Stephen Molstad - [ID4- Independence Day 03]

by War in the Desert (epub)

  There was plenty to think about during his flight north. His cockpit instrumentation was showing a contradictory jumble of digits and flashing zeroes. All satellite-dependent systems were unreliable. But he’d made the flight to Jerusalem many times and knew the way by heart. He tried to keep his mind clear, but couldn’t help thinking about what Whitley had said about lapses. Could it be that the man had a point? After all, even though he’d engaged in hundreds of mock battles during the last several years, this was the first time he would be facing a live fire situation since his last, ill-fated sortie over Iraq.

  As he flew past the ancient ruins of Petra, he got his first glimpse of the alien ship. It was only a gray blot on the horizon but Reg felt the hackles raise on the back of his neck. His warrior instincts told him to attack the thing at once, but as he came closer, it grew to an impossible, intimidating size and his passion cooled. Dominating the sky, it seemed to cover half of Israel. The astounding thing was that something so vast and heavy could float. It was an egregious violation of the laws of physics and the closer Reg flew to the city-sized airship, the more it dawned on him that he was in the presence of a powerful civilization far in advance of his own. He felt a sudden chill and began to grasp why not a single government around the world had decided to declare war on the uninvited guests.

  At the same time, it produced a dark attraction. There was a certain sort of ominous, magnetic, unholy beauty to the craft. Its sleek gray dome, glinting in the midday sun, was made of an exotic material he’d never seen before. It was something out of a beautiful nightmare, like a medieval fortress from the twenty-fourth century built in the clouds.

  Mesmerized, Reg flew closer until he became distracted by a stinging in his eyes. It took him a moment to realize that sweat was pouring down his face and blurring his vision. When he wiped his forehead clean, he noticed his hand was trembling. It had been so long since he’d felt anything resembling fear at the controls of a plane that he didn’t recognize it for a moment. In a sudden rush of self-doubt, Whitley’s words echoed through his head. Maybe he wasn’t ready for the real thing.

  Distracted, he didn’t notice a pair of Syrian MiG Fulcrums moving up behind him at top speed. They passed above him by a scant few hundred feet, then deliberately cut across his path. When Reg hit the turbulence of their jet wash, his Hawk shook as though the wings would snap off. Regaining control, he rose a thousand feet in altitude and flipped his radio to the general frequency.

  “Thank you, friends, for that warm welcome,” he said to the Syrians, figuring that having had their fun, they would leave him alone. But his heads-up display showed them arcing around for another pass. Realizing he was under direct attack had a curious effect on Reg. His hands stopped shaking, his heart rate slowed and something like a smile crossed his lips. “If you boys want to dance,” he said into his radio, “let’s have a go.”

  Far below, he saw the brilliant blue of the Dead Sea on Israel’s eastern border. He cut his speed to let the Syrian planes catch up. The Hawk’s automated systems honked a warning alarm as the MiGs came within firing range behind him. When they were almost upon him, Reg snapped back hard on the controls and sent the Hawk into a sudden vertical climb. As he guessed, the faster, more maneuverable MiGs stayed on his tail, following him upward and closing the distance. He looped over backwards, pointed the nose of his plane to earth and plunged full-throttle toward the Dead Sea. The Syrians continued the pursuit.

  The three planes plummeted toward the blue surface of the water at hypersonic speed. Reg gave no indication of pulling up. He increased his speed. In his earphones, he could hear his pursuers talking nervously in Arabic. Soon, they were screaming at one another to level off as their altimeter readings approached zero. They broke out of their dive, watching in amazement as the English plane continued to head straight down.

  A big grin spread across Reg’s face as he calmly brought his plane parallel to the water with plenty of room to spare. Just as he’d expected, the Syrians had pulled up in a panic, forgetting that zero on an altimeter indicated sea level. But the Dead Sea, the lowest point in Asia, was more than nine hundred meters below sea level.

  With his confidence restored, Reg ignored the flashing lights on his display panel and crossed into Israeli airspace with an airspeed of 1,000 KPH and an altitude reading of minus 700 meters.

  Outwardly at least, the gigantic alien ship over Jerusalem was an exact replica of the thirty-five others. The front of it was marked by a slender black tower, three-quarters of a mile tall, set into a crater-shaped depression in the dome. Soon after it had parked itself over the ancient capital, it began to spin slowly like a wheel, completing a revolution every seventy-two minutes.

  Reg was approaching from the southeast but knew that the Tornadoes were on the opposite side, the northwest. He scanned the skies searching for the safest way around the fifteen-mile-wide obstacle, but everywhere he looked, Israeli jets were patrolling in clusters. Hundreds of other planes were prowling just beyond the border. Only the murky area directly below the alien megaship was deserted. Quickly deciding that would be the path of least resistance, he darted into the deep shadows cast by the floating behemoth.

  The bottom of the ship was not the smooth surface it appeared to be on television. Instead, it was studded with endless rectangular structures the size of warehouses. They were arranged in precise rows and the spaces between them formed broad boulevards that ran to the center of the vessel. Subtle color differentiations on the surface created a pattern that looked like a vast daisy, the petals of which stretched several miles to the ship’s perimeter. As he approached the eye of the flower, he glanced down at Jerusalem. The exact center of the giant ship was directly above the city’s most distinctive landmark, the Al-Aksa mosque, the famous Dome of the Rock.

  It occurred to Reg that the mazelike underbelly of the ship was a twisted minor image of the beautiful city below. Jerusalem, one of the most revered cities on the planet, was staring up at a dark reflection of itself. He glanced down as he tore past the walled Old City.

  Continuing on his way, he steered toward the horizon, a low, blue ribbon of open sky. When he emerged from beneath the ship, he flew unopposed to the Mediterranean coast and slipped out of Israeli airspace. It didn’t take him long to locate the forty British planes. They were in a disorganized holding pattern, flying long slow loops about five miles from shore. He established radio contact with the group’s commanding officer.

  “Lost Sheep, Lost Sheep, this is Guide Dog. Do you read?”

  A sputtering, panic-stricken voice roared back. “It’s about bloody well time somebody showed up! Is that you in the Hawk, Guide Dog?”

  “Affirmative. This is Major Reg Cummins out of Khamis Moushalt. I’m given to understand that you’re in need of my services.”

  “This is Lieutenant Colonel Thomson. What we need is to get to a friendly airfield and land these planes!” the officer shouted. “We’re not pilots, man. We’ve got no business flying these planes, especially in these circumstances. The blasted Israelis have been threatening to shoot us down. Now I’m ordering you to get us the hell out of here at once.”

  Although Reg had been warned that the men piloting these sophisticated warplanes were not the best pilots, he was surprised at the man’s hysterical tone. “Colonel,” Reg said calmly, “you and your men are in good hands. I intend to deliver all of you safely to our base in Kuwait. Now if you gentlemen will kindly follow me to the south along the coast.. .”

  A new voice, much younger than Thomson’s and speaking in a working-class London accent interrupted. “Pardon me. Major Cummins. No disrespect intended, but heading south takes us closer to that big ugly wanker sitting over Jerusalem. I, for one, would prefer to stay as far away from that monster as possible.”

  “That’s quite enough, Airman Tye,” Colonel Thomson said sternly. “Let the man lead.”

  “Airman? Did someone just say ‘airman’?” Reg said incredulously. “What the hell is an air
man doing flying a Tornado?” Like most militaries around the world, the RAF only gave wings to officers. “What’s going on here, Thomson? You’ve got cadets flying these planes?”

  Before Thomson could answer, Tye spoke up again. “It’s worse than you think, Major Cummins. I’m not even a cadet. Just a lowly mechanic, but don’t you worry about me. I’ve got it under control.” Reg had to admit that the kid had a point. It was hard to tell from a distance but Tye seemed to be handling his plane better than most of the others. Certainly much better than his commanding officer, Thomson. He wondered how it was that a mechanic had learned to fly one of Britain’s newest and most lethal jet fighters, but decided not to ask.

  “Hold on,” demanded a new voice. “Why south? Last time I checked, Kuwait was east of here.”

  “Quite right. We could go that way,” Reg said. “In fact, that’s a brilliant plan if you chaps think you’re ready to square off against the Israelis, the Syrians, the Jordanians, and the Iraqis. How does that sound?”

  “Never mind,” replied the voice. “I humbly withdraw the suggestion.”

  The young Londoner, Tye, spoke again. “Yes, when you put it that way, Major, heading south sounds lovely. Suddenly, I’d love to get a better look at that spaceship.”

  The group formed up behind Reg and flew along the coast keeping to an elevation only slightly lower than the edge of the alien ship. The closer they came, the larger grew the lump in Reg’s throat. Guessing that the others must be feeling the same way, he choked down his fear and got on the radio playing the role of friendly tour guide.

  “Coming up on your left, gentlemen, you might notice a very large, dark gray aircraft from outer space hovering just a few thousand feet above the ground. We ask that you kindly refrain

  from feeding the aliens and please remember to keep all arms and legs inside your cockpits at all times.”

  Nervous laughter came back over the radio and several men made jokes of their own. But just as they approached the nearest edge of the disk, shouting erupted. Movement was detected along the bottom of the craft. Reg immediately shed a thousand feet of altitude. When the Tornadoes followed him, they had a clear view of what was happening.

  Mammoth hatch doors were lowering to create a mile-wide opening at the eye of the daisy design. A sparkling jade-green light spilled from the interior of the ship and washed over Jerusalem, illuminating the city as if it were some kind of magical kingdom. It was such a beautiful sight that, for a moment, it was possible to believe the aliens had benign intentions after all. But soon, the tip of a massive cone-shaped mechanism lowered through the opening.

  “What in the world is that?” gasped Thomson.

  Reg thought he knew. He clenched his teeth and fought against the impulse to abandon the novice pilots to make a run at the jewel-like cone. His fingers itched to unleash his Sidewinders at what he feared was some sort of weapon. But he remained on course, even as a tightly focused beam of white light stabbed downward from the tip of the cone and touched the golden cupola of the Dome of the Rock.

  “Communications beam?” someone asked with withering hope.

  Reg shook his head sadly. He did not say the words aloud, but mouthed them behind his oxygen mask: targeting laser. A moment later, to his horror, Reg saw that his instinct was right.

  A blinding blast of light ripped out of the cone and smashed down on the golden domed mosque, shattering the building into a billion pieces from the inside out. A dense pillar of fire began to build up over the blast site as the weapon continued to fire, adding more and more energy. Then, all at once it exploded outward and began to rip through the city, a tidal wave of flame rolling across the ground, utterly destroying everything in its path. It only seemed to gather momentum as it moved. Spreading relentlessly from the epicenter, a fiery wall of destruction several hundred feet high moved beyond the walls of the city and into the surrounding hills and suburbs. With the speed and force of an atomic explosion, it scoured Jerusalem from the face of the Earth, vaporizing in a handful of seconds what it had taken humans two thousand years to build.

  At length, the bright beam coming from the firing cone shut off. But still the explosion rolled outward. With a momentum of its own, the blast shot beyond the city limits, breaking apart the surrounding towns and villages. It threw automobiles, buildings and bridges hundreds of feet into the air before burying them under a molten sea of flames.

  Even after the flames themselves stopped moving outward, the residual heat continued for another mile, killing everything it touched. Where one of the most beloved cities of the world had stood scant seconds before, there was now only a twenty-mile circle of scarred, scorched earth. Half a million human lives had been extinguished.

  None of the English pilots had spoken a word since the blast began. Reg broke the silence with a terse command. “You men continue south.” Then he broke abruptly out of formation, turning to port for an attack run against the giant city destroyer.

  He was not alone. From every corner of the sky, pilots from every nation in the Middle East temporarily forgot their longstanding rivalries to attack their common enemy. Without a word passing between them, Reg joined a group of eight Iranian jets which adjusted their positions to make room for him in their formation. He had only a few missiles loaded aboard his Hawk, but when the Iranian flight leader shouted the signal, he fired two of them. His AIM-9 Sidewinders kicked forward and joined the barrage of Iranian weapons. They all exploded at the same time, a full quarter mile before reaching the polished surface of the alien craft.

  “What the hell was that?”

  As the missiles detonated, they produced an odd atmospheric disturbance. The air surrounding the city destroyer rippled visibly

  like the surface of a pond disturbed by a handful of pebbles.

  “Pull up!” Reg shouted to the Iranians. “They’ve got some kind of energy shield!”

  The stunned pilots saw that he was right and yanked back hard on their yokes in a desperate bid to avoid the invisible barrier. For some, the warning came too late. Four of the eight splattered themselves against the shield and burst into flames without penetrating to the other side. As Reg and the others leveled off, they could see the same thing was happening all around them. Missiles and jets were exploding against the invisible wall protecting the dark ship.

  In his headphones, Reg could hear Colonel Thomson screaming, cursing and demanding that he finish the job of escorting the squad out of the area. After studying the melee unfolding around him for another minute, Reg saw that there was little hope of damaging the ship. Reluctantly, he turned south to rejoin the Tornadoes.

  Only a moment after he spotted the Tornadoes, the already-disastrous situation got worse, much worse. A fresh round of shouting erupted over the radio. Reg looked over his shoulder at the black tower that marked the prow of the city destroyer. Near the top of it, a portal had appeared. What had seemed like a solid surface only moments before now bore a wide opening from which hundreds of small craft were emerging. They ducked and turned with incredible aerodynamic agility, like an angry swarm of bees boiling out of a disturbed hive. They quickly split into packs and moved to confront the human jets.

  “Finally,” Reg said to himself, “someone our own size to pick on.”

  “What now?” Thomson shouted. “What do we do, Cummins?”

  “There’s only thing you can do in a situation like this, Colonel. Run like hell. Get out of here as fast as you can. I’ll try to buy you some time.”

  Reg wheeled around to face the oncoming enemy and spotted a gang of ten or twelve of them headed his way. They were sleek.

  lethal-looking machines with large reflective windows and curved rods extending from their noses like sets of pincers. Instead of a stable formation, they darted over and under one another in a continuous shuffle. As they streaked closer, white-hot energy pulses formed between the pincers before firing through the air. They look like the scarabs in the Egyptian Museum of Cairo, thought Reg. but they
fly like bats.

  Before Reg came within range, the alien detachment came under attack. Arabs, Israelis, Turks, Greeks and Africans closed in on them and filled the air with missiles and large-caliber gunfire. Reg flew toward the melee, bobbing and weaving to avoid the stray blasts from the alien pulse weapons that were streaking through the air. A moment after he joined forces with a Sudanese pilot, the man’s MiG burst into flames and disintegrated. The scarab that had fired the deadly shot buzzed over the top of Reg’s Hawk. In a heartbeat, Reg banked hard and fell in behind him. The alien pilot seemed not to realize he was being followed. Or perhaps he didn’t care. He swooped to attack another jet, an American F-l 5, but before he could fire another pulse blast, Reg locked on with his targeting system and sent a Sidewinder flashing through the air. It scored a solid hit, exploding with devastating power against the rear of the attacker.

  “One confirmed kill!” he reported, keying his radio to the common band. But as the smoke cleared, he realized that he had spoken too soon. The attacker was still in one piece. It wobbled through the air for a moment, reeling from the force of the blast, before righting itself and moving on as if nothing had happened. “Bad news,” he shouted. “These little buggers have shields, too! Break off the engagement.”

  That was easier said than done. The nimble alien attackers were destroying jets almost as fast as Reg could count them. It wasn’t a dogfight, but a one-sided aerial slaughter. Reg turned south again and tried to find a way through the mayhem. More than one of the aliens sighted on him and came in firing pulse blasts, forcing him to use every trick in his considerable repertoire to avoid being shot down. Reg managed to stay alive, but the

  less-skillful pilots around him were not so lucky. Shaking off the last of his alien pursuers, he leveled out at five thousand feet, pushed his twin turbo fan engines to their maximum speed and tore south along the coastline. He saw no sign of Thomson or the others, and was thankful that they appeared to be safely out of the area. Then, a lone Tornado came roaring up behind him and stationed itself off his starboard wing.