Koz started climbing the ladder with one hand while his other held up the M9. Sachs started right after him, but Li held her back until he was almost out of sight above her. Then she gave her the go ahead, and Sachs put her boot on the ladder and pulled herself up.
As she did, one of Marshall’s men emerged from the shadows like a phantom, moving quickly toward the base of the ladder. She heard a cry and looked down in time to see Captain Li fall away, shot in the back, dead.
Glowing eyes — night vision goggles — looked up at her from below and a red target dot began to move up her body. She struggled to find the gun on her hip, but couldn’t get it out of the holster. A shot rang out and the green eyes exploded in front of her and the phantom sank back into the dark.
She looked up at Koz, hanging on with one hand, the M9 in his other hand. “Look out!” he shouted as he aimed his gun at her.
Sachs flung herself to the side of the ladder, hanging on for her life while Koz pumped several bullets straight down the ladder at a second phantom. Sachs heard a groan and saw a fleeting shadow before she heard a loud
She tried to swing her feet back onto the ladder, but a couple of bullets pinged off the rungs. She looked up. Above Koz, a woman in uniform was leaning over the open ceiling door, firing down at them. Koz fired back one- handed, and the woman cried out and staggered back out of view.
55
Inside the 30-foot-tall turret of the pyramid, Marshall was booting up his Defender air traffic controller post when he heard the gunfire erupting below. The only reason he had kept the floor’s door open for the ladder was for Harney and Wilson, but he would close it if he had to and they would have to fry.
“See what’s going on downstairs with Harney and Wilson,” he ordered Major Banks, who was setting up the landline communications system and running a line on the floor.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
Everything in the turret had been hardened to withstand nuclear impact: The walls, ceiling and floor were lined with an 11-gague steel liner plate. Mounted on the floor were open frame racks for circuit boards, and built into each of the four slanted walls was a gigantic, 20-foot disc — the complex’s phased-array antenna. Suspended overhead was a shock-isolated platform for Cold War support equipment long gone. The only thing it supported now were the servers that hosted the War Cloud cyberweapon program.
He turned his attention back to his radar screens and to opening a clear line of communications with his Defenders on the secret frequency. He was using one of Raytheon’s newer STARS, or Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System equipment, to get a clear picture of aircraft operations over the Pacific airpace.
The digitized blips on the screen represented his ten top-secret Defender 747s armed with laser canons. They were the Tier 3 component of his Defender system, based on America’s Airborne Laser Test Bed program. Each Defender plane could direct energy to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometers, and at a lower cost per intercept than missiles.
He could only imagine the look on General Zhang’s face any minute now when he launched his DF-5s in response to the incoming American Minutemen nukes. The onboard sensors of the U.S. Defenders would detect the boosting Chinese missiles and track them with a low-energy laser. A second low-energy laser would measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbance. Finally, the Defender would fire its megawatt-class high-energy laser, heating the boosting DF-5 to critical structural failure.
And General Zhang would see the futility of his response even before the incoming Minutemen killed him.
Marshall spoke into his headset, “All Defenders report.”
Defender One reported, “All clear.”
“All clear,” reported Defender Two.
Every Defender, save Defender Six, was almost in range to shoot down any outgoing ICBMs from China that General Zhang might launch before he lost them to incoming Minuteman. Zhang’s window was closing fast to make a decision, and so was Marshall’s to make sure the Defenders could take out any Chinese missiles.
“Defender, climb to 38,000 feet,” Marshall ordered.
Marshall knew from personal experience as a fighter pilot that the hardest part of mission flying was reading the clouds. Aiming a laser canon in flight was infinitely harder. Volatile temperature and barometric pressure might bend the beam just enough to miss an outgoing missile, or jiggle the plane enough to blow the shot.
Defender Six updated its position. “Barometric pressure stabilizing.”
Marshall said, “Maintain course, Defender Six.”
Marshall had trained these pilots well, and the beauty was that nobody in the current situation knew about them. Not General Zhang in China nor General Block at Northern Command. Only President Rhinehart and General Carver at Strategic Command, who allowed Marshall’s program to proceed behind Congress’s back. Now they were both dead.
Best of all, at this time of year in January, Beijing was cold but dry, with an average of fewer than two days of rain.
In short, clear skies were perfect for lasers.
Marshall heard Banks cry out and turned to see her stagger back from the open door in the floor and collapse. He pulled out his M9 and walked over. She was spitting up blood, suffering, eyes pleading for help.
Marshall gazed down at her for a moment. She reached up her hand, and he took it in his left even as he lowered his right hand holding his M9.
“Mission accomplished, Major Tom.” There was pride but no pleasure in his voice. “You are honorably discharged,” he said and shot her in the head.
The light went out of her eyes instantly, and her head rolled to the side.
Marshall moved to the open door in the floor and peered over the edge, cautiously. He saw none other than Colonel Joe Kozlowski coming up the ladder, with what appeared to be Deborah Sachs some way behind him. Kozlowski was pointing a gun up at him, and Marshall moved back as a bullet whizzed by his ear.
Marshall stuck his hand holding his gun over the edge and sprayed several bullets straight down until Kozlowski stopped firing.
56
Sachs heard the gunshots and called out Koz’s name. But instead of an answer she saw him suddenly lose his grip and fall toward her. She grasped the next rung of the steel ladder with one hand and swung out of the way. She watched in horror as Koz’s body hit the concrete floor at the base of the ladder far below.
She screamed. “Oh, my God!”
“I’m up here!” Above her, Marshall’s face lingered in the opening, gun in hand, but then withdrew from sight.
She froze on the ladder. She desperately wanted to crawl down to Koz and run away from that monster Marshall above her. But run to what? A world that Marshall destroyed? There was no turning back, she realized. This was either kill or be killed, and she had to keep going. Jennifer and at least a billion American and Chinese were counting on her.
Sachs willed herself up the ladder, one rung at a time, hand over hand, boot over b until she reached the
