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The lower altitude made the plane more stable, but it also made them an easier target for interceptors and missiles. More important, it cut down on the laser’s range. Atta got the second missile, but just barely; he turned southward, pushing on a direct line toward Islamabad as the radars caught two more probably ballistic missiles coming up off the ground. One of the pilots in the F-15s escorting them barked something into his ears; Atta was too busy trying to get the shot lined up to make sense of it, let alone respond.

He had to get these missiles now. He had to take them all out. Miss one, and he might as well have missed them all.

“SAMs up,” warned the copilot.

Atta pushed southward, setting up a new firing track. He turned the airplane over to the computer and then fired. He caught the first missile at five thousand feet; the second was nearly level with the plane when the laser finally destroyed it.

Two Pakistani interceptors had been scrambled to try and take them down. The F-15s were responding.

“SAMs are launching,” said his copilot. There was another barrage of missiles from the Indians, unidentified by the sensors: probably more ballistic missiles.

Six of them.

They were going to run out of fuel for the weapon soon.

Atta started to override the target selection, then froze. There were too many targets, spread over too wide an area.

He glanced back at the HUD, fired — a mistake, since he hadn’t locked. The blast missed.

Atta took a breath and waited for the laser to recycle and position itself. He fired, taking out the first SAM. But the second was coming hard, and he didn’t have a firing solution: It was locked on one of the Eagles.

I should let it go,he thought to himself.The nukes are more important.

But he didn’t. He banked the 767 hard, momentarily forgetting that the plane was flying on only one engine. He recovered quickly, but the craft shook violently and it took precious seconds to stabilize before he could set it to fire. The cursor went red and he nailed the warhead about twenty seconds away from impact.

Atta put the plane on its wing, a bit more gently this time, hoping to hold an angle that would cover a wide arc of the sky. But the computer wouldn’t keep the plane like that: The programming insisted on straight and level on one engine. He wasted time going back, and then even more overriding the weapon system’s insistence that he give up helm before firing. He had six missiles but time to take out only four.

The first two were easy. His hands began trembling on the third, and by the fourth he had to give the plane back to the computer to make the shot. They took out the missile just before the second stage separated — the last possible moment.

It was too late for the others. Atta, now deep into Pakistan, turned to go north, cursing himself. He looked at the targeting screen to see if there were more targets.

The screen was blank. So was the missile-tracking radar.

“What happened to the other two missiles?” Atta asked Peters.

“Five and six are gone,” said Peters.

“Were they decoys?”

“I don’t know,” replied the sergeant. “I have secondary strike indications; did you shoot at them?”

She knew the answer as well as he did, but Atta said no anyway.

Chapter 21

Howe pushed northward, running toward the laser plane. The contact screen was now completely blank; they were the only aircraft left in the sky. In fact, except for a few stray bubbles of flak, they were the only anything left in the sky. Cyclops had taken out all of the nukes.

“How you looking, Bird Two?” he asked his wingman.

“Disappointed. I got a missile left.”

He didn’t sound like he was kidding.

“I assume that means you’re in one piece,” answered Howe.

“Oh yeah.”

The Velociraptors were now way low on fuel, and Howe checked with the tanker to make sure they could catch a refill.

The AWACS and the eavesdropping aircraft assured him that both sides had called it quits. They had also shot their wads: Both had used all of their nuclear weapons.

“Good work, Cyclops Two,” Howe told Atta as he closed on the plane ahead. “We just saved a couple of million lives.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” snapped Atta. “One thing: Uh, we lost two of the contacts in the last box. And that unidentified spy plane — that’s gone too. We’re going to have to sort it out on the ground,” he added. “But we’re pretty sure the contacts we lost were ballistic missiles.”

“They hit the spy plane?”

“Negative. They were separated by about a hundred miles. Here’s the thing: When those missiles disappeared, our gear recorded laser strikes, just like ours.”

Part Four
Recovery

Chapter 1

There was no part of his body that didn’t hurt. His right knee felt as if it had been turned inside out; a jagged numbness ran diagonally across his back to the left side of his neck, where it plunged through his chest and came out at his breastbone. His temples felt as if daggers were pressing against them.

McIntyre lay on his stomach in the darkness for an hour or more, gradually growing colder and colder. Images fluttered before his eyes, some real, some imaginary.

He saw a dozen girls he should have laid but hadn’t.

That was how he knew he wasn’t going to die. If he’d been about to buy it, he’d have seen a shadowy figure standing in front of a long tunnel, just as all those near-death books and movies claimed.

That, or a babe with serious knockers leading him to hell.

McIntyre pushed with his arms and legs, trying to lift the metal from around him. He pushed through the darkness, working his way in the path of least resistance. He began to feel cold. Several times the blackness closed around him and his head floated away from his arms and legs. At some point he realized he was on the ground outside of the wreckage.

His legs and arms felt stiff, and his neck buzzed with whatever he’d done to it. But he was free, he could move; he pushed over and sat up.

There was a rifle near him, a Russian Kalashnikov.

He reached for it. His hand moved in slow motion. When he finally touched it the metal seemed on fire. He pulled the gun toward him, used it as a crutch to get to his feet.

The helicopter lay a few yards away, nose-first against the side of the hill. There were people outside, near the door: bodies, none moving. He took a step forward, saw a man next to him: Captain Jalil.

The bastard who had kidnapped him.

McIntyre swung the rifle up and crashed it down on Jalil’s head. The Indian fell straight down. McIntyre swung again, hitting the back of his skull so hard that he felt something crack inside it. Surprised at his strength and the ferocity of his anger, he knelt over the captain. Blood streamed from his ears and mouth; the man was dead.

Something moved near the helicopter. McIntyre heard a shout. He grabbed the rifle right-side up, pulled it to his side and fired into the thick of the shadow as he turned around.

The shadow fell away. But rather than going over to make sure the soldier was dead — rather than getting up and seeing if any of the others were alive — McIntyre sat next to Jalil’s lifeless body.

“Why did you want to kill me?” he asked. “Why? Why kill anyone?”

Then he collapsed, unconscious, his chest landing on the motionless remains of his enemy.

McIntyre’s body transformed itself in the dazed nightmare of his troubled sleep. His arms became long icicles, and the back of his head swelled larger and larger until it lifted him up from the valley, sending him soaring through the darkness. He saw himself, then saw women — beautiful, gorgeous women in an endless parade, traveling through the rift in the mountains.

A gust of wind took him and spun him around; he woke to find himself sitting against part of the damaged helicopter’s tail. It was now mid-morning.

His first thought was: I’m in real shit.

His second thought was: Damn it’s cold.

His third: I have to take the world’s biggest leak.

McIntyre could do something only about the last. He rose, unbending unsteadily, then walked a few yards away. He remembered bashing his captor’s head and body; had it been part of the dream?

His hands were covered with blood, so he knew it had to have been real. Still, he couldn’t quite prepare himself for what he saw when he went back. He pushed it over, avoided looking at the battered face as he searched for his satellite phone.

He found a photo in one of the pockets. McIntyre threw it aside without looking.

Someone groaned from inside the helicopter. McIntyre steeled himself, continued searching. There were papers, a very small pistol; the phone had been tucked into the Indian’s hip pocket and was still warm.

There was another moan. Worried that some of the men might be alive, he took the phone and jammed it into his back pocket. An assault rifle sat on the ground; McIntyre stooped to pick it up. Blood rushed from his head; dizzy, he put his hand out and dropped the phone into the dirt.

The helicopter’s cockpit had been crushed, but the rear compartment was more or less intact. The side door had been torn off and there was a long, narrow hole running back from it, as if it were a seam that had split. Five or six bodies lay nearby. One moved, then another.

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