“Though not for much longer,” Oberlin said. “If the first test flight is successful, the man could be relinquished to private enterprise.”
“Or elsewhere,” the general said. “He has insulted me often enough.”
“I can see to it,” Oberlin offered.
“Please do.”
“Somewhere in the North Sea?”
“That would be pleasant,” Eisenach said, his mind already picturing a man stepping out of a helicopter at 2,000 feet over the sea. Not stepping out willingly, of course. “Now, what surprises do the intelligence staff have for us today?”
“Mostly, they will be complaining about Schmidt’s decision to launch a SAM at the Soviet airplane. They will say it draws unnecessary attention to the wells. The feeling is that reconnaissance flights do not reveal a great deal to the observers.”
“Still,” Eisenach said, “it is disturbing that the Soviets even mounted a reconnaissance mission over the Greenland Sea. Their normal haunts are the Barents and North Seas.”
“True. And speaking of the seas, the Black Forest reported a possible sonar contact with a submarine in the Greenland Sea.”
“Identification?”
“No. The contact was momentary.”
“That is not a normal passage for either American or Soviet submarines, Maximillian.”
“No, General, it is not.”
“Unless it is another of their celebrated treks under the North Pole.”
“Yes, that could be it. Then, too, there have been inquiries about the wells, channeled through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
“I see. Who inquires?”
“The Americans, the British, the Soviets, and the government of Greenland.”
“All instigated at the request of the Americans, no doubt, so as to throw off suspicion on the Americans alone.”
“Perhaps, General. Or perhaps it is the Soviets who are behind it.”
“And that Greenpeace boat captain? Has he complained to anyone?”
“Not as yet,” Oberlin said. “We thought that they might go to the United Nations and squeal like pigs, but they have been uncharacteristically quiet”
“Mmmm.”
“Then, too, General, these information requests have a new requirement. They demand information about the wells prior to a deadline at twenty-two hundred hours.”
“Or?”
“There is no ‘or’ stated, Herr General.”
“But it is implied. I think, Maximillian, that it would be wise to notify Weismann. Have him maintain continual air coverage tonight.”
“Very well, General. And Admiral Schmidt?”
“No. He’s done enough damage so far.”
In Hangar One, McKenna and Munoz watched as the two ordnance technicians installed the Wasps. There were four of the missiles to be mounted on the right-hand inboard pylon. The port pylon mounted a gun pod.
They had spent most of the day, after Volontov had taken off on his return trip to Murmansk, with 1st Lt. Mabry Evans, the ordnance specialist, preparing the missiles. The Wasp was designed with retracting fins which opened outward on launch in atmospheric conditions. In space, where the fins were useless, the gimbal-based rocket motor provided directional control. The first modifications involved replacing the fins and the motor with fixed units. Stationary fins and a stationary motor, if they were ever recovered, could not give rise to speculations about the missile being a space-based device.
TNT charges had been placed in the electronics/guidance compartment, to obliterate the black boxes upon impact. After the missile detonated, there wouldn’t be an integrated circuit or silicon wafer in pieces large enough to identify.
The Wasp warheads were interchangeable, depending upon the objective — air-to-air or air-to-surface. Typically, a Wasp was prepared in the air-to-air configuration, with a warhead containing twenty-one pounds of high explosive.
Evans had asked, “What are we penetrating, Colonel?”
“That’s a problem, Mabry” He showed the man a close-up photo of a dome. “They’re flat, triangular panels, fifteen feet on a side. Each one is joined to the next by a four-inch-wide strip of metal. Along each edge of the strip are bolt heads, spaced one foot apart, and staggered from one edge to the other. We’re pretty damned sure that behind the triangular panels is insulation, then probably an interior panel. Pearson believes the panels are aluminum, rather than fiberglass, but we don’t know how thick the insulation layer is, or what it’s composed of.”
“Each section would be prefabricated at some factory, then brought to the site and bolted together?”
“That would be my guess,” McKenna said.
“Temperatures in the area?”
“Wintertime, they get down to around eighty below wind chill,” Munoz told him.
“That would be a relief, after being stationed in Chad,” Evans said. “I’m going to say that they’re using a Styrofoam core, sandwiched between, and bonded to, quarter-inch aluminum sheeting, then. That would keep them light enough to handle easily during construction, and yet provide rigidity. To combat those temperatures with a minimal expenditure of heating energy, I’d think the Styrofoam would be at least a couple of feet thick.”
“However,” McKenna said, “according to the IO, we’re less concerned here with keeping cold temperatures out than we are with hiding excessive heat within.”
“Hiding it from… ”
“Infrared measurement.”
“I see. Well, hell, Colonel. I need the interior temperature.”
“Unknown. But the hotshots say it could go as high as six hundred degrees.”
“Fahrenheit?”
“Right.”
“And we’re hiding it? Damn, offhand, that could require Styrofoam walls maybe ten feet thick.”
“Let’s work off that assumption, then, Mabry.”
“How big a hole do you want?”
“Amy-baby,” Munoz said, “would like to remove three triangular sections.”
“No way in hell we’re going to do that. It’s got to be five, if we manage a direct hit on an intersection. Triangles intersect five at a time.”
“Do five,” McKenna said. “Then there’s another itsy-bitsy problem.”
“Of course there is,” Evans said. “What?”
“We strongly suspect that the domes are compartmentalized inside. Partitions, divisions, whatever. We won’t get much of a reading if we open up a section over a dormitory.”
“So you want three or four holes, five panels each.”
“That’d be nice.”
Evans calculated for a while, then said, “What I’m going to do is preset a proximity instruction in the missile computers. That will keep the missiles about twenty feet from each other on the flight in. I’ll slave three of them to the first missile. You’ll have to launch all four at the same time, but the pattern of impact will be spread eighty feet apart.”
“Good,” Munoz said.
“No way in hell you’re going to actually hit an intersection of panels.”
“You questioning my marksmanship?” Munoz asked. Evans just grinned at the WSO. “We don’t want to kill anyone, I suspect?”
“No, not if we can help it,” McKenna said.
“I’ll use fifty pounds of HE in a soft metal cone, and I’ll also use a proximity fuse setting of three feet. Those hummers will go off before actually contacting the dome, but the concussion should do the job. Providing there isn’t a supporting partition directly under the panels affected.”
“The domes are designed to be self-supporting, from what I understand,” McKenna said. “If there’s a partition of some kind directly under an impact site, it wouldn’t be a load-bearing wall.”
“Maybe the wall crumbles, then,” Evans said.
“You’re overloading the warhead,” Munoz said. “What’s that going to do to me?”