“Medic!” Graber yelled at the top of his lungs, then reflex overcame emotion and he checked the rest of the lounge. Buxton and Antonelli were behind him and they went straight for the cockpit. Everything was clear in the lounge.
“Downstairs is secure, Cap.” Buxton said, coming out of the cockpit. “There’s one down in—” He saw the major. He thought Sean had wanted a medic for the co-pilot. “Shit…”
“Get Goldfarb up here,” Sean ordered. “And keep guns on everybody until you’re sure all the bad guys are down.”
Buxton headed down.
The major was half-conscious. His vest had taken two of the slugs, but two others had nailed him between the shoulder and the bicep. Graber tore away at the wet black material. The wound was bleeding like an open valve.
“Oh Christ… Get back, Cap.” Goldfarb put a firm hand on Graber’s shoulder and pushed him aside.
“It looks like two, Jeff.” Sean steadied the major’s head between his hands.
“It’s a bleeder. There’s no way I can pack this this close to the joint. I’m gonna have to tie it off. Shit!” The Delta medic pulled a piece of surgical tubing from his bag and looped it under the major’s shattered arm, above the wound and almost in his armpit. He pulled it tight with both hands, then tied a single knot. The blood flow slowed instantly and stopped almost completely a second later.
Graber was now in command. The signal! “Jeff, take care of him.” Only McAffee and Sean were privy to knowledge of the fighter tailing them.
“Gotcha.”
Graber bolted up and into the cockpit. Antonelli was there, moving a body with only a pinkish mass for a face out of the way. He arm-dragged it into the lounge area.
“Captain Hendrickson.”
“Yeah. Yeah. That’s me.”
“We…” Graber stopped. Something was wrong. “What happened?”
Hendrickson pointed to the center of the dark console, just above the throttle levers. “The bastard was a lousy shot,” he said with as much agonized humor as he could muster.
Sean already had his light on. He trained it on the console. Three holes, spaced close to each other, ran diagonally up the instruments. At least one of them had hit something vital, as there wasn’t an instrument lit in the entire cockpit.
Hendrickson leaned in and stuck the tip of his forefinger into the middle hole. “Right back in here is an electrical trunk line. It’s a one-inch insulated cable that goes right into two separate transformers. I’ll bet if you pulled the panel cover off the cable would be sliced in two. That’s the only way all this would have gone out.”
“What about the radio?” Graber asked.
“No good. Out.”
Wonderful… “What about a backup radio?”
“Look, I’m just glad that she’s even responding. She’ll fly — landing’s another story. And you want a radio? No. There’s no backup. We don’t plan on bullets getting loose in here. The transformers for all our radios — HF and VHF— get their power from these cables the bullet cut. The only other transmitters are in the survival rafts, and those won’t do a damn bit of good in here.”
Graber eased himself into the dead pilot’s seat. His light swept across the wet red liquid on the center console. “Well we’re in trouble, then.”
“Why?”
Sean checked his watch. “In about a minute a fighter a couple of miles back is gonna splash us.”
“Shoot us down? For God’s sake, why?”
It hadn’t occurred to the Delta captain that the crew was in the dark. Then he decided that it had probably been for the best… at the time. That time was past. “You’ve got some kind of nuclear shit in the cargo hold. There’s a guy from DOE down there working on it.”
“A bomb?”
“No. Not exactly.” Sean knew there wasn’t time to explain. “Look if we don’t get the right signal to that fighter we’re going swimming.” Dammit, Blackjack, what would you do?
Hendrickson fought the feelings that could very well have overwhelmed him. Buzz was gone. Gone. Murdered.
He had to think. The soldier was looking to him for some kind of answer. No radio, and they had to let the fighter know that shooting them down wasn’t necessary. The thoughts of what had to be done — or attempted — lost out to emotions for a second, and the old Air Force pilot found himself blinking away the tears that welled up. Wait… The idea came instantly. “What’s the signal?”
“Why?” Graber asked.
“Never mind. You want to live? Then tell me.”
His thumb was rigid. A quarter of an inch of downward force would push the firing button far enough to make contact and complete the firing circuit. Flying straight and level, as the F-l06 was, the G compensator wouldn’t even add any reverse pressure on the button. It would be easy. Hardly a physical act at all.
There was more to the act than the twitch of a muscle, though. A man with a mind and a conscience was in the cockpit.
Cooper checked the fighter’s old timepiece. Everything should have happened by now, he thought. He had a three-minute window of opportunity. During that time, which began at the moment of the scheduled assault, he could fire or wait. After 180 seconds, however, the decision was taken away. He had to fire. That decision was not his, but he would carry it out.
The Genie’s 1.5-kiloton warhead was armed, and the bay doors were open. Power was already flowing to the weapon’s firing circuits, and was allowed through to the two-phase detonator. The loop would be complete after the missile was fired, when, two miles from the fighter, the stored energy would be released from the shaving-cream-can-size capacitor. The high explosives would fire, triggering the nuclear explosion.
From Major Cooper’s vantage the 747 was cast in an eerie pulsing glow. The huge jet looked small from three miles away, and the moist air enveloped it, diffusing the external lights into a sphere brighter than the surrounding night.
He again checked the frequency setting. This was the third time in two minutes. It was right. “Come on. Come on,” he coaxed the silent radio.
The M.D. from Louisiana waited until only ten seconds were left. Twenty years before he would have removed his bulky glove, but flight garments had come as far as his usual ride. His fingers moved easily, finding the fire button, mounted at a slight upward angle on the stick. He breathed heavily, hearing it through the mask-mounted microphone that carried sound like an intercom.
What… At first he thought an unseen wave of heavy air had swept in from the side, blocking the 747 from view. But then it was back, but without its anti-collision lights. A stream of moonlight penetrating the cloud cover above glinted off the white body of the aircraft. Cooper stretched his thumb upward. It was time. His neck craned upward slightly to sight in on the target. The magnification made the jet fill the reticle.
“Sweet Jesus…forgive me—”
His eye caught it through the sight first, then he backed his face away. It was visible to the naked eye.
The bright landing lights on the 747 came on, then went off. On again, and off. One more time the sequence repeated. Cooper’s thumb hovered over the fire button. After a brief pause the lights came back on, shining distinct cones of light from the xenon lamps into the clouds ahead. They went off quickly and back on for a longer period. It was Morse!
“You lucky bastard,” Cooper said. His thumb went back to the side of the stick. “We’ve got an S and an A, fellas. C’mon with the rest.”
The F and the E followed, but Snoopy wasn’t going to shoot down anybody for a misblink if there had been one. He allowed himself a breath before closing the bay doors and safing the Genie.