Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (35 page)

 
          
The
entire northern part of the airfield illuminated brighter than daylight. The
western half of the sprawling cargo complex disappeared in an enormous lake of
fire. The fireball that was a 220,000-pound airliner plunged through the
western half of the thirty-acre cargo complex, disappeared for a few seconds,
bounced on the ground, blew out the northwest side of the building, and cartwheeled
several times across the ground, shredding the western half of the
building—Universal Express’s executive offices, communications center, and
computer complex—as it tumbled. The heat of the explosion, nearly a half-mile
away, could be felt right through the slanted tower windows, and Gayze was
thrown to the floor when the shock wave hit and shattered those windows, the
blastfurnace heat rolling across the tower like a fiery tidal wave...

 
          
But
it was not the north windows that blew out—it was the southern windows, behind
Gayze. He leaped to his feet as soon as he could shake the shock and noise from
his head. A few controllers were rushing for the exit door, but Gayze just
stood there, bathing himself in the heat and the noise and the light coming
from an explosion—not on the Universal Express cargo facility, but on the main
terminal.

 
          
Gayze
was reaching for the crash phone button again, but the tower supervisor pulled
his hand away—the tower was dead. “Get out of here, Bill.”

 
          
“What
the hell happened? Did 107 hit the terminal?”

 
          
‘The
tower’s been damaged, Bill. Get going.”

 
          
But
Gayze couldn’t make his feet move. As horrible as the spectacular crash on the
Universal Express facility was, what had happened behind him on the main
terminal was even more shocking. The main terminal building, right at the
intersection between the east and west concourses, was on fire, severed and
flattened in a fiery crater. Two airliners were on fire, and two more were spun
sideways from the force of the blast. Gayze could see inside one L-1011
airliner, and the flickering lights in its windows told him that passengers
were rushing toward the exits inside. The fire was still several yards away
when Gayze saw doors pop open and emergency escape slides deploy on the side of
the plane opposite the fire. A few doors opened on the side of the fire, but no
passengers used that exit, thank God. The evacuation seemed rapid and orderly
...

 
          
.
. . but it wasn’t fast enough, because suddenly the L-101 l’s left wing caught
fire, then exploded, ripping the fuselage of the big airliner in half.
Passengers and baggage spilled from the ruptured halves of the airliner onto
the fiery tarmac. Gayze ducked when the force of the explosion hit him up in
the open tower cab.

 
          
“Bill!”
someone shouted. “Get out! Let’s go!”

 
          
But
Gayze looked through the clouds of smoke and fire at the terminal. It was not
just the main terminal that had been hit—now he could see huge fires breaking
out on the north side of the terminal, the northwest corner of the parking
garage, and the south side of the Sheraton Hotel, just a few hundred yards west
of the control tower. He could hear the roar of the fire, smell the burning
kerosene—it was like looking at a firestorm.

 
          
“Bill!
Damn it, let’s go!”

 
          
Smoke
was rapidly filling the control tower, and Gayze was forced to drop on his
knees and crawl to the stairs toward the exit. His eyes were filled with tears,
and not all of it was from the smoke.

 
          
“Oh
... my ... God ...” Roberts muttered in stunned disbelief as the series of
explosions and fires rippled across
Memphis
International
Airport
below him. But the sight of the burning
terminal and hotel was nothing compared to the horrifying sight of the sea of
fire that was once the Universal Express super hub. It looked like a nuclear
bomb had simply flattened and vaporized the entire northern half of the
airport. The flames still shooting from the impact site seemed to tower far
above the Shorts’ altitude, and the ripples of fire made it seem like the bottom
of a volcano’s lava pit.

 
          
“I
said, close the cargo doors, Roberts,” Cazaux ordered over the intercom.
Roberts still was too stunned to make his feet or hands move. All that death,
all that destruction—and he had witnessed it all, been in on the planning of
all of it. It was a terrorist attack on his own people, his own countrymen. It
was an attack incomprehensible to the young American, more devastating than
anything he had ever heard of since the
World
Trade
Center
bombing. They were turning westbound, so he
could no longer see the fires at the Sheraton or the main terminal—those
attacks
were
by his own hand ...

 
          
“I
know it is painful, Kenneth,” a voice said. It was Henri Cazaux, standing
beside him—obviously the plane was on autopilot. “The destruction, it is
horrible, no?”

 
          
“God,
yes,” Roberts said in a low voice. “All those people down there, all that
death.”

 
          
“It
is time you joined them,” Cazaux said quietly, just before he grasped Roberts
by the forehead from behind, drove his infantry knife up through the base of
Roberts’ skull into his brain, and wiggled the knife point around inside his
skull several times to scramble his brain matter. There was virtually no
blood—Roberts’ heart had stopped beating instantly, as if shut off with a
switch. Cazaux merely picked him up by the blade of his knife, still embedded
deep in his skull, took him to the edge of the open cargo ramp, and dropped him
over the side.

 
          
The
autopilot was weaving the Shorts around the sky unsteadily, and there was a
little turbulence from the heat radiating off the hills of western
Tennessee
and northern
Mississippi
, but Cazaux did not seem to notice it. He
stood on the edge of the Shorts’ cargo ramp, the toes of one foot actually over
the edge itself, with no safety line or parachute, looking at the incredibly
bright glow of
Memphis
International
Airport
on fire.

 
          
He
dared God, dared the Devil, dared any man or being to take him. It was
easy—just a slight buffet, a sudden ripple of air, a short interruption of
thousands of circuits running through the Shorts’ autopilot system—and he would
be thrown into space, just as dead as Ken Roberts.

 
          
No,
it was not his time to die, not yet. Jo Ann Vega was right: the dark master had
given him the gift of invincibility.

 
          
He
wanted the death to continue ...

 
          
Beale Air Force Base,
Yuba
City
,
California
Several Minutes Later

 
          
Despite
being a retired two-star Coast Guard admiral, Ian Hardcastle preferred the
Non-Commissioned Officers lounge on Beale Air Force Base; he and his small
staff had virtually taken over the billiard room again with an impromptu
drinks-and-dinner meeting.

 
          
Colonel
Al Vincenti, who, with the help and support of Hardcastle, Martindale, and the
Senate subcommittee, had been cleared of all charges (but had not yet been returned
to flight status), was haphazardly banging billiard balls around on the
well-worn felt with Hardcastle.

 
          
Hardcastle’s
chief of staff, retired Air Force colonel, military analyst, and political
consultant Marc Sheehan, his fourth cup of coffee of the night in one hand, was
reading from a sheaf of notes: “Admiral, I think we’re ready to make this
presentation to the Project 2000 Task Force executive committee,” he said. “I
think this is a masterful piece of work.” “I’d rather take a bit of time to get
more data,” Hardcastle said, missing a complicated two-rail bank shot. Vincenti
cast a questioning eye at Hardcastle’s showy but hopeless shot and easily sunk
his own. “There’s a lot of stuff this report is missing. And I wish I had more
time with Martindale. He’s spent more time at fund-raisers and tours than on
the business at hand here.”

 
          
“Can
I speak frankly, sir?” Sheehan asked.

 
          
“That’s
why I hired you, Marc. Out with it.”

 
          
“Sir,
in my opinion, you suffer from the H. Ross Perot syndrome,” Sheehan said.
“Everybody loves Perot. He’s a straight shooter, he’s knowledgeable—or at least
he’s got a great staff—he’s articulate and polished, and he’s not afraid to
take on the big boys on their own turf. He also gets no respect, for those very
same reasons. He hits people between the eyes with clear-minded logic built on
years of experience—”

 
          
“And
people don’t like it.”

 
          
“And
people don’t like it,” Sheehan echoed. “And government doesn’t like it either.
Folks tend to shut you off simply because you come on strong—they think you
have a hidden agenda, a secret plan. Right or wrong doesn’t matter.”

 
          
“Marc,
I can’t accept that,” Hardcastle said, lining up another shot after Vincenti
intentionally missed an easy shot just so he wouldn’t clear the table on Hardcastle
again. It seemed Vincenti was scowling at everyone—at Hardcastle, at Sheehan,
at the world. He had not said ten words all evening unless asked a specific
question, and nothing that anyone had said all evening seemed to please him.
“What I’m writing about here is not fiction—it’s real,” Hardcastle went on. “My
goals and methods are real and workable.”

 
          
“Sir,
what you’re describing is
America
under siege,
America
on the defensive,” Sheehan said. “Nobody
likes to hear that we’re so vulnerable. They would rather believe that you’re a
flake rather than we’re facing a major terrorist crisis in this country.”

 
          
Hardcastle
flubbed another shot by trying a long, difficult shot, scratching in the
process. Vincenti put Hardcastle out of his billiards misery by clearing the
table again. Hardcastle didn’t seem to notice, but asked Vincenti, “Set ’em up
again, Al, double or nothing.”

 
          
“I
can swim in the beer you owe me already, Admiral,” Vincenti pointed out.

 
          
“You
don’t drink, remember? You thought betting dou- ble-or-nothing beers with you
was a sucker bet? I’ll never pay off. Set ’em up,” Hardcastle repeated with a
smile. “Marc, I’m ready to go to the Task Force in the morning.”

 
          
“The
press conference is set for next week,” Sheehan reminded him. “Why not wait a
few days, get some more feedback from the congressional leadership? Our little
clambake in
Virginia
Beach
is set for this weekend, and so far attendance looks good.”

 
          
“Clambake?”
Vincenti asked as he retrieved the billiard balls.

 
          
“Good
way to feel out the heavy hitters in Congress,” Hardcastle explained. “Project
2000 is throwing a party out on
Virginia Beach
for the leadership and their families—
private transportation, plenty of chow and booze, private beach, even
parasailing and Jet Skis. We gotta lure the big cheeses to at least listen to
what we have to say. Even thirty minutes with them, talking about our programs,
would be worth the money.”

 
          
“Yeah.
Right. Makes sense,” Vincenti muttered. He finished racking the balls, then put
his cue stick on the table. “Sir, excuse me, but I’ve got to get going,”
Vincenti said.

 
          
Hardcastle
looked up at him, a hint of a smile on his face. “If you don’t need me anymore,
I’ll be hitting the road.”