Plague Ship tof-5

by Clive Cussler

  Eric hadn’t known it, but his last commanding officer had gotten word to an old friend, Hanley, that Stone would make an excellent addition to the Corporation. When Max made the initial approach, Eric agreed to join almost immediately. He recognized in the former Swift Boat commander the same things he had seen in his old teachers. Max had this calm, steady demeanor and endless patience, and he knew how to nurture talent. He was slowly molding Eric into the man he always wanted to be.

  This was the other reason Eric couldn’t eat and had slept only fitfully the night before. Success today would mean he had killed a man who had been more of a father to him than the man who had raised him.

  “You okay, son?” Jack Taggart asked as they were putting on their flight suits in a locker room behind the hangar office. The space plane’s cabin was pressurized, so the suits were little more than olive drab overalls. “You look a little green around the gills.”

  “A lot on my mind, Colonel,” Eric replied.

  “Well, I don’t want you to worry none about the flight,” the former Shuttle pilot drawled. “I’ll get us there and back, no problem.”

  “I can honestly say that the last thing I’m concerned with is the flight itself.” A technician stuck his head into the room. “Gentlemen, you’d better shake a leg. Flight director wants Kanga rolling in twenty minutes.”

  Taggart snatched up his helmet from his locker and said, “Then let’s go light this candle.” There were two reclined seats behind the pilot’s position in the sleek space plane, ’ Roo. Eric had spent the early morning hours securing his computer and the transmitter into one of them. He eased himself into the second and kept his hands away from his chest, as workers belted him in as secure as a Grand Prix driver. Above him was a pair of windows, through which he could see the underside of the mother ship.

  There were small windows on either side as well. Taggart was in front of him, talking to flight director Rick Butterfield.

  Eric jacked his helmet into a communications port and waited for a pause in Taggart’s conversation to do a radio check on the flight frequency, before switching over to another frequency, though he could still hear the pilot in one ear.

  “Elton, this is John, how do you read me? Over.” Hali Kasim had picked the code names from the Elton John song “Rocket Man.”

  “John, this is Elton. Reading you five by five. Over.”

  “Elton, prepare to receive telemetry on my mark. Three, two, one, mark.” Eric hit a key on his laptop so that Hali could monitor the flight and the Russian satellite in real time aboard the Oregon . He’d even rigged a webcam so his shipmates could see what he was seeing.

  “John, signal looks good. Over.”

  “Okay, we’re about ten minutes from rollout. I’ll keep you updated. Over.”

  “Roger that. Good luck. Over.”

  The big hangar doors rattled open, bathing the cavernous space in the ruddy light of a new day. There were enough workers on hand to push Kanga out onto the apron. On the edge of the runway sat a ramshackle mobile home that was the flight director’s control center. Its roof bristled with antennae and a pair of revolving radar dishes.

  “How you doing back there?” Taggart called over his shoulder.

  Before Eric could reply, the two turbojets mounted on the top of Kanga’s fuselage roared into life.

  Taggart repeated the question over the radio, because it was too loud to speak comfortably.

  “Getting a little excited,” Eric confessed.

  “Don’t forget, I’ll flash a red light on your console when we’re ten seconds from the end of the burn. It’ll turn yellow when we’re at five and green when the rocket motor cuts out. At that moment, we’ll be at an altitude of roughly seventy-five miles, but once the motor runs dry we start falling immediately. So do your thing fast.”

  “You got it.”

  “Here we go,” Taggart announced as Kanga started to taxi.

  The gawky mother ship, with its droopy wings, rolled onto the runway and turned sharply to align with the center stripe. It began to accelerate immediately, the engines keening at full power. Designed for the sole purpose of getting ’ Roo up to its launch altitude of thirty-eight thousand feet, Kanga wasn’t the most dynamic aircraft in terms of performance. It used up nearly the entire runway before transitioning into the air to start its long, stately ascent. Out the side window, Eric could see its bizarre shadow racing across the scrub desert. It looked like something out of a science-fiction movie.

  It took an hour for the plane to spiral up to altitude. Eric spent the time double-checking his equipment.

  Taggart merely sat quietly in his seat, playing a Game Boy flight simulator.

  They were ten minutes early, according to Eric’s timetable, so the plane carved lazy figure eights in the sky. High above them, the Soviet satellite was fast approaching. Unlike the Shuttle or the International Space Station that orbited parallel to the equator, the Orbital Ballistic Projectile weapon swept over the globe from pole to pole. In this way, it crisscrossed every square inch of the planet in fourteen days, as the earth revolved beneath it. It was currently over Wyoming, coming on at almost five miles per second.

  In its present orbital track, it wouldn’t arrive over Eos Island for another week, which was why one of the signals Eric had to send was to fire its maneuvering rockets and change its vector. If everything went as planned, the satellite would be in range to fire one of its rods in less than eight hours.

  “Coming up on T minus one minute,” Eric heard Butterfield announce. “All boards are green.”

  “Roger that, Ground. Sixty seconds.”

  A timer on Eric’s console began to click backward, while the digital speed indicator mounted on the dashboard remained pegged at four hundred miles per hour.

  “Thirty seconds . . . Ten . . . Five, four, three, two, one. Go for separation.” The pilot aboard the mother ship released a lever that held ’ Roo clamped to the aircraft’s belly. The space plane fell free for a few moments, to get distance from Kanga, before Taggart toggled the liquid-rocket motor.

  To Eric, it felt as if every one of his senses was assaulted at the same instant. The roar of the engine was like standing at the base of a waterfall, a palpable sensation that beat on his chest. The airframe’s vibrations forced him to clutch the armrest while he was slammed back into his seat, as if by a giant fist.

  His body shook inside his skin so much it felt like someone was rubbing him with sandpaper. His mouth had gone dry from the dose of adrenaline sent shooting into his veins. Focusing hard on the speedometer, he saw that, in seconds, they were nearing the sound barrier.

  The g-forces kept him pressed into his reclined seat, as Taggart pointed the nose ever higher, the vibrations getting progressively worse, and Eric feared the airframe would come apart in midair. And then they burst through the sound barrier. The vibrations diminished, and while he could still feel the thrust of the engine they were traveling faster than its throaty snarl, and it grew noticeably quieter.

  One minute after the motor kicked in, they burst above a hundred thousand feet, and Eric was finally coming to grips with the ride. His heart rate slowed, and, for the moment, he let himself enjoy the space plane’s raw power.

  The airspeed gauge hit two thousand miles per hour and they still accelerated. Looking over his head, he noticed the sky darkening rapidly, as they roared up through the atmosphere. As if by magic, stars began to appear, faintly at first but brightening. He had never seen so many so clearly. Gone was the twinkle caused by their light passing through earth’s atmosphere. They held steady, and their numbers swelled, until it looked as though space was made of light rather than darkness.

  He knew if he stretched out his hand, he would be able to touch them.

  The indicator in front of him suddenly flashed red. He couldn’t believe four minutes could pass that quickly. Straining against the g’s, he moved his hand over to the laptop.

  “Ten seconds,” he said on the frequency the Or
egon was monitoring. If Hali replied, it was lost in the rocket’s din.

  The altimeter was still reeling off numbers in a blur. They hit three hundred and ninety-four thousand feet when the light went yellow, and, in those last five seconds, they rose another mile. The indicator turned green just as they hit the four-hundred-thousand-foot mark.

  Eric typed in the command, as the rocket motor consumed the last of its fuel and the cyclonic pumps that fed it went quiet. The g-forces that had hammered him into his seat suddenly released him, and the silence left his ears ringing. They had gone weightless. He had often experienced moments of it on roller coasters, and on a few flights with Tiny Gunderson, when they were fooling around, but this felt different.

  They were on the very edge of space now, not playing tricks with gravity but almost out of its reach.

  In the cockpit, Jack Taggart activated the armatures that raised the entire wing so it was at an angle to the fuselage. The added drag, and the dynamics of the new configuration, kept the plane incredibly stable, as it started its long glide back to the airfield outside of Monahans, Texas.

  “What did you think?” he asked.

  “Just a moment.”

  Taggart thought Eric might be sick and he craned around to look, but Stone was concentrating on his computer. The kid had just been given the ride of his life and he was already working. Taggart admired the dedication, thinking back to his first Shuttle mission. He hadn’t been able to do anything but stare out the window his first hour up here.

  “Repeat that, Elton. Over.”

  “I said, we’ve got confirmation from the bird’s onboard telemetry. She has fired her maneuvering thrusters and is changing orbit. Targeting computers are online, and it’s going through its prefire checklist.

  Congratulations. You did it!”

  Eric didn’t know if he wanted shout for joy or cry. In the end, he settled for simple satisfaction that his plan was going to work. He had to give credit to the Russians. When it came to their space program, they knew what they were doing. Where NASA was all about elegant finesse, the Soviets had gone for simplicity and brute force, and, as a result, they built to last. Their Mir space station remained in orbit twice as long as originally planned. Had it not been for lack of funds, it would likely still be up there.

  “Roger that. Over and out.”

  “Well?” Taggart asked.

  “It worked. We now have control of the Russian satellite.”

  “I wasn’t asking about that. I want to know what you thought of the flight.”

  “Colonel, that was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced,” Eric said, feeling weight slowly returning to his body. His stomach settled back into its normal position.

  “I know it won’t go into the books, but, just so you know, we broke the altitude record. We’re going to limit our paying flights to about three hundred and thirty thousand feet, so it’s a record that’ll be around for a while.”

  Eric chuckled to himself, thinking how jealous Murph was going to be—and how impressed Janni would be. But, no sooner had the thought crossed his mind, the smile died on his lips, and he once again considered Max Hanley’s fate.

  CHAPTER 35

  MAX HAD RACKED HIS BRAIN, THINKING OF A WAY OUT of the subterranean fortress, and he had only one solution. On a late-night foray, he had discovered triple guards on the stairwell leading to the garage, and he knew that he wasn’t going to bluff his way past them. Kovac had left his face a swollen mess, and the guards would be suspicious the moment they saw him.

  He wasn’t getting out the front door, so he had to sneak out the back.

  He left his hiding place in the closet of the executive wing and made his way to the generator room. He made sure to hide his face from the few people he passed in the hallways. He rounded a corner nearest the room where the jet engines spun the turbines that powered the facility and saw that Kovac had ordered a guard to stand watch here as well. Keeping his pace steady and measured, he walked down the corridor. The guard, a kid of about twenty wearing a blue police-style uniform and with a nightstick in his belt, eyed him as he approached.

  “How ya doing?” Max called jovially when he was still ten feet away. “Yeah, I know, my face looks like hamburger. A bunch of antiabortion zealots jumped me day before yesterday at a rally in Seattle. I just got here. Hell of a place, huh?”

  “This is a restricted area unless you have a clearance badge.” The kid forced authority into his voice by deepening it, but he didn’t seem overly wary.

  “Is that so? Only thing I’ve been issued so far are these.” Max pulled his last two bottled waters from the pockets of his overalls. “Here.”

  Rather than offer it and give the kid an opportunity to refuse, he tossed a bottle to the guard. He caught it awkwardly and glared at Max. Max grinned stupidly and twisted off the cap of his bottle. He held it up in a salute.

  Etiquette and thirst overcame the young guard’s limited security training, and he pried off the lid and returned Max’s salute. He raised the bottle to his lips and tipped his head back to take a swig. Max lunged like an Olympic fencer, ramming the stiffened fingers of his right hand directly into the soft spot at the base of the kid’s throat.

  Water spewed from his mouth as his airway swelled closed. He couldn’t cough. He managed a gurgling sound, as his eyes bugged from his head and he clutched for his throat in a desperate attempt to get air.

  Max laid the guard out with a haymaker to the side of the jaw and he fell at his feet. He bent to check on his breathing. Now that the guard was unconscious, he stopped hyperventilating and could draw a little air through his damaged larynx. His voice would be a husky whisper for the rest of his life, but he’d live.

  “If I were you, I’d ask for a refund from whatever security guard training school you went to.” Max opened the door to the generator room. The control room was deserted, and, by the looks of the displays, only one of the jet engines was making power. Max stuffed the young guard into the kneehole of a metal desk and manacled his wrists to the leg with his FlexiCuffs. He didn’t need to worry about gagging him.

  Hanley had already considered the idea of sabotaging the engines and denying the Responsivists the means of transmitting the signal but felt it would be a waste of time. He knew they had a fully charged battery backup in some part of the facility he hadn’t seen, so they would still be able to send it. If he managed to find and somehow disable the batteries, all he would accomplish is a short delay until they could repair the damage. He’d maybe buy a few hours or days while giving away his presence. The reason they hadn’t found him lurking in their headquarters was because they thought he was either dead or eluding them outside. As soon as they knew a saboteur was inside the bunker, the security contingent would comb it inch by inch until they found him.

  He could just imagine how painful a death Kovac would have in store for him.

  Max was certain Cabrillo had gotten the message and trusted without question that the Chairman had come up with a plan to destroy the transmitter long before Severance sent the signal. So he discounted the idea of sabotage and had dedicated his time to an escape plan.

  The four engines were laid out in a row, with fat ducts feeding them air on one end and large exhaust pipes venting the spent gases from the other. Just before the ducts exited the room through the far wall, the four pipes came together in a manifold so that a single large exhaust duct led outside. There was a heat exchanger located just after the pipes came together to cool the gases leaving the facility. The air intake worked the same in reverse, with a single conduit entering the power plant and branching off to the separate turbines. Max would have preferred that route, but the plenums were ten feet off the floor and inaccessible without a scaffolding.

  “If it’s good enough for Juan, it’s good enough for me,” he muttered, thinking back to Cabrillo’s escape from the Golden Dawn.

  He found tools and ear protectors on a workbench at the back of the control room and slid open th
e door to the power plant’s main floor. With his ears covered, the engine’s whine remained at a tolerable threshold. Before he got to work, he checked a distinctive red cabinet. Without its contents, his escape attempt would kill him.

  There was an access port on each of the four exhaust pipes that was secured with a ring of bolts. He got to work removing the three-inch-long bolts, taking care that none rolled away from him. He had taken apart his first engine at age ten and had never lost his love of machinery, so he worked swiftly and efficiently. He left one bolt in place but had loosened it so he could pivot the inspection hatch away from the hole. Although the engine fitted to this exhaust duct was silent, the fumes rising up from the pipe made his eyes swim.

  He grabbed a handful of short, fat bolts from a drawer of spares in the control room. They were a fraction too small for the threaded holes, but they would more than pass a cursory inspection. When the turbine was fired up, the pressure would blow them out of the hatch like bullets, but that wasn’t Max’s problem. He replaced the tools back in the control room and checked on the unconscious guard to make sure he was still breathing.

  The red cabinet contained firefighting gear—axes, heat detectors, and, most important, air tanks with masks. Because any fire that broke out in the generator room would most likely be fed by the jet’s kerosene fuel, there were also two silvery one-piece metallic suits with hoods that would protect wearers from the tremendous heat.

  Max had noticed all of this on his first foray into the generating room, and the discovery had been the genesis of his escape plan. He cut off one of the suit’s hoods and slid into it, pulling the second one over him so that everything but his head was double insulated. There was enough play in the boots for his feet, barely. He carried two of the air cylinders to the open access port. His movements were awkward, like a robot from an old science-fiction movie. The tanks were fitted with armored hoses that jacked directly into the suit at hip level through a valve. He would have preferred carrying more air, but he wasn’t sure if his battered body could heft the extra weight.