“Sorry I’m late,” Brackman said. “We had head winds.”
“Or excess baggage,” Mays said, looking at Brackman’s waistline.
“Jesus, Harv. You know how many calories I’m on, already? I lost two pounds.”
“In the last month?” Mays laughed.
The three flag officers shook hands and settled into the conversational grouping of couch and chairs in one corner of Cross’s office. Brackman opened his briefcase and placed it on the low oak cocktail table in front of him while Marilyn filled coffee cups and passed them around.
After exchanging several routine updates, Cross said, “Okay, let’s get to it. You said something about Germany, Marvin.”
“Yes, I did. My gal Pearson, who’s the intel officer aboard Themis, came up with it.”
Brackman passed out printed copies of the maps Pearson had displayed at Cheyenne Mountain, then photos of the well, the aircraft, and the ships. He completed his briefing in less than five minutes.
“This the only shot you have of the well?” Mays asked.
“At the moment, yes. I don’t have a satellite in position for a better view, and won’t have for another nine days. If we change the orbit on a KH-11, we might well alert some people we don’t want alerted. However, I’ll have a close-up for you as soon as McKenna makes a run over the area.”
“It’s difficult to judge the scale,” Cross said, “but this dome gives the impression of being larger than necessary.”
“Yes, it does, in comparison with the size of the helo pad. And yet, given the weather conditions, it may be mostly insulation.”
“Maybe,” Cross said.
“We’re hoping to get a snapshot that includes a chopper on the deck or a man outside the dome, so we can do some measuring.”
“You said this has been going on for three years?” Mays asked.
“Correct.”
“And we never cared before?”
“Everybody drills for oil,” Brackman pointed out.
“All right,” Cross said. “McKenna’s going to shoot some pictures. What else should we be doing? I’m not going to the National Security Council or the President with what you’ve got here.”
“No, I don’t want to jump the gun,” Brackman said. “I would like a CIA assessment of current German energy sources and uses. Let’s find out if these wells are on-line and pumping oil to the mainland.”
“Let me talk to Krandall over at Langley,” Mays said. “I can get something quietly.”
“Good,” Cross agreed. “And I might put in a call to General Sheremetevo. We’ve been pretty open with each other lately, and perhaps his people have some ideas.”
Vitaly Sheremetevo was a deputy commander in chief of the Soviet air forces, in charge of the PVO (Protivovoz-dushnaya oborona Strany), the largest air defense force in the world.
“We don’t want to raise any alarms,” Harvey Mays said. “Those people over on the Hill come unglued anytime we bitch about a possible military buildup in Germany.”
Brackman agreed with Mays. Some people in seats of power were too willing to believe the best about the intentions of adversaries, past, present, and future.
“Still,” the admiral said, his eyes fixed in thought, “our position is worse if we spring surprises on the politicos. Now that I’ve had my second thought, I believe I will speak to the President. It might be a good idea to have State query the Germans about, say, the success of their venture in the Greenland Sea. That way, we’re on record as having pursued a diplomatic channel.”
Brackman wasn’t sure he would do it that way, but then he wasn’t the boss, either.
“Hey, Cancha?”
Maj. Frank Dimatta spoke into his helmet mike. “Got something, Nitro?”
“Two somethings. Bearing oh-four-three, we’ve got a solid return. It must be the Air France 747 Josie keeps nagging me about.”
Capt. George “Nitro Fizz” Williams called Delta Green’s on-board computer “Josie.” For no reason that Dimatta had ever figured out. Before they departed Themis, Williams had programmed Josie with the scheduled commercial flights in their area of operations. It wouldn’t do to latch onto the wrong bird.
“And the other?”
“Could be our boy. He’s at our bearing three-four-nine, ninety miles. And his heading is in the general direction of Cape Town.”
“You want a visual pass, first?” Dimatta asked.
“Nah. If it’s the wrong one, I just won’t let go of the Wasp.”
They were lightly armed this trip, just two Wasp II missiles on each of two pylons. The Wasp was a multipurpose missile developed strictly for the MakoShark. While the ordnance pylons could take the modified Phoenix and Sidewinder missiles, as well as pods housing twenty millimeter rotary machine guns, the Wasp II had proved versatile. It had a range of seventy-five miles compared to the Phoenix’s 125 miles or the Sidewinder’s eleven miles. It covered the range at Mach 2.5. The Wasp had retractable fins and a variable exhaust nozzle, useful in low-or no-atmosphere conditions. Targeting was by independent radar-seeker or by visual control, guided by the video camera in the missile’s nose. The WSO could watch the target on his panel CRT and guide the missile toward it by shifting his helmet.
The warhead was composed of twenty-one pounds of high explosive inside a cone of machined metal containing depleted uranium. It could pierce armored plate, and when it detonated, the cone, scored on the inside surface like a jigsaw puzzle, became shrapnel that ripped and tore at anything in its path.
“I’m not going to arm the warhead, Cancha.”
“Fine by me,” Dimatta said. He was an Italian-American from New Jersey who had served as an advisor with NATO forces, in addition to his six years as an air force test pilot. He was dark, easygoing, and a lover of exotic foods. The only thing that really got his adrenaline going was downing hostile aircraft.
“Seventy miles, and I put him at two-eight-thousand,” Nitro told him. “Let’s take her down.”
They had been coasting along at 70,000 feet above the dark side of the dark continent after their recon run over Afghanistan and Iran. The outboard pylon on the starboard wing carried a photo reconnaissance pod. It contained high-resolution cameras shooting 2402-type and infrared films.
Far to the northeast, night would be falling on Mali and Ghana. Below, and to his left behind him, Dimatta could see the lights of Kananga, Zaire. The lights of other small towns and villages were visible, too, but they were infrequent and spread wide apart. Africa was mostly dark.
At 30,000 feet, Dimatta started bringing the speed back until he dropped below the sonic threshold. He saw a flash of cream lightning against the earth. The moon reflecting off a piece of the Sankuru River.
“All right, good,” Williams said. “He’s making two-two-oh knots. That’s about right.”
Their target was an elderly Beechcraft Super-18, a reliable twin-engined light cargo or passenger plane forty years past its prime. Pearson’s information had this one headed toward a rowdy tribe in South Africa with a load of AK-47s, RPGs, a few flamethrowers, and a million rounds of ammunition.
The screen in front of Dimatta showed the target clearly, about forty miles away. The Air France jetliner was to the east now, a hundred miles away.
“You think Pierre’s going to see this, Nitro?”
“Nah. Not a Wasp trail at this distance. Hey, this guy’s going down in rain forest so thick, they’ll never find the pieces.”
“ELS?”
“Emergency Locator Signal? On an old C-fifty-four? You got to be kidding, Cancha. Even if that plane went down, the owners wouldn’t want it found.”
“Yeah. Okay. Cancha give me a heading?” Frank Dimatta had picked up his nickname in the air force as a result of his frequent use of the crunched words, “can cha.” Since then, he had consciously tried to avoid it, but it slipped out once in a while.