informed his boss. 'About two hundred meters that way.' Kootie pointed along the walkway that wound around the castle that had for centuries been an icon of American family entertainment.
'Let's move and stay on your toes,' Thomas ordered. He stood directly in front of President Moore while Clay sandwiched in behind him. The president held his daughter's right hand, while Sehera held her left. The immunobooster was doing its job and Deanna's arm was mostly healed now.
Kootie took the right flank, and several other agents took up post around them. The group walked at such a fast pace that Deanna had to take several running steps every few walking steps to keep up. She never complained.
'Okay, everybody, let's pick up the pace,' Thomas said. 'Dee, if we're going too fast for you, Clay will carry you.'
'I can run faster than Clay, Thomas!' Deanna challenged.
'That's the spirit, honey.' Sehera smiled.
The walkway began to wind through some ornamental shrubbery and trees. One of the shrubs had a particular likeness to a certain famous little wooden boy while another looked like a flying elephant. Thomas noticed that the trees directly across from them near Frontierland were beginning to sway as if a breeze were picking up, and then suddenly a hovercar shaped like a magic carpet whirred through the vegetation, scattering leaves and flowering blossoms asunder. The magic-carpet-ride car was large enough to hold two adults in front and in back and most likely used the same type of hovercar propulsion that the Andromeda Invasion ride had used. The large plastic hovercar accelerated way beyond the safety protocol speed it had been designed for, and like a guided missile, it collided with Marine One.
'Everybody down!' Thomas turned and pushed the president to the ground and crawled on top of him, using himself as a shield. Clay and several others did the same for Deanna and Sehera.
The magic carpet crunched like an accordion against the armor of the president's aircraft. The plastic fuselage of the amusement park ride didn't make a dent in the armor, but it managed to push the hovercraft up on one skid from the force of the impact. Marine One fell back on all three skids just as the power pack of the magic carpet ride exploded, sending multicolored shrapnel in all directions. A jagged composite material piece of the carpet's tassel penetrated the neck of one of the men standing guard around the vehicle. The shrapnel entered his neck from the side, ripping through his esophagus and the major arteries. He died almost instantly as a spray of bright red blood glinted in a ray of the rising Florida sun.
The rest of the guards around the vehicle had little time to react. A second carpet zoomed overhead and hit the president's hovercraft again. This time the trajectory of the carpet seemed more calculated, and it swooped down low enough just before impact to sandwich several of the other guards, killing them rather efficiently. The few that survived were hammered by third, fourth, and fifth carpets. Finally, a squadron of slightly larger hovercars shaped like flying elephants with gigantic ears swarmed in from Fantasyland behind them and collided with the vehicle, at once inflicting enough damage to topple Marine One up and over, landing completely upside down on a nearby sidewalk. A final car hit the underbelly, tearing through several power conduits of the vehicle. Sparks and hydraulic fluids spilled out from multiple torn junctions in an array of electric colors and goopy liquids. The electrical system flashed bright white with just enough heat in the right direction to trigger the volatile liquids to flame. The lift began to smolder and then slowly burn. Pieces of the plastic from the hovercars began to flicker from the heat and distort as the surface charred and melted.
'Marine One, do you copy?' Thomas called over the tac-net.
'Roger that. Pilot and copilot are okay but I don't think we'll be able to roll over or to pull out from under this pile of debris,' the pilot replied. 'We're dead in the water here.'
'Hang in there, Marine One. You are on fire and you need to get out!' Thomas replied.
'Negative. We're trapped unless somebody can roll this thing over.'
'Damnit!' Thomas wanted to help them, but his priority was the president. He needed his detail for that mission.
'We should try to help them, Thomas,' President Moore told him.
'I'm sorry, sir, but that isn't our protocol. We have to protect you first and foremost, and moving out there could be a trap.'
At that point the discussion was moot, as a third wave of flying vehicles crashed into the flaming underbelly of Marine One. The impact sent even more fluid spurting from the hydraulic systems, which in turn fueled the already growing flames. Soon, the hovercraft reached a critical flashpoint and burst into roiling orange flames. Finally, it exploded as the ordnance on board must have reached some critical temperature. The explosion flung debris high into the air across the central fountain on Main Street. There was little left of the president's vehicle or the crumpled amusement park hovercars.
'HQ! HQ! This is a full-scale attack alert. The president is under attack and Marine One is down! I repeat Marine One is down! We need immediate backup and extraction. President is in jeopardy!' Thomas called over the net. He pulled one of the other agents from the periphery over the pile to cover the president. Then Thomas crawled forward to make a better assessment of the situation.
