“What have we got left, Nitro?”
“Air-to-air, but they’re not working, remember.”
“Let’s go with landing gear.”
“Mow ’em down. Gotcha.”
Dimatta disengaged the autopilot and brought the MakoShark into a tight left turn, lining up on the dome. “I’m ready,” Williams said.
Dimatta lowered the landing gear, feeling the increase in drag tug lightly at the hand controller.
The screen displayed the dome on the night-vision lens.
He retarded his throttles on the approach.
“Down a tad, Cancha.”
The antennas came up fast, and he leveled out, using the light spillage from the left side of the dome as his landing strip.
The right gear slammed into the antenna group.
Sparks and metal flying.
As they flashed across the top of the dome, Williams reported, “Communications blackout.”
McKenna and Munoz went to the floor when they heard the racket from above, the sound of tearing metal.
It died away, they looked at each other, shrugged, and stood up.
The steel Verboten door was locked and would not budge. McKenna turned to his right, found another steel door, and pushed it open to find a stairway.
“This way, Tony.”
Munoz closed the door quietly behind him, and the two of them went sideways down the steel staircase, keeping their backs to the wall and the M-16s at port arms.
It was a series of half-flights, with landings at every half-story. Below, McKenna could hear voices speaking in German.
On the fourth floor, he opened the stairwell door and looked out on a corridor that matched the one above. There was no apparent fire damage here, but water dripped from the ceiling.
No bodies, alive or dead.
He stepped into the hallway and tried the door at his right, which did not have a forbidding sign or a lock. Opening it an inch he peered into yet another corridor. This one was wide, about thirty feet across. It didn’t match the interior plan Pearson had drawn. He’d have to let her know she wasn’t infallible.
Or maybe he wouldn’t say anything about it to her. Damn, he was getting conservative.
The hallway was wide and long, from the well section to the outer curve of the dome. There were three Ping-Pong tables and a few electronic games situated around.
On the other wall he saw an elevator door and another door with the black letters Verboten. That seemed to be the place he wanted to be.
If not for the ten men milling about in the recreation space. They were armed with assault rifles and carried steel helmets.
The door across the way opened and an officer stuck his head out. Yelled.
The men snapped to attention, then donned helmets.
McKenna shut the door.
“Kev?”
“I think somebody wants to meet us.” He unclipped a grenade and pulled the pin.
“You don’t want to meet a new friend?”
“Not these.” He twisted the door handle, hauled the heavy door back, and rolled the grenade in.
Slammed the door.
Hit the floor with Munoz right beside him.
Heard yelling.
Dull boom.
The door blew out, slammed him in the shoulder.
Munoz yelped.
Smoke and dust and debris in the air.
McKenna pushed the door off of himself and struggled to his feet.
The Germans had been flung all over the room. Blood and flesh splattered the Ping-Pong tables and walls. Some of them were groaning, and some were screaming, and some were deathly silent.
The lieutenant in the other doorway was on his back, his hands clutched to his face.
Munoz hadn’t moved.
Keeping an eye on the opposite door, McKenna dropped to his knee.
“Tony?”
He moved his head groggily.
There was a long gash in his forehead, blood rushing freely from it.
“Hey, Tony?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I’m all right.”
“You sure?”
“Hell of a headache. I’m okay, jefe.”
Munoz rolled over and pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. The blood dripped from his head onto the carpeted floor of the hallway.
McKenna dug into his right thigh pocket and came up with the first aid kit.
Munoz took it from him, settled onto his buttocks on the floor, and leaned back against the wall. He found his M-16 and rested it across his legs.
“Go, amigo.”
With a quick glance around the corridor, McKenna dashed across it and slammed into the wall next to the doorway. The wall was smeared with blood and riddled with shrapnel. The lieutenant moaned.
He inched his head around and looked inside.
Rows of electronic consoles.
A whole herd of people, down behind the consoles, peering over them.
A huge man in a uniform shirt, but with no insignia, leaned against the back of a chair, his arms crossed, staring at the doorway.
And a general. In full uniform. His face was almost black with his fury.
He didn’t see any guns in there, so he pushed off the wall and stepped through the doorway, careful to avoid the lieutenant. Kept the M-16 trained lazily in the direction of the senior officer.
The general stared at him.
McKenna got close enough to see the name tag on his breast pocket.
Eisenach.
What do you know? This was the guy Pearson tried to find out more about, but whose assignment as a special assistant to Marshal Hoch had been ultrasecret.
He walked sideways and looked down the next row of consoles. Fearful faces looked back at him. He didn’t see any weapons.
“General, you tell a couple of these people to tend to the wounded in the hallway.”
The general didn’t move.
The big man barked an order in German, and five men leaped off their knees and ran to the doorway.
McKenna checked the door and saw Munoz standing beside it. He had a bandage plastered to his forehead, but it was already orange.
“Tony?”
“I’m still here. Got it covered on this end.”
McKenna turned back to the German general. “The way I have it, Eisenach, you’re in charge of all this shit.”
Still not responding.
McKenna nodded at the big guy. “Who are you?”
“Colonel Hans Diederman. You are?”
“Colonel McKenna. U.S. Air Force. Well-wisher.”
“I am sure,” Diederman said.
No humor there. “What do you do in this room?”
Diederman looked at the general, then back to McKenna. “Monitor operations of the wells. Peaceful wells, Colonel McKenna.”
“They are very dangerous wells,” McKenna countered. “You have no controls in here?”
“None. And now, we have no monitoring. The antennas are gone.”
McKenna tilted his head to scan several of the screens. They were all blank.
“You have no radio communications?”
“None at all,” Diederman said.
The general’s face finally mobilized, changing from fury to something else. Fear? It looked as if he might have a heart attack.
“You and your people have overestimated the dangers, I am afraid,” Diederman said.
“What happens in a Force Ten gale?”
“Nothing. I designed these platforms myself.”
Egomaniac?
Eisenach looked down at the first console, then quickly away.
McKenna released the stock with his left hand and pointed downward at the floor. “What’s down there?”
“The Switching Center.”
“Collects and distributes the electricity?”
“Exactly. You have destroyed an enterprise designed solely to help mankind, Colonel McKenna.”