Time to add power, get the hell out of here, and figure this shit out over an airport with lights!
That decision made, he pushed the power levers forward and pulled back ever so slightly on the control yoke. And got the shock of a lifetime.
Nothing. No response.
This isn't happening! Not to me, not with 183 people on board! Please, God, not this!
He pushed the yoke forward a smidgen, reduced power. Nothing. The engines were still running — he would have felt it had he lost one — but the inputs to the controls had absolutely no effect.
Ten seconds had passed since the flash, no more than that.
A total power failure, he thought, one chance in a zillion and by damn it's happening! That flash must have been lightning — it must have fried everything in this plane! The computers are cooked. Lightning! The plane is fly- by-wire, with computers that move the flight controls, that regulate fuel flow to the engines, that—
The plane began a slow roll to the left. A few degrees a second. Victor Pappas felt the plane roll, saw the moon and night sky and barely visible river move. Without conscious thought he twisted on the yoke, turned it to the right and pulled back slightly, trying to counter the nose-down drift that instinct told him was coming.
Oh, Jesus, there it was, the nose was dropping… twenty degrees angle of bank, turning toward the Anacostia Naval Station.. the nose dropping…
He slammed the throttles full forward. Nothing.
In slow motion the airliner continued to roll, the nose dropping toward the Earth. Behind him someone screamed.
Victor Pappas released the controls. One hundred and eighty-three people! He closed his eyes and began praying.
The airliner had reached ninety degrees of bank, thirty degrees nose down, when it slammed into the Earth.
At D.C. General Hospital, Dr. Apollo Ice had two patients on ventilators. One of them, an eighteen-year-old male, had been shot in the head earlier in the evening during a gang-related fracas outside a district bar. The other, a fourteen-year-old girl, had taken thirty sleeping tablets, all that remained in a bottle containing a prescription for her mother, after her first boyfriend told her she was ugly and he didn't want to be her boyfriend anymore.
Dr. Ice was in the ventilator room checking his patients when the power failed. He stood in the darkness waiting for the emergency generator to kick in. As the seconds passed, he counted.
When his count reached ten seconds he knew he had a decision to make. He didn't know why the emergency generator hadn't come on-line, supplying power — he didn't know that the switches in the circuit were fried — but he knew for an absolute fact that both his patients would die without air, which the machines had been providing.
The girl, he thought. The boy may have permanent brain damage.
He pulled the girl from the ventilator and began artificial respiration. He glanced at his watch. The liquid crystal display read 10:58.
He got into the rhythm, working slowly and steadily, trying for about twelve breaths a minute. After a bit the sweat began dripping off his nose.
Okay, people, let's get the goddamn emergency generator going here. The boy will die in minutes if we don't get juice to his machine. I can do this for only one person.
'Help!' he shouted. Maybe a nurse will hear. 'Damn it all to hell, somebody come help me or we're going to lose this kid!'
How long had it been? The boy's brain would begin to die if he didn't receive some oxygen soon.
Apollo Ice looked at his watch. The display still read 10:58. He couldn't believe his eyes. Two or three minutes had passed, at least. He didn't know that the E-bomb's electromagnetic pulse had toasted the watch too.
'Help me,' he shouted, unwilling to leave the girl. 'Help me, for God's sake, somebody help me.'
Moving carefully along the unfamiliar dark hallways, looking for people in the light of burning drapes and smoldering carpet, Jake Grafton found he had his cell phone in his hand. He jabbed the button to turn it on, waited for several seconds for the small display to light up. It didn't. The thing was dead as a rock.
Before his eyes a wall burst into flame. Unless the firefighters got on it quickly, the entire building would soon be involved. Missile warheads were designed to set aluminum and steel warships ablaze— the effect of a direct hit on a large building with a high wood content by a warhead containing 750 pounds of high explosive was awe- inspiring.
Satisfied that he could do nothing here without protective clothing and breathing apparatus, Jake found a window with the glass blown out and leaned out to get some fresh air. Behind him were the sounds of flame consuming everything it could reach, yet over that he could hear another airplane.
When the dull boom of the explosion from the crash of an airliner several miles away reached him, Jake Grafton left the window and made his way along the hallway, opening doors and searching for victims. He shouted over the noise of the fire, the rush of air, and crackling as dry wall and plaster and wood and steel burst into flame.
'Anyone here? Sing out!'
He was coughing when he found someone, a man in civilian clothes on the floor of one room. He heard the groan and found him by feel. Something had fallen from the wall or mantel and knocked the man unconscious. He was coming to now, but Jake grabbed him by the armpits and dragged him off. If they stayed here without protective clothing or breathing apparatus, they were both going to be victims.
Out on the lawn he found other people who had somehow made their way from the building, the entire top story of which was now ablaze. He pulled the man across the drive and put him under a tree, well away from the building. The man was breathing, with a regular heartbeat, when Jake left him.
Jake walked directly away from the burning mansion, toward the Mall. The Washington Monument should have been prominently visible, lit by floodlights, the city alive with lights and the streets with cars, even at this hour. But not a single gleam of light was visible beyond the garish light from the fire behind him. The noise of the fire was the only relief from the silence. There were no fire sirens, no fire trucks, no police sirens, no traffic noise of any kind.
Several of the people behind him were sobbing. He could see shadowy figures running across the driveway and lawn near the south entrance to the building… and from here and there, shouts, calls, curses. .
Jake heard another airplane, the engines howling. It swept over, apparently descending toward the river. It too crashed in a welter of fire and light, a glow that lit the horizon beyond the trees and buildings. Somewhere near Arlington National Cemetery, Jake thought.
Then he heard that unmistakable sound, a small turbojet engine traveling low and very fast, probably about five hundred knots.
'Another Tomahawk,' Toad said in a hoarse whisper. He came up behind Jake.
The missile seemed to cross from left to right, from east to west, directly over the Washington Monument or very near to it. It literally flew down the Mall, over the Capitol, over the Washington Monument, and over the Lincoln Memorial. And that route made sense. All three of those huge man-made objects would make excellent points for position updates as the missile began its final run-in to its target.
'Where is it going?' Toad muttered, speaking more to himself than to his boss.
'West,' Jake Grafton replied.
The stench and smoke brought him back to the here and now.
In the darkness the fire in the White House continued to burn. The fire had taken most of the upper stories on this side now. There were people in the driveways flaking out hoses, cursing about water pressure, issuing orders. But of fire trucks, he saw not a one.
'The whole thing is going to go,' Jake said under his breath.
Although he waited and waited, he heard no more Tomahawks.
Crossing the Capital Beltway westbound, the last Tomahawk fired that evening from USS
The E-warhead in the nose of the missile detonated fifty feet above the roof of the main America On-Line technical facility in Reston, Virginia.
The terawatt of energy just five hundred picoseconds long generated by that warhead burned out every
