15. It Had To Be This Way.
Back on the Dolphin, Lee had kept tabs on all the action at the camp via the footage streamed through Brandon and Jo's contact lenses, direct comms from Nash and Dale's station on The Lady and also from Project Guardian.
Chapman had informed Tobias and was waiting on his collective military brains trust to patch into the developing and unprepared for mission.
"We can't wait" Nash argued, "that's like closing the stable door after the horse has already bolted!"
Chapman couldn't make the decision, but so long as no kinetic action was taken, he was willing to give Nash free rein to pursue the Maglev before it got away from them… they knew the train was on a low speed subline between the island and L.A, so they could afford the small delay they had currently, but after that who knew which line they'd take?
He took a deep breath and nodded in acquiescence, "get after it, but keep your guns holstered, this is seek mission only. Until I say otherwise." Chapman ordered Nash before shifting his focus to Le.
"Le, get all the info up that you can on the mapped tunnels, we need to see if we can get an idea on how they control the vacuum.
"I'm willing to bet my left nut there's surface infrastructure, it's just a matter of finding it on these unmapped lines." He said, while the sense of urgency climbed as time went by.
Back at the Babylonian Village, a very brief reunion led to Nash preparing his group for the change of plans. Jo, Branson and Angela would hitch a ride back to the Dolphin on the Blackhawk with Michael and Marella.
Fellows had earned a seat on Airwolf next to Dale. He'd serve as an extra set of eyes to take in the influx of fresh discovery that they'd be dealing with and had the training to be dropped to ground if need be. He robbed any supplies he thought he'd need from the Blackhawk and strapped them down in The Lady. Anything he didn't have, he'd likely be able to MacGyver together and make do.
He couldn't believe his luck, and if his father was still alive, he wouldn't have been able to help himself but to tell him he'd flown on the physical form of what was only known as File A56-7W back in his heyday.
After sliding on one of the spare helmets, he watched the fairly standard start up and allowed himself to be emersed in the feel of the machine. Everything was conventional until they'd left landfall and were skimming over the water at a hundred feet.
Dale smiled knowingly at him and warned him, "Buckle up buttercup."
Nash called for Turbos and Fellows hit the back of his seat.
Once he got over his initial shock, he set his eyes on the impressive computer array, what stood out to him most were the choppers readings, the ones aside from the normal aircraft systems he was used to seeing.
Air speed was never a strong point for helo's but once The Lady hit 300 knots, the magic happened.
Labels like BBT Field Integrity, Skin Temperature and Stealth Magnitude were unfamiliar to him and were only ever imagined in any good sci-fi show or his dreams.
Then he glanced at their Airspeed again, which was heading to 500 knots…it almost blew his mind.
He stayed quiet for now, simply observing and letting the experience wash over him.
Le's voice chimed in through the headset, "Dale, can you bring up the PASS?"
Dale minimized the Aircraft Systems screen and brought up the new PASS technology to give it a test.
Le hadn't been sure if The Lady could still get a reading strong enough to be able to interpret, but he did have hope that once she was in the air and over three hundred knots, that her force field frequency would be able to amplify the tracking systems for PASS to get a reading
His hunch was right.
Not only that, but it was vastly improved from their initial PASS discovery on the Dolphin.
The blurry blip in the distance became less pixilated as they closed in. It was traveling at a pretty strong clip - at just under two hundred knots. The shape became more apparent and looked like a string of tic tacs.
What was more interesting was that the image had a faint shadow that stretched both in front and behind it for about three hundred yards which appeared to be the train's emitting frequency bleeding up and down the line.
They were within five miles of the Santa Monica Coast and heading back to The Olde Coastal Museum.
The train would likely slow down, either to stop at the museum, or to change lines to a high-speed tunnel - to who knew where?
Le started to download the information of the mapped lines in the rest of the country. Tobias had been waiting for this moment, it was the last part of the plan to finally flush out the key cockroaches from the vestiges of Hollywood's underground before he retook office after the hiatus that was necessary.
It had to be this way.
As Chapman had alluded to, there were multiple vacuum vents built along the lines. The problem was finding them. In build up areas, they were built into existing underground infrastructure – not conducive to The Lady, who's prerogative was to keep the blue side up.
That meant they'd have to let the train run until it reached largely uninhabited tracts of land.
That meant they'd have to get ahead of it.
That meant they would have to assume where it was heading and hope they could match up a main line in a mapped area and find a suitable vent in order to insure they could stop the train. This was because the train would be traveling so fast, that it could very well outrun the vacuum leak until the next vent and so on.
"Le standby for Airwolf's imaging, and see if we can match up a probable route." Chapman ordered.
All eyes were on the monitors and at the same time, the Dolphins deck crew had marshalled in the Blackhawk full of weary passengers.
The Lady shadowed the Maglev as it approached the underground port beneath the Museum, where it diverted to the right and paused before going through the airlocks between low and high-speed lines.
Minutes later the Maglev shot away heading under the Pacific Palisades and towards Eaton Canyon.
Le finished down loading the classified files of the underground tunnel systems that had already been codified. He hurriedly scrolled through the glossary for anything related to vacuum and vents, and honed in on what he was looking for.
As expected, branches of highspeed tunnels were marked, flowing into California from Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. As with a road map, a heavier line indicating a primary tunnel spanned from west to east, also via Nevada.
As Airwolf gave chase to the train, it soon became apparent that they were heading via Nevada, but which line?
With help from Airwolf's TFR (terrain following radar), Nash hugged the rough landscape to stay under the radar
Le swore under his breath when he scanned the schematics of a typical vent and their challenging configuration, but he sent them through to give the Airwolf crew an idea of what they were contending with.
They were essentially very large exhaust pipes with pumps at the base, way down at the four mile tunnel level. Supporting exhaust fans were positioned at regular intervals up the chamber to force air out over the long distance to maintain the vacuum.
And that was why he swore.
Because the vertical and multilevel impact zones were not conducive to horizontal flight approaches when racing at Mach one plus speeds. Simply blowing the protective cover off the vent wouldn't immediately destroy the vacuum pump at the bottom of the shaft, they had to systematically destroy each fan in quick succession before the train got to the exhaust location.
Minds raced with the new information, and the seemingly impossible task.
Nash remained on course while Le kept tabs on Airwolf's proximity to which tunnel she was following, streaking across The San Gabriel Mountain Range and towards Victorville.
Every so often, they'd come across a temporary interruption in the PASS image as a secondary frequency broke up the image.
"Le can you check distances between vents, think we could be inadvertently logging them on the PASS," Dale asked, trying to isolate the frequency.
"Standby" Le said, while he scrolled through the information. "Looks like every two miles give or take and depending on the landscape."
Fellows couldn't believe his eyes as they passed Mach one… in a Helicopter.
Le finally got a break when the two close knit tunnels finally separated, the Maglev was heading east in a direct and uninterrupted route alongside the meandering I-40.
He swiftly sent the appropriate information to Dale, who punched in the coordinates to get ahead of the runaway train.
The crew on the Dolphin were discussing options while Angela was put to bed. She had fallen asleep in Michael's arms. It was uncanny how relaxed she was around him from the moment the crew had boarded the Blackhawk back to the ship.
The discussions bled to the Airwolf crew as they headed to south of Las Vegas
"What do you think Fellows?" Nash asked the only person who hadn't chimed in yet. The precise nature of his mission experience was valuable.
Fellows had been thinking and kept coming back to the same conclusion.
"Well," he started tentatively, "short of a vertical dive, there's no other quick way to even come close to destroying something all those miles underground, even then, we'd need a heck of a lot of firepower to blast a clear path down, and….."
He didn't get to finish as Nash pulled back on the Cyclic and started to lift The Lady's nose skyward.