It was better to play the wait-and-see game, to allow the fly to come to the spider.
They would come and the spider would unleash its missiles from ambush.
He looked forward to it.
General Oleg Druzhinin and Sergeant Nikita Kasartskin had been in the Global Communications room for hours. The communications specialist had all of the scanners operating in tandem with the tape recorders.
Kasartskin had been jumping in at intervals, randomly testing frequencies in the HF, UHF, and VHF spectrums.
Once every hour, Druzhinin had left the center to walk the runway. All of the air crews were in the cockpits of their MiG and Sukhoi fighters, and their ground crews and start carts rested in close proximity. The teams who winched the camouflage hills from the runway remained close to the winches, slapping at mosquitoes. Druzhinin had called the alert as soon as Chairman Shelepin had gone public.
But now it seemed the grand announcement was less public than planned.
“Nothing, Comrade General,” Kasartskin said for possibly the twentieth time. “None of the major networks has broken the news to the world.”
Druzhinin picked up the telephone beside his chair and called Phnom Penh.
After the formalities of code recognition, Sergei Pavel asked, “You have heard something?”
“No, we have not. I suspect the recipients of the tape are attempting to verify conditions before calling press conferences.”
“The problem,” Druzhinin said, “is one of feedback. We do not know whether the intended recipients actually received the tapes, and if they did, whether they have bothered to view them as yet.”
“Or if they believe their eyes,” Pavel added. “They may simply be trying to verify the information. Hold on while I talk to our friend.”
The telephone transmitter on the other end of the line was muffled while Pavel spoke to Shelepin.
Druzhinin was very concerned that the Americans did not yet know of the nuclear threat. They had already attacked the space station once, according to Bryntsev. They might foolishly attack again, precipitating a launch. Ten cities might die. London, Paris, Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Beijing, Rome, Bonn, and Geneva were the first targets.
And that was not the intent.
The intent was to maintain that precarious balance of power. If they were required to expend their first ten warheads, everyone lost. Certainly, before they could bring the next rocket on-line, Colonel McKenna’s raiders would overpower Maslov and destroy Soyuz Fifty.
They desperately needed to have the world’s governments in a state of disarray and fear, giving them the time to lift the remaining rocket components into orbit.
Pavel came back to the telephone, “We are going to send tapes to the major news services.”
“Excellent. We should have done that in the beginning.”
“Yes. The media has less restraint than diplomats.”
Wilbur Conover watched the HUD as the rocket motors shut down, seeking the proper green indications and the expected readouts.
“Altitude three-one-one miles, Con Man,” Abrams reported. “Velocity two-two-point-nine. That should do it.”
“Roger, Do-Wop. I’m giving you two Phoenix IIs and four Wasp IIs. Be careful with them.”
Conover reached for the armaments panel and activated the missiles.
“Got ’em,” Abrams said. “Going visual.”
The video came up on the screen. Just stars.
“Delta Blue, Yellow,” he said on Tac Two.
“Blue.”
“We’re in position, tracking.”
“Roger that,” McKenna said. “We’re seventeen out.”
“Copy seventeen minutes.”
Delta Blue was on a direct course for the Soyuz space station, exposing herself as bait. Delta Yellow had taken an odd-numbered orbit. People — and hopefully the opposition — generally and subconsciously selected even numbers, 280, 290, three hundred, and the odd orbit might give Conover and Abrams a slight edge over being seen or expected.
“We’re sixteen-point-two away from the coordinates,” Abrams said.
That put them a long way ahead of Delta Blue, but because of her lower orbit, Delta Blue had a shorter track to follow and she was moving at a slower velocity.
“I hope the son of a bitch is there,” Abrams said.
“Roger that,” Conover said.
According to Pearson, the pilot was likely some ex-Soviet named Bryntsev or Maslov or Nikitin. She had put them in alphabetical order.
“And it’s nice to finally know who the bad guys are,” Conover added.
“New World Order? Stupid name, Con Man.”
“Are we on full magnification?”
“Hey, guy. Right beside the screen is this…”
“I know. It just doesn’t look right.”
The screen still displayed only stars.
They were inverted, and the Earth filled their overhead view. With the sun currently on the bottom of the MakoShark, the canopy and upper wings were in deep shadow. He could barely see Shalbot’s markings.
The ID factor had been Benny Shalbot’s idea. Just before they had launched, he had approached McKenna, “Colonel, you guys may fuck each other over.”
“How’s that, Benny?”
“No markings on the birds. You get in a rough-and-tumble dog fight, Delta Green looks like anybody else. We need to splash some paint on you.”
“Not very stealthy, Benny,” Munoz had said.
“If you got to see each other to fight anyway, Major, who gives a shit about stealth?”
“Do what you will, Benny,” McKenna had said.
Since painting didn’t work well in a weightless environment, Shalbot had used six-inch-wide white tape. On the top and bottom of each wing, he had created a large symbol, visible for miles in sunlight. Delta Blue was adorned with triangles, and Delta Yellow carried squares. As Red and Orange docked for service and rest, Shalbot would dress them up, too.
“You ready for this, Do-Wop?”
“Soon as I find a decent radio station,” Abrams said.
McKenna rolled the left wing down toward the Earth.
“Good damned idea, jefe. I wouldn’t have thought about it.”
“It just now crossed my mind, Tiger”
With the wing-down attitude, the sun didn’t directly light up the symbols on the wings. The upper wingtip was directed at the sun. If Bryntsev, or whoever it was, was in the area, and above them, the symbols gave away the strategy They were there only to identify the spacecraft to an ally, and therefore, there must be another American MakoShark around.
It would make the New World Order pilot suspicious and more cautious.
If he was even there.
“Delta Blue, Semaphore.”
“Go Semaphore.”
“Sitrep?”
Munoz responded, “One-one-two miles to target, based on expected celestial coordinates of the target. We’re not using radar. Closure rate ten miles per minute”
“Roger approximately ten minutes to contact,” Brackman said. “We now have a crisis committee, Blue.”
Wonderful, McKenna thought.
“I am the liaison with you.”
“Some wishes are granted, Semaphore.”
“Don’t get persnickety.”
“That’s a current-usage word?” McKenna asked.
“Dates me, doesn’t it?”
“Has the committee looked at Delta Orange’s daylight pictures?”
“Roger. They acknowledge the existence of a clandestine base in Kampuchea. They have asked the United Nations to send a direct message to the Kampuchean government, requesting that Shelepin and the New World Order be expelled. They’re also weighing some other pros and cons at the moment.”