“Lion Six,” Mac said. “Fire mission! Over.”
The crew for one of the M177’s replied immediately. “Roger. Over.”
“Lion Six. Fire for effect on laser. Danger close. Over.”
There was a short pause; then the officer in charge of the M777, 155-mm howitzer responded. “Shot over.”
“Shot out,” Mac said, keeping the laser steady on the yacht. It was picking up speed, twin turbines planing it out, heading directly for Nada’s Zodiac. While the rubber boat might be more agile, it wasn’t faster and with two compartments flooding, it was moving slow.
“Splash over,” Lion Six warned, indicating the Excalibur round was five seconds from impact.
“Splash out!” Kirk said over the team net.
The round tore through the deck plating and exploded inside the Splendor. Curiously, the armor plating layered on the boat contained the explosion to an extent.
Which meant the interior of the boat was shredded, along with the lone man left behind for guard duty, who’d been running around throwing every switch he could trying to regain control.
The explosion did make enough holes in the hull, though, that the yacht quickly began to settle.
Another Firefly down.
Eagle had the crane barge in his IHADSS. The crane was rotating, the steel claw swinging, but once more it was short of Nada’s Zodiac.
So far, in Eagle’s convoluted media way of thinking, they’d gone through PT-109 with Moms’s Zodiac being plowed under and cut in half and the sinking of the HMS Hood with the M177 taking out the yacht. He couldn’t come up with a parallel for the barge, so he just said, “Frak it,” and relayed the firing command to the surviving Apache.
The 30-mm chain gun fired, but more importantly, one Hellfire missile launched from the pod on the left side of the attack helicopter. Eagle adjusted slightly and a second Hellfire came off the right side.
The first Hellfire hit the crane, blowing it to pieces. The second hit the barge, ripping out the front right portion. Given the weight on board, it did a mini-Titanic as the crane slid off and into the water, and the barge went vertical and then down.
Two Fireflies dissipated.
And then there was silence.
Burns stood on the roadway that crossed the Loudoun Dam, above the intakes for the turbines. He could see the golden glow approaching in the water. He checked his watch. He’d heard explosions in the distance and knew the Nightstalkers were coming. They were nothing if not persistent.
Something to count on. As regular as time.
“Armorflate?” Roland said. “Really? False advertising, I say.”
“Keep pumping,” Nada ordered Roland. “It’s for bullets, not cranes.” He had Moms, Ivar, and Roland on board, along with his original crew of Mac and Doc. The barge had sliced open two of the air compartments on the Zodiac and damaged two others. Roland was battling the leaks using the foot pump, while Doc worked on bandaging the boat.
Scout and Kirk were on their Sea-Doos, now in tight formation, less than five feet off to each side, their engines almost idling as they kept pace. The flotilla, not even close to being an armada, came around a curve in the river and the waterway widened. A couple of miles ahead, lights glowed in an even line, slicing across the river: the Loudoun Dam.
Moms spoke over the team net. “Eagle?”
“Roger?”
“Get an uplink to FPF.”
There was a short silence. “Roger.”
The B-52 was lazily circling at forty thousand feet when the alert light flashed on the pilots’ control panel and in the lower deck battle station.
Lazy became focused as the crew readied all weapons systems.
Neeley touched down on the road above the dam. Support had already sealed off the road, Route 321, with roadblocks, far enough away from the dam to keep civilians out of eyesight. As she unbuckled her harness, Neeley looked about. It was eerily quiet other than the roar of the water pouring through the spillways, tumbling down to the continuation of the Tennessee River below, to the west.
That roar began to decrease and Neeley readied her MP5 as she walked over and peered down.
Someone was closing the spillways, forcing more water into the intakes for the three generators. She headed for the powerhouse.
A Firefly was inside the control for the gate mechanisms, closing them off. Burns was inside the power station on the northern end of the dam, watching the power levels begin to spike while the outtakes from the powerhouse gained force.
The entire dam vibrated for a moment as the golden glow reached it, being forced through the intakes and then wrapping itself around the three generators, eating the energy they produced.
Inside the Can, there was no power outage this time as the clicking alert sounded and the lights flashed.
“We have pre-Rift!”
Alarms went off in power stations all over TVA as the power output from Loudoun Dam suddenly ceased. Relays were automatically thrown, power was diverted, but blackouts rippled across the Tennessee countryside.
At the Ranch outside Area 51 and in the Cellar underneath the NSA, both Ms. Jones and Hannah watched the developing situation on their computer displays. The pre-Rift warnings came in from Russia and Japan, but it was no surprise that they pinpointed the location at the power station on Loudoun Dam.
They were helpless at the moment to do anything other than observe. Their forces were in place and this was going to play out on the ground, as combat always had since the first caveman picked up a club.
The lights on the roadway along the top of the dam went out. In fact, the lights all around the lake went out.
“That’s not good,” Roland said.
“No shit,” Mac muttered.
“Someone is stealing the dam’s power,” Doc said.
The Zodiac was now less than a half-mile from the dam. Nada powered down on the throttle slightly.
“Burns,” Moms said.
Everyone’s phone began playing “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.”
Moms answered. “Yes?”
“We have pre-Rift inside the power station,” Ms. Jones reported.
“We’ll be there shortly.”
“Neeley should be there now,” Ms. Jones said. “She’ll help.”
Moms had her own opinion on that, but she kept it to herself.
“This is very different,” Ms. Jones said. “Burns, the golden glow. Something is coming together. Something long in the developing.”
“Yes,” Moms said.
“You need to pay attention,” Ms. Jones said. “Be open to possibilities.”
“What?” Moms said.
“Good luck.” And then the connection was dead.
“The gates are all closed.” Mac was peering through a night vision scope.
Moms shook her head and focused on the immediate situation.
“We have to stop Burns from getting all that power,” Doc said. “He’s going to use it to open a Portal.”
“How can he?” Moms asked as they continued toward the side of the dam with the powerhouse.
Roland was ignoring the discussion, checking his M240, making sure it was loaded and that the nozzle for the burner was loose in its sheath.
“Are we sure that a Portal is a bad thing?” Ivar asked.
That earned him a glare from everyone in the boat — except Moms and Nada and Scout.
“Everyone who’s ever opened one is dead or gone,” Nada said.
“A Rift,” Ivar said. “Not a Portal.”
Nada looked at Doc. “Just tell me how to stop this.”