“Look,” the President said. “I understand what you’re trying to accomplish. These are very noble ideas and I want you to succeed with them. But in the very near future, you’re going to discover that the world just can’t work that way. I am offering you a very important position in a world that does work, where you will have everything you desire: money, power and control. I can’t hold this position open for very long. I am going to need an answer from you, if not now, then soon.”
“No,” John said emphatically. “You are a pariah. You have forfeited your right to lead. Now go and crawl back under your rock. We have nothing to discuss.”
“I understand your anger and your frustration,” the President said. “You need time to think this over, discuss it with your people. Get back to me within forty-eight hours by radio and let me know we have a deal.”
The President was smiling again and offering his hand. John turned and walked away with the rest of us behind him. After we got back in the car John said, “Carl, what do you think?”
“I think he’s a very dangerous man,” I said. “You can’t trust him.”
“I agree,” Ed said.
“Well,” Major Samuels said, “we should be good for the next forty-eight hours, anyway. After that, who knows?”
“He doesn’t really care about anyone but himself, does he?” Tia asked.
“He cares about what he offered us,” John replied, “money, power and control. The sad part is that he believes those are the only things anybody cares about. Nothing else registers in his mind as having any importance whatsoever.”
I explained who General Strom was and why he was with the President. We rode in silence back to John’s Learjet 45 and boarded for our return flight to Denver. We had climbed to our thirty-four thousand foot cruising altitude when the co-pilot came back into the passenger cabin.
“I’ve got a migraine,” he said. “Anyone want to sit in the cockpit with the captain?”
“Sure,” Tia said as she started to get up.
I felt that anxiety return that warned me something was coming.
“I better go,” I said. “Tia, you need to stay back here.”
“Look,” Tia replied, “just because we have a relationship doesn’t mean you get to order me around.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “You wanted me to share; I’m sharing.”
“What do you mean, you’re sharing?” Tia asked.
I glanced over at Ed. He had a puzzled look on his face.
“I mean like the night the meteor storm started,” I said. “That kind of sharing.”
“The Frankenwolves?” Tia asked. “What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, “I just know I need to be up there with the pilot.”
Both Tia and Ed had alarmed expressions on their faces. John looked puzzled. I walked toward the cockpit. I stopped at the door and turned around.
“You need to keep your seatbelts on,” I said.
Tia cinched her seatbelt tight and clamped her hands onto the armrests. She looked terrified.
“We’re swinging to the south to avoid a line of thunderstorms,” the pilot said as I climbed into the copilot seat. “It should add only about twenty minutes to our flight time. You ever fly a plane?”
“No,” I replied, “but I’ve done some time with flight simulators, so a lot of the instruments on the panel look familiar.”
“A simulator’s not really like the real thing,” he said. “You don’t get the physical feeling like when the plane moves.”
“I can see how that would make a difference,” I replied. We continued with small talk as I kept watching the ground below us. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I suspected I would know it when I saw it. A half hour later, I knew what it was.
“We have a smoke trail coming up at us from the ground,” I yelled.
“A what?” the pilot yelled back.
“A smoke trail rising rapidly to the right and front of the plane.”
“Shit!” he said. He grabbed the intercom mike and pressed the button. “Seat belts on tight. Everybody grab on to something.”
He jammed the yoke forward and banked the jet to the right. The source of the smoke trail looked like a small dot, now in the center of the front windshield.
“Near the center of the instrument panel,” he said, “navigational radar, flip the switch to long range.”
I found the control and flipped the switch.
“It’s a Surface to Air Missile,” he yelled, “radar guided. The long range nav radar is the strongest we’ve got. I’m hoping it confuses the missile guidance system, at least a little.”
We were flying down on a direct collision course with the missile. I couldn’t believe he was doing this.
“Shouldn’t we be going in the other direction?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said. “That missile travels at four to six times our speed. We can’t outrun it. It’s designed to follow and hit us. This is the only way.”
At the last split second he jerked the plane to the left. The missile flew right past us.
“That was close,” I said.
“We’re just getting started,” he replied. “Look back and see which way the missile turned.”
I looked back through my side window and didn’t see anything of the missile. “I don’t see anything,” I yelled.
He glanced out his side window.
“It’s swinging around to the left,” he said. “I’ve got it.”
We were still flying almost straight down. I looked at the altimeter. It was spinning counterclockwise. I looked at the ground slowly approaching us. That’s when I saw the second smoke trail.
“Second missile, dead ahead,” I shouted.
The pilot looked at the second missile and glanced back at the first one.
“Okay,” he said, “this is where it gets a little dicey.”
“A little dicey?” I shouted as I gripped the armrests as hard as I could.
“That’s right,” he said quietly, “come to daddy.”
This guy had to be nuts. Again he jerked the plane to the left at the last fraction of a second before we collided with the missile. He glanced back at the first missile again and then at the ground.
“Second missile turned to the left?” he asked.
I looked out my side window again. “Nothing there, just like before,” I yelled.
“Okay,” he said as he swung the plane further to the left, “did you see where the missile was launched from?”
“Yes,” I said, “the roads form a grid with one diagonal road, where the diagonal road crosses the river, upper side. That’s where it came from.”
“Got it,” he said. “I’m going to swing back to the right. The missile should appear in your right rear window. Let me know as soon as the smoke stops.”
“Smoke stops?” I asked.
“These missiles are propelled by solid fuel. When the smoke stops they’re out of fuel. They can maneuver some, but they can’t fly up.” He banked the jet to the right and I watched as the missile came into view.
“Okay!” I shouted, “No smoke.”
“Perfect,” he said.
The ground looked like it was coming up rapidly now. He started pulling back on the yoke as the plane struggled to pull up. I looked back at the first missile.
“Getting closer! Almost here!”
The plane leveled with the ground and started to climb. I looked back at the first missile and it disappeared from view behind the plane. A few seconds later the plane was jarred by the shock wave from the explosion.
“Return to sender, boys,” he said. “Where’s the second missile?”
“High and behind us,” I said. “What did you mean, return to sender?”
“Timing was good,” he said, “it hit the launch vehicle. They won’t be shooting anything else at us.”