A green lamp illuminated on the panel, then Filatov opened the interior hatch and Maslov straightened out his legs and floated into the station.
The interior was brightly lit, but the finish was rudimentary and crude, and everything was painted gray. Conduit and venting pipes ran along the bulkheads. In seemingly random locations were consoles and control panels. Life aboard Soyuz Fifty was not intended to be luxurious.
He looked toward the rear, into the next component, and saw four bodies floating. One of them was Corporal Filatov, still in his space suit, but with his helmet removed.
Following Filatov’s lead, Maslov removed his own helmet.
“Are they dead, Corporal?”
“Not yet, Comrade Colonel.”
Bryntsev and Filatov had utilized dart pistols armed with tranquilizing darts. Explosive firearms might have punctured the hull of the station. And they had brought along the tank of nitrogen/oxygen in the MakoShark’s cargo bay just in case they had had to breach both hatches of the airlock and had lost the atmosphere inside. The station had an atmospheric recycling system, but they would have had to re-prime it.
Yuri Bryntsev got his helmet off.
“It went very well, Aleks.”
“So I see. You are both to be congratulated, and I will see that the Chairman knows of your heroic efforts.”
They both nodded their gratitude.
The three of them toured the station, noting where controls and monitoring equipment were located. Each of the eight components beyond the reactor could be sealed off, apparently in case of a loss of pressure in one of the modules. There was a full library of manuals which would be of great assistance in learning the many sub-systems. Several complex scientific experiments appeared to be underway in the laboratory modules, but they could be ignored.
“All right,” Maslov said, “I think we should finish the transfer. Yuri, you appear to have mastered the EVA suit. If you would reconnect the antennas and the video leads, then begin unloading the equipment in the bay of the MakoShark?”
“Of course, Aleks.” Bryntsev did a forward flip. “I am beginning to like this place.”
“Good. We would like to have the radio scrambler first, so that Corporal Filatov can hook it into the system. Then, we will have communications, and I suspect the Chairman would appreciate that.”
Bryntsev pointed to the three sedated cosmonauts. “And them?”
“I will take care of it.”
Maslov took care of it by taking one man at a time into the airlock with him and pumping the atmosphere out of the lock. Without light in the lock, he did not have to look at the man’s face as he died, his blood boiling in the vacuum of space.
Then he opened the outer hatch, and nudged the body outside, giving it a final push in the direction of the Earth.
He did not watch the bodies drift away.
General Oleg Druzhinin was startled when the radio finally blurted, “Commodore, this is Commander.”
He had been waiting so many hours for that statement that it seemed as if days had passed. Sergeant Kasartskin had been waiting with him in the communications room also, and he grabbed the microphone. “Commander, this is Commodore.”
Maslov’s tone was jubilant. “Commodore, the station is ours. All of the cargo transfers have been made, the personnel complement is in place, and the craft will be departing within the hour.”
“Acknowledged,” Kasartskin said.
He turned to Druzhinin, grinning, and said, “The radios seem to work very well, General.”
“Everything works well, Sergeant,” Druzhinin smiled, then stood and left the room for his office down the hall.
He placed a call to the compound in Phnom Penh.
There was no answer.
He tried another telephone number.
And Sergei Pavel answered.
“It is a grand evening,” he said.
“And a balmy one,” Pavel answered.
“I call to report full success.”
“Excellent! That is excellent, comrade!”
As soon as he awoke at five o’clock in the morning, McKenna went downstairs to the hotel lobby and called Milt Avery in Borneo. He learned that there had been no confrontations and no sign of Delta Green. Jim Overton had begun relieving the MakoShark sentinels one at a time.
He went back up to his room to shave and pack his Dopp kit, the only luggage he had with him. The tan slacks and tropical shirt had been last minute purchases at the small base exchange at Merlin, and he was already tired of them. He sat on the bed and waited.
Munoz knocked on the door at 5:22 A.M., and they waited together.
“You could go down and bang on her door, jefe.”
“I’m not an alarm clock, Tony.”
Munoz threw up his hands in exasperation.
At 5:30 A.M., Pearson rapped on the door, and McKenna let her in.
“You had to pick a hotel without a shower,” she said.
“We’re being low-profile, remember?”
She grimaced, then said, “We go to the consulate first, to pick up some paperwork.”
“What kind of paperwork?”
“Cover. It makes us members of an international health organization’s investigation team. We’re looking at children’s hospitals to see if we should provide funding.”
“I see,” McKenna said. “When did you order this up?”
“I called the CIA contact at the consulate last night.”
“Using the hotel’s phone?”
“No one’s eavesdropping on this hotel,” she said, probably with truth.
“But they’re damned sure eavesdropping on the consulate, Amy.”
“Give me some credit, McKenna. I had the CIA guy leave the consulate and call me back.”
“Yeah, McKenna,” Munoz said, “give her some credit.”
“Let’s go,” he said.
The Renault was parked on a side street next to the hotel, and when they reached it, they found it missing a window, the radio, and the hubcaps.
“Hated those hubcaps,” Munoz said as he crawled behind the wheel. “When I was growin’ up in Tucson, we only took hubcaps worth takin’.”
He drove them to the consulate, where Pearson got out and went in for the forged papers, then to the airport where they checked in the rental car and had breakfast consisting of some egg concoction with a curry spread over it and lots of weak coffee.
McKenna didn’t finish his breakfast. He went to flight operations, pinned down the location of the hospital, and received assurances that the landing strip would accept a Learjet.
When he came back to the table in the small restaurant, Pearson asked, “Did anyone wonder why you wanted to go there?”
“No. And I didn’t offer any excuses. I’m not cut out for this snoopy stuff”
Munoz scooped up the last of his and then McKenna’s breakfast offerings, shoveled it into his mouth, and said, “Let’s do it”
They walked out to the Learjet and Munoz unlocked it while McKenna made an inspection tour. It appeared to have gone the night without interference or vandalism. Satisfied, he climbed aboard, went through the checklist with Munoz, and started the turbofans.
After a wait for an Air India passenger liner, they were given approval for takeoff, and twelve minutes later, were climbing through fifteen thousand feet, headed northwest.
He leveled off at sixteen thousand feet, cruising along at 350 knots, following the Tonle Sap River.
Pearson came forward and knelt on the floor between the pilot seats, keeping her balance by gripping both seat backs. She was wearing a pale green pants suit, also purchased from the Merlin Base Exchange, but it seemed more appropriate for casual jungle wear than a dress. It also matches her eyes, McKenna noticed.