It was as the digital timer hit the ten-second mark that Kram yanked off his headphones, and he flinched when a rumbling explosion sounded clearly in the distance. The mini-sub’s sonar was rendered all but inoperable by this deafening underwater blast, whose ensuing shock wave tossed the vessel violently from side to side. The lights failed, and in the impenetrable blackness that followed, Benjamin Kram’s thoughts refocused themselves from forlorn mourning to selfish prayers for his own survival.
Chapter 49
“Well, how about it, Jake? Are we going to need that additional pit stop before landing at Andrews?”
The E-4B’s flight engineer held back his answer until he doublechecked his latest fuel calculations.
“Don’t bother with it, Lucky. Even with our brief wire-out, the lack of head winds is gonna put us in a good fifty minutes early.”
Lucky turned to address the officer seated to his left.
“If it’s okay with you. Major, I’d like to abort our last scheduled aerial refueling.”
Owen Lassiter stifled a yawn and unenthusiastically replied, “Very well.”
“I can’t help but wonder what’s going to be waiting for us back in Washington,” offered Jake from his workstation directly behind the copilot.
This remark hit a nerve, and Lassiter readily chimed in.
“One thing you can be certain of is that the President’s death is going to put a damper on the July Fourth festivities. And here Peg’s sister and four kids are visiting from Tacoma, and we planned to take them to the Capitol Mall to enjoy the fireworks and music.”
“Prom the somber mood of the Chairman and his staff of late, I’m just hoping we won’t be at war come the Fourth,” said Lucky.
“Tell me about it,” Jake muttered.
“I heard from a sergeant on Captain Richardson’s staff that FEMA still hasn’t made contact with the VP. Now that’s certainly strange, as was that unscheduled EAM we just finished transmitting. Do you think the rumors are true, and that our Atlantic alert platform was intentionally rammed by a Russian attack sub?”
“That’s enough of your groundless scuttlebutt. Lieutenant,” ordered Lassiter.
“Next you’ll be telling us that Coach really has the Ebola virus.”
“I can personally attest that’s not true,” cut in a familiar deep voice from the back of the flight deck. Fresh from climbing out of the open hatchway on the floor of the upper-deck rest area, Coach nodded in greeting, with Brittany and Red joining him in quick succession.
“Look who’s back from the dead,” Jake fondly greeted him.
“Are you finally feeling better. Coach?” inquired Lucky.
“If I were you. Major, I wouldn’t rush things,” suggested Lassiter.
“As I was telling the boys, I suffered from the runs myself, during my honeymoon. And just when I thought I had them licked, I couldn’t get to that infernal toilet quick enough.”
Coach had all but forgotten the fictitious excuse that the Chairman had circulated to explain his incarceration. Yet before he could set the facts straight, the collision-avoidance radar began loudly chiming. It took only a quick glance at the center console for him to determine that the radar scan was set on maximum range. And it was Lucky who pointed out the two flashing blips visible on the outer perimeter of the blue-tinted radar screen.
“Since they’re coming out of the west, the smart money says they’re ours,” added Lucky.
This fact was verified seconds later, when the intercom filled with the sharp voice of one of these newcomers.
“Nightwatch six-seven-six, this is Eagle One. Good morning. Please be advised that per the express orders of General Lowell Spencer aboard Iron Man One, you’ve been diverted to Langley, and we’ll be accompanying you. Over.”
Confusion filled Lassiter’s face as he pushed away his chin mike and addressed his copilot.
“What the hell is this all about?
Captain Davis, get the Chairman on the horn, and inform him of General Spencer’s request to alter our flight plan.”
“Lucky, if you’ll just hang loose a sec,” interjected Coach, who beckoned both Brittany and Red to join him on the flight deck, before instructing them to shut the cockpit door, and then sharing with the flight crew the real reason for their presence amongst them.
Chapter 50
It was at a temporary ORP at the side of the trail that Ted Cal-la han called together Thomas, Sergeant Reed, Captain Christian, and Ranger Glickman. They convened beneath the protective cover of a camouflaged tarp. With Reed illuminating a detailed U.S. Forest Service map of the Irish Wilderness with his redlensed flashlight, Jody Glickman pointed out their current position.
“Tater Hill is right over the next rise,” she whispered, her right index finger circling the corresponding topographical feature on the map.
“It’s another kilometer at most, and it’s here that we’ll find the entrance to the Defense Department’s underground facility.”
“Surely it can’t be accessed by the general public,” remarked Callahan.
“There’s a barbed-wire-topped, chain-link fence and an iron barricade protecting the entrance, which most hikers mistake for the opening of a collapsed cavern,” Glickman said.
“Since it’s apparent that’s where the footprints we’ve been following are headed, why not bypass this booby-trapped trail altogether?” Thomas suggested.
“It would certainly speed things up.”
“Not really,” objected Reed, who had just put a pinch of tobacco in his mouth.
“My R&S team reports that the surrounding woods are saturated with freshly placed claymores. The footpath might seem slow, but it’s safer in the long run. At least we know where to look.”
“I wish we had time to call in some of that mechanized equipment from the Alton staging area,” said Jay Christian.
“A Grizzly could clear us a safe lane to Tater in a matter of minutes.”
“Though we don’t have a Grizzly, my Sappers are carrying bangalore tube charges,” Reed revealed with a grin.
“They might be noisy as all heck, but I guarantee that we can clear us a lane to that cave entrance without taking the time to probe by hand.”
Less than a meter away from the five individuals gathered beneath the tarp. Doc Martin peeked out of the heavily camouflaged slit trench in which he was buried. He was so close to the intruders he could almost reach out and touch them, and the ex SEAL fought the temptation to take all of them out with a single frag grenade.
His mission and that of his three-man unit was R&S, with strict rules-of-engagement limitations imposed on them by Dick Mariano. This was fine with Doc, who got just as much satisfaction from tracking a man down as from cutting his throat.
He had been taught this forgotten skill by some of the best trackers on the face of the earth — Vietnam’s Montagnards, or Yards, as the members of SOG preferred to call them. The Yards were Vietnam’s largest minority, their culture organized along tribal lines much like the American Indians. They were nomadic hunters and foragers who still used the crossbow, and had taught Doc that the real art of camouflage was blending one’s spirit into the forest as well as one’s own body.
He had also learned from the Yards how to sharpen his senses through meditation. Through a variety of self-realization techniques such as deep breathing and chanting, he discovered that one could smell an enemy long before he could be seen or heard.