Eagle had the Snake high, at five thousand feet, circling over Knoxville. They knew Burns was close — how close was the question.
Doc knelt in front of Moms, holding out his iPad. He tapped the screen. “Here. See this?”
“Power lines,” Moms said. “The ones Roland jumped into. And? You think Burns is using them?”
Doc shrugged. “He might be. But this whole area is built on power. The TVA.” He pointed to the deck of the Snake. “The river is dammed in multiple places, all of which generate power. There’s also three nuclear power plants that are run by the TVA along the river.”
Nada had leaned over to listen in. “Not another fucking Chernobyl. Ms. Jones would shit.”
“How close is the nearest nuke plant?” Moms asked.
“Watts Bar,” Doc said. “About sixty miles downriver. And they’re getting ready to put their second unit online. The first reactor to be started up in the U.S. in over twenty years. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Plus they ship tritium to the Savannah River Site.”
“But Burns is around here as far as we know,” Nada said. “And—” He paused as Moms cocked her head to the side, indicating a message from Ms. Jones.
“We’ve got a target,” Moms announced. “Lock and load. Eagle, take us in.”
The Fireflies flashed through, darting about almost joyfully.
As if they knew what joy was, Burns mused as he watched them go by, lighting up the darkness. Despite the fact that he was no longer a Nightstalker, his training held and he counted them as they came out.
Fourteen.
They went off in different directions on their various missions of mayhem.
“Too late, Nada,” Burns whispered. Then he brought the automatic rifle up and scanned the sky overhead for the parachute he was sure would soon appear.
Most likely Roland.
Which meant it would be a big target.
Roland had always been a pain in the ass, Burns thought as he flipped off the safety.
Eagle flew along the river, one hundred feet above the dark water. The plan was to use the river to reach the power lines and then loop underneath them, avoiding the towers and coming in right on top of the Rift and fast roping down. It would require some fancy flying on Eagle’s part, but that’s why he had the big brain.
Literally.
“Thirty seconds from the lines,” Eagle announced. “Opening ramp.”
The team was locked and loaded. Scout was all the way forward in the cargo bay, under dire and strict orders from Nada to remain exactly where she was. He’d buckled a harness around her and snapped the leash into a deck bolt, ignoring the dirty look she gave him.
It was just in case.
And to keep her from following the team out.
The back ramp opened wide and the roar of the engines and the air swirling about added to the decibels.
Roland had the M240 in one hand, loaded and ready. He had a flamethrower on his back, the barrel of the weapon resting in an asbestos sheath strapped to one thigh.
Mac had the M203 grenade launcher, a 40-mm grenade ready in the lower barrel.
Moms and Nada had MK-17 CQC SCAR automatic rifles, reluctantly having traded in their venerable 9-mm MP5s over the past year in favor of the heavier cartridge and greater range. They were old dogs but willing to learn new assault rifles when the advantages were obvious.
Doc had his medical kit in one hand and his laptop in the other. This was Protocol when they were approaching a Rift, because it was his job to shut the thing while the rest of the team took care of the Fireflies.
Moms glanced down at her iPad, checking on the status of their support units. She had a lot of firepower on hand and ready.
Nada glanced over his shoulder and gave Scout an encouraging grin, lost in the blackout red lights of the cargo bay. Then he focused at the yawning mouth of the ramp, ready to charge off into whatever new hell awaited them.
What wasn’t lost was the fourteen-foot-long wooden pole that abruptly ripped through the floor of the Snake, passing inches in front of Scout and lodging into the roof.
“Fuck!” Eagle shouted over the net as the aircraft rocked sideways and lost altitude, diving toward the river.
It was a sign that he was more than a tad agitated that he used a profanity.
Eagle was flying on instinct, having no idea what had caused the problem, not being able to look over his shoulder into the cargo bay. He just knew they’d been hit by something and he had to keep them airborne.
He slammed throttles forward, drawing every ounce of power he could from the engines, while he fought the dive with both flaps and rotation.
The Snake settled out to a hover less than three feet from the water, stuttering, engines straining.
“What happened?” Eagle demanded as he kept them level.
“We got hit by a telephone pole,” Nada said as he got to his feet and observed the cargo bay, his heart racing until he saw that Scout was all right.
“A what?” Eagle asked.
“We got a fraking pole through the cargo bay,” Mac clarified unhelpfully. The team was sorting itself out after everyone had become a pile of people, weapons, and gear on one side of the bay. Scout had been dangling in her harness, just above all of them, and she had settled back down on the upright deck with a thump.
“Where—” Eagle began to ask, but then another pole flashed by the cockpit, glanced off the armored side of the Snake with a clang, and disappeared into the darkness. Through his night vision goggles, Eagle could see the barge tied off beneath the cliff ahead. The crane was lifting another pole into place in the pile driver, which was oriented toward them.
“We got Fireflies already through,” Eagle announced. “Pile driver on the river has one in it.”
“Head for the Rift,” Moms ordered. She switched frequency. “Spooky, I’ve got a target for you.”
The gunner was chewing gum, reading her Kindle when the call for fire came in. She lifted her gaze from the latest Bella Andre romance novel and scanned the display. “I’ve got a barge. No heat signatures.”
“That’s it,” Moms’s voice echoed in her ear.
The gunner didn’t question the order, the lack of personnel on the target, or the mission. While the Spectre gunship was part of the Air Force Special Operations Wing and had conducted more than its share of hush-hush missions, she’d been able to tell from the attitude of the pilot and copilot just before takeoff that whatever they were doing here over Tennessee was so far in the dark they didn’t even dare to start a rumor.
Theirs was but to shoot and scoot.
“Acquired. Request final authorization.”
“Authorized,” Moms said.
A line of 25-mm bullets shot out of the spinning barrels of the Gatling gun poking out of the side of the aircraft, firing so quickly that the slugs appeared to be a solid line of red even though only every fourth round was a tracer. The 40-mm cannon chugged out rounds, not quite as quickly. And the 105-mm howitzer fired as fast as the crewmen could load it.
As the Snake cleared the shoreline underneath the power line, those in the cargo bay could see the gunship firing downward.
“Minds on the mission,” Moms snapped, trying to ignore the pole through the cargo bay and wrapping her arms around the fast rope.
“Ten seconds,” Eagle warned.
“Roland, guard Doc once we hit the ground,” Moms ordered.
Nada leaned close to Roland and whispered something in his ear, and Roland nodded.
The barge never got a third pole off.
The incoming fire from Spectre chewed it up, ripping the wood decking apart, punching holes in the metal hull. As pieces flew in all different directions, a small golden sparkle lifted out of the sinking hulk and dissipated.