'Go back and get ready, Commander. Did you think for one fucking minute I would leave him out there?' Then Ryan smiled and looked at the specialist in the right seat. 'Ready to be a hero?'
'No, sir!' the young man answered.
Jack saw as soon as he opened the remote case that he wasn't going to have the time to set off the device. The dirt waves were a thousand yards from the dust cloud that was Soda Flats. They were breaching and then diving back into the earth, and they would eventually rise within a hundred yards of the very spot where he was. He frantically started to pull on the broken electrical leads on the case anyway.
The captain in the lead Paladin snapped up when his GPS came to life with target-tracking information. The orders had gone out to give the ground team added time by covering them with their remaining rounds. The numbers were streaming in from the circling AWACS above them. He quickly got on his radio and started shouting orders to his tank platoon as the Excalibur rounds were loaded into M284 cannon.
'Excalibur up!' the loader shouted.
Over the radio they heard a voice call out, 'Fire until all rounds are expended.'
'Gunslinger, fire, fire, fire at will!' the captain shouted into the radio.
The platoon of M109A6 Paladins opened fire, and the Excalibur rounds flew up and out toward their preprogrammed targets. As the gunners reloaded, another GPS signal imprinted on the rounds, initiating contact with the circling AWACS overhead. It was feeding constant target-aspect changes to each individual round as it flew from its tube. The small directional fins popped free and guided the smart rounds to their targets.
Jack heard a tearing overhead as if the sky were ripping apart. The vibration of the approaching animals was actually making the ground around him shimmer and jump. The first rounds exploded on top of the lead offspring running ahead of the male, a mere 250 yards from Orion. These animals vaporized in a flash as the second volley fell on even more of the shallow-traveling creatures. Jack threw himself to the ground as the next three Excalibur rounds tracked the largest target. The male, sensing danger, dove deep as the rounds dug into the dirt and sand, exploding harmlessly thirty feet above it.
A number of the other creatures were faring far worse as they were left behind by their larger and much swifter brother. They became easy targets as their wakes were clearly marked by the cameras of the AWACS, and it computed in a millisecond targets where the Talkhans would be, not where they currently were. The movable fins guided the rounds perfectly, outsmarting the offspring at every turn.
The Paladins fired what ordnance they had.' By the AWACS count they had taken out at least twenty-five of the smaller animals, with the largest Talkhan and possibly twenty to thirty of the smaller females still missing.
Jack saw his reprieve and started working as fast as he could. Then he saw the wave approaching at breakneck speed. It was as if the animals knew what was planned and were trying to speed by before detonation.
Collins looked around at the emptiness of the desert and knew in fifteen seconds it wouldn't look the same, having turned into a giant hole in the ground. He bent down and opened the case and tugged hard on the broken antenna leads, taking away the built-in stress relief all manufacturers place in wiring. He looked up just as the giant animal breached the surface of the desert, followed into the air by the surviving thirty females. Jack didn't know how, but he knew the beast had seen him in the expanse of machine-cleared dirt and sand. The Talkhan roared and dove for the ground, sending up a wave of atomically altered soil that rushed toward ground zero. But Jack smiled as he saw the trailing grayish alkali dust cloud follow the animal down.
'Well, Niles, Senator Lee, it's been fun.' Jack placed the box close to the small antenna and wrapped the wire leads around the steel, then pushed the button.
This time the screen flashed red with the words
The wave diminished as the beasts approached and started making their run for deep soil. Jack smiled, knowing no matter how deep they went, they would never escape the inferno of gamma rays coming their way.
Senator Lee lowered his head. Niles Compton placed his head in his hands and waited. Alice was angry as she quickly swiped a tear from her eye, then glared at the senator for having known exactly what Jack was going to do.
As they all waited, they heard shouting over the COMM link. It was the White House.
'What in the hell are those maniacs doing?' They could tell it was the president yelling.
As Niles looked up, he was amazed to see the Blackhawk slowly zigzagging and bounding its way back to ground zero at a horribly slow rate of speed.
'Ryan, you crazy bastard!' Niles screamed, jumping from his chair and clapping once, knowing there wasn't a chance in hell the slow-moving, terribly piloted Blackhawk would make it, but cheering the fools on nonetheless because he knew a neutron bomb didn't have the same explosive effects as a nuclear weapon. It would be less violent and they would be shielded somewhat if they could get at least two hundred yards from ground zero.
Jack stood suddenly when he heard the thud of rotors and saw the helicopter approaching. 'Good God,' he said as he saw the Blackhawk slewing first left, then right, all the while losing altitude too fast. There was only fifteen seconds left to detonation. The vibration of the approaching Talkhans indicated they were close to dead center of ground zero. 'I'm going to hang you three,' Jack said as he saw Everett hanging out of the door and bracing himself on the remaining wheel and Sarah behind him, grasping his waist.
The beast was past dead center as the Blackhawk swooped in dramatic fashion toward the desert floor. Jack saw a worried look on Everett's face as he reached for all he was worth. Collins jumped, sending a jolt of searing pain through his chest from his broken ribs. Everett caught him, but Ryan was having trouble stopping the Blackhawk as Jack's feet dragged along the topsoil for twenty feet. Then Ryan applied everything he had on the collective, twisting the throttle and adding all the power he had, and the helicopter shot straight up. He had just pushed the control stick forward and the nose had just dipped, gaining speed as they shot away from ground zero, trying desperately to escape the conventional explosive of the weapon, when suddenly the world changed below them.
The desert floor first lifted, sucking the air away from the Blackhawk, making Ryan lose control, then the ground fell back. The eruption was white-hot and only the falling soil saved them from being fried to death by the expanding X-rays. The very edge of the Superstition Mountains vanished as they fell into the giant hole created by the device after it evaporated a half-mile section of desert. The creatures had been only a hundred feet from the neutron weapon when the electrical charge detonated the conventional explosive, sending a compressing impact into the uranium core. The animals had vaporized as the power of the sun struck them and gamma radiation coursed through their armorless bodies.
Ryan had totally lost control of the helicopter. Jack was still dangling precariously above the giant crater in the desert, only holding on because of the sheer strength of Everett and the willpower of Sarah, who was holding the weight of both men. The Blackhawk threatened to force Collins off by centrifugal force as it spun out of control over a hole that now resembled a giant meteor strike.
Ryan was also being forced away from the pedals due to the force of the rotation. The specialist, who saw what was happening, and against the forces being applied, fought his foot to the left pedal and jammed it down, helping Ryan slow the spin. The control panel started flashing several warnings. The engine-fire light went on and Ryan was at a loss as to what to do.
'Sit it down, sit it down, you crazy bastard!' the specialist screamed out.
'You waited long enough to say something besides 'Yes, sir'!' Ryan screamed back. 'And now you're giving orders!'
In the back, Everett and Sarah had finally managed to drag Jack up and over the wheel, and then he jumped into the back compartment of the helicopter and collapsed on the deck. As Everett was pulled sharply backward by Sarah, and they both tumbled into the cabin on top of Jack. They all watched breathlessly out the door at the slowly spinning world outside. Jack saw the giant depression in the ground stretching at least half a mile in a circular pattern and knew the beasts couldn't have lived through that. He nodded, satisfied, and collapsed, not caring that the added weight of Sarah and Everett were crushing him.
'In case you didn't know it, Mr. Everett, that arm of yours is broken,' Jack said as he saw the twisted limb resting beside his own face.
