Fire from the gun battery at the far side of town exploded in the air near him, a close call. McCracken drove the Hind into a weaving pattern as he fired his three missiles in rapid succession, the laser guides doing the rest. He was actually over the generator-gun complex and past it before he was certain of impact, but he banked the Hind back so he could see the effect of three direct hits.
Nothing! The only evidence of any impact was a few scattered fires sprouting from minor splits in the steel over-skin.
Blaine’s stomach sank. He had struck the generator gun dead center with three shells that could level a city block, with no apparent effect. Already his mind was working in another direction. His only hope was to bide his time over Main Street long enough to ready another pass, and this time he would fire his missiles straight for the exposed barrel from which the ray would be emitted, a far more difficult shot but his only hope of knocking the weapon out.
He plunged closer to the ground as he crossed over Main Street again, firing his air cannons in random patterns just to buy himself time. Hitting the barrel would be a tough shot. He narrowed the firing grid at the small computer display screen on the console just to his right. The warship was fitted with an infrared camera on its underside, which broadcast the shape of whatever the missiles were aimed at on the monitor. When his target appeared on the screen all he had to do was lock into it and a missile would trace for the target from wherever it was fired.
McCracken dropped the Hind as low as he dared, barely fifty feet up, firing his laser-aimed cannons at windows where gun barrels protruded. The greatest congestion of resistant activity had been centered around three buildings in the town’s center, obviously headquarters and perhaps armory for Raskowski’s men.
The first, unbeknownst to him, was Sheriff Junk Heep’s office, the facade of which was obliterated by his first rocket. The second was what looked like a general store. He gave it a missile and enough of the building exploded outward to make the soldiers in the street dive to the ground.
When he neared the eastern edge of town, the regrouped gun battery aimed a volley at him which missed the mark widely. He sped up and peppered the guns with as many missiles as he could fire until he passed them, leaving smoke and flaming steel behind as he headed back west to deal with the second battery.
Four of Paz’s men rushed into the street beneath him holding what he recognized as Laws rockets. He aimed his helmet at them and fired, but his increased speed had the warship already beyond the shooters and his cannon bullets dug chasms out of the street’s fresh tar surface. He was boxed in, the Laws behind and the western battery ahead.
He wasn’t sure how many of the rockets actually struck the Hind-D. The controls seemed to lock up in his hands just for an instant. When the give came back, they were stiff. A pair of red lights flashed on his console board indicating aft fires too large for the automatic systems to fight. Blaine drove the warship on, faster, halfway to the gun battery now.
He could see the gun operators had gotten it right this time. Three of the four big guns were already aimed toward the gulley to lay down suppressing fire that would make it impossible for him to cross. The fourth fired token rounds which forced him to climb sooner than he would have wished. His maneuverability was reduced, as well as his chances of avoiding the blasts once over the gulley again.
His target, the exposed barrel, was frozen in his mind, but it needed to be equally frozen on his CRT grid if he was going to have any chance at all. The gulley came up fast as he crossed over the western battery. Blaine’s hand moved to the targeting computer to lock in.
The fire of the three guns came and kept coming. He was headed straight for the generator complex now, seconds away, with the barrage of shells exploding everywhere around him, the percussion ringing in his ears as the Hind buckled. He adjusted its nose angle lower for smoother release and focused on the narrower target grid waiting for the gun barrel to lock on.
There it was, square in the center! McCracken went for the firing button.
A huge blast tore into the Hind from the rear, kicking it skyward. The warship fluttered in midair, seeming almost to stall, and smoke began to flood the cabin. Red lights flashed up and down the instrument board.
The missiles hadn’t fired! They hadn’t fired!
Paz’s gunners had beaten him by an instant, but Blaine wasn’t giving up yet. He still had three missiles and intended to find a way to fire them. He coughed through the smoke and struggled to regain control of the Hind. More blasts rocked him as he brought the sputtering bird around in a wide bank that took him back over the San Juans. More red lights flickered to warn him all his weapons systems had shorted out and the fuel line was ruptured. The Hind was limping in the air, refusing to go further. He was flying it to its death. And his.
With the last burst of strength he could grab from it, Blaine veered deeper over the foothills of the San Juans. The huge artillery shells followed him every inch of the way, a final one finding him just as the foliage of the mountains was beneath him and he had begun to try some sort of landing.
But that final blast had finished the ship. Black smoke instead of gray flooded the cockpit and filled his lungs. Blaine was aware of a terrible grinding noise and of a tumbling sensation as the brave bird plummeted. He dimly recorded the whiplash of collision, certain at that point he would never know anything again.
Chapter 33
Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse is unquestionably the city’s most fashionable and elegant avenue. Combining the qualities of Wall Street and Fifth Avenue along a three-mile stretch bordered by lime trees, the Bahnhofstrasse houses numerous banks, investment firms, insurance companies and brokerage houses. It is lined from one end to the other with business and commercial buildings of various sizes and architectural styles, the more modem ones seeming to compete with each other for uniqueness of design.
In one of the largest, the Kriehold Building, the top three floors are leased by a computerized mail service that specializes in a worldwide investment newsletter. In reality, the newsletter does not exist. The mail service is a cover. The three floors contain the technological headquarters of General Vladimir Raskowski.
Raskowski had chosen the Zurich locale personally, believing that his enemies wouldn’t expect him to set up shop in one of the world’s busiest business centers. Besides, Raskowski found directing his project from Zurich entirely fitting, for soon even the Bahnhofstrasse would belong to him if he desired. He could have it all, he could have anything.
The computers that controlled the generator gun in Pamosa Springs and the aluminum reflector soon to be in geosynchronistic orbit were on the top three floors, encased by concrete and steel on all sides. In effect, the control room was a massive vault a hundred feet square and employing three dozen men and women.
Raskowski inserted his command card into its slot outside the control room. The huge entry door parted electronically from its seal and swung open. He entered, men rising to attention as he passed. Raulsch, the old German scientist who had designed and built the entire headquarters, rose and saluted crisply. Raskowski’s favorite post was a chair from which he could gaze up at a huge electronic map of the United States. Now the map showed a rising green light — the path of the satellite containing his reflector as it climbed toward its deadly orbit. The various angles required of the reflector to achieve the destruction of specific American targets had been preprogrammed, and now those targets appeared in the form of dozens of flashing red lights all across the country.
“How long?” Raskowski asked Raulsch.