“No way, CAG,” Triblehorn said. “We’ve lost power to those valves.”
“Halon. Let’s use the Halon system.” The magazines could be filled with Halon gas, a system designed to choke off a fire. It would also suffocate anyone in the compartment not wearing an OBA.
Triblehorn paused. “Halon will kill our guys too.”
Jake rubbed his eyes. “Do it.”
Triblehorn spoke into the intercom box. In seconds the answer came back. The Halon system was also disabled.
Jake slumped into a chair. How will Qazi get out of the magazine through the marines? Hostages won’t help Qazi then, and he knows it. Even as he thought of the problem Jake Grafton knew the answer.
“Where’s that marine officer? I need to talk to him.”
Perhaps he could secure electrical power to the weapons elevator. No good. Qazi will arm one of the nuclear weapons and threaten to detonate it unless he is allowed to leave. And if he is thwarted by marines or inoperative elevators or anything else, he may just carry out the threat. Jake had no doubt that it was technically possible to bypass the safety devices built into the weapon. The weapons were designed to prevent an accidental detonation; of course, a technician who knew what he was doing could intentionally trigger one, given enough time and the right tools. And Qazi probably had enough of both.
The Bay of Naples! Jake rubbed his forehead. It felt like the skin there was dead, as if the blood supply no longer functioned. The explosion would vaporize the ship and everyone aboard her. And the ship was three miles off the coast, in a bay surrounded on three sides by hills and islands which would focus and enhance the concussion, radiation, and thermal pulses from the explosion. And the light and thermal pulses would be reflected off the clouds. How many people are in Naples, anyway? In Pozzuoli, Portici, on the slopes of Vesuvius?
The marine lieutenant was standing beside him, looking at him, waiting.
Will Qazi be bluffing? Can I afford to take the risk of calling him? What if he just lights one of those babies off while he’s down in the magazine?
For a few milliseconds a raw piece of the sun about the size of a man’s fist would exist here on the surface of the earth. The plutonium’s mass would be converted to pure energy. The sky and sea would rip apart. Every human within twenty miles not cremated in the first millionth of a second would see the face of an angry, wrathful God.
“Triblehorn, let’s get underway. We’ll steer the ship from after steering. Get the navigator to lay a course out to sea. Put some lookouts with sound-powered phones up on the bow and let’s slip the cable. Now!”
“Aye aye, sir.” Triblehorn stepped away, issuing orders as if he got the ship underway from engineering every other Thursday. Perhaps he was relieved to have orders he found familiar. Jake watched the officers and sailors. They, too, seemed relieved that something was being done.
The marine shifted nervously beside Jake’s chair. Jake stood. He felt a little light-headed. “Got a cigarette?” he asked the lieutenant.
“I don’t smoke, sir.”
Jake nodded vacantly. The alarm from the forward magazine was still sounding. Were the Americans there still alive? What about Parker? At least the fire in the comm space was extinguished and the ones in the hangar were under control and would soon be out. That was a plus. Perhaps the only one.
What kind of man was this Colonel Qazi? Jake had spent a quarter hour on the bridge watching him. He was not the wired-up fanatic one expected after viewing too many terrorist incidents on television. No. He was competent, calculating, intelligent, and, Jake suspected, absolutely ruthless. Not suicidal. Not on a mission for the glory of Allah. But a man who would do whatever he felt he had to do to get the job done.
“What are we going to do, sir, about the intruders?” Dykstra had a stern, square jaw and a wide mouth that just now was set in a pencil-thin line. His nostrils flared slightly every time he inhaled.
“Whatever that asshole wants us to do, Lieutenant. I’m sure he’ll be telling us just what that is before very long.”
The seawater looked black in the glow of the battle lanterns in the forward magazine. Colonel Qazi waded through the cold, foot-deep water casting his flashlight beam this way and that. Row after row of olive drab sausages met his eye. White missiles hung in racks against the bulkheads. Enough ordnance for a nice little war, he thought as he scanned the compartment. There, a door.
He lifted the single lever that cammed all six of the dogs, then sprung back as the door flew open from the weight of the water behind it. A little waterfall flowed through the doorway until the water in this compartment was equal in depth to the water where Qazi and his companions stood. Qazi stepped through into this compartment. Yes. The weapons were white, about the size of a five-hundred-pound bomb. Each of them was strapped into its own cradle which held it firmly several feet above the deck. Chains and pulleys hung from rails on the overhead.
“Did the water harm them?” Qazi heard Ali say.
“Oh no,” Jarvis replied. He tilted his gas mask away from his face and sniffed experimentally, then removed it. “They’re waterproof so they can be carried on external bomb racks through rain and snow and still function.” He was examining one of the devices under a powerful flashlight. The sheen of moisture on the top of his bald head glistened occasionally in the stray light reflecting from the water’s surface. He spread his legs and lowered his gut like a sumo wrestler. He used a screwdriver on an access plate. In seconds he had it off and was shining a flashlight into the interior of the weapon. “Hail wouldn’t do the covering on the radar transceiver in the nose any good, of course,” Jarvis continued softly, “but a little bath shouldn’t hurt anything. As long as these access panels were properly fitted …”He knelt in the water and bent his head down so he could get a better view inside the weapon.
He looked up at Noora. She had removed her mask too and was using her hand to fluff her hair. “This one looks fine.” He searched her face expectantly and was rewarded. A trace of a smile lifted the corners of her lips. His eyes flicked down and he grinned nervously as he moved toward the next bomb.
“Put this one on a dolly and connect your device to it before you check the others,” Qazi said.
They positioned a bomb cart beside the weapon and four of them surrounded it, two on the nose and two on the tail. There were no good handholds, but they were running out of time. Jarvis danced from foot to foot, chanting, “Oh, don’t drop it. Please, don’t drop it …”
They got it two inches out of the cradle and set it back down. It was too heavy. “Use a pulley,” Qazi said.
On the end of the chain was a piece of metal that fitted into the two metal eyes on top of the weapon. These eyes would fit up into an airplane’s bomb rack where two hooks would mate the weapon to the plane. With the mechanical advantage provided by the pulley, it only took two men pulling on the chain to lift the weapon from its cradle and lower it gently onto the dolly.
The water lapped at the bottom of the weapon. Jarvis opened the access panel and used strapping tape to secure the trigger device he had constructed to the top of the weapon. Then he ran two wires with alligator clips on the ends from the device through the access panel. He used the flashlight to attach the wires inside the weapon. When he was finished, he stood back as Qazi bent to look inside.