Treasure of Khan (Dirk Pitt 19)

"As a buffer to the more valuable territory to the north, I suspect," Captain Nobuji Negishi replied. "I just hope we get repositioned to the front when the northern invasion occurs. We're missing all the fun in Shanghai and Peking."

As Miyabe stared at the flat ground beneath the plane, a bright glint of sunlight briefly flashed out of the corner of his eye. Scanning across the horizon, he tracked the source of the light, squinting at what he saw.

"Sir, an aircraft ahead and slightly below us," he said, pointing a gloved hand toward the object.

Negishi peered ahead and quickly spotted the plane. It was the silver Fokker trimotor, flying northwest toward Ulaanbaatar.

"She's crossing our path," the Japanese pilot noted with a rise in his voice. "At last, a chance for battle."

"But sir, that's not a combat plane. I don't think it is even a Chinese airplane," Miyabe said, observing the markings on the Fokker. "Our orders are to engage only Chinese military aircraft."

"The flight poses a risk," Negishi explained away. "Besides, it will be good target practice, Lieutenant." No one in the Japanese military was getting reprimanded for aggressive behavior in the Chinese theater, he well knew. As a bomber pilot, he would be afforded few opportunities to engage and destroy other aircraft in the skies. It was a rare chance for an easy kill and he wasn't about to pass it by.

"Gunners at your stations," he barked over the intercom. "Prepare for air-to-air action."

The five-man crew of the attack bomber were immediately energized as they manned their battle positions. Rather than play the quarry of smaller and quicker fighter aircraft, as was their lot in life, the bomber crew suddenly became the hunter. Captain Negishi mentally computed a dead-reckoning line of the trimotor's path, then eased back on the throttles and banked the bomber in a wide slow turn to the right. The Fokker slipped by beneath them until Negishi eased out of the turn, which brought the bomber around and behind the silver trimotor.

Negishi eased the throttles forward again as the Fokker loomed ahead. With a top speed of two hundred sixteen miles per hour, the Mitsubishi was nearly twice as fast as the Fokker and easily closed the gap.

"Ready with the forward guns," Negishi ordered as the unarmed plane grew larger in the gunsights.

But the trimotor was not going to pose like a sitting duck. Randy Schodt had seen the bomber first and tracked it as it curled around on to his tail. His hopes that the Japanese plane was just making a harmless flyby vanished when the Mitsubishi took up position squarely behind him and hung on his tail, rather than fly alongside. Unable to outrun the faster military aircraft, he did the next best thing.

The Japanese plane's turret gunner just squeezed the first round from his 7.7mm machine gun when the trimotor banked sharply left and seemed to stall in the air. The gunner's bullets sprayed harmlessly into the sky as the bomber quickly overshot the Fokker.

Negishi was caught completely off guard by the sudden maneuver and cursed as he tried to muscle the bomber back toward the smaller plane. The rattle of machine-gun fire echoed through the fuselage as a side gunner tracked the sudden juke by the Fokker and sprayed a long burst in its direction.

Inside the Fokker, Hunt swore louder at the pilots as crates of artifacts began tumbling around the interior of the plane. A loud crash told him that a crate of porcelain bowls was suddenly smashed by the plane's violent turns. It wasn't until the Fokker banked sharply right and Hunt caught

a glimpse out the side window at the Japanese bomber that he realized what was happening.

In the cockpit, Schodt tried every trick in the book to shake the Mitsubishi, hoping that the bomber would abandon the pursuit. But the Japanese pilot was angered by the earlier rebuff and pursued the Fokker relentlessly. Time and again, Schodt would stunt and stall his aircraft to throw the bomber off his tail, causing the Japanese plane to circle around and reacquire the trimotor in its gunsights. The hunter would not give up the chase, and Schodt would soon find the Mitsubishi back on his tail again, until finally one of the gunners found his mark.

The Fokker's rear stabilizer was the first to go, shredded in a hail of lead. Negishi licked his chops, knowing the plane could no longer turn left or right without the control from the stabilizer. Grinning like a wolf, he brought the bomber in close for the kill. As the gunner fired again, he was shocked to see the Fokker once again juke to the right, then pull up in a stall.

Schodt wasn't through yet. With Dave jockeying the throttles on the two wing-mounted engines, Randy was still able to duck and weave away from the Mitsubishi. Once again, the gunfire burst harmlessly into the fuselage, Hunt grimacing as another crate of artifacts was decimated.

Wise to his opponent's tactics, Negishi finally swung the bomber around in a wide arc and approached the Fokker from the side. This time, there was no escaping the gunfire and the Fokker's right wing engine disintegrated under a fury of bullets. A plume of smoke burst from the engine as Schodt shut down the fuel line before the motor caught fire. Jockeying the remaining two engines, he continued to fight with all his skills to keep the Fokker airborne and out of harm's way, but his hourglass finally ran out. A well-placed shot by the Mitsubishi's topside gunner severed the Fokker's elevator controls and effectively ended the flight of the Blessed Betty.

Without the ability to control altitude, the wounded trimotor began a flat descent toward the ground. Schodt watched helplessly as the Fokker plunged toward the dusty ground with its wings ajar. Amazingly, the airplane held its balance, gliding downward, with its nose bent just a fraction forward. Shutting down the remaining engines just before impact, he felt the left wingtip clip the ground first, throwing the plane into a clumsy cartwheel.

The crew of the Japanese plane watched with minor disappointment as the Fokker rolled across the ground, failing to explode or burst into flames. Instead, the silver trimotor simply flipped twice, then slid inverted into a sandy ravine.

Despite the difficulty in downing the civilian plane, a cheer rang out aboard the Mitsubishi.

"Well done, men, but next time we must do better," Negishi lauded then banked the bomber back toward its base in Manchuria.

On board the Fokker, Schodt and his brother were killed instantly when the cockpit was crushed on the first roll of the aircraft. Hunt survived the crash, but his back was broken and his left leg nearly severed. He painfully clung to life for nearly two days before perishing in the jumbled wreckage of the fuselage. With his last gasp of energy, he pulled the lacquered box close to his chest and cursed his sudden turn of luck. As his last breath left him, he had no idea that still clutched within his arms, he held the clue to the most magnificent treasure the world would ever see.

Part One

Seiche

-1-

Lake Baikal, Siberia

June 2, 2007