And, by golly, here came another one. Four or five hundred feet above the earth, scorching along to the northwest. McGarrity got that one with a Sidewinder too. Elation flooded her. This fighter pilot gig was hot shit! Again she soared up and turned southeast, toward the sea.
Two minutes later, she found a third Tomahawk on radar, this one going almost north. Catching it meant a chase, so she engaged the burner and let her fighter accelerate as it again went down toward Mother Earth. She didn’t see the Tomahawk until she was about four miles from it — it was a little thing, only visible because the radar told her exactly where to look. She kept the juice on, coming in from an angle, nose well in front to bounce it by sliding up behind it. Gun selected. She kept the missile just below the visible horizon, because to dip below it was to risk flying into the ground. Flying this fast this close to the planet was sublime, a sensory overload.
She was only a mile from it, flying at just above two hundred feet on a course to intercept, closing at Mach 1.2, when she saw something out of the left corner of her eye. Even as the object registered as a radio tower, she hit one of the supporting cables with her left wing.
At that speed, about 1,300 feet per second, the steel cable sliced halfway through the wing as if it were cheese; the spar in the left wing broke and the wing separated from the racing F-16.
There was just no time to react. In a tiny fraction of a second the F-16 rolled hard left, the nose dropped, and the fighter smacked into the ground inverted. The fireball rolled along the land for a thousand yards, dribbling pieces of airplane and Rose-Marie McGarrity. Two houses and one barn caught fire. Smoke mixed with the thick, humid haze.
No one spoke in the control room of Texas. They knew that passive antisubmarine torpedoes were hunting them. And the pundits said the age of robots was still in the future!
“Put out some more decoys,” Loren Snyder said. Jugs Aranado went to the control panel and launched four.
“Where’s the bottom?” Loren asked.
“Two thousand feet down.”
“Take us to fifteen hundred,” he said to Ada Fuentes.
The sub continued its descent as water poured into the ballast tanks. Snyder was worried. Virginia-class submarines were the quietest ever made, and the antisubmarine torpedoes weren’t designed to find subs this quiet. But…
The tension mounted. They could be dead in a moment. Each breath could be their last, each heartbeat.
“Do you hear the torpedoes?” Loren asked George Ranta.
“Too much noise,” he whispered. “I hear pinging but I can’t get a direction.”
Boom. The explosion rocked the boat. One of the torpedoes had found a decoy.
And another boom.
“More pinging,” Ranta said.
Where had the other torpedoes gone?
“We’ve got to turn,” Ada said. “That production platform is dead ahead.”
“Right ninety degrees.” The boat was still going down. Fourteen hundred feet and sinking.
But they were still alive.
They heard two more explosions. Well away.
“The torpedoes went for a platform,” Ranta said.
A wave of relief swept over the little crew of Texas.
“There are more of them out there,” Ranta said. “I can hear at least one. Maybe circling.” They turned the boat toward the noise and waited. Finally the noise from the torpedo’s engine faded.
Snyder said to Fuentes and Aranado, “Go back up, so we can use the photonics mast.” To Ranta he said, “You must keep us clear of those platforms.”
“I can hear them.”
So they rose slowly from the depths. When the photonics mast was raised, it revealed the injured destroyers lying dead in the water at least six miles to the west. The damaged production platform still stood, but no doubt the crew on it was on their radio reporting the torpedoed destroyers and the torpedoes that struck the platform. And trying desperately to prevent a major oil spill.
Loren Snyder was exhausted. He’d slept six hours in three days. “Let’s get the hell out of the gulf,” he said. “Jugs, lay a course for the Straits of Florida. When we are clear of these platforms, take us back down to a thousand feet so the P-3s can’t find us. I’m going to sleep.”
He staggered along to the tiny captain’s cabin and collapsed into the bunk.
Fifty-five of the sixty-three Tomahawk cruise missiles launched by USS O’Hare and Harlan Jones actually impacted Texas power plants. The resulting explosions took seventeen power plants off the grid instantly. Subsequent inspections revealed that at least nine of them could be repaired, and they began producing electricity, at least at a reduced level, within a week or two. The remaining eight were damaged beyond salvage.
The Texas government kept the amount of damage a closely held secret, although within a day or two satellite reconnaissance would allow analysts in Washington to make reasonably accurate assessments.
No doubt more Tomahawks were in Texas’ future.
A few minutes before three that Friday afternoon, six Secret Service agents climbed from an SUV in front of the main entrance of the Pentagon and went inside. They were escorted to the E-Ring, where they arrested Admiral Sugar Ray, the army chief of staff, and the air force chief of staff. They put all three men in handcuffs and took them to the ground level of the building and into the interior courtyard. The sun was shining and the temperature was already in the low nineties.
Each man was handcuffed to a small tree with his hands behind his back. Admiral Ray knew what was coming. He cursed himself for waiting so long. We should have done it yesterday, he thought bitterly.
The senior agent drew his weapon and shot each of them in the head. Sugar Ray just happened to be last. “Rot in Hell,” Ray told the agent, who then pulled the trigger.
The agents left the bodies handcuffed to the trees, walked back through the Pentagon, past those horrified officers and enlisted who had actually managed to get to work today, and out the main entrance to their waiting car.
Al Grantham was worried. He had visions of squads of armed troops coming into the White House and arresting the president and everyone around him, taking them to some dungeon and chaining them to the wall. Shooting three senior officers at the Pentagon was an in-your-face insult the armed services couldn’t ignore.
He broached the subject to the president, who sneered. “They’ll do nothing,” he said. “They are bureaucrats, paper-pushers, and they achieved their high ranks by not making waves.” The president lit a cigarette and puffed on it contentedly. “We have nothing to fear from the generals. They have taken orders since their first day in uniform. Nothing in their experience has prepared them for the day when their superiors might use violence to make them behave.”
“They aren’t cowards.”
“Oh,” said Soetoro with a hint of derision in his voice, “but they are. They believe in nothing but the holy flag, keeping the boss happy, and collecting their pensions in the good by and by. The man who believes in something and will use any means to get it will leave them at a loss.”
Grantham’s face reflected his doubt.
“Relax,” Barry Soetoro said. “Whatever they are, they are not gamblers. When have you ever known one of them to take a risk?”
TWENTY-SIX
A couple of days after our first visit, Armanti Hall and I decided to call on Angelica Price to deliver a deer haunch. A little fresh meat always goes well, we thought, and maybe we could trade for some fresh potatoes and beans.