“The photographs that are being circulated,” Elliott went on, “show a facility that has been built in the Soviet Union in a small fishing village called Kavaznya. The Soviets have built an actual anti-satellite and antiballistic missile laser there. In the past few months they’ve been using it.”
“On what?” Dave Luger asked as McLanahan studied the satellite reconnaissance photographs. “There hasn’t been anything in the news—”
“And there won’t be,” General Elliott interrupted. “Injecting public sentiment into the situation could make it more volatile than it already is. The fact of the matter is that the Kavaznya laser has proved very effective. Although the Russians haven’t even admitted the presence of the weapon, it has destroyed over five billion dollars worth of American equipment and has taken thirteen lives.”
“My God,” Luger said, reflecting the collective sentiment.
“Our job is nearly finished here,” Elliott continued. “I’ll want all of you to stand by for the next few hours in the unlikely event SAC command needs your input on some aspect of the B-ls’ gear that may not be functioning correctly, but after that you’ll be free to go. I’ve already had the Transportation office arrange your flights back. You also are ordered not to reveal a word of what I have just told you. You all have top-security clearance, and I felt you were entitled to know what you’ve been a part of. Knowing should also make you acutely aware of the necessity of not revealing to anyone ever what you have been doing here.”
Suddenly the door to the briefing shack was thrown open and Lieutenant Harold Briggs hurried into the room. He halted two steps away from Elliott. “General,” Briggs said, “we’ve got a problem.”
Elliott’s face turned pale. He noticed that Briggs was wearing his short- barreled Uzi submachine pistol mounted on a shoulder harness, and that the harness had three hand grenades clipped into it. “Hal?”
“Got a report of a light airplane that dropped off radar coverage into the area a few minutes ago, General,” Briggs said. “Ridge-hopped in from Vegas, we think. We’ve got security patrolling the area from Dreamland on out.”
“Did it make it into Dreamland?” Elliott asked. The odds against it were tremendous—any kind of aircraft over a few hundred pounds in weight would be picked up by a dozen different sensors patrolling the desert.
“We’re anticipating the worst.”
Luger and McLanahan were already out of their chairs. Anderson was leaning forward, ready to move on Elliott’s order.
“James,” he said, “get your people over to the Old Dog’s hangar right away. They’ll be safer there.”
Anderson nodded and turned to the others. “All right, you heard the General. Let’s get moving.”
As McLanahan hurriedly led Wendy out of the briefing shack and over to the Old Dog’s black hangar, he heard the sound of gunfire and explosions. Looking to his left, he noticed a billowing cloud of smoke at the entrance to the compound.
“Holy shit,” Luger said behind him, “we’re under attack!”
In less than half a minute each member of the Old Dog test team was in the hangar and McLanahan was bolting the door. He had just turned away from the door and was heading into the bowels of the hangar when he heard a pounding outside and Elliott’s voice. He opened the door for General Elliott and Briggs.
“It’s more serious than we thought,” Elliott told Anderson, who had moved forward to join them. “You must—”
He never finished. The first explosion was felt rather than seen. Its impact point was on the far corner of the black hangar, on the roof. To Elliott, it felt as if the entire four-acre roof above their heads was vibrating like a sheet of tin.
Elliott and Ormack were thrown off their feet by the shock wave. Anderson tumbled against the Old Dog’s front wheels, landing on his head and shoulders.
Briggs managed to stay on his feet. Still gripping his Uzi, he helped Elliott up off the hangar floor.
“Take cover, General,” Briggs said as the second explosion came, three times more powerful than the first. A fifty-foot hole was blown into the roof a hundred feet from the Old Dog’s left wingtip, showering the wing with bits of metal and concrete. The wall beneath the hole ripped open as if someone had pulled a giant zipper down the side of the black hangar all the way to the ground. An acetylene line burst and flames shot skyward. Automatic gunfire erupted outside the open mouth of the hangar. The opening was filled with running workers and armed security police trying to spot the attackers and dodge the stampede of terrified workers. Bodies began to fall.
Elliott shook debris out of his hair and struggled to clear his eyes and throat of dust and gas. He turned and saw the first impact point on the far corner, the second right beside the bomber, and the gunfire outside the hangar. He did not need to be a general to realize that the next mortar round was going to be right over their heads and that more bodies were going to pile up outside.
“John.” He grabbed Ormack and put his mouth next to his ear. “Get aboard. Start ’em up.”
“What?”
“The engines. Start ’em up. Get this thing moving. ”
“Moving?”
“Taxi the goddamn plane out of here, they’re going to blow this place apart. Move. ” He shoved Ormack toward the hatch. Ormack tumbled to the polished concrete floor, and for a split second Elliott thought he wasn’t going to get up. Then Ormack scrambled up on his hands and knees, found the boarding hatch, and climbed inside.
“Campos, Pereira.” He found the defensive systems operator and his assistant stumbling around the bomber’s right wing, bumping into the Scorpion pylon, not sure which way to turn or run. Elliott grabbed them both by the necks, ducked them under the bomber’s belly. “Get aboard.”
Angelina reacted instantly, scrambling up the ladder. Campos, confused, watched as his assistant disappeared inside. He turned to Elliott.
“No, I can’t—”
“Get up there, goddammit.”
“I won’t get into that thing.” Campos used his bony elbows and fists and broke free, bolted toward the open hangar door, ignoring bursts of gunfire erupting all around him. He crashed against the edge of the hangar opening and paused, then turned and took one last look at the black bomber.
“Campos,” Elliott ordered, “take cover . . .”
Too late. Just as Elliott called out Campos turned and ran outside. As he turned, a third explosion tore into the front of the black hangar, ripping out the entire left side of the building, and Campos disappeared in a blinding flash of light and a screech of burning, shattering metal. The left side of the hangar opening sagged and crashed to the floor.
Elliott could only watch and duck as the hangar opening crashed down and bullets whistled around him. He turned and saw Anderson just getting to his feet at the front of the plane, his head and face bleeding.
Elliott hurried over to help Anderson climb aboard the bomber. He felt a sting on his right calf, reached down and his hand came back covered with blood. He put his right leg down to stop himself and see what was wrong. It refused to support his weight and he sagged helplessly to the floor.
“General,” Anderson said, crawling over to where Elliott lay bleeding, “we’ve got to get out...” One of Anderson’s eyes refused to stay steady, rolling from side to side.
“Get on board,” Elliott ordered. A high-pitched scream issued from the number four engine. Anderson turned and saw exhaust fumes bellowing from the nacelle.
“The engines . . . they’re starting ...”
“Ormack’s on board. Get going.” Elliott noticed a huge gash on Anderson’s head, struggled to push himself off the floor to help Anderson get to the hatch. The scream of the engine changed to a roar, and soon the number five engine sounded.
“Jim . . . hurry . . .” Elliott managed to rise to his left leg. As he did a line of six red holes, big as quarters, appeared on Anderson’s gray flight suit from his collar bone to right thigh. Anderson did not seem to notice. He continued t
o walk toward the open hatch, then stumbled into the bomber’s sleek black side and crashed to the floor, leaving a red streak on the Old Dog’s polished surface.
Suddenly Hall Briggs was beside Elliott, firing his automatic pistol one-handed at whatever moved outside. Again he dragged the general to his feet, the Uzi smoking in his right fist. “We’ve got to get you on the plane, General—”
“No, I’ve got—”
“Get on that plane. ”
“Chocks ... got to disconnect the—”
“I’ve done all that, General. Chocks, air, power, pins, streamers. Now get your ass on board.”
Briggs fired at a running figure in the doorway, then hauled the resisting general up into the hatch, where a pair of hands—McLanahan’s—grabbed the general by the lapels of his fatigues and hauled his feet clear of the hatch.
“Briggs,” Elliott yelled. “Get up here, now. ”
McLanahan put Elliott’s hands on the ladder, and the general realized what he had and pulled himself painfully up to the upper deck. McLanahan then turned back to the open hatch and extended a hand to Briggs, who was on one knee, firing into the distance.
“Get on board, you jerk,” McLanahan said.
“Not my plane, my friend,” he said as a loud ringing started in McLanahan’s ears. “Adios. ”
Briggs was gone, and a second later the hatch snapped shut and the outside latch locked into position.
McLanahan was about to open the hatch, but the Megafortress made an incredible lurch and he was thrown toward the back of the offensive crew compartment.
“We’re movin’,” Luger said in amazement.
“Either that or they just blew half the fucking plane away,” McLanahan said, got back to his feet and went for the ladder to the upper deck.
What McLanahan saw on the upper deck made his guts turn.
Wendy Tork and Angelina Periera were standing over a dazed and bleeding Bradley Elliott. Periera had been knocked off her feet by the sudden motion of the bomber and was just regaining her balance, her jeans and blue workshirt covered with blood.
Elliott looked as if he had been wading in red dye. His right leg was covered with dark, clotted blood. Blood was everywhere—on Periera, on Tork, on Elliott, on the deck, on the circuit breaker panels—everywhere. Wendy was trying to wrap an arm of her flight jacket around the two large openings in Elliott’s calf. Elliott himself was hovering just above consciousness; awake enough to feel the intense pain, groggy enough to be unable to move or help anyone. Sweat poured down his face.
“McLanahan.” Ormack swung around in his seat. “Get up here.”
Ormack was in the copilot’s seat, checking the gauges. McLanahan half-ran, half-crawled up front and knelt between the pilot and copilot’s seats. He stared out through the sleek cockpit windows over the drooping needle nose of the Old Dog.
“We’re moving.”
“Damn right,” Ormack said. “Sit down. Help me.”
McLanahan stared at Ormack.
“Well, sit down. ” Ormack grabbed McLanahan by the jacket and yanked him forward into the pilot’s seat. He grabbed Anderson’s headset and slapped it over his head.
“We taking off?”
“If we can,” Ormack said.
“We have clearance?”
“I got an order. From him.” Ormack jerked a thumb toward Elliott. “He owns the six thousand square miles were sitting on, not to mention this plane. And this hangar, which they’re about to blow up on top of us. Now listen. Just watch the gauges—RPMs, fuel flow, EGTs. If anything looks like it’s winding down, yell. Watch me on the left.” Ormack pushed the throttled forward, and the huge plane rushed toward the hangar opening.
“The door’s down, we won’t make it. Cut it right—”
Ormack gripped the wheel, moved the steering ratio lever on the center console from TAKEOFF LAND to TAXI, nudged the right rudder pedal. The bomber swung gently to the right. Ormack reached down to the center console and moved the steering ratio lever back to TAKEOFF LAND. “That’s all the room I got.”
“I don’t think it’ll make it . . .”
McLanahan watched as the hangar door came toward them. Before they reached the opening he saw Hal Briggs kneeling at the door opening, trying to take cover behind a fallen steel beam. He saw the wngtip rushing toward him. Letting the Uzi drop onto its neck strap, Briggs held his hands out and apart as far as he could, gave McLanahan a thumbs-up, then took off at a dead run outside the hangar.
“How’re we looking?”
“Hal said four feet.”
“Four feet what?”
His question was a head-pounding, wrenching scream of metal that thundered from the left wingtip. The Old Dog veered sharply to the left. A less painful but still frightening crunch of metal exploded from the right wingtip.
Ormack looked at the fuel gauges. “We lost the left tiptank. Maybe both of them.”
McLanahan didn’t want to look back. All he could see were dozens of bodies littering the road ahead of them, a burning fuel truck and overturned security police trucks. There was still a handful of cops firing into the wooden barracks outside the fence surrounding the black hangar.
“Lucky this whole dry lake is a runway,” McLanahan said.
Ormack nodded. “Just watch the gauges, I hope they can get the fence open—”
A Jeep pulled up beside them, sped ahead of the bomber easily— although Ormack had jammed the Old Dog’s eight throttles up as far as they could go, the half-million-pound bomber accelerated slowly.
“It’s Hal!”
In the distance McLanahan could see Briggs’ Jeep speed toward the closed gates. He could tell brakes were being applied, but the Jeep crashed headlong into the right side of the gate going at least fifty miles an hour. Intentionally or not, it did the trick. The right side of the wide gate burst open. The Jeep did two full donuts in the sand-covered concrete, then came to a stop. Steam poured out of the radiator. The right side of the gate was half-open, the Jeep was stalled on the runway-driveway, and the left side of the gate was free but still closed.
“C’mon, buddy,” McLanahan murmured, “you can do it.”
The distance between the bomber and the gate was decreasing rapidly. Briggs was trying to get the Jeep restarted. He gave it a few seconds, then jumped out and started pushing.
Ormack brought the throttles back to idle, which seemed to make no difference.
“We gotta slow down.”
As if in reply, three mortar shells exploded in front of the bomber. Briggs tripped and sprawled in the sand. Another explosion crated a huge waterspout of sand off the right wing, and Briggs and his Jeep were lost in the rolling cloud.
The explosions rocked the bomber as if it were caught in a typhoon. Ormack checked the airspeed. “Seventy knots. If we hit the brakes at this speed, they’ll explode. We can’t stop in time anyway. Briggs ...”
Briggs had managed to get the Jeep cleared off the runway behind the fence. He ran over and hauled on the right side of the gate. The heavy wide fence slowly opened. Briggs sprinted through the sandstorm and pulled on the left gate. A securing pole was dragging in the sand, and Briggs had to throw his entire skinny body against the fence to move it.
“It’s stuck,” Ormack said.
“This is going to be a real short flight if he doesn’t open that gate,” McLanahan said.
But the fence wasn’t moving. Briggs’ legs were pumping, his once spit-shined boots scraping against the sand, but it wasn’t helping.
The fence was half-open when Briggs slipped and slumped to the sand, then rolled to his right to jump back to his feet. As he did he saw the Old Dog.
The aircraft looked like a gigantic pterodactyl coming toward him. And the pencil nose of the bomber, tilted down for takeoff, was aimed right at his heart.
Briggs jumped up, his eyes on the monster with wings speeding toward him, and body-tackled the fence. The fence jumped a few feet, but Briggs kept on going, his legs didn’t sto
p pumping until the blast of eight turbofan jet engines swept him off his feet and into the fence.
“He did it,” McLanahan said.
“We aren’t out of it yet.” Ormack slowly throttled up to full power, then reached down and hit the flap switch. “After the fence we got three miles of concrete left. It’ll take another minute to get the flaps down, another minute to accelerate this pig to rotate speed. We run out of hard surface in less than a minute.”
McLanahan finally found the flap indicator. “It’s not moving . . .”
“It probably jammed during one of those explosions,” Ormack said, holding tight to the wheel. “It might take them longer to come down—or the flap motors will burn out. One of the other.”
The indicator moved to ten percent. Twenty percent. A pause—then a longer pause. Thirty percent. The bomber began to rattle.
“Forty percent.” McLanahan scanned the instruments, then looked out the window. Through the dim morning light he saw the glitter of steel on the horizon. He stared harder. Perched directly in front of them was a large, boxy aircraft, with some men scattered around it.
“What the hell is that?” Ormack was staring into the distance.
“It’s an airplane on the concrete,” McLanahan said. “They’re blocking our path.” He glanced down at the flap indicator again. Still forty percent. “The flaps stopped.”
“We can’t do it. We need the whole dry lake now.” Ormack reached down and shut off the flap switch, freezing them at forty percent down.
“Can we rotate with the flaps stopped?” .
“We’ll run out of time before we hit that plane. We’ll have to stop . . . pull the ’chute—”
'Wait. ” McLanahan searched the control panel near his left arm, finding a switch marked “DEFENSE CONSENT.” He flipped the switch from SAFE to CONSENT.
“Angelina.” He arched around in his seat. “Angelina. Turn on the missiles. The forward missiles.”
“What?”
“The Scorpions. Turn ’em on.”
Pereira scrambled forward, clutching onto the pilot’s ejection seat. “Turn them on? We can’t. They need to align, lock onto a target—”
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