Attack on Area 51 (7 page)

Only then did the RAM troopers realize the city was being bombed.

Their radioman tried calling higher authority—but then a second, trailing Sabre jet arrived over the Mackinac Bridge. Its pilot pressed his weapons trigger once, and the RAM patrol was vaporized, truck and all.

With this strange beginning, the Battle of Detroit was underway.

Within minutes, the “boom boxes” were going off all over the Motor City.

The commotion was loud enough that some of the citizens, locked inside their blacked-out homes, dared to look out their windows.

They saw the sky was lit in all directions like daytime. Some of the illumination was coming from flares, dropping slowly on special parachutes designed to hover in the air for long periods of time. But there were also thousands of small blasts going off everywhere. Like millions of strobe lights blinking at once.

The noise was frightening. A loud, earsplitting roar, punctuated every few seconds by the sound of a huge explosion going off. In some parts the city, the noise was so loud, buildings started to crumble.

All this had the RAM security troops patrolling the streets in a major panic. Every last man sought cover to avoid being killed in the bombastic aerial display.

A similar kind of panic ran through RAM headquarters. Lit by the thousands of flashes of blinding light, the seven former-GM towers shook wildly from the noise. Still, their roofs were thick with AA guns and SAM missiles, and some of the RAM crews had started firing back.

But their SAMs were heat seekers, and anything they fired was distracted by the hundreds of red-hot, burning flares drifting over the city. And while their AA guns were radar guided, strips of aluminum foil were also falling out of the prop planes, and as every AA gunner knew, aluminum strips appear on radar screens like massive swarms of bees, masking anything that a radar-guided AA gun might lock on to.

In other words, RAM’s anti-aircraft forces had been rendered useless.

RAM had a large and brutal security force, but they were trained for intimidation—not combat. And never had RAM considered that any other city would attack them. But that’s what seemed to be happening now—and its top officers had no idea what to do. So they scampered down into their basement shelters and waited as the city they’d controlled for so long was bombed into dust.

Or at least that’s what they
thought
was happening.

All communications in Detroit were cut within the opening minutes of the unusual attack.

One of the prop planes circling the city was equipped with Hunter’s primitive-but-effective radio jammer, making communication all but impossible. Which is why the officers hiding in the RAM HQ’s basement shelters were not getting any damage reports. The noise was deafening, the light was blinding—but what exactly was being destroyed?

There was just no way for them to know …

The few RAM officers and AA crews remaining atop the seven towers were still firing away at the mystery aircraft. They could see them flying north, south, and west of the city, still dropping boom boxes, flares, and aluminum strips. Meanwhile, there was no air activity east of the city, along the riverfront, which was why the RAM forces that were still topside had their eyes glued only in the other three directions.

Which turned out to be a big mistake.

The destroyer had slipped into the Detroit River late that afternoon, after a two-day, breakneck journey across two of the Great Lakes. It had been lurking a few miles to the north since then, moving only when the first bright flashes began going off over the Motor City.

It sped down the river, stopping when it reached a position parallel to the towers of RAM’s headquarters nearby.

Those few security troops guarding the riverfront saw the ship, but mistakenly thought it belonged to RAM. Suddenly a helicopter came out of the night and roared right over them. They knew RAM had no helicopters, but this one was flying so quickly, they couldn’t even see it, never mind fire on it.

Nor did they see the three big guns on the ship’s deck turning toward the seven towers of RAM headquarters.

Hunter flew the helicopter with ease.

Handling the chopper had just come naturally to him. Even setting down on the extremely small helipad he’d set up on the destroyer’s stern had been a breeze.

Climbing to five hundred feet, he saw what the enemy saw—a sky full of blinding aerial pyrotechnics—and he heard what the enemy heard—the sound of gigantic explosions, mostly courtesy of the huge Football City stadium speakers.

It was all very scary, even to him. But that was all part of the plan.

He flew around the seven towers once, neatly dodging those few ordinary antiaircraft guns that had lowered their barrels to shoot at him. He spotted people on the upper floors looking out at him; they were all adult males in uniform. If what he had planned worked, those people were breathing their last breaths.

He opened up an unimpeded radio link to the destroyer and was soon talking to the CPO in charge. Hunter rattled off a series of numbers, including wind speed, distance to target, throw weight, and wind jam—all vital information for an artillery strike.

Then he said the words that every artilleryman worth his salt longed to hear: “Fire for effect …”

Seconds later the ship’s six three-inch deck guns opened up. The combined fusillade made the destroyer look like a battleship, further lighting up the night. Its fiery shells passed through the smoke and mist, each one smashing into the midsection of Tower One.

The destroyer’s gunners had been right on the money. Tower One was instantly aflame from the twentieth floor up.

Then it was on to Tower Two …

In all, it took just five minutes. A total of eight barrages from the destroyer—the extra volley for Tower Four, the tallest and central tower of the seven. Hunter was sure it was the main building of RAM’s headquarters. It also seemed to be the most reinforced.

So for the eighth and final barrage, he had the ship’s guns fire low, through the flaming wreckage of the other towers, impacting perfectly near the base of the center skyscraper. The massive explosion caused the tower to slowly topple over, hitting the burning building to its south and causing it to topple, too. The noise was tremendous.

Five minutes. That’s all it took to reduce the seven evil skyscrapers to smoking rubble. Five minutes to destroy the heart of ten years of RAM tyranny.

Hunter called back to the destroyer and gave them the good news. Then he had one last order for them: “Get out of here—fast!”

Hunter spent the next few hours flying above the shocked, smoking city, making sure that any remaining RAM forces he could see were attacked and eliminated.

To that end, he served as a forward air controller, calling down air strikes and strafing missions for the pair of Football City Sabre jets Ben and JT were flying.

When they finally had to return home for fuel, Hunter used the Huey’s two 50-millimeter cannons to tear up any sign of RAM activity he could find.

Tanks, trucks, gun emplacements.

If he saw it, it was little more than smoke and twisted metal seconds later.

The sky was just becoming light when the helicopter’s low-fuel light finally snapped on.

Hunter steered toward Coleman Airport. Ben and JT had refueled and returned to Detroit by that time, landing just as Hunter arrived.

The six C-119s had also refueled and returned; they were carrying more than fifty reserve pilots now in the employ of Football City. The air jockeys were crucial to the next part of the mission.

Hunter landed and met up with Ben and JT. They quietly congratulated each other on the—mostly—psyops mission they’d just pulled off.

No aerial bombs? Not needed, if you have tons of fireworks, smoke bombs, flares, and loudspeakers blaring the sound of explosions at decibel levels that could literally cause one’s ears to bleed. Besides, the only real destruction was to RAM’s headquarters and its military apparatus. The city was still standing.

Only the devils were gone.

But with the light of day, all that seemed like a distant memory. Now something new was happening.

St. Louis had arrived with a group of Football City’s top military people. With Hunter, Ben, and JT in tow, they walked to the center runway, where they were met by a like number of the people from Detroit’s small-but-resilient anti-RAM insurgency, known as the Motor City Underground (MCU).

In an agreement hammered out just hours before the battle, the MCU leader told St. Louis that in exchange for taking down RAM, the vast armada of RAM bombers now belonged to Football City, along with all the aerial bombs they could carry.

This included the Mitchells Roy from Troy had bought, only to lose to RAM thievery.

So the operation had been a success. RAM was history, Detroit was still intact, and once they were able to integrate the big planes into their tiny air corps, Football City would have one of the largest bomber fleets on the continent.

“From worst to first,” JT said as the first B-52s were taking off. “Who’ll dare screw with us now?”

Yet the whole thing seemed surreal to Hunter.

The foggy airfield, the sound of airplane engines, the smell of exhaust …

His memory began to stir again. He recalled the scene on the foggy runway again, only this time it took place at night. And again came the blur of something moving at an earsplitting speed overhead. Then the mystery woman with blonde hair appeared, beckoning to him through the mist.

Or was she waving goodbye?

He didn’t know.

Because, try as he might, he couldn’t recall anything more than that.

One week later

T
HE SIX MITCHELLS CAME
out of the night and roared over Groom Lake.

Led by Hunter’s F-86 Sabre, they were flying just fifty feet off the ground, engines making a lot of noise, ready to fire at anything that moved.

But the only thing moving at Area 51 was the wind.

It was midnight and the end of a long flight from Football City. Three of the Mitchells were crammed with fifteen people each: two pilots and a flight engineer, plus a dozen members of the Football City Special Forces. The FCSF soldiers took turns manning each plane’s gun turrets, but there was no need. The flight out had been unopposed and, after four provocative passes, no one was shooting at them from the secret base below.

But while it seemed like nothing had changed since his recon just ten days before, Hunter still wanted to be the first to land. If a bullet was out there waiting for someone, he wanted it to hit him.

So he brought the Sabre down and rolled it off the runway. Killing the engine, he lifted his canopy, climbed out onto the wing, and waited.

Nothing.

He jumped to the ground, stopped, and listened.

Still nothing.

He took a moment to absorb his surroundings. It was odd being out here in a place that had fueled so many wild imaginations.

UFOs. Aliens. Bigfoot. Elvis …

Where did the truth end and the nonsense begin?

At the same time, his psyche was ablaze. There were answers for him out here. He could feel it. But how quickly could he find them?

He scanned the base with his night-vision goggles. Lots of hangars, support buildings, and old barracks-like structures all appeared empty and abandoned. Just what he wanted to see.

His idea was to get the raiding force on the ground, find Dr. Pott’s AII facility, take whatever they could from it, then leave as quickly as possible.

With luck, they’d be there less than an hour.

The B-25s came in one by one.

The first was carrying an FCSF combined air defense and communications team, armed with both Stinger missiles and powerful radio sets able to listen in on AMC radio traffic.

The next three Mitchells were carrying elite FCSF infiltration troops (the raid’s search teams). Next to land was the gas plane, filled with huge rubber bladders full of aviation fuel. Its crew would immediately gas up the other Mitchells, readying them for their planned quick exit.

Ben and JT were the last to land. Along with a dozen FCSF troopers, they were carrying two extra passengers: Dr. Pott, who would help look for the AII facility, and St. Louis, who couldn’t be talked out of joining the mission.

As a few FCSF troopers took up guarding the Mitchells, the rest began a building-by-building search, looking for the AII facility, but also making sure there was no opposition hidden anywhere.

Meanwhile, Dr. Pott and St. Louis joined Ben and JT at Hunter’s position.

“Anything look familiar, Doctor?” Hunter asked.

“I’m not sure,” Pott replied, glancing around. “This place has changed a lot since I was last here.”

Pott was assigned a trio of FCSF troopers under St. Louis’s command. Together, they headed deeper into the base in search of the AII Research Center.

Hunter, Ben, and JT scouted the south end of the base. They searched a trio of large hangars, but each was empty. They checked a series of smaller buildings, workshops, and toolsheds. They were also vacant, with many broken windows and unlocked doors. The same went for a row of maintenance garages.

“Talk about a ghost town,” JT remarked. “I don’t blame anyone for not coming out here.”

Suddenly Hunter’s radio crackled to life. They’d been on the ground less than five minutes.

It was St. Louis.

He said three words: “We found it!”

They’d located the Anomalous Incident Investigation facility inside a large, wooden building squeezed between two enormous, empty hangars built after Pott had left the program.

St. Louis met Hunter, Ben, and JT at the door. “Fried brain or not,” he said, “the good doctor led us right to it.”

They walked into the dark building to find it filled with dusty computers, moldy furniture, and more broken glass. Pott was waiting by a door at the far end of the hallway. Its sign read:
AII SPECIAL RESEARCH STORAGE SECTION
.

He was smiling broadly. “Welcome to the end of the rainbow.”