Omega Missile (Shadow Warriors)

by Bob Mayer

  Thorpe looked closer and saw the two Zodiacs. "Let's get them!"

  *****

  McKenzie heard the chopper. He turned and looked back the way they had come, then spun about and looked downstream. Within sight, the river opened into the lake. Two miles across the smooth surface of the lake he could see the dike blocking the main channel.

  "Faster!" McKenzie yelled.

  Drake had abandoned the computer and had his hand on the outboard engine throttle. He opened up the throttle all the way. The lead Zodiac was now half flying across the water but the pod was slowing them too much. Johnson held his submachine gun at the ready to fire if the chopper got closer.

  McKenzie took the rope that was tied to the pod inside the second Zodiac and pulled on it, slowly bringing the second Zodiac closer until its prow was just behind the engine of his boat.

  "Stop!" McKenzie yelled.

  Drake cut the throttle and the two boats coasted to a stop. "Give me a hand," McKenzie ordered, stepping over the gunwale and into the second Zodiac.

  "What are you doing?" Drake asked in alarm as McKenzie cut the ropes holding it in place and put his shoulder to the pod.

  "Do as I tell you!" McKenzie shoved, and with Drake's assistance, the pod rolled over into the water where it bobbed on the end of its line. McKenzie reached back into the first boat and grabbed Tommy with his artificial arm and lifted him over into the second boat as he yelled and pounded futilely on McKenzie's arm.

  "Shut up," McKenzie yelled at the boy as he quickly looped the rope binding Tommy's hands through the safety rope that ran along the top of the front pontoon. McKenzie quickly tied off several square knots.

  *****

  The Blackhawk was now less than twenty feet above the water. Inside, Thorpe manned the left M-60 while Dublowski manned the right one. They were less than a mile away from the two stopped Zodiacs and the lake.

  "What are they doing?" Dublowski asked.

  "I don't know," Thorpe's finger was itching on the trigger of the machine gun as he saw movement in the boats. He would have started firing already if Tommy wasn't out there.

  *****

  McKenzie pushed down the outboard motor that had been canted up in the second Zodiac. He pulled the starter cord and it roared into life.

  "Say hi to your dad for me," he said to Tommy as he twisted the throttle and locked it full open. His mechanical hand squeezed down on the metal, crushing it in place. As the Zodiac accelerated, McKenzie jumped into the boat with Drake in it. Tommy's Zodiac built up speed, rushing straight across the lake toward the dike two miles away.

  "Let's go!" McKenzie yelled at Drake.

  *****

  "What the fuck!" Dublowski exclaimed as they watched the two Zodiacs part, one heading across the lake, the other turning to the right and driving toward the swamp on that side. They could see Tommy tied off in the first one and the men in the second.

  "Which one do we go after?" the pilot asked in Thorpe's headset.

  Thorpe looked from one to the other, then looked back in at Dublowski across the cargo bay. The older NCO said nothing and Thorpe knew he would back whatever decision he made one hundred percent.

  "The one with my son," Thorpe ordered.

  The Blackhawk swooped down to less than ten feet above the surface of the lake in pursuit.

  *****

  McKenzie smiled as he watched the Blackhawk go after the other boat. The beginning of the swamp and concealment beckoned less than a quarter mile ahead.

  *****

  Inside his boat, Tommy was ripping at the ropes with his fingers, slowly undoing the knots that McKenzie had tied. He could feel the rush of wind across his face. Water spray from the Zodiac bouncing across the surface of the lake splashed up, blinding him when he tried to look forward.

  Tommy looked over his shoulder as he heard the sound of a helicopter. His heart rose as he saw his dad leaning out the side, held in by a harness. He was waving at him, less than two hundred feet away.

  *****

  "Lower," Thorpe ordered.

  The pilot had them down to less than ten feet above the surface of the water and he edged down a couple more feet. Thorpe looked past the boat they were rapidly gaining on and saw the dirt wall of the dike four hundred yards in front of Tommy.

  "Put me right over the boat!"

  The pilot did as he was told but another hundred yards went by before Thorpe could look down on Tommy, hair blown about by the rotor downwash. Thorpe met his son's eyes and could see the fear in them. Thorpe gave a thumbs-up, then unsnapped the strap across his chest.

  He fell the ten feet, the forward speed of the chopper giving him enough velocity to match the boat. Still, he hit the left rear pontoon and had to desperately grab at the safety line to keep from sliding off.

  "Dad!"

  "I'll be there, Tommy," Thorpe said as he scrambled into the boat. He looked past his son at the rapidly approaching dike, now less than two hundred yards away. The chopper was following them, less than forty feet behind. Turning to the motor, Thorpe twisted on the throttle but it didn't move.

  "Damn," Thorpe cursed as he saw that the metal had been crushed in place at full open. He drew his knife and moved up next to Tommy, wrapping one arm around his shoulders. "I've got you."

  "Stop the boat, Dad," Tommy said.

  "I can't," Thorpe replied as he sliced through the rope holding his son. The dike was now a hundred yards away. Thorpe knew he had less than ten seconds.

  "We're going to have to jump overboard," Thorpe said.

  "I can't, Dad. We're going too fast."

  "Trust me, Tommy " Thorpe held him, poised on the edge of the pontoon. "We'll be all right. I'll make sure you don't get hurt."

  Tommy looked at him and nodded, his chin trembling. "All right, Dad."

  "Let's go," Thorpe said. He rolled over the side with Tommy in his arms. His back hit the water and the position cushioned his son from the impact. They went under and Thorpe kicked, pushing them to the surface. He cradled Tommy as he coughed and spit out water.

  "We made it!" Tommy cried out, gripping him tight around the shoulders.

  "Yeah, son, we made it," Thorpe said as he watched the zodiac smash into the dike and crumple, the weight of the engine flipping the boat end over end, smashing it into the earth.

  The Blackhawk came to a hover over their heads and Dublowski lowered a line off a winch.

  *****

  Colonel Hurst was reading a computer screen. "Our Patriot missile batteries near Tel Aviv are responding. Defensive launches are going up now."

  Lowcraft was shaking his head. "Just great. Our own missiles are defending against a Trident launched from one of our own subs. And we don't even have any Patriots here to protect Washington."

  "What are the chances the Patriots will take out the Trident?" Hill asked. He was under guard by the MPs, but still a spectator to the two red lines on the screen.

  "Zero to none," Lowcraft said, "but the Patriot battery was a great political placebo you gave the Israelis." He pointed at Hurst. "Get me the commander of that Patriot unit," General Lowcraft ordered.

  *****

  Parker was wondering if what was left of the forty feet of reinforced concrete and large spring suspenders would work as they were advertised. The clock turned to 9:45, then 9:44. She knew that Tel Aviv would last only two minutes longer than her location, with Washington following four minutes after that.

  The program was complicated. She'd known Kilten was a genius but this was almost beyond her. The key word was almost. She had the added spur of her—and millions of others'—very survival. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, her mind working furiously to unravel Kilten's puzzle.

  *****

  Drake was driving more slowly now, negotiating the treacherous shallow water. McKenzie was carefully watching their route on the map, telling Drake which way to go. "Another two miles and we'll be at the floatplane. Then we'll be out of here," McKenzie said.

  The lake was gone
, hidden behind a wall of trees and the sky overhead was crisscrossed with branches. McKenzie knew they were safe.

  "What about the others?" Johnson asked. "The guys at the LCC?"

  "We'll give them thirty minutes," McKenzie said. "If they aren't there by then, we take off and they have to use the alternate plan."

  *****

  A mile away on the lake, Thorpe and Tommy were pulled into the cargo bay of the chopper.

  *****

  The clock went down to 8:00. Turned over to 7:59. Parker sat back in the chair and closed her eyes for a second as she furiously searched her mind for an answer to her predicament.

  "Yes!" she yelled. "I see it." She leaned forward over the keyboard.

  *****

  McKenzie did another map check, then picked up the bulky sniper rifle from the floorboards and put it across his lap. He slowly maneuvered the muzzle so that it pointed at Johnson, the third man in the boat. McKenzie pulled the trigger. The round blasted Johnson out of the boat and sent the body flying twenty feet, splashing down in a bloody mess in the swamp. Alligators immediately started sliding into the water for the meat.

  Drake eyed McKenzie with a worried look.

  "More money for each of us," McKenzie said. "Oh, don't look so concerned, Drake. I won't shoot you. You're my buddy. It's me and you the rest of the way. And remember, I need you to fly the plane."

  *****

  Thorpe wrapped a poncho liner Dublowski had handed him around Tommy. The Blackhawk had gained altitude and was hovering over the lake at five hundred feet. Thorpe looked to the southwest where McKenzie and the Zodiac had disappeared.

  "We'll never find him under all that foliage," Dublowski was at his side, looking in the same direction.

  "He's got to have a way out," Thorpe said. "A plan to get away."

  "He has a balloon, Dad," Tommy said from deep inside the poncho.

  "What?" Thorpe asked.

  "He has a balloon. I saw the helium and some rope under a blanket in the boat."

  Thorpe looked across Tommy at Dublowski and their eyes locked. "Helium and rope?"

  They both said it at the same time: "Fulton rig."

  Thorpe keyed the radio. "Head southwest," he ordered the pilot.

  *****

  "How far to the floatplane?" Drake asked as he turned a bend in the small creek he was navigating and entered a small pond. The money pod dragged behind them, half submerged, the contents dry.

  McKenzie had the map on his knees, covering the barrel of the large sniper rifle. "This is far enough," he said. "How are our missiles doing?"

  Drake stared at the computer screen. "Seven minutes until the LCC gets hit. Nine minutes for Tel Aviv. Thirteen for Washington."

  "Excellent." McKenzie smiled. "Then it's time to say good-bye."

  "What?" Drake's face was a mixture of confusion and growing awareness. The look was wiped off by the half-inch-diameter bullet hitting him in the jaw and taking most of his head off as it continued its trajectory. The body flipped overboard, the laptop computer going with it.

  *****

  The clock in the LCC was now down to 6:00. It changed to 5:59.

  "Goddamn!" Parker screamed as her computer screen went blank before she could finish reprogamming and regaining control. McKenzie must have done something to the system. She knew she would have to reboot the mainframe in the LCC and that would take about six minutes. "Oh, God," she muttered as she hit the reboot button.

  *****

  McKenzie ripped open the tarp in the back of the Zodiac. He checked his watch and speeded up the pace of his action. First he threw a small anchor overboard, locking the Zodiac in place in the center of the pond. Then he popped open the top on a long tube as he turned the valve on the helium canister. A blimp-shaped balloon slowly slithered out of the tube. The blimp was eight feet long and four feet in diameter, connected at the bottom to the climbers' 12-mm rope in the bottom of the boat.

  McKenzie didn't bother to watch as the blimp rose, reaching up above the height of the weathered trees surrounding the pond. He was buckling on a monkey harness, cinching down all the connections. He grabbed the free end of the 12-mm rope and connected the sewn-in loop to the front center of the harness with a locking snap link.

  Then he turned and untied the money pod from the back of the boat. He tied that rope off to another snap link on the waistband of his harness. He reached into his vest and pulled out an FM radio headset, settling it on his head. It was already set to the right frequency.

  Finally he looked up. The blimp was still rising, another fifty feet of slack in the boat before it would come to a halt. Still it was already over three hundred feet up.

  McKenzie spoke into the voice-activated mouthpiece. "Alpha Two, this is Alpha Six. Over."

  *****

  Forty miles above the surface, the ICBM was coming straight down. The nose cone was just beginning to glow red from contact with the atmosphere. Through a haze of clouds, the Gulf of Mexico lay in an arc far below.

  *****

  "Six, this is Two, we are on course and one minute out. We have you in sight."

  The C-130 was over twenty-five years old and had been bought fourth-hand from the Cambodian government. It had actually cost McKenzie more money than the plane's original price to add the special equipment that the plane now had. There was a specialized steel yoke that had been welded to the front of the plane like a pair of whiskers, along with a powerful winch and crane in the cargo bay that faced the rear ramp. There were also rubber fuel bladders in the front half of the cargo bay, bulging with enough JP-4 to take the C-130 to a country that didn't have an extradition law with the United States.

  The pilot saw the orange blimp floating in the clear blue Louisiana sky and lined up the nose of his aircraft for the rope which he knew hung below the blimp.

  *****

  Thorpe and the pilots of the Blackhawk also saw the blimp.

  "What do you want to do?" the pilot asked.

  The copilot was looking out the left window. "We've got a One-Thirty inbound!"

  Thorpe saw both the C-130 and the blimp. "Put us at the bottom end of that rope below the blimp." He knew exactly what McKenzie was doing and he knew that unless they acted quickly, McKenzie would succeed.

  Thorpe grabbed the only thing handy, a parachute harness from the firewall of the cargo bay, and strapped it on as the Blackhawk swooped down toward the pond. He looped a snap link through the chest strap, securing it in place. The pilots slowed as they approached the rope, afraid of fouling the blades. Thorpe tapped Dublowski on the shoulder and pointed at his ruck, yelling in his ear what he wanted. Dublowski pulled out a small green bag and looped it over Thorpe's head.

  Thorpe could see McKenzie seated in the boat, the rope coming down to him. "Lower," Thorpe said. He turned to Tommy. "Stay with Sergeant Dublowski . I have something I have to do."

  Tommy had seen the Zodiac also. "He's a bad man, Dad."

  "I know." When the chopper was less than twenty feet from the pond surface, Thorpe jumped.

  *****

  Inside the LCC the clock now read 3:20. Parker's hands were gripping the arms of her chair as the computer screen ran through its self-diagnostics as it powered back up. 3:19...3:18...

  Like a mantra she repeated to herself exactly what commands she would have to type to abort the two missiles once she could access the computer again. The clock told her she wouldn't have that time.

  *****

  "Sir," Colonel Hurst called out, "I have the Patriot battery commander on the line. He's reporting negative strikes on the inbound. They've shot their wad. It's going in. Four minutes, fifty-five seconds until Tel Aviv hit. Eight minutes, fifty-five until we get it."

  Many in the War Room were watching the two red lines creep closer to their targets. Others, like those in a sinking ship, were writing notes to loved ones, despite the knowledge that such notes would most likely never be recovered. Some were desperately trying to get an outside line, trying to call th
eir families.

  General Lowcraft knew that discipline had broken down, but he understood that there was nothing they could do and that was precisely the reason people were reacting the way they were. He keyed the microphone.

  "Major Parker, I don't want to disturb you, but it would be most helpful if you did whatever it is you said you could do to abort these missiles."

  "You fucked up trusting her," Hill said, twisting uncomfortably in his seat, trying to adjust his cuffed hands.

  Lowcraft turned to the former national security adviser. "As you said earlier, the most important thing is that I take responsibility. And I do."

  *****

  McKenzie had heard the Blackhawk long before he saw it. He watched Thorpe jump into the water, even as the voice in his ear reported ten seconds out. McKenzie looked up and saw the C-130 roar by overhead.

  *****

  The rope was caught by the whiskers and dragged into the exact center. A sky anchor clamped down on the rope and held it in place, while just above the anchor a blade cut the blimp free.

  *****

  Thorpe was swimming hard toward the Zodiac. He was five feet away from McKenzie when the rope suddenly went taut and McKenzie's grinning face was yanked up out of the boat into the air.

  Thorpe twisted and reached out, grabbing the rope leading to the money pod. He pulled in a bit of slack and pressed it through the snap link on the chest of his parachute harness. He was just in time, as the slack in that rope was ripped out of his hands and the rope, pod, and Thorpe were lifted into the air, the latter sliding down the rope until he slammed into the top of the pod.