Final Storm (38 page)

Literally hundreds of wires, cable trunks, and sensors made up the bomber’s complex nervous system, and each connection had to be identified, securely mated, and tested. Working together, the three men had accomplished almost half the seemingly impossible task.

But even as they struggled to connect the bomber’s eyes and ears, she was already drinking in a hefty draught of volatile nutrients. Jet fuel, thickened with the bitter cold, was now being pumped from the special holding tank in the submarine to the two fueling ports and eight pumps of the B-1’s integral “wet wing” fuel system, filling it with almost 200,000 pounds of the precious liquid.

Firing up the engines would be next. Now silent, the four augmented turbofan engines would eventually cough to life, inhaling the frigid air of the ice cavern and blasting out more than 120,000 pounds of thrust in four fiery torches from the gaping black nozzles, which currently sported a fine coating of delicate rime.

Further ahead, under the green tube of the B-1’s fuselage, Wa was supervising the installation of the two AGM-130 Striker glide bombs in the after weapons bay, as Toomey helped load the defensive air-to-airs in the forward bay’s rotary launcher.

Jones was up in the cockpit, communicating with the other members of the work details using the plane’s intercom, powered temporarily by a thick cable from the submarine’s auxiliary power unit. Checking the cockpit flight controls, the offensive and defensive weapons system, and the rest of the bomber’s complex circuitry, the senior officer was gradually bringing each system on line with the standby power from the submarine. And more than four thousand feet away from where the bomber was being assembled by the team of freezing, feverish workers, Patrick’s crew of ex-Seabees were putting the finishing touches on the nearly mile-long, slightly sloping ramp that was to serve as the B-1’s takeoff runway. All that remained was to break the thin shell of ice that now separated the interior of the cave from the cold Arctic surface, and the imprisoned green bird of prey could break free from the ice to deliver its deadly payload.

Patrick was gunning the engine of the land grader, shoving nearly a quarter ton of ice in front of its blade to help clear the furthest end of the ramp. Even the roar of the grader’s diesel couldn’t drown out the ominous creaks, groans, and cracking sounds from the blue-white ice of the giant cavern itself.

The grizzled Seabee had seen more than his share of frozen wastelands, and he knew the fickleness of the shifting plates of the jagged icecap. What seemed to be a solid mass of smooth ice underneath him was actually a dangerously fragile mixture of frozen seawater, arctic snow, and crystallized moisture, ready to split apart and become one with the gray water below, or the white icefields above in a second’s terrible fury.

Every minute they spent in the ice cavern was on borrowed time, as the wind and weather above pressed down on the arching roof, and the mighty ocean heaved and strained against the thin floor. More than once, Patrick had seen the thirty-foot-thick ice shelf ripple with the motion of an errant wave, or shudder at the impact of some far-off iceberg.

But he knew that the men on the other end of the ramp were working as fast as they could, frantically trying to reassemble one of man’s most advanced mechanical marvels under near-prehistoric conditions. He only hoped it would be done in time.

More freezing hours passed. Finally the project was nearing completion.

Now up in the cockpit, Hunter watched through the sloping forward canopy as the last of Patrick’s Seabees drove the grader off the top of the long, upward ramping runway in front of the plane. The heavy equipment was to be left inside the ice cave, probably never to be used again.

As Yaz’s crewmen started to dog down the huge cargo hatches, Hunter’s thoughts turned to the task ahead of him.

Through the frost crystals on the front canopy, he could see the narrow horizontal slit in the ice cavern at the far end of the nearly mile-long ramp they had constructed. Frozen light from the weakened Arctic sun shafted in through the crevice, casting an eerie blue glow on the surrounding ice. Outside, he knew this part of the world was bathed in near-twilight this time of year. It would give the B-1, which would be flying without any external lights, an additional blanket of cover.

The opening Hunter had to drive the bomber through was just under 160 feet across—enough for the B-1’s wings to pass through at their maximum extension of fifteen-degree sweep, with maybe six feet to spare on either side. He knew that his was not the first airplane to take off from the clandestine ice cave—Fitz told him that the CIA once flew light-weight OV-1 Mohawk recon-observation-airplanes from the place—ones specially adapted to flying in the frigid arctic weather. They had been used to trip the Soviets’ northern frontier radar net, then dash away, no doubt giving fits to the isolated Soviet radar operators.

But there was a world of difference between a small, two-prop Mohawk and the B-1 supersonic swing-wing bomber. But a larger opening was out of the question—cutting the crevice any wider might cause the whole ceiling to collapse, or the shifting floor to give way.

However, getting out of the small opening was just one of the problems Hunter expected to encounter on take-off. He knew it would be difficult just to guide the big bomber along the slick, packed-ice surface, especially under full power on takeoff. A half-inch mistake of the throttle or control stick could send the green monster careening off the narrow ramp to be smashed on the jagged ice below, or crush a fragile wingtip on the crusted edge of the cave opening.

So he knew he had to make it happen on the first try. There would be no aborts once he punched the four powerful afterburners …

Eight more hours passed.

Finally, the work was completed on the bomber. At just about the same time, Patrick christened the runway of ice as being ready.

At this point, Hunter, JT, Ben, and Jones gathered for one last meeting, went over all aspects of the mission once again, then feasted on some stale sandwiches and water made from melting the Arctic.

Hunter was three bites into his sandwich when he closed his eyes just to give them a rest. So much had happened over the past few weeks, his head felt like it was caught up in a perpetual swirl: the raid on Bermuda, the hypnotic testimony session, the trial itself, the nuking of Syracuse, the endless preparations for this mission.

It was enough turmoil for a hundred lifetimes. He promised himself that after this was over, he was going to take some extended R&R and do what he had vowed to do right after the Panama operation. That was to find his only true love, Dominique, wherever she was. Maybe he would even ask her to finally settle down and …

Next thing he knew, JT was shaking him awake. He had unintentionally slept for three hours.

It was now time to go …

The last crewman was aboard the USS
Ohio
when Hunter finally fired up the B-1’s engines for real.

It took more than forty-five minutes for the cold turbines to power up to their optimum speeds under full oil pressure. Another thirty minutes was devoted to Hunter’s checking his cockpit avionics against those readings in the remote-control room deep within the
Ohio.
A few minor problems were ironed out, and the MAPS device recalibrated for the final time.

At that point, there was nothing else to do but take off and get the damn thing over with.

With JT, Ben, and Jones seated at their remote-control console Yaz and Patrick were the only ones to stay up on the big sub’s conning tower weather bridge to watch the B-1 take off.

Yaz flashed a “thumbs up” sign to Hunter as he nudged the B-1 forward along the improvised flight line, but Patrick stood watching, hands clenched tightly against the railing, straining to listen with his entire body for any sound from the ice.

But he couldn’t hear the creaks and groans from the densely packed ice now. The steady whine of the B-1’s idling engines became a deafening roar as the four GE turbofans spat out their fiery exhausts a mixture of red-hot flame and billowing white vapor clouds in the frigid air. Their thundering blast rocked the sub and the men on deck as it echoed in the closed cave. His ears useless, Patrick nevertheless could almost
feel
the ice mass shuddering.

“The engines!” he hollered above the noise to Yaz. “The damned vibrations’ll rip this place apart!”

“Too late now, Pops,” Yaz screamed back, “He’s already committed to go!”

The two men watched, unable to speak, both being pounded by the howling engine roar.

The B-1’s wings swung outward toward their full extension even as the plane began to gather speed toward the narrow beam of light at the far end.

Within a matter of seconds, the bomber was traveling at almost a hundred and fifty miles per hour, straight as an arrow toward the opening. The wheels seemed locked into their tracks as the big bomber gained the acceleration it needed for takeoff.

“Time for afterburners, Hawk buddy,” Yaz said through clenched teeth, his hands clasping an imaginary control stick in front of him, as if he were trying to fly the plane himself. Without the extra punch of power, the airplane would never break the lock of gravity.

The screaming engine noise was notched upward an order of magnitude as all four afterburners sent the bomber hurtling along. But suddenly a new sound was heard over the jet’s thunder. An ear-splitting explosion echoed through the cavern, and an ominous crack appeared in the floor of the cave near where the bomber had been assembled.

The men on the submarine’s bridge watched in horror as the crevice continued to grow, chasing the speeding bomber along the runway. A deep rumbling welled up from the ice mass around them, drowning the roar of the engines. More cracks opened in the ice floor, spreading across the makeshift airstrip scant feet behind the plane’s path as it continued to rush toward the bright slit at the end of the ramp.

Now they could actually see the ice of the floor buckle and ripple before them.

Jagged frozen chunks began heaving themselves up as the green-gray seawater rushed through the crevices between them. The grader they’d used to clear the runway quickly disappeared into the dark water, followed by leftover fuel barrels and empty electrical wire spools. At the same time, ice stalactites were shaken loose from the ceiling, and plunged downward like white daggers toward the green blur now nearing the opening.

Miraculously, none struck the bomber.

Finally, one of the ice daggers tore away from the ice roof with a huge chunk of ice connected. It struck the runway just behind the jet’s moving tail section and opened a gaping tear in the packed-ice floor. The massive block of ice had been the keystone of the crazy-quilt structure that formed the cavern’s ceiling, and its sudden dislodging sent Shockwaves rippling throughout the cave.

First one fissure appeared in the ceiling, starting to slice over to the top of the runway. Then another dashed down a wall to join the disintegration of the floor. Finally, the huge arching cavern roof began to give way, sending huge blocks of ice smashing into the churning seawater and ice that floated below. Several ice boulders struck the exposed hull of the submarine.

At that moment, Yaz knew it was time to get the hell below and get the
Ohio
down to safety.

Patrick was the last one on the bridge. He glanced back over his shoulder to see the green arrow-shape of the B-1 shoot out of the mouth of the ice cave, wings barely clearing the narrow window.

Then the plane was gone from sight.

I
N THE ELABORATE BUNKER
deep beneath the Krasnoyarsk radar building, Soviet Air Marshal Alexsandi Petrovich Porogarkov lit a cigarette and looked about him.

A dozen radar consoles lined the smart, bright red walls of this main control room, their sparkling TV screens dwarfed by the mammoth black cabinets that contained their elaborate supporting hardware and electronics. He checked a bank of LED indicator lights on his own desk-top console and was reassured to see that all twelve of the radar screens were in operation now, each one of them attended by two crack technicians.

He leaned back and took a deep drag on his cigarette. All was correct with his world at the moment—even the music. A constant symphony of duo-tone beeps and blips intermittently echoed through the room, filling it with a forceful, yet pleasant chorus of sounds.

Above it all was the sterling banner of the Red Star—the near-secret, elite ruling party that had guided the Soviet Union since the beginning of World War III.

There is an inherent simplicity in smaller numbers, Porogarkov thought, not for the first time. Whereas before the war the Soviet Union’s Communist Party was a bureaucracy bloated beyond all recognition, the new Party, the Red Star, was small, manageable and common-sensical. For in his mind, of the many positive things that resulted from the Soviet Union’s “victory” in World War III, the best of all was the thorough cleansing of the old Kremlin ruling clique. In fact, he knew this purification was the
real
reason the war was started in the first place. No sooner had his confederates launched the surprise Scud missile attack on western Europe, when the precarious dominoes in the Politburo came crashing down. Even before the Scuds had hit their targets, the reformers in the Kremlin were gone. Assassinated. With them went
glasnost, perastroika
and all the rest of the obscene Western-style fads.

Yes, even before the deadly gas from the Scuds had scattered more than a few feet, the
original
communist ideal was firmly back in place in the Kremlin. Now, a handful of years later, under the banner of the Red Star, that ideal was stronger, leaner, more enduring.

Only now did he truly believe he would see the Red Star banner flying over the entire planet in his lifetime.

Porogarkov had known this place when it was little more than a crudely constructed radar station.

Based on thirty- or forty-year-old designs stolen from the West, it had been built by Soviet engineers from available Soviet equipment. At that time, before the Big War, he remembered touring Krasnoyarsk and seeing more than half of the radar stations shut down or only partially operable. Back then there was an absence of trained operators so acute the station commander had been forced to man some of the stations with untrained, unqualified recruits.