'Rufus . . . !'
The missiles roared toward them.
Rufus saw them coming, and a moment before it was too late, saw the answer.
The missiles rushed forward, zooming in for the kill . . .
. . . just as Rufus swung the Black Raven inside the massive doorway that opened off the aircraft carrier's starboard elevator, manoeuvring his airborne fighter inside the ship's main hangar!
The missiles—unlike the shots from the destroyer, he Triomphe— were fitted with electronic detection systems that didn't allow them to strike their own carrier. As such, they ditched into the ocean, detonating in twin hundred-foot geysers.
Inside the carrier's tower, radar operators stared at their screens in confusion, shouted into their radio-mikes:
'—Where the fuck did it go?—'
'—What? Say again—'
'What happened?' the captain asked. 'Where are they?'
'Sir. They're inside us!'
The Black Raven now hovered inside the cavernous hangar of the French aircraft carrier.
'I like your style, Rufus,' Knight said as he started firing indiscriminately at the array of parked planes, helicopters and trucks.
Like a giant bird trapped inside a living room, the Black Raven powered over the interior of the hangar, overturning entire planes with its backwash, flinging fuel trucks into the walls.
It shoomed across the hangar causing untold mayhem and destruction, its two high tail fins even scraping against the ceiling once.
Knight called into his radio: 'Mother! Where are you?'
A lone jeep shot towards the aft end of the elongated hangar bay, driving at full speed, zooming under tilting planes and bouncing fuel trucks, with Mother at the wheel and Schofield crouched in the back.
Mother yelled. 'I'm at the other end of the hangar bay, trying to avoid your mess!'
lDo you have Schofield?'
'I've got him.'
' Want us to pick you up while we're in here?'
Mother turned to Schofield, bent over in the back with her—or rather, Knight's—RPG pack. 'You wanna be picked up in here?'
'No! Not yet!' he yelled. 'Tell Knight to get outside. He doesn't want to be in here in the next two minutes! In fact, he doesn't want to be anywhere near this ship! Tell him we'll meet him outside!'
'Copy that,' Knight said, moments later.
He turned. 'Rufus! Time to bail!'
'You got it, Boss!' Rufus said. 'Now, where is that other . . . ah,' Rufus said, spotting a second open-air elevator on the opposite side of the hangar bay.
He powered up the Sukhoi, brought her swooping across the interior of the hangar bay, the roar of her engines drowning out all other sound, before—shoom—the Raven blasted out through the port-side elevator and into blazing sunlight.
Meanwhile, in the back of his speeding jeep, Schofield rummaged through the RPG pack that Mother had brought.
It was indeed Knight's Russian-made RPG pack—which meant it contained a disposable rocket launcher and various explosive-tipped rocket charges.
He found the one he was looking for.
The notorious Soviet P-61 Palladium charge.
A Palladium charge—comprising a palladium outer shell around a liquid core of enhanced hydrofluoric acid—has only one purpose: to take out civilian nuclear power plants in a terrible, terrible way.
Nuclear weapons require a core consistency of 90% enhanced uranium. The nuclear reactors in civilian power plants, on the other hand, have a core consistency of around 5%; while reactors on nuclear-powered aircraft carriers hover at around 50%—as such, neither of these reactors can ever create a nuclear explosion. They can leak radiation—as happened at Chernobyl—but they will never create a mushroom cloud.
What they do release every single second, however, are massive quantities of hydrogen—highly flammable hydrogen—an action which is nullified by the use of 'recombiners' which turn the dangerous hydrogen (H) into very safe water (H20).
Mixing palladium with hydrogen, however, has the opposite effect. It multiplies the deadly hydrogen, producing vast quantities of the flammable gas which can then be triggered by the addition .of a catalyst like hydrofluoric acid.
As such, the P-61 charge operates as a two-stage detonator.
The first stage—the initial blast—mixes Palladium with hydrogen, multiplying the gas at a phenomenal rate. The second stage of the weapon ignites that gas with the acid.
The result is a colossal explosion—not quite as big as a nuclear blast, but perhaps the only explosion in the world big enough to crack the reinforced hull of an aircraft carrier.
'There!' Schofield yelled, pointing at two gigantic cylindrical vents at the aft end of the hangar bay, fan-covered vents which expelled excess hydrogen out the rear port flank of the carrier. 'The reactor's exhaust vents!'
The jeep whipped through the hangar bay, weaving past flaming fighter jets.
Schofield stood up in the rear section of the jeep, hoisted the
RPG launcher onto his shoulder, aimed it at a gigantic fan set into the side of the exhaust stacks.
'As soon as I fire, Mother, hit the gas and head for the ascending ramp! We're gonna have about thirty seconds between the first stage and the second stage. That means thirty seconds to get off this boat!'
'Okay!'
Schofield peered down the sights of the launcher. 'Au revoir to
you, assholes.'
Then he jammed his finger down on the trigger.
The launcher fired, sending its Palladium-tipped RPG rocketing into the upper reaches of the hangar, a dead-straight smoke-trail extending through the air behind it.
The Palladium charge smashed through the fan in the right-hand exhaust vent and disappeared inside it, heading downward, searching for heat.
No sooner was it away than Mother floored the jeep, wheeling it around in a tight circle before disappearing into the tunnel-like ascension ramp that allowed vehicle access from the hangar to the upper flight deck.
Round and round the jeep went, rising upwards.
As it circled higher, tyres squealing, there came an awesome muffled boom from deep within the bowels of the aircraft carrier.
The Palladium charge had hit its target.
Schofield hit his stopwatch: 00:01 . . . 00:02 . . .
In the air above the Richelieu, the Black Raven was still engaged in the dogfight of its life with the four French Rafale fighters.
It banked hard, screaming through the air, and took one of the Rafales out with its last remaining missile.
But then Rufus heard a shrill beeeeeeeeep from his console.
'They've fully hacked our countermeasure frequency!' he called.
'We just lost missile shield completely!'
At that moment, another of the Rafales got on their tail and the two planes roared over the ocean together, the Rafale trailing the Sukhoi, blazing away at it with orange tracers.
As the Raven rushed forward, Knight swung around in his revolving gunner's chair and opened fire on the trailing plane with the Raven's underslung revolving gun, raking the French fighter's cockpit with a withering rain of fire, shattering its canopy, ripping the pilot to bits, causing his plane to plough into the sea with a jarring explosive splash.
'Boss!' Rufus called suddenly. 'I need guns forward! Now!'
Knight spun. What he hadn't seen was that this trailing Rafale had been driving the Raven toward . . . the other two French fighters!