The horrified wire operator provided the blow-by-blow commentary that followed. From the glass-enclosed confines of the wire port, he described how over seventy-five feet of drifting wire antenna got ingested into one of the Tomcat’s GE-400, augmented turbofan engines. There was an explosive flash, and the last thing he reported seeing was the F-14’s canopy being jettisoned, the pilot’s frantic attempt to bail out.
There were no celebratory high fives traded inside the E-4B’s cockpit, the crew instead refocusing their attention on the furious air battle that was taking place in the skies to their right. Fiery tracers and eerily glowing missile contrails indicated that the sole remaining Tomcat and the last of the Eagles were engaged in a winner-takes-all battle between fellow countrymen. It was a bizarre sight to behold — this initial engagement of America’s second civil war, fought not with huge armies, but with a couple of highperformance jet fighters over the mid-Atlantic.
“Coach,” warned Red from the upper-deck rest area, “we’ve got Major Hewlett and a security team headed up the stairway!”
“Shit!” cursed Coach.
“They’re not going to be happy until all of us are dead. Lower the fire door at the top of the stairs, Sergeant. And then you’d better reseal that access way we crawled out of earlier.”
The collision-avoidance radar began chiming once more, but nothing was showing up on the screen. Puzzled, Lucky scanned the skies, in the direction where the air battle was still taking place. And then he saw the oncoming contrail, and the pinprick, fiery plume of a single, misdirected Sidewinder air-to-air missile, headed directly toward them out of the pitch-black sky.
“Break left! Break left! Incoming missile!” he shouted.
Coach once more yanked the yoke hard aport. Unlike Air Force One, Nightwatch had no chaff dispensers, or any other defensive countermeasures, and all he could do was get them as far away as possible from the oncoming missile.
Just as the restraint harness began biting into his upper torso, indicating that Nightwatch was in the midst of the turn, the Sidewinder detonated. A massive shock wave caused the entire aircraft to violently shudder, with the majority of the blast directed to the plane’s underside. Thousands of pieces of shrapnel pierced the lower fuselage, the damages immediately indicated on the flight panel displays.
“I’m showing power anomalies in engines one and three!”
Jake informed them.
“Hydraulic pressure is dropping across the line, and we’re rapidly losing fuel from the main bladder. Initiating emergency fuel crossover procedures.”
Alarms were sounding throughout the cockpit, and both Coach and Lucky summoned their every last bit of strength to pull back on their yokes in a desperate effort to counter the rapidly falling altimeter. The lights flickered, and when smoke began pouring into the flight deck. Coach realized that his command had taken a lethal hit.
“Hang on!” he cried.
“We’re going down!”
Chapter 54
Vince pounded the bars in frustration, and Andrew Chapman grabbed his bruised fist and kept him from inflicting further punishment upon himself.
“Easy does it, Kellogg. Since it’s apparent that you’ll never smash your way through those bars, chill out, and quit blaming yourself for our predicament.”
“The more I think about it, the more it makes sense,” whispered Vince bitterly.
“Those bastards intentionally left that MRE in here so I’d have an opportunity to escape, and lead them right to you.”
The VP shook his head in disagreement.
“Look, Kellogg, it was my decision alone to reenter the hollow when we heard that claymore detonate, and whatever happens, that’s something I can live with.”
“But what about them?” said Vince, referring to their four cellmates, who were huddled on the floor behind them.
“That boy is gonna bleed to death unless we get him some medical attention, and I should never have allowed them back into the hollow after learning what kind of animals we were up against.”
At the rear of the cell. Junior was sprawled out on his back, fading in and out of consciousness. His father and sister were doing their best to attend to the tourniquet that Chapman had helped rig up. Tiny was nearby, his pride hurting more than his bruised skull.
It had been nearly an hour since one of their captors had checked on them. This was only a cursory visit, and the green faced commando refused their urgent request for water and medical supplies. It appeared that they had been abandoned altogether, and just as they were about to give up hope of ever getting any help, a pair of BDUclad men holding M16s and ammo-laden LBEs rushed past the detention cell.
“Hey, stop!” pleaded Vince.
“We need a first-aid kit!”
They disappeared into the cavern’s black recesses without so much as a flicker of recognition, and once again Vince pounded his fist into the iron bars.
“You know, it looks like some kind of alert is coming down,” remarked the VP.
“Perhaps our rescuers are on their way even as we speak.”
Vince greeted this hopeful comment with a pessimistic grunt, and he listened as Chapman added, “This Mariano character seems to be a bit of a psychopath. If he’s indicative of the type of individuals the leaders of this supposed coup are relying on, they don’t stand much of a chance.”
“A soldier like Mariano has his place, sir,” returned Vince.
“Every army needs its trained assassins, and as for Mariano’s psychopathic personality, it’s the nature of the beast. After all, we created and trained his type to fight a guerrilla war that we never intended to win. And now we have to learn to live with the consequences.”
“The latest diagnostic indicates that it definitely isn’t our equipment that’s at fault,” reported the technician, ever afraid that this news would generate yet another angry outburst from the bearded veteran anxiously pacing the floor of the Op Center behind him.
Dick Mariano accepted this revelation with a disappointed shake of his head, and there was an uncharacteristic timidity in his voice as he glanced at the overhead clock and calmly replied, “Then there’s nothing we can do but continue to wait for his call. Why don’t you try another digital page. Chief? I’m beginning to wonder if something bad hasn’t happened to the man, and I’m tempted to give ole spit-and-polish Warner a buzz to get the skinny.”
Mariano’s two-way activated with a burst of static, and he readjusted his cranial headset and spoke into the miniature chin mike.
“Mariano … I expected as much. Doc. Pass on a “Job well done’ to the boys, and get your keisters back to the inner perimeter.
I want you sealed up inside the compound in ten minutes’ time.
“Cause at midnight, all hell’s gonna rain from the sky, and those pussy-eating Sappers will be nothin’ but overdone barbecue.”
Chapter 55
“Captain, the weapons system is at 1SQ. Missiles number one and twenty-four are ready to launch.”
The amplified intercom announcement echoed through the missile magazine, and Benjamin Kram and the five SEALs gathered at his side looked out pleadingly to the armed group of sailors who continued to face them. Captain Terence McNeil Lockwood appeared to ignore the intruders as he reached up for the nearest intercom handset.
“COB, I want that sonar up within the next two minutes, at which time I intend to ascend to launch depth.”
Lockwood lowered the mike and listened as Kram reinitiated his argument.