Primary Target (1999) (50 page)

"Wildcat One is rolling in hot," Carl Zukowski radioed, then talked to his wingman. "Alan, hold your fire on this run. I'm going to shave the bow off and hope our Marine friend is bright enough to jump ship."

"Copy," Swindell replied. "I'm in cold."

"Jax approach," Zukowski said. "Wildcat One and Two are running on fumes--we gotta have answers."

A long pause followed.

"Wildcat Four-Fourteen," a deep voice said with the sound of authority, "your orders are to sink the yacht ... at all costs. Do you copy?"

"Oh yeah, we copy," Zukowski said as he and his wing-man mentally prepared to eject from their Hornets.

Scott was approaching the pilothouse whenbuuuuuuurrrrrpp--the bow of the yacht exploded in a hail of twenty-millimeter Vulcan cannon fire. Able to fire 6,000 rounds per minute, the Hornet's six-barreled rotary cannon literally sawed off four feet of the bow. With the front of the yacht open to the sea and the powerful diesel engines churning at full throttle, Sweet Life was rapidly filling with water. Time to punch out. Cringing from pain, Scott limped out to the edge of the sundeck and dove over the side. He quickly surfaced and frantically swam away from the thrashing screws.

Jackie saw Scott surface and immediately began slowin
g
and descending toward him. "He's jumped overboard--he's safe!" she radioed. "The agent is clear of the yacht!"

"He's off the boat and well clear," Zukowski reported to Jax approach, then added, "the helo is closing on him." "Great," the deep-voiced controller said with obvious relief. "The word is sink the ship--ASAP."

"We're workin' on it," Zukowski radioed, then talked to Swindell. "Alan, I'm going to work on the bow. You take the stern."

"You got it, boss."

Maneuvering the helicopter closer to Scott, Jackie skillfully brought the LongRanger to a hover near him. She would have to be extremely careful about lifting Scott out of the water.

The powerful rotor-blade downwash whipped the surface of the water into a frothy gale, sending sheets of spray in every direction as she moved closer to Scott. With absolute concentration, she lowered the landing skids into the water, then gasped.

Two large sharks were approaching Scott from his right side. Unable to remove her hands from the controls to point at the danger, she pulled up a couple of feet and hovered toward the sharks. Once she was in position, Jackie eased the LongRanger down until the belly was almost in the water.

Treading water and turning to keep Jackie in sight, Scott was stunned when he saw the dorsal fins. He faced the sharks and saw the fins disappear. I'm bleeding like a butchered hog.

Quelling his rising panic, he pulled his knees up to his chest and waited for Jackie to move toward him. With surprising power, something slammed into Scott's lower back, then veered away. Oh, shit--this isn't good.

Reaching for the landing skid, he saw a shark coming straight at him. Using both legs, Scott viciously kicked the predator in the snout, then threw his good leg over the skid and grabbed the brace aft of the pilot's door. He pulled himself up and straddled the skid.

As Jackie was lifting the helo out of the water, Scott sa
w
the two Hornets pulverize the yacht with deadly streams of cannon fire. When the pilots pulled up from their firing run, the 126-foot Broward was twelve feet shorter and rapidly turning into a submarine.

While Jackie flew toward Atlantic Beach at low altitude, Scott maintained a death grip on the brace protruding from the fuselage. He watched the yacht as it neared the slight dogleg channel leading to Mayport Basin and the Kennedy. One of the yacht's engines was still thrashing the water into foam, but only the sundeck and the bridge were visible. The Hornets came in for a third pass, then split when Alan Swindell's F/A-18 flamed out. While the flight leader headed straight for Runway 31 at Jacksonville International, his wingman pointed his lifeless Hornet out to sea and waited until the last second to eject.

Sweet Life slowly came to rest at the entrance to the basin and sank in approximately forty feet of water.

Waiting until the helo slowed to a hover over a crowded stretch of beach, Scott dropped five feet to the sand. Jackie moved off to the side and gently lowered the landing skids onto the beach, then motioned Scott to get in. He hobbled around the front of the LongRanger and climbed into the left seat.

Scott's eyes reflected his pain and fatigue. "Take off and fly straight south as fast as you can," he gasped as he buckled his straps.

She gave him a quizzical look. "What's wrong?"

"Go! The bomb is on the yacht, and I think it's set to go off at any moment. Let's get outta here!"

For a shocked instant Jackie stared toward the naval station, then applied power to lift off. At the same moment they saw a huge geyser of water shoot hundreds of feet into the air above the entrance to the naval basin. A visible shock wave preceded a blossoming mushroom cloud as the helicopter lifted off the beach.

With the LongRanger barely four feet in the air, the passage of the shock wave slammed the helicopter into the sand with such force that it ripped one of the main rotor blades off and collapsed the slender boom leading to the tail-rotor pylon. The remaining rotor blade thrashed the beach, flippin
g
the battered helo onto its side and sending the crowd running for cover.

When they crawled from the wreckage, Scott and Jackie sat up and stared in disbelief. A low, rolling cloud of debris obscured everything in the direction of the naval base except for one thing; the mast of the carrier Kennedy. The nuclear explosion, for the most part, had been diminished by the depth of the water in the channel. The sinking of the yacht had saved thousands of lives.

"Are you okay?" Scott asked as he spit sand and blood out of his mouth.

"I think so," she replied, dazed by the crash. She glanced at a handful of shocked beachgoers running toward them. Actually, the people were running at an odd angle, staring at the mushroom cloud with wide-open eyes.

"Well," Scott began sadly, his spirits nearly flattened, "I sure as hell mucked that up."

"The end result is what counts," Jackie insisted, then looked at his bleeding leg. "I need to get you to a hospital." "What we need," Scott suggested with a rueful grin, "is a nice, quiet vacation in St. Thomas."

Jackie looked sideways at him and nodded. "As a matter of fact, you do owe me a ride on a sailboat."

Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Marylan
d
Maritza Gunzelm. and Greg O'Donnell were visiting in his room when the familiar bright red logo appeared on the television. They fell silent when the surprised anchorwoman turned to the camera.

"This just in to CNN," she said briskly. "We are receiving initial reports that Air Force One has crashed. Again, our sources are reporting that Air Force One has crashed north of Springfield, Illinois."

She paused a long moment and looked away, then turned back to the camera. "It is believed--we're getting unconfirmed reports--that President Macklin was onboard at the time the plane went down. These are unconfirmed reports. It is not known what caused the crash ... wait, I'm getting an update."

A stunned look crossed her face. "We have another breaking story just into our newsroom--this from the Associated Press. A nuclear explosion has taken place at the Mayport Naval Station near Jacksonville, Florida. Initial reports indicate that a nuclear bomb may have exploded aboard the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy. We are receiving conflicting reports about the accident. Our sources are saying that casualties may be very high."

Greg lowered the volume on the television and turned to Maritza. Both were shocked and horrified.

"I hope Jackie and Scott aren't involved in any of this," Maritza said with a distant look in her eyes.

"So do I," Greg replied in a tight voice. "The sponsors of terrorism have grossly miscalculated this time."

"God, if the president is dead ..." Maritza trailed off and closed her eyes. "It's time to destroy the cowards, eradicate them like a swarm of locusts."

A stir was created in the hallway as word of the horrifying news spread throughout the hospital.

Chapter
50

The White House
.

Still dressed in the uniform of an Air Force chief master sergeant, President Cord Macklin approached the offic
e
of his chief of staff. The attorney general had called Fraiser Wyman and asked him to remain at the White House until she arrived.

Accompanying the president were Hartwell Prost, Pete Adair, Sandra Hatcher, two Secret Service agents, and two FBI agents. The entourage, like the rest of the nation, was outraged by the terrorist acts that had destroyed the reserve Air Force One and devastated the John F. Kennedy and May-port Naval Station. Although their guns were holstered, the four agents were unusually apprehensive.

Enraged by the growing death toll, including everyone aboard the flying White House, Macklin viciously threw open the door and caught Fraiser on the telephone.

Hearing the whisper of the guillotine, Wyman's mouth dropped open as he fumbled to place the phone receiver in the cradle. "Mr. President, I thought you were--"

"Don't say anything," Macklin threatened in a trembling voice. "A few hours ago, before I left for Andrews, I began thinking about the Dallas crash."

"Sir, I know--"

"Shut up," the president said with acid in his voice. "I
f
ound it strange that you happened to know that Senator Morgan was aboard the plane long before the passenger list was released."

Seeking an avenue of escape, Wyman's deeply set blue eyes darted from person to person. There was no way out. The veins in Macklin's neck looked like they were going to explode. "Then I thought about the odds against Tehran knowing exactly when and where one of our recon planes would show up. A very strange coincidence, wouldn't you say?"

Wyman's face turned chalky white. "Sir, let me expla--" "Then," the president loudly interrupted, "the surprise in the Persian Gulf was just too much of a coincidence." Wyman's eyes looked huge behind his round metal-rimmed glasses.

With pure malice in his voice, Macklin stared into Wyman's frightened eyes. The president grabbed Wyman by his tie, then savagely yanked him face-to-face. "You're a despicable piece of trash."

Shaking and perspiring profusely, Wyman's mouth opened and shut, but no words came out.

"You already had a fortune," Macklin said bitterly. "But that wasn't enough, was it?"

Wyman's eyes were downcast.

"Was it?" the president yelled at the top of his lungs. "No," he whispered.

"Who paid you?"

"Bassam Shakhar," Wyman said weakly.

"How much did you charge to sell out your country?" Wyman hesitated, then looked away. "Fourteen million," he uttered in a hollow, frightened voice.

"Where's the money?"

"In Argentina--Buenos Aires."

With all his strength, Macklin shoved Wyman back into his chair. Shaking from rage, the president turned to face the FBI agents. "Get him out of my sight."

"Yessir," they said.

Macklin started for the door, then stopped and looked at Wyman. "You treasonous bastard," the president said in disgust. "May God have mercy on your worthless soul."

Focusing on the primary sponsors of international terrorism, President Macklin orchestrated a campaign of round-the-clock bombings of military targets and civilian infrastructure. For three weeks, seven days a week, bombs and cruise missiles rained down on airfields, naval installations, radar sites, ammunition dumps, missile sites, command-and-control complexes, military storage facilities, and selected civilian targets that would not cause mass casualties. Nothing was spared, not even military headquarters buildings.

Bassam Shakhar and his closest lieutenants rode out the pounding attacks in an underground home in northern Afghanistan.

After the blistering bombing raids, President Macklin delivered a brief but poignant speech to the perpetrators of terrorism and the sponsors of terrorism. Broadcast on MSNBC, Fox, and CNN, the message was short and straightforward. The United States was at war with terrorists. In the event of another terrorist attack on U
. S
. citizens, at home or abroad, American bombs and missiles would pulverize all the sponsor state's major airports, highways, roads, railways, bridges, dams, and power plants. Signing off, President Macklin vowed to make acts of terrorism against the United States too expensive for sponsor states to condone or conduct.

Chapter
51

New Orleans
.

Tanned and refreshed after their leisurely vacation in St. I Thomas, Jackie and Scott invited Greg and Maritza to join them for a relaxing weekend in New Orleans. Even though Scott, Maritza and Greg were still recuperating from their injuries, the foursome enjoyed their tour of the Vieux Came. What they hadn't seen Friday night, they saw the following morning, including Jackson Square, the French Market, Royal Street, Dixieland Hall, and the expansive Riverwalk. They wrapped up the pleasurable tour with a river cruise on the magnificent Natchez. With a calliope playing a jaunty melody and its huge paddle wheel thrashing the muddy Mississippi, the colorful steamboat had glided downriver past charming moss-draped oak trees and Chalmette Battlefield. By the time Natchez returned to the Riverwalk, the quartet had worked up a voracious appetite.