A moment later, Reg’s fear became an ugly reality. A large portal suddenly appeared near the top of the gleaming black tower. Where a moment before there had been only a smooth, polished surface, there was now a gaping orifice leading onto a wide tunnel. Within seconds, hundreds of alien attacker ships darted into the open air like hornets spewing from a disturbed nest. They scattered in every direction, but the main force shot down the face of the tower to engage the Saudi squadron. In the dogfight at the base of the tower, the Saudi jets were outnumbered
live to one by their shielded enemies. The slaughter was under way.
“Where are those damned Americans?” Reg growled as he watched the scarab fighters annihilate the Saudi forces.
Khalid and his small band of renegades were racing toward the international pilots’ position. A group of perhaps fifty aliens fell in behind them, knitting through the air fluidly in their distinctive over-and-under formation.
“Should’ve headed for Kuwait when I had the chance,” Sutton said when he saw them coming.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Reg shouted. “Head west, directly into the sun. Now!”
“What about Khalid? Shouldn’t we help them?”
“No. There’s nothing we can do. Follow me!”
The sun was just above the horizon but still blindingly bright. As Reg flew toward it, a strange clicking disturbance sounded in his earphones. Fearing that it was the sound of alien homing devices, he ordered his fellow pilots to shed altitude and pick up speed. Then, like a trumpet blast, Thomson’s voice burst onto the airwaves.
“They’re down!” he bellowed. “The shields are down! The Americans are telling everyone to attack immediately, before they go back up!” All at once, Reg recognized that the clicking sounds were Morse code.
“Thomson, are you sure the message is accurate?”
“Yes, yes! We’re getting reports of damage to the alien destroyers. It’s not just the Americans. Everybody’s hitting them.”
A lethal smile crossed Reg’s lips, and his fear evaporated. His hands, which had been shaking, steadied themselves. He knew that the absence of the shields was no guarantee of victory, but he relished the idea of meeting the aliens in a fair fight. A moment before he whipped his Tornado into a sharp turn, he spoke calmly to the others. “You heard the man, ladies and gentlemen. It’s party time.”
As the international pilots hurried to defend Khalid and his besieged cohort, there was a flash of green light in the distance and cheering on the airwaves. One of the jets had scored the first kill against an alien attacker.
“Bloody amazing!” said Tye. Hearing that the shields were down was one thing, but actually seeing one of the invincible aliens bite the dust was quite another. Suddenly the pilots were like a pack of wolves with the taste of blood in their mouths. They jammed their controls forward and rocketed toward the conflict.
“They’re on our tails,” Khalid yelled. “Help us!”
“Fly directly into the sun!” Reg shouted. “We’re headed straight toward you.”
“Where are you? I can’t see you!”
“That’s the point, Khalid. You can’t see us, and, hopefully, neither can they. When I give the order, I want you and your boys to break into a vertical climb. Straight up, you got that?”
The F-15 Eagle flying just behind Khalid’s was vaporized by one of the alien pulse blasts. “Yes, yes, I understand. But hurry!” Khalid’s group continued to fly blind, weaving and jigging, as the alien contingent behind picked off one after another of them.
“Almost... almost,” Reg repeated calmly. Then, when the nose of his plane was less than a mile from Khalid’s, he gave the order.
“STRAIGHT UP! NOW!”
Dogged pursuers, the alien ships followed the Saudis upward, losing speed and exposing their undersides as they did so. Without realizing it, they’d lined themselves up like ducks at a shooting gallery. They never saw the international pilots coming. In a matter of seconds, more than half of the alien column was destroyed. A flash of jade green light accompanied each kill.
“Go in groups,” Miriyam shouted. “Hunt them down.”
It was good advice, but Reg knew he was good enough to be a group of one. After assigning Tye and Sutton to chase down one of the nearest alien craft, he set his sights on another. He quickly tucked himself behind the targeted ship and began angling for a proper shot. The alien pilot ignored him, turning to attack a pair of Iraqis. It was obvious to Reg that whoever—or whatever—was
flying the attacker, no adjustments in tactics were being made to compensate for the loss of the shields.
“Not much of a thinker, I see,” said Reg, launching a Skyflash missile. It struck the alien ship squarely, blowing it to jade-green smithereens. It was the precise shade of green that Reg had seen cast on Jerusalem moments before the city was destroyed. Must have something to do with their energy source, he noted.
All around him, other pilots were bringing down alien ships. He heard the Ethiopian, Remi, shout, “Now go back to hell where you came from,” a second before he destroyed the alien he was chasing. When Miriyam and Yossi fired simultaneously at the ships they were following, two more green flashes lit up the sky.
“And Israel scores two!” Yossi shouted like the announcer at a soccer game.
“Saudi pilot,” Edward warned, “you have an enemy to port.”
Reg looked above him and saw that Khalid was in trouble again. He responded at once, climbing to put himself in position. But before he arrived, Khalid had executed a wing-over roll, doubled back on his enemy, and destroyed him.
In his steady, workhorse way, Sutton was destroying alien ships and keeping Tye out of harm’s way. There was nothing spectacular or daring in the way he operated his plane, but his pursuits were patient and relentless. Rather than use up his supply of missiles, he was doing all his damage with the Tornado’s 27mm cannons. He didn’t call out his kills as many of the others were doing, choosing instead to go quietly about his business.
Tye, on the other hand, a mechanic who had never fired a missile before, began celebrating loudly after one of his missiles connected with an enemy target. It didn’t matter to him that he’d used up nearly all his ammunition, or that the attacker he’d destroyed wasn’t the one he’d been aiming at. Just killing one of the bastards was enough. He went on whooping and cheering until Reg reminded him that the battle was only beginning.
In Hebrew, Farsi, Turkish, English, Amharic, Yoruba, and several dialects of Arabic, the pilots cursed and taunted their nonhuman enemies. As the last few alien ships were being hunted down, Reg took a moment to watch the other pilots at work. One of the Iraqi pilots, he noticed, was especially effective, gunning down one attacker after another.
“This one is the bread!” the Iraqi yelled as he dropped his MiG-29 behind his next target.
“I think you mean toast,” Tye corrected him.
“Yes, the toast!” the boyish-sounding Iraqi agreed as he unleashed a volley of armor-piercing shells. “This one is the TOAST!” The large-caliber bullets ate away at the attacker’s shell until it exploded into a messy green blur of debris.
Once the last attacker had been shot down, the group turned its attention back to the city destroyer, which was moving inexorably forward, undeterred by the loss of its shields. It had already swallowed Usfan in its shadow and was closing in on Mecca. If the ship could not be shot down, or driven away from the city very quickly, hundreds of thousands of lives would be lost, and one of the earth’s most important cities would be obliterated.
As Reg led the way toward the front end of the city-sized craft, he watched the bombing attacks already under way. A group of MiGs was circling the crown of the destroyer’s domed roof completely unopposed, strafing and bombing at will. Their missiles gouged deep craters into the armored surface, but it was not nearly enough. The ship was so large that the damage was inconsequential.
As Reg studied the problem, some of the pilots in his group rac
ed ahead and fired a salvo of missiles. They struck squarely and caused spectacular explosions, but the problem was the same. The exterior shell was not penetrated, and the destroyer continued to move calmly forward as placidly as a bull moves through a swarm of flies. It only decelerated when its prow approached the northern outskirts of Mecca and began to seal off the sky over the crowded city.
“It’s impossible,” Sutton announced with characteristic pessimism. “We just don’t have the firepower.”
“He’s right. At this rate, it’ll take us a week to knock this thing down.”
“Only a few minutes until it fires on the city. We’ve got to do something quickly.”
“Let’s use everything we’ve got, then go and find some more weapons.”
“Where are we going to find them?” Miriyam asked. “All the bases are destroyed. I’ve only got two Sidewinders and a Python left.”
Remi, the Ethiopian pilot, suggested using the last of their armaments against the skyscraper-like tower. “It looks like a control tower,” he pointed out. “If we can damage it, they won’t be able to steer. Even if they fire on Mecca, maybe they won’t be able to go on to the next city.”
Behind Reg, the team raced toward the leading edge of the megasaucer and watched its seventeen-mile-wide shadow darken the city below. There was bad news waiting for them when they arrived. Remi’s idea, although logical, wasn’t working. A group of Egyptian and Sudanese jets were skirmishing with a swarm of the scarablike attackers, and firing on the tower without effect. The structure, anchored into a wide dimple in the ship’s surface, was made of a material that absorbed the missiles’ impact without breaking apart.
“Scratch that bright idea off the list,” Sutton droned. “Now what are we supposed to do?”
No one answered. The group seemed to be at a loss.
But Reg had an idea, one that had been brewing ever since the battle above Jerusalem. He craned his neck back and studied the polished face of the jet-black tower. He noted that the large portal that allowed the alien attackers to pass in and out of the ship was still open. What would happen, he wondered, if I ducked inside? Since his Tornado obeyed a different set of aerodynamic principles than the attackers, which could come to a dead stop and still remain airborne, he could guess the most likely outcome: He would merely splatter himself against an internal wall or other immovable object. But the destroyer was now completely covering the city below, and unless something was done quickly to disrupt the alien attack, hundreds of thousands of lives would be lost.
As the other pilots in his group discussed their next move, Reg tuned them out and kept his eyes on the portal, wondering if he should take the risk of flying into the alien ship. The question wasn’t whether he would survive—that seemed unlikely—but whether he’d accomplish anything. In a way, it was the same question he’d been asking himself ever since the Gulf War. He’d spent the last several years in Saudi Arabia trying to work off the insurmountable debt he owed to the people of the area. Was the kamikaze mission he was contemplating a way of settling the score?
Shouting from the other pilots snapped him back into the present. The clicking noise had returned to the radio.
“We’re getting another message from the Americans,” Thomson told them. “It’s brief. Hold on a moment while we decode it.” Thirty seconds later, Thomson came back onto the airwaves. By that time, the destroyer had come to a dead stop above the city, centered over the Great Mosque. “Good news, excellent news. Finally, we have—”
“WHAT DOES IT SAY?”
“Right. Sorry about that. It says: Small missile strike against firing cone at center bottom causes chain-reaction explosion. Guarantees total kill.”
“A total kill, you say?”
“That’s what it says here,” Thomson assured them. “ ‘Guarantees total kill.’”
Yossi cracked a joke. “And we get our money back if we’re not one-hundred-percent completely satisfied, right?”
After a last glance at the open portal, Reg pointed the nose of his jet at the ground. “Follow me,” he called to the others. “Let’s go find that firing cone.”
As the group shed altitude and took a look at the underside of the destroyer, they realized that reaching the center would be no easy task. More than a hundred of the surviving alien fighters had massed themselves in the deep shadows and were flying in agitated circles, firing their pulse cannons down at the city. At the same time, the people of Mecca had no intention of going down without a fight. They’d installed dozens of surface-to-air missile stations and were using them with impunity. Their rockets flew straight up and smashed into the ship’s hard underbelly.
As they patrolled the perimeter of the gigantic ship and surveyed the scene, a set of enormous doors at the center of the ship began to retract. Soon, all of Mecca was bathed in the resplendent green light that spilled out of the destroyer’s interior.
“Listen up,” Reg said. “We’ve going to play follow the leader, and we’ve only got one chance to do it right. We’ll go in single file, fast and tight, nose to tail. I’ll take the point and keep the path clear until I’m out of ammunition. After that, Miriyam moves to the front. When she’s empty, you back there in the second Iraqi plane, what’s your name?”
“Mohammed.”
“I’ve been watching you. Nice shooting back there. Do you have any missiles left?”
“Yes, of course. I hate to waste them.”
“Excellent. You’re up third. The rest of you save your missiles for the target.”
“And then?” someone asked.
“If we’re not dead by then, we’ll think of something. Now fall in behind me,” he called, before leading them under the edge of the destroyer.
Even though the sun was beginning to set, the sudden transition from the light of the open sky to the oppressive gloom below the ship meant the pilots had to fly blind until their eyes adjusted. Maintaining his speed, Reg focused on the lowering hatch doors and the green light that showed between them. Entering the airspace under the destroyer was like flying into an enormous round room with no walls to hold up the ceiling. Reg stayed as high as he dared, only two hundred feet below the underside of the ship, which was studded with rectangular structures that looked like hanging storage containers. These large, boxlike structures were arranged in precise rows, and the gaps between them created a dizzying optical illusion of slow-motion movement as the jets raced past. Adding to the disorientation was the fact that the main source of light was the reflected green glare coming from the city below. This created the sensation of flying upside down over a dark industrial landscape.
Fighting through his own confusion, Reg steered his group gently away from oncoming bands of attackers, doing his best to conserve his weaponry. After destroying a handful of the attackers, he shouted, “I’m out! Miriyam, take over.”
The Israeli captain took a different approach. Instead of avoiding confrontations with the enemy planes, she steamrollered straight ahead and blasted everything that stood in her path. Very soon, the last of her missiles was spent, and she called for Mohammed to take over.
Just then, a surface-to-air missile streaked upward and demolished the Iraqi MiG carrying the last of Mohammed's fellow countrymen. The young pilot took over the point position, but was clearly unnerved. He began veering off course, leading the team off course.
“Follow the street!” Reg coached, and it was obvious to everyone what he meant. The wide paths between the outcropping buildings above them formed wide, straight “boulevards” that ran from the edges of the ship to its center. Although the firing cone and the hanging doors were still miles away, the “street” was directly above and provided a clearly marked path to their destination.
Just as Mohammed regained his bearings, trouble came streaking toward him in the form of an alien attack squadron. A tightly clustered group of at least forty fighters was headed directly toward them. Mohammed hesitated for a moment, stricken with indecision. By the time he activ
ated his missiles and sent them flying, he knew it was too late for the pilots behind him to fan out and try to slip past the onrushing enemy squadron. All nine of the missiles he’d fired connected with their targets, but the rest of the alien force continued toward him, firing their pulse cannons as they came. The balls of condensed energy sliced wildly through the air, narrowly missing Mohammed’s MiG. Acting on instinct, the young Iraqi shouted out an order to the rest of the crew.
“UP! UP! Pull up!”
Since they were already skimming the underside of the city destroyer, the other pilots couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
“There’s no more room,” yelled Sutton, who was flying in the second slot. “We’re up as far as we can go.”
But when Mohammed lifted away, giving him a clear look at the aliens bearing down on them, Sutton jerked back on his controls and followed the Iraqi pilot upward. One by one, the rest of the team quickly followed suit.
Besieged by a hailstorm of pulse blasts, and moving at close to Mach speed, Mohammed led them higher and higher until they were flying down the center of one of the so-called streets, which was barely wide enough to accommodate their wingspans. The hanging buildings on either side of them rushed past in a blur, the ceiling was only a few feet from the tops of their cockpit canopies, and more than one pilot was screaming at the top of his lungs. With a razor-thin margin of error, they held their collective breath and concentrated on steering straight down the narrow pathway until the attackers shot past them below.
When they ducked back into the open air, the alien squadron was well out of range, and they appeared to have an unobstructed path to the center of the ship. As the pilots cursed and panted and wiped the sweat from their brows, Reg congratulated Mohammed. “That was a nifty bit of work, lad.”
Stephen Molstad - [ID4- Independence Day 03] Page 11
