“How long will that take?” Danilevsky demanded.
Aware that nothing about this conversation was private in the submarine’s crowded control room, Nakhimov turned to his radio officer, Lieutenant Volkov. “What’s your estimate, Leonid?”
The younger officer pursed his lips, considering the question. “Between transit time to a safe distance and the time required to launch and recover our Relay One submersible? I would guess somewhere around forty-five minutes, sir.”
Danilevsky grunted. “A lot could happen between now and then.”
Nakhimov shrugged. “True. But our passive sonar arrays can pick up the propeller noise from that ship out to more than one hundred miles, even in this storm. If anything changes, we’ll know soon enough.”
Thirty-Six
The Quartet Directorate’s leased LM-100J Super Hercules was parked just off Orlando Apopka’s single runway. Long shadows cast by the last sliver of sunlight stretched across the thin strip of grass and train tracks separating the runway from a nearby divided road, the Orange Blossom Trail. Lights from some of Orlando’s outlying northern suburbs already glowed brightly along the dark eastern horizon.
Nick Flynn waited at the foot of the large aircraft’s open rear ramp. Ahead of him, the other seven members of his Dragon assault team struggled up into its cavernous cargo compartment. They were hauling themselves along a rope rigged to the ramp. Between their wingsuits, ram parachute packs, oxygen masks and cylinders, weapons, ammunition, and other special gear, they were carrying significantly more than a hundred and twenty pounds of added weight strapped to their backs, chests, and thighs. He fought down a laugh when Cooke looked back at him and uttered a high-pitched bray, mimicking a heavily loaded pack mule squalling in angry protest.
Two more men in coveralls stood waiting at the top to assist each overburdened member of the assault force into one of the mesh seats that lined one side of the compartment. In flight, they would crew a rail-mounted tracking camera and telescope system — the twin of the one aboard Fox’s Gulfstream G650 business jet. If the Gulf Venture drastically altered its course before their civilian Super Hercules turboprop aircraft reached the target area, that long-range, IR-capable camera would be their only hope of finding the ship.
The big aircraft’s four powerful Rolls-Royce engines were slowly spooling up, with their six-bladed propellers starting to spin. Dust and small bits of debris kicked up by the steadily increasing prop blast swirled away into the air.
Flynn saw Gwen Park leave the rented hangar they’d been using as temporary quarters and a base of operations. She hurried over to join him. “What’s the word?” he asked loudly, raising his voice to be heard over the rising engine noise.
“NOAA’s most recent forecast confirms that weather conditions are improving rapidly over your target zone,” Four’s chief of security for Avalon House shouted back. “By the time you reach that area, winds near the surface should be minimal. But the high-altitude winds will still be fairly strong.”
He nodded. “We’ve trained for that,” he assured her. “Any more news from the Gulfstream?”
“Just that they’re headed for Bermuda now,” she said. “That, plus a personal message for you from Ms. Van Horn.” She leaned closer. “She asked me to tell you again that you are not, repeat not, to get yourself killed… or she will be extremely pissed off.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll do my best on that,” Flynn promised solemnly.
Gwen Park nodded. “See that you do.” For a brief instant, the trace of a dry smile appeared on her face. “For what it’s worth, I’ve never yet seen Laura get really angry. But I strongly suspect it’s an experience I would rather avoid. So spare me that if you can.” Then she clapped him gently on the shoulder and stepped back. “Good luck, Nick.”
Flynn grabbed hold of the rope and pulled himself slowly up the raised surface of the ramp and into the rear of the Super Hercules. By the time he reached his seat, the ramp was already whirring upward. It closed and latched into position with a sudden vibration that could be felt even over the pulsing throb created by the aircraft’s engines, each producing more than 4,500 horsepower.
The LM-100J’s pilot, Jack “Ripper” Ingalls, came aft from the cockpit a moment later. He checked to make sure each of his passengers was belted in, making his way steadily down the row of seats toward Flynn.
“No jumpmaster this time?” Flynn asked with a grin.
Ingalls shrugged. “Hell, Nick, I don’t even have a copilot on this jaunt.” He tapped himself on the chest. “I’m the sole member of this bird’s flight crew.”
“Isn’t that totally illegal?”
Ingalls matched his smile. “Oh, yeah. On the other hand, if we get caught, I’m guessing the act of transporting a bunch of heavily armed private soldiers out to board and capture an Iranian-flagged oil tanker will make the fact that I also tore up a whole bunch of FAA regulations doing it the least of my worries.”
Flynn chuckled. “There is that.”
“But since I am risking both my personal liberty and pilot’s license for you guys, I’ve got a question I really need answered,” Ingalls continued.
“Shoot.”
The pilot pointed to the oddest-looking piece of equipment worn by Flynn and all the others on his Dragon team. Each of them had what appeared to be a three-foot-wide streamlined wing with twin engine nacelles attached to a breastplate. “What in God’s name is that Rube Goldberg contraption?”
“This, Rip,” Flynn said, tapping the aluminum and carbon fiber casing, “is what turns us from being basically falling rocks with a slightly better glide ratio into real live birdmen.” He grinned tightly. “Well, at least for a few minutes, anyway.”
The experimental assistive propulsion devices were the brainchild of an Austrian stuntman and wingsuit enthusiast named Peter Salzmann. Together with a team of innovative BMW engineers, he’d pioneered the creation of these miniature flying machines. Each weighed in at only about twenty-six pounds. Their twin nacelles contained tiny carbon fiber impellers capable of spinning at up to 25,000 revolutions per minute. Powered by 50-volt lithium batteries, each unit’s electric motors could produce around twenty horsepower for up to five minutes — enabling wingsuit wearers to reach speeds of up to 160 knots in horizontal and even climbing flight, and greatly extending the distance they could glide.
Ingalls whistled loudly when Flynn finished his quick run-through on the technology involved. “And this high-tech gizmo really works?”
“Both times we’ve tried it,” Flynn said.
The aircraft pilot stared at him. “You’ve flown these things just twice,” he said in disbelief. “And now you’re going to use them in combat?”
“Yep.”
Ingalls breathed out slowly. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re batshit crazy, Nick?” he asked carefully.
“Well, I prefer the term sanity-challenged,” Flynn replied. “It sounds more official, somehow.”
“That is true,” Tadeusz Kossak nodded gravely. “Though I prefer the Polish version. We are Oddział Wariatów, the Lunatic Squad.”
Alain Ricard grinned. “Ah, but Tadeusz, my friend, it sounds better in French, L’escouade lunatique.”
Ingalls snorted, unsuccessfully attempting to hide his own sudden grin. “The Lunatic Squad, huh? Catchy name.” He bumped fists with Flynn and then went back up the line, doing the same thing with every man in the Dragon team. “All right, I’ll go get this plane off the ground. Far be it from me to interfere with crazy people doing their duty.”