“All right,” yelled Danny. “Phase two, phase two.”
The helicopter whipped to the side, spinning back around over the civilian terminal. The other helicopter had already started in toward bin Awg’s three hangars. The video feed from the LADS that showed there were no terrorists nearby but Danny wouldn’t trust it; the helicopters did a quick circuit to make sure the ground was clear before depositing the Whiplash team on the ground.
“McKenna, you got twenty minutes,” Danny said over the com circuit. “If you can get that plane launched by then, it’s yours”
“I only need fifteen,” she shot back.
Chapter 84
Breanna brought the EB-52’s engines to full military power, the thrust rippling through the muscles of the big jet as it was held in place by its brakes.
“Ready?” she asked Zen.
“Ignition in three,” he said.
They counted down together. At two, Breanna slapped off the brakes and the big jet leapt forward, propelled by nearly a quarter of a million pounds of thrust from its four P&W engines. A second later the Flighthawks added their thrust. Within a blink the plane’s speed passed a hundred miles an hour. Bree started back on the stick and the aircraft rushed upward, springing off the pavement as if its landing gear were pogo sticks.
A black streak flew across the right side of her windscreen; by the time Breanna realized it was a mortar shell she was far beyond it. The impact of the explosion was lost in the turbulence behind the aircraft; if it affected the plane at all the computer controls compensated without Breanna noticing. She held the Megafortress steady as the plane rose over the runway and out of danger.
Starship glanced at kick as they counted down together with Major Alou and the computer. The EB-52 vibrated madly, and the noise of the revving engines leaked past the noise-canceling headgear, a steady hum in the back of his head.
‘Two,” they said, and the Megafortress began to roll, cued by Major Alou up on the flightdeck.
“Three,” they said, and the Flighthawk engines whipped on. Starship felt himself pushed back in his seat as the Mega-fortress burst ahead in quick-takeoff mode. His view screen played a feed from the nose of the Flighthawk; he could see the tail of the other Megafortress disappearing to the right. The strip and surrounding jungle slid by, the EB-52’s speed ramping quickly. He could feel the plane starting to lift, gravity beginning to tilt his body back like the gentle rock of a cradle.
And then the plane sagged left. Something popped in Starship’s ear. A red emergency light blinked, and as Starship reached his hand to the screen control, a cold curtain of darkness descended around him and he fell unconscious.
Zen shut down the Flighthawk engines and began cycling fuel into Hawk One, replacing what they had used to get off the runway.
“Indy was hit,” Breanna told him. “They didn’t get off the runway.”
Zen felt his throat tighten. Trying to take off had been foolhardy, a ridiculous gamble. He was responsible for the men who’d been in that plane.
He glanced at the instrument screen on his left — he was using the auxiliary controls, since there hadn’t been time even to get his helmet — double-checking that he had enough fuel to launch.
“Ready to launch Hawk One in sixty seconds,” he told Breanna.
When Starship opened his eyes, he was at the stick of an F-15E. The altimeter ladder in his heads-up display showed that he had just notched up over forty thousand feet, and he was still climbing, winging upward like an angel called to heaven. The blue void of the atmosphere thinned as he rose, the color paling into white and then becoming almost black. The black deepened, and still he climbed, over a hundred thousand feet now, the altimeter calmly notching it off. One-ten, one-twenty, one-fifty, two hundred…
“I can’t go this high,” said Starship. “Not in a Strike Eagle.”
With that thought, the blackness turned red and he felt his body twisting hard against his restraints. His arm smacked against something hard and he heard a scream coming from the middle of his chest.
“I got to get the hell out of here,” said Starship, and by instinct he reached for the ejection handle, but he couldn’t find it. He managed to get his head down and look, then realized he couldn’t eject — they were too low, too low —
No, they were on the ground, and the seats hadn’t been properly prepared besides.
He saw one of the emergency lights blinking on a panel and realized they had crash-landed at the end of the runway.
“Out, out, out!” he yelled, and started to jump from his station. He couldn’t move and for a moment he despaired, thought he’d been crippled like Zen.
He’d kill himself before he lived like that, as much as he admired the older pilot.
And then he realized he was still buckled into his seat. A wave of relief powered into his legs and arms as he threw off the restraints, bolted upright, and started for the exit. He remembered Kick, turned and saw that he was still back in his seat. Starship shook him, then when he didn’t respond reached down and unsnapped the buckles, helped him up — more like picked him up — and dragged him behind him to the hatchway. The motor that worked the ladder growled as the lower door started to open. Something in the mechanism snapped and it stopped after moving only an inch or so. Starship pounded on the control, but it didn’t move. He swung around and tried kicking at the hatchway, first gently and then with all his weight, but nothing budged.
“Upstairs,” he told Kick, who was crouched over where he’d left him.
Starship grabbed his friend and tried pushing him up the ladder which led to the flight deck, but Kick was so out of it that he finally draped him over his side and back and pulled him up with him, crawling onto the rear of the long cockpit area. “Major Alou! Merce! Merce!” he yelled to Alou.
The pilot sat at his station, head slumped over, hand on the throttle slide. As Starship came close, he saw that the front wind panel and some of the aircraft structure around it had been shattered. A piece of metal twice the size of Starship’s hand had embedded itself in the side of Alou’s head. Blood covered everything around the pilot.
“We got to get the hell out of here,” he told Kick. He started to go back down, thinking they could use the emergency hatchways at the forward part of the Flighthawk compartment. But then he realized it would be quicker to use the emergency roof hatches above the ejection seats, which could be blown out by the computer or by hand.
He squeezed past the center console, trying not to look at Alou. The consoles were still lit.
Starship got up on the seat, balancing awkwardly as he struggled with the hatchway. He fumbled with the large red bar that had to be pushed back to override the computer’s emergency system and access the controls directly. Once that was out of the way, he hit the thick, square button at the top of the panel, which blew all of the upper hatchways off at once.
“Up we go, up we go!” he yelled to Kick.
He put his head out of the hatchway, breathing a whiff of the hot, humid jungle air. A machine-gun started to fire in the distance.
Starship ducked back down. Maybe it would be better to stay in the plane, where at least there was a modicum of cover. But the Megafortress would be a target for whomever was attacking; he turned and yelled at Kick, who still hadn’t moved off the deck.
“Yo, Kick boy, time to get the hell out of here,” he yelled to his companion. Once again he draped the other pilot across his back, wobbling as he snaked around and then up through the hatchway. A green arm appeared over the black skin of the Megafortress as Starship pulled upward. His heart nearly leapt from his chest before he realized it was one of the Special Forces soldiers.