Free North Cape by Joe Poyer

was covered with blood and vomit and the eyes of the man were open, staring directly, it seemed, into the cameras. For a long moment Teleman could not tear his eyes away from the face as the cameras recorded the scene in minute detail. Then he broke the aircraft out of its orbit and dismissed the rest of the flight plan. He had all of the information he needed. judging from the evidence he had seen so far, the Chinese were using either gas or germ warfare.. For some reason, with the image of the dead Russian soldier's face before him, he was betting on bacteriological agents.

CHAPTER 6
    Teleman wondered how many shells had been fired' before the satellite surveillance system had spotted the 210-mm cannon. This one appeared to have been timed for just after dawn; probably so, that the Chinese could gain a quick estimate of its effectiveness as well as initial Soviet reaction.
    So far, there did not appear to be any. He checked the atmosphere sampling tanks and the lights glowed green, showing that the covers were sealed. Now it would be up to Washington to extract what they could from the samples.
    A quick scan of the radar panels indicated that there had been no unusual air activity recorded in the nine minutes he had been below forty thousand feet. But deep in the valley as he had been, his radar was shadowed by the hills to the east. He considered a moment, then pulled the nose up sharply and cut in afterburners. He came out of the shallow valley, clearing the hills like a rocket. In less than thirty seconds he had passed sixty thousand feet and switched the engines to ramjet. The sudden explosion of thrust kicked him back into the acceleration couch. The pressure suit accommodated itself to the change caused by the sudden acceleration while the PCMS adjusted stimulant flows. Off to the east, the surveillance radar had two Chinese Migs spotted, heading for the broad valley. As he climbed, the Chinese pilots, now far below, pulled up sharply, caught by his surprise exit. They chased him upward for a short while, but by the time they reached_ sixty thousand feet he was leveling off at 120,000. Teleman caught the flicker of air-to-air missiles reaching for him as the Chinese
    aircraft tried a last frantic measure to bring him down. But there was never a chance. There would be, he knew, some soul-searching at their intelligence headquarters later on—if the pilots were believed. There would certainly be no radar sightings to confirm their story and the Thoughts of Mao would provide no sensible answers. Teleman grinned to himself as the A-17 pulled out of the climb and settled into a searchand-photograph flight mode, then turned to the monitoring console to run through the information the sensors had so far picked up. As the data, reduced to language forms and equations, streamed across the screen, he found more information than he had hoped for. The laser topographical radar had managed to build a thorough map of the war area. Also spotted were several Soviet and Red Chinese missile installations that he suspected were previously unknown to U. S. Intelligence. Near the town of Lepsinsk on the Kazakh SSR side, a cleared site with camouflaged bunkers betrayed a VTOL fighter airdrome.. That meant that the Soviets had moved their air operations closer to the border than had been suspected. The vertical takeoff and landing fighters were limited in operating range, but they were Mach 2.1 fighters and could react and be over the selected target or engagement in a lot less time than conventional jet aircraft. By moving them into the area around Lepsinsk, the Soviets could meet the threat of the heavy Chinese airbase at Nordach, located well into the jut of the Sinkiang border, from which they could bring fighter bombers within striking distance of Alma Alta.
    The IR sensors had located vehicle weapon parks on both sides of the border, including a number of heavy artillery sites, well dug in and virtually invulnerable to