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 island’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.
71
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.