a superpower, and the world will soon know of it.”
Anatoly Shelepin was in bed when the telephone rang. It rang three times before he managed to rise from the bed without waking Yelena and get to the living room.
“Yes?”
The voice on the other end, attesting to the quality of the Kampuchean telephone system, was tinny and more than slightly distorted.
“It is a grand evening.”
“And a balmy one,” he replied to Oleg Druzhinin’s code phrase.
“The packages have arrived.”
“All of them?”
“Three of them. The fourth is expected within fifteen minutes,” Druzhinin said. “However, I report that the first three are in excellent shape.”
The four SS-X-25 missiles had Multiple Independently Retargeted Vehicle (MIRV) warheads. Each of the nose-cones on the missiles contained ten five hundred-kiloton nuclear warheads. With four rockets at his disposal, forty targets could be designated. The missiles were solid fuel-based, and not as volatile as earlier liquid-fueled rockets. These four, in fact, had once been mounted on trailer-truck launchers.
“Thank you. I appreciate the notice,” Shelepin said and hung up.
It was going to happen.
He would make it happen.
If the former general secretaries and — terrible title! — the presidents of the Soviet Union had had the same resolve as Colonel General Anatoly Shelepin, there would still be a Soviet Union, and she would be the supreme and only government of the world.
Lynn Haggar hooked her elbow around one of the stanchions of the spring-loaded exercise machine and floated with her legs straight out in front of her.
The exercise room, which was also the 1st Aerospace Squadron’s briefing room, was slowly filling up with the crew members. Tony Munoz sat upside down — to her — in the centrifugal machine and yawned widely. Ben Olsen and Will Conover were trying to arm wrestle each other, but neither of them was going to win since they were floating in midair, without a solid surface to brace against.
McKenna came in, looked over his team, and slowly soared to the top bulkhead.
Jack Abrams ushered Amy Pearson through the hatchway, then closed the hatch.
“Three-quarters of the squadron present and mostly accounted for,” Abrams said.
“It’s all yours, Amy,” McKenna said.
“Thank you, Colonel.”
Uh oh, Haggar thought. Just when it looked as if Pearson and McKenna were getting along better, something had happened to spoil the progress. By the reddish flush coating Pearson’s throat, Haggar guessed that the new deputy commander was embarrassed about some incident. Maybe McKenna had made a pass at her?
She looked upward at the squadron leader. He seemed to be a little more reserved today. And he appeared just as handsome as ever.
Pearson was an idiot.
McKenna could make a pass at Lynn Marie Haggar any time, and he could expect an interception.
“All right,” Amy Pearson said, “here’s what we’ve got so far.”
She read off a bunch of names, most of which sounded Russian to Haggar.
“Shelepin and Pavel once held flag-rank positions in the Red Army and the KGB. They are both considered extremely right-wing as well as capable strategists. We… that is, I think they are involved in the hijacking of Delta Green. The motive is unknown at this point, but both men have been spotted in Phnom Penh.
“Of the five possible Soviet Mako pilots who could have hijacked the MakoShark, Aleksander Maslov appears to be the strongest candidate because of his past associations with Shelepin. He has a strong record in MiG-23 Floggers and MiG-29 Fulcrums, and he has combat experience in Afghanistan. He washed out of the Mako program because his superiors didn’t think he had enough self-discipline. He was too willing to risk his backseater and his passengers. We’re still trying to track the remaining four pilots, and one or more of them could also be involved.
“That’s good, Amy,” Haggar said. “But there’s no hint about motivation yet?”
“Not yet, Lynn.”
“We know one thing,” McKenna said. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be space-based.”
“How so, jefe?” Munoz asked.
“They went to the trouble of capturing a shipment of fuel pellets. That suggests to me that a few trips into orbit are planned.”
“The odds,” Haggar said, “favor the HoneyBee still being in orbit. Somewhere.”
“So they’ve got to come out here to refuel,” Will Conover added.
“The odds also favor,” Pearson said, “a land base somewhere in Southeast Asia for three reasons. It’s close to the hijack site, Colonel McKenna spotted them once in the area, and they nearly flew into a trap we set off Vietnam.”
“So we’re going to adopt a lie-in-wait philosophy,” McKenna said. “We can’t take Themis stationary, but the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is going to reposition some infrared-detecting satellites over Southeast Asia. We’re going to put a MakoShark out there, too, watching for an eight-or nine-minute rocket burn. That, we can see.
“It’ll be boring as hell, but we’ll set it up in six-hour shifts, rotating back here for rest periods. Will, you and Do-Wop get the first shift, and Lynn and Ben go second. Tony and I will do the wrap-up.”
“Except,” Pearson said, “I need to go Earth-side, and none of the Makos are available. I also need someone to pilot a Lear for me once I get there.”