Atlantis jh-1

by David Gibbins

  On Seaquest’s shattered foredeck Jack could see the gun turret deployed and elevated. The barrels were at a crazy angle, evidently the result of a direct hit. Jack knew that York and Howe would not have abandoned her without a fight. He silently prayed they had managed to escape afterwards with the rest of the crew in the submersible.

  “They were scientists and sailors, not fanatics and thugs,” Jack said coldly.

  Aslan shrugged and turned back to the screen.

  It transformed to show another ship, this one hove close in to the island. As the image magnified, all eyes were glued on the stern. A group of figures could be seen dismantling two large tubes which showed irregular patterns of thermal radiation as if they had been on fire. Just as Jack realized he was looking at battle damage to Vultura, Aslan snapped his fingers and a hand gripped Jack’s shoulder like a vice.

  “Why was I not told?” Aslan screamed in rage. “Why was this kept concealed from me?”

  The room went silent and he pointed at Jack. “He is not worthy of ransom. He will be liquidated like his crew. Get him out of my sight!”

  Before being hustled away Jack made a quick mental note of the GPS co-ordinates on the SATSURV screen. As Dalmotov pushed him he pretended to trip up against the security monitors. Earlier he had recognized the approach passageway and the hangar entrance on the two nearest screens. As he stumbled against the control panel he pressed the pause key. Other CCTV cameras would chart their progress, but with all eyes diverted to the image of Vultura there was a chance they might go unnoticed.

  Ever since he had woken that morning Jack had been determined to act. He knew Aslan’s moods were fickle, that the rage of his last outburst would again revert to apparent conviviality, but Jack had decided to gamble no more on the whims of a megalomaniac. The shocking image of Seaquest and the uncertain fate of her crew had hardened his resolve. He owed it to those who may have paid the ultimate price. And he knew the fate of both Costas and Katya lay in his hands.

  His opportunity came as the shuttle was speeding them from the control hub back to the hangar. Just beyond the halfway point Dalmotov stepped forward to peer at the docking bay as it came into view. It was a momentary lapse in vigilance, a mistake he would never have made had his instincts not been blunted by being too long in Aslan’s lair. With lightning speed Jack drew back his left fist and slammed it into Dalmotov’s back, a crushing impact that threw Jack off balance and left him clutching his hand in pain.

  It was a blow that would have killed any ordinary man. Jack had brought his full force to bear at a point just below the ribcage where the shock of an impact can stop the heart and diaphragm simultaneously. He watched in disbelief as Dalmotov remained immobile, his huge physique seemingly impervious. Then he muttered something unintelligible and sank to his knees. He remained upright for a few seconds, his legs shuffling feebly, then toppled forward and lay still.

  Jack heaved the recumbent form out of sight of any surveillance camera. The docking bay was empty and the only figures he could see were on the helipad outside the hangar entrance. As the shuttle drew to a halt he stepped out and pressed the return button, sending the carriage and its unconscious occupant back in the direction of the control hub. He was buying precious time and knew every second must count.

  Without hesitating he marched brazenly towards the helipad entrance, praying his confident gait would allay suspicion. He reached the rack of flight suits, selected the longest and pulled it on. He tightened the lifejacket and donned a helmet, closing the visor so his face was concealed.

  He snatched a duffel bag and picked up one of the Barrett sniper rifles. He had observed Dalmotov assembling the weapon and quickly found the locking pin. He detached the stock from the receiver and slid them both into the bag. Stacked alongside were cartons labelled BMG, the 50 calibre Browning Machine Gun round. Jack took a handful of the massive 14 millimetre cartridges and shoved them in beside the weapon.

  After zipping up the bag he continued resolutely towards the hangar entrance. Once there he squatted down to survey the scene while pretending to adjust an ankle strap. The tarmac was hot to the touch, the summer sun having burned away the rainwater from the night before. In the glare the buildings of the compound seemed scorched and overburdened with heat like the surrounding hills.

  He had already decided which helicopter to go for. The Werewolf was the most sophisticated, but was parked with the Havoc at the far edge of the heliport. The Hind was only twenty metres in front and being prepared for flight. It had been a workhorse of the Russian war machine and the snout with its stepped tandem cockpit exuded reliability.

  He straightened up and walked over to a crew chief who was feeding a belt into the ammunition loading port.

  “Priority orders,” Jack barked. “The schedule has moved forward. I am to leave at once.”

  His Russian was rusty and heavily accented, but he hoped it would pass muster in a place where many of the personnel were Kazakhs and Abkhazians.

  The man looked surprised but not unduly taken aback.

  “The weapons hardpoints are still empty and you have only four hundred rounds of 12.7, but otherwise we are ready to go. You are cleared to mount up and begin pre-flight checks.”

  Jack slung the duffel bag over his shoulder and climbed through the starboard door. He ducked into the cockpit and manoeuvred into the pilot’s seat. He stashed the bag out of the way. The controls did not look as if they would present too many problems; the overall configuration differed little from other military helicopters he had flown.

  As he strapped himself in, Jack looked out through the canopy. Over the bulging Plexiglas of the gunner’s nacelle he could see a group of fitters wheeling two flatbed trolleys, each laden with tube launchers for the Spiral radio-guided anti-armour missile. The Hind was being loaded up for the final assault on Seaquest. At the same moment he glimpsed two men in flight suits coming towards him from the hangar entrance, evidently the Hind’s pilot and gunner. The instant he saw the crew chief pick up his cellphone and raise his eyes in alarm, Jack knew his cover was blown.

  The giant five-blade rotor was already vibrating, the twin 2,200 horsepower Isotov TV3-117 turboshafts having been warmed up as part of the pre-flight routine. Jack scanned the dials and saw the tank was full and oil and hydraulic pressures were up to mark. He prayed fervently that Aslan’s anti-aircraft defences had not yet been briefed to shoot down one of their own. He gripped the two control sticks, his left hand pulling hard on the collective and twisting the throttle and his right hand pulling the cyclic as far back as it would go.

  In seconds the beat of the rotor rose in a mighty crescendo and the Hind lurched into the air with its nose angled down. For a few agonizing moments there was no movement as it strained and bucked against the force of gravity, its efforts drummed out in a deafening cacophony that reverberated off the buildings around the helipad. As Jack skilfully worked the pedals to keep the machine from sliding sideways he caught sight of a great bear of a man running out of the hangar and roughly pushing aside the two dazed airmen. Dalmotov did not even bother with his Uzi, knowing the 9 millimetre rounds would splatter harmlessly off the helicopter’s armour plating. Instead he raised a much more lethal weapon he had grabbed on his way through the hangar.

  The first 50 calibre BMG round smashed straight through the forward gunner’s nacelle, a position Jack would have taken had he known the helicopter was dual-control. As the machine suddenly sprang forward, a second round hit somewhere aft, a jarring impact that swung the fuselage sideways and forced Jack to compensate with an extra burst to the tail rotor.

  As he wrestled with the controls, the helicopter rose over the hangar and clattered with increasing speed towards the southern seawall. To his left he could see the futuristic complex of Aslan’s hillside palace and to the right the sleek lines of the frigate. Moments later he crossed the perimeter and was over the open sea, the undercarriage skimming the waves as he kept low to minimize his radar profile. With
the throttle at maximum and the cyclic jammed forward, he soon reached the helicopter’s maximum sea-level speed of 335 kilometres per hour, a figure he was able to boost slightly after finding the lever that retracted the undercarriage. The shoreline was now receding rapidly to the east, and ahead lay only the cloudless morning sky merging into a blue-grey haze on the horizon.

  Fifteen nautical miles out, Jack pressed the pedals that controlled the tail rotor and pushed the cyclic to the left, gently easing the helicopter round until the compass read 180 degrees due south. He had already worked out how to activate the radar and GPS unit and now programmed in the co-ordinates for the island he had memorized on Seaquest three days previously. The computer calculated the remaining distance at just under 150 kilometres, a flight time of half an hour at present velocity. Despite the high fuel consumption, Jack had decided to maintain low altitude and maximum throttle, the fuel tanks over this distance providing ample margin.

  He activated the autopilot and opened the visor on his helmet. Without pausing he lifted the duffel bag and began to assemble the rifle. He knew he could not afford to let his guard down for one moment. Aslan would do all in his power to bring him back.

  CHAPTER 25

  Bring the helicopter to a standstill and await escort. Comply immediately or you will be destroyed. You will not be warned again.”

  Jack had heard the voice only once before, cursing gutturally in Russian, but there was no mistaking Dalmotov’s heavily accented delivery as it crackled through his headphones. Jack had kept the two-way radio on throughout the flight and had been expecting contact as soon as his pursuers came within range. For the past ten minutes he had been monitoring the radar screen as two red dots converged on him from the north, their speed and trajectory leaving no doubt they were the Havoc and Werewolf from Aslan’s base.

  He was only ten nautical miles north of the island, less than five minutes’ flying time away. He had sacrificed maximum speed by keeping low over the waves to suppress his radar profile, a gamble that had nearly paid off. Despite its age the Hind was marginally faster and more powerful than the other two machines, but they had gained on him by flying at a higher altitude where there was less air resistance.

  As well as a fixed 30 millimetre high-speed cannon and two twenty-round pods of 80 millimetre rockets the Havoc and Werewolf each carried a lethal combination of laser-guided air-to-air and anti-ship missiles, weapons Jack had seen in the loading bay. By contrast the hardpoints on the Hind’s stub wings were empty, the only firepower coming from the trademark four-barrelled 12.7 millimetre machine gun in the chin turret. It was a potentially devastating weapon, a mass killer in the Afghan and Chechen wars, but in the absence of a gunner Jack could only operate it on a fixed trajectory over open sights. At a cyclic rate of 1,200 rounds per minute per barrel, the four one-hundred round belts of armour-piercing would only allow a five-second burst, enough to cause colossal destruction at short range but scarcely sufficient to take on two such formidable adversaries.

  Jack knew the odds would be stacked hopelessly against him in a stand-off battle. His only chance would be a close-up engagement of the most brutal kind.

  “OK, Dalmotov, you win this time,” Jack muttered grimly to himself as he eased back on the throttle and spun the helicopter round to face his enemy. “But don’t count on seeing home again.”

  The three helicopters hovered in line abreast thirty metres above the waves, the downdraught churning up whirlwinds of spray. In the centre the Hind seemed conspicuously bulky, the other two machines having been designed for manoeuvrability and reduced battlefield visibility. To Jack’s right the Mi-28 Havoc looked like a hungry jackal with its low-set cockpit and protuberent snout. To his left the Ka-50 Werewolf’s trademark twin counter-rotating coaxial rotors seemed to magnify its potency yet reduce the airframe to insect-like proportions.

  Through the bulletproof flat-screen glazing of the Werewolf, Jack could make out the glowering form of Dalmotov.

  He instructed Jack to fly fifty metres ahead of his escorts. The clatter of the rotors increased to a reverberating din as the three machines tilted forward and began to fly north-east in close formation.

  As ordered, Jack switched off the two-way radio that would have allowed him to alert outside help. After activating the autopilot he settled back and cradled the Barrett out of sight on his lap. Fully assembled it was almost a metre and a half long and weighed fourteen kilograms. He had been obliged to remove the ten-round magazine to keep the barrel concealed below the cowling. With his right hand he checked the receiver where he had chambered one of the massive 50 calibre BMG rounds. His window of opportunity was closing with each kilometre and he knew he must act soon.

  His chance came earlier than expected. Five minutes on they suddenly encountered a thermal, a residual effect of the storm the night before. They bucked and swayed in a roller-coaster ride that seemed to ripple from the Hind to the other two. In the split second longer it took the others to adjust their controls, Jack decided to act. As another jolt of turbulence hit, he twisted the throttle forward and pulled hard on the cyclic. With the increase in engine power, the up-draught was enough to provide lift with the rotor blades pitched to maximum. The Hind bounced twenty metres above its original course, then faltered and began to drop. The other two passed below as if in slow motion, their blades almost skimming the Hind’s underbelly. Suddenly Jack was behind them. It was a classic manoeuvre of First World War dogfighting that was used to devastating effect by British Harriers against the faster Argentinian Mirages during the Falklands conflict.

  With the muzzle of the rifle wedged below the left window, Jack decided to use the Hind’s integral firepower against the machine to the right. He depressed the right-hand rudder pedal slightly and swerved sideways until the Havoc was in his sights. The entire manoevure had taken less than five seconds, scarcely time for the others to register his absence, let alone take evasive action.

  As the Hind bounced into position fifty metres astern, Jack flipped open the safety cover on top of the cyclic and pressed the red fire button. The four guns in the chin turret erupted in an immense wall of noise, a staccato hammering that threw Jack forward with the recoil. Each barrel spewed out twenty rounds per second, the casings ejecting in a wide arc on either side. For five seconds multiple prongs of flame shot out from under the nose and a withering hail of fire poured towards his opponent.

  At first the Havoc appeared to be absorbing the rounds as they punched through the rear plating of the fuselage. Then a gaping hole suddenly appeared from fore to aft as the bullets shredded everything in their path, and the cockpit and its occupant disintegrated in a geyser of carnage. As the Hind tipped upwards, the final torrent of bullets caught the Havoc’s turboshaft assembly, severing the rotor which spun off like a demented boomerang. Seconds later the fuselage exploded in a giant fireball of aviation fuel and detonating ammunition.

  Jack pulled hard on the collective and rose above the doomed helicopter. He settled on a level trajectory with the Werewolf, its sinister form now thirty metres to his left and slightly ahead. Jack could see the pilot battling with the controls as the lighter airframe was buffeted by the thermals and the aftershock of the explosion. Dalmotov seemed frozen in disbelief, unable to accept what had happened, but Jack knew it would be momentary; he had only seconds before he lost his advantage.

  He levelled the Barrett out of the window and fired. The bullet left with a mighty crack, the noise reverberating inside his earphones. He swore as he saw sparks fly off the Werewolf’s upper fuselage and quickly chambered another round. This time he aimed to the right to compensate for the 200 kilometre per hour airflow. He fired just as Dalmotov jerked his head round to look at him.

  Like most close-support helicopters, the Werewolf was well protected against ground attack, the armoured shield round the cockpit designed to withstand 20 millimetre cannon strikes. Its vulnerability lay in the upper fuselage and engine mounting, areas less susceptible to ground fi
re, where defensive plating was sacrificed to allow maximum armour to be concentrated round the crew compartment. The counter-rotating airfoil was both its strength and its weakness, producing a highly agile machine but requiring a shaft that protruded high above the fuselage to accommodate the two heads for the three-blade coaxial rotors.

  The second round struck just below the lower rotor, smashing through the machinery and severing the control line. For a moment nothing happened and the helicopter continued forward with its nose down. Then it began to judder and reared up at a crazy angle. Jack could see Dalmotov frantically working the controls. Even from a distance he could tell the cyclic and collective were dysfunctional and there was no response from the pedals. Dalmotov reached up to pull a red handle that hung above his head.

  The Werewolf was unique among battlefield helicopters in having a pilot ejection seat. The problem with helicopter ejection had always been the rotor above the cockpit, but Kamov had devised an ingenious system whereby the blades were discarded and the pilot’s seat was blasted up to a safe altitude for the parachute to open.

  From the moment he pulled the handle, Dalmotov must have sensed something was terribly wrong. Instead of ejecting, the rotor blades remained fixed while the explosive charges around the canopy detonated in quick succession. The canopy blasted into the rotor and was hurled into space, leaving the blades bent but operational. Seconds later the seat ejected in a belch of smoke. By hideous chance it was caught between the two sets of blades and tumbled madly like a Catherine wheel spurting fire. After two full revolutions every protruding part of Dalmotov’s body had been sliced away, his helmeted head tossed out like a football. After a final spin the rotors spewed out what was left of their macabre cargo and it disappeared below in a plume of spray.