Launcher number one was set at a fixed 60-degree up angle, and it was pointed far to the northwest, well away from the eastbound aircraft, but Patriot didn’t need to be pointed directly at its quarry at launch. The missile quickly adjusted course, sending a white streak of smoke across the early-morning Texas sky. It climbed to fifteen thousand feet in less than three seconds before starting its terminal dive. Traveling at over twice the speed of sound, it took only six seconds for the first missile to find its target. After the hit, the Patriot engagement radar locked on to the biggest piece of the stricken aircraft, the aft half of the fuselage, and that’s what it steered the second missile into—but one missile was all that was needed.
“Splash unknown 19,” Connor reported in a monotone, detached voice. The plane—he wasn’t even sure what kind of plane it was or how many persons were aboard—was destroyed, clean, simple, and quick. Radar return one moment, the next moment nothing. Connor felt horribly tense, almost nauseated. All their actions were precisely like the simulator sessions they constantly ran—the little Patriot missile “football” symbols racing across the screen, the dotted lines showing the missile’s track intersecting with the target’s track, the “coffin” symbol around the target as the computed time of intercept ran out and as the radar tried to determine if the target was still flying. But, of course, this was no simulation. “Set HOLD FIRE all units,” he murmured, his voice barely audible over the whir of the van’s air conditioning units, “and let’s get a status report.”
Aboard Tiger 90
It was an eerie feeling on the AWACS radar plane at that moment. In the Weapons and Surveillance sections, most of the controllers were busy with their own sectors and were not aware that a Patriot missile had just destroyed an aircraft near Fort Worth, Texas. But the Senior Director and Major Kestrel, the Mission Crew Commander, simply wore blank expressions as they stared straight ahead at their scopes. The other controllers and technicians that had participated in the shootdown were on their feet, silently looking over toward Kestrel. Most of them had helped kill things before for real—but they had been SCUD missiles over Saudi Arabia or Israel, or drones over the Gulf of Mexico or Pacific Ocean during live-fire exercises, never a manned aircraft flying over America.
“Get me a status on all Tiger units,” Kestrel said, forcing as much steel into his voice as he could. “Verify all units acknowledging HOLD FIRE.” He could see the status of all his assigned air and ground air defense systems himself, but he wanted to hear it for himself, direct from the unit operators and commanders, to reassure him that he was back in control and that no one else would die unless he gave the command.
“MCC, unknown 18 is still looking for clearance to Oklahoma City ...”
“I want that bastard on the ground at Meacham,” Kestrel ordered. “I want both Tango X-Ray-311 units to intercept unknown 18, and if they have to blow out his windscreen or shoot off an engine, I want that sonofabitch on the ground immediately. I want federal agents to arrest the crew.”
“It’s being done, Will,” Ian Hardcastle replied. “Marshals Service agents and the FBI are on the way.” He had been speaking on a headset to Marshals Service agents on the ground at Dallas-Fort Worth as the incident was occurring.
“Major.. . there was nothing you could do,” Hardcastle said. Hardcastle could see the pain and the anger in Kestrel’s face. These men were professional soldiers, trained to defend their country, yet killing was not part of their nature. It was even more difficult because it was so easy, so detached, so remote—say a word, and seconds later, men die and a very large air machine is destroyed.
“You did everything right, and you exercised proper judgment.”
“Then why in hell did we lose a Patriot site, Admiral?” Kestrel said. “There were a hundred soldiers at that site out there at Alliance.”
“You got the guy who attacked them, Will. There was no way we could know unknown 19 was a terrorist. He had a proper flight plan, followed the proper procedures.”
“Then what are we doing here, Admiral?” Kestrel shouted, whipping off his headset and shooting to his feet before Hardcastle. “We can’t stop anyone who wants to come in. That Westfall flight is doing everything completely wrong!” He pointed to his radarscreen, his eyes bulging in anger. “He’s still doing everything wrong, and he’s getting away scot-free.”
“We gotta deal with that, Will.”
“Are you saying I should blow away that Westfall flight?”
“I’m not saying that, either,” Hardcastle replied. “Your job is to protect your assigned airports from aerial assault.”
“Well, I obviously failed at that.”
“If one plane screws up and gets away, and a terrorist is allowed to attack, then it’s the system that’s failed, not you,” A1 Vincenti interjected. “You’re doing everything you can.”
“Sir, I need you on headsets,” the senior director interjected. Hardcastle could see real, serious stress etched on that man’s face—the pressure was on early in the game, and it showed no signs of letting up at all. “We’ve got another unknown, over Houston-Hobby, declaring an emergency.”
“Shit!” Kestrel exclaimed, slipping wearily into his seat and donning his headset once again. “Admiral, I don’t know what the answer is. But this is not going to work. It is just not going to fucking work.”
Near Bedminster, New Jersey That Evening
The television was on, and CNN was giving its hourly wrap-up of the hunt for Henri Cazaux. Jo Ann Vega shivered with excitement as she saw pictures of the aftermath of the latest attack, a cargo plane shot down north of Fort Worth, Texas, after it had dropped several cluster bombs on an Army Patriot missile site. Military commentators were now talking about the capabilities of the Patriot missile, assuring everyone that the advanced surface-to-air missile could easily defend its assigned airports.
She rose from her leather sofa and walked toward the windows, which looked out through the front of the house past the four-acre, tree-lined front lawn, and shook her head while she thought of the commentator’s words. No one, she thought, was safe from Henri Cazaux. Even a Patriot missile could not stop him. Only Henri Cazaux himself could stop the killing.
Looking out the third-story window through the driving rain, Jo Ann Vega could see the guards in the front of the mansion, who had been sullenly pacing back and forth around the grounds through the warm summer rain, suddenly snap to attention. Cigarette butts went flying and submachine guns appeared from under long coats back up to carry-arms position. A few minutes later, a big one-ton dually six-passenger extended cab pickup truck zoomed around through the trees at the edge of the grassy front lawn and down the gravel driveway toward the mansion, stopping about fifty yards from the front door. While one guard covered the driver and another covered the passenger cab, a third guard shined a flashlight inside the front passenger side, checking IDs.
The truck was allowed to pass, parking just underneath the breezeway that covered the front entryway. A man she had never seen before emerged from the back of the truck, stood out on the lawn as he finished his cigarette. As he tossed it away, he looked up and saw Vega standing in the window, watching him. Their eyes locked for several moments before he pulled up his raincoat collar and headed inside.
Vega began to quiver, and she reached for a pack of cigarettes. Empty. She shivered again, and she felt as cold and as sweaty as if she was out there in the humidity and rain with the guards.
Henri was home. Good .. .
She had evacuated her home in Newburgh, New York, several days ago, right after the attack on Memphis. As they had expected, Newburgh and Stewart International had become a major supply depot for the effort to stop Henri Cazaux, with dozens of flights of C-5 Galaxy, C-141 Star- lifter, and C-17 Globemaster transports bringing soldiers and air defense missile batteries into Stewart and trucking them to New York City and airports in Connecticut. Stewart International was also the southeastern New York headquarters of the New York State Pol
ice, with the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms setting up shop at the Army barracks at Stewart as well, so clearly it was no longer practical for Cazaux to visit her there.
Vega now occupied the entire third floor of the spacious mansion, with luxurious furniture, a little galley, a fully equipped entertainment center, and plenty of windows to watch the deer and other animals scamper across the property. Her new bedroom was almost as large as her entire storefront apartment in Newburgh had been. It was a lovely, peaceful, tranquil.. . prison. She had no company and was not allowed any guests. Her meals were brought to her by guards, who patrolled the hallways and who would periodically enter her room, even her bathroom, unannounced, to check on her. The guards never spoke to her, hardly ever looked at her, even when they would burst in on her in the shower or dressing in front of the mirror. Of course, she had no phone. She had no one she desired to call, but it effectively sealed her isolation.
She was allowed to have all her astrological books, charts, cards, runes, and even had a new computer with her charting software installed on it, so she spent a lot of time doing Henri’s charts and readings, mapping out the progress of his campaign of terror, and writing what amounted to a script, a Book of Revelations, about how his private war would turn out. There was no doubt that his strength was growing each and every day. Every life, every existence could of course take a number of different paths, and Jo Ann tried to search each of the strongest and best- defined paths that her Henri would most likely take each day. They all went in the same direction—horrible death. Henri’s death was clear, but his was not the only soul that she saw feel the pain of vengeful, wicked, bloodthirsty death. She saw thousands of tortured souls crying into the mists of the future, thousands of souls painfully ripped from this life and thrust into the next like hair being pulled from the skin by the roots.
But even more horrible than that was of a nation torn apart by a desperate, cold-blooded act of hatred by Henri Cazaux, an incredible act of destruction that would change millions of lives . . .
“Hello, Jo Ann.”
Vega whirled around and saw him. Jesus, he was as silent as a snake. His hair, brown and curly with a hint of gray around the temples, was growing back with astounding speed, so fast that he appeared a completely different person. He seemed thinner, but that only helped to accentuate his wiry, muscular frame and lean, cheetah-like profile. He wore a sports coat over a black T-shirt, which he removed as soon as he entered her room.
“Henri,” she greeted him, suddenly short of breath both by being startled by him and by the excitement of seeing him again. “It’s good to see you.”
“You look good, Jo Ann,” Cazaux said casually. His words made her heart flutter. They were the most caring words he had ever said to her. He stepped toward her, his eyes roaming her body momentarily, and then he said in French, “pi va, Jo Ann. How have you been?”
“pi va bien, merci, Henri,” she replied. “I’m lonely without you, Henri. I wish you would stay with me, but—” “You have already seen otherwise,” Cazaux finished for her. “You know the forces that drive me, Jo Ann. You know that the power that is the instrument of my revenge is stronger than both of us. I have come so that you can tell me more about my future.”
“I don’t know that the forces that propel you are too strong to be overcome, Henri,” Vega interrupted. “I’ve seen many of your futures. You are vulnerable now.” “Vulnerable? How?”
“The forces of good are organizing against you,” Vega said. “There is weakness among your troops. Their resolve is not as strong as yours. You must use your power to keep all those around you in line.”
“I have seen to that,” Cazaux said with a smile. “You shall see.”
“Good,” Vega said. She averted her eyes slightly, as if embarrassed to tell all. Cazaux reached out and grasped her arm, wordlessly ordering her to continue: “The master, he is concerned about your targets,” the woman said. “These small airports, this emphasis on these little companies.”
“I don’t understand, Jo Ann.”
“The dark master has given you an enormous gift, Henri,” Vega said. “Eternal life, power beyond any mortal, the vision, the strength—and you waste it on whatever this stockbroker tells you to attack.”
“He has chosen his targets carefully,” Cazaux said. “I don’t understand all that he does, but the money he earns for us is far beyond anything I’ve ever seen before in my life.”
“Do you think the dark master cares about how much money you make, Henri?” Vega asked. “He has given you a gift much more precious than money. Are you going to waste it on earning a few more dollars?”
“Then what?” Cazaux asked. “You’re my adviser! Tell me!”
She stared at him, said nothing, then they both diverted their attention to the television. A group of men and women were standing in front of the White House for an impromptu press conference: “Henri Cazaux is a menace to American society, and I think it’s time the White House and the Pentagon take off the kid gloves and get serious about stopping this bastard,” the man in the lead said. He was identified by a caption as former Vice President Kevin Martindale. He continued, “So far the White House has put a gag order on their plans on how to deal with this crisis, which claimed thirty-one more victims this morning near Dallas. The American people deserve to be told how the Administration is responding to the crisis.”
“There,” Vega said. “That is your target.”
“What? Those men? I agree they should be executed, but I don’t—”
“I and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle are calling for a bipartisan Senate hearing on the terrorist crisis that is paralyzing our country,” another person, identified as Senator Georgette Heyerdahl, said. “What we are demanding is a full-scale military-led manhunt for Henri Cazaux.” “A manhunt!” Cazaux laughed. “Those idiots are incapable of mounting a manhunt for a child, let alone a group of trained soldiers.”
“Congress will enact legislation authorizing full military participation in the hunt for Cazaux,” Heyerdahl continued. “We are asking that the President federalize the National Guard to assist law enforcement agencies to patrol the airports, protect the air defense units, fly along on scheduled commercial flights, and assist in the FBI investigation.” The image shifted to shots of soldiers with Stinger shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, and then to an aerial shot of the White House.
“There,” Vega said, a smile coming to her full red lips. “That is your target.” Cazaux was staring with complete surprise at the aerial view of the White House and of the Capitol Mall.
The White House? The Capitol? But . . . But, of course...
“Yes,” he breathed, his chest tightening in anticipation. “Yes, that’s it. No more airports, no more little business run by nobodies.”
Oh yes, he was going to be unstoppable.
“The attack on Dallas-Fort Worth Airport was a complete failure,” Cazaux said later to his assembled staff officers. Almost everyone except Tomas Ysidro remained perfectly still in case any movement might be noticed by their angry commander. He tossed a plastic bag onto the circular glass coffee table before them. “I will not tolerate any more failures from this staff. Is that clear?”
The plastic bag landed on the table with a gut-wrenching splut! and flopped open, but no one dared to touch it—no one except Ysidro, who was sick enough to do just about anything anyone could possibly imagine. Under Cazaux’s stem gaze, Ysidro held the bag up, examined its contents, smiled at Cazaux and nodded approvingly, then reached in and pulled a black, sticky blob out of the bag by a long rubbery tube.
“This belonged to Georges Lechamps, the butthead who hired those two dope-smoking pilots for the Dallas mission, eh, Henri?” Ysidro said, holding the thing up and twirling the tube as if he were carefully studying the thing, although he was really looking to see everyone else’s reaction. Cazaux said nothing, but watched as everyone stared in horror at the squishy black blob that Ysidro was han
dling and examining. “Well, I guess ol’ Georges’ heart really wasn’t in his work!” Ysidro laughed, letting the now-recognizable mass drop back into the bag.
That was enough for Harold Lake’s assistant, Ted Fell—he barely made it out of the dining room before vomiting in a bathroom off the billiard room down the hall. Harold Lake felt equally as nauseated, but he was glad he could control his stomach, because Cazaux and Ysidro watched Fell run out of the room with utter disgust and disdain.
“I’ll agree, Lechamps paid too much and got two worthless pilots to fly that mission,” Gregory Townsend said, quickly ignoring the blood-filled bag of gore on the table in front of him. “But the mission was important because it pointed out the military’s defense setup. Our field people report that our Airtech was destroyed by a Patriot missile fired from Carswell Air Force Base while the Airtech was less than a thousand feet aboveground. That was a shot from about fifteen miles away; a double missile launch, as I believe all Patriot attacks are done. That tells us that the Patriot missiles alone have extraordinary capability.
“What we learned about the other near-engagement was important as well. The Army let that first unidentified 727 fly right to five miles outside Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and still did not engage—at cruise speeds, that’s less than forty-five seconds to a bomb-release point. Our people saw two F-16 fighters scramble from the Dallas Naval Air Station, and those fighters did not engage either. At least one and possibly several Hawk antiair batteries were within range, and possibly even an Avenger Stinger mobile unit, and yet no one fired on the unidentified 727.”
“You can believe that will not be the case the next time,” one of the other staff officers said.
“The next target will have to be saturated for any attack to be successful,” Townsend summarized. “Multiple aircraft, multiple axes of attack. Follow the flight plan as best as possible, then strike as close as possible to the aerodrome. As we saw with the very first unidentified-aircraft alert in Dallas, the mobile air defense units and the fighters escorting the suspect are not in a favorable position to attack the suspect once he’s on the ground—they still track him, to some extent, but they assume he is not a hostile target when his wheels actually touch ground. We can use that fact to our advantage. Of course, timing and speed are essential.”
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