Nighthawk

by Clive Cussler

  “Simple math,” he said. “One obliterated continent is better than four.”

  “Marginally,” she said.

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” Kurt replied.

  “Any idea where this last unit was supposed to go?” Paul asked.

  “I heard Urco’s men mentioning something about Rio,” Kurt said.

  “Considering how much deforestation is occurring in the Amazon, it would make sense to wipe out the largest city on the continent in hopes of putting a stop to it,” Joe said. “But now what?”

  Kurt was grim. “We’ve won the battle, but we’re losing the war. We need to warn the Chinese and the Russians and get in touch with the NSA.”

  They searched both the camp and Urco’s men for any form of long-distance communication. All they found were short-range walkie-talkies, their own satellite phones, which had been destroyed, and Urco’s computer with its bulky satellite antenna.

  After twenty minutes of trying, Paul said, “I’ve seen this before. It’s a multistep security program. Even if we could get past the first level, there’s probably a second layer of encryption to get through before we can access the satellite communications suite.”

  They pressed the two survivors for information, but they could get nothing out of them.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Kurt said. “We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way. Up close and personal.”

  “We’ve only got one vehicle and three mega-bombs to chase down,” Joe noted.

  “We’ll have to split up,” Kurt said. “You and I will go after the Russians. Paul, you and Gamay take that Jeep Cherokee and see if you can catch Emma.”

  “She has an armed escort,” Paul noted.

  “Then deal with him.”

  “What about the Chinese?” Gamay mentioned. “They’ve got to be airborne by now.”

  Kurt glanced at his watch. There was nothing they could do about the Chinese at the moment. “It’s a long flight to Beijing; maybe we can figure out how to defuse the bombs and talk to them before they land.”

  Without wasting any time, they carried the last containment unit down the path and out to the narrow dirt road where the Cherokee waited. After loading and securing it, Paul and Gamay got moving. There were no good-byes. Time was too short.

  As Paul and Gamay drove off, Kurt and Joe set about to chase down the Russians. The first problem was, knowing where to find them.

  “They flew directly over that notch in the ridge and kept on going,” Joe said. “I can’t see any reason they wouldn’t be flying in a straight line to whatever destination they had in mind. And considering the weight and control problems I encountered carrying the Nighthawk, they can’t seriously hope to get too far.”

  “I think I know where they’re going,” Kurt said. “Remember the audio from the first bomber’s crash? The pilot of Blackjack 1 was in a panic when the Nighthawk began to break free. He was shouting for the Falconer to use the reset codes on the Nighthawk. He was calling to Blackjack 2.”

  “And Urco was the Falconer.”

  Kurt nodded. “Which means Blackjack 2 did not crash. It landed safely, and probably in the near vicinity. All we have to do is find the closest airfield.”

  “There is one,” Joe said. “About seven miles from here. When I was planning our route, I saw it on the map.”

  “That’s a long hike,” Kurt said. “We’d better get to it.”

  “We don’t need to hike it,” Joe said. “At least not all the way. The river passes within a mile of the runway. We can take the Zodiac. It’ll save us hours.”

  54

  The seven-mile flight of the Air-Crane would be its last, thought Major Timonovski of the Russian Air Force. The big helicopter was struggling to carry the load in the thin mountain air. The engine temperatures were in the yellow before they’d made it halfway. But with the Nighthawk’s nine tons of mass slung beneath them, Timonovski did not dare speed up.

  “Red light on engine number two,” the flight engineer said.

  “What is it?” Timonovski asked.

  “Metal shavings in the oil pan. The main rotor—its transmission is coming apart. We need to put this bird down.”

  Timonovski heard the strain in the engineer’s voice but shook it off. “We’re almost there,” he said.

  He could see the outline of the runway up ahead. Blackjack 2 was there, no longer covered in the shroud of netting and tarps that the Birdcaller had wrapped around it. Another aircraft was there on the runway as well. A small turboprop.

  Ignoring the warning lights, Timonovski brought the orange helicopter and the stolen American spacecraft over the last line of trees and down toward the hard-packed airstrip. A man on the ground flashed a light at them in Morse code.

  “So the Birdcaller tells the truth, for once,” he said. After so many lies and tricks, Timonovski half expected to be met by American agents or perhaps the Chinese. “Contact them on the low-frequency channel.”

  The flight engineer dialed up the correct frequency and engaged in a rapid-fire conversation. “They want us to land the Nighthawk on top of the bomber,” he told Timonovski. “Can we stay airborne that long?”

  “I would rather put it down on the side of the runway, but once we land this helicopter, it will never take off again.”

  “That’s what I thought,” the flight engineer said. “What should I tell them?”

  Timonovski didn’t hesitate. “We chance it.”

  He angled toward the sitting bomber, pulled up next to it and put the helicopter into a sideways slip. With a deft touch, he eased them over the resting bomber until they were centered and began to lower the American craft toward it.

  The first attempt ended in failure as the swirling downwash of the rotors continued to twist the suspended craft. The second attempt was no better.

  “I can’t keep it lined up,” Timonovski said.

  “We need to put it down,” the flight engineer said. “We’re going to lose the gearbox any minute.”

  “One more try,” Timonovski said.

  This time, as he moved in, the men from the ground crew appeared on the back of the bomber. They grabbed the Nighthawk with their bare hands, hooked ropes around the nose and tail and used their combined weight to arrest the twisting motion. With their help, Timonovski steered the Nighthawk into position and felt it bump softly against the armored spine of the bomber.

  “Down and locked,” the flight engineer said. “I’m releasing the cable.”

  With an audible snap, the cables were disconnected. The Air-Crane rose quickly in response—and did so with dark smoke pouring from the transmission housing.

  A horrible grinding noise soon drowned out the roar of the engines and Timonovski knew they’d lost the gearbox.

  “Hold on,” he shouted, angling away from the bomber, the Nighthawk and the ground crew.

  The smoking helicopter peeled off with what little power remained and then began to fall. Timonovski did what he could to counter the loss of control, but the craft had become unstable. They hit near the shoulder of the runway.

  The impact bent the right landing strut and the Air-Crane went over. The rotors struck the ground and shattered into deadly fragments, most of which flew mercifully into the trees.

  As the helicopter came to rest on its side, Timonovski shut down the engines and cut the fuel. He turned to see the flight engineer bailing out through the door.

  By the time Timonovski pulled off his seat belt and caught up with the engineer, half a dozen members of the ground crew had closed in around them. One was spraying foam from a fire extinguisher toward the engine compartment. Black smoke belched from the vents, but there was no flame.

  “Evil things,” said a voice among the crowd.

  The Major spied Constantin Davidov. To have the head of the directorate out in the fi
eld was a rare sight indeed. The old warhorse was beaming as he rushed forward.

  “Evil things?” Major Timonovski asked. “What things would those be?”

  “Helicopters,” Davidov explained. “Unnatural, noisy and ugly. Little more than torture devices, in my opinion.”

  The Major didn’t know about Davidov’s long ride from Kamchatka to the cruiser Varyag in the Carrier Pigeon. But he knew better than to question the boss. “If you say so.”

  “I do,” Davidov replied, “But they have their uses.”

  “And their limits,” Timonovski replied. “As do we all.” He pointed to Blackjack 2, with the Nighthawk sitting proudly on its back. “We’ll never get off the runway. The field is too short. The trees too high. I told the Birdcaller as much.”

  “And he listened,” Davidov said. “I’ve brought the RATO boosters. With the rockets to assist us, and a few of those trees chainsawed to the ground, we’ll make it without a problem. The ground crew are attaching the boosters as we speak.”

  Timonovski squinted. He could see the ground crew hooking up the stubby missile-like canisters to the hardpoints beneath the bomber’s wings. It was a complex process. “It seems the Falconer thought of everything.”

  “Yes,” Davidov agreed. “It seems he did.”

  55

  Emma’s route to Cajamarca took her through a wide valley and then up through a narrow pass. At first the road was flat and hemmed in by the mountains, but as they came out of the pass the road began to look like the one she and Kurt had dealt with on the way up. Only now it was dusk and growing darker by the moment.

  She had the high beams on, along with the small fog lamps under the bumper and two auxiliary lights mounted on the roof rack. They lit the road well enough, but the drop beyond the narrow shoulder was nothing more than a dark void.

  “When this is over, I’m moving to Kansas,” she said.

  “What’s Kansas?”

  The question came from Reyes, the escort Urco had sent with her. He sat in the passenger seat, cocked to the side and holding a 9mm pistol in his hand.

  If she drove too fast or too slow, he gave her a dirty look and then complained. Right now she must have been doing fine since he was leaning back and the Beretta was resting on his lap, aimed roughly at her thigh.

  “Kansas,” she said, “is a very flat part of America. None of these mountains to climb or cliffs to fall off.”

  His brow furrowed.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I can imagine how that sounds to someone who lives here.”

  He said nothing, leaned forward to glance at the speedometer and then leaned back again.

  “Are we on a schedule?” she asked.

  He didn’t reply. Maybe they were.

  “Urco didn’t need to send you along, you know.”

  “I’m here to make sure you do as you promised.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” she asked, rounding a curve. “It’s, literally, the only sane thing to do.”

  He shrugged.

  “And, anyway, what would you do if I refused? Or changed my mind?”

  She was just talking, just making conversation on the long drive and perhaps hoping to make him see her as a human being instead of a target. But she’d hit a nerve.

  “I shoot you and drive there by myself.”

  “Really?” she said, surprised and not surprised all at the same time. “And then what? Just going to hand over the containment unit and tell my colleagues you’re a Good Samaritan who picked it up on the side of the road? For that matter, how would you even find them without me?”

  The answer came to her even before she’d finished asking the question. “Oh, you have a phone,” she said. “You have my phone.”

  At almost the same moment, both of them realized that he’d given something away.

  A phone could deliver help. It could summon a rescue team to the lake and military units to swarm over Urco and his followers. Her phone could turn the entire situation on its head.

  “Pull over,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “It’s okay. Let’s just drive to Cajamarca.”

  “Pull the car over!”

  From there, everything happened in a flash. Reyes shouted again and leveled the pistol at her head. She realized this might be her only chance to act and slammed hard on the brakes. The sudden deceleration caused his extended arm to swing forward. His hand smacked against the dashboard and the pistol discharged into the windshield.

  As the glass shattered, Emma swung her right arm toward him. Her hand was stiff, her fingers outstretched. The edge of her palm caught him in the throat, a perfect backhand to his Adam’s apple.

  The blow crushed his windpipe and Reyes dropped the pistol.

  Her foot went to the accelerator, slamming it to the floor. He fell back now, thrown off balance again.

  As he reeled in the seat, she reached down for the pistol, trying to pluck it off the floor. Her fingers brushed it, but before she could pick it up, he did the unthinkable, lunging for the steering wheel and pushing it hard to the right.

  The wheels turned sharply. The Toyota skidded and then went over on its side. The windshield blew out and the old SUV slid toward the far edge of the road and the cliff beyond. It went halfway over the edge and crashed headlong into a gnarled tree that grew from the side of a steep slope and stopped.

  The impact knocked Emma unconscious. Whether it was seconds or a minute or more, she didn’t know. When she woke up, she was lying on her side and pinned by the steering wheel. A hissing sound could be heard, and she was surrounded by a cloud of steam that was venting from the Toyota’s shattered radiator.

  Reyes was nowhere to be seen. And with the damaged windshield completely missing, she assumed he’d been ejected.

  “That was foolish,” she grunted, angry at herself. Angry at him as well, wherever he was.

  She twisted around, felt a spike of pain shoot through her ribs and laid eyes on the containment unit. It remained in place, strapped down as it had been.

  Emma stretched far enough to reach the control panel. As her fingers touched the screen, it lit up. The indicators were all green. Power was still flowing through the unit. The magnetic bottles were intact and the cryogenic system was still operating.

  “Thank God, they didn’t give this contract to the lowest bidder,” she whispered.

  For obvious reasons, the units were incredibly durable and well made. They’d been designed to survive years in space, cosmic radiation, extremes of heat, cold and pressure, not to mention the turbulence and vibration of reentry and landing or even a minor crash.

  Fortunately, the one car accident was not more severe than those conditions.

  All Emma had to do was get out of the Land Cruiser, find her former guard and hope that the phone in his pocket had survived his ejection and landing in the road.

  She pushed against the steering column that had been loosened by the blow against the tree until she was able to shove it far enough to slide her legs free. Then she pulled them up toward her and eased into a sitting position.

  With the Toyota over on its side and the front windshield gone, the easiest way out was forward. Sitting where the driver’s window had been, she swung her legs forward. They stretched through the empty space where the windshield had been and touched . . . nothing.

  Emma froze. Her legs were dangling as if she was sitting on a swing . . . or a ledge. She looked beneath her. There was ground against the cabin where her side window had been, but it fell away near the front edge.

  She leaned forward, grabbing the seat belt for stability. As the steam from the radiator began to dissipate, the rooftop lights played out into the darkness, touching the ground three hundred feet below.

  The Land Cruiser was already pointed downward at an angle. The only thing keeping it from dropping was the gnarled tree i
t had run into.

  Emma pulled her legs back in and shifted her weight to climb out the top. A barely audible crack from the tree trunk and a subtle shift in the Toyota’s position told her that moving was a bad idea. She went still, wondering how long the tree would hold.

  56

  Kurt and Joe made excellent time in the Zodiac. They ran with the engine wide open and the current at their backs. A few sets of minor rapids caused little problem and they’d soon traversed twelve miles on the looping river, enabling them to move nearly seven miles as the crow flies—or the Nighthawk flew.

  “This is as close as we’re going to get,” Joe said, navigating based on his memory of the chart and the time.

  “I’m ready,” Kurt said. “Let’s go on foot.”

  Kurt had changed into regular clothes, and both men were wearing their boots. As soon as Joe beached the Zodiac, they leapt off and began a hike that would be more of a sprint than a walk.

  Darkness had fallen, the night air had cooled dramatically and the stars had come out. They shone up above like diamonds on black velvet. Using the stars to navigate, Kurt and Joe continued to cross the rocky ground, moving toward the airfield.

  A few yards behind Joe, Kurt felt his knees begin to ache from old football injuries.

  “You’re getting slow in your old age,” Joe needled.

  “While some of us were sitting around all day, I was working,” Kurt said.

  “Floating on the lake in an inner tube doesn’t count as work where I come from,” Joe said.

  “I’ve basically created my own kind of extreme triathlon,” Kurt insisted. “Swim under a waterfall, climb up a sheer cliff and now a 2K uphill run in the rarefied air at ten thousand feet of altitude.”

  “Under a waterfall?” Joe said. “Why didn’t you swim around it?”

  “I tried,” Kurt admitted. “Not as easy as it sounds.”

  Joe laughed. “I just hope all this running is worth it and we haven’t missed our flight.”