Blaine pushed the red firing button.
Impact thrust him back against his seat and halted the tank’s progress. Blaine watched through the viewer as a blur shot out toward the guard tower, turning it into an orange fireball spraying metal and wood everywhere.
The digital rocket counter clicked down to “2.”
McCracken aimed the tank around to where most of the troops were dispersing. He dabbed at his brow and decided his next and last targets would be the greatest concentrations of men. Perhaps in the confusion he might slip away. Perhaps—
Wait! Confusion, that was it! The ultimate in confusion had to be created if he was to escape. Blaine gave the accelerator pedal more pressure and reached over the T-bar for a pair of buttons. The tank’s front-mounted, twin machine guns responded by cutting down those troops brave enough to chance a rush at the iron monster.
He swung the M60 to the left and angled it for the storage hangar he had come from originally. He had just come in line with the front of the building, when an armor-piercing shell ripped into the side of his tank, spraying dust and debris into the cabin. The smell of burnt metal and wires flooded his nostrils.
“Come on, baby,” McCracken urged out loud. “Hold together for just a little longer. …”
The tank seemed to hear him and obey, limping forward with one tread crippled as more explosions outside battered Blaine’s ears. He swung the turret in the direction they were coming from and fired the big gun quickly without taking proper aim. The shell landed short but bought him the last seconds he needed.
The counter clicked down to “1.”
He crashed the M60 through the hangar’s heavy doors, rolled right through them with the turret swinging back to the front. The T-bar shook in his hands and he had to twist it in crazed patterns to compensate for the crippled tread. The targeting scope was equipped with infrared, so even in the darkness he had no trouble locating the corner he remembered the crates of grenades had been stored in. With the tank struggling forward, knocking crates from its path, Blaine fired his last rocket.
The results were immediate. And spectacular.
That entire portion of the building went up in a blinding fireball, the intense heat and flames reaching out to consume box after box of other explosives and ammunition. Blaine was out of the M60’s cabin an instant before the flames reached his area, and he rushed away as they licked at his back. An explosion catapulted him through the air and he felt himself strike the floor as another blast ripped out the wall before him. With the onrush of flames serving as his cover, Blaine crawled back outside. On the base there was total havoc. Order had collapsed. Troops ran in every direction with no idea of what they should be doing in such a situation. The commando leaders were shouting commands, but it was useless. Explosions kept sounding in the storage hangar, which had become a formless mass of construction tumbling in upon itself to be swallowed by the raging flames.
McCracken’s face was charred black and he was bleeding superficially in a number of areas. As he moved through the chaos, he saw many others who looked much the same, especially those who had followed orders to battle the fire with hoses bearing insufficient pressure. Then, above it all, a voice crackled over the loudspeaker.
“Attention all personnel! Attention all personnel! Prepare immediately for evacuation to Newport com-center. Repeat, prepare immediately for evacuation to Newport com-center. Trucks will begin leaving for the airfield in five minutes. Trucks will begin leaving for the airfield in five minutes.”
They were abandoning ship, Blaine thought. I’ve accomplished that. And destroyed a prime weapons cache to boot.
Newport com-center …
What in hell was that? No matter, McCracken figured, it’s my chance for escape regardless.
He burst through a barracks door, where men were feverishly packing gear, and found an unoccupied bed and foot locker. In the near darkness and confusion no one took much notice of his features through the grime and blood that covered them. He would be fine so long as the bed’s true occupant didn’t make an untimely return.
Blaine redressed in shapeless green fatigues and rummaged around their owner’s foot locker to find sufficient packing for a duffel bag as the others were doing. He would do everything just as the others did. They were his ticket off the island.
He moved from the barracks, duffel bag in hand, with the second rush of men through the door. The fire was now totally out of control. It had spread to neighboring structures in the face of facilities utterly inadequate to fight it. Blaine ran toward the trucks near the motor pool and hurled himself into the back of one. Its darkness soothed him. Feeling cocky, he extended helping hands to the last of those who crowded in the back and shoved around to find seating space. A number gave up and settled on the floor. McCracken managed to find a spot on the bench way in the back near the truck’s cab.
The truck rumbled to a start, lurched forward in one grinding lunge, and then another. The engine, not yet warm, resisted, but the driver pushed the machine until its gears ground in protest. Blaine followed the path they were taking as best he could through the open tailgate. It was smooth-going through the length of the complex until they reached the hardened dirt road that would lead them to the airfield. Blaine recognized its coarse feeling from the trip in and found it little more comfortable outside a crate than inside.
His fear of being recognized as an impostor had evaporated by the time the caravan of trucks reached the airstrip. Enough eyes had met his and turned away routinely to convince him that where the darkness and grime stopped being his ally, he was aided by the fact that these men had apparently remained strangers to each other through their training.
That led him to the conclusion that their training had not lasted long and to wonder how many had come before them.
Newport com-center …
What if this destination was one of many spots across the country Krayman’s white mercenary troops had been airlifted to? Blaine had to assume that Sahhan’s PVR cells were already in place in similarly strategic areas. Two separate armies, both prepared to strike, both financed by Randall Krayman. But where was the connection?
The questions and puzzles kept battering Blaine’s mind as he sat in the crowded cargo hold of one of the transports streaking through the sky. He had overheard someone calling out the flight coordinates earlier and thus knew that the Newport of their destination was the one in Rhode Island — quite fortunate since he had spent a month some years back resting and recuperating from an especially grueling mission on the prestigious community’s famed beaches. He remembered the area well enough to suit his needs.
Blaine dozed a few times through the eight-hour flight, which ended harshly on an abandoned airfield at nearly three A.M. The troops stretched and shook themselves awake, trying to beat back the sluggishness the long trip had brought on. Once the plane came to a halt, the men closest to the doors slid them open and let down the ramps. Blaine walked out in the middle of the group and felt the cold air assault him on contact. Paris had been bearable and San Melas steaming, so a return to the unusually early winter cold was shocking. All the troops looked to be shivering. But the bereted leaders shouted at them and pointed them in the direction of a hangar which might have been a giant icebox.
After so long in darkness, even the temporary fluorescent lighting burned Blaine’s eyes. He shielded them as he took his place in line, leaving his duffel bag by his feet and making sure his face was covered. The rows of men were neat and orderly. The troops stood halfway at attention in the cold. Beyond a window crusted with a combination of ice and dirt, Blaine noticed a few of the leaders conferring with a giant of a man wearing a civilian overcoat. Even from this distance, the big man did not look pleased. The men beyond the window dispersed, and moments later a raspy, slurred voice echoed through the hangar over a P.A.