“Hostages, yes,” said Stacy, “but under what terms? No word of Congresswoman Smith and Senator Diaz has been heard since they were abducted.”
“No demands have been received,” explained Penner, “forcing the President into a wait-and-see game. And until we can provide him with enough intelligence to make a judgment call on a rescue operation, he won’t give the order.”
Giordino gazed at Penner with a small air of contemplation. “There must be a plan to trash the joint, there’s always a plan.”
“We have one,” replied Penner, committing himself. “Don Kern has created an intricate but viable operation to penetrate and disable the center’s electronic systems.”
“What kind of defenses are we talking about?” inquired Pitt. “Suma wouldn’t sink heavy effort and money into the eighth wonder of the modern world without protecting the hell out of it.
“We can’t say with any accuracy.” Penner’s eyes swept over the island model with a look of concern. “We do know what security and military technology is available to Suma, and must assume he’s installed the best sensory gear his money can buy. Exotic radar equipment for land and sea detection, sonar sensors for underwater approach, laser and heat detection ringing the perimeter of the shore. Not the least of which is an army of armed robots.”
“And lest we forget, an arsenal of hidden surface-to-sea-and-air missiles.” This from Pitt.
“It won’t be an easy nut to crack,” Weatherhill said in a classic understatement.
Giordino looked at Penner, amused, curious. “Looks to me like an assault by at least five Special Forces assault teams, preceded by an attack of naval carrier aircraft and a bombardment by a strike fleet to soften up the defenses, is the only way anybody’s going to get inside that rock.”
“Either that,” Pitt tagged, “or a damn big nuclear bomb.”
Penner smiled dryly. “Since neither of your suggestions fits into the practical scheme of things, we’ll have to use other means to do the job.”
“Let me guess.” Mancuso was acid. As he spoke he gestured to Stacy, Weatherhill, and himself. “The three of us go in through the tunnel.”
“All five of you are going in,” Penner murmured quietly. “Though not all by way of the tunnel.”
Stacy gasped in surprise. “Frank, Timothy and I are highly trained professionals at forced entry. Dirk and Al are marine engineers. They have neither the skill nor the experience for a tricky penetration operation. Surely you don’t intend to send them in too?”
“Yes I do,” Penner insisted quietly. “They are not as helpless as you imply.”
“Do we get to wear black ninja suits and flit through the tunnel like bats?” There was no mistaking the cynicism in Pitt’s voice.
“Not at all,” Penner said calmly. “You and Al are going to drop in on the island and create a diversion to coincide with the entry of the others from Edo City.”
“Not by parachute,” Giordino groaned. “God, I hate parachutes.”
“So!” Pitt said thoughtfully. “The great Pitt and Giordino the magnificent fly into Hideki Suma’s private resort fortress with bugles sounding, bells ringing, and drums beating. Then get executed samurai style as trespassing spies. Kind of taking us for granted, aren’t you, Penner?”
“There is some risk, I admit,” Penner said defensively. “But I have no intention of sending you to your deaths.”
Giordino looked at Pitt. “Do you get the feeling we’re being used?”
“How about screwed?”
With his partisan eye Pitt knew the Director of Field Operations wasn’t acting purely on his own authority. The plan had come from Kern with Jordan’s approval and the President’s blessing on top of that. He turned and stared at Stacy. She had “Don’t go” written all over her face.
“Once we get on the island, what then?” he queried.
“You avoid capture as long as possible to distract Suma’s security forces, hiding out until we can mount a rescue mission to evacuate the entire team.”
“Against state-of-the-art security, we won’t last ten minutes.”
“No one expects miracles.”
Pitt said, “Well?”
“Well what?”
“We fall from the sky and play hide-and-seek with Suma’s robots while the three pros sneak in through a sixty-kilometer tunnel?” Any hint of irritation, incredulity, and despair was contained with great force of will by Pitt. “That’s the plan? That’s all there is?”
“Yes,” Penner said, self-consciously avoiding Pitt’s blazing stare.
“Your pals in Washington must have drawn that brilliant piece of creativity out of a fortune cookie.”
In his mind, Pitt never doubted his decision. If there was the slightest chance Loren was held prisoner on the island, he would go.
“Why can’t you simply cut off their power source on the mainland?” asked Giordino.
“Because the control center is entirely self-sustaining,” replied Penner. “It has its own generating station.”
Pitt looked at Giordino. “What do you say, big Al?”
“That resort have geishas?”
“Suma has a reputation for hiring only beautiful women,” Penner answered with a faint smile.
Pitt asked, “How do we fly in without being blown out of the sky?”
Penner smiled a smile that seemed to portend something good for a change. “Now that part of the plan has an A-number-one gilt-edge rating for success.”
“It had better,” said Pitt with ice in his opaline eyes. “Or somebody’s going to get hurt real bad.”
44
AS PENNER HAD suggested, being shot down in flames was not a likely prospect. The ultralight power gliders that Pitt and Giordino were to fly off the landing pad of the U.S. Navy detection and tracking ship Ralph R. Bennett looked like pint-sized Stealth bombers. They were painted a dark gray and sported the same weird Buck Rogers shape that made them impossible to see on radar.
They sat like alien bugs under the shadow of the ship’s giant box-shaped phased-array radar. The six-story-high system was composed of 18,000 antenna elements that collected a wide range of intelligence data on Soviet missile tests with an incredible degree of accuracy. The Ralph R. Bennett had been pulled away from its mission near the Kamchatka Peninsula by presidential order to launch the power gliders and monitor activity in and around Soseki Island.
Lieutenant Commander Raymond Simpson, a man on the young side of thirty with sun-bleached blond hair, stood next to the men from NUMA on the open deck. There was an air of capable toughness about him as he kept a tight eye on his maintenance crew, who swarmed around the tiny aircraft fueling tanks and examining instruments and controls.
“Think we can manage without a check flight?” Pitt asked.
“A piece of cake for old Air Force pilots like yourselves,” answered Simpson lightly. “Once you get the hang of flying while lying on your stomach, you’ll wish you could take one home and keep it for your personal use.”
Pitt had never laid eyes on one of the odd ultralight craft until he and Giordino landed on the ship by an Osprey tilt-motor aircraft an hour before. Now after only forty minutes of class instruction, they were supposed to fly them over a hundred kilometers of open sea and make an injury-free landing on the dangerously rugged surface of Soseki Island.
“How long have these birds been around?” Giordino queried.
“The Ibis X-Twenty,” Simpson corrected him, “is fresh off the drawing boards.”
“Oh, God,” groaned Giordino. “They’re still experimental.”
“Quite so. They haven’t completed their testing program. Sorry I couldn’t have given you something more proven, but your people in Washington were in an awful rush, insisting we deliver them halfway across the world in eighteen hours and all.”
Pitt said consideringly, “They do fly, naturally?”
“Oh, naturally,” Simpson said enthusiastically. “I’ve got ten hours’ flying time in them mysel
f. Super aircraft. Designed for one-man reconnaissance flights. Powered by the very latest in compact turbine engines that provide a three-hundred-kilometer-per-hour cruising speed with a range of a hundred twenty kilometers. The Ibis is the most advanced power glider in the world.”
“Maybe when you get discharged you can open up a dealership,” Giordino said dryly.
“Don’t I wish,” said Simpson without feeling the barb.
The skipper of the radar ship, Commander Wendell Harper, stepped onto the landing pad with a large photo gripped in one hand. Tall and beefy with a solid paunch, Harper’s bowlegged gait gave him the appearance of a man who had just ridden across the Kansas plains for the Pony Express.
“Our meteorology officer promises you’ll have a four-knot tail wind for the flight,” he said pleasantly. “So fuel won’t be a problem.”
Pitt nodded a greeting. “I hope our reconnaissance satellite came up with a decent landing site.”
Harper spread an enlarged computer-enhanced satellite photo up against a bulkhead. “Not exactly O’Hare Airport in Chicago, the only flat spot on the island is a grassy area measuring twenty by sixty meters.”
“Plenty of room for an upwind landing,” Simpson injected optimistically.
Pitt and Giordino moved in and stared at the amazingly detailed picture. The central feature was a landscaped garden clustered around a rectangular lawn that was only open from the east. The other three sides were thickly bordered by trees, shrubbery, and pagoda-roofed buildings with high curved bridges leading down from open balconies to an Oriental pond at one end.
Like condemned men who’d just been told they had a choice of being hanged on the gallows or shot against a wall, Pitt and Giordino looked into each other’s eyes and exchanged tired cynical smiles.
“Hide out until rescued,” Giordino muttered unhappily. “Why do I get the feeling my ballot box has been stuffed?”
“Nothing like arriving at the front door with a brass band,” Pitt agreed.
“Something wrong?” asked Harper innocently.
“Victims of high-pressure salesmanship,” Pitt replied. “Someone in Washington took advantage of our gullible nature.”
Harper looked uneasy. “Do you wish to scrub the operation?”
“No,” Pitt sighed. “In for a dime, in for a dollar.”
“I don’t mean to crowd you, but sunset is only an hour away. You’ll need daylight to see your way in.”
At that moment, Simpson’s crew chief came over and informed him the power gliders were serviced and ready for launch.
Pitt looked at the fragile little aircraft. Calling it a glider was a misnomer. Without the strong thrust of its turbine engine, it would drop like a brick. Unlike the high, wide wing of a true ultralight, with its maze of wires and cables, the airfoils on the Ibis were short and stubby and internally braced. It also lacked the ultralight’s canard wing that resisted stalls and spins. He was reminded of the adage about the bumblebee as having all the wrong features for flight, and yet it flew as well as, if not better than, many other insects that Mother Nature had aerodynamically designed.
After finishing their preflight check, the flight crew stood off to the side of the landing pad. In Pitt’s mind they all wore the look of spectators at an auto race anticipating a crash.
“Maybe we can land in time for cocktails,” he said, pulling on his helmet.
With routine calm Giordino merely yawned. “If you get there first, order me a vodka martini straight up.”
Harper incredulously realized that glacial nonchalance was the highest state of emotional nervousness these men were capable of displaying.
“Good luck,” he said, offering both men a firm handshake. “We’ll monitor you all the way. Be sure to activate your signal unit after landing. We’d like to tell Washington you came down safely.”
Pitt gave him a wry smile. “If I’m able.”
“Never a doubt,” Simpson said, as if cheering the home team. “Mind you don’t forget to set the self-destruct timer. Can’t make the Japs a gift of our ultralight technology.”
“Goodbye, and thanks to you and your crews for looking out for us.”
Giordino touched Pitt on the shoulder, gave him an encouraging wink of one eye, and without another word walked toward his craft.
Pitt approached his power glider and eased in from the bottom through a narrow hatch in the fabric-covered fuselage and onto his stomach until his body fit the contours of a body-length foam rubber pad. His head and shoulders were elevated only slightly higher than his legs, elbows swinging free a centimeter above the floor. He adjusted his safety harness and belts that strapped across his shoulder blades and buttocks. Then he inserted his outstretched feet into grips on the vertical stabilizer and brake pedals, and then gripped the stubby control stick in one hand while adjusting the throttle setting with the other.
He waved through the minuscule windscreen at the crew who were standing by to release tie-down cables, and he engaged the starter. The turbine, smaller than a beer keg, slowly increased its whine until it became a high-pitched shriek. He looked over at Giordino, just making out a set of spirited brown eyes. Pitt made a thumbs-up gesture that was returned accompanied with a grin.
One last sweep of the instruments to make sure the engine was functioning as stated in the flight manual, which he barely had time to scan, and a final glimpse at the ensign flapping on the stern under a stiff breeze that beat in from the port side.
Unlike from an aircraft carrier, a forward takeoff was blocked by the great radar housing and the superstructure, so Commander Harper had brought the Bennett around into a quartering wind.
Pitt held the brake on by pressing his toes outward. Then he ran up the throttle, feeling the Ibis try to surge forward. The lip of the landing pad looked uncomfortably close. The lifting force of the Ibis occurred at forty-five kph. The combined wind force and the speed of the Bennett gave him a twenty-five kph running start, but that still left twenty kph to achieve before the landing wheels rolled into air.
The moment of decision. He signaled the flight crew to release the tie-down cables. Then Pitt eased the throttle to the “full” stop, and the Ibis shuddered under the force of the breeze and the thrust of the turbine. His eyes fixed on the end of the landing pad, Pitt released the brakes and the Ibis leaped ahead. Five meters, ten, and then gently but firmly he pulled the control stick back. The craft’s little nose wheel lifted and Pitt could see clouds. With only three meters to spare, he drilled the Ibis into the sky and over the restless sea.
He banked and leveled off at forty meters and watched Giordino sweep into the air behind him. One circle around the ship, dipping his wings at the waving crew of the Ralph R. Bennett, and he set a course for Soseki Island toward the west. The waters of the Pacific rushed beneath the Ibis’ undercarriage, dyed a sparkling iridescent gold by the setting sun.
Pitt slipped the throttle back to a cruise setting. He wished he could put the little craft through its paces, gain altitude, and try some acrobatics. But it was not to be. Any wild maneuvers might show on a Japanese radar screen. In straight and level flight at a wave-top altitude the Ibis was invisible.
Pitt now began to wonder about a reception committee. He saw little hope of escaping from the retreat’s compound. A nice setup, he thought grimly. Crash-land in Suma’s front yard from out of nowhere and create bedlam among the security forces as a distraction for the others.
The crew in the Bennett’s situation room had detected the incoming radar signals sent out by Suma’s security defenses, but Commander Harper decided not to jam the probes. He allowed the Bennett to be monitored, rightly assuming the island’s defense command would relax once they saw the lone U.S. ship was sailing leisurely away toward the east as if on a routine voyage.
Pitt concentrated on his navigation, keeping an eye on the compass. At their present air speed, he calculated, they should set down on the island in thirty-five minutes. A few degrees north or south, however, and t
hey might miss it completely.
It was all seat-of-the-pants flying and navigation. The Ibis could not afford the extra weight of an on-board computer and an automatic pilot. He rechecked speed, wind direction and velocity, and his estimated course heading four times to make certain no errors slipped in.
The thought of running out of fuel and ditching in a rough sea in the dead of night was a hardship he could do without.
Pitt noted grimly that the radios had been removed. By Jordan’s orders, no doubt, so neither he nor Giordino would be tempted to launch into idle conversation and give their presence away.
After twenty-seven minutes had passed, and only a small arc of the sun showed on the horizon line, Pitt peered forward through the windscreen.
There it was, a purple-shadowed blemish between sea and sky, more imagined than real. Almost imperceptibly it became a hard tangible island, its jagged cliffs rising vertically from the rolling swells that crashed into their base.
Pitt turned and glanced out his side window. Giordino hung just off his tail and less than ten meters behind and to his right. Pitt waggled his wings and pointed. Giordino pulled closer until Pitt could see him nod in reply and gesture with the edge of his hand toward the island.
One final check of his instruments and then he tilted the Ibis into a gentle bank until he came at the center of the island from out of the darkening eastern sky. There would be no circling to study the layout of the ground, no second approach if he came in too low or high. Surprise was their only friend. They had one chance to set their little Ibises on the garden lawn before surface-to-air missiles burst in their laps.
He could clearly see the pagoda roofs and the opening in the trees around the open garden. He spotted a helicopter pad that wasn’t on Penner’s mock-up, but he dismissed it as a secondary landing site because it was too small and ringed with trees.
An easy twist of the wrist to the left, right, and then hold. He lowered the throttle setting a notch at a time. The sea was a blur, the towering cliff face rushing closer, swiftly filling the windscreen. He pulled the stick back slightly. And then suddenly, as if a rug was pulled out from under him, the sea was gone and his wheels were hurtling only a few meters above the hard lava rock of the island.
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