“Just get going—I’ll bring Wilkes. Cazaux’s going to bomb the White House, and the explosive he’s using could fry us all. The Capitol will be the safest place for us. Can you drag Wilkes over there?”
“I don’t think so,” Harley said. “I’m staying here with you, Ian. There’s no other choice.”
“I’ll take Wilkes in a minute. You head for the Capitol. Get going.” Harley reluctantly got to her feet and began trotting east toward the Capitol Building. Hardcastle found a four-cell flashlight and examined the interior of the Avenger—and immediately struck paydirt. He dragged two green steel-and-plastic cases out from storage racks behind the passenger seat and opened them to find a large shoul- der/pistol grip assembly and two cylindrical cans.
“What are they?” Harley asked behind him.
“I said get moving toward the Capitol.”
“I can’t make it—I can hardly see where I’m going,” Harley said. “I’ll help you. Do you know what they are?” Hardcastle cursed and pulled a yellow-and-black tab on one side of the pistol grip. A metal grilled device resembling an open animal cage popped out of the right side of the unit. “It’s a Stinger missile shoulder grip assembly,” Hardcastle said. “I think we can fire the missiles from this unit from the shoulder. All we have to do is figure out how to get the missiles out of the launchers.”
“Looks like the Army already thought of that,” Harley said. She shined the flashlight into the lid of the carrying case, where they saw color-cartoon-like pictures detailing how to do it. Two latches on the bottom side of the right Stinger launcher opened an access panel, where they could see inside the launcher itself; two more latches on the side of one of the green aluminum tubes allowed it to slide free out the rear end of the launcher. She helped slide the aluminum tube onto the pistol grip assembly and lock it into place. Hardcastle took one of the cylindrical cans, inserted it into a hole just forward of the trigger, and twisted it to lock it in place. A green light on the side of the grip told him the unit was on.
“Get that computer over there,” Hardcastle said. “It has a map telling where Cazaux’s plane is.” Harley retrieved the computer, opened it, and studied the screen. Meanwhile, Hardcastle keyed the mike switch on his helmet headset: “Leather, this is Hardcastle. I’ve found the Stinger shoulder launchers. I’m going to try to shoot it with a Stinger.”
“You ever shoot a Stinger before, Admiral?”
“How hard can it be?” Hardcastle asked. “The instructions are printed in cartoons.”
“Three miles,” Harley said, “heading right for us.”
“Can you describe those instructions to me?” Hardcastle asked.
Harley studied the drawings for a moment. “Looks like a button on the left side of the grip is for the ... the IFF?”
“ ‘Identification Friend or Foe,’ ” Hardcastle said. “It’ll tell us if the plane is transmitting proper codes. Doesn’t matter—if it flies near here, I’m shooting it. Next.”
“Large lever behind the grip. Pull down with your thumb when the target is within range. Powers the missile gyro, cools the seeker head, and charges the eject gas cylinder.” “What’s the range?”
Harley checked the computer screen: “Two miles.”
The time seemed to drag on forever. Hardcastle couldn’t see a thing in the sky—the few lights and the remains of the fires to the south were destroying his night vision, and now the sirens wailing around the city prevented him from hearing anything. “Range!” he shouted.
“One-point-five miles ...”
“I see it... Jesus, it’s low!” Hardcastle shouted. It was a small single-engine Cessna with a fixed landing gear, and it looked like it was less than a hundred feet in the air. It was just south of the Tidal Basin, skimming the treetops. An occasional gust of wind or thermal current from the fires pushed the plane sideways or caused it to lose altitude, but it always regained its heading—it was homing directly for the White House. Hardcastle moved the large lever behind the pistol grip down until it snapped to the stop, and he heard a sudden shot of high-compression air and a loud whirring sound. “I think it’s on. What next?”
“Large button on the very front of the grip—squeeze it with your thumb and hold to open the seeker-head shutter. Look through the sight and center the target in the sight.” Hardcastle looked over the sight, first to line up the Cessna, then looked through the sight. There was a sawtooth frame under a tiny round circle in the center of the sight. When Hardcastle placed the Cessna inside the center of the circle, he heard a loud beep beep beep beep beep ... “It’s beeping. What next?”
“Pull the trigger and kill that motherfucker,” Harley said.
Hardcastle squeezed the trigger.
There was a very loud fwoosh! with very little kickback. The missile popped out of the aluminum tube and sailed skyward ... and immediately fell to earth about fifty yards ahead of them. A second later the missile’s motor fired, and it skittered across the ground for hundreds of yards until it was lost from sight. “Shit! It didn’t track! It didn’t go!” Hardcastle shouted.
“It should’ve gone, ” Harley shouted. “We did everything right.” But Hardcastle was already scrambling to remove another missile from the Avenger launcher. He removed the launch tube from the shoulder grip, twisted off the hot battery cylinder, loaded another missile on the shoulder grip, and twisted on another battery unit.
By the time Hardcastle hefted the Stinger onto his right shoulder again, the Cessna was over the Jefferson Memorial, swooping lower and lower. Its wings swung wildly as it caught in the hot lower air currents as it passed over the flaming ground path of the terrorist 747. Hardcastle lined up on the Cessna once again, flipped the BCU activation lever down, and .. .
... as soon as he did so, white acidic gas began streaming out both ends of the missile. Hardcastle threw the missile and launcher on the ground. The gas was coming out at high pressure now, and the battery unit underneath the grip was smoking. ‘The missile must’ve been bad,” Hardcastle said. Harley was already moving toward the Avenger launcher to pull off another missile, so Hardcastle opened the second case to get another launcher—and he had a chance to study the instructions himself.. .
That's it! he exclaimed to himself.
The missile was pushed out of the launch tube by compressed nitrogen gas, and there was a 1.5-second delay before the rocket motor fired. The launch tube needed to be “super-elevated,” or raised high enough so the missile would not hit the ground before the rocket motor would fire. The last drawing before squeezing the trigger described the final lineup of the target in the sight and how to superelevate: after the target was acquired and locked on with the beeping tone, the Stinger had to be raised until the target nestled into one of the sawtooth notches on the bottom of the sight, depending on the direction the target was flying, to lead the target. The missile’s seeker head would still be tracking the target all the way, and when the rocket motor fired it would home in and kill.
By the time they loaded the third missile and screwed in a new battery unit, the Cessna was almost directly overhead, flying less than the length of a football field west of the Washington Monument. Hardcastle could clearly see two objects under the wings of the Cessna—those had to be the fuel-air explosives. He let the Cessna fly north of his position, then, as it flew over Constitution Avenue, activated the battery unit, squeezed the seeker head uncage switch, heard the beeping sound, lined up on the Cessna for the last...
“Freeze!” someone shouted behind him. “FBI! Drop that missile launcher now! ”
“No!” Harley shouted. “I’m Harley, Secret Service!” She held up her U.S. Treasury Department ID wallet, hoping that the FBI agent would notice the standard federal agent “safe signal”—looping one finger over on the badge side and two fingers on the ID card side. “We’re trying to stop that plane!”
“I said drop it!" Obviously he was too keyed-up to notice Harley’s safe signal. To the FBI agent who had driven up to the group
at the Washington Monument, it looked as if Hardcastle were trying to launch a bazooka round at the White House or the Commerce Department Building.
“No!” Harley shouted. “I’m Secret Service! He’s authorized! Don’t!”
Hardcastle felt the bullets crash into the middle of his back like two sharp rapid punches—but the bulletproof vest saved his life. He superelevated the Stinger launcher, placing the target in the middle notch on the bottom of the sight so the muzzle of the launcher was raised well over the Cessna, and squeezed the trigger... just as two bullets hit the back of his Kevlar helmet. The FBI agent couldn’t get the shooter in the back, so he tried for a head shot, and this time he got him.
The missile popped out of the launch tube and sailed high overhead, nearly out of sight—but nowhere near the Cessna. Hardcastle thought it was flying out of control again. It was our last chance, damn it, he thought as he fell forward on his face, dazed and immobilized by the shock.
Our last chance . . . God, no . . .
He looked up toward the White House when someone shouted, “Look!” Two quick puffs of fire could be seen on the wings of the Cessna as the fuel-air explosives canisters released, just as the Cessna passed over the Zero Milestone - at the north end of the Ellipse and continued on toward the White House.
“Everyone get down! Get down!” Hardcastle murmured. “The bombs ... the bombs are going ... going off...” But he couldn’t seem to make his mouth move anymore.
Just as the Stinger missile started to nose over and head back to earth, the rocket motor ignited with a bright orange tongue of fire, and a split second later the missile arched gracefully and smoothly right into the front left side of the Cessna’s engine compartment, near an exhaust stack. The one-and-a-half-pound warhead exploded on contact, and the Cessna nosed over, spiraled down, and crashed on the south lawn of the White House.
But as the canisters began to disperse the deadly high-explosive mixture, the Stinger missile exploded. The cloud of explosive vapors had no chance to properly disperse and mix with the air that would have given it its tremendous explosive power. The fireball that erupted just over the south lawn was still a thousand feet in diameter, large enough to blacken the entire south lawn and blow out windows at the Old Executive Office Building and the Treasury Department. The polycarbonate antisniper windows of the White House rippled and shook from the explosion, but remained intact. Harley could feel the intense heat of the fireball a half-mile away. There were several loud explosions as the bomblets from the fuel-air explosives harmlessly hit the ground, tossed several hundred feet away by the force of the blast.
Harley and the FBI agent ran over to Hardcastle together. The agent had his gun out and aimed at Hardcastle’s head, but Harley shoved her badge and ID in the guy’s face. “Call an ambulance, you idiot,” she ordered. “He just saved the White House. The Director is hurt too—she’s over there.” “The Director ... of the FBI?”
“No, the damned director of ‘I Love Lucy.’ ”
“Well, Jesus, Agent, how the hell am I supposed to—” “Just get an ambulance, damn it!” Harley yelled. She carefully unbuckled the helmet—it fell apart in piecesrin her hands. “Ian! Are you all right? Can you hear me?” There was no response. The back of his head was covered with blood, the glistening red blood contrasting well with his thin gray hair. “Ian? Stay with me, stay with me!”
“All right, all right, Deborah,” a subdued, strained voice murmured into the ground. “Just answer the damned phone, will you please? The ringing is driving me crazy.”
Epilogue
The Next Morning
The closest undamaged airport to Washington that could be totally secured was Naval Air Station Patuxent River-Trapnell, about forty miles southeast. The airspace for fifty miles in all directions was closed from the surface to infinity, secured with rapidly reactivated Patriot and Hawk surface-to-air missile sites and constant fighter patrols. At precisely nine a.m., Air Force One—the real Air Force One—touched down on Trapnell’s two-and-a-half- mile-long runway. A formation of three VH-53 VIP helicopters was waiting, and the President of the United States, the First Lady, and a group of Cabinet members boarded the middle one, ignoring the small knot of reporters and photographers that had been allowed to cover the President’s arrival. It was obvious to all that the President didn’t feel like talking to the press.
After lift-off, the three Marine Corps helicopters did an aerial shell game, changing position in the formation so that no one on the ground—no gunner, no terrorist, no assassin—could tell which one carried the President. They flew high and fast, heading first toward Arlington to trace the final flight path of the 747 as it crashed into the city. The, only planes allowed to be anywhere near the President were three F-16 fighters—one was on high patrol at twenty thousand feet, the other two orbiting at low altitude, separated from Marine One by three miles. They had orders to shoot any aircraft that strayed within twenty miles of the President, no questions asked, no warnings issued.
The group of three helicopters flew over the impact area near the Lincoln Memorial, then traced the two-mile- long path of destruction across the Reflecting Pool, the Kutz Bridge, the Tidal Basin, and south Washington to survey the damage. The burned, twisted hulk of the 747 was still piled up against the Case Memorial Bridge, but cranes had already been put in to start removing the wreckage—the blue-and-white Air Force One paint scheme could clearly be seen. Fireboats were still spraying water on smoldering boats and buildings at the Capital Yacht Club, the Washington Marina, and other buildings along Water Street, and a thick rainbow of spilled jet fuel could be seen streaming down the Washington Channel toward the Potomac. The Auditors’ Building, the Sylvan Theater, and the Holocaust Museum were heavily damaged. The southwest corner of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the Outlet Bridge, the Kutz Bridge, most of the cherry trees on the east side of the Tidal Basin, the Japanese Lantern, the John Paul Jones Memorial, and the Tidal Basin Paddle were completely destroyed. Army and National Guard troops had been dispatched to seal off the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to protect against anyone looting the valuable currency and note plates inside. A few large-scale fires had broken out near Southeastern University and Sixth Street, and the area was alive with emergency lights and streams of water being pumped onto apartments and high-rises.
The three helicopters then flew over to the White House, all three coming in together in formation a thousand feet in the air on a fast, high approach west of the Washington Monument, north over the Ellipse toward the south lawn, duplicating the flight path of the Cessna on its computer-controlled bomb run. The westernmost helicopter touched down first, discharging ten heavily armed Secret Service agents and lifting off again, before the middle helicopter came in, bringing the President and the First Lady, followed by the third helicopter with other presidential advisers, a few reporters, and more Secret Service agents. Army gunners with Stinger missiles and machine guns were deployed on the roof of the White House and in several nearby buildings, scanning the skies in all directions for any sign of trouble.
The White House didn’t look so white that morning.
Its front had been slightly damaged, with some missing stone and long streaks of black and gray across the south side. The Old Executive Office Building, the Treasury Department Building, and the south lawn were battered and heavily blackened, with trees and gardens still smoldering in all directions. A steel helicopter combat landing zone mat had been anchored to the south lawn for Marine One, and a raised walkway had been set up so the President would not have to walk across the scorched earth. A wooden platform had been set up for the members of the press, about sixty yards from where the President would be walking toward the White House.
The Q & A podium had been set up near the press pit, but the walkway did not extend over to it and no one expected the President to make a statement on this very grim occasion. But as he emerged from Marine One, several heavily armed Secret Service agents took positions in front
of the press pit, facing toward the crowd with weapons highly visible at port arms, and the President walked across the scarred earth to the podium, with the First Lady on his right side. The bulk of the bulletproof vests they wore under their business suits were obvious to everyone.
“I’m not going to take any questions,” the President said solemnly, “just the following statement: I wish to convey my sincere condolences to the families of all those who lost a loved one in this ... this devastating tragedy. I share their pain, and the pain of all Americans as they try to comprehend this disaster.
“I wish to thank the federal agents, District of Columbia Police, and the members of the military who responded when the disaster struck, especially FBI Director Lani Wilkes, who was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with Henri Cazaux himself. The disaster would have been much worse if it had not been for their efforts.
“Finally, I want to ask for the cooperation of all Americans as we work toward rebuilding the capital and as we intensify our efforts to bring those responsible for this disaster to justice. I pledge—”
Suddenly he stopped as something caught his eye and a stirring in the crowd grabbed his attention. The President was staring at...
... a paper airplane that had sailed over the reporters’ heads, bobbing and flitting directly for him. Four Secret Service agents grabbed the President and pulled him and the First Lady toward the White House, and suddenly unmarked Secret Service trucks and D.C. Police cars were racing for the group of reporters from parking areas near the Treasury Department Building. The reporters and cameramen were instantly surrounded by armed agents. “Wait a minute! Wait!” the President shouted, twisting in the Secret Service agents’ arms. “I want that note! I want to see it!” But the Secret Service hustled him and the First Lady away to safety.
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