Delta Green - страница 18

“But they could have entered the base earlier than that, couldn’t they?” Overton asked.

“Certainly, General. Any time during the night. Then just waited until Delta Green landed.” She knew what he was getting at. If they rode their hang gliders into the base sifter Delta Green’s unannounced arrival, then they likely had been signalled by someone from within the base. The security examination would have to determine whether or not there had been an insider involved. She looked to him for other questions.

“Go on, Colonel.”

“We’ve backtracked the tapes for our infrared sensors, as well as for those of the reconnaissance satellites in the area at that time. There is no indication that the rocket motors were utilized.”

There was no technological development yet available for disguising the infrared signature of the MakoShark’s rocket exhaust, especially when full thrust was required for orbital insertion. Most rocket burns, however, lasted for about four minutes, with the maximum burn around nine minutes. Observers on the ground probably mistook the burns for meteorites entering the atmosphere.

“My second assumption, then, is that Delta Green was not taken into orbit. At least, not yet. We will be searching to the west of Borneo, and we will be looking for landing strips of concrete or asphalt, which are at least two miles long. They will not be in populated areas, of course, and they will have available some form of cover: hangars, jungle canopy, camouflage netting.

“I have designated three search areas.” Pearson nodded to Curtis, and he pressed a button sending the maps to receivers at Wet Country.

“Coming up on the printer now,” McKenna said.

“Zone One is Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Zone Two is the Indian Subcontinent. Zone Three is, I’m afraid, the entire continent of Africa.”

“What are we going to do for the rest of the day, enamorada?” Munoz asked.

Pearson cleared her throat. “The crosshatched portions of the maps are areas you can eliminate for population, political, or other reasons. The yellow areas are probably iffy for geographical or topographical reasons. The blue-shaded areas are the most suspicious. Those are where a MakoShark could be landed and hidden.”

“Nice job, Colonel,” McKenna said without being condescending, a tone she sometimes searched for in his voice.

“On short notice, it’s the best I could come up with in order to initiate a physical search.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “Country Girl, you’ve got Zone Three. Con Man, you’re on Two, and we’ll take One. We’re going to have daylight for much of this, so we’ll keep the altitude high. Stay around five-zero-thousand and use your video cameras on magnification.”

“Do we want to mount recon camera pods?” Abrams asked.

“I don’t think so,” McKenna said. “We’re not trying to document anything just yet. If we run into something, the video tape will be sufficient. Also, let’s avoid air traffic, people. We don’t want anyone spotting us and alerting some trigger-happy air defense force. Questions?”

There were none and McKenna told them to take off.

Haggar and Olsen pushed their way out of the radio shack, eager to be on the way and doing something.

Pearson followed them out of the compartment, aiming herself toward her office cubicle.

Now that she had the squadron started on one segment of the search, she was impatient to get her own intelligence investigation under way.

Her search, she was certain, would be more fruitful than shooting around in the skies, looking for a tiny MakoNeedle in an earthen haystack.

McKenna, Munoz, and the Delta Yellow crew were already dressed in their environmental suits, and they left the ready room and turned into the hallway leading to the hangar proper.

Emerging into the brightly lit aircraft area, McKenna saw that the ground crews were lolling around the workbenches at the back, sitting on the floor or the benches themselves. Both of the MakoSharks had their canopies closed and appeared to be all buttoned up.

General Cartwright and the aide he had brought with him from his last assignment, Major Mikos Pappas, stepped from the elevator to the upper floor and control tower.