Dragon (Dirk Pitt 10)

One last sweep of the instruments to make sure the engine was functioning as stated in the flight manual, which he barely had time to scan, and a final glimpse at the ensign flapping on the stern under a stiff breeze that beat in from the port side.

Unlike from an aircraft carrier, a forward takeoff was blocked by the great radar housing and the superstructure, so Commander Harper had brought the Bennett around into a quartering wind.

Pitt held the brake on by pressing his toes outward. Then he ran up the throttle, feeling the Ibis try to surge forward. The lip of the landing pad looked uncomfortably close. The lifting force of the Ibis occurred at forty-five kph. The combined wind force and the speed of the Bennett gave him a twenty-five kph running start, but that still left twenty kph to achieve before the landing wheels rolled into air.

The moment of decision. He signaled the flight crew to release the tie-down cables. Then Pitt eased the throttle to the "full" stop, and the Ibis shuddered under the force of the breeze and the thrust of the turbine. His eyes fixed on the end of the landing pad, Pitt released the brakes and the Ibis leaped ahead.

Five meters, ten, and then gently but firmly he pulled the control stick back. The craft's little nose wheel lifted and Pitt could see clouds. With only three meters to spare, he drilled the Ibis into the sky and over the restless sea.

He banked and leveled off at forty meters and watched Giordino sweep into the air behind him. One circle around the ship, dipping his wings at the waving crew of the Ralph R. Bennett, and he set a course for Soseki Island toward the west. The waters of the Pacific rushed beneath the Ibis' undercarriage, dyed a sparkling iridescent gold by the setting sun.

Pitt slipped the throttle back to a cruise setting. He wished he could put the little craft through its paces, gain altitude, and try some acrobatics. But it was not to be. Any wild maneuvers might show on a Japanese radar screen. In straight and level flight at a wave-top altitude the Ibis was invisible.

Pitt now began to wonder about a reception committee. He saw little hope of escaping from the retreat's compound. A nice setup, he thought grimly. Crash-land in Suma's front yard from out of nowhere and create bedlam among the security forces as a distraction for the others.

The crew in the Bennett's situation room had detected the incoming radar signals sent out by Suma's security defenses, but Commander Harper decided not to jam the probes. He allowed the Bennett to be monitored, rightly assuming the island's defense command would relax once they saw the lone U.S. ship was sailing leisurely away toward the east as if on a routine voyage.

Pitt concentrated on his navigation, keeping an eye on the compass. At their present air speed, he calculated, they should set down on the island in thirty-five minutes. A few degrees north or south, however, and they might miss it completely.

It was all seat-of-the-pants flying and navigation. The Ibis could not afford the extra weight of an on-board computer and an automatic pilot. He rechecked speed, wind direction and velocity, and his estimated course heading four times to make certain no errors slipped in.

The thought of running out of fuel and ditching in a rough sea in the dead of night was a hardship he could do without.

Pitt noted grimly that the radios had been removed. By Jordan's orders, no doubt, so neither he nor Giordino would be tempted to launch into idle conversation and give their presence away.

After twenty-seven minutes had passed, and only a small arc of the sun showed on the horizon line, Pitt peered forward through the windscreen.

There it was, a purple-shadowed blemish between sea and sky, more imagined than real. Almost imperceptibly it became a hard tangible island, its jagged cliffs rising vertically from the rolling swells that crashed into their base.

Pitt turned and glanced out his side window. Giordino hung just off his tail and less than ten meters behind and to his right. Pitt waggled his wings and pointed. Giordino pulled closer until Pitt could see him nod in reply and gesture with the edge of his hand toward the island.

One final check of his instruments and then he tilted the Ibis into a gentle bank until he came at the center of the island from out of the darkening eastern sky. There would be no circling to study the layout of the ground, no second approach if he came in too low or high. Surprise was their only friend. They had one chance to set their little Ibises on the garden lawn before surface-to-air missiles burst in their laps.

He could clearly see the pagoda roofs and the opening in the trees around the open garden. He spotted a helicopter pad that wasn't on Penner's mock-up, but he dismissed it as a secondary landing site because it was too small and ringed with trees.

An easy twist of the wrist to the left, right, and then hold. He lowered the throttle setting a notch at a time. The sea was a blur, the towering cliff face rushing closer, swiftly filling the windscreen. He pulled the stick back slightly. And then suddenly, as if a rug was pulled out from under him, the sea was gone and his wheels were hurtling only a few meters above the hard lava rock of the island.

Straight in without a sideways glance, a gentle kick to the right rudder pedal to compensate for a crosswind. He soared over a row of bushes, the tires of his landing gear grooving the tops. Throttle back on idle, the Ibis settled beyond the point of recovery. A tender tug on the stick and the power glider flared. He felt the landing wheels thump as they lightly touched down on the lawn no more than five meters from the edge of a flower bed.

Pitt flipped the kill switch and applied gentle but firm pressure on the brakes. Nothing happened.

There was no slowing force pulling his body forward. The grass was wet and the tires slid across the lawn as though coated with oil.

The urge to cram the throttle full forward and pull back on the stick was overpowering, especially since his face was only a few centimeters from the nose of the Ibis. Impact with a tree, a building, a rock wall? Directly ahead, a row of shrubs ablaze in autumn red and gold shielded any solid barrier beyond.

Pitt tensed, bent his head down, and hung on.

The craft was still traveling at thirty kph when it tore through the shrubs, ripping the wings off and plowing with a great shuddering splash into a small pond filled with huge carp.

For a moment there was a deathly silence, broken a few seconds later by splintering and tearing noise as Giordino's Ibis ripped through the bushes alongside Pitt's shattered craft and skidded to a stop in a sand garden, devastating intricate designs precisely raked in an artful composition.

Pitt struggled to release his safety harness, but was pinned by the legs, and his arms had no freedom of movement. His head was half submerged in the pond, and he had to tilt his face up to breathe. He could plainly see a school of giant white, black, and gold carp, their gaping mouths opening and closing, large round eyes staring blankly at the intruder in their private domain.

Giordino's fuselage was relatively undamaged, and he managed to extricate himself without a problem.

He rushed over, leaped into the pond, and surged through the muck and lily pads like a maddened hippo.

With strength built from long years of bodybuilding, he tore apart the crumpled structural braces that pinned Pitt's legs as if they were toothpicks. Then he unfastened the safety harness, pulled Pitt out of the mangled craft, and dragged him to the bank.