“Right away, Colonel.”
As she waited, the two German planes joined up again, and the whole scenario drifted off the screen.
Macklin came back to her. “Colonel Pearson, the two in formation are at five hundred knots, heading three-five-oh. Five-two per cent probable Tornados. The aircraft in the north is nine-five percent probable MiG-25. Heading zero-nine-nine, speed Mach two point six. The other aircraft is seven-five percent probable Fulcrum, heading zero-nine-four, speed Mach one point nine.”
“Give me an intersecting vector on the MiG’s, Macklin.”
He read off the coordinates. “That’ll be in the Barents Sea, north of Sereya, Norway, Colonel.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. That’s all.”
“Now the Soviets are involved?” Amber asked.
“Looks that way, Donna. You want to raise General Thorpe for me at Cheyenne Mountain?”
Ten minutes passed before Thorpe was located.
“Hello, Amy. Something up?”
She told him about the confrontation. “We think they were Soviet aircraft. It seems likely that they were on a reconnaissance mission.”
“That would be right,” Thorpe said. “Colonel Volontov’s people are probably on the job.”
“You don’t trust our information?”
Thorpe laughed, but it was hollow. “Not that at all, Amy. You like to make decisions based on the most information available, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said reluctantly.
“That’s all that’s taking place here. But you said there was a missile fired?”
“Yes. Surface-to-air, ship-launched.”
“All right, I’ll look into that. One other thing, here. The CIA interviewed the captain of that Greenpeace ship. Boat, really.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Yes and no. The captain, a guy named Nichols, is a pretty ardent fellow, from the reports. And he wants to bring charges against some German major for firing a missile at him.”
“He say why they were that far north?” Pearson asked. “Chasing a rumor. We’ve only got secondhand hearsay on this, Amy, but apparently Nichols talked to some fishing boat captain from Greenland who said the fish were migrating out of the Greenland Sea. Nichols suspects oil spillage, and he was trying to take water samples.”
“Maybe we should get the samples for him?” Pearson said. “Or for us.”
“General Brackman’s going to take it up with the Joint Chiefs. I think that we’ll try to get a submarine in there, Amy.”
“If they’re shooting at airplanes, the Germans may attempt to run a submarine off, too, General. They might get pretty upset.”
“Well, yeah, that’s got us a little worried.”
Compartment A-47, the exercise room, did not have a screen, so the squadron members crowded into the Command Center for their briefing.
All of the available tethers were in use, and several people floated free, drifting with the air-conditioning currents. South America, verdantly bright, slithered across the porthole.
McKenna hung onto the curtain outside his office cubicle and watched as Overton raised his hand to silence the babble. Donna Amber had her head stuck through the curtained doorway to the Radio Shack.
“Ladies, gentlemen, and weapons system operators,” Overton said, drawing a laugh. The general had once been a WSO. He had also ejected from a Phantom hit by a SAM-7 over Hanoi and spent a couple of hours bobbing in the South China Sea. “Our interest in the Greenland Sea in the last few days seems to have generated a lot of activity. Colonel Pearson will tell us about it.”
Pearson quickly went through the details of the Greenpeace boat, the State Department’s inability to elicit information from the Germans in regard to the wells, and the Soviet overflight. McKenna had been aware of all but the Red Air Force’s mission.
Tony Munoz asked, “This a cooperative thing, Amy? With the Soviets?”
“All I know, Tony, is that General Sheremetevo has assigned the Fifth Interceptor Wing to gathering information. During their first flight this morning, the Hamburg launched a missile at Colonel Volontov, the wing commander. It was apparently meant as a warning.”
Munoz spun to look at McKenna. “This is gonna get out of hand, Snake Eyes.”
“I talked to General Brackman this morning,” McKenna said. ‘The President has signed a contingency order for us.”
“Fire if fired upon?”
“Yes, except that it has to be cleared through me. Everybody keep that in mind.”
“We going to have to dodge a bunch of Soviet airplanes?” Conover asked.
Pearson responded to the question. “The 5th Interceptor Wing has been moved to Murmansk, and the unit flies Fulcrums. I understand that there are also a couple of Foxbats assigned to the wing, and there will be tankers in the area of the Barents Sea. Yes, you need to watch out for them.”
Dimatta looked more than a little pained. “We’re buddy-buddy, now?”
“For the time being, Frank, yes,” Pearson said.
Dimatta turned to McKenna, the question still in his raised eyebrow.
“That’s right, Cancha. For the time being.”
The look that Pearson gave him suggested that she didn’t think much of the requirement for McKenna’s squadron to double-check her information with the squadron commander.
They all seemed a little disgruntled, but they settled down as Pearson went through selected pictures from the recon flight of the night before. One by one, she brought them up on the screen, pointing out features. She started with Dimatta and William’s run over the oil fields.
“There’s nothing new to report on the wells themselves, but there has been an interesting change in the makeup of the naval ships. We got photos of fifteen ships, including three seagoing tugs, which we hadn’t seen before. New, also, is the fact that the missile cruiser Stuttgart has joined the fleet. Further, the naval force has been reconfigured into battle groups of three ships. Either a missile cruiser or a missile frigate accompanied by two destroyers. Something has changed the philosophy, but this is the kind of thing I would expect, after reading the bios on Admiral Gerhard Schmidt. The posture is a great deal more defensive.
“On the sonobuoys that Delta Green deployed, we haven’t yet picked up much. A couple ships passing close to number six. Number eight picked up a submarine, the Black Forest, according to the screw signature, which is their newest nuclear sub. We aren’t certain that every sonobuoy is located exactly on the pipeline route, but the Black Forest could well be patrolling the pipeline.”
“You said the navy is going to send a sub in there?” Overton asked.
“Yes. I passed this information on to General Thorpe at NORAD. He is forwarding it to CINCSUBLANT.”
“Good.”
“All right, on to Delta Yellow’s flight. Overall, we didn’t find much changed in the industrial or military centers. New Amsterdam has enough parked aircraft to support the information that four wings are stationed there.” Pearson brought up a new picture, an enlarged photo of the runways at New Amsterdam. McKenna had landed there once, but it seemed like a long time ago.
With a collapsible pointer, she indicated the alert shack at the end of Runway 27. “This is the twenty-four-hour standby facility, with, as you’ll notice, revetments for two aircraft. There have been alterations since our last photos of New Amsterdam, which were about three months ago. Back to the bottom right, here, about two hundred yards from the alert shack, new revetments have been built, and nine house trailers have been moved into position. Judging from the number and type of equipment deployed — Tornadoes, Eurofighters, transports, and helicopters — we believe that this is the 20th Special Air Group.”