He waited a moment while the computer tested the inputs and readbacks from the pod and tested the circuits to the large transmitters housed inside. The display recited that the pod was ready for combat, ready to fry the electronics of any approaching aircraft that challenged this particular Firestar in a dogfight. Djaliz checked the time, wondering if he should radio back to headquarters that he was wasting the jet fuel, that no one had shown up for whatever mysterious mission HQ had had in mind.
The young airman stood and climbed out of the cockpit, his jaw dropping as the speeding U-10 crashed through the security gate without bothering to scan in. He dropped to the ground and unholstered his pistol, about to command the intruder to halt. The truck drew up to the jet, parking off the side of the starboard wingtip, as if the driver wanted to avoid blocking the jet’s takeoff. Djaliz leveled his automatic pistol at the driver, who seemed unconcerned with him. He called out to the man, who opened his door and walked around to the front of the vehicle.
Djaliz stared down his gunsight… at Colonel Ahmed, supreme commander of the Combined Air Force. Djaliz quickly holstered his weapon. Ahmed ignored him in his rush to the passenger door. When he opened it, Djaliz could see the form of the Khalib himself, Mohammed al-Sihoud.
He at least had enough presence of mind to snap to attention, eyes focused on the horizon, but from the corner of his eye he could see that the Khalib was in bad shape.
“Help me with him, airman,” Ahmed ordered.
The two men grabbed the arms of the Khalib, who seemed conscious but weak, dazed.
“Sir, what happened?”
Ahmed shook his head, hauling the general to the ladder.
“Get him in the back seat,” Ahmed said when they had reached the ladder. “General, can you climb?”
“I think so.” The airman helped him up the steep ladder.
Ahmed returned to the U-10, found a clipboard with a scrap of paper and scrawled on it. He looked it over, checked his watch and continued writing, finally folding the paper in two, then again. He hurried over to the jet. Djaliz had gotten Sihoud into the rear seat and was strapping him in, putting on his flight helmet and strapping on the oxygen mask. He stepped back down the ladder and faced Colonel Ahmed.
The colonel looked Djaliz over for a moment, then handed him the piece of paper.
“You know where the Quchara Communication Base is?”
“Twenty kilometers on Highway 2, north, sir.”
“Take the U-10 and get to the base as fast as the truck can go. Have them transmit that immediately on the VLF set— very low frequency. Can you remember that? Very low frequency.”
“But, sir, why will they do that on my say so? I’m an airman—”
Ahmed reached into his tunic and pulled a chain around his neck until it broke. He handed the bar-coded identification card to the airman.
“Give them that. If they have doubts call me on the airborne UHF frequency of the day. Have you got all that?”
Djaliz stood at attention and saluted.
Ahmed was already four steps up the ladder. Djaliz watched as the colonel strapped on the helmet, lowered the canopy and waved down at him. Djaliz ran for the wheel chocks, pulled them both out and ran clear of the jet. As he looked up Ahmed had already taken the turbines to half-thrust and was thundering down the taxiway to the end of the runway. Less than a minute later the jets roared on full afterburner as the colonel kicked the aircraft up to full power. The takeoff run took only seconds, the Firestar’s nose pointed skyward, blasting off the runway, rising nearly vertically into the sky. Soon all Djaliz could see were the twin flames coming from its tailpipes, and then they vanished in the darkness.
Djaliz seemed to wake up from a dream then, the paper soaked with the sweat of his hands. He unfolded it and read the colonel’s hurried scrawl.
TO CNF SUBMARINE HEGIRA: BY THE ORDERS OF THE KHALIB, SURFACE AT DAWN AT NORTH 35 DEGREES/EAST 30 DEGREES AND PREPARE TO RESCUE TWO SURVIVORS. GOD IS GREAT. COLONEL R. AHMED SENDS.
Chapter 3
Thursday, 26 December
The predawn darkness shrouded the calm waters of the Mediterranean, the dim starlight barely apt to separate the dark water from the black sky on the horizon. Three hours later the water would be a sapphire blue, shimmering and beautiful and clear, but now the water was black and forbidding.
The water was filled with sound, the central and western basins always busy with commercial traffic, even now that the nations of the northern coast found themselves at war with those on the south. If anything, the war had accelerated the flow of freighters and tankers in and out of Gibraltar, the ships filling the sea for miles with the noises of their cavitating screws. The noise of the hundreds of ships competed with the marine life that inhabited the warm water. Clicking of shrimp, chattering of dolphins, moaning of whales all filled the underwater with sound waves.
There in the wash of noise, under 100 meters of water, a silent ghost passed through a school of shrimp, the startled fish clicking loudly. The shape of the intruder was sleek and long, starting with an elongated elipsoidal nose, a cigar-shaped twelve-meter-diameter cylinder following, the shape seventy-five meters long, tapering to a point. In the middle, a tall fin towered over the cigar body, the rear of the fin angled down to the cigar, the dorsal fin of an exotic fish. At the tapered end of the body was a set of tail fins; the tail planes were attached to the hull at an angle, forming an X-shape. The underwater vessel continued swimming east, gliding silently through the water.
The soundless shape was the Combined Naval Force submarine Hegira. Inside the envelope of smooth outer steel were twenty-one torpedo tubes, a cramped pressure hull, and a large oil-enclosed alternating current motor driving the half-hull-diameter propulsor impeller. The pressure hull was a cylinder half the length of the ship, beginning just forward of the fin and ending five meters forward of the X-tail rudder, the cylinder only thirty-eight meters long, of which only the forward thirteen meters were habitable by men, the remainder taken up by modular machinery compartments. The aft compartment was the battery and diesel module; forward were the reactor module and steam-power module. None of these aft modules could be entered when the ship was submerged. The machinery spun and churned under computer control.
The forward module, designed for the crew, was the command module, three decks high. The lower deck was mostly taken up by the electronic equipment of the Second Captain system but had a row of tight bunks on the port bulkhead. The middle level was split into four staterooms, a messroom, and a small galley and head. The upper deck was occupied by ship-control functions in a large open control room, a computer room, a radio room, and two additional rooms on the forward elliptical head of the pressure vessel. The smaller forward room was the first officer’s stateroom. The second was the captain’s stateroom, an L-shaped space, the corner of the room formed by the head between the captain’s and first officer’s staterooms.
At the head of the conference table in the captain’s state room, a man frowned down at a large spread of ship’s blue prints, the roll of drawings kept flat by plates and glasses.