Final Storm

by Maloney, Mack;

  In other words, when the time came, they would serve as the flight crew—assisting in flying the plane, locating and evaluating the threats, preparing and eventually launching the weapons—all without leaving the comparative safety of the USS Ohio.

  It would be the next best thing to having a crew on hand.

  Chapter 40

  LESS THAN TWENTY-FOUR hours later, a small group of men assembled inside the grimy repair shed at the Newport News shipyard.

  The stern of the black cigar-shaped USS Ohio lay awash in the sunken cradle in front of them, now lowered to sea level. The bright streaks of weld marks still showed on the massive cargo hold hatches behind the conning tower as the big submarine prepared to inch its way out of the covered repair berth.

  As the powerful turbines came to life, spinning the giant propellers that churned the water behind her, the huge submarine began to ease through the enormous doors and slide into the harbor, just as the Roosevelt had done an hour earlier.

  Now, as the towering bow of the USS Ohio began to slip away from the cluster of men in the building, one of them spoke.

  “Shouldn’t we say something?” a voice in the back said. “After all, the ship is being commissioned again—you know, this is her second maiden voyage.”

  “Indeed, you’re right,” Mike Fitzgerald replied. He had overseen the delicate operation of bringing the bomber’s weapons to Newport News. Now he would stay behind and monitor the mission from Washington. “A proper launching ceremony she deserves, too.”

  The ruddy Irishman produced a half-empty bottle of Scotch from his duffle bag, and at the last possible moment, hurled it at the rapidly retreating bow of the submarine. It crashed against the side of the ship, shattering and splashing its contents across the weathered name, “USS Ohio,” stenciled on the stubby bow.

  “Godspeed to you, lads,” Fitzgerald called out as the sub sped down the ways into the dark water.

  The dark form of the submarine bobbed slightly as it left the darkness of the shed doors behind and entered the twilight world beyond. For a time, the men on shore could see the black conning tower against the evening sky, until it slipped silently beneath the waves.

  Chapter 41

  Six days later

  ED PATRICK HATED THE COLD.

  He had hated the frozen ground and the six-month night of the Aleutian Islands when he was stationed there before the Big War to build secret airfields on several of the barren rocks. And he’d hated the bone-chilling, raw, devouring wind that blasted the Korean peninsula when he was there building roads and bridges for the American forces in the Eighties. And even when he volunteered for duty in World War Three, he had wound up on the icy tundra north of Thule, Greenland, helping construct a new radar base.

  And now he was fifty feet beneath the polar icecap, well north of the Arctic Circle, stamping his feet and shivering under his insulated parka, waiting for his grader to be unloaded. His breath crystallized in the frigid air, punctuating his speech with the tinkling of ice particles. Spit crackled audibly as it froze and snapped before hitting the icy floor.

  Just once, he asked himself, why can’t the Seabees build an airfield on Aruba?

  Patrick wasn’t with the Seabees any more, at least not technically.

  True, he had volunteered his services when the balloon went up in World War Three, and he was admitted back to active duty under the Naval Reserve Veteran Program. Despite the fact that he was past sixty, the Navy’s Seabees had allowed him to deduct his eighteen years of active duty from his age, making him eligible to rejoin one of the elite Construction Battalion units, where his experience at construction under combat conditions had quickly made him an invaluable commodity.

  But after the Vice-President’s phony armistice was declared, the Seabees were disbanded along with the rest of the nation’s military units. After months of freezing isolation in Greenland, he and some of his crew had hitched a ride back to the States on a tramp steamer. On the shattered continent, they had found more than enough freelance construction work to keep them busy.

  In fact, it was Patrick and his crew that had helped Mike Fitzgerald rebuild the Syracuse Aerodrome into a bustling “truck stop of the skies” after the New Order took over. So it was only natural that Fitzgerald would look to the elder Irishman when they needed a construction crew for “a bit of ice-scraping,” as it was first described to the ex-Seabee.

  “Fitzie, you bastard,” Patrick growled under his breath, looking up at the vaulted ceiling of the huge, secret ice cave. “If I ever get out of this damned deepfreeze, I’ll kick your Irish ass back to County Cork!”

  But Patrick’s grumbling was more than half in jest. He knew the stakes involved in the desperate operation that the younger men were about to embark upon, and he knew they needed his help to carry it out. And he was more than ready to do his part.

  If he didn’t freeze to death first …

  The top-speed voyage had brought the two submarines carrying Hunter and the others plus the unassembled bomber to a point just under the lip of the polar ice cap, in the northern reaches of the Soviet Union. Traversing the Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean in just five days, they had carefully made their way to the spot that corresponded with the gap Jones had detected in the Soviet radar coverage.

  Once in position, the huge subs had inched their way along the underside of the massive ice formation, pinging with their powerful sonar upward to probe the inner structure of the glacier-like mass.

  After several hours of searching, the sonar echoes traced out the pattern they were seeking in the ice above them. A huge glacial cave that had been secretly carved out years before the Big War as part of a joint “black program” between the CIA and Naval Intelligence.

  Back then, the cave was used to allow US Navy subs sanctuary well within the territorial limits of the Soviet Union. Fitzgerald had accidentally become privy to secret documents referring to the cave several years before, and now, that stroke of good luck seemed downright serendipitous: The hiding place was an almost-perfect jump-off site for the crucial bombing mission.

  Once the coordinate point was found, the Ohio patrolled along the length of the cavern underneath the ice shelf, sonar mapping the entire inner structure of the huge cave.

  Finding a weakness in the ice at the far end of the shelf, the Ohio’s crew brought its blunt nose up to contact the ice at its thinnest point. By using the power of the ship’s engines and releasing ballast, they rammed the jagged ice shelf repeatedly, opening a wide gash in the long frozen-over floor of the ice cave.

  Once the opening was wide enough for the big sub’s conning tower and cargo hatch, the ship surfaced on the icebound lake they had created inside the yawning cavern of ice.

  Two hours later, the Roosevelt repeated the maneuver, popping up some five hundred feet from the Ohio.

  Securing the wallowing subs to the shifting ice mass was no easy feat, as the thickened seawater-slush froze and rethawed between the hulls and the ice shelf. It had taken both crews more than three hours just to unload their portable cranes so that they could in turn unload the rest of the equipment.

  Once the Roosevelt was empty of its cargo, its captain and a skeleton crew departed the ice-covered hiding place and headed back for Greenland, its part in the long-range mission complete.

  Now, just the principals remained, living, eating and sleeping in the Ohio while Mike Patrick’s grader began the long process of carving a smooth runway along the nearly mile-long length of the ice cave, one which would gradually ramp uphill toward the narrow crevice at the far end.

  Meanwhile, the UA engineering crew were assembling what looked like a jumble of dark green metal slabs and tubes brought up from the depths of both subs’ cargo bays. Even though the engineers had carefully planned the position of each piece in the holds to allow a reverse sequence for assembling the big bomber, it would be a massive and complex task.

  A task that would ordinarily take weeks of effort in a well-equipped repair ha
ngar had to be completed in less than forty-eight hours. In subzero temperatures. Inside the fragile eggshell of the ice cave.

  Meanwhile, inside the relative warmth of the submarine’s wardroom, Hunter and Jones were plotting the last calculations on the MAPS computer, linking their present position to the course they’d already laid in back at Newport News. JT Toomey and Ben Wa looked on, making notes and carefully watching the screen while Jones reviewed the flight plan to the target area.

  As the defensive systems coordinator for the mission, it would be Toomey’s responsibility to remotely operate the complex AN/ALQ-161 avionics package and jam or evade incoming threats. Even while hurtling through the air at near supersonic speeds, the big bomber’s electronic countermeasures (ECM) system was supposed to be capable of automatically detecting, identifying and jamming multiple enemy search radars, and monitoring the threat to make sure the jamming worked.

  Toomey knew he would probably be busy at his sub console toward the end of the B-1’s flight, sifting through the thousands of signals processed by the threat receiver, and designating appropriate jamming signals to counter them. In addition, there was a separate tail warning system that would alert him to a missile or fighter approaching the swing-wing bomber from behind.

  Besides the jamming electronics, Toomey would control the bomber’s decoy flares and chaff dispensers. To supplement the existing chaff cannisters embedded in the fuselage behind the cockpit, he had supervised the installation of a large chaff pod under the right wing, well outboard from the main engines. Several miles of the hairlike, metal-coated fibers were tightly wound in the cylinder, ready to be spun out and cut at the touch of a button. Should a radar-guided missile detect the false radar image created by the metallic “tinsel,” it would be diverted from the bomber itself.

  Despite all this, Toomey knew that Hunter’s best defense for the hazardous flight would be a combination of stealth and speed.

  Flying a low-level, terrain-hugging course at speeds near Mach 1, the big aircraft could get below most of the Soviets’ radar coverage, and jam the rest that got in their way. And a host of radar-absorbing materials on the bomber’s airframe would help reduce their radar profile to less than 1/100th that of a conventional B-52.

  But Hunter had anticipated the unexpected, so Toomey had an additional defensive ace up his sleeve. Six aces, to be precise—six sleek AMRAAMs (Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles) were stored inside the aft weapons bay of the B-1. Controlled from Toomey’s remote radar console, the deadly airborne torpedoes could be spun out of the rotary launcher and fired at an intercepting fighter from a range of more than thirty miles.

  Ben Wa, on the other hand, had the task of the offensive systems operator: he would remotely control the delivery of the critical payload to the target. The AGM-130 rocket-powered glide bombs could be launched from his TV console, which also contained the low-light television screen on which he could monitor the images transmitted by the bomb’s six-inch TV camera. A similar screen was part of the TV bank inside the cockpit of the bomber itself. By operating a small tracking handle, Ben would be able to control the bomb’s on-board rocket boosters to actually “fly” the weapon right into the target shown on the TV monitor.

  Also at Wa’s station were the remote controls for the AN/APQ-164 multimode offensive radar system. In addition to probing the target area, the radar’s advanced phased-array antennas were used to control the big bomber’s altitude during the automatic terrain-following system’s operation.

  Several times a second, the radar pulse would interrogate the ground below for approximately ten miles ahead, and the sensitive receivers would convert the data almost instantly to a CRT image of the approaching terrain for both Wa and the pilot. It was all simultaneously fed into the flight-control computer to maintain the plane’s constant height above the contours of the earth below.

  It was this feature that enabled the huge form of the B-1 to dive within two hundred feet of the ground below and dash along at Mach 1, popping up to avoid major obstacles and diving down to stay under the protective ground clutter that would shield the bomber from enemy ground-based radar and fighters alike.

  Fidgeting in his chair, Wa looked again at the MAPS printout and the initial leg of the flight plan.

  As for Jones, he would serve as Hunter’s long-range co-pilot and navigator. As such he would help Hunter to any degree possible with the flying of the mission, plus he’d be able to chip in and assist Toomey and Wa in the event that they were overwhelmed at some point.

  It was more than twenty hours later that Hunter found himself on the floor of the ice cave, huddled underneath a tarp that draped over the B-1’s wingroot and hung down to the ground. The makeshift shelter was barely keeping in the scant warmth of a portable heater, powered by thick cables from the submarine.

  The blasting heater made the temperature inside the tarp about ten degrees Fahrenheit. Not exactly balmy, Hunter thought, until he considered that the temperature outside the shelter was almost thirty degrees below zero.

  For nearly four hours, he and a couple of Patrick’s workcrew had been connecting the maze of wiring that served as the nerves and veins and arteries of the big bomber. Like some huge mechanical bird, the B-1 stood mute on the frozen surface, awaiting the spark of life from the four powerful GE turbofan engines, which would in turn generate the electrical power to run the bomber’s internal organs.

  Literally hundreds of wires, cable trunks, and sensors made up the bomber’s complex nervous system, and each connection had to be identified, securely mated, and tested. Working together, the three men had accomplished almost half the seemingly impossible task.

  But even as they struggled to connect the bomber’s eyes and ears, she was already drinking in a hefty draught of volatile nutrients. Jet fuel, thickened with the bitter cold, was now being pumped from the special holding tank in the submarine to the two fueling ports and eight pumps of the B-1’s integral “wet wing” fuel system, filling it with almost 200,000 pounds of the precious liquid.

  Firing up the engines would be next. Now silent, the four augmented turbofan engines would eventually cough to life, inhaling the frigid air of the ice cavern and blasting out more than 120,000 pounds of thrust in four fiery torches from the gaping black nozzles, which currently sported a fine coating of delicate rime.

  Further ahead, under the green tube of the B-1’s fuselage, Wa was supervising the installation of the two AGM-130 Striker glide bombs in the after weapons bay, as Toomey helped load the defensive air-to-airs in the forward bay’s rotary launcher.

  Jones was up in the cockpit, communicating with the other members of the work details using the plane’s intercom, powered temporarily by a thick cable from the submarine’s auxiliary power unit. Checking the cockpit flight controls, the offensive and defensive weapons system, and the rest of the bomber’s complex circuitry, the senior officer was gradually bringing each system on line with the standby power from the submarine. And more than four thousand feet away from where the bomber was being assembled by the team of freezing, feverish workers, Patrick’s crew of ex-Seabees were putting the finishing touches on the nearly mile-long, slightly sloping ramp that was to serve as the B-1’s takeoff runway. All that remained was to break the thin shell of ice that now separated the interior of the cave from the cold Arctic surface, and the imprisoned green bird of prey could break free from the ice to deliver its deadly payload.

  Patrick was gunning the engine of the land grader, shoving nearly a quarter ton of ice in front of its blade to help clear the furthest end of the ramp. Even the roar of the grader’s diesel couldn’t drown out the ominous creaks, groans, and cracking sounds from the blue-white ice of the giant cavern itself.

  The grizzled Seabee had seen more than his share of frozen wastelands, and he knew the fickleness of the shifting plates of the jagged icecap. What seemed to be a solid mass of smooth ice underneath him was actually a dangerously fragile mixture of frozen seawater, arctic snow, an
d crystallized moisture, ready to split apart and become one with the gray water below, or the white icefields above in a second’s terrible fury.

  Every minute they spent in the ice cavern was on borrowed time, as the wind and weather above pressed down on the arching roof, and the mighty ocean heaved and strained against the thin floor. More than once, Patrick had seen the thirty-foot-thick ice shelf ripple with the motion of an errant wave, or shudder at the impact of some far-off iceberg.

  But he knew that the men on the other end of the ramp were working as fast as they could, frantically trying to reassemble one of man’s most advanced mechanical marvels under near-prehistoric conditions. He only hoped it would be done in time.

  More freezing hours passed. Finally the project was nearing completion.

  Now up in the cockpit, Hunter watched through the sloping forward canopy as the last of Patrick’s Seabees drove the grader off the top of the long, upward ramping runway in front of the plane. The heavy equipment was to be left inside the ice cave, probably never to be used again.

  As Yaz’s crewmen started to dog down the huge cargo hatches, Hunter’s thoughts turned to the task ahead of him.

  Through the frost crystals on the front canopy, he could see the narrow horizontal slit in the ice cavern at the far end of the nearly mile-long ramp they had constructed. Frozen light from the weakened Arctic sun shafted in through the crevice, casting an eerie blue glow on the surrounding ice. Outside, he knew this part of the world was bathed in near-twilight this time of year. It would give the B-1, which would be flying without any external lights, an additional blanket of cover.

  The opening Hunter had to drive the bomber through was just under 160 feet across—enough for the B-1’s wings to pass through at their maximum extension of fifteen-degree sweep, with maybe six feet to spare on either side. He knew that his was not the first airplane to take off from the clandestine ice cave—Fitz told him that the CIA once flew light-weight OV-1 Mohawk recon-observation-airplanes from the place—ones specially adapted to flying in the frigid arctic weather. They had been used to trip the Soviets’ northern frontier radar net, then dash away, no doubt giving fits to the isolated Soviet radar operators.