The Roswell Conspiracy

As Tyler continued trying to stretch his seat belts, he made one promise to himself.

He wasn’t going to die sitting on his ass.

FIFTY-SEVEN

Morgan had stopped talking, and that’s what worried Grant the most as he kept his hand on the T-38’s control stick. Being a trainer, the jet was easy to fly, but all he could do was follow a straight line or make minor adjustments in their heading. He needed Morgan for anything more complex, and the two-minute vertical ride to thirty thousand feet had brought on a fierce bout of her vertigo.

He thought she was okay until they nosed over and leveled off. It was bad enough for him, the blood pooling in his head from the negative g’s, but for her it must have been overwhelming. She told him to keep hold of the stick and then went silent.

Thanks to chatter on the radio, they had enough info to vector in on the Lodestar. It was fifteen miles away climbing at two thousand feet per minute. At their closing speed of mach 1.2, the T-38 would rendezvous with it before the Skyward was in position for launch.

Ground control continued to try to raise the Lodestar on the radio without success, so they had requested the Air Force to scramble two F-16s to intercept it. Their ETA was another fifteen minutes, far too late to do any good. The T-38 was the only plane in range to intervene. Although ground control was also trying to reach Morgan and Grant, they maintained radio silence.

The situation reconfirmed for Grant that the Killswitch was on the Skyward. If there had simply been a communications malfunction, the pilot would have returned to Oshkosh. The only explanation was that Colchev was making his attempt to detonate the weapon in the ionosphere, causing a doomsday scenario for the American infrastructure.

Grant was sick at the thought of being responsible for Tyler and Jess’s deaths. He wracked his brain for any other option, but he kept coming up empty. If they simply made a warning pass or attempted radio contact with the Lodestar pilot to threaten him, Colchev might launch before the T-38 could intercept even if the Skyward weren’t at the optimal altitude. They’d only get one pass at bringing the carrier down. This had to be a sneak attack.

Grant tried to console himself with the thought that Tyler would agree he had no choice. The good of the country came first. Tyler had been an officer in the Army, with responsibility for ordering men into harm’s way. But Jess was an innocent victim. She’d never made the pact that you would give your life for the greater good.

Both military veterans, Grant and Morgan had made that bargain. It didn’t need to be said between them that they were willing to die to keep the spaceplane from launching.

“Morgan, talk to me.”

After a few seconds, he heard, “I’m here.”

“How are you doing?”

“I was able to hold down my lunch. My vision’s a little blurry, but it’s clearing up.”

“And the vertigo?”

“Better. I can handle the stick now.”

Grant let go and she put the plane into a steady climb on the intercept heading. She seemed to be doing okay.

“We’re going to come up from below and behind them. Even if they’re aware of us from listening to ground control, they won’t be able to see us until we’re almost upon them. When we’re close, I’ll slow to a one-hundred- knot closing speed so that I make sure not to miss. At that velocity we’ll still do enough damage to destroy the plane.”

“And ours.”

“That’s why we’re going to eject just before impact. Under each of your armrests is a trigger. Feel for them but don’t pull them.”

Grant touched them. “Got ’em.”

“When the time comes, you’ll pull both armrests straight up and squeeze the triggers. The canopy will blow off and a rocket will eject the seat. Sit up straight to minimize the possibility of fracturing your spine. The wind will slam into you. Your mask should stay on, but if it doesn’t you’ll pass out before you reach twenty thousand feet. The parachute will open automatically.”

“How will that affect the flight path of the plane?”

“At the speed we’ll be going, the plane will be like a missile. The inertia will keep it steady for a few seconds.”

“We pull at the same time?”

“No, pulling the handle will eject both of us, one after the other.”

Morgan was the expert, so Grant had to take her word that all this would work.

“I still expect that afternoon together,” he said.

“I promise. I’ll be there.”

A distant white speck caught Grant’s attention.

“Target dead ahead,” he announced to Morgan.

In seconds he could see the bone-white Lodestar, its enormous wingspan cleaving the blue sky. They were coming up directly behind the carrier, which grew in size rapidly.

“I’ve got it,” Morgan said. “Are you ready?”

“Just tell me when.”

“I’ll count down. Throttling back.”

Grant’s chest strained against the safety straps as the afterburners cut off. They were now doing a stately six hundred knots. Ejecting at this speed and altitude was dicey at best, especially because he wasn’t wearing a flight suit. If he didn’t die of hypoxia, he might freeze to death before he got to a lower altitude.

The Lodestar was now close enough that Grant could make out the Skyward below it.

Tyler and Jess had no clue what was coming. Grant rationalized that they would die anyway if the Killswitch were detonated, but the taste of guilt was too strong to ignore. If he could trade places with them, Grant would do it in an instant.

“I’m sorry, guys,” he said under his breath. “So sorry.” He silently prayed for them.

“It’s time, Grant,” Morgan said. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Can’t wait.”

The Lodestar loomed in the windscreen. Morgan was aiming dead center. The T-38 would tear through the middle of the fuselage. Grant hoped that Tyler and Jess would never know what happened.

Morgan began her countdown.

“Pull on one. Five.”

Grant wrapped his fingers around the armrests and triggers.

“Four.”

Morgan’s voice sounded strangely at peace.

“Three.”

Like she knew this was a moment to be savored.

“Two.”

Like she was finally back where she belonged.

“One. Bail out, bail out, bail out!”

Grant jerked the armrests up, and his world became a rush of sensation. The sound of the explosive bolts blowing the canopy off. The intense cold of the air lashing his arms. The crushing force of the seat catapulting him out of the plane. The coppery taste of blood as he bit his lip. The tunneling of vision from sudden deceleration as the air dragged him to a stop.

As he tumbled through the air, a drogue chute deployed to halt the spin, and that’s when he saw that she had overestimated their closing speed. He’d ejected when they were still hundreds of yards from the Lodestar.

But Grant couldn’t see Morgan’s chute anywhere. She hadn’t bailed out.

For an instant Grant thought something had gone wrong with the ejection mechanism. But then he realized