McKenna was so damned stubborn.
But he kisses pretty well.
She brushed away that thought quickly and asked Donna Amber on the intercom to connect her with the National Security Agency at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland.
The giant facility tapped in on almost all of the television, telephonic, and radio communications in the world. The sonobuoys and listening posts that the MakoSharks had scattered from Europe to South America were monitored by the Agency.
When Amber had the connection made, Pearson asked for the German section.
“MacDonald.”
“I thought you might be on duty, Walt. This is Amy Pearson.”
“Hello there, honey. You up in the cold blue sky?”
“I think we’re just about directly over Tokyo.”
“Boy, I tell you. If my heart were up to it, I’d take you up on your invitation to visit.”
She had never met MacDonald in person, and she didn’t know whether he truly had a heart condition or just weak nerves.
“You’re missing the best view ever.”
“Don’t I know it. What’s up?”
“I wanted to see if you’ve had any action on some of our listening posts.” She read him the list of code numbers she had compiled.
MacDonald was the section chief, and he yelled for one of his subordinates to go check the machines. With voice communications, the NSA had computers similar to Val Arguento’s to scan for key words in the millions of dialogues. With sonobuoys not covered by the navy, the continuous output was recorded on tape machines. The listening posts were more sophisticated, collecting sounds for half an hour at a time and then compressing them digitally into a sixty-second blurts radioed to a satellite.
On the NSA’s end, the messages were decompressed into real time, then saved on tape.
She and MacDonald chatted for several minutes, then he said, “Here we go, Amy. On your sixteen sonobuoys in the Norwegian and Greenland seas, only four are still operational. We have the Bohemian passing through seventy-five degrees north, but that was three hours ago. Farther south, on buoy three, we picked up the screws of a fishing boat.
“The Elbe River LP’s at Köthen show a marked increase in the frequency of traffic, Amy.”
“Which way, Mac?”
“Northward. Sounds like heavy tugboats, so there’s probably long strings of barges.”
It could be increased industrial goods, but she suspected that military material was being moved.
“How about Peenemünde?” she asked.
“No dramatic changes,” MacDonald told her. “Automobile traffic. Once in a while, we hear machine tools.”
“Okay, thanks, Mac. Look, if you hear anything out of the norm at Peenemünde, give me a call, will you?”
“Sure. In fact, I’ll program what we have into the computer as a base pattern, so we can get an automatic alert if there’s anything strange that comes up.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Come and see me some time.”
After she signed off with MacDonald, Pearson spent half an hour thinking about McKenna’s proposal. Thinking about what could go wrong.
Resetting her tether straps to give her a little more freedom, Pearson switched on her computer and keyed in her access code to the main database. She called up the photographs taken of well number eight, selected the clearest low-light shot, and then transferred it into her graphics program. That program let her manipulate the image, and she duplicated it, side by side, then rotated one so that she had a top and side view of the dome and platform. The side view looked a little squashed, so she elongated it until the dome appeared round again.
The top view displayed the openings created by Mabry Evan’s warheads. Through the holes, she could discern three distinct partitions, dividing the diameter into three almost equal sections, so she erased the remaining portion of the top of the dome, then drew in the partitions. The section containing the wellhead and turbine equipment, which were blurred in this photo, was at the back of the platform, opposite the helicopter pad.
She wished she could erase the ceilings of interior spaces and see what was below them, but had to guess that they were housing and operational spaces. Probably five or six floors of them.
Erasing the dome face in the side view, she sketched in approximate floor levels. The dome’s diameter was constant from the deck of the platform up to midheight, then it began to curve in toward the middle. For the upper hundred feet, any floor installed would be smaller in area than the floor below it. Still, it would be possible to fit in as many as fifteen floors with adequate head room and floors thick enough to carry ventilation, power, and plumbing.
She went back to her top view. Peering closely at the photograph, it seemed to her that there was a fair amount of distance between the top of the dome and the first apparent ceiling on the inside. As a guess, she would say at least fifty feet. She went back to the side view and erased several top floors.
What seemed logical to her is that the dome on every platform was similar. They were, after all, mass-produced as preformed parts. The well itself would be at the back of each platform. There was something else she knew.
What was it?
On the electromagnetic maps.
She called up the maps on a second screen and studied them closely.
Wells one and eleven gave off more electromagnetic pulses than did the other wells. For the most part, the pattern indicated that the power cables from most of the platforms converged upon both one and eleven.
Primary and secondary collection and distribution centers. Well number one would be the primary, since it was drilled first.
She looked at her manipulated drawings and thought that maybe McKenna was right.
Again.
Damn him, anyway.
*
“Sorry to drag you all this way, Colonel, but with something of this magnitude, I like to see the face of the man with the proposition,” Adm. Hannibal Cross said.
“I don’t mind the trip, if you don’t mind the hour, Admiral,” McKenna said.
It was after eleven. McKenna and Munoz had put down at Peterson Air Force Base, Munoz headed for a cab and the city lights, and McKenna and General Brackman had commandeered an F-111 swing-wing bomber for the flight to Washington. Brackman flew, claiming that he rarely got the chance to get behind the controls anymore. It was the primary reason to avoid becoming a general, McKenna had thought. It was funny how that exalted goal of his — to get that star — had evaporated so easily. The house he had grown up in, with a World War II vet father, had instilled him with a sense of duty and responsibility, and somewhere along the line, he had come to the conclusion that his duty was best served right where he was at.
“Around here, Colonel, there aren’t any early or late hours. It’s always late.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sit.”
They were in the chairman’s sumptuous office, which overlooked the Potomac and the River Drive entrance to the Pentagon, and they all moved to a small round conference table in one corner. Cups had been set out, and a tray containing a Thermos pot of coffee, sugar, and cream rested in the middle of the table. There were yellow pads and pencils for everyone. A copy of McKenna’s two-page telex was in front of every padded chair.
Everyone included the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General Mays of the air force; General Brackman; Adm. Carl Woldeman, the chief of Naval Operations; and Gen. Budge McAdams, the army chief of staff.
McKenna counted seventeen stars on five left shoulders and decided he was in company where he didn’t belong. Or did not want to belong. They all had experiences similar to his own, but they had adapted to the ultracomplex politics that flowed around the head of the military and the head of the government. McKenna had little faith in politics.
“Before we get into your proposal, Colonel McKenna, we’ve got one little item to take care of,” Cross said.
“Yes, sir, I suppose that we do.” Mc
Kenna knew what was coming.
“I’m referring to Major Lynn Haggar.”
He kept his silence.
“It is not the policy of the Department of Defense to put our female members in situations where they might be subjected to hostile fire. That’s the policy, Colonel, and you’ve subverted it.”
“No, sir, I have not.”
“You’d better explain that,” Harvey Nays said.
“Major Haggar is simply learning to fly the MakoShark. She’s capable and extremely competent. There is no intention of placing her in a combat situation. The MakoShark primarily flies reconnaissance missions, for which she is qualified. More qualified, gentlemen, than most of her peers. The number of people who are certified to fly either a Mako or a MakoShark is extremely limited. I take only the best pilots, and they are rare.”
“But with the situation we have in Germany … ”
“If it came to that, I’d fly on her wing,” McKenna said. He turned to look at McAdams. “We had women flying combat during the excursion to Panama. They did well.”
“That was inadvertent,” Budge McAdams said.
“If Major Haggar encounters combat, it will be inadvertent,” McKenna said.
“You don’t have anyone more prepared … ”
“No, sir, I do not.”
“Inadvertent?” Nays asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Brackman said, “General Overton says she’s already flown the MakoShark.”
“And did quite well, General.”
Mays looked at Brackman, who shrugged, then at Cross and nodded.
Cross Said, “Keep her out of dangerous situations, Colonel. She is not to be scheduled for any flight over Germany or German interests. We’re not altering policy, but we’re allowing you to develop her as a recon pilot.”
“Thank you, Admiral.”
He tapped the telex. “Now then, what you’re proposing is definitely a dangerous situation, isn’t it? And you’ve set it for three days from now. Why is that?”
“For the most part, it’s preparation time. I’ve got to get Delta Yellow checked out and airborne. I know that Admiral Woldeman is already accumulating a task force of specialized ships off the coast of England, but he will need a few more days. General Brackman said that the British are participating, and that the Soviet Union may do so. If you approve my operation, General McAdams will have to alert the Rapid Deployment Force and get them to England.
“From a more global point of view, which I admit is not my bailiwick, I understand that the Germans may have ICBM capability within the week. That would alter our position drastically, I think, and perhaps prevent our ever doing anything about the geothermal wells. I’m in favor of taking care of the problem now, before the Germans can stop us, and before there’s an accident.
“Therefore, I believe we need a ‘go’ or a ‘no go’ yet tonight.”
Hannibal Cross shook his head dejectedly. “We’d have to, at minimum, get the President out of bed.”
“The hours are long in this town, Admiral.”
Cross studied him. “Yes. I believe I mentioned that. What do you want to call this thing, Colonel?”
The flag ranks would want to discuss the details yet, and probably suggest a few thousand changes that McKenna might resist, but he had the feeling that everyone in that office had already made up his mind.
It would be a matter of convincing the White House and any other agencies the President felt should be involved.
“For the media, when they see the troops on the move, Admiral? I’d say it’s a training exercise, perhaps a joint exercise with the British and Soviets. Call it Operation Whale-Saver. That might get the environmentalists on our side for a change.”
Sixteen
Kapitän Rolf Froelich was nervous and trying not to show it, Schmidt thought, but then every man in Schmidt’s small fleet was nervous.
Three successive nights of maintaining battle stations, with no sight of the enemy, did terrible things to both morale and the state of readiness. Sleeplessness, inaction, boredom. It could lead to mistakes.
For all Schmidt knew, the American MakoSharks had been romping unseen through the offshore wells each night, shooting their pictures. The probe by submarines that he had convinced himself to expect had not occurred. Neither the Black Forest nor the Bohemian had had sonar contacts to report. The fifty sonobuoys deployed around the field only picked up the screw signatures of slowly cruising German naval vessels.
Maybe it was the spell of bad weather that was holding them off.
For the past three days, it had been overcast, the sun and its warmth blotted out. Frequent rain squalls passed through the region, drenching everything, including gun crews shivering throughout seemingly long nights. The weather was another morale-breaker.
Froelich waited until Schmidt finished brooding, staring out the window of his flag plot. When he turned back to the Hamburg’s commanding officer, he had not come up with any answers.
He did have an observation. “The weather is lifting, Rolf.”
“A little, Admiral. The meteorologist says that we will continue to be overcast, but that the rain should let up. None is forecast, anyway.”
“A small favor. Well, shall we get on with it?”
Froelich moved to the electronic plot on the bulkhead, and the leutnant operating it sat up at his console.
Not many of the symbols on the map had changed in the last days. The wells did not move, though they might if Eisenach’s stupid “fail-safe” plan were activated. The ships of the Dritte Marinecraft’s first four battle groups were now holding their stations. The fifth battle group was 200 kilometers away, approaching the wells. Schmidt had relieved them of their duty over the cable.
The picture displayed on the map was fairly complete. The basic information was fed to the admiral’s plot from the Combat Information Center, which obtained its information from the radar sightings of all ships in the fleet, as well as the Luftwaffe aircraft flying cover.
Extending a collapsible pointer, Froelich aimed it at a group of red blips northwest of North Cape, Norway. The Soviet ships out of Archangel continue to move at cruise speed. The group has been joined by three stragglers.”
“It is how large, now?”
“Fourteen vessels, headed by the rocket cruiser Kirov. There are several Kotlin Sam class destroyers and two troop carriers. The balance appear to be service and supply ships.”
“And the other group?”
The pointer slipped across the screen to a spot 300 kilometers due east of Daneborg, Greenland.
“The American and British task force still contains seventeen ships, Admiral. They have not moved farther north in the last eight hours, but appear to be on track to meet the Soviet group.”
“Operation Whale, they are calling it?”
“It was advertised as such in the newspapers. A joint naval exercise.”
“But no more details since that announcement?”
“No, Herr Admiral.”
“I do not like the presence of the two salvage ships in the Anglo force,” Gerhard Schmidt said. “Nor do I like seeing the Tarawa … ”
The Tarawa was an amphibious assault ship, with a capability of landing 1,800 soldiers by helicopter and landing craft. The reconnaissance flights had detected no large contingents of troops aboard the ship, but they could easily be kept below decks.
“Tell me, Rolf. What is your estimate for the minimum amount of time it would take either of those task forces to reach us?”
“The slowest of the ships can make eighteen knots, Admiral. It would take about fifteen hours for the British-American force, nineteen hours for the Soviet group.”
They were much closer than Schmidt liked. He also did not care to be outnumbered almost two-to-one, even if some of the ships were merely noncombatants.
“The aircraft?” he asked.
The pointer flew over the map. “Colonel Weismann has just two aircraft up at the moment, here and he
re. He continues to insist upon using his strength at night. One of the Eurofighters detected an airborne warning craft here, over the eastern coast of Greenland. It is probably supporting the British-American task force. Both task forces have helicopters up, ranging in front of them. Antisubmarine warfare craft, probably.”
“If we stopped the fifth battle group right where they are, the Americans and Soviets would intercept them sometime tomorrow,” Schmidt said.
“Do you want to do that, Admiral?”
“No. I want them here, so that we have three battle groups on the southern side of the well field. All right, Rolf, thank you.”
As soon as the Kapitän left, Schmidt said, “Lieutenant, locate General Eisenach for me. I believe he is still on Platform One.”
Five minutes passed before the telephone at his side buzzed. He picked up the receiver.
“Felix,” Schmidt said, “I want to bring you up to date on those task forces.”
It took him two minutes.
And as he had in their last two conversations, Eisenach brushed them off, like he would a fly. “You worry too much, Gerhard. It is simply a show of force. The Americans could not breach our security with their airplanes, so now they will march across our front door with their ships. I am not frightened. Are you frightened?”
“Yes, Felix, I am. Amphibious assault ships scare me. Salvage ships scare me.”
“Why?” the general asked. “It is only a pitiful armada, assembled with vessels that were close by at the time they needed them.”
He partially agreed with the general. If Gerhard Schmidt wanted to put together a show of force, he would do it with seven or eight warships, not seventeen ships that included unarmed vessels.
“Nonetheless, Felix, I believe you should talk to the High Command. I want permission to unleash my guns, and my submarines, against hostile vessels if I need to do so.”
“Then you have it, Gerhard.”
Schmidt wondered when Eisenach had obtained that kind of authority, the authority to start a war.
“I want it in writing.”
“Then you shall have it in writing. You will not need it, however.”
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