From a thousand feet the fields looked weedy and unattended, the occasional house just a shack, the villages collections of shacks. At random intervals the machines crossed above power lines and railroad tracks, incongruous fixtures that ran across the gently rolling countryside from one hazy infinity to the other.
The helicopter flew from sunlight into the random cloud shadow, back to sunlight again while Jake Grafton thought about radioactivity and nuclear warheads.
The noise was loud but not painfully so. Oh, to be able to fly on forever and never have to arrive. His eyelids grew heavy. To fly on and on and never have to arrive at the radioactive hell embedded in the haze and puffy clouds somewhere beyond the horizon, beyond the blighted promises and twisted dreams.
Fueling the helicopter that was to take them on to Serdobsk and Petrovsk was a nightmare. The hand pump leaked and took the best efforts of two men.
Everyone took turns. Three or four minutes of intense effort reduced most rotor downwash where Goober hovered, but they had been up to the belly of the machines when the Americans found them. One of the tires of the helicopter carrying the fuel had been flat. A half hour was spent getting an air compressor from the hangar to start. A family of birds had nested in one cooling intake, but Goober didn't think that worth mentioning.
"How are you going to get these engines started out there"-Jake nodded toward the southeast-"if they run long enough to get us there?" We loaded two power carts into the other chopper, sir.
That cut the amount of extra fuel we could carry." "I don't want to walk back." "I think we'll be all right, sir." Well, Goober was his pilot. He could go over the figures with him or take his word for it.
"Okay," Jake told him and turned to his little group. "Let's get out of these suits after Captain Collins checks each one. Be careful with them. These are the only hot suits we have." "How did you get permission to borrow these machines, Admiral?" Colonel Rheinhart asked as he worked his zipper down, "It's a standard midnight requisition, Colonel," Toad put in, but his smile never arrived. Jake Grafton saw that and wondered if Rita did. She was helping Captain Collins check the suits. "Common procedure in the American Navy," Toad assured him.
"Oh, You're stealing them?" "We showed the guards at the gate a personal note from Boris Yeltsin." The colonel looked at him askance, so Toad added, "An interpreter at the embassy wrote the note. We gave it to the sergeant of the guard as a souvenir, along with two cartons of cigarettes and a bottle of bourbon." Actually Spiro Dalworth had done the talking and Toad had watched.
Dalworth was trying hard to please Tarkington, who had little to say to him. Just now Dalworth stood watching this exchange. He wasn't trying on a hot suit since he was going to remain with the fuel chopper.
was What if the Russians shoot us down?" Jack Yocke whispered to Jake Grafton, who pretended not to hear him. The admiral walked over to Rita and had some final words with, her.
"If I may, gentlemen," Colonel Reynaud offered, "I believe it is time to mount up'? As zhey say in ze western movies, we are burning ze daylight." Jake rode beside Goober Groelke in the copilot's seat for the first leg.
He was impressed by Groelke's flying ability: he handled the large Russian helicopter like he had flown it for years. Jake examined the faces of the instruments that were telling him God-knows-what and watched the pilot at work for the first five minutes, then his mind wandered.
More puffy clouds this afternoon. And they had a late start.
They soon left the heavily industrialized suburbs of Moscow behind and followed a two-lane road for a while, then the road turned more to the east and the helicopters flew across wood lots and fields and here and there small villages. The land didn't look prosperous, Jake decided.
From a thousand feet the fields looked weedy and unattended, the occasional house just a shack, the villages collections of shacks. At random intervals the machines crossed above power lines and railroad tracks, incongruous fixtures that ran across the gently rolling countryside from one hazy infinity to the other.
The helicopter flew from sunlight into the random cloud shadow, back to sunlight again while Jake Grafton thought about radioactivity and nuclear warheads.
The noise was loud but not painfully so. Oh, to be able to fly on forever and never have to arrive. His eyelids grew heavy. To fly on and on and never have to arrive at the radioactive hell embedded in the haze and puffy clouds somewhere beyond the horizon, beyond the blighted promises and twisted dreams.
Fueling the helicopter that was to take them on to Serdobsk and Petrovsk was a nightmare. The hand pump leaked and took the best efforts of two men.
Everyone took turns. Three or four minutes of intense effort reduced most of them to puffing. The marine captain was in the best shape, but after five minutes even he needed a break.
They were in a pasture several miles from the nearest village, but no one came to see who they were or why they had landed. Two scrawny steers watched from the safety of some trees at the far end of the field.
"How's the machine flying?" Jake asked Goober.
"Left engine is running a little hot," he was told, "but the oil levels seem okay. And the pressure in the primary hydraulic system fluctuates occasionally, but it's nothing we can't live with." "And the other machine?" "A bunch of circuit breakers popped. The stab aug is out. Several hydraulic leaks." The refueling took over an hour while Tom Collins rigged his radioactivity detection equipment, which he described to Jake as advanced Geiger counters. The censors were on small winches so they could be lowered from the open rear door of the chopper to get readings at ground level. In the meantime Groelke and the other pilot climbed all over the two helicopters, checking everything.
When fueling was complete, everyone stepped behind the helicopter to relieve themselves, then took long drinks of water. The party that was flying on donned the hot suits.
"Toad," Jake said, "you ride with Goober in the cockpit." Toad would do the navigation. He had several charts which he got out and stacked in the order in which he would need them. Most of the officers had cameras. They checked them carefully before they donned their helmets and zipped the gloves into place.
They were going to breathe filtered air as long as the radiation levels were not too high. Collins would tell everyone when to switch on their oxygen systems.
Jack Yocke walked over to Jake and said, "If anything goes wrong, we're dead men. You know that?" Jake Grafton was tempted to make a flippant reply, but after a look at the reporter's face, he refrained. "I know, Jack," he said patiently, and pulled his helmet on.
He knew the dangers better than the reporter did. No one in the other machine had hot suits and the machines would be too far apart for radio reception. If this machine had a serious mechanical problem and was forced down, everyone aboard was doomed. Even in well-maintained helicopters with excellent equipment and thorough, careful planning, this mission was too dangerous for anyone but a desperate fool. Which was, he told himself scornfully, why the Russians weren't here and he was.
He had given the other pilot explicit orders: if we don't come back after six hours, you are to return to Moscow.
The hour-and-forty-five-minute flight from Moscow had put a sufficient charge on the helicopter's batteries that Goober got a start without using the external power cart.
They had wrestled one of the carts into the passenger bay and Spiro Dalworth was outside standing beside the other, just in case.
Jake strapped himself into the crewman's seat by the rear door. He surveyed the compartment.
Some of the other people had strapped in, some hadn't.
Yocke was playing with his buckle, toying with the adjustment catch. Perhaps each of them in his own way was pondering his karma.
Jake looked forward and saw Toad looking back at him.
He gave Tarkington a thumbs up. and lifted the bird When the engine Rpm had stabilized, and the machine left the ground.
All that remained of the Serdobsk fast breeder reactor wa
s rubble arranged around a shallow hole in the ground.
From a hover two hundred feet above the plant it was obvious that no one had survived the blast.
Jake Grafton lay on his belly with his helmeted head poking out the open helicopter door.
Seventy-five feet below him the radioactivity sensor was inscribing little circles in the air.
Beside him people were taking turns snapping cameras, Jake felt a hand pulling him. It was Collins.
They put their helmets together and Collins shouted, "We can't stay here more than a couple minutes.
It's hotter than holy hell down there." "What's that stuff over there?" Jake pointed to the ay from wreckage of a building several hundred yards aw where the reactor had stood, Numerous drums were visible amid the concrete rubble, some of them split open. The contents looked dark, almost black.
"Plutonium. They probably had tons of the shit stored there." "The containers have ruptured." "Yeah, and the stuff is going to get blown away on the wind or washed into the creeks and rivers or soaked into the soil. Come on, Admiral, let's get the hell outta here." Jake went forward to the cockpit and tapped Goober on the shoulder. The pilot eased the stick forward and the helicopter left the hover.
"Circle over that KGB troop facility." Groelke did so. One of the buildings had burned and several bodies were visible, but nothing moved. Nothing.
The helicopter flew in a gentle circle until it was pointed southeast toward Petrovsk.
Goober Groelke climbed to several thousand feet to minimize their radioactivity exposure.
Now the noise of the engines became mesmerizing, Jack Yocke thought. One listened carefully, anxious not to hear any change, any burble or hiccup or unexplained sound.
With your life depending on the continued smooth running Of these two engines, the sound captures your attention and holds you spellbound. The ruins of the reactor had been horrifying, but the sound of these engines was the promise of continuing life, a drug more powerful than anything a doctor could prescribe.
Yocke tried to put his emotions into words, tried to string the words together as he sat with closed eyes and concentrated on that perfect humming.
On the floor of the passenger compartment Tom Collins fiddled with his equipment and made notes of radioactivity readings from which he could extrapolate estimates of the levels present on the surface.
Jake Grafton watched him.
At times Collins shook his head. Finally he folded up the notebook and sat hunched, staring at the needles on the dials in front of him.
The helicopter flew over a village, then a small town, then farther along another village.
Cattle lay dead in the fields. Not a sign of life below, not even buzzards. They were dead too.
All those people went to bed one evening and at dawn, or just after, the radioactive fallout arrived, an invisible rain that fell without noise, without beauty, without warning, and brought quick, gentle death. Most of the victims probably died in their sleep.
Is that the fate of civilization? Is that the end that awaits our species? No bang, no warning, just death for every last man, woman and child as they lay sleeping on the dawn of the last day?
Jake Grafton felt his eyes tearing over and blinked repeatedly.
Collins had given up on the instruments and was standing beside Grafton looking aft, out the open door, when they saw the river, the Volga, broad and deep, the water reflecting the blue of the sky and the white of the clouds.
"Let's go down and hover just above the surface." Goober turned the machine and went back. After twenty seconds of hovering, Collins signaled to fly on. Toad saw him and waved his hand at Groelke.
Jake bent down to where Collins was making notes. He was not writing down radiation levels, but a sentence: "The Volga is now a river of radiation carrying poison to the sea." They circled the Petrovsk Rocket Base while Collins took more readings.
Jake looked out the window. The barracks and offii'cces and hangars were all intact, but nothing moved.
From this altitude the scene reminded Jake of a model railroad setup, complete with cars, trucks and several airplanes parked on the mat just off the runway', and a locomotive and flatcars near the biggest hangari But his attention was captured by the empty transporters parked on the mat. There were three of them, green tractors with green flat trailers hooked behind them, all empty.
Jocko West and the two European officers stood in the door looking at the transports, then Rheinhart began snapping pictures.
"I think we can land, Admiral," Collins shouted.
"How long?" "As little time on the ground as possible." "How hot is it?" "Unprotected, you'd be fatally ill in a half hour. Maybe less." Groelke put the chopper near the main hangar and killed the engines to save fuel. Breathing pure oxygen, the people got out of the machine carefully, gingerly, conscious of anything that might rip or damage their antiradiation suit.
"Goober, stay with the machine. Toad, stay with him." Jake Grafton led the little party toward the open hangar door.
The giant missiles riding on their transporters were stark, functional sculptures with the red star prominent upon their flanks.
There was open space near the door, apparently enough for the three transporters that sat a quarter-mile away across the concrete.
impressive as the missiles were, the little group was soon standing gazing at medium-size wood crates arranged on pallets.
One of the boxes had been ripped open, revealing a cylindrical-shaped device about twelve inches in diameter.
Wires and electronic devices covered it like spaghetti. Yet Just visible between some of the wire bundles was a dull black substance arranged in the shape of a ball. This black stuff, Jake knew, was the conventional explosive trigger.
Upon detonation it would squeeze the plutonium in the core-the center of the ball-into a supercritical mass.
There in that tiny space the plutonium atoms would have their electrons stripped away, an instantaneous rape.that would release stupendous amounts of energy. E equals MC2.
Jake Grafton counted quickly. Four warheads on each pallet, how many pallets? Almost a hundred.
The visitors were wandering away from the warheads when they saw the bodies stacked in one corner. Jake went over for a look, then found that only Jack Yocke had followed him.
Blood everywhere. Blood? Jesus, these people were shot! Lined up and gunned down.
Now he saw the spent cartridges that lay scattered around. He picked one up. Soviet.
Not that that meant anything. The Soviets sold military equipment all over the world, just like the Americans, Germans, French and British.
Superpowers do that, right? To keep the factories humming and the diplomats employed.
How many people? Fifteen or so.
There was a telephone on the wall and he went toward it. He held the handset against his helmet and tried to hear a dial tone. Nothing. He played with the buttons. Finally he replaced the instrument on its hook, He left the building and headed for the clean room., More bodies, all with bullet wounds. Some had died quickly, others bled a lot. There were bullet holes in the protective shield that sealed the room from the raw plutonium on the other side of the window. Even the flies were dead on the floor. Jake Grafton looked, then turned to find.
Jack Yocke staring at him through his faceplate.
Yocke had a camera but he wasn't taking any pictures. Jake brushed past him and headed for the door.
He had seen all he wanted to see. The others were ahead of him, walking toward the helicopter.
Yocke trailed behind. Jake counted. Everyone here.
He climbed through the door and found Goober and Toad in the cockpit.
"Crank it up," he shouted. "Let's get outta here.
Goober manipulated switches. Nothing happened. "Battery's dead," he announced.
It took all of them to manhandle the power cart out of the helicopter.
After looking all the controls over carefully, Toad Tarkington set
the choke, turned on the battery, and pushed the start button.
Nothing happened.
"Fuck," Toad said, loud enough for Grafton to bear.
"Nothing in this fucking country works," he announced, then turned back to Jake.
Grafton looked at his watch. They had been on the ground for fourteen minutes, "Those transporters probably have jumper cables and some hand tools. Maybe. Go see." Toad went trotting off, a silver figure laboring through the heat waves rising from the concrete.
Time passed. Jake Grafton stared at the sky.
There was a jet up there. He could see the contrail. There it was, a silver gleam coming out from behind that cloud.
Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 5 - Red Horseman Page 27
