Dragon

  "He's eighteen minutes ahead of schedule," said Giordino softly, "and looking good."

  " `Like one that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread,' " Sandecker quoted absently.

  Giordino looked up quizzically. "What was that, Admiral?"

  "Coleridge." Sandecker smiled apologetically. " `The Ancient Mariner.' I was thinking of Pitt down there, alone in the deep with millions of lives riding on his shoulders, centimeters away from instant cremation--"

  "I should have been with him," Giordino said bitterly.

  "We all know you'd have locked him up if only you'd thought of it first."

  "True." Giordino shrugged. "But I didn't. And now he's staring at death while I sit here like a store-window dummy."

  Sandecker gazed at the chart and the red line showing Pitt's course across the seafloor to the B-29, and from there to the detonation site. "He'll do it and come out alive," he murmured. Dirk is not the kind of man to die easily."

  Masuji Koyama, Suma's expert technician in defense detection, stood behind the operator of a surveillance radar display and pointed out a target to Yoshishu, Tsuboi, and Takeda Kurojima, who were grouped around him.

  "A very large American Air Force transport," he explained. "Computer enhancement shows it as a C-Five Galaxy, capable of carrying an extremely heavy payload for great distances."

  "You say it is acting most strangely?" said Yoshishu.

  Koyama nodded. "It approached from the southeast along a course toward the American Air Force Base at Shimodate, an air traffic corridor used by their military aircraft that passes within seventy to a hundred kilometers of our island. While tracking it, we observed an object detach itself and fall into the ocean."

  "It dropped from the aircraft?"

  "Yes."

  "Could you identify it?" asked Tsuboi.

  Koyama shook his head. "All I can tell you is it appeared to fall slowly, as if attached to a parachute."

  "An underwater sensing device perhaps?" mused Kurojima, the Dragon Center's chief director.

  "A possibility, although it looked too large for a sonic sensor."

  "Most odd," mused Yoshishu.

  "Since then," Koyama continued, "the aircraft has remained over the area in a circular holding pattern."

  Tsuboi looked at him. "How long?"

  "Almost four hours."

  "Have you intercepted voice transmissions?"

  "A few brief signals, but they were electronically garbled."

  "Spotter plane!" Koyama snapped as if seeing a revelation.

  "What," inquired Yoshishu, "is a spotter plane?"

  "An aircraft with sophisticated detection and communications equipment," Koyama explained. "They're used as flying command centers to coordinate military assaults."

  "The President is a vicious liar!" Tsuboi hissed suddenly. "He laid a smoke screen and falsified his position to stall for time. It is clear now, he intends to launch a manned attack on the island."

  "But why be so obvious?" Yoshishu said quietly. "The American intelligence knows well our capacity to detect and observe targets of interest at that range."

  Koyama stared at the reflection of the plane on the radar display. "Could be a mission to electronically probe our defenses."

  Tsuboi's face was hard in anger. "I will open communications with the President and demand he remove it from our waters."

  "No, I have a better plan." Yoshishu's lips parted in a bleak, wintry smile. "A message the President will understand."

  "Your plan, Korori?" Tsuboi inquired respectfully.

  "Quite simple," answered Yoshishu with emotionless candor. "We destroy it."

  Within six minutes, two Toshiba infrared surface-to-air missiles spewed from their launchers and homed in on the unsuspecting crew of the C-5. The defenseless, frighteningly vulnerable aircraft did not carry attack warning systems. It went about its business of monitoring Big Ben's progress, circling the sea in blissful ignorance of the destructive terror streaking toward its great bulk.

  Sandecker had stepped into the communications compartment to send a status report to the White House while Giordino remained in their office. Giordino stood hunched over the desk studying the marine geologist's report on the undersea trench Pitt had to cross to reach the safety of the Japanese coast. He was plotting the distance for perhaps the fifth time when the first missile struck the aircraft and burst with a great roar. The shock and pressure wave knocked Giordino to the deck. Stunned, he had barely hoisted himself to his elbows when the second missile smashed into the lower cargo hold and tore a huge gaping hole in the belly of the fuselage.

  The end should have been swift, spectacular, but the first missile did not explode on immediate contact. It passed through the upper waist of the aircraft between bulkheads and shot across the cargo bay, bursting as it penetrated the airframe ribs on the opposite wall. The major force of the explosion was thrust into the night air outside, saving the aircraft from tearing apart.

  Even as he fought off the shock, Giordino thought, She must go down now. She can't stay in the air.

  But he was wrong on both counts. The big Galaxy was not about to die. She was miraculously free from flames, and only one of her flight control systems was damaged. Despite her gaping wounds, she remained solidly in the air.

  The pilot had put the crippled aircraft into a shallow dive before leveling out less than thirty meters above the sea on a southern course away from Soseki Island. The engines were running normal, and except for the vibration and restraining drag from the holes in the fuselage, the pilot's primary concern was the loss of the elevator control.

  Sandecker came aft, accompanied by the flight engineer to assess the damage. They found Giordino picking his way gingerly on his hands and knees across the cargo bay. Clutching a bulkhead support for dear life, he cast a jaundiced eye out the gaping opening at the sea that swept past like quicksilver.

  "I'll be damned if I'll jump," he shouted over the roar of the chaotic wind that pounded through the aircraft.

  "I don't fancy it either," Sandecker shouted back.

  The flight engineer stared in frightened awe at the damage. "What in hell happened?"

  "We took a pair of hits from ground-to-air missiles," Giordino yelled at him.

  Giordino motioned to Sandecker and pointed forward to get out of the wind blast. They made their way to the cockpit while the flight engineer began a damage inspection of the shattered lower belly. They found the pilots calmly struggling with the controls, quietly conversing as though they were conducting a textbook emergency in a flight simulator.

  Giordino sank wearily to the floor, thankful to still be alive. "I can't believe this big bird is still flying," he mumbled gladly. "Remind me to kiss the designers."

  Sandecker leaned over the console between the pilots and gave a brief accounting of the damage.

  Then he asked, "What's our chances?"

  "We've still got electrical and some hydraulic power and enough control to maneuver," answered the chief pilot, Major Marcus Turner, a big ruddy-featured Texan, usually cheerful and humorous but now tense and grim. "But the blast must have cut the lines running from the main fuel tank. The needles on the gauges have made a drastic drop in only two minutes."

  "Can you stay on station beyond the range of the missiles'?"

  "Negative."

  "I can make that an order from the chief executive," said Sandecker gruffly.

  Turner did not look happy, nor did he cave in. "No disrespect, Admiral, but this aircraft may come apart at the seams any second. If you have a death wish, that's your business. My duty is to save my crew and my aircraft. As a professional Navy man, you know what I'm talking about."

  "I sympathize, but my order stands."

  "If she'll stick together and we nurse the fuel," said Turner unperturbed, "we might make it to Naha Airfield on Okinawa. That's the nearest long runway that isn't in Japan proper."

  "Okinawa's out," Sandecker announced curtly. "We get clear of the isla
nd's defense systems and we stay within communication range with my man on the bottom. This operation is too vital to national security to abandon. Keep us in the air as long as you can. If worse comes to worst, ditch her in the sea."

  Turner's face was red, and perspiration was beginning to drip from it, but he managed a taut smile. "All right, Admiral, but you'd better plan on a long swim to the nearest land."

  Then, as if to add insult to injury, Sandecker felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned quickly. It was the communications operator. He looked at Sandecker and shook his head in a helpless gesture that signaled bad news.

  "I'm sorry, Admiral, but the radio's knocked out. We can't transmit or receive."

  "That tears it," said Turner. "We can't accomplish anything by flying around with a dead radio."

  Sandecker gazed at Giordino, sorrow and anguish showing clearly in every deeply etched line in the admiral's face. "Dirk won't know. He'll think he's been abandoned."

  Giordino looked impassively through the windscreen to a point somewhere between black sea and black sky. He felt sick at heart. This was the second time in the past few weeks he felt he had failed his closest friend. At last he looked up, and strangely he was smiling.

  "Dirk doesn't need us. If anyone can damn well explode that bomb and park Big Ben on the shore, he will."

  "My money is on him too," Sandecker said with total conviction.

  "Okinawa?" Turner asked, his hand tightly gripping the controls.

  Very slowly, with much difficulty, as if he were fighting the devil for his soul, Sandecker looked at Turner and nodded. "Okinawa."

  The big aircraft banked on a new course and limped into the darkness. A few minutes later the sound of its engines faded, leaving behind a silent sea, empty but for one man.

  >

  With the bomb hanging grotesquely from its manipulators, Big Ben sat poised on the edge of the great submarine trench that yawned ten kilometers wide and two deep. Inside, Pitt stared grimly down the slope that trailed off into the gloom.

  The geophysicists had selected a point about twelve hundred meters below the rim of the trench wall as the optimum location for the blast to set off a landslide that would in turn launch the seismic sea wave.

  But the grade was a good five percent steeper than the satellite photos had suggested. And worse, much worse, the upper layer of sediment that formed the sides of the trench was the consistency of oily clay.

  Pitt had activated a telescoping probe into the silt and was far from overjoyed at the geological test results that read across the computer screen. He realized the danger of his position. It would be a battle to prevent the heavy vehicle from slithering through the slick muck all the way to the bottom of the trench.

  And once he was committed and plunged Big Ben over the edge, there was no turning back. The cleats on the drive tracks could never gain a grip solid enough to pull the DSMV back up the slope and over the ridge to safety before the explosion. After priming the bomb, he decided to continue on a diagonal course downward along the side of the slope, much like a skier traversing a snow-packed hill.

  His only chance, and a slightly less than nonexistent one, was to use gravity to increase his speed and push Big Ben beyond the clutches of the avalanche before they were both caught up in its force, swept away, and buried for the next ten million years.

  Pitt appreciated how narrow the fine dividing line was between survival and death. He thought wryly that Murphy's Law never took a holiday. He missed having Giordino at his side and wondered why all communications had ceased from the C-S Galaxy. There had to be a good reason. Giordino and Sandecker would never desert him without cause. It was too late now for explanations and too early for final farewells.

  It was eerie and lonely with no human voice to prop up his morale. He felt the fatigue sweeping over him in great woolly waves. He slumped in his seat, any optimism drained away. He examined the coordinates for the detonation site and peered at his watch for the last time.

  Then he took manual control of Big Ben, engaged the forward drive, and plunged the huge tractor vehicle down the steep slope.

  The momentum rapidly increased after the first hundred meters, and Pitt began to doubt he could stop DSMV before it barreled to the bottom of the trench. He quickly discovered that braking the treads failed to check his speed. Friction did not exist between the cleats and the slick mud. The great mechanical beast began to slide over the slick surface like a runaway truck and semitrailer hurtling down a steep road grade.

  The rotund bomb swung wildly in the grip of the manipulators. Because it hung directly in front of his forward view, Pitt could not avoid glancing at the evil thing without conceding it in his mind's eye as the instrument of his own impending death.

  Suddenly another terrifying thought mushroomed in his mind. If it broke free and rolled down the slope, he might never be able to retrieve it. He stiffened in desperate fear, not of death, but that he might falter in the home stretch.

  Pitt moved quickly now, uncaring that he had taken a risk no sane man would ever have contemplated.

  He slipped the drive into reverse and applied extra power. The cleats wildly thrashed through the slippery ooze backward, and Big Ben sluggishly slowed to a crawl.

  A wall of silt engulfed the vehicle as he brought it to a full stop. He waited patiently for visibility to return before easing forward for fifty meters, then engaging reverse and drawing the DSMV to a halt again. He continued this series of maneuvers until he regained firm control and had a feel for the interaction between the drive track and the mire.

  His movements at the controls became hurried now. Each passing minute increased his desperation. At last, after nearly thirty minutes of intense effort to move the big DSMV where he directed it, the navigational computer signaled that he had reached his destination. Thankfully, he found a small level shelf protruding from the slope. He disengaged the power systems and parked.

  "I have arrived at the detonation site and will begin to arm the bomb," he announced through his communications phone in the forlorn hope Sandecker and Giordino might still be listening in somewhere above.

  Pitt lost little time in lowering the manipulator arms and setting the bomb in the soft sediment. He released the grippers and interchanged the pincers for working tools. Once more he inserted his hand into the manipulator control and very carefully used a sheetmetal shear to cut away the panel on the tapered tail assembly that covered the main fusing compartment.

  The housing inside contained four radar units and a barometric pressure switch. If the bomb had been dropped as planned, the radar units would have bounced their signals off the approaching ground target.

  Then, at a predetermined altitude, an agreed reading by two units would send the firing signal to the fusing system mounted on the front of the implosion sphere. The second arming system was the barometric switch that was also set to close the firing circuit at a preset altitude.

  The firing signal circuits, however, could not be closed while the plane was in flight. They had to be triggered by clock-operated switches that were not bypassed until the bomb had dropped well clear of the bomb bay. Otherwise Dennings' Demons would have gone up in a pre-detonated fireball.

  After the panel was removed, Pitt swiveled a miniaturized video camera on the end of the left manipulator. He quickly found the barometric arming switch and focused on it. Constructed of brass, steel, and copper, it showed signs of corrosion but was still intact.

  Next, Pitt coupled a slender three-pincer hand to one manipulator. The arm was flexed back toward the front of the DSMV, where the pincers opened the heavy mesh lid of a tool crib and removed a strange ceramic object that looked like a small deflated soccer ball. A copper plate was imbedded in the concave bottom, surrounded by a pliable bonding material. The appearance was deceiving. The object was actually a very sophisticated pressurized container filled with an inert puttylike compound composed of plastic and acid. The ceramic cover surrounding the caustic substance ha
d been contoured to fit snugly over the barometric firing switch and form a watertight seal.

  Pitt worked the manipulator hand and positioned the container around the switch. Once it was firmly in place, he delicately pulled a tiny plug that allowed the sea to seep very slowly into the container. When the inert compound inside came in contact with saltwater, it chemically turned active and became highly caustic and corrosive. After eating through the copper plate-- the thickness governed a delayed sequence of one hour-- the acidic compound would then attack the copper in the barometric switch, eventually creating an electrical charge that would set off the firing signal and detonate the bomb.

  As Pitt retracted the manipulators and gently backed Big Ben away from the hideous monstrosity lying like a fat, slimy bulge in the mud, he stole a quick glance at the digital clock on his instrument console.

  He had run a tight race. Mother's Breath would explode forty-eight years late but within a new deadline in another time.

  "Any word?" asked the President anxiously from the Oval Office.

  "We have an unexplained communications breakdown," Jordan reported from the Situation Room.

  "You've lost Admiral Sandecker?"

  "I'm afraid so, Mr. President. We've tried every means at our disposal but have been unable to re-establish contact with his aircraft."

  The President felt a numbing fear spread through him. "What went wrong?"

  "We can only guess. The last pass of the Pyramider showed the aircraft had broken off with the Deep Sea Mining Vehicle and was headed on a course toward the island of Okinawa."

  "That doesn't make any sense. Why would Sandecker abort the mission after Pitt had successfully removed the bomb from Dennings' Demons?"

  "He wouldn't, unless Pitt had a serious accident and was unable to complete the detonation."

  "Then it's over," the President said heavily.

  When Jordan replied, there was the hollow ring of defeat in his voice. "We won't know the full story until the admiral makes contact again."