by Mack Maloney
Meanwhile the other Havoc had climbed, banked, and then turned towards the hovering British fighters, firing two Aphids in rapid succession, hoping the missiles would home in on the VTOL jet exhaust. No such luck. This time, the Harrier pilots simply jumped up and out of the way of the deadly rockets. Then, quickly, both jets turned and fired long, accurate volleys at the helicopter. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left of the Russian chopper but a rapidly falling cloud of burning metal cinders.
Now the games were over. No more face-offs. The Harriers put the thrusts back on forward and tore into the remaining choppers.
Meanwhile, Hunter was systematically battling the Hind gunships. He had lowered his flaps and his landing gear to slow down enough to fire on the copters with his Sidewinders. Many of the remaining troop-carrying choppers, after seeing the F-16 twist and turn about their loose formation, opted to land and disgorge their troops. This tactic put the friendly troops taking cover inside the pyramid in imminent danger.
The Soviet reinforcements started moving towards the Cheops monument, already drawing fire from the outnumbered Moroccans. Hunter dove in and strafed the Soviets, expending the last of his cannon ammo in three passes. The action served to delay the Russian advance—but not by much, he knew. He had to call in the Harriers to strafe the advancing troops.
While this was happening, the surviving Soviet Hinds began a curious tactic: the copters circled the pyramid in both directions, firing down on the troops hiding near the entrance. Again, it looked like a scene from the Old West—this time, the old Indians-surrounding-the-wagons ploy. One Harrier, seeing the situation, backed off from the strafing operation, climbed, then screeched down out of the clouds and stationed itself, in a hovering mode, right over the entrance.
“Okay, I’ve had enough of this bullshit,” Hunter said. He put the F-16 into the same orbit as half the circling choppers and started pumping out Sidewinders. The missiles had a liking for the hot exhausts spewing out of the choppers’ main rotor engines. First one, then two Hinds went down. Then another. And another.
The other Harrier, having chopped up the Soviet ground troops, joined him in the tactic. Soon the sky was filled with streaking Sidewinders and long, fiery contrails. Hunter could only imagine that the Soviet in charge of the copter attack was pressing his pilots to continue the battle at all costs. As a result, the fighters had a turkey shoot. After seven copters were finally downed in the circling battle, the survivors—barely five of them—finally broke off and fled.
“That was the balmiest goddamned battle I’ve ever been in!” one of the Harrier pilots radioed.
“Same here,” Hunter echoed. He saw it as a portent of things to come.
Now the recovery operation could proceed. The two frigate copters reappeared and, as the Moroccans climbed aboard the troop carrier, Marv and his men, still dressed in their antirad suits, loaded the precious crate into the chopper net. His men then scrambled aboard the copter, which took off and made a successful grab of the net. Marv jumped on the troop carrier for the ride back. The two Harriers fell in behind the copters and, with Hunter’s F-16 in the lead, the force headed north, out over the sea, and toward the Saratoga.
It had been an exciting morning …
Chapter 36
THE S-A3 SPY PLANE—its mission high above the port of Alexandria complete—landed on the Saratoga right after Hunter’s F-16. Once the deck was cleared, the two Harriers and the frigate choppers came in, Yaz’s men carefully handling the crate containing the radioactive material found in the Cheops pyramid.
Ten minutes later, Yaz, Marv, and Hunter were standing in the “Clean Room” of the Saratoga, dressed in antirad suits. Before them was a huge, thick, plate-glass window which looked in on another smaller room. This “Critical Room” was entirely surrounded by lead—a foot thick in some places. It was a place where most nuclear materials could be handled safely. This was where the metal container had been placed.
Using long, robot-like appendages controlled from the safe side of the window, Yaz managed to open the metal casing. Inside were as many as two dozen short tubes, each one sealed at both ends with a large dob of lead.
“This is interesting,” Yaz said as he manipulated the left hand of robotic fingers to pick up one of the tubes. “This lead-end-sealing procedure. I’ve seen it used for UB-40 uranium. If this were plutonium, I would guess the entire tube would be covered in lead.”
“How can you find out what’s inside?” Hunter asked.
“There’s really only one way—open ’em up,” Yaz answered as he began using the right metal arm to carefully scrape off the lead end-seal of one of the tubes. “It will take me a few minutes to get all this lead off, though.”
So here it was, Hunter thought, looking at the tubes. “The valuable” the Soviets were guarding for Lucifer. Had they themselves been tricked? Thinking the radioactive stuff could be made into bombs? Or was it he and Yaz that had fallen for a ploy? Could the tubes contain some ultra-high radioactive substance that would instantly contaminate the ship despite protections like the Clean Room and the Critical Room?
Or did the tubes contain the answer to all their prayers?
“We’ll know in a few moments,” Yaz said as he skillfully worked the lead off the end of the tube.
A lot rested on those few moments. Hunter knew it. Yaz and Marv knew it, everyone on the ship and in the fleet knew it. They were dead in the water. Just 150 miles from their goal. After the long, arduous push-pull journey, the battles, the mind games of Lucifer, the wounding of the valiant Sir Neil, the shows of support from people along the way, the frustration of waiting for The Modern Knights. And now all that could change. Change with the simple identification of the atomic structure of whatever the hell was in those tubes.
Hunter closed his eyes. Dare he evoke the spirits just one more time?
“Okay,” Yaz said, completing the operation. “The seal is off. I’m going to put the tube down and shake it a little. Whatever pops out, we’ll have our answer. Here we go.”
Hunter and Marv watched in silence as the robot arm lowered the tube to the table. Then Yaz swung the tube around to the end and deftly nudged it two times. Nothing came out. He hit it two more times. Still nothing.
“Christ,” he swore. “I hope it’s not plutonium sealed in some kind of plastic or glass. If it is, it will melt within minutes of the air hitting it.”
He nudged it again. Then twice more. Still absolutely nothing.
“Screw it,” Yaz said as he clamped his fingers back around the tube. He picked it up and started to shake it.
Suddenly something dropped out of its end …
Marv was the first to cry out. “Hallelujah!”
“Yeah!” Yaz joined him.
Hunter looked at the small object. It looked like a pellet. Although he didn’t have the trained eyes of Marv and Yaz, he caught on quickly as to what the pellet was.
“It’s uranium, isn’t it?” he asked, a grin spreading across his face. “UB-40?”
“It sure looks that way,” Yaz said, pushing a few buttons on the control panel in front of him. It was a device that determined the origin and strength of radioactive elements. A few seconds passed, then lights blinked, meters started registering, and, finally, a buzzer went off.
Both Yaz and Marv started frantically reading the meters and taking notes. A brief orgy of calculations followed, then the two men looked at each other and smiled. Then they slapped each other with high fives. Then they hugged.
“Oh baby!” Yaz proclaimed. “It’s enriched UB-40 … ”
“And that means … ” Hunter said, prodding him.
“And that means we put it into the carrier’s reactor,” Yaz said, not trying to contain his excitement, “and we’ll be at full power. Engines, propulsion, electrical systems, weapons. Everything will work.”
Hunter felt an excitement build up inside him. Then he asked the critical question: “How long?”
Yaz thought for a
moment. “Normally, it would take a week to ten days,” he said. “With my guys and some help—twenty-four hours.”
“Solid,” Hunter said, giving him the double thumbs-up sign. “Let’s get to work … ”
The Commodore looked through the binoculars and swore. “Son of a bitch!”
Approaching his three yachts was a single gunboat. It was still a mile away, but The Commodore knew it was the same patrol boat that had stopped them earlier in the Canal. Perhaps the South African captain would try to extract another bribe from him. Perhaps worse.
The gunship was soon alongside the Commodore’s yacht. The Commodore struggled to tighten up his Roman collar as three soldiers jumped on board. The gunboat captain was the next to come across.
“Well, my good holy man,” the captain said sarcastically. “Have you decided no one wants his soul saved today?”
“Our prayers are with the people in this area,” the Commodore said, feigning his best angelic voice. “The power of prayer can save men’s souls.”
The captain laughed. He appeared to be drunk. His soldiers—the three on the yacht’s deck and six more waiting on the gunboat—seemed tense.
“And how about the souls of women?” the captain asked, looking past the Commodore at one of the “nuns” on the bridge. “Do you have a means for saving them too?”
The Commodore knew the patrol boat captain wanted more than money this time.
“How many of the good sisters do you have on your boats, holy man?”
The Commodore didn’t have a chance to answer.
“Search the boats!” the gunboat captain said, walking right up to the Commodore. “Search them all!”
Well, we’re lucky, the Commodore thought. At least he has only one boat this time.
The Commodore fired the .357 Magnum right through his smock. The bullet tore a hole so wide in the gunboat captain’s chest, the Commodore actually saw a speck of daylight coming from the exit hole in the man’s back. The captain looked at the Commodore in a horrified, quizzical way, before falling forward and hitting the deck with huge thud.
In an instant, Australian Special Forces troopers on the Commodore’s yacht as well as the other two boats were up and firing at the gunboat soldiers. They were all cut down in a matter of seconds, the Aussies being careful not to let stray bullets hit the hold of the Commodore’s boat.
When the smoke cleared, a strange silence settled over the scene. One of the Maltese UDT men appeared on the deck and spoke to the Commodore. “Close one, sir,” he said.
The Commodore kicked aside the dead captain’s body, spitting on it for emphasis. “Bastards,” he said, then he laughed. “Would he have gotten a surprise if he’d searched our boats!”
The UDT man nodded and returned to his work below the deck, cleaning seaweed and debris from the 100 retrieved Soviet mines.
The sailors on the bridge of the battleship snapped to attention as soon as they saw the black-cloaked figure and his entourage of guards heading down the walkway toward them.
Two red-uniformed Storm Troopers roughly opened the bridge’s door and burst inside, eyeing the sailors with contempt. “If they treat their allies like this,” one sailor, a Brazilian mercenary, thought, “how do they treat their enemies?”
A second later, Lucifer strolled in, dressed entirely in the heavy black garments, his thin face oozing pain from the burned-in scars. He too viewed the sailors disdain. He immediately sought out the watch commander, an Austrian lieutenant.
“What is our position?” Lucifer demanded.
The lieutenant squared his shoulders and began: “We are at thirty degrees latitude and—”
“No! You fool!” Lucifer raged. “Where are we in relation to the Canal? How long until we enter it?”
“That’s very hard to say, sir,” the man stammered. “We are about forty miles south of the southern entrance of the Canal. But as to when we’ll enter it depends on the currents we’ll encounter.”
Lucifer’s eyes became very thin. “And what about the ships in front of us? Are there not dozens of ships that have already encountered these currents?”
“Yes, sir … ” the lieutenant replied. “I guess so, sir … ”
Lucifer’s scarred face became a deeper shade of red. “Then why don’t you know when we will enter the Canal? Is it not the most important part of our mission? Is it not what we’ve been training for? Planning for?”
“Yes, sir … ”
Lucifer turned to one of his Storm Troopers. “Shoot him,” he said calmly.
The other sailors all forgot they were at attention and looked at Lucifer, not quite believing what he had said. Dutifully, the guard pulled his pistol, walked up to the terrified lieutenant, put it beside his head, and pulled the trigger. Half the man’s skull flew across the room, followed by a spray of blood. The man fell to the floor. Without a moment’s hesitation, two troopers picked up the still-twitching body, walked out the door, and nonchalantly threw it overboard.
“Now,” Lucifer said, walking by the other trembling sailors. “This is my flagship. It is the flagship of the greatest fleet ever assembled. How can we light the world on fire if the flagship of this fleet is under the command of a man who cannot answer a simple question?”
A deadly silence fell upon the bridge.
“You are all well-paid,” Lucifer began again. “Well-paid and cared for by me. To fight for me. To die for me. You have the honor of being part of the greatest military force the world has known since the Big Battles.”
Lucifer’s face was getting redder by the moment. He was shouting now, in his irritating whiny voice.
“There are almost one million men in this army!” he screamed. “And when I ask any one of them a question, they’d better know the answer.”
No one on the bridge dared breathe. Even Lucifer’s bodyguards were tense, afraid he might ask one of them a fateful question.
“Now,” Lucifer said in a voice barely above whisper. “Who is next in command?”
A young North Vietnamese ensign stepped forward. “I am, sir!”
Lucifer looked him over. “All right,” he said. “When will we enter the Canal?”
The ensign hesitated one second, then cried out: “In approximately two hours, sir. Shortly after sunset, sir!”
Lucifer looked at him, then at the other sailors, and smiled.
“Now,” he said. “That’s better … ”
Then he turned and walked out, unknowingly dragging his long cloak through the pool of blood left on the bridge’s floor.
Chapter 37
“WELL, THAT’S THE BEST news I’ve heard in ages!” Sir Neil said, clapping his hands and trying to sit up in his bed. Clara, ever at his side, helped him.
“Yaz said they’ll get the reactor to go hot any minute now,” Hunter said, continuing to explain the turn of events to Sir Neil. “Then we’ll start seeing real electricity. Those generators we’ve been using are about to burst at the seams. Now we’ll be able to power up all the radios, the on-board weapons. Everything.”
“Aye, but when can we get underway, Hunter?” the Englishman asked.
“Yaz has a team of propulsion guys on it right now,” Hunter replied. “That’s the first priority, of course. We’ll know more as the night goes on.”
“How about the Commodore?”
Hunter smiled and shook his head. “He’s a trip,” he said. “He fulfilled his mission just as he planned. Docked up to one of the frigates about an hour ago. He’s got more than a hundred Russian mines in his hold. Just like he said he would.”
“Good Lord, the man is intrepid! Isn’t he?” Sir Neil was clearly delighted. However, he quickly turned serious. “Those bloody Modern Knights. Where the hell are they!? We come back from the dead and they’re probably still lollygagging around.”
“Heath told the Italian communications guys to turn one of their antennas west for a few minutes each hour,” Hunter said. “I know the Knights would never send us an open radio mes
sage, but our gear on board might be powerful enough to pick up their ship-to-ship communications. At least we’ll get a fix on where they are.”
“Good plan,” Sir Neil said, calming down a bit. Just as he spoke, the lights in his cabin suddenly tripled in intensity. It was as good an indication as any that Yaz’s guys had the reactor up and working.
“Lights!” Sir Neil cried out. “Real lights! No more dim bulbs!”
Hunter nodded. For the first time he felt like he was sailing on a real ship.
The next day passed slowly but quietly.
Hunter had six aircraft in the air at all times, providing the carrier fleet with an air cap as well as serving as an early warning system for any approaching Soviet subs.
Hunter could only describe the mood on board the carrier itself as one of “serious jubilation.” Serious in that the air crews and the support people, plus the allied mercenaries, went about the duty of preparing for war. But there was jubilation too, every time some previously useless device or machine clicked back on thanks to the revived currents of electricity running through the ship. Hunter was thankful the carrier’s catapults were finally working as they should. Launching the half-dozen aircraft earlier in the day had taken one-tenth the time of previous launches.
“The whole goddamn ship feels alive!” Hunter told Emma that morning.
But the real celebration came about mid-afternoon. This was when Yaz’s men had boiled up enough steam using the reactor to open the valve which led to the Saratoga’s powerful propulsion turbines. Those aboard felt a sudden, almost violent jolt. Then all were aware of a very strange sensation. They were moving. Evenly. Smoothly. No more push. No more pull.
A spontaneous cheer went up all over the ship. Crewmen on the ships nearby, all unaccustomed to seeing the Saratoga move under its own power, joined in with applause. Hunter happened to be on the bridge at the time and watched in awe as all the multi-colored lights on all the control panels blinked on. Heath and O’Brien were also there to witness the display.
