Delta Blue

by William H. Lovejoy

  “Let’s go RS-three-three.”

  “Gone.”

  McKenna tapped at his communications keyboard, entering the code which installed the thirty-third of fifty available scrambling circuits into the VHF communications channel. Only Themis and the operations room at NORAD could monitor them on similar scrambling units.

  “You there, Con Man?” McKenna asked.

  “Most of me is.” Conover’s voice echoed a trifle, due to the scrambling.

  “What’s your velocity?”

  “Down to nine-point-six, Snake Eyes.”

  “Okay, it’s easier if you pick the coordinates.”

  “Hold one. Do-Wop?”

  Abrams said, “How about six-five degrees north, two-zero degrees, seven minutes east? Seven-five thousand? We’ll still be coasting.”

  “Tiger?” McKenna asked.

  “Fine by me. You want to bet on this one, Con Man?”

  “Ten bucks.”

  “Roger that,” Munoz said, then switching to intercom, told McKenna, “Feedin’ the data in. I need a headin’ of zero-one-six, and I need a rocket boost of two-two seconds at six-five percent.”

  “You’re going to waste two thousand dollars’ worth of Grandma’s high-test fuel pellets for ten bucks?”

  “There’s a principle involved here, Snake Eyes. Hurry now, ’cause I’m tryin’ to keep my mind around two different trajectories.”

  McKenna went through the checklist swiftly, ignited the rockets, and burned solid propellant pellets for twenty-two seconds.

  “Beautiful, jefe.”

  At 0109 hours, Delta Blue reached the established coordinates, but Delta Yellow wasn’t visible. McKenna flashed his running lights twice.

  “Sumbitch, Blue. I see you.”

  McKenna looked back and upward in time to see Conover flash his own lights, several thousand feet above and a couple miles behind them.

  “You owe me ten bucks, Con Man,” Munoz said.

  “You cheated. I can’t use turbojets yet.”

  “Delta Flight, Alpha One.” Pearson’s voice.

  “Go Alpha,” McKenna said.

  “Are you people planning to play games all night?”

  “Just passing the time, Alpha,” McKenna said. “Where we at, Tiger?”

  “Moonrise in nineteen minutes, so we’d better hump it. I say we come in out of the dark side, headin’ two-eight-zero, angle of attack minus four-zero, speed Mach three. On my mark, make the turn. On my second mark, take the dive. Third mark, dump the speed brakes. We want four-five-zero knots on the pass. Yellow trails by two miles.”

  “Con Man?” McKenna asked.

  “We still on for number eight?”

  “Eight it is,” Munoz said. “Number fourteen is the IP.”

  “It’s good by Yellow.”

  “On the pullout, Con Man,” McKenna said, “make a right turn to zero-one-five. That should take us over the ice between numbers seventeen and twenty-one. Give them ten miles’ distance before going to rockets.”

  “Roger that, Snake Eyes.”

  “Forty miles out,” McKenna continued, “Tiger will go to hot radar and see what kind of company we have. No other radar, Do-Wop.”

  “Roger.”

  McKenna pulled his straps tighter, turned the thermostat down a notch, and brightened the HUD. He held his course dead on true north, and let the speed bleed off to Mach 3 by inching the throttle levers back.

  Munoz put the rearview on the small screen, aiming the camera up slightly.

  “Give me a flash, Con Man.”

  McKenna saw the lights on the screen.

  “How’s your glide?”

  “I’m going to have to put my nose down pretty soon.”

  “Mark one!” Munoz called out.

  McKenna eased the hand controller over and banked into a heading of 280 degrees. It was a wide turn. Sharp maneuvers weren’t accomplished well at three times the speed of sound. The heavy atmosphere tended to cling to control surfaces.

  “Two-eight-zero,” he said.

  Two seconds later, Conover said, “Two-eight-zero.”

  “Mark Two!”

  McKenna nudged the hand controller forward, and when the HUD showed him minus forty degrees, eased it back to center and held it. He pulled the throttles full back and noted that the MakoShark began to lose speed steadily, though slowly.

  “Arm me, Snake Eyes.”

  McKenna reached for the armaments panel, selected both pylons, the gun pod, the four missiles, and armed all of them.

  “The birds are yours, Tiger.”

  “Gracias.”

  The altimeter readout sped through the numbers, 60,000, 55,000, 50,000.

  As they passed through 45,000 feet, Conover radioed, “Yellow’s got turbojets. All green. Cameras are primed.”

  At 30,000 feet, Munoz called, “Mark three!”

  McKenna deployed the speed brakes.

  “Bring the nose up to minus three-zero,” Munoz said on the tactical frequency, so Conover could hear the instruction.

  McKenna pulled back on the hand controller.

  When they were slowed to Mach 1.5, and at 18,000 feet, Munoz went to active radar. The screen in front of McKenna lit up with returns off the sea, off wells and ships, and off two blips to the northwest.

  “Countin’, countin’, countin’,” Munoz said, then switched the radar to standby. “Three-five to target. We got bogies at three-four-six, one-zero-thousand feet, and five-seven miles.”

  Speed Mach 1.1.

  “What’s the heading on the bogies?”

  “Due east. They’re right over the ice platforms.”

  “We going to intercept on zero-one-five?” McKenna asked.

  “Damned close, Snake Eyes. I didn’t have time to read them for speed, but they’re subsonic.”

  “Con Man, on pullout, go to zero-two-five.”

  “Roger zero-two-five, Snake Eyes.”

  Speed 600 knots.

  “I want one more time on active, jefe.”

  “Go.”

  The screen displayed the radar scan for two sweeps, then reverted to the night-vision image.

  McKenna saw a green dome against the lighter green sea.

  “Come right two degrees.”

  Nudge of the hand controller. The HUD showed 282 degrees.

  “That’s the IP … Mark! Hang on to that headin’. Lose the brakes, Snake Eyes.”

  Platform fourteen flashed under them.

  McKenna brought the speed brakes in as the readout gave him 445 knots.

  “We’ve still got five-five-zero-zero altitude, Tiger.”

  “Two thou should be about right.”

  McKenna put the nose down a little, trading altitude for maintaining his airspeed.

  The throttles were still at the back detents. Infrared production from the jet engines would be negligible.

  “Do-Wop, you getting an IR off me?” McKenna asked. The MakoShark aerospace craft were equipped with infrared search and tracking sensors that had an effective range of fifty miles.

  “Hell, Snake Eyes, you’re two miles ahead of us, give or take a mile, and I can’t see you on the night vision, much less the IR tracker. No output at all.”

  On the other side of the canopy, off to his left, McKenna could see a scattering of red strobe lights from the other wells. The running lights of three ships were ten or twelve miles away to the east.

  Ahead, the aircraft warning light of well number eight was coming up fast.

  He glanced at the screen. Using his helmet-aiming system, Munoz had the bomb sight high-centered on the dome in seven-power magnification.

  As they approached, the WSO kept dropping the magnification.

  At ten miles from target, the screen went to normal magnification. The upper-left corner lettering on the CRT flickered as the computer made its calculations, then read: TARGET: 8.17 MILES.

  “Any time, Tiger.”

  “Give it a couple more miles, jefe. We’re not gonna be flyin
’ through debris.”

  At six miles out, Munoz switched the screen image to the first Wasp, then launched.

  Four white flares flashed in the corners of McKenna’s eyes as the Wasps left the rails. Immediately, the missiles separated, following the instructions imbedded in their brains. Munoz guided with the first Wasp, and the others stuck close to it.

  The green dome loomed larger on the screen.

  The number one, guided, Wasp was the left one of the four fiery trails now two miles ahead of the Mako-Shark.

  Shifting his head, Munoz steered the missile slightly left, toward the left upper side of the dome. The other missiles obediently shifted to the left also.

  The lights on the helicopter pad flashed on.

  McKenna watched ahead and to his left for the patrol aircraft.

  “Looks to me like their radar picked up the incoming, Tiger.”

  “/

  “I’d think so, if they’re on the ball at all,” Munoz said. “Betcha they’re so damned rattled, they don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Those German pilots might know.”

  He glanced back at the screen just as the Wasps detonated. The screen went black, then green again as the MakoShark’s own camera took over. Bright greenish-white flash as all of them went off simultaneously.

  “Let’s get out of Con Man’s way,” Munoz said.

  McKenna pulled into a right bank and started to climb, his speed decreasing, but that was all right. The last sight of the dome on the screen showed him a distance to target of 3.7 miles and black gaps appearing in the dome’s upper surface.

  “Get me a location on the hostiles,” McKenna said.

  Munoz went to active radar. “Shit. Bogies are headin’ in. Tornados, I think. I read ’em fourteen out and diving. Nine-five-zero-zero. Speed seven-zero-zero knots.”

  Munoz switched out of active mode.

  Jack Abrams came on, “I’ve been scanning the local marine channels, Snake Eyes. There’s a hell of a lot of excited German chatter.”

  “Okay, Do-Wop. You continue with your pass. I’m going to get behind you, then divert the Tornados.”

  “Delta Blue, this is Semaphore.”

  General Brackman’s voice was very steady and very well modulated over the scrambled, satellite-relayed network.

  “Go Semaphore.”

  “Be extremely careful. Favor to me?”

  “Granted, Semaphore.”

  McKenna turned left, diving below and across the line of flight of Delta Yellow. He advanced his throttles until the readout gave him 700 knots. Watching the chronometer on the HUD, he estimated when Conover passed over him, then turned right again, paralleling Conover at 282 degrees, but a mile to his left.

  “Let’s go over, Tiger.”

  “Now? Are you sh … oh, hell yes!”

  Skimming through the checklist, McKenna had rockets in ten seconds. He shoved the outboard throttles full forward and felt himself shoved back into his couch.

  “Radar, Tiger.”

  “Comin’ up.”

  On thirty-mile scan, the screen showed the Tornados eight miles away.

  He applied right rudder to lead their line of flight and pulled the controller back to gain some height.

  Mach 1.9.

  “Under or over, amigo.”

  “Under. They may still never see us.”

  “They’re about four miles from Yellow. Now at five thousand.” It was a guess since Munoz couldn’t track Conover.

  Three miles.

  Mach 2.4.

  Two miles.

  Mach 2.8.

  One mile.

  McKenna killed the rockets as Munoz went to night vision on the screen.

  The two Tornados were displaying running lights and were a hundred yards apart, in echelon formation, almost exactly in the center of the screen.

  Half mile.

  More right rudder. A touch.

  Mach 2.7.

  McKenna edged his nose down a trifle.

  The Tornado pilots were probably scanning the immediate area of well number eight for an attacker. They did not — could not — see the MakoShark coming up out of the darkness of the sea. If they had, they would have taken evasive action.

  The MakoShark passed under both aircraft with less than fifty feet of separation, and it passed under in less than a half second, leaving behind a trail of violent turbulence that shocked the pilots and the weapons systems’ operators who were concentrating on reaching well number eight.

  With the rocket motors shut down and the turbojet throttles set at full retard, the MakoShark did not even leave a visual trail.

  It left two Tornado pilots fighting catastrophe and panic. In the rearview screen, McKenna saw the lead plane leap up abruptly, then turn completely over, nosing into a spin. The wingman fought to keep his plane upright and nearly collided with his flight leader.

  McKenna didn’t think they would spot Delta Yellow, even by accident.

  Nine

  The telephone jangled shrilly in the middle of the night. Felix Eisenach detested phone calls in the middle of the night.

  He rolled over and sat up, shaking his head.

  The telephone rang again.

  “What is it, Felix?”

  “I do not know yet, Marta. Go back to sleep.”

  His wife was good at taking orders. She rolled over, away from him, as he picked up the receiver.

  “Eisenach.”

  “Diederman here. We have a problem, General.”

  “So, tell me, Hans, what is the problem.”

  “The dome of Platform Eight has been blown out.”

  “What! How?”

  “I’m at the platform now, General. I have one man dead, and five injured by falling debris. We’re sending them … ”

  “What damage?”

  A long pause, then Diederman responded, “There are three very large holes in the upper dome, fifty meters above the deck. That is in what we call attic space. But large pieces of debris crashed through the ceiling of the upper dormitory, and that is where the casualties … ”

  “The equipment, Hans? Is it still operating?”

  “Yes, of course. Structural and engineering damage is minimal.”

  “The cause?”

  “Obviously an attack from outside sources, General. Nothing else would explain the kind of damage I see. The dome imploded.”

  “The Soviets?”

  “I have no idea, General Eisenach. No one saw the intruders. No radar contacts, no visual sightings.”

  “You have talked to Weismann?”

  “Two of his aircraft were in the area. They saw nothing, but they complained of running through heavy turbulence.”

  “It is the Americans, then. It was their stealth aircraft.” Diederman did not respond.

  “This will require investigation.”

  “You will tell the High Command?” Diederman asked.

  “I will leave here shortly. I want you to prepare a full report.”

  “Of course, General. Perhaps you would visit the hospital at Bremerhaven and speak to the injured men.”

  “Yes, perhaps. Later.”

  *

  It was eleven o’clock at night, Themis time, before Amy Pearson and Donna Amber got the film packs from Delta Yellow.

  It was one in the morning by the time the two of them had developed the film and run the video comparisons with similar wells in California, Italy, Mexico, Japan, and New Zealand. They worked on the computer terminals in the Radio Shack, and McKenna, Munoz, Conover, and Abrams hung around in the Command Center, poking their heads into the Shack every few minutes to check on progress.

  “What do you think, Donna?” Pearson asked.

  There were two images on the monitor, the screen split to show the infrared image of well number eight situated next to an infrared image of a well located near the Sierra Nevadas and operated by the California Power Company.

  “Well, Colonel, the sites are different. The California well
is located on land and doesn’t have the same spread of heat in the soil as the German well has in the water. Ignoring the outer edges, though, and concentrating on the core, they look just about the same.”

  McKenna floated through the hatchway, took one look at the screen, and said, “You were right, Amy. Geothermal tap.”

  “Damned right, McKenna.” Even though it rankled a little, she felt as if a compliment were in order and added, “You did a good job.”

  “Not all my doing. Tony pulled the trigger. And while I think about it, I’d like to have you send Mabry Evans one or two of those pictures, so he gets some feedback on how his ordnance worked.”

  “All right, I’ll do that.”

  Donna Amber said, “I don’t get it, at all. If we’ve got geothermal wells in California, why can’t the Germans have them?”

  “On the legal side, you’re probably right, Donna,” McKenna said.

  “The purposes will be the same,” Pearson said. “It’s an energy source. Tap into superheated steam and boiling water, and use it to run turbines coupled to generators, transforming the steam energy into electrical energy. Typically, there’s a primary well, extracting the steam and boiling water. It’s run through the turbines, then the cooled water is injected back into the earth’s crust through a secondary well. The spectrograph shows some steam containing earth elements. Sulphur, primarily. Lots of condensation. There’s no excessive salt content, so it’s fresh water, rather than seawater.”

  “The California wells exhaust a lot of steam,” Amber pointed out.

  Pearson pointed to the storage tanks mounted to the back side of the dome. “I suspect that is what these tanks are for, a series of traps used to reduce the quantity of byproduct steam. It disguises the true nature of the well.”

  “There’s still some vapor emitted from the fifth tank,” McKenna said.

  “Yes. And then again, perhaps they’ve developed a method to extract yet more energy from equipment placed in those external tanks,” Pearson said. “That would give them a primary source and several secondary sources, plus hiding the vapor output.”

  “It’s a hell of an undertaking. As I recall most of those wells have to go down twenty-some miles,” McKenna said. “Plus doing it offshore. Some geologist discovered the right location.”

  “Maybe they found some undersea geysers?” Amber said.

  “I doubt it, in that area,” Pearson told her. “But obviously, like Kevin says, the Germans have a geologist who guessed right. And Donna, a geyser is useful if it’s hot enough, but a geyser produces both steam and water. Steam alone is better, and that’s called a fumarole. Down in the earth’s crust are fractures which collect the steam and trap it in place. The objective of drilling a well is to hit one of those fractures.”