Delta Blue

by William H. Lovejoy

  “All of that is probably true, General Brackman. But to keep the facts straight, Frank didn’t make the decision. He asked permission, and I gave it. Don’t blame Frank, and don’t blame it on the heat of battle.”

  McKenna was tucked into his office cubicle, where he had slept the balance of the night. He had been thinking about the joys of a turnaround flight to, even, Borneo, where he could get a hot shower when Brackman had called. The general had just read the debriefing report.

  “You discuss that decision with Overton?”

  “No. Jim’s responsible for Themis. The squadron is my baby. I’ll take the heat.”

  “Give me a rationale,” Brackman said. “One that will pass muster when I send it to Washington.”

  “Dimatta was fired upon.”

  “Come on, Kevin! You’re talking to me, remember?”

  “All right, Marv. Arrogance.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The whole setup aches with an overtone of arrogance. I don’t know what’s going on in the civilian government, but the old guard military acts as if the last forty years haven’t meant a damned thing. The buildup of arms and armies is taking place blatantly, as if the world isn’t watching. The commanders tromp over anything in their path. The Greenland Sea wells defy any common sense in regard to the environment. Punch a missile into the sea near an old wooden boat? No big goddamned deal. Frank didn’t hear, and I didn’t hear, either, any warning from the Tornado pilot, Marv. He came in shooting, as if he owned the Arctic. I wanted him, and his bosses, to know that he doesn’t own it.”

  Brackman pondered for a while. “Okay, Kevin. I buy it. Sending the message, I mean. I don’t know whether or not Harvey Mays and Hannibal Cross will buy it.”

  “You know what makes it a credible message, Marv?”

  “I have an idea.”

  “It’s almost four o’clock in Bonn. Have the White House or the State Department received any irate ambassadors?”

  “No. And we didn’t get any as a result of the attack on the well.”

  “How much do you want to bet that Bonn doesn’t even know what’s taken place, or is taking place?” McKenna asked. “Anybody want to pin the chancellor down?”

  “No bets. You suggesting we inform Bonn that their military is out of hand?”

  “I’m not suggesting a damned thing. The policy people in the White House, at Foggy Bottom, and on the Hill are going to screw it all up, anyway. And somehow, I don’t think the German chancellor would take kindly to interference in his administration, no matter the reasons or the facts.”

  “All good points, Kevin. Okay, put that aside for now. What did you get me?”

  “Pearson is still wrapping up her analysis, but from what I saw, we’re not going to find many weak points in the transmission lines. The only exposed points are where the pipes — they look like pipelines — come out of the sea on the mainland. That may be subterfuge. Dummy pipelines. There are three of them at each of the pumping stations. From the side-view pictures, each of the pumping stations is built on top of a cliff, some one hundred yards back from the shoreline. My gut feeling, Marv, is that the pumping stations are also dummies. I think that each platform has its own turbine generators, and the electric output goes right into undersea cables, is collected at one or two central points, perhaps also on the sea bottom, and then transferred to the mainland, coming ashore underground. I believe that the distribution centers are located in hardened, subterranean excavations under the pumping stations. Further distribution within the country is also below ground.”

  “Shit. No place where we could cut the flow of electrical energy?”

  “Not if you go by my guts,” McKenna said.

  “I keep asking this. What’s next?”

  “Let me talk to Amy and Jim and get back to you.”

  “I’ll call Washington and see if you and I still have jobs.”

  *

  “We had an airborne warning and command craft in the area, and we did see one side of the confrontation, Marvin.” Vitaly Sheremetevo did not tell Brackman of his jealousy concerning the MakoShark aerospace craft. Watching the radar tapes, seeing four darting blips chasing nothing at all, then watching nothing at all shoot down two high-technology German fighters, had been an exercise in frustration.

  Even for an observer.

  An observer who had found himself unexpectedly rooting for an American.

  Heresy.

  “It is disconcerting, isn’t it, Vitaly? I saw our own tapes.”

  “The important thing,” Sheremetevo said, “is that we have achieved a new phase.”

  “Direct hostilities, Yes.”

  “And with no concurrent admission or announcement from Bonn.”

  “It gets ‘curiouser and curiouser.’ That’s a quote, Vitaly”

  “From whom?”

  “I’ll send you a copy of the book.”

  “What do your Joint Chiefs of Staff have to say about this?”

  “They’re discussing it with the SecDef. Secretary of Defense. I imagine that he’ll then discuss it with the President and the National Security Advisor. It may be weeks before I hear from them again.” Brackman’s laugh did not sound very amused.

  “On this side, Marvin, I have had to confer with a small defense committee of the Politburo. As you say, discussions are under way.”

  “In the meantime, Vitaly, I’m finalizing the objective I would like to see.”

  “Which is?”

  “I want to take those wells out of commission. For two reasons. I want to reduce the threat of war, and I want to eliminate the threat to the environment.”

  “I can agree with that,” Sheremetevo said. “Yes, I will support the position. How do we do that?”

  “That’s the hell of it. I’m not certain how we go about it. There’s got to be a weak link somewhere.”

  “The transmission cables would be my preference.”

  “That’s my preference, too, Vitaly. We just can’t find the damned things.”

  *

  Amy Pearson worked at her desk in her office. On two of the screens, she had called up copies of telexes that had been forwarded to Themis.

  The first one was half amazing, less in its contents than in its correspondents.

  CLASSIFICATION TOP SECRET

  Decode: 06/17/0841

  TO: DIR, CIA

  FROM: CHMN, KGB

  SUBJ: PEENEMUNDE FACILITY

  1) AGREE FACILITY IS LAUNCH COMPLEX.

  2) SOURCES INDICATE PRESENCE OF GERMAN NATIONAL EXPERTS IN PHYSICS, AERONAUTICS, ENGINEERING,

  COMPUTING. PERSONNEL COMPLEMENT APPROXIMATELY SIXTY PROFESSIONAL STAFF THREE HUNDRED SUPPORT STAFF.

  3) LOCAL POPULACE BELIEVES FACILITY EXPERIMENTAL LABORATORY.

  4) AGENT INTERVIEWED TWO SITE WORKERS–COOK, ALLOYS TECHNICIAN, OBTAINED FREEHAND DRAWING SIMILAR TO USSR SRF-32 MULTIPURPOSE LAUNCH VEHICLE. (PARTIAL SPECIFICATIONS MAY BE PROVIDED UPON EXECUTIVE REQUEST.)

  5) AGENT OBSERVED COL. ALBERT N. WEISMANN, CMDR, 20TH SPECIAL AIR GROUP AT SITE.

  Pearson thought that communications between the chairman of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency were extremely rare. The original of this message might go for big bucks at a Sotheby auction fifty years from now.

  On content, she was highly interested in the apparent connection of Weismann with the launch complex. That put the 20th Special Air Group, already identified with the geothermal wells, into some kind of relationship with a rocket launch facility.

  Reading between the lines of item four, she thought that the KGB suspected that the German rocket was a copy of one of their own. There was very likely an in-depth search for spies taking place at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Tyuratam. A “multipurpose launch vehicle” didn’t tell her much. Intercontinental Ballistics Missile? Space entry vehicle? Or both?

  She turned to her keyboard at the third screen and quickly typed a request memo to
Gen. David Thorpe, copy to General Overton, asking for a follow-up on item four, a listing of specifications for the Soviet Rocket Forces SRF-32, over the President’s signature. She felt that knowing the capability of the SRF-32 was suddenly important.

  On screen two was a copy of an extract from another telex, directed to the CIA’s European division in the Intelligence Directorate from an unknown agent or asset in the field. The agent apparently kept a vigil over the High Command’s headquarters in Bonn and one of his entries for the current morning read:

  1116 HOURS:

  GEN. FELIX EISENACH, COL. MAXIMILLIAN OBERLIN, COL. ALBERT WEISMANN DEPART HC HDQTRS TOGETHER.

  NOTE: EISENACH CURRENT ASSIGN AS SPCL ASST TO MARSHAL HOCH. OBERLIN AIDE TO EISENACH. WEISMANN

  CMDER 20TH SAG.

  Thorpe, or someone assigned to the task in the CIA, had extracted the entry and forwarded it, she was certain, because of the reference to Albert Weismann.

  The man was showing up everywhere. At New Amsterdam, at Peenemünde, and now with importance enough to be present at the High Command’s headquarters in Bonn.

  She reached forward and tapped an intercom button, “Communications, IO.”

  “Sergeant Arguento, Colonel.”

  “Would you set up a link with the CIA’s database right away, please.”

  “Two minutes, Colonel.”

  Anyone who reached flag rank in the German military rated a complete file, and after a quick scan, Pearson found Eisenach’s. She dumped the file to the station’s mainframe memory, then took her time going through it, deleting innocuous and duplicated data, and coming up with a brief word-picture of the man.

  She didn’t like the picture.

  Old-line military aristocracy. Pampered, complete education. Lots of family money. Long-term marriage. Career on hold for a long time, until Germany reunified.

  And in the background of the snapshot, the items that agents and researchers had uncovered over the years. As a legislative liaison, the general had been known as an inveterate manipulator. It was suspected that he held blackmail files on a number of influential people. He had had twelve extended extramarital affairs, and all twelve of the women had, at one time or another, been severely beaten. One of the women had vanished a few months after Eisenach had learned that she was Jewish.

  That was a recurrent theme. On the professional side, in every position he had ever held, or every office over which he had authority, the researchers suspected that he had weeded out every Jew or minority and fired or reassigned them.

  Pearson didn’t like the man, and she had only just met him on paper.

  She composed messages for CIA and DIA, asking for details of Eisenach’s assignment as an assistant to Marshal Hoch, then as an afterthought, requested additional personal data for Oberlin and Weismann.

  Then she transmitted copies of her file to Overton’s and McKenna’s offices, where they would be queued in the correspondence file behind the rest of their daily messages.

  She figured McKenna would never get to his.

  *

  Mac Zeigman had a photocopy of a picture taken by a New York Times photographer. It had been shot through the windshield of a car east of Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado and showed the barely discernible shape of what the reporter purported to be a MakoShark taking off from the base.

  The reporter had been right.

  “That is it,” Zeigman said.

  He handed the photocopy back across the desk to his commanding officer.

  Weismann took it, dropped it on the blotter, and then leaned back in his wooden swivel chair. The chair squeaked. The backs of his hands were reddened with his skin rash and from scratching them. Zeigman wondered if the man had ever seen a doctor about his problem.

  “I will have the picture enhanced and blown up to pass out to the air crews,” the commander said.

  Zeigman looked through the windows at the runway. Two Eurofighters took off in formation, turbojets whining, the dark kerosene vapors trailing wispily behind them.

  They were in the command quarters of the Zwanzigste Speziell Aeronautisch Gruppe, in what had originally been the standby facility for aircrews on 24-hour alert. Weismann liked having his headquarters this close to the runways, even if the scream of jet engines continually interrupted conversations. In the outer office, Zeigman could hear operations officers speaking on telephones and radios.

  “Well, Mac, you’re one of the few who can say that you’ve seen it.”

  “Truly a privilege, Colonel,” Zeigman said, the sarcasm heavy.

  “And you say that you could not get either a radar or infrared lock?”

  “Neither. I had to guide the missiles by hand. Then the bastard accelerated so quickly, I lost him.”

  “Perhaps, Mac, if you had had your weapons officer with you, the result would have been different. Altogether different.”

  Zeigman kept his silence. He was being chastised, and worse, he knew it was warranted. Had he attended to the flying, and had he had his weapons officer along to guide the missiles, the Luftwaffe might well have a downed MakoShark to examine. He had already lambasted himself. To be that close, and then to miss!

  “When he went to active radar, chasing Tiger Three and Tiger Four, I did get a positive lock-on,” Zeigman said. “But then I lost it when the radar was switched to passive.”

  Weismann leaned forward and planted his elbows on top of the old wooden desk. The chair squeaked again. He placed his fingertips together and studied them.

  “It is going to require a change in tactics, Mac. We must put more faith in the weapons system operators.”

  “Yes.”

  “The Eurofighters will not stand a chance alone against them. Nor will the Tornados unless we concoct new methods.”

  “Perhaps not,” Zeigman reluctantly agreed.

  “Let us get Metzenbaum in here and devise a method of using the Eurofighters and the Tornados in combination. What would you think of that?”

  Zeigman thought about it, about using the single-seat fighters as bait, and he liked it.

  *

  Mako Three, piloted by Maj. Kenneth Autry, was on space duty, retrieving dead or malfunctioning satellites and transporting them to Themis for repair and retrofit.

  That program alone had enhanced the stature of the space station. Abandoning communication and reconnaissance satellites in space, then replacing them by boosting new satellites into orbit atop Titan rockets or in the bay of the Space Shuttle was extremely expensive. NASA and the Space Command estimated that the savings accrued from reconditioning existing satellites amounted to over four billion dollars in the current fiscal year.

  McKenna was killing time until Headquarters, USAF Space Command responded to Pearson’s latest hot flash. He, Polly Tang, and T. Sgt. Benny Shalbot were in the module of Spoke twelve, which had several bays similar to the hangar cells of the hub, watching Ken Autry and two men on Extra-Vehicular Activity, EVA, through the bay window and the open hangar doors.

  Autry had maneuvered the Mako to within fifty feet of the open hangar and parked it. The craft was on its side, in relation to McKenna, its opened payload doors facing him. Extending from the payload bay were four slender grappling devices, and they were lovingly clamped to the primary housing of a Teal Ruby satellite. The Teal Ruby could not be pulled into the Mako’s cargo bay, or for that matter, into the module’s repair bay, because its combination solar collector panels and antennas extended forty feet on each side of the satellite body.

  The two crewmen were dressed in white environmental suits with all-purpose packs strapped to their backs. The packs contained the life-support system and the thrusters used for mobility outside the station. Both men were tethered by long life lines.

  “Mako Three,” said one of the crewmen over the open radio, “You can release now.”

  “Roger.”

  The grappling hooks released their grip and withdrew into the bay.

  “You’re clear, Mako. Do it slow, now.�
��

  Three thrusters, on nose and wing tips, fired, and the Mako drifted away, then began to maneuver for docking in another hangar. The payload bay doors closed.

  The crewmen moved in on the Teal Ruby and started dismantling the solar wings so that the three components could be brought inside for repair.

  “Damned slow buggers, ain’t they?” Shalbot said, tapping his electronics diagnostic box. “I shoulda been done with this job by now, and back in my bunk.”

  “We can’t all move at your speed, Benny.” McKenna said, taking Polly’s hand in his own and giving it a squeeze.

  “Don’t I know it?” Shalbot said.

  “What are you doing?” Tang asked him.

  “Moving at my own speed,” McKenna said.

  “Too fast for me,” she told him, gently withdrawing her hand. “I’ve got to go put Mako Three to bed.”

  “Where did I go wrong?”

  “I’ll think about it, then tell you,” she said.

  McKenna went with her, jetting across the large open space of the interior half of the module. Affixed to its bulkheads were workbenches mounting the latest technology in electronic diagnostics and repair. Oscilloscopes, computers, monitors, digital measuring devices. McKenna was glad he didn’t have to understand them and amazed that Benny Shalbot knew the functions of each one.

  They went down the spoke together and passed through the hatchway into Corridor 2, the main path around the perimeter of the hub.

  “Bye-bye, Polly,” he said as she pushed gracefully off a bulkhead and sailed into Corridor 1B, which crossed the hub behind the hangars.

  “Good-bye, Colonel. Don’t be depressed.”

  “I am, dear, I am.”

  McKenna crossed to Spoke thirteen and opened its orange door by tapping his code into the keypad. Locking the hatch behind him, he traversed the spoke quickly and unlocked the module door with the same code.

  Spoke thirteen was used entirely for fuel storage. It was divided into subcompartments containing JP-7 jet fuel and solid fuel pellets. An intricate maze of piping accepted incoming fuel from HoneyBee rockets or, lately, from the solid fuel manufacturing plant in Spoke eleven, and transferred both types down the spoke to the various hangars. The safety precautions were as complete as they could be. Fire extinguisher nozzles protruded from all bulkheads. In the event of a leak or fire, automatic valves closed off the lines into the hub. If a fire was not containable, the entire spoke and module could be detached from the space station with exploding bolts and pushed off into space by heavy-duty thrusters attached to the outer housing.