Delta Green - страница 13

George “Nitro Fizz” Williams, Dimatta’s backseater, frowned. He wouldn’t like giving up the Delta Green designation. It was a superstitious trait — even McKenna had renamed his new craft Delta Blue after the original Delta Blue had been shot down.

“George?” McKenna asked.

“Whatever you say, Colonel”

Williams wouldn’t normally call McKenna “Colonel,” except in a public setting. He was pretty much reality-based, though he went overboard on the nutrition thing. He was thirty-three, tall at six-two, and the startlingly red hair and deep green eyes had come from some Irish ancestry, though he denied it to Conover, who was Irish. When he wasn’t messing around with all of his electronic gadgetry in the backseat of a MakoShark, he was messing around with the electronic gadgetry he built as a hobby. His cubicle aboard Themis and his apartment landside were stuffed with stereos, television sets, computers, bar code readers, VCRs, radar detectors, and even radars he had designed and built himself.

“Spit it out, George,” McKenna ordered.

“Well, damn. We ought to rename the new bird Green.”

“No,” McKenna said. “As far as we know, Delta Green is still operational. She’ll stay Green until we know one way or the other.”

Williams shrugged.

“Next. Will, what’s your status?”

Conover sat up in his hard wooden seat and said, “We’re topped up and ready to go.”

“Weapons?”

“We’ve got practice Wasp IIs aboard, Kevin. We were just starting our training series in the desert when Overton diverted us here.”

“Change them out for live missiles, just in case, and install a Chain Gun pod.”

“We’ve got permission?” Conover asked.

“Not yet, but we will have by the end of the day.”

Jack “Do-Wop” Abrams, Conover’s WSO, broke in. “We’re going to shoot her down, Kevin?”

Dimatta groaned.

“That’ll be up to the brass, Jack. My immediate priority is to locate her. Based on the assumption that it’s not wise to let anyone — whoever it is — have a spacecraft that is equal to our own and can be used against us, I recommended to Brackman that we destroy it.”

Williams groaned.

“The general, however, read me a minor riot act which included items such as cost-per-bird, public relations, and congressional thumbs which might be turned down on our whole act.”

“So Brackman’s kicking it upstairs for a decision?” Abrams asked.

Abrams’s bushy mustache had grown even longer, now covering his upper lip, and just then, it seemed to quiver. The mustache was compensation for the hair which had disappeared before he reached the age of forty. His pate was smooth, but his face was lined with the worry he devoted to almost any issue. He was chronic about worrying, and it was reflected in his sharp hazel eyes. Originally a New Yorker, Abrams had graduated from the University of California at Berkeley prior to entering the Air Force. Conover thought that Berkeley had been the root of his worrying. The only thing that took his mind off his imagined troubles was outdated music, the source of his nickname, “Do-Wop.”

“Let’s just say, Jack, that my recommendation, along with General Brackman’s observations, will be considered by the appropriate commands.”

“He kicked it upstairs,” Abrams concluded. “We can figure on somebody making a political decision”

“Which will likely be the wrong one, amigos.” Munoz added. The Arizonian was slouched in a corner chair, missing his normally ready grin.

“Our current mission is purely location,” McKenna said. “Tony, why don’t you go make sure Delta Blue is getting her service? And hot weaponry.”

McKenna was definitely in a bad mood, Conover thought.

“Will, you get your ordnance changed out, then stand by for an operational plan from Pearson. I’ll call Country Girl and brief her. Frank, head for Hot Country.”

The group broke up, more glum than they had been in a long time. Generally, they were a happy-go-lucky bunch, which Abrams worried about, of course. One of the great things about working for 1st Aerospace, outside of flying the best damned bird ever built, was flying with the best damned pilots and backseaters around. They had come to know each other so well that they had learned to anticipate the actions and reactions of one another.