"Perhaps it was something you ate," suggested the KGB general in a sympathetic tone.
The Rocket Forces officer groaned again. "Do not speak of food, Arkady, please. All I have consumed today was our mom-ln8 tea. It certainly could not have been that. We drank from the same samovar. You poured the cups yourself, and you are fine."
"Yes," agreed the KGB man, "absolutely fine. Perhaps you should go to the dispensary."
The Rocket Forces general emitted a grunt. "And let those incompetents go to work on me with their leeches? No thank you. I shall wait until our duty shift is over, then I will go to the Party clinic in town to see a real doctor."
"Yes, perhaps that is best, Vladimir," concurred the general in the green serge uniform.
Vladimir sat down gingerly and looked over at his KGB counterpart. Usually the heavyset KGB general was somewhat arrogant and aloof. But today he had been all kindness and understanding. Perhaps he had misjudged this man. "Arkady… I would just like to say, I appreciate your covering for me while I have been… indisposed."
The KGB general shrugged. "Think nothing of it, Vladimir."
Vladimir was turning a darker hue of green. "Has everything been quiet today?"
"Extremely so. In fact, I just had a routine communications check from the Aerospace Defense Warning Centre. Everything is quiet there as well."
Vladimir nodded, then groaned again and ran back through the door toward the toilet.
After watching Vladimir run off, the KGB general patted his breast pocket, which held a vial of pills given to him by the KGB Chairman himself.
One of the pills had gone into Vladimir's tea earlier that morning.
During combat, or other moments of high stress, Mad Dog Monaghan would relieve some of the tension by repeating the same curse over and over, putting emphasis on the last word. As he surveyed the blanket of giant cumulonimbus clouds before him, the old habit returned.
"Dirty bastard\ Dirty bastardl Dirty bastardV'
"So what's the deal, Mad Dog?"
"Dirty bastard\ Listen, Hot Rod, we're in a pickle, and I think this is our only shot. The Baikonur area is totally socked in by those clouds ahead and below us. They're thirty thousand feet thick if they're an inch. I think Iceberg is probably somewhere in front of us, but there's no way we're gonna be able to search for him visually in that soup. And since we have to keep the Kestrel trimmed up for gliding, we can't move your radar around much."
Lamborghini's frontal view from the backseat wasn't very good, so he had to rely on the pilot's assessment. "So what do we do?"
"I'm killing the airbrake," said Monaghan, and Lamborghini felt the spacecraft-turned-glider lurch forward a bit. "I'm going to eliminate the last braking S-turn and take the Kestrel in a wide semicircle. That will eat up time, but still let us retain some speed and kinetic energy."
"Speed and kinetic energy for what?" queried Lamborghini.
"To keep us airborne long enough so Iceberg can get on the ground. As we execute the semicircle we'll still be descending while coming around one-eighty degrees. I'll try and time it so that when we finish the maneuver we'll be under the cloud cover and have enough steam left for one pass over the cosmodrome. Maybe we can find him on the ground and nail him there. The Intrepid will be nice and hot from reentry, so you should be able to get a lock-on with the Sidewinders."
Lamborghini could have faulted a lot of Monaghan's ideas, but he had to admire the man's rapid-fire diagnosis of their situation — and they obviously didn't have time for thoughtful debate. "Sounds good to me, Mad Dog. Go for it."
"Roger," replied Monaghan, and he put the Kestrel in a slight bank to the left. They were traveling at Mach 3.3 and had just dropped through ninety thousand feet.
"Thirteen minutes to drop point," chanted Whizzo. "Altitude one-seven thousand, ground speed four-three-nine knots."
"Roger," said Leader, while pushing the stick forward. "Starting descent now. Get ready."
"I'm ready, Skip," replied Whizzo, as he checked his fire control systems for the umpteenth time.
By the time he reached the glassed-in observation platform, Grigory Vostov was huffing, puffing, and swearing at the climb up the stairs. He wondered why they had not installed an elevator in the damned tower.
"Good afternoon, Comrade Chief Designer," greeted the tower controller. "I was told you would be arriving."
It took some time before the overweight Vostov could regain his breath to ask, "Binoculars?"
The controller was helpful. "Of course, Comrade. You are welcome to use mine," he said, while lifting off the neck strap.
Vostov took them without thanks. "The communications link to Kaliningrad?" he puffed.
The controller pointed to the phone. "That receiver there."
Vostov nodded, then lifted the Carl Zeiss lenses to his eyes.
The top fringes of the towering cumulus clouds were still below the Intrepid as it came out of its fourth and final braking S-turn. Iceberg was transfixed on the NavComputer now. There was only one chance to hit the runway, and all he had to rely on was the NavComputer, the altitude/vertical velocity indicator, and the other instruments on his craft.
The Intrepid was now entering the terminal area energy management phase of its landing approach — five minutes and fifty-five miles from the runway, traveling at 1,700 mph, and rapidly descending through 75,000 feet. Iceberg was carefully husbanding the kinetic energy of the vessel now, trading speed and altitude for lift and distance. The remaining energy had to be managed precisely so the huge spacecraft would be able to execute its critical flare maneuver just prior to touchdown.
Iceberg pitched the hand controller to the right and gently applied pressure to the right rudder pedal. He was putting the orbiter into proper alignment with where the runway was supposed to be. His flight suit was becoming sweat-soaked as the digital altimeter ran backward through 60,000 feet and the Intrepid plunged into a giant thunderhead.
Fyodor Tupelov was about to throw in the towel. His computations showed his remaining fuel would keep him aloft for twelve or thirteen minutes at the most, and he wasn't about to punch out at sixteen thousand meters altitude. At this height, he figured his blood would freeze in an instant. The colonel be damned. He would give it five more minutes, then he was going to dive through the clouds and hunt for an airfield.
The black batwing broke through the clouds at twelve thousand feet. Leader and Whizzo scanned the screens of the nose cameras to look for the recovery runway, but the scene was somewhat hazy from the overcast and they couldn't locate it.
"Hit the zoom," ordered Leader. His companion turned a dial and the images of all three screens enlarged.
"Still don't see it," muttered Whizzo.
"We'll stay on this heading," grumbled Leader. "What's your readout?"
Whizzo checked his instruments. "Altitude eleven-two hundred and descending. Speed four-four-two knots. Nine minutes to drop. The computer says we're in the groove."