“No.”
“Why do you think she’s not here?” Dalton didn’t wait for an answer. “She’s going to a shielded location. Everyone on this ship will be killed when you transmit.”
“The bitch,” Valika muttered. “I never trusted her.”
“There isn’t much time,” Dalton said.
“What can we do?”
He noted a long case on her bed and he had the spark of an idea. “What’s that?”
“Barrett fifty caliber.”
Dalton smiled and he knew Marie had pointed him in the right direction. “Strategic target interdiction.”
“What?”
“Something I trained on in Special Forces.” Dalton was opening the case. “Grab a couple of extra magazines.”
Boreas’s eyes were locked on the red numbers counting down.
:58:57:56
Cesar was also watching the same numbers on the screen of the computer that Souris had programmed. He briefly wondered where she was. She had not called in for a while. It did not matter. His gaze went back to the screen and the distant stare returned.
Jackson released out of the trail B-2’s computer into the virtual plane, flying along with the two bombers. She watched as they both smoothly completed the turn, led by their guidance and targeting systems, and their bomb bay doors opened.
The first cylinder of the lead plane dropped down into the opening and cycled through, spitting out bombs.
Boreas leaned forward to hit the red transmit button just as the first MK-82 landed on the leading edge of the field of antennas. The second impacted a half a second later.
Mixed among the five-hundred-pound high-explosive bombs were the cluster bombs. Two hundred meters above the ground, the casing of each thousand-pound cylinder split open, dispensing 202 bomblets. The “footprint,” as the Air Force called it, for each CBU was two hundred meters by four hundred meters. As the heavier MK-82s dug out ten-foot-deep craters, the CBUs cut huge swaths through the antenna field, slicing metal like cheese.
Boreas was stunned as the thud of the first explosions reverberated through the control center. He ran to the window and looked out, seeing flash after flash in the darkness as bombs exploded.
Jackson was satisfied the HAARP field had been wiped off the face of the Earth by the first B-2. She was right behind the second one as its first cylinder unloaded.
She’d manipulated the GATS/GAM on that one to target the HAARP control facility. She knew forty thousand pounds of ordnance was overkill for one two-story building, but the bombs were available.
Boreas never saw the B-2, five thousand feet above in the night sky. He also didn’t see the first MK-82 as it hit the roof and tore through to the first floor.
He did have a brief glimpse of the fireball that consumed him before he died.
The screen cleared and a smiley face appeared. Cesar frowned. What was going on?
“Cesar.”
He recognized the voice. Souris.
“It is too late for anyone to stop this. We will rule the world.”
“Who? Who are you talking about?” Cesar jumped to his feet and slammed the monitor to the ground, glass shattering. The smiley face was still on other screens, grinning at him.
The face disappeared, replaced by a single blinking word.
TRANSMITTING
Dalton settled down with the butt of the Barrett tight into his shoulder. Valika was kneeling next to him, a set of binoculars oriented on the closest satellite dish. They were on the walkway that ran around the rear smokestack of the Yuri Gagarin, over a hundred feet above the main deck and on level with the top of all the dishes.
He pulled the trigger and the rifle rocked back against his shoulder. The half-inch-diameter bullet hit the exact center of the dish, blowing the core into a thousand parts.
“Adjust, up one twenty meters,” Valika said.
Dalton reacted, shifting the gun.
“Fire,” Valika ordered.
He pulled the trigger and the second large dish was out of commission.
“Adjust, plus one ten up ten.”
He had the rhythm, the feel of the Barrett, a weapon he had fired in training, and it took less than a second to find the new target. The third bullet took out the next transmitter. This was a mission he had been trained for at Fort Bragg, using the Barrett to hit critical components of various systems to disable them.
Red lights were flashing in the bridge of the Gagarin.
“What is it?” Lonsky demanded.
Zenata was staring at her displays. “The two main and first alternate dish are down. Transmission is rerouting to the final dish.”
“What the hell is going on? Who’s doing this?”
Dalton pulled the trigger.
“Miss,” Valika told him.
Dalton felt the snap of bullets whizzing by before the sound reached him. “What is it?” he asked as he resighted on the last remaining dish.
When there was no reply, he pulled his eye back from the scope and glanced to his left. Valika was against the smokestack, a large splotch of red on the upper left quadrant of her chest, a thin trickle of blood flowing from her mouth. Her lips twisted slightly in what might have been a grin, then her eyes glazed over and the body slumped back.
“Damn.” Dalton spared a look down and he could see Cesar running forward, a submachine gun tight against his shoulder. A string of bullets tore into the walkway just to the right of Dalton. He ignored them, knowing he had run out of time, and aimed at the center of the fourth dish.
“Reroute complete,” Zenata announced. Lonsky was on the left wing of the bridge, looking back, trying to find the source of the firing.
“Transmit in two seconds,” she yelled to him.
Dalton pulled the trigger and the bullet hit the center of the dish, silencing it. Even while the bullet was in flight he was fading, disappearing from the real plane into the virtual as Cesar fired another burst that tore through where he had been. The Barrett fell to the deck with a loud clang.
Dalton jumped and was on the deck just behind Cesar. He re-formed in the real plane, his left arm shifting into a firing tube. He didn’t hesitate or feel any compunction about shooting the other man in the back. He fired and the ball of energy hit Cesar in the middle of his back, blasting him forward.
Cesar was dead before he hit the deck plate.
Dalton shifted back into the virtual and jumped, heading back toward the Ranch.
25
The computers on the two B-2 bombers had been released from the reprogramming that Jackson had done. The planes were on their way to the nearest Air Force base outside Anchorage. The crews were certain their careers were over. Dropping eighty thousand pounds off-range was an offense they were sure they would never recover from. They could only hope they had hit wilderness and not killed anybody.
Behind them, there was little to indicate that 540 steel towers had once occupied the torn and savaged ground. On the hillside where the control center had been, there were just a few chunks of smoldering concrete.
Captain Lonsky looked at the body of the man who had bought the ship for a few moments, then issued an order.
“Throw it overboard.”
Once that was accomplished, Zenata waited for the next order.
“Let us head back to Russia,” Lonsky said. “The less said about all this, the better.”
Dalton raced along the power connection with Sybyl, back to his body at the Ranch.
Souris diverted the Lear to Dallas. She “knew” that Cesar had been unsuccessful, but she also knew that the Psychic Warriors had been responsible for destroying HAARP, so the two canceled out.
She had failed in the mission she had been assigned, but gaining the Psychic Warrior update was a coup. They would appreciate that. It would give them a way to enter the real world and fight the Priory.