But as bad as the crowd was inside the airport, it paled in comparison with the mob that waited outside the airfield’s fence. O’Malley estimated there were close to a quarter of a million people surrounding the facility.
“This is ridiculous!” O’Malley said to Elvis. “A thousand 747s couldn’t carry all these people out!”
The Wreckers had arrived just minutes after a gruesome catastrophe. Many of the fences around the airport were no longer strong enough to hold back the burgeoning crowds. Several had already broken down. One of those remaining was the barrier on the north side of the airport, closest to its last operating runway. Its supports finally gave way just as a beat-up Swedish National Airline 747 Jumbo jet, smoking and desperately low on fuel, made what was technically an unauthorized landing.
Just as the big airplane came in, the weight of the thousands pressing against the fence made it collapse. Those leaning on the fence when it snapped were forced to run in all directions, the crush behind them was so great. Several hundred were forced right into the path of the landing 747. The airliner’s pilots, horrified to see the people on the runway, were too low to abort. The big plane plowed through hundreds of terrified people head on, flipping many up and over its wings and horribly sucking others into its jet-engine nozzles. The pilots had immediately reversed the big jet’s engines in an attempt to halt the airplane’s screeching roll and stop the unbelievable carnage, but the action only caused the airliner to skid off the runway and plunge into a larger crowd of people. A fire quickly broke out and the airplane exploded, killing its crew, and more than a thousand others.
O’Malley and Elvis had arrived just two minutes later. They found the runway littered with bodies. Only O’Malley’s skill allowed the fighter jet to land without colliding with a corpse. Still, in steering the landing aircraft around the bodies, O’Malley was forced to swerve the plane off the runway, and now it was stuck up to its right wingtip in sand and dirt that had turned to mud at the end of the runway.
O’Malley reached inside his flight suit, dug out six bags of silver coins, and gave them to Elvis. “Try to bribe someone with a towline and a vehicle, will you?” O’Malley asked him. “We’ve got to winch this bird out.”
“Roger,” Elvis said, taking the silver and bounding off the jet’s wing.
O’Malley reached into the F-4’s cockpit and came up with an M-16. “Here, better take this too,” he said, handing the gun to Elvis. “And better keep your helmet on.”
“Where you headed, captain?” Elvis asked.
O’Malley looked out onto the mass confusion of the airfield, then checked his .45 automatic sidearm pistol.
“I’m going to the control tower to find out if anyone’s seen an F-16 around here.”
Chapter 8
The RAF Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft took off and gracefully climbed to 20,000 feet. Although there was bad weather off to the northeast, it was a beautifully clear morning over Gibraltar.
The big plane turned toward direct north and was soon over the coast of Portugal. Hunter and Sir Neil were sharing a large window near the plane’s navigator’s console, both enjoying the view of the shimmering early morning Atlantic and inviting lushness of the land below.
The pilot called back a reading and Sir Neil checked a navigation chart. “All right, major,” he said with a sly smile. “We are soon to cross over Lisbon. If you look down into their port facilities, I think you’ll see something very interesting.”
Hunter moved closer to the window. Despite a bunch of puffy clouds, he could begin to focus on the port of Lisbon below. Immediately, he saw what Sir Neil was talking about.
“Jeezuz,” Hunter exclaimed. “I’ve never seen so many ships in one place in my life!”
The port and the surrounding waterways were crowded with ships. Freighters, ocean liners, warships, large ferries. There must have been at least 200 of them. They were anchored side by side in a line that stretched for miles. All of them were painted with the same drab, gray-green color scheme.
“Those are the ships of The Modern Knights,” Sir Neil said, a touch of boast in his voice. “Two hundred and forty major vessels. It is a fleet to rival only Lucifer’s.”
“I should say so,” Hunter said, fascinated at the sight of concentrated power.
“But, it’s what will be riding in those ships that’s important, major,” the Englishman continued.
The airplane turned east. Soon, they were flying over what Hunter recognized immediately as a massive military complex close by a mountain range.
“This is Montemor-o-Novo,” Sir Neil said, rolling the word perfectly. “This is the major staging facility for The Modern Knights. They have hired hundreds of thousands of mercenaries. From all over western Europe. There’s another facility like this at Plymouth in the UK. It is these troops, traveling on those ships, that will go against Lucifer’s Legions. This undertaking rivals the invasion force put together for the Normandy landings back in World War II.”
While the Nimrod circled, Hunter studied every aspect of the huge base. It did look like a scene out of the movie on D-Day. “Just when will these troops be ready to move out?” he asked.
“We are hoping they’ll embark just a few days after we do,” Sir Neil said, slowly. “Trouble is, the logistics of such an operation are monstrous.”
Hunter looked back at the Englishman. For the first time since meeting Sir Neil, Hunter heard a hint of uncertainty in his voice.
An hour later, Sir Neil was seated at the navigator’s control station with Hunter peering over his shoulder. The Englishman fiddled with the bank of touch-sensitive buttons that controlled the airplane’s sophisticated “look-down” radar.
The Nimrod had climbed to 50,000 feet and headed northeast. They had hit the bad weather just before crossing over the Pyrenees. Now, even at this height, rain pelted the jet, and strong headwinds buffeted its wings.
“We’ll be over our second ‘target’ in a few minutes,” Sir Neil said, working hard to get the jumble of lines on the video screen in front of them to properly shape themselves to the contour of the earth below. “This weather gives us a good hiding place, Hunter, but it also plays daffy with the TV imaging.”
Sir Neil gave the control panel a well-placed slap just above its fuse bank. The screen blinked twice and then became crystal-clear. Where there had been hundreds of lines of wavy static before, now there was the sharp, neon-blue-and-white image of the snow-capped mountain range.
“Ah, yes, the Pyrenees,” Sir Neil said happily by way of explanation. “Used to take the wife skiing there before the war. She’s in Free Canada now, thank God.”
Hunter couldn’t help but think of Dominique; she too was in Free Canada.
The TV screen was beautifully registering the ground ten miles below, despite the poor weather. The image was so clear, it almost looked like it was being shot by a television camera, not a ground-imaging radar.
“Great piece of equipment, this,” Sir Neil said, fine-tuning the picture even more. “It’s a LORAL TK-1Q imager.”
“Next best thing to being there,” Hunter agreed.
Slowly the image of the mountain faded and was replaced by the swaying lines of the ocean.
“We’re over the Gulf of Lions now,” Sir Neil said. “That’s Marseilles up ahead.”
The airplane bucked once, hard. The video screen protested with a brief burst of static, then returned a faithful picture of the southern coast of France. Hunter turned to look over the heads of the Nimrod’s pilots and out the cockpit window. The rain was getting heavier, the air more turbulent. The pilots had the airplane’s windshield wipers working overtime, and were taking turns wrestling with the controls in an effort to keep the airplane level.