President Jack Brooke burst into the cockpit, followed closely by his terrified advisor, Todd Williams. “What the hell is going on?”
“We don’t know,” said the Colonel. The yoke was vibrating wildly in his hands and a series of various warning alarms were sounding out in the small cockpit. “It’s some kind of electrical attack!”
“I thought this plane could defend against an EMP?” Todd said.
Scott shook his head. “Sure, but this ain’t no EMP!”
They all heard the grim sound of the four General Electric turbofans powering down as the terrifying neon-blue electrical fire leaped and crackled over the aircraft. Brooke shielded his eyes from the blinding flashes sparking across the windshield.
“Five thousand feet and going down fast!” Jennings said.
With wheels up only a few moments ago, London Heathrow’s Runway 27R was only seven or eight miles behind them and the gear was barely retracted inside the plane.
“Can she stay in the air?” Brooke said.
Scott shook his head again as he desperately scanned the instrument panel. “We have a vertical speed of five hundred feet per minute, Mr President. At this rate we’re on the floor in less than five minutes.”
“Can we do anything?”
“We’ve already deployed all countermeasures, sir, but they’re designed to deal with incoming missiles or fighter jets, not whatever the hell this is.”
Scott slammed his hand on the chunky throttle quadrant and pushed it forward again, this time to the max. The normal response would have been a mighty, bass roar as the engines spooled up to full power, but the blue lightning was interfering too much with not only the electrical systems but also the turbofans themselves. The response to the Colonel’s action was the sound of the engines continuing to lose power.
“RAF jets have been scrambled,” Jennings said.
“It’s too late,” Scott said. “We’re going down! Everyone into crash positions!”
“She’s coming down!” Kruger said. ‘We’re actually going to knock Air Force One right out of the sky!”
Hawke and Lea exchanged a look of horror before returning to the terrible sight of the President’s aircraft as its flight crew desperately struggled to keep the wounded bird in the air. Lea felt the sword’s power in her hands more acutely now, and it was starting to burn and sizzle.
“Bring that bastard down!” Vermaak yelled.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Zito said. “It’s like we have the power of the gods!”
The intensity of blue light produced by the Sword of Fire was terrifying, and Hawke was forced look away.
“Jesus Christ!” Vermaak said. “The fucking thing’s going down in that field.”
Hawke watched helpless and consumed with rage as he watched the world-famous Boeing fighting against the ancient power of the sword. Its engines whined and moaned as the lethal blue lightning flashed and leaped all over the wings and onto the main fuselage. He had never seen anything like it in his entire life, and never wanted to again.
“This will kill them all, Kruger!” Lea shouted.
“That’s sort of the point,” Vermaak said.
Lea felt herself passing out, and as her head swam she heard another sound now: fighter jets screeching through the air to the north. Hawke saw them first — two typhoons, and they weren’t messing about. When they got closer he saw the RAF insignia, and then he saw they were armed to the hilt with Brimstone air-to-surface missiles.
“They’ve fucking found us, Dirk,” Vermaak said.
The typhoons banked hard either side of Air Force One to avoid the same fate, and then swooping around toward the house, Hawke saw them both fire.
“Incoming!” he yelled.
Hawke saw in Kruger’s eyes that he wanted more than anything in the world to be the man who blew up Air Force One and killed the President, but he knew the game was up.
Exhausted now, Lea dropped the sword and collapsed into the grass. With the sword on the ground, it had stopped drawing the energy from the air and the blue lightning was dissipating as fast as it had arrived.
Two Brimstone missile scorched a path of death across the sky before slamming into the upper storeys of Horak’s manor house and sending a colossal fireball shooting into the air. The shockwave blasted everyone to the ground.
Hawke rolled to a stop and watched as the neon fire finally released its grip on the presidential plane. The aircraft was seconds away from a devastating impact in a wheat field, but now they all heard the engines power up and pull the wounded bird up out of an imminent stall.
Lea started to come around again. “Thank God!” she mumbled.
With fire and smoke billowing from the mansion, and Air Force One racing away into the blue sky, Kruger cursed and passed a gnarled hand over his chin stubble. “Damn it all.”
“We’d better make tracks, Dirk,” Vermaak said. “This place will be crawling with anti-terror cops in minutes.”
“Get to the chopper!” Kruger said. “We have the sword, and that’s all that matters. And don’t forget the parachutes.”
With Reaper and Mack still unconcsious in the house behind them, Vermaak marched Hawke and Lea toward the AgustaWestland.
“Parachutes, Kruger?” Hawke said. “Nervous flyer?”
“We have a boat waiting for us in the North Sea. Me, Vermaak and Gianni parachute onto it while the chopper drags your boys in blue on a wild goose chase all over France. We get safely away with the sword and your anti-terror idiots are being sent in the opposite direction.”
“And what about us?”
“You’re going to find out what it feels like to hit the ground at terminal velocity, and so is your girlfriend. Get on the chopper.”
Hawke watched Vermaak as he loaded the bag on the plane and then threw the three parachutes in behind it. Lea was still too dazed to fight, but the former SBS operative decided it was now or never and made his move when the commando’s back was turned. With his hands still tied behind his back, he lashed out and headbutted Kruger in the face and then turned and delivered the same punishment to Zito.
Kruger cried out for Vermaak who pirouetted back out of the aircraft and scrambled to contain the situation. He raised his MP5 and screamed at Hawke to get back. He obeyed, but it was too late for Zito. Hawke’s hefty headbutt had knocked the Italian hard and now he was staggering backward toward the Agusta’s tail rotor propeller blades.
Even Kruger turned away as the speeding metal blades ripped into the Italian mobster and sprayed what was left of him all over the helicopter and tarmac.
“Jesus Christ!” Vermaak said, and raised his gun at Hawke. “Try that with me and see what happens, Englishman.”
Kruger looked up and saw the figher jets had been joined by two more and all four were now flying toward Air Force One to escort it out of British airspace. “Get us in the air!” he snapped at the pilot.
Hawke’s last stand had failed, and now Vermaak forced them to get on the chopper at gunpoint.
Scott and Jennings shared a glance that spoke a thousand words as the blue fire streaked away from Air Force One and released its deadly grip on the aircraft. From the jumpseat just behind them, President Brooke shared their relief as the Colonel slammed the throttles forward. This time the engines responded correctly, and a deep, satisfying roar filled the cabin as Scott rammed them up to N1 and pushed the turbofans to full capacity.
“Good flying, Colonel,” Brooke said.
“I wish I could say it was, sir,” he said.
Brooke had no response. He knew things had gotten too close today, and a very dark chapter in American history had been narrowly avoided thanks to the RAF jets that had ripped the hell out of the terrorists’ ground position.