By now, Sky Monster had taken them northwest, toward the coast, and as The Halicarnassus left the mainland of Australia and shot out over the Indian Ocean, the two Interceptors engaged it.
Missiles, guns: they gave it everything they had.
West and Zoe returned fire with equal violence until finally West nailed one Interceptor with his cannon and…went dry.
“Right-side gun is out!” he called into the intercom. “How’re you traveling, Zoe?”
“Still got a few rounds left,”she said as she fired at the last J-9.“But not many—shit! I’m out, too!”
They were out of ammo and there was still one bad guy left.
“Uh, Huntsman…!” Sky Monster called expectantly. “What are we gonna do now, throw rocks?”
Jack stared at their remaining pursuer—the Interceptor hovered in the sky behind them, waiting, watching, holding back a little, as if it sensed something was wrong.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered.
He unbuckled himself from his gun chair and hurried back into the main cabin, thinking fast.
Then it hit him.
He keyed his headset radio. “Sky Monster. Take us vertical. As vertical as you can go.”
“What? What are you doing?”
“I’ll be in the rear hold.”
Sky Monster pulled back on the yoke and The Halicarnassus went nose-up into the sky.
Climbing, climbing, climbing…
The Interceptor gave chase, zooming upward after it.
Battling the slope, Jack staggered into the rear hold, clipped a safety rope to his belt, and opened the rear loading ramp.
Air rushed into the hold, and beyond the entryway, he saw the Interceptor immediately behind them— beneath them—framed by the deep blue ocean.
It fired.
Sizzling-hot tracer bullet sentered the hold, smacking into the girders all around Jack—sping!-sping!-sping!— just as he kicked a release lever—the release lever that held his LSV harnessed in place.
The spring-loaded harness retracted instantly, whip-snapping away, and the light strike vehicle rolled out the back of the plane and fell out into the sky.
Seen from the outside, it must have looked very odd indeed.
The Halicarnassus soaring upward with the J-9 behind and below it, when suddenly the LSV—an entire car— came dropping out of the Hali and…
…sailedpast the J-9, the Chinese fighter banking at the last moment, just getting out of the way.
Its pilot grinned, proud of his reflexes.
Reflexes, however, that weren’t fast enough to evade or avoid the second LSV that came tumbling out of The Halicarnassus ’s rear hold a moment later!
The second falling LSV smashed squarely into the fighter’s nose, causing the whole Interceptor to just drop out of the sky. It plummeted to the ocean, ejecting its pilot a moment before it and the car entered the water with twin gigantic splashes.
High above it, The Halicarnassus righted itself, retracted its rear ramp, and flew off to the northwest, safe and away.
“Huntsman,”Sky Monster’s voice came over the intercom.“Where to now?”
Standing in the hold, Jack recalled Wizard’s message. “WILL MEET YOU AT GREAT TOWER.”
He keyed the intercom. “Dubai, Sky Monster. Set a course for Dubai.”
BACK ATWest’s farm, Chinese troops stood guard at every gate.
The two majors, Black Dragon and Rapier, waited formally on the front porch as a helicopter touched down on the dusty turnaround in front of them.
Two figures emerged from the chopper, an older American man shadowed by his bodyguard, a twentysomething US Marine of Asian-American extraction.
The older man walked casually up onto the porch, unchecked by any of the guards.
No one dared stop him. They all knew who he was and the considerable power he wielded.
He was a Pentagon player, an American colonel in his late fifties, and he was fit, extremely fit, with a barrel chest and hard blue eyes. His hair was blond but graying, his features weathered and creased. In stance and bearing, he could have passed for Jack West twenty years from now.
His Marine bodyguard, ever alert, went by the call sign Switchblade. He looked like a human attack dog.
Black Dragon greeted the senior man with a bow.
“Sir,” the Chinese major said. “They have escaped. We brought enormous force and executed our landings perfectly. But they, well, they were—”
