hand went to her collar. She raised the microphone to her mouth.
“All stations lock on, now!” she said into the microphone.
Flying at 39,000 feet off the coast of Mexico, James McCabe smiled as he heard the voice in his ear.
“But, miss, we are trained to-”
“Lock on the target, now!” she screamed, sounding like a spoiled child balking at a parental order.
All stations turned on their IR and radar-equipped seeker heads located in the missile itself. The signal was sent through to the microchip inside the handle of the Stinger and the blip appeared as a target that had been acquired. The three Stinger stations placed on the rooftop all called in stating they had acquired the target.
“Now get out of there,” McCabe ordered. “Flag a cab about three blocks from the building you’re in and don’t look back. Meet me in Atlanta. D.C. is going to shut down minutes after the attack.”
Laurel listened to McCabe and for the first time she started to get frightened at what she had just ordered. It was like a twelve-year-old getting caught hitting a schoolmate with a sharpened pencil-while the exhilaration was still there, it was nonetheless scary to be caught red-handed.
“But-”
“Get the hell out, now!”
Laurel snapped the phone shut and ran for the stairs.
The two U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors were flying at fifteen thousand feet through a cleared corridor dictated by Marine One’s flight plan to Annapolis. Their job was to cover the path of the presidential helicopter the entire time it was in the air. This was a new protocol since the attacks on air and space assets in the previous week. The pilots were on a rotating roster and were stationed at Andrews. Their duty was usually one of boredom and routine as they circled well above the commander in chief.
The flight lead was Lieutenant Colonel William “Wild Bill” Lederman, a career officer who was filling in for a pilot who had just received his orders to Afghanistan. He was doing it as a favor so the other man could spend a few more days with his wife and two children. His wingman was Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson, a young first lieutenant who was performing the protection run for only the second time.
The world for both pilots was about to change in dramatic fashion.
The large Sikorsky gained altitude quickly and its occupants were unaware of what was happening a mile away at an old and decrepit brownstone. Inside the helicopter a communications line buzzed.
“Mr. President, you have a call on the secure line,” a Marine corporal said as he leaned into the cabin.
The president of the United States looked over at his national security advisor, who was the only one of his staff accompanying him that evening. He then closed his eyes as the phone rang in the armrest of his seat. He sighed and then snatched up the receiver. He knew it was going to be a long night of nervous tension watching the double launch tonight from Vandenberg. He placed the phone to his ear and heard the scrambling sounds as the Marine communications officer made the connection.
“Yes,” he said as he finally received the soft tone telling him the scramble was complete.
“We have a breakthrough from Colonel Collins, and you won’t believe it.”
The president sat up in his seat when heard the voice of his friend Niles Compton.
“What?” he asked, waving the Marine steward away from his seat.
“Samuel Rawlins, the reverend, the evangelist.”
“What about that pain in the ass?”
“We think he may behind all of this,” Niles answered.
“I think you’ve lost your mind. He’s an idiot and has been chastised by every religion on the books-they all know he’s a fundamentalist fool.”
“Jack’s reporting that Rawlins’s father was a minister at Spandau Prison in 1947, and had access not only to the man they were looking for, this Nazi clerk named Zinsser, but also to Albert Speer. They may have divulged their knowledge of Operation Columbus to Rawlins’s father, a lieutenant colonel in the Army at the time. It’s all just circumstantial, but given recent events and the Reverend’s not so hidden disdain of yourself and the attempt to get to the Moon. I’m sure we have enough to get the FBI out in California to pay him a visit.”
The president was thinking. He had never known Niles Compton to run off half-cocked about anything. His guesses were as good as Einstein’s theories.
“Okay, I’ll order-”
Alarms started sounding inside of Marine One and the communications system was shut down without warning. The president looked up as the giant Sikorsky banked hard to the right and started a nose-down plunge just past the White House grounds. The president dropped the phone and held on as the helicopter’s hard maneuver threw him deep into his seat. He heard shouting from up front, but it was controlled as the pilot and copilot started an emergency procedure the president had always heard about but never experienced.
The Marine corporal leaned outward from his seat and looked at the president. The commander in chief saw the worry in the boy’s face.
“We’ve been locked on to with an infrared and radar system. The pilots are attempting to set us down.”
The president nodded as Marine One banked in the opposite direction. He was thrown to the right and painfully so, as his ribs dug into the armrest. He managed to look at his national security advisor and saw him cross himself. His lips were moving in prayer.
“Say one for me if you have the time, Tom.”
Lieutenant Colonel Wild Bill Lederman got the call just as his threat receiver told him that he was picking up a sweeping IR targeting of the area surrounding Marine One. His reactions were fast due to his training running the same kind of missions over Afghanistan while protecting attack and personnel helicopters as they flew into hostile territory. He quickly got a fix on the return of the radar and IR signatures and saw that they were emanating from the east at one mile. Without saying anything he rolled the F-22 over and dove for the deck. He just hoped the sky was as clear as his controllers said it was.
As the two F-22s rolled into the city, the lock on Marine One started a steady warbling in the colonel’s headphones. He glanced to his right as houses began to become large in his windscreen and vapor started to stream off his wingtips. He saw Marine One start firing off chaff and flares as the large Sikorsky lost altitude very quickly, giving Lederman hope that this attack would fail. As he thought this, he saw the first two fire trails of the missiles as they left their launchers. He knew immediately that the weapons were Stingers. He had seen enough of them in Afghanistan and Iraq. They had received a security report on the theft at Raytheon and he suspected that these may be from that theft. All of this flashed through his mind in the briefest of seconds.
“Gunslinger Two, this is Lead. Take out those launchers. Take them out now!” he said as calmly as he could, just as the third missile left its tube from the rooftop. “Have you acquired target?”
“Roger, Gunslinger Lead, Two is rolling in,” came the quick reply from Hollywood.
As Gunslinger One clicked the communication button on his stick, he rolled to the right, away from his wingman just as the first missile suddenly started falling from the sky. The exhaust trail stopped and the missile went down into the office buildings below. The second and third missiles still came on. The F-22 watched as they closed on Marine One. The chaff-little pieces of aluminum foil-and the flares being ejected from the tail boom of the Sikorsky were an attempt to get the Stingers to lock on to a false target, but the colonel knew that the advanced Stinger systems Raytheon produced were programmed to avoid the countermeasures and blast through to the real target.
He decided he had little choice. He turned as hard as he could while at the same time throwing the twin Pratt amp; Whitney F119-PW-100 turbofans into afterburner. The Lockheed jet responded faster than any fighter in the
