'I don't see any beam,' said Pitt. 'Is it working?'
'Sorry to shatter your conceptions,' answered Weir, 'but the argon laser beam is invisible.'
'How can you zero it in?'
'With this thirty-dollar telescopic rifle sight.' He patted the round tube, which had been hastily screwed to the laser. 'It won't win me the Nobel Prize, but it should suffice.'
Pitt lay on his stomach and crawled until his head was past the threshold of the open hatch. The blasting cold tore at his head bandage, causing one end of the gauze to flap like a flag in a hurricane. The projectile was hanging below the helicopter, trailing at a slight angle toward the tail rotor. Staring at it. Pitt found it difficult to believe a universe of agony and death could be crammed into so small a package.
'Closer,' Weir shouted. 'I need another ten feet.'
'Move in ten feet,' Pitt said over the microphone.
'Any closer and we can use a pair of scissors,' Giordino muttered. If he was tense with anxiety, he didn't show it. His face displayed the expression of one who was half dozing. Only the burning eyes gave any hint of the concentration required for precision flying. The sweat felt like it was exploding inside his cast and the nerve endings in his leg screamed at the irritation.
Pitt could make out something now — a blackening color in the twisted shroud lines above the projectile. The invisible beam had locked in and was melting the nylon strands. How many were there? he wondered; perhaps as many as fifty.
'She's overheating!' Two words and a skipped heartbeat. 'Too cold in here with that hatch open,' Weir yelled. 'The coolant tubes have frozen up.'
Weir's eyes returned to the telescopic sight. Pitt could see several lines parting, their charred ends snapping horizontally and lashing out in the airstream. The acrid smell of burning insulation began to invade the cabin.
'The tube won't take much more,' said Weir.
Another half-dozen shroud lines burned free, but the rest remained taut and undamaged. Weir suddenly straightened up and tore off his smoldering gloves.
'God, I'm sorry!' he shouted. 'The tube is gone!'
The Quick Death projectile still hung ominously beneath the Minerva.
Thirty seconds dragged by while Pitt lay there, staring at the deadly projectile swinging through the sky. There was no expression on his face, just a peculiar preoccupation. Then he broke the silence.
'We've lost the laser,' he announced without elaboration.
'Damn, damn, damn!' Steiger snarled. 'Where did our luck go?' His voice was almost savage in bitterness and frustration.
'So now?' Admiral Sandecker asked calmly.
'You break off and put that turkey in a dive,' Pitt answered.
'A what?'
'The last card in the deck. Head into a dive. When you build up sufficient g-forces, pull up. Maybe Abe's luck will change and your unwanted passenger will drop free.'
'It'll be sticky,' said Steiger. 'I'll have to do it on instruments. I can't see shit with the canopy covering the windshield.'
'We'll stay with you,' Giordino said.
'Don't come too close or you'll catch our cold,' Steiger replied. He eased the helicopter clear of the chase plane. 'Let's pray this baby isn't constipated.' Then he pushed the control stick forward.
The Minerva tipped over and down on a seventy-degree angle. Sandecker braced his feet against the base of Steiger's seat and clawed for a handhold. To the men watching in rapt fascination from the Catlin, the helicopter's nose pointed straight at the sea.
'Ease your angle of descent.' said Pitt. 'The projectile is beginning to trail back toward your tail rotor.'
'I read you,' said Steiger, his words tense and strained. 'It's like jumping off a building with your eyes closed.'
'You're looking good,' Pitt said reassuringly. 'Not too fast. Pass seven g-factors and you lose your rotor blades.'
'Wouldn't think of it.'
Four thousand feet.
Giordino did not attempt to match Steiger foot for foot. He lagged behind — ' keeping the Catlin in a shallow banking dive, corkscrewing down behind the Minerva. Dr. Weir, his job finished. groped toward the warmth of the control cabin.
The sharp tilt to the helicopter's cabin floor made Admiral Sandecker feel as though he were standing with his back against a wall. Steiger's eyes danced from the altimeter to the air-speed indicator to the gauge showing the artificial horizon and back again.
Three thousand feet.
Pitt could see that the canopy of the parachute was flapping dangerously near the twirling rotor, but he remained silent. Steiger had enough on his mind, he reasoned, without hearing another dire warning. He watched as the sea rushed up to meet the Minerva.
Steiger began to experience a mounting vibration. The wind noise was picking up as his speed increased. For a fleeting second he considered holding the stick in position and ending the torment. But then, for the first time that day, he thought of his wife and children, and his desire to see them again stoked a fierce determination to live.
'Abe, now!' Pitt's command boomed over his earphone. 'Pull out.'
Steiger hauled back on the stick.
Two thousand feet.
The Minerva shuddered from the tremendous gravitational drag that attacked every rivet of her structure. She hung poised as the projectile, reacting to the force like a weight at the end of a giant pendulum, arched outward. The surviving shroud lines that had withstood the laser's beam tautened like banjo strings. In twos and threes they began to fray.
Just as the Quick Death projectile looked as though it was going to whip back and smash the helicopter, it tore free and dropped away.
'She's gone!' shouted Pitt.
Steiger was too drained to reply. Fighting the blackness framing his vision from the sudden pull-out, Sandecker struggled to his knees and shook Steiger by the shoulder.
'Make for that cruise ship,' he said in a very tired and very relieved voice.
Pitt did not watch the Minerva as it veered off and headed toward safety. He watched the projectile until its blue skin blended against the blue of the rolling water and faded from sight.
Designed for a descent rate of eighteen feet per second, the projectile hurtled past one thousand feet without blowing off its warhead. The detonation mechanism lagged until it was too late. At nearly three hundred sixty feet per second the biological organism, carrying its threat of agony and mass extinction, plunged into the waiting areas of the abysmal sea.
Pitt was still watching when the tiny white scar from the splash was closed over by the relentless swells.
There is something heartsickening about seeing a proud ship die. The President felt deeply moved, his eyes centered on the billowing pillars of smoke rolling from the Iowa as the fireboats edged close to the inferno in a futile effort to extinguish the flames.
He sat with Timothy March and Dale Jarvis, the Joint Chiefs having returned to their respective offices in the Pentagon to begin launching the expected investigations, dictating the expected reports, and issuing the expected directives. In a few hours the shock would wear off and the news media would start shouting for blood, anyone's blood.
The President had settled on a course of action. The public outcry had to be softened. Nothing would be gained by proclaiming the raid as another day of infamy. The pieces were to be swept under the carpet of confusion as delicately as possible.
'Word has just come in that Admiral Bass has died at Bethesda Naval Hospital,' Jarvis announced softly.
'He must have been a strong man to have carried the terrible burden of the Quick Death's secret all these years,' said the President.
