looked at the launch clock above his head. Just twenty-one minutes and
thirty-six seconds remained before the platform would be engulfed in a
blasting inferno. As if that wasn't enough motivation to move faster,
a sudden whirring noise erupted from inside the hangar. An electronic
command had been issued from the Koguryo's launch control software and
the hangar's large barn doors began sliding closed in preparation for
the blastoff.
"The doors are closing," Dahlgren huffed. "We've got to hurry."
Like a trio of Olympic sprinters heading to the tape, the men bolted
side by side toward the shrinking gap of the closing doors. Though he
still had plenty of fire in his step, Pitt eased back as they
approached the opening and let Dirk and Dahlgren jump through first.
Following single file, he turned and slid sideways through the gap just
before the doors sealed shut.
Midway down the hangar, they could hear the sound of muffled voices and
a metallic banging as the men inside the metal shed fought
to extricate themselves. Dirk, Dahlgren, and Pitt scurried to the shed
and examined the chained and padlocked door as they caught their
breath.
"That chain isn't going to give, but maybe we can pry the door off its
hinges ... if we can find a crowbar around here," Dahlgren said,
scanning the area for a potential tool.
Pitt glanced at the motorized work platform Jack had ridden across the
hangar and reached up and grabbed the control box, which dangled from
the railing.
"I think we've got our crowbar right here," he said, lowering the
platform a few feet, then rolling the device up to the front of the
shed. As Dirk and Dahlgren looked on, Pitt grabbed a loose end of the
padlock chain and wrapped it tightly around the platform's railing,
then yelled at the men inside the shed: "Stand back from the door."
Waiting a second, he then hit the raise button and watched as the
platform rose slowly, drawing the chain tight. The lifting mechanism
groaned and strained for a moment as the wheels of the platform rocked
across the floor. Then, with a loud crack, the shed's door ripped off
its hinges and popped into the air, slamming against the platform with
a shudder before dropping and dangling from the chain midair. Pitt
quickly backed the platform out of the way as the Sea Launch crew
surged out of the claustrophobic shed.
The crewmen had been given little to eat since the Odyssey was
commandeered and they appeared weak and haggard from the stress of
their captivity. Yet an underlying anger purveyed over the men, a
group of seasoned professionals who didn't take kindly to having given
up their rocket and platform.
"Is the captain and launch manager here?" Pitt shouted over the cries
of thanks from the released crew.
A battered Captain Christiano elbowed his way through the throng,
followed by a thin, distinguished-looking man with a goatee.
"I'm Christiano, captain of the Odyssey. This is Larry Ohlrogge,
platform launch manager," he added, nodding to the man beside him
"Has the platform been secured from those scum?" he spat with
contempt.
Pitt shook his head. "They've evacuated the platform in preparation
for launching the rocket. We don't have much time."
Ohlrogge noted the erector transporter had been returned to the hangar
and that the hangar doors had been closed.
"We're talking minutes," he said with alarm in his voice.
"About eighteen, to be precise. Captain, get your crew to the helipad
now," Pitt directed. "There's an airship waiting that can evacuate
everyone from the platform if we move quick."
Turning to Ohlrogge, Pitt added, "Is there any way we can stop the
launch?"
"The launch sequence is completely automated and controlled by the
assembly and command ship. Presumably, these terrorists have
duplicated that functionality on their own vessel."
"We can mechanically halt the fueling of the rocket," Christiano
noted.
"It is too late," Ohlrogge said, shaking his head. "There is an
override control in the bridge that would be our only hope at this late
time," he added grimly.
"The elevator at the rear of the hangar leads to the bridge deck. The
helipad is just above," Christiano said. "Then let's get moving," Pitt
replied.
Quickly, the group shuffled en masse to the rear of the hangar and
crowded around a medium-sized elevator.
"There's not enough room for all," Christiano stated, regaining his
captain's form. "We'll need three trips. You eight men first, then
this group, then you ten men over there," he ordered, dividing the
crowd into three groups.
"Jack, you go with the first group and help them onto the Icarus. Let
Al know there's more on the way," Pitt said. "Dirk, you bring up the
last group, make sure everyone makes it out of here. Captain, we need
to visit the bridge now," he said, turning to Christiano.
Christiano, Ohlrogge, Dahlgren, and Pitt crowded into the elevator with
eight other men and waited impatiently as the elevator zipped up to the
bridge level above the hangar. Dahlgren quickly located a stairwell
off to one side that led to the helipad and herded the crewmen up to
the exposed deck.
As promised, the silver airship hung hovering several feet above the
pad, Giordino at the controls smoking a fat cigar. He quickly rotated
the swiveling propulsion ducts and brought the gondola down to the deck
as Jack ran up.
"Hi, sailor. Give a few girls a ride?" Dahlgren asked, poking his
head into the gondola doorway.
"Certainly," Giordino replied. "How many do you have?"
"About thirty, give or take," Dahlgren replied, looking suspiciously at
the gondola's passenger compartment.
"Shove 'em in, we'll make them fit. But we better toss any unnecessary
weight if we want to get off the ground. Just make it quick, as I have
an aversion to getting baked alive."
"You and me both, pardner," Dahlgren replied, herding the first of the
crewmen aboard.
In addition to the two-seat cockpit, the gondola's passenger
compartment was configured to seat eight passengers in oversized
leather airplane-type seats. Dahlgren studied the arrangement and
grimaced at the prospect of squeezing all the men in and possibly
grounding the blimp. As the crew climbed aboard, he checked the
mountings of the seats and found that they had a quick-release
mechanism for temporary removal. He quickly unlatched five of the
seats and, with the help of a Russian engineer, tossed them out the
door of the gondola.
"Everybody to the back of the bus," he barked. "It's going to be
standing room only."
As the last man in his group wedged into the passenger compartment,
Dahlgren turned to Al.
"How much time do we have?"
"About fifteen minutes, by my count."
The next group of crewmen began spilling off the stairs and sprinting
across the deck of the helipad. Dahlgren let out a slight sigh. There
would be time, if not room, to get every man to the blimp before
blastoff. But would it be enough time to stop the launch, he wondered,
catching sight of the Zenit rocket standing fueled and ready across the
platform.
Inside the Odyssey's bridge, Captain Christiano turned pale and shook
his head silently as he surveyed the bullet-ridden computer stations
and shattered glass that littered the floor. Walking to the navigation
station, he curiously noticed a lonely computer mouse dangling by its
cord, its companion keyboard nowhere to be seen. Ohlrogge observed
that the computer drive itself was undamaged.
"I've got scores of laptop computers downstairs. We can plug one in
and activate the platform controls," he offered.
"They have no doubt secured the automated controls," Christiano said
with disgust, thrusting a thumb over his shoulder toward the window.
Pitt followed his motion, observing the Koguryo sitting defiantly in
the distance. Returning his gaze to the captain, Pitt caught sight of
the Badger, still tied up in the water off the starboard support column
far below.
"There is no time. It might take hours to work around," Christiano
continued, moving to the bridge's center console with a look of despair
on his face.
"You said there was a manual override on the bridge?" Pitt asked.
Christiano anticipated the results before his eyes reached the console.
They had simply known too much. How to navigate and ballast the
platform, how to fuel the Zenit, how to control and launch the rocket
from their own support ship. There was simply too much inside
knowledge for the terrorists not to have sabotaged the manual override.
With disappointing confidence in his beliefs, he looked down at a
jumbled mass of cut wires and smashed controls that offered the last
hope of halting the launch.
"Here's your manual override control," he swore, flinging a segregated
clump of wires and switches across the bridge. The three men stood in
silence as the mass of electronics bounced across the deck before
coming to a halt against the bulkhead. Then the bridge door opened and
Dirk thrust his head into the bay. From the looks on the other men's
faces, he knew that their attempt to prevent the launch had failed.
"The crew is all aboard the airship. I respectfully suggest we abandon
the platform, and now."
As the last four men aboard the platform began to scramble up the
helipad stairwell to the waiting airship, Pitt stopped and grabbed his
son by the shoulder.
"Get the captain aboard the blimp and tell Al to take off without me.
Make sure he gets the airship up range of the platform before the
rocket fires."
"But they said there was no getting around the automated launch
controls," the younger Pitt protested.
"I may not be able to stop the rocket from launching, but I just might
be able to change its destination."
"Dad, you can't stay aboard the platform, it's too dangerous."
"Don't worry about me, I don't intend to stick around," Pitt replied,
giving his son a gentle shove. "Now get going."
Dirk looked his father in the eye. He had heard numerous tales of his
father placing the safety of others above himself and now he was seeing
it firsthand. But there was something else in his eyes. It was a calm
look of assurance. Dirk took a step toward the stairwell, then turned
back to wish his father luck but he had already vanished down the
elevator.
Sprinting up the stairwell two steps at a time, the younger Pitt leaped
onto the deck of the helipad and looked on in amazement at the waiting
blimp. The gondola looked like a windowed can of sardines, with the
fish replaced by humans. The entire Sea Launch crew had managed to
squeeze aboard the passenger compartment, cramming into every available
square inch. The weakest of the crew were given the three passenger
seats that Dahlgren did not remove while the rest of the men stood
shoulder to shoulder in the remaining space. Scores of men hung their
heads out the side windows while one or two were even jammed into the
small bathroom at the rear of the gondola. The sight made a New York
City subway at rush hour look spacious by comparison.
Dirk ran over and wedged himself through the door, hearing Dahlgren's
voice somewhere in the mass telling him that the copilot's seat was
vacant. Half-crawling, he squirmed his way into the cockpit, taking
the empty seat alongside Giordino, who had moved to the left-hand
pilot's seat.
"Where's your dad? We need to get off this barbecue grill, pronto."
"He's staying put. Has one last trick up his sleeve, I guess. He said
to get the blimp up range of the platform, and that he'll meet you for
a tequila on the rocks after the show."
"I hope he's buying," Giordino replied, then tilted the propeller ducts
to a forty-degree angle and boosted the throttles. The gondola chugged
forward, pulling the helium-filled envelope with it. But in
stead of rising gracefully into the air as before, the gondola clung to
the deck, dragging across the helipad with a dull scraping sound.
"We've got too much weight," Dirk stated.
"Get up, baby, get up," Giordino urged the mammoth airship.
The gondola continued to skid across the pad, heading to the forward
edge, which dropped straight down two hundred feet to the sea. As they
approached the lip of the helipad, Giordino adjusted the propellers to
a higher degree of inclination and jammed the throttles to their stops
but the gondola continued to scrape along the deck. An eerie silence
filled the cabin, as every man held his breath while the gondola
slipped over the edge of the helipad.
A falling surge suddenly hit the pit of everyone's stomach as the
gondola lurched down ten feet, then halted. The occupants were roughly
thrown forward as the blimp's fabric-covered tail bounced off the
helipad, pushing the nose of the blimp at a steep decline as the
airship's balance of weight cleared the edge. Continuing to jar
forward, the tail finally scraped past the platform edge and the entire
blimp rushed nose first toward the sea.
Giordino had a split-second decision to make in order to save the
airship. He could either pull the thrusters all the way back to a
ninety-degree vector and hope the engine propulsion would overcome the
excess weight and hold the blimp at altitude. Or he could do the
complete reverse: by pushing down the thrusters, he could try to
increase the blimp's forward velocity, which would generate lift if he
gained sufficient speed. Staring at the looming ocean, he let the
momentum of the blimp guide his decision and calmly pushed the yoke
forward, accelerating their downward dive.
Cries of alarm wafted from the rear passengers as it appeared Giordino
was deliberately trying to crash into the sea. Ignoring the pleas, he
turned to Dirk in the copilot's seat.
"Above your head there is a water ballast release control. At my
command, hit the release."
While Dirk located the button on the overhead console, Giordino
focused his eyes on the altimeter. The dial was rolling backward
quickly from two hundred feet as their descent speed increased.
Giordino hesitated until the dial read sixty feet, then barked:
"Now!"
In unison, Giordino yanked back on the yoke while Dirk activatec the
water ballast system, which instantly dumped a thousand pounds of water
stored in a compartment beneath the gondola. Despite the sudden
actions, there was no immediate response from the blimp. The massive
airship moved at its own deliberate pace, and, for an instant Giordino
thought he had acted too late. As the approaching ocean filled the
view out the cockpit windshield in a rush of speed, the nose gently
began to pull up in a sweeping arc. Giordino eased of the yoke to
level the airship as the gondola surged closer toward the sea, its nose
rising with agonizing slowness. With a sudden jolt, the base of the
gondola slapped the water's surface as the airship flattened from out of
its dive but bounded quickly up and off the surface. As every man
aboard held his breath, the blimp staggered forward a short distance
before slowly climbing a few feet above the water and holding steady.
As the seconds ticked by and the airship held in the air, in became
apparent that Giordino had pulled it off. Though risking high-speed
impact, the accelerated dive and last-second ballast release had been
just enough to keep them airborne.
Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind Page 50
