When they got clearance, Billy Ray let out an earsplitting rebel yell and jammed the twin throttles to their stops, simultaneously engaging the afterburners.
Thirty-foot cones of blue-white flame knifed from the two turbofans as raw fuel was dumped into their exhaust. The Hornet reared back on her pneumatic landing gear as she started to rocket down the runway. Mercer was forced back into his seat as the aircraft accelerated.
At two hundred knots, Billy Ray yanked back on the stick and the plane arrowed into the black sky. Mercer’s pressure suit automatically squeezed his chest, ensuring that blood didn’t drain from his head and cause a blackout. He held onto the seat arms as he watched the altimeter needle wind around like a hyperactive clock.
Billy Ray didn’t level out until they reached thirty-two thousand feet, and it took several minutes for Mercer’s stomach to catch up to the hurtling Hornet. Sixty seconds later there was a jarring explosion and the thunderous roar of the engines died abruptly. Mercer thought for sure that Billy Ray had torn the guts out of her but then realized they had just broken the sound barrier.
“What ya think of her?” Billy Ray asked in the eerie silence.
“I can’t wait until United uses these for their shuttle service,” Mercer retorted. “Does she have a name?”
“Sure does,” Billy Ray said with pride. “Mabel.”
“Your mother?”
“No, my pappy’s prize heifer,” the pilot replied matter-of-factly.
Mercer slumped into his seat as much as he could and rested his head against the canopy. He closed his eyes for a moment and realized that sleeping would be a lot easier than he had first imagined. The only irritation was Billy Ray’s off-key humming of “Dixie.”
He was jolted awake once during the trip between Washington and the West Coast. That waking was the worst moment of sheer terror he had ever experienced. It was still dark outside and he could clearly make out the running lights of another aircraft that was so close he couldn’t see the tips of its wings. Billy Ray seemed bent on ramming it. They were at subsonic speed, but the other plane was rapidly filling the Hornet’s canopy. Mercer braced himself for the impending collision, but Billy Ray tucked his F-18 under the other lumbering plane with maybe twenty-five feet to spare.
Rapt, Mercer watched in fascination as a spectral boom came out of the murky night and into the halo of light around the fighter. Only when the boom attached itself to the tube just forward and right of the Hornet’s cockpit did he realize that the fighter was being refueled in flight. It took several minutes for the KC-135 tanker to fill the F-18’s tanks. As the hose retracted toward the tanker, residual drops of fuel froze in the rarefied atmosphere and flashed past the cockpit like tracer fire.
“Thanks for the nipple; this baby was hungry,” Billy Ray said to the crew of the stratotanker.
He waggled the wings of the nimble fighter, dipped below the slow-moving KC-135, and eased the throttles forward. An instant later, the tanker was miles behind them and the Hornet was approaching the speed of sound. Once the F-18 began flying faster than the roar of her engines and again the cockpit was silent, Mercer rested his head against the Plexiglas canopy. It took another few minutes for his heart to slow enough for him to fall asleep.
MV John Dory
The radio operator tossed his earphones onto his gray steel desk under the massed banks of communications equipment. He nodded to his assistant, and hurried from the cramped room, a hastily scrawled page in his hand. The John Dory was running under the ruddy glow of battle lights as she had for most of this patrol but his little world was bright because of the lights on the sophisticated electronic radio gear. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the gloom in the rest of the transformed submarine.
He passed through the small aperture of a watertight door and into the sub’s control center. The two planes-men sat to the left in airline-style seats, the yokes controlling the rudders, and dive planes completed the aircraft cockpit facsimile. Behind them, the three men who monitored the ballast controls stood in front of a panel studded with two dozen valves and pressure gauges. The system was archaic, dating back to the earliest type of subs from the First World War, but still effective. Only the very latest Soviet subs utilized the modern ballast control computers that the Americans had been using since the 1960s.
The fire control station was to the left. It was the most modern piece of equipment on the boat, a twelve-year-old computer copied from the American UYK-7 command and control computer. The UYK-7 was the first type of C&C computer utilized on the American Los Angeles class attack subs. The Russian copy had been installed during the refitting of the John Dory in Vladivostok.
At the back of the control center, four engineers monitored the ancient reactor at the stern of the boat, their eyes and fingers never leaving the confusing mass of lights, dials, and switches. An identical panel was located in the reactor room and the two stations were electronically linked. This way there were actually eight pairs of eyes watching for any danger from the radioactive furnace burning away under its decaying shield of lead and concrete. The boat’s periscope hung from the low ceiling like a steel stalactite. It acted as the only visible means to ensure the outside still existed once the sub dove beneath the waves, the passive and active sonars only reporting the echoes of the real world.
“Captain, message from Matrushka.” The code name for Ivan Kerikov referred to the intricate nesting dolls so popular with generations of Russian children. It was a fitting code for such a secretive and multitiered man.
Captain Zwenkov was hunched over the weapons officer’s console, reviewing firing solutions for the sub’s Siren missile in case it was needed against the volcano not more than twenty miles distant.
“This is good, Boris,” the captain praised his weapon’s officer and slapped him on the shoulder before turning to the lanky radio man. “What have you got?”
“Message from Matrushka, Comrade Captain,” the radio operator repeated, handing over the sheet of paper. He stood at attention, waiting for the captain’s response.
Zwenkov held the flimsy paper to one of the steel-caged battle lights and squinted to make out the writing. He grunted several times as he read it through. He then folded the paper carefully and slid it into a pocket of his stiff-necked tunic.
“Bowman, take us to periscope depth.” Zwenkov’s orders were quiet but clear. “But do not use the ballast. Take us up with engines alone, turning for two knots. We’re not in any hurry. Sonar, secure the active systems. I don’t want an accidental ping.”
Zwenkov looked around the dim bridge as the men went about their jobs. Satisfied with their performance, he picked up a hand mike and dialed in the ship’s intercom.
“This is the captain speaking.” His voice was barely above a whisper. Crewmen not directly near a speaker had to strain to hear him. “I know we’ve been rigged for silent running for a long time, but the need for this precaution is almost over. We will be leaving station within twenty-four hours and heading for home. We cannot afford to be lax during these crucial hours; now is the time to redouble our efforts. There is an American carrier in the area as well as an amphibious assault ship. I don’t need to remind you that there will be a fast-attack sub protecting the carrier and their sonar can hear a hammer drop two hundred miles away. They do not know we’re here, and I don’t want to give them a chance to find us. All conversations are to be in whispers. There will be no music in the mess rooms and any necessary repairs must first be cleared by me personally. All scheduled maintenance is suspended until further orders. That is all.”