But there was a world of difference between a small, two-prop Mohawk and the B-1 supersonic swing-wing bomber. But a larger opening was out of the question—cutting the crevice any wider might cause the whole ceiling to collapse, or the shifting floor to give way.
However, getting out of the small opening was just one of the problems Hunter expected to encounter on take-off. He knew it would be difficult just to guide the big bomber along the slick, packed-ice surface, especially under full power on takeoff. A half-inch mistake of the throttle or control stick could send the green monster careening off the narrow ramp to be smashed on the jagged ice below, or crush a fragile wingtip on the crusted edge of the cave opening.
So he knew he had to make it happen on the first try. There would be no aborts once he punched the four powerful afterburners …
Eight more hours passed.
Finally, the work was completed on the bomber. At just about the same time, Patrick christened the runway of ice as being ready.
At this point, Hunter, JT, Ben, and Jones gathered for one last meeting, went over all aspects of the mission once again, then feasted on some stale sandwiches and water made from melting the Arctic.
Hunter was three bites into his sandwich when he closed his eyes just to give them a rest. So much had happened over the past few weeks, his head felt like it was caught up in a perpetual swirl: the raid on Bermuda, the hypnotic testimony session, the trial itself, the nuking of Syracuse, the endless preparations for this mission.
It was enough turmoil for a hundred lifetimes. He promised himself that after this was over, he was going to take some extended R&R and do what he had vowed to do right after the Panama operation. That was to find his only true love, Dominique, wherever she was. Maybe he would even ask her to finally settle down and …
Next thing he knew, JT was shaking him awake. He had unintentionally slept for three hours.
It was now time to go …
The last crewman was aboard the USS Ohio when Hunter finally fired up the B-1’s engines for real.
It took more than forty-five minutes for the cold turbines to power up to their optimum speeds under full oil pressure. Another thirty minutes was devoted to Hunter’s checking his cockpit avionics against those readings in the remote-control room deep within the Ohio. A few minor problems were ironed out, and the MAPS device recalibrated for the final time.
At that point, there was nothing else to do but take off and get the damn thing over with.
With JT, Ben, and Jones seated at their remote-control console Yaz and Patrick were the only ones to stay up on the big sub’s conning tower weather bridge to watch the B-1 take off.
Yaz flashed a “thumbs up” sign to Hunter as he nudged the B-1 forward along the improvised flight line, but Patrick stood watching, hands clenched tightly against the railing, straining to listen with his entire body for any sound from the ice.
But he couldn’t hear the creaks and groans from the densely packed ice now. The steady whine of the B-1’s idling engines became a deafening roar as the four GE turbofans spat out their fiery exhausts a mixture of red-hot flame and billowing white vapor clouds in the frigid air. Their thundering blast rocked the sub and the men on deck as it echoed in the closed cave. His ears useless, Patrick nevertheless could almost feel the ice mass shuddering.
“The engines!” he hollered above the noise to Yaz. “The damned vibrations’ll rip this place apart!”
“Too late now, Pops,” Yaz screamed back, “He’s already committed to go!”
The two men watched, unable to speak, both being pounded by the howling engine roar.
The B-1’s wings swung outward toward their full extension even as the plane began to gather speed toward the narrow beam of light at the far end.
Within a matter of seconds, the bomber was traveling at almost a hundred and fifty miles per hour, straight as an arrow toward the opening. The wheels seemed locked into their tracks as the big bomber gained the acceleration it needed for takeoff.
“Time for afterburners, Hawk buddy,” Yaz said through clenched teeth, his hands clasping an imaginary control stick in front of him, as if he were trying to fly the plane himself. Without the extra punch of power, the airplane would never break the lock of gravity.
The screaming engine noise was notched upward an order of magnitude as all four afterburners sent the bomber hurtling along. But suddenly a new sound was heard over the jet’s thunder. An ear-splitting explosion echoed through the cavern, and an ominous crack appeared in the floor of the cave near where the bomber had been assembled.
The men on the submarine’s bridge watched in horror as the crevice continued to grow, chasing the speeding bomber along the runway. A deep rumbling welled up from the ice mass around them, drowning the roar of the engines. More cracks opened in the ice floor, spreading across the makeshift airstrip scant feet behind the plane’s path as it continued to rush toward the bright slit at the end of the ramp.
Now they could actually see the ice of the floor buckle and ripple before them.
Jagged frozen chunks began heaving themselves up as the green-gray seawater rushed through the crevices between them. The grader they’d used to clear the runway quickly disappeared into the dark water, followed by leftover fuel barrels and empty electrical wire spools. At the same time, ice stalactites were shaken loose from the ceiling, and plunged downward like white daggers toward the green blur now nearing the opening.
Miraculously, none struck the bomber.
Finally, one of the ice daggers tore away from the ice roof with a huge chunk of ice connected. It struck the runway just behind the jet’s moving tail section and opened a gaping tear in the packed-ice floor. The massive block of ice had been the keystone of the crazy-quilt structure that formed the cavern’s ceiling, and its sudden dislodging sent Shockwaves rippling throughout the cave.
First one fissure appeared in the ceiling, starting to slice over to the top of the runway. Then another dashed down a wall to join the disintegration of the floor. Finally, the huge arching cavern roof began to give way, sending huge blocks of ice smashing into the churning seawater and ice that floated below. Several ice boulders struck the exposed hull of the submarine.
At that moment, Yaz knew it was time to get the hell below and get the Ohio down to safety.
Patrick was the last one on the bridge. He glanced back over his shoulder to see the green arrow-shape of the B-1 shoot out of the mouth of the ice cave, wings barely clearing the narrow window.
Then the plane was gone from sight.
Chapter 42
IN THE ELABORATE BUNKER deep beneath the Krasnoyarsk radar building, Soviet Air Marshal Alexsandi Petrovich Porogarkov lit a cigarette and looked about him.
A dozen radar consoles lined the smart, bright red walls of this main control room, their sparkling TV screens dwarfed by the mammoth black cabinets that contained their elaborate supporting hardware and electronics. He checked a bank of LED indicator lights on his own desk-top console and was reassured to see that all twelve of the radar screens were in operation now, each one of them attended by two crack technicians.
He leaned back and took a deep drag on his cigarette. All was correct with his world at the moment—even the music. A constant symphony of duo-tone beeps and blips intermittently echoed through the room, filling it with a forceful, yet pleasant chorus of sounds.
Above it all was the sterling banner of the Red Star—the near-secret, elite ruling party that had guided the Soviet Union since the beginning of World War III.
There is an inherent simplicity in smaller numbers, Porogarkov thought, not for the first time. Whereas before the war the Soviet Union’s Communist Party was a bureaucracy bloated beyond all recognition, the new Party, the Red Star, was small, manageable and common-sensical. For in his mind, of the many positive things that resulted from the Soviet Union’s “victory” in World War III, the best of all was the thorough cleansing of the old Kremlin ruling clique. In fact, he knew this
purification was the real reason the war was started in the first place. No sooner had his confederates launched the surprise Scud missile attack on western Europe, when the precarious dominoes in the Politburo came crashing down. Even before the Scuds had hit their targets, the reformers in the Kremlin were gone. Assassinated. With them went glasnost, perastroika and all the rest of the obscene Western-style fads.
Yes, even before the deadly gas from the Scuds had scattered more than a few feet, the original communist ideal was firmly back in place in the Kremlin. Now, a handful of years later, under the banner of the Red Star, that ideal was stronger, leaner, more enduring.
Only now did he truly believe he would see the Red Star banner flying over the entire planet in his lifetime.
Porogarkov had known this place when it was little more than a crudely constructed radar station.
Based on thirty- or forty-year-old designs stolen from the West, it had been built by Soviet engineers from available Soviet equipment. At that time, before the Big War, he remembered touring Krasnoyarsk and seeing more than half of the radar stations shut down or only partially operable. Back then there was an absence of trained operators so acute the station commander had been forced to man some of the stations with untrained, unqualified recruits.
At one time, only one in four of the enlisted men assigned to the place had had any radar experience. Alcoholism was rampant. The console crews were little more than repetitive sets of bloodshot eyes staring past the screens into nothingness, and shaking hands nervously fidgeting with the dials on the bench.
But all of that changed with the coming of Red Star.
His own life had changed too—dramatically so. Once he had been little more than an assistant to the deputy air defense minister, a petty functionary who couldn’t even get an extra book of meat ration tickets. Now, since the dawning of Red Star, he was the air defense minister—a very important person in a very important position. He now had power and prestige of the kind he had only dreamed of before—a luxury apartment in Moscow not far from the Kremlin, as well as a dacha on the Black Sea. His wife could shop at the exclusive stores where there were no lines, no shortages, and plenty of pre-war quality goods. His mistresses could do the same.
He lit another cigarette and reveled in the ever-budding glory of Red Star. They had defeated the United States, forced its disarmament, presided over its break-up, enforced the New Order. They had kept the mish mash of America’s countries and states on edge for the last few years, all of it part of the plan to buy time. Time for their scientists to reactivate the warhead-targeting satellites. Time for their scientists to refurbish their remaining ICBMs. Time to plan, with an intelligent step-by-step approach, the eventual conquest of the entire globe.
And once that was accomplished, Porogarkov told himself without a hint of false modesty, Red Star would rebuild a space shuttle, reconquer space, and eventually go to the Moon and Mars.
Nothing could stop them now.
Not even the news that the former US Vice-President had been kidnapped and returned to America.
This too was part of a plan. The American turncoat had long ago worn out his usefulness—his role had simply been another device to buy time. And with his capture came an opportunity to send the Americans a message. No more would the Soviets be forced to infiltrate entire armies halfway around the world, or pay out enormous sums of money to every two-bit hooligan terrorist who promised to make things hard for the United Americans’ shaky provisional government.
No, the days of the shotgun approach were gone. The Soviets’ new message—the firm bold message of Red Star—had arrived in an air burst twenty thousand feet above the city of Syracuse.
Porogarkov had only seen the American traitor once, when the man had visited Krasnoyarsk not six months after his act of betrayal. But even before the Big War, there had been inside, deep rumors of the American’s collusion with the Red Star fringe elements of the Politburo. The logical payoff had come in the form of highly sophisticated satellite software technology the Vice-President had somehow managed to squirrel away in Finland before hostilities broke out.
Now, not fifty meters from where Porogarkov stood, the very last of that same high-tech booty was finally being fully installed.
As air defense minister, he was privy to all aspects of the First Launch, as the bombing of Syracuse had come to be called. In many ways the operation had been a test firing; the liquid fuel mixture had been critical, but so had been the correct interaction between the equipment installed at Krasnoyarsk and the orbiting satellites. All things considered, not only had the First Launch gone off flawlessly, but it had answered many questions. Now, with only a few more adjustments to make, the Red Star technicians had transformed the Krasnoyarsk station into a military command center like no other in history. Not only would it be able to cover ninety percent of the Soviet Union with an early-warning radar screen and look in on any part of the US via the astoundingly advanced American-built spy satellites, but it would also be able to independently target any of the Red Star ICBMs with pinpoint accuracy to any spot on the globe.
It was a simple concept. Manageable. Sublimely so.
In this, Porogarkov saw the beauty of it all. For from this isolated Central Asian outpost, Red Star could control the world.
At the far end of the building, Captain Nikita Mursk had just reported for duty.
Refreshed from a good night’s sleep and a hearty meal of delicious food, the young Red Star officer began his duty shift as he always did: making the rounds in the complex’s defensive radar section. Walking around the large, terminal-filled room like a benevolent schoolmaster looking over the shoulders of his students, Mursk saw that most of the radar scopes yielded nothing but the shapeless masses of huge weather systems that reeled across the Asian continent, blotting out huge areas. On others there was an occasional blip from a military flight, with its authorization code duly noted alongside the dot on the screen where it appeared.
All seemed to be normal.
Except for the last screen …
This station’s radar scope, manned by a sergeant named Vasilov, showed more of the same weather patterns and identified flights. But Mursk noticed the young man was staring at a certain point near the northern border’s coastline.
“Anything to report, Vasilov?” Mursk asked, scanning the young man’s console without waiting for an answer.
“Nothing, Comrade,” the well-groomed, muscular enlisted man began, his voice quavering only slightly. “At least it appears to be nothing …”
“Explain, Sergeant,” Mursk said calmly. “Don’t hold back.”
“I saw a large blip appear in the middle of the White Sea, sir,” the man replied. “Only for a brief moment. It was moving very fast. But now, I see no such indication.”
Mursk half-listened to the radarman as he watched the screen. The area Sergeant Vasilov had pointed to was on the edge of the dense Arctic pack ice in the White Sea. For the most part Mursk was certain, beyond question, that no aircraft could just simply appear and penetrate the zone undetected.
“Probably just a case of atmospheric distortion,” Mursk said confidently, dismissing the enlisted man’s concern. “Anything else?”
“Nothing, sir,” Vasilov said, returning to his regular position at the console. “Only some ground clutter farther south.”
Mursk gave the man a comradely pat on the back. “Carry on, Sergeant,” he said.
Chapter 43
HUNTER CHECKED THE MISSION clock and saw it was already at four and one half minutes.
So far, so good.
Time seemed to be moving extra fast ever since he’d burst forth from the hidden ice cavern base. It was only a second after he had punched in the big bomber’s afterburners that the deafening roar of the engines diminished all at once to a distant rumble. This told him that his power plants were working well.
Wing configuration came next. Upon leaving the cavern, the big bomber’s wings were fanned out t
o their full extension as it shot skyward on a steep angle. After only seconds in the air, Hunter had grasped the large wing-sweep lever to his right, pulling it up almost halfway. Immediately, giant ball-screw assemblies in the wingroots smoothly cranked the tapered wings in toward the slim fuselage at a twenty-five-degree angle, and the B-1’s rocketlike rise increased another notch.
Ten seconds into the flight, he knew that the heavy bomber was climbing at a rate of more than two thousand feet per minute, slicing through the frozen skies at almost four hundred miles per hour.
“Quarterback to base,” he had called into his microphone. “I’m up and still climbing. At fifteen hundred feet now at mark …”
“Roger, QB,” came Jones’s reply. “Activate on-board sensor and monitoring systems …”
Hunter had reached over and punched a series of switches on a computer-driven TV transmitter that had been installed on his right side where the co-pilot’s seat would normally be.
“Sensor and monitoring systems on,” he reported, as he watched the four, side-by-side TV screens facing him on the front console blink to life.
Almost magically, the color images of Jones, Toomey, and Ben materialized, each on his own TV screen. The fourth screen, designated “mission master” would display all data—fuel load, time to target, potential threats, and so on—deemed important by the mission computer.
“This is very strange,” Hunter admitted as he looked at the three video talking heads, “I actually feel like it’s getting crowded in here.”
“Imagine what it looks like to us back here,” Toomey said, reaching up to tap the lens of the TV camera devoted to his station. “You look like Buck Rogers, or Captain Midnight.”
Final Storm Page 30