Authors: Allen Steele
Not bothering to crouch, I dashed to the other side of the room and raised the scope to a western window. The Apache was now hovering in midair at a parallel distance and altitude from the Cayuse, slightly above the height of the water tower; like the other one, it was now facing the tower.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted swift movement on the ground; looking down through the scope, I saw ERA troopers sprinting away from the tower, giving up their cover behind trees and benches. I ran the scope to the armored car closest to the park; troopers were practically shoving each other aside in their haste to get through the LAVs’ rear hatches.
It looked like they were retreating.
I felt a momentary surge of relief … then the nightscope almost dropped from my numb hands as I realized what was about to happen.
“The Apache’s going to launch its missiles!” I shouted.
“Just a moment, Colonel …” Payson-Smith cupped his hand over the receiver. “Ruby confirms TADS lock-on and Hellfires arming.”
“Sentinel
flyover in sixty-six seconds,” Morgan said softly, his eyes riveted to his screen. “Initiating satellite uplink and c-cube interface.”
“We don’t have sixty seconds!” I shouted. “That chopper’s going to—”
“Gerry,” Richard said, “please shut up and get away from the window.”
I took a couple of steps away from the window, then stopped when I saw what was displayed on the computer screens. Payson-Smith’s had opened a window depicting a cutaway view of an Apache AH-64; Morgan’s screen displayed an aerial map of downtown St. Louis, with the Compton Hill Reservoir epicentered within a red bull’s-eye.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Colonel,” Payson-Smith said, uncupping the phone again. “But you’ve been warned—”
There was a bright flash through the western windows.
I looked around just in time to see sparks erupt from beneath the nacelles of the Apache as two Hellfire missiles launched from the chopper.
Then I threw myself to the floor.
I didn’t even have a chance to scream before the supernova erupted.
There was a brilliant white flash, then an immense thunderclap pummeled my ears. Windows shattered, glass spraying across my back, as the stone floor trembled beneath me. I lay still, my eyes squeezed tightly shut, my hands wrapped around my head, waiting for the tower to collapse around me.
But that didn’t happen.
The light faded, the thunder subsided, the floor stopped shaking.
The missiles hadn’t hit the tower.
I raised myself to my elbows and looked around, not quite believing I was still alive. Glass from the broken windows on the eastern side of the room was strewn across the floor; a cool predawn breeze wafted through the shattered panes, carrying with it the harsh odor of burning aircraft fuel.
“What the fuck happened?” I murmured.
“Hello, Colonel?” I heard Payson-Smith say. “Do you hear me?”
Richard and Jeff were picking themselves off the floor from where they had ducked for cover. Payson-Smith still had the phone in his hand; he was listening to it as Morgan crawled to the computer terminal and tapped a couple of keys.
The stench of burning gasoline was stronger now. I raised myself to my knees and stared through the broken windows. A thick plume of black smoke billowed up from behind the reservoir walls, obscuring the downtown lights. I could hear the steady thrum of a helicopter’s rotors from behind me, but it sounded more distant than before.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” Payson-Smith was saying. “Ruby Fulcrum—and I’m sure you’re aware of what that is—has accessed the source codes of the programs controlling your Apache’s onboard computers.”
I could hear the faint voices of men yelling outside the tower, sounding almost as confused as I was. I felt around with my hands until I located the nightscope where I had dropped it.
“In case you don’t know this,” Payson-Smith said, “the avionics of your Apaches are controlled by eleven computers, including the ones that operate the weapon fire-control systems. When its missiles locked on to the tower, my friend Ruby took command of the laser targeting computer. Even though your copilot thought he was aiming at us, he didn’t really have any control over …”
I crawled to an eastern window and raised the nightscope to my eye, but I saw only an opaque black spot through the eyepiece. The scope was broken.
“We’ve achieved uplink with
Sentinel,”
Morgan said quietly. “Ruby’s making the snatch.”
Richard smiled and held up a finger. “Yes, Colonel,” he said into the phone. “Ruby took over their TADS computer, so when the Apache launched its Hellfires, the laser guidance system instantly retargeted the other helicopter instead. That’s the reason why one of your choppers has just been destroyed and the other one cannot attack us …”
He paused and listened. “No, Colonel,” he replied, “that wouldn’t be very wise. Just ask the Apache’s gunner. Everything on that chopper runs off its computers. If he tries to fire another missile or use his guns, he’ll probably hit everything except us, and that includes your men on the ground … I’m sorry, sir. I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t—”
Even without the nightscope, I could see the troops clambering out of the LAVs where they had taken cover and swarming toward the base of the tower. I bent closer to the window, trying to see what they were doing …
Poppa-poppa-poppa …
I ducked below the sill as I heard full-auto gunfire. “They’re sending in the ground troops!” I yelled; the window above me shattered, and there was the high zing of bullets ricocheting off stone walls. I hit the floor and began to crawl toward the center of the room.
“Colonel, listen to me!”
A double beep from the Compaq; Jeff Morgan leaned closer to read the message he had just received. “Oh, fuck,” he murmured. “They just got wise to us.”
Richard turned around to look at him, his eyebrows raised in silent question. “Ruby reports a jet just took off from Scott AFB,” Morgan said softly. “Strong probability that it’s a YF-22.”
A window had opened on the Compaq’s screen, displaying dorsal and side views of an YF-22 Lightning 2: a small dual-engine fighter that looked like a hybridization between an F-18 Hornet and a Stealth fighter.
“Excuse me, Colonel …” Richard said, then clapped his hand over the receiver again. “What’s its ETA?”
Morgan typed a query into his keyboard, then shook his head. “Five minutes, thirty seconds. Ruby says its onboard computers are inaccessible … must be using a program she hasn’t wiggled into yet.
Sentinel
is trying to track it, but the sucker’s down in the grass—”
“Ground track?”
More tapping of keys, almost drowned out by the popcorn rattle of gunfire from below the tower. “No good,” Morgan said, shaking his head as he stared at the screen. “Thermal emission zeroed out … ground-air shadow almost negligible …
Sentinel’s
got something, but it can’t lock on. The pilot’s flying evasive. ETA five minutes and counting.”
Scott Air Force Base was located in Illinois, not far across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. The YF-22 was made for just this sort of mission: radar-deflecting fuselage, low-visibility paint, engines designed to reduce its heat-exhaust signature. Even flying below radar, the fighter would be here in only a few minutes … and I had no doubt that its Sidewinder missile could finish the job the Hellfires had botched.
“Where’s
Sentinel?”
Richard snapped.
“Directly above us.”
“Instruct it to … never mind, I’ll do it.” Payson-Smith pulled the Apple closer to him and began to type instructions into the keyboard. He slid the phone across the floor to me. “Keep him busy,” he ordered. “Make sure he knows we’re not bluffing.”
I grabbed the phone and pulled it to my ear. “Colonel Barris—”
“Rosen? Tell that maniac that whatever he thinks he’s doing, it’s not going to work.”
Barris’s voice was calm, but I could hear his barely suppressed rage.
“Unless you come out that door right now, my men are going to blast it open, and I can’t guarantee they’ll take prisoners.”
If I was scared before, that bit got me mad instead. “Get a new line, Barris!” I yelled. “If your men wanted to demo the door, they would have done it already! You know and we know they’re just harassing us until your jet gets here and finishes the job!”
“Jet? What jet …?”
“ETA three minutes,” Morgan said.
“The jet that just scrambled out of Scott, you weenie!” I almost laughed at his lame attempt at subterfuge. “You think we don’t know about it? Man, we’ve got eyes in the sky, eyes in your computers, eyes in your bathroom!”
“Rosen, listen to me
—”
“No, jerk-wad, you listen to me for a change!” Ignoring the rattle of small-arms fire, I sat up on the floor. “You don’t intend to let us go, just as you never intended to let my friend stay alive. But the shoe’s on the other foot now, pal … you’re the one who’s sweating bullets, not me! You’re fucked, Barris, and I’m the one who’s doing the—”
The phone was suddenly snatched out of my hand by Payson-Smith. I grasped for it, but he pushed me away with his hand. “Colonel?” he said. “I’m sorry for the unseemly outburst there, but … yes, that was uncalled for, but my friend is correct in his remarks.”
I crawled away from him, clambering on hands and knees around the glass shards on the floor until I reached the windows overlooking downtown. The sound of gunshots lapsed again, doubtless because the troopers had just received orders from their squad leaders to cease fire and take cover.
“ETA two minutes …”
I raised myself to my knees and stared out through a broken window. The rainclouds that had haunted the city yesterday were gone, leaving behind a dark blue sky. The first light of a new day was breaking over the eastern horizon, painting the Arch silvery rose red and bathing the downtown skyscrapers with a vague pink hue. In the near distance, I could make out the oval bowl of Busch Stadium, where my friend and benefactor George Barris was even now plotting our demise.
It was a beautiful spring morning in St. Louis. I had little doubt that this would be the last Missouri dawn I would ever see.
“Colonel Barris,” Payson-Smith said, “we don’t have much time, so I’ll tell it to you straight.
Sentinel 1
is above the city right now, and its laser is focused directly at Busch Stadium. Ruby Fulcrum now has complete control of the satellite, and I have given her instructions to open fire upon the stadium unless you remove your squads from the park and order the fighter to break off its attack …”
Now I could see a thin, jagged white contrail coming over the horizon, led by a tiny silver point of light. The YF-22 was coming in hot and fast over the river, skittering back and forth across the sky as it sought to evade
Sentinel.
In another minute it would be over the reservoir.
“I know you don’t believe me,” Payson-Smith was saying, “so I’ll have to demonstrate. Please watch carefully …”
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw him lift his left hand and raise two fingers. Morgan nodded and typed a command into his keyboard.
I looked out the window again.
A second elapsed. Two. Three …
The contrail flattened out and became more dense as the YF-22 crossed the Mississippi, its pilot homing in on an old stone tower near the edge of the city.
Then a narrow red beam lanced out of the cold blue stratosphere, straight down from space into the center of Busch Stadium. It was there, and then it was gone.
“Strike one,” Morgan said, his eyes locked on the screen.
The beam reappeared an instant later, its angle only marginally different. One moment it was there, and then it had vanished again.
“Strike two,” Morgan said. “Ruby confirms two kills.”
A couple of seconds elapsed, then I heard faint booms from far away, carried by the still morning air, as tiny black pillars of smoke rose from the stadium like funeral pyres. I stared up at the dark sky, but I couldn’t see anything except the last stars of night. If one of them was
Sentinel 1,
there was nothing about it to distinguish it from anything else in the heavens.
“Those two helicopters were destroyed on the pad by
Sentinel.”
Richard Payson-Smith’s voice was low, direct, and intense. “The sat is now aimed directly at your office in the stadium. Even if you decide to commence with the attack and we’re killed, Ruby Fulcrum will nonetheless order the satellite to take you out … and when it circles the earth again in another three hours, it will destroy another military target in the United States.”
I glanced out the window again. I couldn’t see the fighter, but I could hear the high, thin whine of its engines. The YF-22 was somewhere over the city, closing in fast.
Richard stopped, listened for a moment, and shook his head. “No, sir, there’s no room for negotiation. Break it off now …”
In those last few moments, all was still and quiet. Payson-Smith intently watched his computer screens, the phone clasped against his ear. Jeff Morgan was bent almost double, his hands laced together around the back of his neck. I stared out the window, my heart stopped in midbeat, waiting for the end of my life.
There was a flat, hollow shriek, then the YF-22 rocketed into sight. Racing only a few hundred feet above the rooftops, it howled over the reservoir, banking sharply to the right as it exposed the dull gray paint on the underside of its wedge-shaped wings. The Compton Heights neighborhood was treated to a sonic earthquake as the jet ripped past the water tower, then its nose lifted, and the fighter hurtled straight up into the purple sky.
The jet reached apogee almost a thousand feet above the reservoir. Then it rolled over, veered to the left, and began to go back the way it had come.
My heart started beating again.
“Thank you, Colonel,” Richard said. “We’ll be in touch.” Then he clicked off, put the phone down on the floor, and took a deep breath.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said after a moment as he turned around to look at us. “I think we’re going to stay alive a little longer.”