In twenty minutes the first wave of air attacks would commence. While no one expected it to go well, the hope was that waves of missiles and feints by the Lincoln’s fighter squadrons would distract Djemma Garand’s forces and allow Paul and Gamay’s insertions to go unnoticed.
“One minute to drop point,” the helicopter’s pilot told them.
“Roger,” Paul said. There was nothing for him to do. The sub was all buttoned up and ready to go. When the pilot decided to drop them, they’d drop. He hoped it wouldn’t be at a hundred miles an hour.
“I brought along some supplies,” he said to Gamay.
“Like what?” she asked. “This isn’t a picnic.” He pointed behind them. Diving gear secured with bungee cords. “In case we have to repeat our miraculous escape. This time, we can do it a little more leisurely.” She smiled, just enough to let him know he’d reached her. Then her eyes grew suspicious. “Do you remember?” “Climbing into this thing brought it all back,” he said.
She looked sad. “Too bad.” “Why?” he replied.
“It was horrible,” she said.
“It was scary, but we survived. I like to think it was one of our shining moments.” He hoped they wouldn’t have to do anything like it again, but the tanks, masks, and fins would help if they did.
“Thirty seconds to drop,” the pilot’s voice said.
“Let’s do this,” she said bravely. “Many will die if we fail.” “Ten seconds,” the pilot said.
He saw Gamay take a deep breath.
The sub swayed back and forth as they slowed almost to a complete stop. And then a sudden feeling of weightlessness hit, followed a second later by a sharp deceleration and the sloshing feeling of the sub in water. They were already configured for a dive, and in seconds the waves had closed over them.
Paul gunned the throttle, kicked the right rudder, and brought the sub onto course. “We’ll be in that canyon in five minutes,” he said. “From there, it’s a Sunday drive. Fifteen minutes to the top and then it’s all Rapunzel.” Twenty minutes total. It didn’t seem bad at all, but somehow Paul knew they would be the longest twenty minutes of his life.
58
DJEMMA GARAND STOOD in the control room of his grand project, fifteen stories above the sea. He was well aware that his game of brinksmanship with the Americans had reached a critical point. He had already destroyed two of their satellites and declared the space over Africa off-limits to the spy craft of any nation, but the latest news from his military commanders suggested the game would be played without limits.
“There is an American carrier fleet two hundred miles off our shore,” one of them told him. “Our main radar has detected at least twenty-four aircraft inbound.”
“What about submarines?” he asked.
“Nothing yet,” the commander of his naval forces replied. “The Americans are known to be very quiet, but once they enter the shallows we will hear them and we will pounce.”
This was as he’d expected.
“Raise the torpedo nets,” he said. “And surface the emitter.”
Beneath the platform, his patrol boats started their noisy engines and raced outward toward the mouth of the bay. Meanwhile, his helicopters, loaded with antisubmarine missiles, rose from the platforms of the Quadrangle.
It was good to see, but they’d be nothing but target practice for the Americans if the energy weapon itself didn’t work.
A mile in front of platform number 4, a long sloping ramp began to rise out of the water like a massive serpent come to life. It climbed until it stood three hundred feet above the waves, the telescoping towers locking into place like stanchions beneath a bridge.
A long tube lay cradled in the center of the ramp, and at its head was a half circle filled with his superconductors that could direct the particle stream in any direction.
“Emitter online, power levels ninety-four percent,” one of his technicians called out.
Nearby, Cochrane studied the readout. He nodded his agreement. “All indicators online.”
“Missiles inbound,” his radar operator reported. “Six from the south, ten coming from due west. Eight from the northwest.”
“Engage the particle beam,” he said. “Destroy them.”
Switches were thrown, and a computer coding program initiated. The powerful radar systems he’d bought were online, picking up the American missiles, tracking and targeting them. The fire control system went on automatic.
The battle was joined at last.
Djemma knew the odds were long. To win he would have to beat back the American attack and then hit them hard on their own land. To succeed he would have to accomplish what no country had managed to achieve in almost two hundred fifty years: he would have to force the Americans to back down.
As he considered this multiple explosions lit the dark horizon, and Djemma Garand knew he had drawn first blood.
SEVERAL THOUSAND MILES AWAY in the Pentagon’s Situation Room, the same group that had gathered twelve hours before watched and waited as the attack on Sierra Leone unfolded in real time.
Dirk Pitt couldn’t remember a feeling so tense, perhaps because the events were beyond his control at this point, perhaps because at least two of his people, Paul and Gamay, were out there in it.
After two flights of Tomahawks had been destroyed and a radar-jamming aircraft had been destroyed as soon as it got into position, a second wave of attacks had been initiated.
On-screen, Pitt watched as icons representing a squadron of F-18 Hornets approached the coast of Sierra Leone from different directions. The aircraft were converging on an imaginary line, the Event Horizon. It was believed the particle beam weapon could incinerate anything that crossed beyond that line, but they couldn’t grant Djemma free reign without testing it first.
A few miles from the line, the Hornets released a flight of Harpoon missiles, the Navy’s fastest nonballistic weapon. By attacking from different angles at the same time, they hoped to overwhelm the system’s capacity to respond, but as one missile after another stopped reporting telemetry Pitt began to sense the failure of step two.
At the bottom of the large screen, video from an onboard camera recorded the flight of a missile approaching from the south. Three other missiles were ahead of it by various distances, all of them deliberately traveling on slightly different courses.
In the distance an explosion appeared well to the left of the missile. It began as a flash, and then a cloud, and then a burning arc of rocket fuel igniting spread across the frame. Seconds later, two similar explosions followed, ahead and to the right this time. And then a flare in the lens and nothing but static and a black screen.
“What happened?” Brinks demanded, though everyone certainly knew.
“The missiles are gone,” one of the telemetry operators said.
Radio calls in the background confirmed that the pilots were seeing the same thing. And then all of a sudden one pilot radioed with trouble.
“Experiencing control failure—”
The signal cut.
A second pilot reported something similar, and then his signal went dead.
“Large explosions, bearing one-five-five,”a third pilot said . “We have two, maybe three aircraft down—”
The squadron commander cut in. “Drop to the deck, pull back.”
Before his orders could be followed, two more signals were lost. And moments later he confirmed five aircraft down.
“Apparently, we drew the damn line in the wrong place,”he said.