CHAPTER 68
“You got him, Harv?”
“Negative, lead. I can’t see him… Nothing on radar, either. Not a goddamned thing.”
“He should be at our twelve o’clock, straight ahead, two hundred feet below.”
Captain Marshall knew they should be almost on top of the B-2 any second now, if the bomber crew had stayed on course, and if they’d maintained speed. If not, Ripper flight might blow right by.
The B-2 was a large airplane, and that was in their favor. It was the kind of shape that could be picked out of the sky at a distance, unless you happened to be at the same altitude. The flat shape of the bomber presented a very small profile when viewed edge-on. From their position two hundred feet above, they should be able to spot it against the top of the low cloud deck below.
For a split second, Captain Marshall saw something on his radar. “Harv, I just got a—”
“Tally ho! Got him!”
“Where?”
“At our twelve, right below the horizon!”
“I see him! Bandsaw, this is Ripper. Target in sight, Ripper is attacking!”
Inside the bomber were two fellow airmen, Air Force pilots doing their best to follow the order they’d received from the president of the United States, sweating in their flight suits and wishing they were somewhere else, doing something — anything — other than what they were doing right now.
Just as he was.
Screw the orders… I can’t just blow him out of the sky without giving him a chance to disengage! It’ll only take a couple of seconds. “Two, burn across his nose, see if you can get him to abort. I’ll stay at his six.” And then gun the living hell out of him if he doesn’t.
Ripper Two flashed ahead, a long tail of blue flame shooting from the F-35’s afterburner.
Ripper lead took position at the B-2’s six o’clock position — directly behind — and armed his 25mm Gatling gun. Capable of spitting out 3,600 rounds per minute — sixty rounds per second — the rotary cannon could chew through the bomber with just a short burst. Since they’d been on a ground attack mission, their aircraft weren’t equipped with any air-to-air missiles. The gun was all he had: 180 rounds of cold steel.
Captain Marshall watched as his wingman rocketed toward the B-2, positioning himself for a pass across the bomber’s nose and then frantically pulling into a high-g climb when the massive bomber banked hard right, into his path, the two aircraft missing each other by a matter of feet.
As Ripper lead kicked right rudder and slewed his F-35’s nose to follow the B-2, placing the bat-winged bomber in his gunsight, he noticed a glint of sunlight off to his left.
Below, and to the left.
No…
He reversed his turn, rolled inverted, and pulled back on his stick, dropping the nose of his aircraft.
And he saw it.
A small, cylindrical object, reflecting the sunlight and falling toward the cloud deck below.
The bomb.
The B-2 had released its weapon before they had a chance to stop it and then pulled away to escape the blast.
“Bandsaw! Weapon released! Weapon released! Ripper Two, get the hell out of here!” Captain Marshall shouted the words into his oxygen mask, grunting against crushing g-forces as he banked hard to turn away from the bomb, slamming his throttle to the stops and diving at a shallow angle toward the ground, keeping the tail of his aircraft toward the coming blast.
Through the cloud of vapor that enveloped his aircraft as he slammed through the sound barrier, he could see the B-2 diving away also, its two-person crew rapidly increasing the distance between them and the hell they’d released. Every second meant increased chances of survival.
As he screamed by the subsonic bomber, he knew the extra seconds he’d given them — to try to avert having to drill 25mm shells through a couple of pilots just doing their duty — had been a few seconds too many.
Twenty seconds later, the remaining residents of Minneapolis-St. Paul witnessed a man-made sun appear in the sky above their beloved Twin Cities, tearing a miles-wide hole in the cloud layer.
It had already happened over Oklahoma City.
And over Little Rock, as well.
For all the people left in those cities who’d turned their faces to the sky wondering if the jet engines’ thunder was a sign of salvation from the horrors they’d seen, the last milliseconds of their lives became an insufferable eternity.
They felt the heat.
Thermal radiation, traveling outward from the fireball at over three hundred thousand kilometers per second, caressed them.
Searing. Blinding. Flesh-eating.
The fireball itself, tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit, floated silently above them, expanding, reaching out with strange tentacles toward the earth, exploring its surroundings in its first wink of existence, gorging itself on the atmosphere around it.
Unimaginable, insatiable.
Milliseconds ticked slowly by.
Skeletons cleaned of flesh stood in place, some pointing, some staring eyeless at the ravenous brilliance, instantly vaporized as the detonation’s roar embraced them. An ancient noise it was, cracking, rolling. The voice of Legion commanding.
I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
Silhouettes on pavement remained.
CHAPTER 69
Carolyn checked the time. Sundown would occur in thirty minutes.
Over the last few hours, she’d watched as the things inside the casings changed.
They hadn’t doubled, as they’d done during the last three days.
There was a single creature in the humanoid casing, and a single creature in the rodent casing, but they were… almost normal. Both creatures now possessed a small, dense mass in the center of their brains, the purpose of which she couldn’t ascertain. The rest of their bodies looked as though they’d returned to their premutated states.
The body of Sergeant Wilson — who she’d seen pacing back and forth in the containment chamber as some sort of hellish beast, who she’d seen soak up without any detrimental effects enough soman gas to kill a thousand people — looked human again.
Normal size.
Normal bone density.
Normal musculature.
And the rat, a run-of-the-mill sewer rat. Normal, except for the mass in the middle of its brain.
She’d watched her readouts record the gradual disintegration of the casings, a steady thinning of the thick, bone-like shells that, at their current rate of decomposition, would lose their integrity at roughly the same time the sun went down topside.
If the same thing was happening to the ground wave casings, and to the bird casings in Minneapolis, Little Rock, and Oklahoma City, they should’ve cracked open by now.
But they hadn’t heard anything yet.
Nothing at all.
General Rammes had been topside for the last hour, apparently called away by something more pressing.
Carolyn couldn’t think of anything more pressing than what they were doing right now, but he’d sure been in a hurry.
Garrett had gone with him, as well.
After Garrett’s little scene with the security guard, forcing her to get some sleep, she’d gone out like a light. She’d been completely exhausted, and thirty minutes of sleep made a world of difference. She was energized, on top of her game, able to think clearly instead of trying to absorb all she was seeing and doing through a thick fog of total exhaustion.
Regardless, she couldn’t explain what she was seeing.