Still they kept marching up the hill. Men in the first line were dropping with bullets to their heads or stomachs and Yaz did his best not to walk on top of then-bodies. Another concentrated fusillade erupted from the enemy lines, only to be answered by two direct hits from the pah* of remaining tanks.
His line was about halfway up the hill when the APC rolled up alongside him.
Despite what Dozer had told them, Yaz moved closer to the machine, figuring he'd take his chances should it be hit by an antitank rocket.
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"First line, double time!" Dozer screamed from his position at the front of the entire force and quickly the paratroopers broke into a run up the hill.
The next thing he knew, Yaz was running too. The ah" was thick with bullets and hot flaming shrapnel. Men were falling all around him and yet he continued. He was more than halfway up the hill and he had yet to fire his weapon.
Within a few seconds of running, he was out of breath. But he kept going simply on adrenaline. For the first time he could actually see the faces of the enemy soldiers firing down on them-the whites of then* eyes! -and it was then he realized exactly what the odds were. There were at least four times as many Circle soldiers behind the barricades than he had previously thought. In an instant a devastating thought came to him. Was this really an attempt to take this hill and save the hundreds of thousands of books in the tower? Or was it more a valiant yet doomed effort-a kind of symbolic gesture that would result in their decimation?
Just as suddenly, he realized he didn't care. For the second time that day he thought: "This is what it's like to die for your country . . ."
They were running full tilt now and he couldn't believe he hadn't been hit, the air was so filled with flying lead. He remembered reading something about how the American Indians prepared to go into battle. They thought if they dwelled on being invisible, they would become invisible, and thereby escape injury during the fight.
From that moment on, Yaz tried to concentrate on being invisible. But he knew it would take more than mind power to save them all.
They needed a miracle . . .
Suddenly there was a tremendous screech directly
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above them. Then there was a series of tremendous explosions all along the Circle barricades. Then Yaz felt himself running at top speed. It happened so fast, he didn't know at first what was going on. Then he looked up and directly above him-no more than 50 feet highwas the F-16XL. One miracle coming up ...
Somehow, the F-16XL made two more devastating strafing runs before Yaz's line reached the top of the hill. Later he would learn that Hunter had already provided similar support to the other UA attacks at the Capitol and at the Lincoln Memorial all within the matter of a few minutes. Yaz would later realize that the Wingman had picked his targets at the top of Monument Hill so carefully, not a single spark had reached the gasoline soaked tower of books.
In the midst of the confusion of battle Yaz had thought he had heard sirens.
Now, just as he was about to go over the top of the smoking Circle fortifications, out of the corner of his eye he could see three fire trucks tearing up the hill behind them, several paratroopers and a load of civvies hanging off them.
But now Yaz could realize that Hunter had other problems. There was another screech in the air. He looked up and saw two MiG-23s bearing in from the south. Hunter put the F-16XL into a freakish, near-impossible turn and immediately engaged the enemy aircraft. Yaz felt his stomach flip. It was obvious that Hunter, their guardian angel, would be busy for a while.
Suddenly Yaz was up and over the barricades. The paratroopers who had reached the battlements before him were engaging the Circle soldiers in vicious hand-to-hand fighting. Yaz was instantly firing at Circle troops in every direction. He ran forward, making
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room for the APC to break through the battered enemy line. The air was filled with not only bullets now, but hand grenades, shrapnel and thick heavy smoke.
There was an awful symphony of sounds going on around him. Men screaming, gasping, groaning, shouting, crying. Men dying . . .
A Circle soldier lunged at him with a bayonet. Yaz shot him square in the heart. Another leveled his rifle at him. Yaz put three bullets into his head.
A third enemy soldier was about to stab a trooper in front of him in the back.
Yaz shot the man first on the ass, then in the groin and chest. A small explosion-probably a grenade-went off beside him, knocking him to his knees.
He regained his footing just in time to shoot another enemy soldier who was drawing a bead on him.
He happened to look up to see one of the MiGs, its wings aflame, roar overhead, the F-16XL right on its tail, blasting away with all six Vulcan cannons. The Soviet jet hit the ground some 200 feet down the slope, cartwheeling into cherry blossom trees.
A few seconds later, the third and fourth waves broke through the barricades as did the second APC. Shane himself was manning the big .50-caliber machine gun on the vehicle's small turret and his stream of fire was cutting through enemy troops with wild abandon.
Just then Yaz saw a group of Circle soldiers moving away from the fighting around the Monument and toward the book tower. One of them was carrying a flamethrower. . .
Suddenly Captain Dozer himself was beside Yaz. He too had seen the squad of Circle troopers making their way to the tower of books.
They're going to torch it!" Yaz yelled.
A second later, he and the Marine captain were
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running after the enemy soldiers. The F-16 roared overhead, using its cannons to strafe a clump of Circle soldiers who were still holding the far end of the barricade. But Yaz knew that Hunter could not risk a shot at the soldiers he and Dozer were pursuing. One spark and the books would be gone in a matter of seconds. At the same time, the second MiG came crashing to the ground not 100
feet away. Hunter had riddled the Soviet airplane with his cannon, then had to literally shoot the plane away from the book tower as the pilot was making a kamikaze-like dive into the high stack of volumes.
Dozer stopped about 25 feet from the book tower and shot one of the Circle fire team dead. But it was too little, too late. The man carrying the flame thrower immediately lit it and started spraying the gasoline-soaked books with a stream of fire. "Jesus Christ, they're burning it!" Yaz screamed. Both he and Dozer opened up with their weapons, instantly cutting down the fire team.
But the damage had been done: a long tongue of flame was quickly working its way up the side of the tower of books. The flamethrower strapped to the dead man's back then exploded, adding to the mounting conflagration. Both he and Dozer were stunned, unable to move for the moment, watching the flames grow higher up the tall stack of books.
"No! We can't let this happen!" Yaz yelled out. Dozer looked around desperately. Then he shouted: "We've got to knock it over!"
With that he was off and running back into the thick of the battle at the barricades. As Yaz watched, the Marine jumped up onto the nearest APC and quickly ordered the crew out. Then, jumping behind the controls himself, he gunned the engine and in a cough of smoke, was rumbling right toward the flam-415
ing section of the book tower.
"Jesus, he'll kill himself!" Yaz yelled out.
Then Yaz spotted three Circle soldiers, who, having seen Dozer's actions, were preparing to fire an antitank weapon at him. Yaz raised his rifle and fired, hitting two of the men just as they were firing the missile. His action distracted their aim enough so that the rocket hit the rear portion of the APC.
However it wasn't enough to stop Dozer. The vehicle roared right by Yaz and hit the bottom of the book tower full force. The impact managed to tip the book tower substantially.
"It worked!" Yaz yelled.
But before he could reach the crippled APC, it exploded, once, then twice, the force knocking Yaz right on his ass and dazing him.
When he finally looked up and his vision cleared, the book tower was still standing, though barely.
He also knew with one look at the burning APC, that Dozer was dead ...
At the same instant, high above, something went off in Hunter's brain. He heard a scream tear through the fabric of his psyche. His body shuddered once, then was overtaken by a strange calmness.
He knew instantly what it meant: Something had just been lost. A spirit had passed on. A friend was dead . . .
He swooped low over the battle on Monument Hill and saw the teetering book tower and the blazing APC. He immediately pieced it together: Only one man would have dared to ram the tower. He knew Dozer was gone ...
He could see the fighting around the Monument was now tapering off, the United Americans finally gaming the upper hand. But flames were still roaring 416
up one side of the leaning pillar of books. That's when Hunter felt another sensation run through him.
More enemy airplanes, coming out of the south . . .
Just then his radio crackled on. "Hawk!" he heard Jones call out. "You're going to have more company . . . The big Soviet stuff is taking off now, along with a bunch of MiGs for cover . . ."
"OK, I copy," he radioed back. "The MiGs will probably head this way, while the bombers try to escape . . ."
"That's exactly what they're doing," Jones confirmed. "But listen, Hawk. We shot down one of the MiGs when it was taking off. It went up like a box of matches. I'd bet it's carrying napalm . . ."
That was just what Hunter didn't want to hear.
"If they're carrying *palm, it's for one reason only," he called back to Jones. "They're going to finish off these books . . ."
"Our A-tens are only a minute away," Jones said. "Well gut the runways so nothing will be able to land . . . But you'll still have to deal with the ones that are already up there . . ."
Hunter signed off just as the three-ship flight of MiGs appeared over the Capitol Building.
He felt a jolt of anger rip through him>with an intensity that rivaled anything he'd experienced before. "You bastards!" he screamed. "My country. My friends. Is there no end to it!"
But he knew before he faced the MiGs he would have to deal with the burning book tower. Putting the F-16 down low, he swung out, then lined the pillar up in his HUD sighting cross. Then with a push of the throttle, he kicked in the airplane's afterburner . ..
Those on the ground were startled by the tremendous boom as the gallons of raw fuel were pumped
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into the rear section of the Fulcrums engine. The aircraft shot across the sky like a bullet, heading straight for the smoking, flaming tower of books. Not a second before it would have hit the tower, the airplane lifted straight up-almost magically-its underbelly just nicking the very pinnacle of the stack.
The tower continued to teeter for a moment. But then the full rush of the sonic wave, combined with the incredible jet wash from the powerful afterburning engine, hit the tower of books like a giant mighty fist.
Suddenly the books looked as if they were caught up in a tornado. The intricate stacking pattern instantly came unraveled-books were suddenly flying everywhere, wildly scattering in the man-made maelstrom. What was left of the tower came crashing down. Most of the fire went out instantly, adding billions of sparks to the whirlwind. The three fire engines were on hand to extinguish any smoldering volumes.
Hunter turned toward the MiGs, not once letting up on his afterburner.
The lead Soviet airplane, its wings loaded down with the weight of four napalm bombs, was the first victim. After spotting the F-16XL, the enemy pilot tried to turn away, but it was too late. One of Hunter's two Sidewinders caught the mid-section of the Flogger as it attempted a bank to the right. The resulting explosion broke the airplane in two separate flaming pieces, both of which crashed to the ground near the West Potomac Park.
With this, the two other Floggers suddenly climbed in an effort to get away.
Hunter put the F-16XL into a gut-wrenching vertical translation, and tore straight up toward the fleeing Soviet jets. He leveled a quarter mile behind them and
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lit his afterburner a second time. Within seconds he was on their tails.
He had only one air-to-air remaining. With a flick of the wrist, he commanded the airplane into a yaw-axis maneuver, meaning while the F-16 continued in a straight line, its nose swung out at an angle. He let his last Sidewinder fly and watched as it was immediately sucked up into the Soviet's tailpipe.
He counted to three and suddenly the MIG was blown to smithereens by the powerful AIM-9 missile.
This left only one son-of-a-bitch to go ...
The Soviet climbed and turned northeast hoping to put enough distance between himself and the crazy man in the strange American jet. But this was not his lucky day. Before he knew it, the red-white-and-blue jet was right behind him, and 100 yards below his tail. Suddenly its nose rose up, even though the airplane itself didn't. It was called pitch-axis pointing. But the Soviet pilot would never know that. Hunter squeezed off his Six Pack trigger and the powerful shells found their way into the two large napalm bombs the Soviet was carrying.
There was no explosion-at least, not right away. The Flogger evaporated with a loud sizzle and a cloud of green-yellow flame. Then came the tremendous explosion ...
"That's for Bull. . ." Hunter said, steering the F-16XL through the burning MiG remnants and turning back toward Boiling.
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Night fell over the peaceful, yet smoky skies above Washington, DC.
The Free Canadian P-3 Orion maritime patrol plane arrived just after sunset, its flight delayed due to a detour around the stormy skies near Baltimore.
Twenty miles south of that city, the retreating Circle forces had collided head-on with the United American Army near the old Fort Meade and a full-scale battle had been in progress for the past 12 hours.
Back in DC, another event, similar in importance, was underway.