The Reply a5-2

by Robert Doherty

  Perkins let go with his left hand and flipped up a small plastic aiming circle, an anachronism that had been built into the plane simply on the incredibly small chance that the plane’s computer-driven forward targeting display, which was projected against the Plexiglas of the cockpit, would be down.

  Perkins began struggling with the plane, trying to get the center of the aiming circle centered on the foo fighter. He knew he would have only one shot before the fighter was past him. He also knew he had to take into account his own speed and descent ratio while also factoring in the foo fighter’s trajectory. It was a situation to make even the sharpest ace of World War II cringe as the two craft were coming to meet each other at over two thousand miles an hour, one dropping in altitude at the rate of a thousand feet every ten seconds, the other climbing just as fast.

  “Come on, baby, come on,” Perkins whispered to himself, his eyes focused. They would pass in less than five seconds.

  The foo fighter was passing through the right bottom of the aiming circle as Perkins pushed hard right. His finger was resting lightly on the trigger built into his joystick. It was attached to the only electrical system still on, drawing such little amperage that the foo fighter couldn’t pick it up.

  Perkins’s finger pulled back. The M16-A1 20mm cannon was on the left side, just below the cockpit. Perkins could feel the plane shudder as the milk-bottle-sized projectiles roared out of the mouth of the Gatling gun. He’d never fired it before with the engines off. He could hear the gun firing, the whine of the barrels spinning, the explosion of the rounds going off.

  His eyes, though, were focused on the line of tracers reaching out from his plane toward the foo fighter. The tracers were high and right, then descended down as the foo fighter came up, right into the path!

  Twenty-millimeter rounds smashed into the side of the foo fighter. It was built to project power, not armored to take such an unexpected attack. The uranium-cored rounds tore through, destroying the small Airlia computer on board and ripping apart the magnetic engine.

  “Yes!” Perkins screamed as he watched the foo fighter drop out of the sky. His exultation was short lived, though, as he realized he was dropping through 45,000 feet and both his engines were cold. He immediately began the emergency procedures to restart.

  * * *

  On board the bouncer, the F-14 that had lost both engines and tried to stay in formation disappeared off the radar screen.

  “Shit,” Turcotte muttered. He hoped the pilot and navigator ejected before the plane went down.

  “One foo fighter is going down!” Zandra reported.

  They watched the display on the small computer screen, the data relayed to them from Cheyenne Mountain.

  “The other is hit too!”

  A voice came over the radio. “This is Lieutenant Commander Perkins. We have splashed two foo fighters and are heading home.”

  * * *

  Perkins felt the thrust of the two Pratt & Whitney engines push him through the back of his seat and banked hard right. He could see the other F-14, engines on, pulling in beside him, the pilot holding his left hand thumbs-up so Perkins could see.

  “That’s one for the record books,” Perkins said to Stanton.

  * * *

  “Let’s go,” Turcotte said. “We’ve got to get in there and get the ruby sphere.”

  The pilot immediately pressed forward on the controls and they were heading for the Rift Valley.

  “The foo fighter that hit my headquarters in Antarctica is back at the foo fighter base,” Zandra noted.

  “That means they’re all back there now, right?” Turcotte asked.

  “Correct,” Zandra said.

  “Perfect.”

  Turcotte thought it most interesting that a foo fighter had targeted Scorpion Station. Obviously the Easter Island guardian knew something about STAAR and its base; more than he himself knew, Turcotte darkly thought.

  * * *

  “Ready?” Commander Downing asked.

  Tennyson’s hands were wrapped around a large red lever on the bottom floor of the Greywolf. “Ready.” He had just removed two bolts that kept the lever locked in place.

  Emory was strapped into his chair. “Ready.”

  “Release,” Downing ordered.

  Tennyson pulled the lever over. There was a grinding noise, then the sound of thousands of steel ball bearings rattling against metal. Underneath the Greywolf the submersible’s ballast was sliding out of the portal Tennyson had just opened.

  Tennyson clambered up into his seat and strapped in. Minus the ballast the Greywolf began to slowly rise, picking up speed as the seconds went by.

  The two foo fighters, picking up no power emission from the submersible, remained where they were, now guarding empty ocean.

  * * *

  On the surface, forty miles to the east, Kevin Brodie was a Department of Defense civilian assigned to the crew of the Yellowstone. For the past twenty minutes he had been putting his laptop computer through its paces, furiously calculating, looking up current and depth data, rechecking, putting in figures as they were relayed to him from the Navy weapons specialist who was sitting at his side. Finally he looked up.

  “I’ve got it.”

  The weapons man picked up a radio mike. “Anzio, here’s the coordinates.”

  Forty miles from the Yellowstone, the USS Anzio, a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, was waiting. As the weapons man gave the coordinates, the captain of the Anzio maneuvered his ship to the designated spot on the ocean’s surface and came to a halt. The ocean for forty miles in all directions was clear of surface vessels.

  On the rear deck, weapons experts worked over a BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile. They were bypassing the sophisticated homing and arming mechanisms built into the missile and replacing them with a simple depth-activated ignitor. In other words they were reducing a missile worth four million dollars to a depth charge.

  The petty officer in charge called up to the bridge and informed the captain they were ready. Shaking his head, the captain ordered the nuclear warhead in the missile armed. The petty officer did so, then stood back as a crane lifted the Tomahawk up and over the side of the ship.

  Slowly the missile was lowered to the water’s surface. The cable holding the missile was released and it sank out of sight. The ship’s four General Electric gas-turbine engines had been running at high speed while this was going on. At the captain’s order the drive shafts were engaged, and the twin screws tore into the water.

  The Anzio raced away to the east at maximum speed, while on the rear deck a SH-60 Sikorsky helicopter lifted off.

  * * *

  The Greywolf was rocketing to the surface now and it passed the missile on its way down at fifteen hundred meters depth. It had been Brodie’s job to calculate the exact location of the foo fighter base from the LLS reading, add in the local currents, temperature inversions, depth, weight and size of the missile and its warhead, and mix all those effects together to find the point on the surface where it should be dropped so that, falling free, it would explode, hopefully, right on top of the foo fighter base.

  The Greywolf broke surface and the entire submersible popped into the air before settling down.

  “Let’s move!” Downing yelled as he reached up and began unscrewing the hatch. Tennyson crowded in and helped him. They pushed the hatch out of the way. It tumbled free into the ocean, but Downing wasn’t worried about that. He climbed up onto the top deck and squinted into the fierce sunlight. He heard the chopper before he saw it.

  The SH-60 swung over the top of the submersible, lowering a cage. Downing grabbed on to the cage and held it steady as Tennyson and Emory climbed in, then he squeezed in beside them.

  “I’ll miss her,” he said to Tennyson as they were lifted into the air, the chopper heading east after the Anzio even before the cage began to be reeled in.

  “She was a good ship,” Tennyson acknowledged as the Greywolf faded into the distance, a dark spot on a bl
ue carpet.

  They all flinched as the entire ocean surface erupted in a massive waterspout where the Greywolf had been.

  Brodie’s calculations were excellent. The Tomahawk passed through the depth the igniter was set for less than fifty meters from the foo fighter complex.

  The nuclear explosion took out not only the two foo fighters that had shadowed the Greywolf and the base, but a half-mile section of the East Pacific Ridge.

  * * *

  On the other side of the world Captain Mike Turcotte gripped Colonel Spearson’s weathered hand in his.

  “Bloody good to see you, even if you do come flying in on one of those weird saucer things,” Spearson said.

  “We need to get to the cavern,” Turcotte said as Duncan and Zandra followed him.

  “Right this way.”

  * * *

  At the same time, back in the Pacific, Kelly Reynolds’s bouncer was settling down on the runway on Easter Island.

  CHAPTER 38

  “You’ve neutralized the foo fighter fleet,” Duncan said as they rode the cog railway down into the cavern. “But what about the Airlia ships that are coming?”

  Turcotte felt tired, the sort of tired he had experienced before in combat and in Ranger School when he’d gone for months with a couple of hours’ sleep a night and barely one meal a day to provide energy. He knew the danger of such tiredness: thoughts became muddled, decision-making impaired. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and cleared his head, then he went back to the question Duncan had asked. He turned and addressed the man in the seat behind them.

  “Colonel Spearson, do you have SATCOM with Area 51?”

  “I can route through to that location,” Spearson said.

  “There’s some people there I need you to send a message to.”

  Spearson pulled out a small notepad from the breast pocket of his camouflage smock. “Go ahead.”

  “All right,” Turcotte began. “The message is to Kelly Reynolds and Major Quinn.” He nodded toward Zandra. “I’m going to need you to pull your ST-8 authorization.”

  “You’ve got it,” Zandra said.

  “All right,” Turcotte said. “Here’s what I need.”

  * * *

  A tunnel had been blasted and drilled through the side of Rano Kau to the chamber containing the guardian. Kelly Reynolds went down the tunnel in a mental fog, her brain and heart swirling with thoughts and emotions she was having a very hard time sorting out and controlling.

  She’d heard of the success in wiping out the foo fighter base and seen the military personnel at the airfield on Easter Island celebrating even while they were evacuating the island. Fools, she thought. All they had done was spit in the face of those who could save the human race. And there were still the talon ships closing on Earth.

  Think what they had done to Atlantis, she wanted to shout at the idiots. Didn’t they realize the Airlia could do the same to New York or Moscow or any major city?

  She reached the bottom and entered the chamber. There was no one around. The U.S. military was getting everyone off Easter Island, clearing it of all human life. Her clearance from Major Quinn had allowed her to pass the military police guards and the captain in charge had warned her that if she wasn’t back up in thirty minutes they weren’t coming down to get her and she’d be on her own. Bouncer 6 had its orders, too, and the pilot took off and headed back to Area 51, leaving her stranded on the island.

  She knew why they were evacuating the island and she knew why the captain was nervous. They wanted to destroy the guardian. They wanted to destroy the machine that held the key to mankind’s history and its future. Just as they wanted to destroy the Airlia.

  Kelly paused as she entered the chamber. The golden pyramid was surrounded by a haze extending out a few inches. She’d also been told that the guardian was now in constant communication with the incoming fleet. She had no doubt that Aspasia now knew of the destruction of his foo fighters.

  Kelly walked across the smoothly cut stone floor to the base of the pyramid. She put her hands out and touched the strangely textured metal. “Please listen to me,” she whispered. “Please listen to me.”

  * * *

  Turcotte looked down at the control panel. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket.

  “What’s that?” Zandra asked.

  “The code for the sphere.”

  “Will it fall in the chasm and be destroyed?” Duncan asked in alarm.

  Turcotte shook his head. “No. The destruct code was in the Temiltepec guardian. That’s gone. This is the code to release it.” He placed his hands over the panel. He touched a spot in the upper left corner and a glow suffused the surface, seeming to come from within, highlighting a series of interlocking hexagons, eight across by eight down, each hexagon containing a high rune symbol.

  Looking at the paper, Turcotte began touching the panel, following the pattern of symbols as they had been dictated to him by Nabinger. There were eighteen in all.

  When he touched the last one, there was a loud hissing noise, followed by the startled yell of the SAS guards. Turcotte looked up. The ruby sphere had been released from the three poles going to the far side and two of the ones on the near side. The one arm in the center of the near side was retracting, pulling the sphere toward Turcotte. Twenty feet from the end the arm started to rotate, bringing the sphere up into the air, then going down, until the sphere rested at the edge of the chasm.

  “We need to get that up to the surface,” Turcotte ordered.

  CHAPTER 39

  Five hours from arrival. The six talons were no longer dancing among themselves. They had spread out, ten kilometers between craft as they approached Earth.

  On the planet they neared, troubling news was beginning to seep out. Nothing official had been released, but there were rumors of attacks by foo fighters; of a nuclear weapon being detonated deep in the Pacific; that the Airlia might not indeed be coming in peace. The rumors were not enough to stem the flow of optimism that blanketed the world, but they were enough to worry those in power and those who had always questioned the coming contact. But what was there to do? was the consensus. The world would have to wait and see.

  Inside the War Room of the Pentagon the President and Joint Chiefs were helpless spectators as the plan devised by Eisenhower was being enacted by STAAR. The mood, though, was getting more positive as each victory was won. Still, the main screen in the front of the room pictured the six talons as seen by the Hubble, and that deadened any euphoria as they knew the biggest battle was yet to come.

  * * *

  Mike Turcotte was in a rush. They had attached the sphere to the outside of the bouncer by the expedient manner of four sets of nylon cargo webbing. He’d immediately gotten back on board along with Duncan and the two STAAR personnel.

  The bouncer was now racing northeast at over five thousand miles an hour. Turcotte had spent the last thirty minutes on the radio, confirming with Major Quinn that the instructions Colonel Spearson had forwarded were being followed and all would be ready when they arrived at Area 51.

  He had been disturbed to hear that Kelly Reynolds wasn’t there; that she had flown to Easter Island on a bouncer. He knew her and he knew what she was trying to do. He gave her credit for trying; the only problem was that if she didn’t get her ass off that island in the next hour, she was going to be sitting on ground zero. He had to try to contact her.

  * * *

  “Firing TCM,” Larry Kincaid said, although the only person in the room to hear him was Coridan. Larry pressed the enter key on the console in front of him and the message was transmitted toward Mars.

  * * *

  Turcotte watched Area 51 approach. This was where it had all started, and it seemed appropriate to him that this was where the ending would be implemented.

  The bouncer did not land outside Hangar One; instead, at Turcotte’s direction, the pilot flew around the side to Hangar Two. As they flew over Groom Mountain, Turcotte could see the gapi
ng hole in the mountainside where the roof on Hangar Two had been destroyed.

  The pilot maneuvered the bouncer down into the hangar, landing next to the side of the massive ship. Turcotte was the first one out of the hatch. Major Quinn was there waiting for him.

  “Do you have everything?”

  Quinn looked worried. “Yes.”

  “Where’s the bouncer I asked for?” Turcotte asked, looking about.

  “It’s already loaded inside,” Quinn said.

  “Great.”

  “Is it modified like I requested?”

  “I had to get the boosters from White Sands. Flown here special on a C-5 and—” “Is it done?” Turcotte’s voice was sharp.

  “Yes. But I can’t guarantee that—”

  “The specials?”

  Quinn swallowed hard. “They’re loaded too. I don’t know who you got to authorize that, but—”

  “Load the ruby sphere into the cargo bay with the rest of the gear,” Turcotte ordered. Quinn nodded. He started to walk away, then paused. He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a TV remote. “You’ll need this. It’s labeled.”

  Turcotte took it and slid it into the breast pocket of his dirty camouflage fatigues. Quinn turned and walked away toward a waiting crew of Air Force men.

  There was a surprised look on Zandra’s face. “You’re not putting the sphere in the engine where it belongs? What exactly do you have planned?” she demanded.

  Turcotte turned and stared into her sunglasses while Duncan quietly watched. “I’m going to give Aspasia what he wants. He wants the mothership and he wants the ruby sphere. I’m taking them to him. That way he has no need to come here to Earth.”

  Zandra was shaking her head before he was done. “That’s unacceptable. You have no guarantee that he’ll take the mothership and leave Earth alone. In fact…” She paused.

  “In fact what?” Turcotte demanded.