A window had opened on the Compaq’s screen, displaying dorsal and side views of an YF-22 Lightning 2: a small dual-engine fighter that looked like a hybridization between an F-18 Hornet and a Stealth fighter.
“Excuse me, Colonel …” Richard said, then clapped his hand over the receiver again. “What’s its ETA?”
Morgan typed a query into his keyboard, then shook his head. “Five minutes, thirty seconds. Ruby says its onboard computers are inaccessible … must be using a program she hasn’t wiggled into yet. Sentinelis trying to track it, but the sucker’s down in the grass-”
“Ground track?”
More tapping of keys, almost drowned out by the popcorn rattle of gunfire from below the tower. “No good,” Morgan said, shaking his head as he stared at the screen. “Thermal emission zeroed out … ground-air shadow almost negligible … Sentinel’sgot something, but it can’t lock on. The pilot’s flying evasive. ETA five minutes and counting.”
Scott Air Force Base was located in Illinois, not far across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. The YF-22 was made for just this sort of mission: radar-deflecting fuselage, low-visibility paint, engines designed to reduce its heat-exhaust signature. Even flying below radar, the fighter would be here in only a few minutes … and I had no doubt that its Sidewinder missile could finish the job the Hellfires had botched.
“Where’s Sentinel?”Richard snapped.
“Directly above us.”
“Instruct it to … never mind, I’ll do it.” Payson-Smith pulled the Apple closer to him and began to type instructions into the keyboard. He slid the phone across the floor to me. “Keep him busy,” he ordered. “Make sure he knows we’re not bluffing.”
I grabbed the phone and pulled it to my ear. “Colonel Barris-”
“Rosen? Tell that maniac that whatever he thinks he’s doing, it’s not going to work.”Barris’s voice was calm, but I could hear his barely suppressed rage. “Unless you come out that door right now, my men are going to blast it open, and I can’t guarantee they’ll take prisoners.”
If I was scared before, that bit got me mad instead. “Get a new line, Barris!” I yelled. “If your men wanted to demo the door, they would have done it already! You know and we know they’re just harassing us until your jet gets here and finishes the job!”
“Jet? What jet …?”
“ETA three minutes,” Morgan said.
“The jet that just scrambled out of Scott, you weenie!” I almost laughed at his lame attempt at subterfuge. “You think we don’t know about it? Man, we’ve got eyes in the sky, eyes in your computers, eyes in your bathroom!”
“Rosen, listen to me-”
“No, jerk-wad, you listen to me for a change!” Ignoring the rattle of small-arms fire, I sat up on the floor. “You don’t intend to let us go, just as you never intended to let my friend stay alive. But the shoe’s on the other foot now, pal … you’re the one who’s sweating bullets, not me! You’re fucked, Barris, and I’m the one who’s doing the-”
The phone was suddenly snatched out of my hand by Payson-Smith. I grasped for it, but he pushed me away with his hand. “Colonel?” he said. “I’m sorry for the unseemly outburst there, but … yes, that was uncalled for, but my friend is correct in his remarks.”
I crawled away from him, clambering on hands and knees around the glass shards on the floor until I reached the windows overlooking downtown. The sound of gunshots lapsed again, doubtless because the troopers had just received orders from their squad leaders to cease fire and take cover.
“ETA two minutes …”
I raised myself to my knees and stared out through a broken window. The rainclouds that had haunted the city yesterday were gone, leaving behind a dark blue sky. The first light of a new day was breaking over the eastern horizon, painting the Arch silvery rose red and bathing the downtown skyscrapers with a vague pink hue. In the near distance, I could make out the oval bowl of Busch Stadium, where my friend and benefactor George Barris was even now plotting our demise.
It was a beautiful spring morning in St. Louis. I had little doubt that this would be the last Missouri dawn I would ever see.
“Colonel Barris,” Payson-Smith said, “we don’t have much time, so I’ll tell it to you straight. Sentinel 1is above the city right now, and its laser is focused directly at Busch Stadium. Ruby Fulcrum now has complete control of the satellite, and I have given her instructions to open fire upon the stadium unless you remove your squads from the park and order the fighter to break off its attack …”
Now I could see a thin, jagged white contrail coming over the horizon, led by a tiny silver point of light. The YF-22 was coming in hot and fast over the river, skittering back and forth across the sky as it sought to evade Sentinel.In another minute it would be over the reservoir.
“I know you don’t believe me,” Payson-Smith was saying, “so I’ll have to demonstrate. Please watch carefully …”
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw him lift his left hand and raise two fingers. Morgan nodded and typed a command into his keyboard.
I looked out the window again.
A second elapsed. Two. Three …
The contrail flattened out and became more dense as the YF-22 crossed the Mississippi, its pilot homing in on an old stone tower near the edge of the city.
Then a narrow red beam lanced out of the cold blue stratosphere, straight down from space into the center of Busch Stadium. It was there, and then it was gone.
“Strike one,” Morgan said, his eyes locked on the screen.
The beam reappeared an instant later, its angle only marginally different. One moment it was there, and then it had vanished again.
“Strike two,” Morgan said. “Ruby confirms two kills.”
A couple of seconds elapsed, then I heard faint booms from far away, carried by the still morning air, as tiny black pillars of smoke rose from the stadium like funeral pyres. I stared up at the dark sky, but I couldn’t see anything except the last stars of night. If one of them was Sentinel 1,there was nothing about it to distinguish it from anything else in the heavens.
“Those two helicopters were destroyed on the pad by Sentinel.”Richard Payson-Smith’s voice was low, direct, and intense. “The sat is now aimed directly at your office in the stadium. Even if you decide to commence with the attack and we’re killed, Ruby Fulcrum will nonetheless order the satellite to take you out … and when it circles the earth again in another three hours, it will destroy another military target in the United States.”
I glanced out the window again. I couldn’t see the fighter, but I could hear the high, thin whine of its engines. The YF-22 was somewhere over the city, closing in fast.
Richard stopped, listened for a moment, and shook his head. “No, sir, there’s no room for negotiation. Break it off now …”
In those last few moments, all was still and quiet. Payson-Smith intently watched his computer screens, the phone clasped against his ear. Jeff Morgan was bent almost double, his hands laced together around the back of his neck. I stared out the window, my heart stopped in midbeat, waiting for the end of my life.
There was a flat, hollow shriek, then the YF-22 rocketed into sight. Racing only a few hundred feet above the rooftops, it howled over the reservoir, banking sharply to the right as it exposed the dull gray paint on the underside of its wedge-shaped wings. The Compton Heights neighborhood was treated to a sonic earthquake as the jet ripped past the water tower, then its nose lifted, and the fighter hurtled straight up into the purple sky.