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Page 394
ritories. Fortunately, the Starlifter was not heavily burdened. It had been laid on rather than a Hercules because Air Command had not been told in advance by the Russians how many passengers and how much equipment they were bringing to Montreal aboard their great beast of an Antonov. That had been the good news. The bad was that there was already a Starlifter on the ground at Site X, the one the American cousins had managed to run off the steel mesh and bog down at the end of the strip. It made Ahlgren uneasy about his ability to land the big airplane on the primitive runway, and in this weather, without duplicating the Americans' embarrassing mishap.
Ahlgren checked the position on the inertial navigation display. Alpha Bravo was now forty miles southeast of her destination, flying in extremely turbulent air over southern Hudson Bay. Air Command Tactical Air Control's operator had been calling Alpha Bravo every ten minutes since the departure from Montreal. The much delayed departure, Ahlgren thought, with more than his proper share of anger and irritation. It was his experience that if an operation did not keep to its planned timetable, it was almost certainly heading for assorted troubles. Ahlgren was a firm believer in Murphy's First Law, the one that stated simply that if anything could go wrong, it would.
The late arrival of the Russians destroyed the timing of the mission immediately, and there was no possibility of postponing the flight for better weather. Ahlgren did not know why it was not possible, but his superiors had made it clear that more delay was not an option.
A series of brilliant lightning bolts flashed through the line of thunderheads just ahead. Hard ice and freezing rain slashed at the Starlifter's windscreen.
"Alpha Bravo, we copy you thirty-two nautical miles from Site X. Begin your descent now."
Supervision so precise, Ahlgren realized, meant satellite surveillance. The Americans were putting plenty of assets in this

 
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