"We're talking minutes," he said with alarm in his voice.
"About eighteen, to be precise. Captain, get your crew to the helipad now," Pitt directed. "There's an airship waiting that can evacuate everyone from the platform if we move quick."
Turning to Ohlrogge, Pitt added, "Is there any way we can stop the launch?"
"The launch sequence is completely automated and controlled by the assembly and command ship. Presumably, these terrorists have duplicated that functionality on their own vessel."
"We can mechanically halt the fueling of the rocket," Christiano noted.
"It is too late," Ohlrogge said, shaking his head. "There is an override control in the bridge that would be our only hope at this late time," he added grimly.
"The elevator at the rear of the hangar leads to the bridge deck. The helipad is just above," Christiano said. "Then let's get moving," Pitt replied.
Quickly, the group shuffled en masse to the rear of the hangar and crowded around a medium-sized elevator.
"There's not enough room for all," Christiano stated, regaining his captain's form. "We'll need three trips. You eight men first, then this group, then you ten men over there," he ordered, dividing the crowd into three groups.
"Jack, you go with the first group and help them onto the Icarus. Let Al know there's more on the way," Pitt said. "Dirk, you bring up the last group, make sure everyone makes it out of here. Captain, we need to visit the bridge now," he said, turning to Christiano.
Christiano, Ohlrogge, Dahlgren, and Pitt crowded into the elevator with eight other men and waited impatiently as the elevator zipped up to the bridge level above the hangar. Dahlgren quickly located a stairwell off to one side that led to the helipad and herded the crewmen up to the exposed deck.
As promised, the silver airship hung hovering several feet above the pad, Giordino at the controls smoking a fat cigar. He quickly rotated the swiveling propulsion ducts and brought the gondola down to the deck as Jack ran up.
"Hi, sailor. Give a few girls a ride?" Dahlgren asked, poking his head into the gondola doorway.
"Certainly," Giordino replied. "How many do you have?"
"About thirty, give or take," Dahlgren replied, looking s
uspiciously at the gondola's passenger compartment.
"Shove 'em in, we'll make them fit. But we better toss any unnecessary weight if we want to get off the ground. Just make it quick, as I have an aversion to getting baked alive."
"You and me both, pardner," Dahlgren replied, herding the first of the crewmen aboard.
In addition to the two-seat cockpit, the gondola's passenger compartment was configured to seat eight passengers in oversized leather airplane-type seats. Dahlgren studied the arrangement and grimaced at the prospect of squeezing all the men in and possibly grounding the blimp. As the crew climbed aboard, he checked the mountings of the seats and found that they had a quick-release mechanism for temporary removal. He quickly unlatched five of the seats and, with the help of a Russian engineer, tossed them out the door of the gondola.
"Everybody to the back of the bus," he barked. "It's going to be standing room only."
As the last man in his group wedged into the passenger compartment, Dahlgren turned to Al.
"How much time do we have?"
"About fifteen minutes, by my count."
The next group of crewmen began spilling off the stairs and sprinting across the deck of the helipad. Dahlgren let out a slight sigh. There would be time, if not room, to get every man to the blimp before blastoff. But would it be enough time to stop the launch, he wondered, catching sight of the Zenit rocket standing fueled and ready across the platform.
Inside the Odyssey's bridge, Captain Christiano turned pale and shook his head silently as he surveyed the bullet-ridden computer stations and shattered glass that littered the floor. Walking to the navigation station, he curiously noticed a lonely computer mouse dangling by its cord, its companion keyboard nowhere to be seen. Ohlrogge observed that the computer drive itself was undamaged.
"I've got scores of laptop computers downstairs. We can plug one in and activate the platform controls," he offered.
"They have no doubt secured the automated controls," Christiano said with disgust, thrusting a thumb over his shoulder toward the window. Pitt followed his motion, observing the Koguryo sitting defiantly in the distance. Returning his gaze to the captain, Pitt caught sight of the Badger, still tied up in the water off the starboard support column far below.
"There is no time. It might take hours to work around," Christiano
continued, moving to the bridge's center console with a look of despair on his face.
"You said there was a manual override on the bridge?" Pitt asked.