Vulcan's Forge (33 page)

“Ever been in a fighter before?” the chief asked with a patronizing smile.

“No,” replied Mercer.

“Oh, Bubba’s going to love you.”

Mercer looked down at the chief. He was a good foot taller than the air force man, but the chief’s wide shoulders and hard, thick gut made them appear physically equal. “Bubba?”

“Howdy,” said a voice that came straight from a dirt farm in southern Georgia.

Mercer whirled around. The speaker stood near an office tucked against one wall of the cavernous hangar. The man’s high-tech flight suit bulged where pads and air bladders would squeeze his body to keep him from passing out in the High-g world of the modern dog fighter. The pilot had a baby face and thin, mangled hair, and when he smiled, Mercer could see that a front tooth was missing. The helmet in his hand had “Bubba” stenciled between stripes of red, white, and blue.

The man looked nothing like Mercer’s mental picture of the pilot.

“Billy Ray Young.” The pilot extended a bony hand. “Jist call me Bubba.” He grinned around the plug of tobacco firmly held in one cheek.

“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.

T
he 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 ballast 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&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.”