Because of the unusual position of the instrument panel, Zavala could not see all the gauges. Aiming for the helicopter to keep the plane on a straight line, Zavala shouted at Austin to call out the air speed.
"Forty!" Austin yelled.
Zavala was surprised at how quickly the plane accelerated, despite its huge mass and the partially deflated tires. He had to maintain a firm hand on the controls to keep the nose from lifting.
"Sixty!"
The landing gear hit the water of the shallow lake, but the plane's speed continued to increase.
"Eighty!"
Even as Austin called out, Zavala felt the lightness on the wheel indicating that the plane was near takeoff speed.
"One hundred!"
Zavala counted to ten, then pulled back on the wheel. Both men practically drove their feet through the floorboards as they pressed on imaginary accelerators. The massive plane seemed to leap into the air. Zavala had assumed that they would easily clear the helicopter, but once the plane was up at an angle all he could see was blue sky.
The helicopter pilot had finally chosen a course of action, but it was the wrong one. He mistakenly assumed that the huge bat-shaped aircraft lumbering across the permafrost in his direction would hit the chopper on the ground. He lifted off about the same time Zavala got the wing airborne.
From his level in the copilot's seat, Austin had a clear view of the chopper rising into the path of the flying wing. Unaware of the impending collision, Zavala had been concentrating on the takeoff. From his reading Zavala knew that the wing's rapid acceleration would blow the covers off the slow-moving landing gear. The gear had been designed for slower-moving propeller-driven planes and took too long to retract. Pilots compensated by retracting the gear while the plane was only a few hundred feet off the ground and pulling the nose up at a fairly steep angle.
If not for the unusual maneuver the aircraft would have collided. Instead they missed by several feet, but there was a horrendous metallic crunch as the landing gear grazed the whirling rotors. The rotors disintegrated, and the helicopter seemed to hang for a moment before it plummeted back to the ground, where it exploded in a ball of flame. The wing wobbled from the impact, but Zavala got it back under control. He kept climbing before he leveled off at five thousand feet.
Zavala realized he had forgotten to breathe. He puffed out his cheeks and gulped air into his lungs so quickly the effort made him dizzy. Austin asked him to do a damage check. He did a visual inspection of the plane from his perch. The fuselage was riddled with bullet holes. Scraps of aluminum continued to peel off, and a second engine was starting to smoke.
"She looks like a wedge of Swiss cheese, but she's a tough old bird."
He put the flying wing on a course that would take them into the vicinity of Nome. There was no need for altitude, and he kept the plane at a few thousand feet. After a while he started laughing.
"What's so funny, compadre?" Austin called out from his perch, where he was fiddling with the radio.
"I was just wondering what they're going to say when we come tooling in all shot up with a fifty-year-old stealth bomber."
"Simple. We'll say we were flying a mission and were kid napped by a UFO."
Zavala shook his head. "That's almost as unbelievable as the real story," he said.
The arrival of the bullet-riddled flying wing had been the biggest event to hit Nome since the original Iditarod. Word of the odd shaped black plane that had landed without landing gear on a sheet of foam had spread like wildfire, and before long it was surrounded by curious townspeople. Austin had called Sandecker from the airport to report his findings and to request some muscle power. Sandecker got in touch with the Pentagon and learned that a Special Operations team was on maneuvers at Elendorf Air Force Base outside Anchorage. The team was ordered to fly into Nome. After Austin briefed the Special Ops leaders at a strategy session, they decided to send the helicopter ahead to scope the situation out, with a quick followup by the main assault force.
It was something of a coincidence that Austin and Zavala returned to the secret blimp base in a Pave Hawk helicopter. The sixty-four-foot-long aircraft was the same kind of helicopter that patrolled Area 51, the top-secret location that UFO buffs say holds alien remains and a spaceship that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. The helicopter had come in alone at a speed of a hundred and fifty miles per hour, flying low over the tundra to avoid detection. As it came up on the base, it made one pass over the water-covered airstrip, scouring the ground with its motion and vibration sensors. Finding no signs of life, the chopper went into a wide circling pattern. On board was a crew of three, eight heavily armed Special Operations troops, and two passengers, Austin and Zavala, who scanned the skies expectantly. They didn't have long to wait. A fixed-wing plane appeared from the direction of the sea and passed over the base. The four-engine turboprop Combat Talon was especially designed for inserting a Special Operations Team under any conditions. Dark objects dropped from the fuselage and within seconds blossomed into twenty-six parachutes. The paratroopers floated down into the low hills behind the flying wing hangar.
The helicopter continued to circle. The plane brought in the first contingent as part of a one-two punch. If the initial assault group ran into trouble the chopper would blast the opposition from the air with its twin 7.62mm guns and land the backup force where it was most needed.
Several tense minutes passed. Then the voice of the team leader on the ground crackled over the chopper's radio.
"All clear. Okay to come in."
The Hawk darted in over the scattered wreckage of the ski plane and the blackened hulk of the chopper that had been dispatched by the flying wing. It landed directly in front of the hangar whose massive door gaped wide open like a patient in a dentist chair. A contingent of camouflage-clad Special Ops troops armed with M-16Al assault rifles and grenade launchers, each man a killing machine of formidable power, guarded the outside while another squad explored the hangar's cavernous interior. The helicopter troops poured out of the side doors as soon as the wheels touched the ground and joined their comrades.
Then the two NUMA men got out and walked into the hangar. The space seemed even more enormous now that it no longer housed the flying wing. Blackened and charred debris left over from their takeoff was scattered throughout the hangar. The rear walls, which had felt the full force and heat of the jet-engine exhaust, were scorched and the paint blistered. They picked their way around the smoldering rubble and went directly to the storeroom. The door was open. The canisters were gone.
"Empty as a bottle of tequila on a Sunday morning," Zavala said.
"I was afraid of this. They must have brought in another chopper."
They walked outside to get away from the choking smoke inside the hangar. The Talon had found a flat, dry strip of land and was landing about a quarter of a mile away. They headed to ward the wreckage of the helicopter, hoping it could provide clues to the attack. Blackened corpses were visible in and around the charred hulk. The officer who had led the first wave came over and shook hands.
"I don't know why you wanted us to come along," he said, jerking his thumb at the downed chopper. "You boys did fine on your own."
"We didn't want to press our luck," Austin said.
The officer grinned. "This place is as clean as a whistle. We checked the underground bunker as you suggested. Found a couple of dead guys at the bottom of the shaft you told us to watch out for. You know anything about that?"
Austin and Zavala exchanged a surprised glance.
"Joe and I set up a little tiger trap for our guests. We never expected it to work."
"Oh, it worked. Remind me never to come in your back door without knocking."
"I'll remember. Sorry you had to go through all this trouble for nothing," Austin said.