Nighthawk (NUMA Files 14)

“Who knows? It’s a very remote area,” Davidov said. “A miracle they even found that airfield to set down upon.” He stood. “I need to speak with the quartermaster. And, God protect me, I need a helicopter to get me to Peru.”

“You’re not seriously going to fly out there with a suitcase full of gold?”

“I’m going to do exactly that,” Davidov said. “I’ll take four of your commandos with me.”

Borozdin clearly thought the idea was dubious, if not suicidal. But he was a sailor, a man trained to act when circumstances were in his favor and to flee when they weren’t. The intelligence service worked differently—they took chances, enormous and sometimes near-suicidal chances. It was their character and their nature and the whole reason behind the attempt to capture the American spacecraft in the first place.

Borozdin offered a more plodding solution. “We have an Antonov 124 cargo plane waiting in Havana,” Borozdin said. “Why not dispatch it with a hundred men on board? It’s designed for heavy lifting and short fields. It will easily be able to land there, pluck the Nighthawk up and carry it away. And you won’t have to expose yourself to this treachery.”

The Antonov 124 was a four-engine, heavy-lift transport. It would be perfect for the job. But getting that large aircraft into Peru unnoticed would be near impossible.

“You forget the balance of the message,” Davidov said. “The Americans are watching. I have no choice. I will ride in one of your infernal helicopters to the coast. We can charter a small turboprop aircraft to take me from there.”

“And if the Falconer double-crosses you?”

“Others will hunt him down,” Davidov said. “A fact I will remind him of when I see him.”

39

Kurt and Emma were back in the water. They’d positioned four straps beneath the Nighthawk, two at the front, two at the back. The straps were spaced so that the aircraft’s center of gravity was directly between them.

While Emma attached lifting bags to the ends of each strap, Kurt filled them with air. Known as parachute-style bags because the bottom end remained open even after they were filled, they arrived in a compact folded state but expanded into teardrop shapes the size of a small car.

To keep the strain balanced and prevent the straps from slipping toward one side or the other, Kurt moved from spot to spot, partially inflating one and then swimming to the other side and inflating its counterpart to equalize the buoyancy.

When he was finished, eight inflated yellow bags floated around the sunken craft, jostling against one another in the current. Still, the Nighthawk hadn’t budged.

“Air bags filled,” Kurt said. “Straps are tight.”

“And it hasn’t moved an inch,” Emma’s voice announced.

Kurt hadn’t expected it to. “The lifting bags aren’t enough to pull it from the bottom,” he said. “But they’ll help the Air-Crane overcome the suction effect created by the layer of silt.”

Salvage teams called this additional effort the breakout force. Depending on the texture of the sediment, it could be a small or large problem. Kurt expected the latter.

At first, it looked as if the Nighthawk had touched down without lowering its landing gear and had come to rest on its wide, flat underside. A quick investigation proved otherwise. Burrowing beneath the nose, Emma had found the landing gear not only down and locked but sunk directly into the sediment like the spikes on the bottom of an athletic shoe. Because of this, and the large surface area now in contact with the silt, the breakout force would be huge. Almost as much as the weight of the Nighthawk itself.

“I was hoping it might break loose just a little,” Emma said.

She was floating above him. The light strapped to her shoulder illuminating the side of the Nighthawk and the hardpoints near the nose. Kicking steadily, she guided a steel cable with gloved hands, connecting it to an attachment point and testing the assembly with several solid pulls. That done, she moved to the other side of the aircraft to connect the second hook.

Kurt looked toward the surface. The Air-Crane hovered somewhere above them, hidden by the silt in the water. Kurt could just make out the dull thumping of its rotors as the sound reverberated off the surface of the lake.

“Lifting cables secured,” Emma announced as she swam out through the forest of yellow bags.

“Looks like we’re ready to go,” Kurt said.

“I’ll inform Joe,” Emma said.

She swam toward the surface, navigating what was now a maze of cables and straps above and around the downed aircraft.

When she disappeared behind the inflated yellow bags, Kurt was left alone on the lake bottom. “Moment of truth,” he whispered to himself.

It would only be the first of many. But, if they didn’t get that craft off the bottom, nothing else mattered.

Hovering above the lake in the Air-Crane, Joe kept one eye on the gauges and one on the surface of the lake below.

He could just see the circular tops of the yellow air bags through the dark water. They were bunched together and stationary. They looked fully inflated.