The ship blushed in a smear of colors when viewed through the heat sensors. The central section of the hull was emitting heat in red,yellow, and tan. The funnel glowed bright white surrounded by shades of pink. Portholes glowed like circular disks of fire.
Up on the top deck, Gushan saw something that caught his eye. A bright pink heat source that was flickering. He changed the settings on the camera, zoomed in, and discovered the unmistakable outline of the NUMA helicopter. Its engines were running as a human-shaped figure walked around it to the far side.
“Regular light,” Gushan ordered.
The technician switched to the visual image. Gushan saw no lights on the deck where the helicopter stood. The pad was dark instead of illuminated, as it would normally be during flight operations. The helicopter was dark as well. Even its navigation lights were off.
“Infrared,” Gushan now commanded. “Put them on split screen.”
The two images flickered side by side. The helicopter was even hotter now. The exhaust trail plainly visible against the cold backdrop.
He reached for the ship’s intercom and called the captain. “How soon can the helicopter be ready?”
“Five, maybe ten minutes,” the captain replied. “Why?”
That was too long. The Americans would be miles away by then. Gushan didn’t bother to explain. “Get it ready. Me and my team will meet the pilots in the hangar.”
On-screen the American helicopter began to rise. “Damn,” Gushan muttered. He turned to the drone operator. “Follow them. Do not lose sight of the aircraft.”
The drone operator took command of his craft and turned it toward the fjord, locating the American helicopter and surging after it. The helicopter was dropping to the deck and flying to the northeast.
With a featherlight touch, the drone pilot turned his craft tofollow. The drone accelerated quickly, but would not be able to keep up with the American helicopter if it went to full speed. Still, the cameras on the drone were powerful and the night was dark and cold. The heat from the helicopter’s jet engine would be visible for miles and miles. They would not lose track of it while it remained in the air.
With the drone locked onto the Americans, Gushan pressed the intercom button again. “Have my team gear up and meet me in the hangar. If the Americans find anything, we’re going to take it from them.”
As the American helicopter and the Chinese drone flew off to the northeast, the repair work on the American ship continued unabated. A crane load of debris was lowered toward the flatbed, placed down gently and then covered with a tarp.
Amid that debris—which was mostly lightweight materials, insulation, and the deflated lifting bags—Kurt and Joe huddled under gray blankets.
Joe laughed at their unceremonious method of departing the ship. “I’ve had a few girlfriends say they wanted to throw me out with the trash, but I never thought I’d choose that option myself.”
Kurt grinned in the dark, happy to feel the flatbed kick into gear and lurch forward on its journey. “I like to consider this more along the lines of repurpose, recycle, reuse. As in, we’re repurposing this flatbed as a getaway vehicle.”
They rumbled across the dock at perhaps five miles per hour. “Slowest getaway ever,” Joe quipped.
“It’s not speed but stealth that matters,” Kurt said.
“How far is the driver going to take us?”
“We get dropped at the dump with the rest of the wreckage. From there, it’s snowmobiles. Which is where we’ll make up some time.”
Kurt looked out from under the blanket. Carefully hidden among the debris were two battery-powered NUMA snowmobiles. The sleek vehicles had a top speed of ninety miles per hour, a two-hundred-mile range, and hard-sided saddlebags filled with tools and explosives.
After checking in with NUMA headquarters and the White House, their orders had been made crystal clear. If they found the EAGL in the middle of the lake, they were to remove a small number of the most advanced parts—to prevent any chance of them being found and reverse engineered—and then blow the rest of the aircraft sky-high.
Chapter 41
A pair of snowmobiles racing along an icy road in Norway didn’t draw much attention. Tromsø and the rest of the region were staring down the brunt of winter. In a month or so everyone would be using snowcats, powered sleds, and snowmobiles to get around.
Had someone chosen to look more closely they would have noticed that these particular machines were custom-built models, longer, wider, and of a lower profile than most of the commercial models. They used a solid-state battery system instead of a gasoline-powered motor. They raced along almost silently, putting out no exhaust and generating very little heat.
The NUMA crew called them skiffs because they were designed to travel over thick blankets of snow without sinking in. The caterpillar treads on the back end were wider, thicker, and made with deeper treads for better traction, while the skids up front were longer and much wider and more curved than the skids on a standard recreational machine. They helped the skiffs stay on top of the snowpack the same way the wide-body skis that powder hounds used kept them from sinking into the fresh snow after a good winter storm blanketed their favorite trails.
Those traits would come in handy when Kurt and Joe reached the lake at the top of the cliff, but they had to get there first.
Traveling to the south, they made great time. Five miles outside Tromsø the road became pure snow. There were tracks in the middle from studded tires on the few trucks and cars that passed this way, but the shoulder was flat and smooth.
Joe found the ride surprisingly comfortable, with the aerodynamically designed windshield deflecting most of the oncoming air and the heated grips and seat keeping important parts of him warm and toasty. His only complaint was riding single file behind Kurt, where he was navigating in the snowstorm emanating from Kurt’s treads. He swung out wide and raced up next to Kurt, until the headlights of their machines were running side by side.
