Tomcats that should be there any second.
Ryan didn't answer; at that moment his F-14 lurched in the sky, throwing him against his harness. His Tomcat quickly lost a hundred feet of altitude as something shot overhead in a blur of silver. The wings of his fighter wobbled uncontrollably for a moment and the nose dipped in a downward spasm. They were caught in the wake of a second saucer as it streaked toward the first. Several warning lights flashed on the Tomcat's control board. Ryan fought the stick, advancing his throttles to try to gain his original altitude. At that moment, a sick greenish light washed over their clear cockpit canopy, casting an eerie glow on themselves and the interior of the jet. The Tomcat's engines lost their whine and the engine-failure light came on. First engine one, then two, flashed their red warnings. A silence now filled the cockpit with the exception of a computerized voice warning of engine stall, and the eerie quiet outside was almost as loud as the engines it had replaced. He didn't panic as training kicked in and he went into automatic. He fought the stick, bringing it forward, then to the left; all the while a soft hum now filled his ears, seemingly coming from outside the aircraft.
'Flameout! Flameout! Range Rider Two is going tits up; repeat, we're a dead stick,' Ryan called.
'Aw fuck!' Henry said almost too calmly from the backseat as he clenched his teeth together.
Ryan brought the stick all the way forward, at the same time lifting both feet from the pedals that controlled the Tomcat's rudder, allowing the ship to automatically control the spin they were in. This brought the Tomcat to a nose-down attitude, a straight position to gain speed, and now the huge aircraft hurtled toward the sea below like an arrow.
'Trying engine restart,' Ryan said, keeping his voice under control.
The Tomcat was equipped with an air-powered generator used for emergencies like this. Rushing air caught vanes, and those turned a generator, and that in turn supplied the aircraft with enough power to restart her engines without the help of ground facilities. At least that was the way the engineers had designed her. This was one scenario you trained for but never actually did outside of a simulator. The high-pitched whine of the rushing stream of air outside the cockpit was close to unbearable.
Derry heard the distress call made by Vampire as his wingman plummeted to the sea. He thumbed the safety release for his Sidewinder missiles, but he couldn't get a lock. He was about to pull away from the craft to his front and try to eye the new assault coming up his back when his own Tomcat was thrown forward as if it were a toy. The tail section was pushed down and the nose went straight up. The twin vertical stabilizers were sheared away as if they were made of eggshell. In the split second before the cockpit was engulfed in flames, Derringer saw the second ship as it rammed him. The F-14 Tomcat disintegrated into a million pieces as the force of the impact, combined with its speed, pulled the plane apart. The wreckage scattered into the wind and pieces of debris fell smoking to a watery grave below.
Another strange light, this time bluish in color, shot forward from the second saucer and engulfed the first. The two ships were now encased in a giant silver-blue sphere.
We've lost contact with the two bandits, sir.'
Harris made no comment. He watched as the single blip of one of his fighters suddenly lit the screen. It was losing altitude fast.
'Sir, Range Rider Two has declared an emergency, both engines are out,' the radio operator called, finally hearing the distress calls from Ryan.
'Where in the hell is Range Rider lead?' Harris asked.
'Only Rider Two is on the scope, sir. Our Alert One aircraft are almost to the intercept point.'
'Nothing on the two targets?' Harris asked.
'No, sir. They have gone completely off the scope.
Silence filled the Combat Direction Center as Harris moved for the bridge phone, but placed it back in its cradle when he heard the announcement to launch rescue choppers. Harris stood in silence. His hand moved to his chin and he closed his eyes. 'What in the hell just happened?'
The Tomcat was falling too damn fast, Ryan thought. He had tried to ignite his engines twice with no luck. His panel was still brightly lit, but for reasons he couldn't understand, the big GE engines wouldn't fire. There was nothing left for the bird to do but fall from the sky.
'That's it, Henry, we gotta go, man, punch out now!' Ryan flipped a switch and allowed juice from the onboard generator to warm up his weapons system. Ai
Henry Chavez grabbed for the yellow-striped handle over his seat and swallowed hard. 'Eject! Eject! Eject!' he cried three times, and closed his eyes.
The canopy separated with a loud bang as Chavez pulled the handle. The force of the ejection shot him out of the jet at over a hundred miles an hour. The blast sheet that deployed when the handle was pulled down covered his helmet and head, so Ensign Chavez never saw the piece of debris that killed him. A chunk of aluminum housing from the destroyed Range Rider One stuck him in his visor-covered face, the debris sinking straight to the back of his skull.
Ryan's mind was spinning as his chute deployed and his ejection seat separated. He was fiercely concentrating on his own survival. He tried to turn and finally caught sight of the Phoenix's contrail through the sky and watched as he saw the long-range missile strike the second saucer, sending pieces flying off its aft quarter. The saucer lost altitude but quickly recovered, and it and the first saucer disappeared into the clouds on a northeasterly heading.
Now as Ryan looked about, he knew Derry was gone. Distant splashes in the water showed him where his commander's remains were striking the sea. The sky was now clear except for the two chutes that settled lazily for the sea. Ryan watched as Chavez's chute swung back and forth in big hitching motions. Ryan looked closer and saw Chavez's arms hanging loosely at his sides. The lieutenant closed his eyes a moment, knowing in his heart what the uncontrolled chute meant.
TWO
Augustus Simpson Tilly had been on this desert since the end of the Korean War. Buck, his mule, had been with him for a third of that time, and they had both become something of a legend in these parts, along with the mountains he prospected. The locals referred to him as Crazy Gus or Old Nut Case, depending on their age. The old man knew they called him those things and didn't really care. He heard the whispers and the not-too-quiet laughter that followed him in the Broken Cactus Bar and Grill in Chato's Crawl, just down the road from Apache Junction. Julie Dawes, the owner of the bar, would shush them, then buy Gus a beer and tell him they didn't know any better. But Gus knew deep down they did. He knew how he looked to others: old, grizzled, dirty, and every year of his life chiseled onto a face that had seen the worst in others.
Gus had lived through the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, a long and forgotten valley that most history books try to skip over. It was one of those moments that would haunt the army and Marines forever. Gus had had to live through strapping the bodies of his best friends to the sides of tanks just to get them out of that frozen valley of death. He watched as men,
He and Buck had been walking since sunup to get to the base of the mountains before midday. He wanted to
