world could have. It streaked toward the lead missile, trying desperately to head it off.
As the flight lead was in the process of intercepting the assault on Marine One, his wingman locked on to the rooftop of the building. He saw a team of six men attempting to run for cover as his F-22 shot through the sky toward them. Long before their missiles came into proximity of the Sikorsky, the CAP found the weapons personnel. The piper on the heads-up display turned red as the small circle sought the first and second man in line. At the same time as the fleeing men were targeted, Hollywood made the call to his controller saying he was locked, but locked in a civilian neighborhood. He was given the all clear to engage the targets.
The Raptor screamed toward the rooftop and before the men knew they had company there was the short “buruppp” of the twenty-millimeter Gatling gun. The tracers streaked toward the first two men in the line trying to reach the rooftop exit. The explosive rounds struck and tore the two men to pieces. Hollywood touched the trigger one last time for exactly a half a second. The short time span of pressure sent 306 rounds toward the remaining men. The twenty-millimeter shells ripped into the tarpaper roof and then tracked the four men and their suspected path. The men joined their first two comrades in a shower of misted blood and flying flesh.
The F-22 climbed at the last moment, sending debris and gravel from the old rooftops surrounding the attack area. The Raptor climbed back into the evening sky.
Gunslinger knew that one of the missiles was going to get through no matter what he did. There was no time for thought and no time for a quick prayer. He jigged at the last minute and caught the first warhead fifteen hundred feet from Marine One. The Stinger caught the Raptor in the right wing and blew ten feet of the composite material free of the fuselage. Just as the impact occurred, Colonel Lederman called a Mayday and reached for the ejection handle over his head. The Raptor rolled to the left at a severe angle and then the fuel lines running from the composite wing that was no longer there ignited the aircraft into a fireball. The Lockheed-built plane came apart in view of Marine One and directly in the path of the third and final Stinger missile.
The Stinger actually struck the disintegrating body and ejection seat of Lieutenant Colonel Lederman as it passed through the cloud of burning debris. It ignored the last of the Sikorsky’s chaff and flares and then detonated three feet from the helicopter’s engine compartment. The warhead was a 3 kilogram penetrating hit-to-kill warhead type that sent shrapnel out in a perfect arc that punched holes into not only the turbine-driven engines but the composite rotor blades of the helicopter as well. The fifth rotor wobbled for the briefest moment and then it too disintegrated as the helicopter fell from the sky.
It had been hit at an altitude of only eighty feet, but instead of auto-rotating when the loss of engine power dictated, Marine One came straight down and struck the street a quarter mile from the White House. Police helicopters were close by and their powerful spotlights illuminated the scene from almost two hundred feet away. The large Sikorsky struck the street and slid almost sixty feet into a median in the center of a wide thoroughfare. It hit the concrete rise and bounced, sending the green and white Marine One back into the air before it slammed down on its side sending the remaining rotors flying in all directions. Three cars were struck and the heavy aircraft spun them around into each other as the aluminum started to spark from the friction of the roadway.
The police helicopters never hesitated. They dove for the tragic scene below without regard to the power lines that crisscrossed the area. Motorists, seeing what had happened, snapped out of their paralysis faster than anyone could have believed as many rushed from cars and houses, office buildings and fast food restaurants. They all ran for the burning Marine One.
Most of the tragedy was caught live on CNN. All but the final result was broadcast live all around the world along with the frantic calls of the police helicopters.
“Marine One is down!”
The panicked rescuers were trying desperately to get inside as a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter sat down hard on the street beside the burning wreckage.
One of the only people who had not witnessed the attempted assassination of the president of the United States was climbing into a cab she had finally managed to flag down six blocks from the launch point of the Stingers.
Laurel Rawlins had the shakes, but the smile was still etched across her face. She knew her father would be proud and he would look on her favorably as a worthy successor to his vast fortune. She would take up the mantle of God’s messenger, only her message would be quite different from her father’s. Hers would be one of hope, and reconciliation.
She knew that this could only come about if all traces of Operation Columbus were removed from the mines, something her grandfather should have done many years before, and her father when he learned of the excavation many years after.
Her next target would be in Ecuador, and she knew her father may not approve, but by that time his approval might not be as important as it once was. She had to get that technology from the buried second gallery where it was suspected the real wealth was buried. She knew from her father and grandfather that the Germans, for reasons unknown, had sealed that portion of the mine and never gone back in. Her father explained once that they had been spooked by something inside, and if the German army was afraid of its contents, Laurel Rawlins knew she had to have it.
The driver looked at the pretty face of the woman in his backseat and wondered why her smile actually broadened as the cab turned off to National Airport.
For a full hour, reports of the assassination attempt filled every television screen across the land. Americans didn’t know if the president was alive or dead. The presidential physician was on duty at Georgetown Medical Center and so the U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter was diverted there instead of to Walter Reed. A thousand reporters waited outside for word on the president’s condition.
9
It was only four hours before Sarah, Will, and Jason were due to suit up. Their flight commander was an Air Force colonel by the name of Arthur Kendal, in command not only of the three Event Group personnel, but of the six other men who had been assigned to the backup crew of the Atlas platform, and he was anxious to see if his crew would become a viable part of America’s return to space.
The crew would be lifted into the sky and delivered to the International Space Station by the Space Shuttle Atlantis if their mission became necessary. While they waited at the dinner table where they had been served a steak, Sarah watched one of the three monitors inside the cafeteria. One was on CNN and the others were static views of the launch pads out west at Vandenberg and in Florida at the Cape, where the giant Atlas stood like an ancient monolith, waiting to see if it would be called upon to serve America one last time.
The two Ares systems were ready at Vandenberg in California. Their two crews of ten would be lifted into orbit and delivered to the space station by the shuttles Endeavour and Discovery. All eyes were watching CNN for news out of Washington. For Sarah, Mendenhall, and Ryan, the news had hit particularly hard because they knew the man who had just been shot from the sky and they also knew that the president’s best friend in the entire world was their very own boss, Niles Compton. As they watched, the coverage broke away from the hospital to the CNN news desk in Atlanta.
“This just in. The FBI has issued a statement detailing the arrest warrants for James McCabe, a former U.S. Army Lieutenant colonel, wanted in the questioning of not only the event tonight in Washington, but for the explosions in Berlin, Germany, that claimed 107 lives, and the attack in French Guiana that claimed another thirty. McCabe has been under investigation for several days now and is known to have ties to fundamentalist movements around the world. The FBI has refused to answer questions about how they came to their conclusions about McCabe, stating only that they have substantial evidence of his involvement.”
Sarah studied the picture of McCabe, an ordinary-looking man who appeared to be an accountant and not a former Special Operations officer in the same army in which she was serving. She looked over at Ryan and
