by Jack Du Brul
“Mercer.” They shook hands. Henna couldn’t help but chuckle at the pallor that had crept into Mercer’s face.
“Kinda glad to have me some company on the flight,” Bubba said. “I been to the stockade fer a spell and didn’t talk to many folks there.”
Mercer looked over at Henna. The FBI director said nothing, but his eyes sparkled with amusement.
“Come with me — ay’ll git ya geared up.”
Mercer followed the pilot to the office. Billy Ray kept up a solid monologue about his term in the stockade for flying his Hornet under the Golden Gate Bridge. His accent was so thick that Mercer understood maybe a third of the pilot’s speech. Billy Ray showed Mercer how to fit into the constricting flight suit and cinch up the various harnesses. Mercer felt like the Michelin Man strapping on a girdle.
Back out in the hangar, Dick Henna hefted Mercer’s nylon duffel bag. “Bit heavy for a change of underwear.”
“My toilet case is lead lined.” Mercer grabbed the bag from him.
A mechanic took the duffel from Mercer and stored it in the area meant for the 1,350 rounds of 30mm gatling gun ammunition. He closed the hatch to the ammo bay and secured it with a special screwdriver, patting the fuselage affectionately before walking away.
“Giddyup there, Mr. Mercer, we’s got a schedule to keep.” Billy Ray Young was already in the Hornet’s front seat.
“Mercer, don’t worry about him,” Henna said. “He’s one of the best pilots in the navy. His record during the Gulf War was unparalleled.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Mercer asked.
“No, not really.” Henna smiled and extended his right hand. “Once you get to the carrier, a helicopter will transfer you to the Inchon. I’ll get in touch with you there. Good luck.”
“Thanks, Dick.” Mercer walked over to the aircraft and mounted the metal steps to the cockpit.
The chief personally strapped Mercer into the ejector seat, briefly outlining the fifty things Mercer shouldn’t do or touch while in the aircraft.
“Any parting thoughts, Chief?”
“Yeah, you puke in here and I’ll have the deck officer on the Kitty Hawk make you clean it up.” The chief slapped Mercer on the top of the helmet and scrambled down the mobile ladder.
“Y’awl set?” Billy Ray asked over the intercom.
“Let’s do it, Bubba,” Mercer said tiredly. Suddenly the five hours of sleep he had gotten earlier didn’t seem like enough, but he doubted he would sleep much on this flight.
Billy Ray closed the canopy and fired up the two GE F404 turbofans. The sixteen-thousand-pound thrust engines sounded like banshees as he brought them to full power for an instant and then throttled them back again.
A tow tractor came out of the night’s gloom and a lineman attached the tow bar to the front landing gear. With a slight jerk, the tractor edged the Hornet out onto the base’s apron. Over the helmet intercom, Mercer listened to the chatter between the tower and several aircraft in the area. When Billy Ray finally spoke to ground traffic control, his accent nearly vanished. His voice was crisp and professional and Mercer began to feel a little better about the flight and the pilot.
“You barf easy on carnival rides, Mr. Mercer?” But not much better.
“Don’t worry about me, Bubba.”
The tractor stopped just short of the runway and the driver leapt from the vehicle and unhooked the tow bar. Billy Ray eased open the throttles and the twenty-five-ton aircraft began to judder under the massive power of her own engines. They taxied to the end of the runway and paused, waiting for clearance from the tower. The runway was a two-mile-long ribbon racing off into the night, edged by blue lights which seemed to converge at the distant horizon.
When they got clearance, Billy Ray let out an earsplitting rebel yell and jammed the twin throttles to their stops, simultaneously engaging the afterburners.
Thirty-foot cones of blue-white flame knifed from the two turbofans as raw fuel was dumped into their exhaust. The Hornet reared back on her pneumatic landing gear as she started to rocket down the runway. Mercer was forced back into his seat as the aircraft accelerated.
At two hundred knots, Billy Ray yanked back on the stick and the plane arrowed into the black sky. Mercer’s pressure suit automatically squeezed his chest, ensuring that blood didn’t drain from his head and cause a blackout. He held onto the seat arms as he watched the altimeter needle wind around like a hyperactive clock.
Billy Ray didn’t level out until they reached thirty-two thousand feet, and it took several minutes for Mercer’s stomach to catch up to the hurtling Hornet. Sixty seconds later there was a jarring explosion and the thunderous roar of the engines died abruptly. Mercer thought for sure that Billy Ray had torn the guts out of her but then realized they had just broken the sound barrier.
“What ya think of her?” Billy Ray asked in the eerie silence.
“I can’t wait until United uses these for their shuttle service,” Mercer retorted. “Does she have a name?”
“Sure does,” Billy Ray said with pride. “Mabel.”
“Your mother?”
“No, my pappy’s prize heifer,” the pilot replied matter-of-factly.
Mercer slumped into his seat as much as he could and rested his head against the canopy. He closed his eyes for a moment and realized that sleeping would be a lot easier than he had first imagined. The only irritation was Billy Ray’s off-key humming of “Dixie.”
He was jolted awake once during the trip between Washington and the West Coast. That waking was the worst moment of sheer terror he had ever experienced. It was still dark outside and he could clearly make out the running lights of another aircraft that was so close he couldn’t see the tips of its wings. Billy Ray seemed bent on ramming it. They were at subsonic speed, but the other plane was rapidly filling the Hornet’s canopy. Mercer braced himself for the impending collision, but Billy Ray tucked his F-18 under the other lumbering plane with maybe twenty-five feet to spare.
Rapt, Mercer watched in fascination as a spectral boom came out of the murky night and into the halo of light around the fighter. Only when the boom attached itself to the tube just forward and right of the Hornet’s cockpit did he realize that the fighter was being refueled in flight. It took several minutes for the KC-135 tanker to fill the F-18’s tanks. As the hose retracted toward the tanker, residual drops of fuel froze in the rarefied atmosphere and flashed past the cockpit like tracer fire.
“Thanks for the nipple; this baby was hungry,” Billy Ray said to the crew of the stratotanker.
He waggled the wings of the nimble fighter, dipped below the slow-moving KC-135, and eased the throttles forward. An instant later, the tanker was miles behind them and the Hornet was approaching the speed of sound. Once the F-18 began flying faster than the roar of her engines and again the cockpit was silent, Mercer rested his head against the Plexiglas canopy. It took another few minutes for his heart to slow enough for him to fall asleep.
MV John Dory
The radio operator tossed his earphones onto his gray steel desk under the massed banks of communications equipment. He nodded to his assistant, and hurried from the cramped room, a hastily scrawled page in his hand. The John Dory was running under the ruddy glow of battle lights as she had for most of this patrol but his little world was bright because of the lights on the sophisticated electronic radio gear. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the gloom in the rest of the transformed submarine.
He passed through the small aperture of a watertight door and into the sub’s control center. The two planes-men sat to the left in airline-style seats, the yokes controlling the rudders, and dive planes completed the aircraft cockpit facsimile. Behind them, the three men who monitored the ballast controls stood in front of a panel studded with two dozen valves and pressure gauges. The system was archaic, dating back to the earliest type of subs from the First World War, but still effective. Only the very latest Soviet subs utilized the modern ba
llast control computers that the Americans had been using since the 1960s.
The fire control station was to the left. It was the most modern piece of equipment on the boat, a twelve-year-old computer copied from the American UYK-7 command and control computer. The UYK-7 was the first type of C amp;C computer utilized on the American Los Angeles class attack subs. The Russian copy had been installed during the refitting of the John Dory in Vladivostok.
At the back of the control center, four engineers monitored the ancient reactor at the stern of the boat, their eyes and fingers never leaving the confusing mass of lights, dials, and switches. An identical panel was located in the reactor room and the two stations were electronically linked. This way there were actually eight pairs of eyes watching for any danger from the radioactive furnace burning away under its decaying shield of lead and concrete. The boat’s periscope hung from the low ceiling like a steel stalactite. It acted as the only visible means to ensure the outside still existed once the sub dove beneath the waves, the passive and active sonars only reporting the echoes of the real world.
“Captain, message from Matrushka.” The code name for Ivan Kerikov referred to the intricate nesting dolls so popular with generations of Russian children. It was a fitting code for such a secretive and multitiered man.
Captain Zwenkov was hunched over the weapons officer’s console, reviewing firing solutions for the sub’s Siren missile in case it was needed against the volcano not more than twenty miles distant.
“This is good, Boris,” the captain praised his weapon’s officer and slapped him on the shoulder before turning to the lanky radio man. “What have you got?”
“Message from Matrushka, Comrade Captain,” the radio operator repeated, handing over the sheet of paper. He stood at attention, waiting for the captain’s response.
Zwenkov held the flimsy paper to one of the steel-caged battle lights and squinted to make out the writing. He grunted several times as he read it through. He then folded the paper carefully and slid it into a pocket of his stiff-necked tunic.
“Bowman, take us to periscope depth.” Zwenkov’s orders were quiet but clear. “But do not use the ballast. Take us up with engines alone, turning for two knots. We’re not in any hurry. Sonar, secure the active systems. I don’t want an accidental ping.”
Zwenkov looked around the dim bridge as the men went about their jobs. Satisfied with their performance, he picked up a hand mike and dialed in the ship’s intercom.
“This is the captain speaking.” His voice was barely above a whisper. Crewmen not directly near a speaker had to strain to hear him. “I know we’ve been rigged for silent running for a long time, but the need for this precaution is almost over. We will be leaving station within twenty-four hours and heading for home. We cannot afford to be lax during these crucial hours; now is the time to redouble our efforts. There is an American carrier in the area as well as an amphibious assault ship. I don’t need to remind you that there will be a fast-attack sub protecting the carrier and their sonar can hear a hammer drop two hundred miles away. They do not know we’re here, and I don’t want to give them a chance to find us. All conversations are to be in whispers. There will be no music in the mess rooms and any necessary repairs must first be cleared by me personally. All scheduled maintenance is suspended until further orders. That is all.”
He hung the mike back in its cradle. The men on the bridge looked at him with a mixture of anticipation and excitement. Apart from sinking the NOAA ship a week ago, the cruise had been long and monotonous. The tension of remaining as quiet as possible for weeks at a time could destroy the nerves of even the best submariner, and they’d been at it for seven long months.
Now the captain was promising the men that they would be going home soon, and the anticipation creased their faces into smiles. The threat of an American hunter/killer sub in the area only served to spice that anticipation. After all, they were sailors in the Russian Navy and their job was fighting, not waiting.
Captain Zwenkov turned to the young radio operator. “Preset your system to alternate channel B. Every two hours starting at midnight you will receive a flash message. The message will be the word ‘green’ repeated for five seconds. Sometime tomorrow night the code word will be ‘red.’ It may not come during the two-hour cycle, so be prepared at all times. Every time you receive the message, tell me. Understood?”
“Yes, Comrade Captain.” The radio operator saluted smartly and turned away.
“Captain, periscope depth,” the dive officer reported quietly.
“All stop.”
“All stop, aye.”
“Extend the ultra-low frequency antenna but don’t let it broach the surface.”
“ULF extending… ULF antenna depth one meter.”
“Engineer, disengage reactor, bring her down to five percent power.”
“Five percent, aye.”
Although a nuclear reactor operates much more quietly than diesel electric propulsion, the powerful pumps used to keep the containment vessel cooled emitted a distinct whirling sound that a trained sonarman could distinguish over the noisy clutter of the open sea. By reducing power to the barest minimum, Zwenkov lowered his chances of detection by the lurking American sub and its very-well-trained sonarmen.
“Anton,” Zwenkov said as he ran a hand through his short gray hair. In response, his executive officer stepped away from his station near the glass-topped plotting table just aft of the periscope. “Find young Dr. Borodin and send him to my cabin.”
“Yes, Captain.” The exec left the bridge, heading aft to the ward room, where he felt sure he would find the scientist.
Zwenkov went to his cabin, just forward of the bridge. From the locked drawer of his plastic-veneered desk, he removed a half-full bottle of vodka and a cheap glass tumbler emblazoned with a picture of the immense television tower in East Berlin. The glass reminded him of his one vacation outside the Soviet Republics, to a city as bleak and depressing as his native Tbilisi in Georgia. He poured a half inch of the liquor into the glass, shot it down in one fiery swallow, and returned glass and bottle to the drawer.
Of course, alcohol was strictly forbidden on all Russian vessels, especially on submarines, but he figured a captain should have some privileges. A single shot, once a week, was all he usually allowed himself, though this week he’d taken three. The second drink he had taken soon after two seamen carried the corpse of Pytor Borodin to the sub’s nearly empty freezer.
“Come,” he barked after a knock on his door.
Valery entered, wearing a borrowed officer’s utility uniform. He looked like a recruitment poster, dark handsome features, trim athletic body held erect with just a trace of tragedy around him that lent an air of mystery. Understandably, Zwenkov had not seen much of him since his father’s death.
“Sit down, please,” Zwenkov invited. “Would you care for some tea?”
Valery demurred with a hand gesture as he swung himself into a chair next to where his father had died. He eyed the other chair for a moment before turning to the captain. “You wanted to see me?”
Zwenkov knew that the direct approach was always best. “I just received word from Kerikov. He’s ordered the destruction of the volcano.”
Valery took the news without changing expression, he didn’t even blink. He had expected something like this, but now that it came he felt nothing. Part of him was vindicated — the father who had abandoned him so young had wasted his entire life on a dream that would never be fulfilled — and part of him felt pain for the old man’s failure. The conflicting emotions turned his face into a stony mask.
Zwenkov continued. “I’m waiting to hear from a commando team in Hawaii. Once I receive word, I’ll fire the missile and obliterate the volcano. We then head toward Hawaii to extract the commando team.”
“Did he give a reason?” Valery asked softly.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Borodin, what was that?”
Valery cleared his throat, but his voice was still
a whisper. “I asked if Kerikov gave you a reason.”
“I’m a member of the Russian armed forces attached to the KGB, Dr. Borodin. When I receive orders I don’t ask for explanations.”
“You know it’s a mistake, don’t you?”
“That is not my concern,” Zwenkov replied caustically.
“I heard what you said to the crew about the American submarines in the area. When you launch that missile they’ll find us instantly.”
“You may know geology, Borodin, but I know American tactics. When that warhead goes off, they’ll rush to the area to investigate and we’ll slip quietly away. The acoustics of the explosion will hide our underwater signature even at flank speed.”
He had told Valery about the missile strike out of courtesy, since the young scientist and his father had put so much effort into the volcano’s creation, but that didn’t mean he liked Borodin nor wanted to have his orders questioned.
Since his father’s death, Valery had abandoned any thoughts of suicide, admitting that he had been tempted in a moment of weakness. Now he realized that he would never be able to dissuade Zwenkov from destroying the volcano — but he still had a chance of escaping with his father’s briefcase.
When the John Dory rendezvoused with the commando team, Valery would find a way to get off the boat, even if it meant swimming to Hawaii. He would escape. The volcano would be gone by then, but Pytor’s notes would certainly be worth something to the Americans.
“Because our boat is about to enter a potential combat situation,” Zwenkov said, interrupting Valery’s thoughts, “you will be confined to your quarters. You are not under arrest, but a guard will be posted to ensure that you do not interfere with the operation of this vessel.”
Zwenkov pressed the intercom button on his desk. The XO answered instantly from the bridge. “Yes, Captain.”
“Send the security officer here to escort Dr. Borodin back to his cabin and have a guard posted there. There is no need for a sidearm.”
A moment later, the security man entered the cabin and escorted a silent Valery Borodin away. A beefy guard already stood outside Valery’s cabin when they reached it.
