Turcotte grimaced. The meat comment was getting real old, but now was not the time to face it down. He followed Prague and joined him in the helicopter. Prague took the seat up front next to the pilot, while Turcotte had the entire backseat to himself. The doors were off and the cold night air swirled inside, making Turcotte regret he had not put on long underwear. He wished he had been better briefed on what was going to happen. He zipped his black Gore-Tex jacket up tight over his coveralls and took the headset that was hanging on the roof and placed it on, over the small plug already in his ear for the FM radio on the team frequency.
Because he was on the same bird as Prague — the mission commander — Turcotte was immediately plugged into the mission’s secure satellite communications traffic as they winged their way to the southwest over the fields of Nebraska.
“Nightscape Six, this is Cube Six. Status. Over.” The voice on the other end sounded familiar to Turcotte, but he couldn’t quite place who Cube Six was.
Prague replied from the front seat. “This is Nightscape Six. En route to Oscar Romeo Papa. Will hold there. Over.”
Turcotte followed the military terminology easily — ORP stood for “objective rally point,” the last place friendly forces held before hitting an objective. Except in this case, Turcotte still didn’t have a clue what the objective was, nor was he impressed with how friendly the forces around him were, if Prague was to serve as the example.
The other, deep voice continued. “Roger, this is Cube Six. Break. Bouncer Three, status? Over.”
A new voice came on the air. “This is Bouncer Three. Airborne and en route. Over.”
“Roger. Wait for my command. Cube Six out.”
The pilot of the AH-6 swept even lower over the cornfields, the UH-60 Blackhawk following just to the rear and above. The other AH-6 flew trail. The corn gave way briefly to pasture with cattle breaking in all directions as the helicopters came over, then the terrain turned back to corn. Turcotte had never seen this many fields, even in Germany. It seemed like all of Nebraska was one big checkerboard of cultivation and ranching. Through his night vision goggles he could see an occasional patch of trees off in the distance, sometimes with lights peeking through the trees, indicating that was where the farmers and ranchers lived. What are we going after out here? Turcotte wondered.
The pilot pulled back on the cyclic and reduced throttle. Turcotte could see Prague checking their location on a ground positioning receiver (GPR). Prague gave a hold signal to the pilot.
“Cube Six, this is Nightscape Six. At Oscar Papa Romeo. Request final clearance. Over.”
“This is Cube Six. Eye in the sky still shows you are clear for a twelve kilometer radius. No traffic within eighteen klicks. Proceed. I say again, proceed. Out.”
“Roger. Out.” Prague pointed out the windshield and they were swooping across the dark sky again. “Phase one initiated. Start the watch.”
“Sir, we’ve got a shadow on Bouncer Three.”
“A what?” Gullick spun around in his command chair.
“What do you mean a shadow?”
Major Quinn pointed at the screen. “There’s a bogey right behind Three. We didn’t pick it up before because it’s so small, but something’s following Bouncer Three. I’ve checked the tapes and it’s been there ever since Three left the hangar. Must have been somewhere in the vicinity when Three took off.” “What is it?” Gullick demanded.
“I don’t know, sir. We were only able to catch it by tracking satellite and infrared signature.”
The Cube was hooked in to the U.S. Space Command’s Missile Warning Center, located inside Cheyenne Mountain outside Colorado Springs. The Space Command was responsible for the Defense Support Program (DSP) satellite system. DSP satellites blanketed the entire surface of the earth from an altitude of over twenty thousand miles up in geosynchronous orbits. The system had originally been developed to detect ICBM launches during the Cold War. During the Gulf War it had picked up every SCUD launch and proved so effective that the military had further refined the entire system to be effective enough to give real-time warnings to local commanders at the tactical level — a valuable system that those in the Cube could tap into. Through the other members of Majic-12 Gullick had access to systems like DSP and many others.
Every three seconds the DSP system downloaded an infrared map of the earth’s surface and surrounding airspace.
Most of the data was simply stored on tape in the Warning Center, unless, of course, the computer detected a missile launch, or, as in this case, an authorized agency requested a direct line and keyed in a specific target area to be for warded on a real-time basis.
“Is it a Fast Walker?” Gullick asked, referring to the code name for unidentified valid IR sources that the system occasionally picked up and could not be explained.
“It’s definitely a bogey, sir. It doesn’t match anything on record. It’s too small to be even a jet aircraft.”
The unspoken question was, what was that small yet fast enough to stay on the tail of Bouncer Three, which was moving at over thirty-five hundred miles an hour toward Nebraska?
“Put it on up front,” Gullick ordered, turning his seat back to the main screen. He briefly touched the right side of his skull, then looked at the hand as he pulled it away. It was shaking slightly. Gullick gripped the edge of his chair to stop that.
Quinn transferred the information to the large screen in the front of the room. There was a small glowing dot just behind the larger dot indicating Bouncer Three.
“How far behind Three is it?”
“Hard to tell, sir. Probably about ten miles or so.” “Have you told Three?”
“Yes, sir.”
Gullick spoke into the boom mike just in front of his lips, keying the send button strapped to his belt. “Bouncer Three, this is Cube Six. Do you have a visual on the bogey? Over.”
“This is Three. Negative. We see nothing. Whatever it is, it’s too far back. Over.”
“This is Six. Give me some evasive maneuvers. Over.”
The pilot of Three answered. “Wilco. Wait one. Over.”
On the screen the dot representing Bouncer Three suddenly darted to the right just north of Salt Lake City. The smaller dot just as quickly followed. A quick series of zigzags didn’t faze the bogey.
“Should I order an abort, sir?” Quinn asked.
“No,” Gullick said. “Let’s ride this out. Get Aurora on alert. I want to be on top of this bogey.” He keyed the radio. “Three, this is Six. Forget about it. Just continue the mission. I’ll take care of the situation from this end. Out.”
Quinn’s worry showed through and it irritated Gullick. “Should I inform Nightscape Six?”
“Negative, Major. Let these people do their job and let me worry about the bogey. You let me do the thinking and informing around here. You got that?” Gullick glared at the junior officer.
“Yes, sir!”
“We have multiple heat signatures to the left,” the pilot of the AH-6 announced, immediately swooping in that direction.
“Go get ’em, cowboy,” Prague yelled into the intercom as he flipped up his goggles. He reached into the backseat, across Turcotte’s lap, and grabbed a rifle that had been strapped down there. Hooking his arm into the sling, Prague leaned out of the helicopter, his safety harness keeping him from falling out to the ground below. Turcotte leaned forward and watched the same scene that Prague was following — cattle scattering in all directions from the sound of the helicopters.
Prague put the rifle to his shoulder and looked through the night scope mounted on top. He fired twice and two of the cows collapsed immediately. “Nerve agent,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at Turcotte. “Knocks ’em down, but leaves no trace. We recover the dart.”