Attack on Area 51 (10 page)

But then it was gone for good.

Hunter yanked off his oxygen mask and breathed in the hot air of the cockpit.

He’d left Nellis reeling—taking out its scramble jets and its fuel supply; making it electronically blind and deaf; and fouling its main runway.

But this one-man preemptive strike bordered on desperation, and he knew it. It would serve as a holding action at best, because once the AMC figured out all this grief was coming from Groom Lake, they would respond in force.

That’s why he
had
to get back there, ASAP.

But then, not thirty seconds outside Nellis, Hunter’s body began vibrating again.

Damn …

Enemy airplanes.

Still flying at fifty feet, he looked up to see the bare taillights of two more J-11s at ten thousand feet. They were already diving toward him.

Where they’d come from didn’t matter, because Hunter had expended the last of his ammunition taking out Nellis’s fuel dump.

Now what?

Suddenly he hit his throttles, climbed to five thousand feet, and turned directly toward Groom Lake. Then he punched his radio to life and made a brief call.

The J-11s were on his tail seconds later. They were armed with the powerful PL-10, a long-range, anti-aircraft missile that was very hard to fool. With his guns empty and the two fighters on the offensive, Hunter had no choice but to run.

The first PL-10 came at him a moment later. He began zigzagging violently, feeling the missile getting closer by the second. Then, just as he sensed it was about to hit, he pulled back on the control stick and went completely over the top. The missile could not follow. He watched as, with its internal guidance confused, it plowed into the desert below.

But a second PL-10 was on his butt an instant later. Hunter kicked his throttles to max and this time went straight up. The missile mimicked his maneuver, but then couldn’t match Hunter’s sudden sharp loop. The missile lost its way, flared out, and crashed.

Hunter completed his loop and wound up just where he wanted to be: a few hundred feet in front of both enemy fighters.

It was a dangerous move, but he had to stay as close as possible to his pursuers so they couldn’t fire any more long-range missiles at him. He would have to endure their cannon fire instead—and hope his strategy worked.

About ten miles outside Area 51, both AMC planes opened up on him, their huge shells going by him like streaks of lightning. He began twisting and turning the Sabre so violently, he could feel its fuselage cracking. More cannon fire. More rolling and dodging, maneuvers so extreme, not only was the fuel flow to his engine being disrupted, but his canopy glass was actually splintering as well.

Then, finally, he could see Area 51 on the horizon.

But would his plan work?

About a quarter mile out, he went back down to fifty feet and started spinning the Sabre wildly. That was his signal. He roared over the runway a few seconds later, the two J-11s still glued to his ass. Their pilots undoubtedly saw the B-25s and the unwarranted activity at Area 51, but at the moment, it didn’t matter. Only killing the Sabre did.

Hunter knew this and started counting down from five. At zero, he pulled back on the stick and jammed the Sabre’s throttles to max again.

The pair of J-11s followed his maneuver—and that’s when two streaks of orange flame came out of the hills near the base.

While the two unsuspecting AMC pilots were trying their best to close in for the kill on the Sabre, two heat-seeking missiles hit them dead on.

The J-11s exploded simultaneously and slammed into the desert floor, victims of the well-hidden FCSF Stinger teams.

Just in time, too, as Hunter’s F-86 ran out of gas a second later.

Groom Lake

H
UNTER GLIDED IN FOR
a landing. No sooner had he stopped rolling than the Sabre jet was mobbed by the gas plane’s crew. They started refueling and rearming it immediately.

An access ladder appeared, but Hunter was surprised to see the squad leader of the Stinger team climbing up the steps.

Hunter congratulated him on some great shooting, but the man was not there for that. Again, the Stinger crew doubled as the FCSF’s communications intercept team. And in just the past few minutes, they’d overheard two pieces of very disturbing news.

“An AMC troop convoy is heading our way,” the squad leader told Hunter starkly. “They are above ground. They might have been on night maneuvers or who knows what—but they’re definitely coming this way as part of the AMC security emergency. They’ll be here in about twenty-five minutes—or less.”

Hunter’s heart went to his feet. But there was more bad news.

“We intercepted another radio message from L.A.,” the squad leader went on. “Three
planeloads
of AMC troops are flying up from L.A. in giant Antonov cargo jets. That will be about a thousand troops, probably paratroopers. They’re mustering up now; it’s about a one-hour flight once they get airborne. They’ll be here at sunrise.”

Hunter stared back at him in disbelief. This was getting serious. He checked his watch. It was now almost 0300 hours, less than ninety minutes before sunrise. He rubbed his tired eyes and tried to shake the feeling that the whole world was closing in on him.

So much for well-laid plans.

He finally climbed out of the Sabre, only to find even
more
bad news waiting for him.

St. Louis was at the bottom of the access ladder. He looked extremely worried. Hunter had noticed very few FCSF troopers were about and the ones he could see looked grim and on guard. After seeing the two AMC planes shot down—with their remains still burning in the desert nearby—everyone was expecting some kind of response from the AMC. Even St. Louis was wearing a helmet now.

He got right to the point.

“Ben and JT went back down the Hole,” St. Louis told Hunter urgently. “Along with three of my guys dressed up like AMC. The plan was to destroy the big ray gun, so they brought a bladder bomb with them. They were making like they were leading the next bunch of hobos down there to be zapped. They got in okay, but then the place went into lockdown. Everyone was told to stay in place until they were cleared by the security troops.

“Our guys were stuck out on that big gantry you were on earlier, not that far from the big round door. They stayed in place and waited for the security troops to come to them, so they could get off the first shot. But before that happened,
another
security team showed up, this time in back of them, and they saw our guys getting ready to rumble.

“This second team ordered our guys to turn around, and that’s when everyone started shooting. Then the original security team from below arrived—and they tried to shoot our guys in the back. So the hobos had to shoot those guys …”

“The hobos … shot them?” Hunter asked, incredulous.

St. Louis nodded, out of breath now, and said, “Because they’re not hobos—they’re another two dozen of my guys dressed in the hobos’ clothes.”

Hunter was shattered. This place that he’d thought held so many of his memories, so many parts of his life, was now turning into hell on Earth.

“So, we’ve got
thirty
guys trapped inside?” he asked.

St. Louis nodded soberly. “We have intermittent communication with them,” he said, holding up his hand radio. “But we’d be crazy to think it isn’t a minute-to-minute situation.”

Hunter checked the time again. He knew the C-119s would be arriving at sunrise, but that’s when the three huge cargo planes full of AMC troops would be arriving as well. Plus, the AMC land convoy was now just minutes away.

His brain went in overdrive. The overland convoy was the most imminent threat—and he already had an idea for that.

But he also had to conjure up something to help his trapped friends.

Then suddenly it came to him.

The speed of sound …

“I’ll need about thirty minutes,” he told St. Louis while signaling all the B-25 crews to meet him on the runway. “Can Ben and JT hang on that long?”

St. Louis just shook his head. “I guess they’ll have to.”

The road leading from Nellis to Groom Lake started out as an asphalt highway.

Used as a bus route back in the old days for people who lived in Vegas and worked at Area 51 but didn’t like to fly, it went straight through the desert for about fifty miles.

Then, twenty miles from Area 51, it went down to a dirt road that ran between two mesas. With sharp curves at either end, the road traveled about a mile through this pass, before it became straight as an arrow again.

The AMC convoy had left Nellis earlier that evening on night maneuvers. After getting the news that first, two AMC fighters had been shot down, and then that Nellis itself had been attacked, their commanders ordered them to Groom Lake to “assess the situation.”

The convoy consisted of three dozen trucks, carrying about five hundred troops. They were on the highway just twenty-five miles south of Groom Lake when they received their orders. And at the moment, they were going at full speed toward Area 51.

Only when the road passed between the two mesas did the convoy slow down a little.

But just as the head of the column was approaching the end of the pass, an airplane came out of nowhere. It was an old two-prop attack bomber, flying slow and making lots of noise—a plane that might get shot down by a single rifle bullet hitting it in the right place.

But the plane suddenly dove on the column and unleashed a storm of cannon fire from its nose, hitting not only the first truck, but the giant towering rocks on either side of the pass as well. This created an avalanche, with two large boulders tumbling down, crushing the truck, and immediately blocking the road.

At the same time, one mile away, the end of the column was just entering the mesa pass road. A similar two-prop aircraft suddenly appeared and did the same thing. It fired barrages at the cliffs on both sides of the pass, triggering another landslide and sealing off any means of retreat.

Now every vehicle in the column hit its brakes, and the parade of troop trucks ground to a halt.

That’s when the two old two-prop planes were joined overhead by four more, plus the accursed silver jet.

They peeled out of the sky in a very systematic fashion, the six B-25s and the gleaming Sabre, firing nose cannons, machine guns, and rockets. There were also gunners at the side doors of the Mitchells, firing twin fifties down on the hapless column.

It was like the Road to Basra. There was nowhere the AMC soldiers could run, nowhere they could hide. Back and forth, amid the tracers, the huge explosions, the sound of the loud propellers fighting their way through all the smoke, and the scream of the Sabre’s jet engine, it took less than fifteen minutes for Hunter and the B-25s to destroy the AMC column and just about everyone in it.

But as Hunter flew one way and the Mitchells the other, he knew it wouldn’t be that easy again.

T
HE SURVIVING AMC
anti-aircraft units at Nellis were just coming back online when the mysterious silver jet appeared again.

It came in extremely low, just like the time before, flying under the radar net but making a lot of noise.

No sooner had it arrived than the ADS units opened up. Missiles, AA guns, automatic-weapons fire from the hundreds of base personnel who’d been armed after the first devastating attack. Even the personnel fighting the raging fuel dump fire were armed and shooting at the intruder.

The night was lit up like Baghdad, but somehow the jet made it through the firestorm—and then … disappeared.

Only a few people at the base saw what actually happened. After passing over the main runway, the jet made a sharp right hand bank and flew directly into the entrance of the underground highway.

And as improbable as it sounded, the jet was now flying
inside
the huge, hollowed-out thoroughfare.

There might be a time, Hunter realized, when he would just run out of ideas and not be able to come up with a great plan when he needed one. The question was: Would he know it ahead of time? Or would he learn that lesson the hard way, through catastrophe—or even mortal failure?

These thoughts were running through his mind as he simultaneously wondered if S4’s underground highway had been built arrow straight or with some curves.

He believed it was straight and his reasoning was simple: whoever constructed the massive subterranean roadway wouldn’t have needed to build in any curves or dips. This was the desert. The desert was mostly sand. They just had to tunnel under everything. Right? Because, if not, and he came to a curve or a turn, it would be curtains for him.

And he had another problem. He didn’t know where the other end of the underground highway was. He was sure he wasn’t flying in a closed system. He could tell he was moving against moving air, which would not be the case if the roadway had a dead end at its terminus. Of course, complicating all this deep thinking, he was flying at more than five hundred miles per hour in a relatively confined space.

That’s why just a few seconds into his extreme and possibly harebrained scheme, he thought, “I don’t think I’ve done this before.”

He radioed St. Louis, amazed that he could get through. His old friend could barely talk after Hunter told him what he was doing. But Hunter asked him only to relay some information to the FCSF people trapped inside S4, gave him his position, and signed off.

It was about seventy-five miles from Nellis to Groom Lake. At his current rate of speed, Hunter knew he could cover that distance in less than ten minutes.

But once there, would his plan work?

Inside S4

The radiophone had barely beeped once before Ben answered it.

Their only link to the outside world, he was astonished the device was still working at all.

St. Louis was on the other end. Ben could just barely hear him over all the static.

“After doing the math, I’m supposed to say to you, ‘seven minutes,’ ” St. Louis was trying to tell him. “Something will happen in about seven minutes. So pass the word.”