Terror Descending

“Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the rest of the fleet,” Alyssa Dean announced tersely, swiveling away from her console. Weighing less than a hundred pounds, the tiny blonde had a slim, almost boyish figure, but she possessed the face of an angel even without any cosmetics. A steaming cup of coffee sat dangerously near the keyboard of her console, and a long-barrel Uzi .22 conversion hung across the back of her chair, a space clip attached to the leather strap.

“Report,” Rexton said in a whipcrack tone.

“Captain Tomashevsky in the Berkeley is en route to Eastern Europe. He stopped at our Tunisia base for refueling, and took on a full load of ordnance, so no problems there,” Dean stated brusquely. “Unfortunately, Captain Whitehorn in the Detroit has reported finding a fuel leak. They’re down to quarter tanks, and will never reach our refueling depot in the Caicos Islands in time.”

“Dizzy, can you send them a tanker?” Rexton asked, looking at the picture of Oughton.

“Not halfway around the world,” the professor said. “Sorry, but there’s nothing we can do to help.”

Sitting back in his chair, Rexton glanced at the clock on the curved wall. This was intolerable! How could they have possibly lost a bomber this early in the fight?

“Captain Whitehorn could risk landing at a commercial airport in South Carolina,” Dean offered hesitantly, making a vague gesture at the main screen. “The professor could fake them an ID easily enough, and I can transfer all the funds needed to a local bank. However—”

“However, if anything goes wrong they could be detained by the local police,” Rexton finished for the woman. “Or worse, captured by American Special Forces who would turn our brothers over to the CIA to be brutally tortured until they revealed the location of our two main bases.”

“The bastards can’t catch us, we’re mobile,” Oughton stated defiantly.

“But we are not,” Rexton countered. “Millions of dollars, and years of hard work, would end in total failure, which in turn would spell disaster for the rest of humanity.” Leaning forward, the man sat upright in his chair. “Okay, give me options.”

Neither Oughton nor Dean spoke for a minute, then they shook their heads.

“Anybody?” Rexton asked the room in general.

There came a negative chorus from the staff.

“I see,” Rexton growled. “Then we have no choice. Alyssa, have the Detroit head out to sea. We’ll need to hide the wreckage. Do they have a raft onboard?”

“Parachutes, but no rafts,” Dean replied grimly. “And any water landing would be immediately investigated by the Coast Guard.”

“We all knew how the mission could end, sir,” Oughton said, his face a grim mask.

Sir? Hearing the honorific, Rexton understood. “Then so be it, we at least spare them the horror of being interrogated by the madmen of the CIA,” he said, taking a chain from around his neck. There was a small key attached, and he slipped it into a slot on the console, first twisting to the left, then sharply to the right. Off by itself, a red light began to glow.

“Goodbye, old friends.” Rexton sighed, placing a finger on the button.

“No, wait!” a woman shouted from the door.

Lifting his hand, Rexton turned to scowl at the rapidly approaching woman. Tall, with a cascade of ebony hair that reached past her trim waist, Dr. Carolina Barry was wearing a white medical jacket over a winter-camouflage ghillie suit. A stun gun was holstered at her side, a medical bag slung over a shoulder in case of an emergency.

“What is it, Carolina?” Rexton demanded.

“Marshall,” the physician replied. “Land them in Marshall, to refuel on the ground.”

“Is the airstrip long enough?”

“For a landing, certainly. But they’ll need some JATO units to take off again.”

“They have those on board,” Dean said, a note of hope back in her voice.

“But what about the fuel?” Rexton asked suspiciously.

“Marshall is near a major airport,” Barry countered. “It shouldn’t be very hard for them to buy, or steal, enough fuel to allow them to reach Tornado Base for a proper refueling.”

“That just might work,” Dean muttered, bending to work out some figures on her keyboard calculator. “Yes, they can do it!”

“But if they’re caught…” Oughton began.

Crossing her arms, Barry scoffed. “At an abandoned airstrip, in the middle of a cornfield?”

“It’s worth a try,” Rexton said, turning off the remote destruction button. Slowly, the red light died away. “However, I want them to get some protection. Send along some mercs to guard the crew until they’re safely back in the air.”

“Not a problem, we have lots of friends in that area,” Dean replied. “However, once the mercs hear about what happened at Brussels, they’ll know who we are and try to blackmail us for more money.”

“Or sell us outright to the Pentagon,” Oughton snapped over the video screen.

“Then have Whitehorn blow the airfield off the map once he’s flying again,” Rexton stated coldly.

“Not a problem,” Dean said, swinging back to her console, her fingers dancing across the keyboard. “But once the word of our betrayal spreads, we’ll never be able to trust any mercs again.”

“After tomorrow, there will be no need,” Rexton replied, going back to studying the map of the world on the main screen.

CHAPTER FIVE

Columbus, Ohio

Ghosting out of the darkness, a large black Hummer rolled along the cracked asphalt of the city street. The windows were darkly tinted, the license plate splattered with dried mud, and the VIN plate on the dashboard innocently covered with a folded map. To a casual glance, this was just an expensive car. But a trained observer would have noticed that the car was riding too low and there was no manufacturer’s name on the tires. The Hummer was illegally armored, and riding on bulletproof military tires. For all intents and purposes, the vehicle was a private tank.

Lounging on a street corner near a closed gas station, a group of older teenagers were industriously doing nothing, drinking beer from oversize cans and smoking an assortment of cigarettes and joints.

Listening to the rock music coming from down the street, their casual conversation stopped instantly at the appearance of the Hummer as it cruised around a burned-down grocery store. Immediately drawing weapons, mostly cheap pistols and old revolvers, they eased back into a nearby alleyway merging with the blackness. A car like that, in this neighborhood, could only mean customers for Delacort, and they wanted no part of his business. Some hardass enforcers from the Cincinnati mob had tried to hijack one of his shipments, and the next day the men were found dead, stripped naked, castrated and nailed to a billboard sign along Route 465. The crazy gunrunner had crucified them and left the bodies in public view! After that, even the cops were hesitant to bother Armando “Crazy Mondo” Delacort.

Passing a bar, the music from inside rattling the windows, the Hummer took the next corner and left the paved road to start along a ragged pathway of busted concrete and weeds. The streetlights were soon left behind, and the armored car moved through the darkness, accompanied by the soft purr of its engine and the crunch of the tires over the loose gravel and shards of old glass beer bottles.

Concrete pylons appeared in the gloom, the thick pillars rising to reach the beltway high overhead. Fifty feet above the ground, Route 270 encircled the entire city of Columbus.

Past the beltway, the Hummer turned on halogen headlights, the brilliant beams helping the driver to maneuver through a maze of railroad ties, K-rails and mounds of refuse that probably would have been unnamable in broad daylight.

Beyond the wall of garbage, the people in the Hummer saw the dark outline of the old canning factory dominating a flat empty field. Weeds ruled the landscape, with huge rusting machines of some sort standing about and gradually decaying back into the soil from which they had been originally mined.

Reaching the sagging remains of an electrical substation, the Hummer’s driver parked the vehicle and killed the lights before sounding the horn twice, then twice more. Moments later a light answered from the murky factory, the beam blinking the same pattern in reply.

Turning off the engine, Carl Lyons stepped down from the Hummer and straightened the collar of his Hugo Boss suit. “Keep control of your fucking temper, Knuckles,” he growled, looking sideways at Schwarz. “We’re here for business. Savvy?”

“Yeah, yeah, stop stepping on my dick, will ya,” Schwarz replied with a snort, lifting an M-16/M-203 assault rifle combo from inside the Hummer. Working the arming bolt on the 5.56 mm rifle, he checked the load in the 40 mm grenade launcher, then rested the dire weapon on a shoulder. Ready for instant use, but not pointing in anybody’s direction.

“We shoulda left the ape behind,” Blancanales rasped in displeasure, drawing his Colt .380 automatic pistol and clicking off the safety before holstering the weapon again. “Somebody might offer him a banana, and he’ll go all postal on us.”

“Blow it out your ass, clotheshorse,” Schwarz retorted, not even looking in the direction of the man. “Gotta have one real man along to do any heavy lifting.”

“Which would be me,” Blancanales said loftily. “So what are you here for again, landfill?”

“Shaddup, the both of ya,” Lyons ordered, smoothing down his hair with both hands before starting forward at an easy walk. His .357 Magnum Colt Python was resting in a belly holster, but the former cop felt oddly vulnerable without easy access to his Atchisson autoshotgun. But that didn’t fit into this role for this night. Instead he was carrying a soft leather briefcase, the kind that a lawyer would use to tote mounds of paperwork. The contents bulged slightly and felt heavy.

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