And then the 727 hit the Universal Express package shipping center.
The entire northern part of the airfield illuminated brighter than daylight. The western half of the sprawling cargo complex disappeared in an enormous lake of fire. The fireball that was a 220,000-pound airliner plunged through the western half of the thirty-acre cargo complex, disappeared for a few seconds, bounced on the ground, blew out the northwest side of the building, and cartwheeled several times across the ground, shredding the western half of the building — Universal Express’s executive offices, communications center, and computer complex — as it tumbled. The heat of the explosion, nearly a half-mile away, could be felt right through the slanted tower windows, and Gayze was thrown to the floor when the shock wave hit and shattered those windows, the blastfurnace heat rolling across the tower like a fiery tidal wave…
But it was not the north windows that blew out — it was the southern windows, behind Gayze. He leaped to his feet as soon as he could shake the shock and noise from his head. A few controllers were rushing for the exit door, but Gayze just stood there, bathing himself in the heat and the noise and the light coming from an explosion — not on the Universal Express cargo facility, but on the main terminal.
Gayze was reaching for the crash phone button again, but the tower supervisor pulled his hand away — the tower was dead. “Get out of here, Bill.”
“What the hell happened? Did 107 hit the terminal?”
‘The tower’s been damaged, Bill. Get going.”
But Gayze couldn’t make his feet move. As horrible as the spectacular crash on the Universal Express facility was, what had happened behind him on the main terminal was even more shocking. The main terminal building, right at the intersection between the east and west concourses, was on fire, severed and flattened in a fiery crater. Two airliners were on fire, and two more were spun sideways from the force of the blast. Gayze could see inside one L-1011 airliner, and the flickering lights in its windows told him that passengers were rushing toward the exits inside. The fire was still several yards away when Gayze saw doors pop open and emergency escape slides deploy on the side of the plane opposite the fire. A few doors opened on the side of the fire, but no passengers used that exit, thank God. The evacuation seemed rapid and orderly…
… but it wasn’t fast enough, because suddenly the L-101 l’s left wing caught fire, then exploded, ripping the fuselage of the big airliner in half. Passengers and baggage spilled from the ruptured halves of the airliner onto the fiery tarmac. Gayze ducked when the force of the explosion hit him up in the open tower cab.
“Bill!” someone shouted. “Get out! Let’s go!”
But Gayze looked through the clouds of smoke and fire at the terminal. It was not just the main terminal that had been hit — now he could see huge fires breaking out on the north side of the terminal, the northwest corner of the parking garage, and the south side of the Sheraton Hotel, just a few hundred yards west of the control tower. He could hear the roar of the fire, smell the burning kerosene — it was like looking at a firestorm.
“Bill! Damn it, let’s go!”
Smoke was rapidly filling the control tower, and Gayze was forced to drop on his knees and crawl to the stairs toward the exit. His eyes were filled with tears, and not all of it was from the smoke.
“Oh… my… God…” Roberts muttered in stunned disbelief as the series of explosions and fires rippled across Memphis International Airport below him. But the sight of the burning terminal and hotel was nothing compared to the horrifying sight of the sea of fire that was once the Universal Express super hub. It looked like a nuclear bomb had simply flattened and vaporized the entire northern half of the airport. The flames still shooting from the impact site seemed to tower far above the Shorts’ altitude, and the ripples of fire made it seem like the bottom of a volcano’s lava pit.
“I said, close the cargo doors, Roberts,” Cazaux ordered over the intercom. Roberts still was too stunned to make his feet or hands move. All that death, all that destruction — and he had witnessed it all, been in on the planning of all of it. It was a terrorist attack on his own people, his own countrymen. It was an attack incomprehensible to the young American, more devastating than anything he had ever heard of since the World Trade Center bombing. They were turning westbound, so he could no longer see the fires at the Sheraton or the main terminal — those attacks were by his own hand…
“I know it is painful, Kenneth,” a voice said. It was Henri Cazaux, standing beside him — obviously the plane was on autopilot. “The destruction, it is horrible, no?”
“God, yes,” Roberts said in a low voice. “All those people down there, all that death.”
“It is time you joined them,” Cazaux said quietly, just before he grasped Roberts by the forehead from behind, drove his infantry knife up through the base of Roberts’ skull into his brain, and wiggled the knife point around inside his skull several times to scramble his brain matter. There was virtually no blood — Roberts’ heart had stopped beating instantly, as if shut off with a switch. Cazaux merely picked him up by the blade of his knife, still embedded deep in his skull, took him to the edge of the open cargo ramp, and dropped him over the side.
The autopilot was weaving the Shorts around the sky unsteadily, and there was a little turbulence from the heat radiating off the hills of western Tennessee and northern Mississippi, but Cazaux did not seem to notice it. He stood on the edge of the Shorts’ cargo ramp, the toes of one foot actually over the edge itself, with no safety line or parachute, looking at the incredibly bright glow of Memphis International Airport on fire.
He dared God, dared the Devil, dared any man or being to take him. It was easy — just a slight buffet, a sudden ripple of air, a short interruption of thousands of circuits running through the Shorts’ autopilot system — and he would be thrown into space, just as dead as Ken Roberts.
No, it was not his time to die, not yet. Jo Ann Vega was right: the dark master had given him the gift of invincibility.
He wanted the death to continue…
Beale Air Force Base, Yuba City, California
Several Minutes Later
Despite being a retired two-star Coast Guard admiral, Ian Hardcastle preferred the Non-Commissioned Officers lounge on Beale Air Force Base; he and his small staff had virtually taken over the billiard room again with an impromptu drinks-and-dinner meeting.
Colonel Al Vincenti, who, with the help and support of Hardcastle, Martindale, and the Senate subcommittee, had been cleared of all charges (but had not yet been returned to flight status), was haphazardly banging billiard balls around on the well-worn felt with Hardcastle.
Hardcastle’s chief of staff, retired Air Force colonel, military analyst, and political consultant Marc Sheehan, his fourth cup of coffee of the night in one hand, was reading from a sheaf of notes: “Admiral, I think we’re ready to make this presentation to the Project 2000 Task Force executive committee,” he said. “I think this is a masterful piece of work.” “I’d rather take a bit of time to get more data,” Hardcastle said, missing a complicated two-rail bank shot. Vincenti cast a questioning eye at Hardcastle’s showy but hopeless shot and easily sunk his own. “There’s a lot of stuff this report is missing. And I wish I had more time with Martindale. He’s spent more time at fund-raisers and tours than on the business at hand here.”