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The
impact sliced off most of the 747’s rear empennage, and it nosed over, then
tumbled, the crushed F-16 adding its own remaining jet fuel vapors to the
tremendous explosion over the
Theodore
Roosevelt
Bridge
. The airliner impacted just east of the
Rock Creek Parkway
, on the interchange west of the Navy Bureau
of Medicine and Surgery complex, tumbling end-over-end in a tremendous flaming
fireball two hundred feet high. The bulk of the burning wreckage missed the
Lincoln Memorial by less than four hundred yards, spraying burning metal, fire,
and destruction across the Reflecting Pool, across the Kutz Bridge, and the Bureau
of Engraving and Printing Building on the east side of the Tidal Basin,
destroying everything in its path.

 
          
With
a terrific mushroom-shaped cloud of fire, the
Francis
Case
Bridge
exploded when it was hit by the wreckage,
but it stopped the careening hulk from tumbling any farther. Flying debris and
burning fuel spread out in a half-milewide, two-mile-long fan, spraying
buildings from the Smithsonian Institution and the Energy Department all the
way to
South
Capitol Street
with an incredible firestorm. In less than two seconds, almost two square
miles of the
District of Columbia
was on fire.

 

 
          
Near the
Washington
Monument That Same Moment

 

           
Hiding behind the square stone face
of the Washington Monument, their breathing rapid and shallow, hands and legs
shaking, eyes staring in tenor, Hardcastle and Harley tried to close their
eyes, then found they couldn’t bear to
not
watch, and they waited for the fires to engulf them.

 
          
The
crash was utterly devastating.

 
          
Hardcastle
caught a glimpse of the huge white 747 just to the right of the Iwo Jima Memorial.
It appeared to be landing except that it was moving at an incredible speed, the
engines shrieking louder than at takeoff, the landing gear up. And, of course,
there was no runway in front of it, only the three-mile-long
Constitution
Gardens
and The Mall.

 
          
But
then Hardcastle saw a blur, a streak of light to the 747’s left, then a brief
puff of fire, and suddenly the huge airliner simply dropped out of the sky
right before him, like a huge pelican diving for a fish in the
Potomac
. The cloud of fire and debris obscured all
view in that direction, and that’s when Hardcastle dove for cover, holding
Harley close to him as if to shield her from the awful concussion that he knew
he had no power to stop. The terrible sound of wrenching steel and Capitol-sized
flames hissing in the humid night air moved across and seemingly over them at
tremendous speed. Hardcastle always remembered the slow-motion TV shots of
plane crashes, but of course they . always slowed the images down so you could
somehow savor or try to analyze the crash, and the airliner had to be moving
well over three or four hundred miles an hour when it hitthe ground. The earth
rumbled with the force of a hundred earthquakes; the lights around the
Washington
Monument
exploded as if being shot out by
machine-gun fire. The air felt hot and electrified, as if they were standing in
front of a steel smelter, and a sudden windstorm sucked the air out of their
lungs as a huge mushroom-shaped blob of air was consumed in the fire.

 
          
But
they didn’t die.

 
          
Hardcastle
stayed put for what seemed like a long time, and finally looked up when he
heard a large piece of debris fall close by. His and Harley’s bodies were,
surprisingly, still whole. He crawled around the north side of the monument and
peeked westward.

 
          
It
was raining burning debris and slippery moisture that Hardcastle knew was jet
fuel, not rain. The stricken 747 had somehow careened around to the south,
between the Lincoln and Washington monuments, across the middle of the
Reflecting Pool, coming to rest in a massive flaming pile beyond the
Tidal
Basin
. The sky was glowing far to the southeast
with several fires, but Hardcastle did not see the massive Dresden-like
firestorm he was expecting. By just a few hundred feet, the 747 had
miraculously missed most of the important government buildings and monuments.

 
          
“It’s
over,” Hardcastle said to Harley, who had gotten to her feet and followed him
around the
Washington
Monument
to inspect the destruction. “I think
Vincenti rammed jt. I thought I saw either a missile or an F-16 itself hit the
. 747 just before it cleared the
Potomac
.”

 
          
“My
head is still ringing,” Harley said. “I’ve never heard or felt anything like
that before in my life.” She walked around the monument, her eyes tracing the
destructive path of the stricken 747. “Didn’t I see Cazaux running in that
direction?”

 
          
“Yep,”
Hardcastle said proudly. “He was all the way down to
Independence Avenue
. He ran right into the path of that 747.
Man, I hope he got fried. What a great way for him to go—cooked by his own
weapon.”

 
          
“That
would be the perfect definition of justice,” Harley said. She trotted over to
her car, retrieved a first-aid kit from her well-equipped trunk, and began
dressing Wilkes’ wounds. The FBI Director was not conscious, but most of the
bleeding had slowed to a manageable level. “I just wish he had gotten it
sooner.” She looked back to the west and spotted the Avenger air defense
vehicle, sitting on what looked like the scorched edge of the fireball across
the
Constitutional
Gardens
. “What’s that? Is that one of the Army air
defense things?”

 
          
“It’s
an Avenger Forward Area Air Defense System,” Hardcastle said. “Must’ve been one
of Cazaux’s targets. He - had to take out the ground air defense units to make
his air attacks work.”

 
          
“We
better go see if anyone’s in there.”

 
          
“I’ll
go—the fire might have destabilized the missiles on board,” Hardcastle said.
“They might have a radio on board.”

 
          
“You
better call the Bureau and tell them Wilkes is hurt badly.”

 
          
“She
got a piece of Cazaux before she got it,” Hardcastle said. “She was going to
play by the rules, even with the Devil himself standing right in front of her.”
He shook his head as he trotted toward the Avenger. “Lani Wilkes saved my life.
How am I ever going to live that down?”

 

 
          
Aboard the E-3C AWACS Radar Plane
Leather-90

 

           
Milford
saw the fast-moving low-flying radar
targets, the F-16 and the fake Executive-One-Foxtrot, get closer and closer,
saw the targets merge . . . and then both disappeared, right over the
Potomac
, just west of the capital. “Oh, Jesus ..

 
          
“Lost
contact with Bandit-1 and Devil-03,” the Senior Director, Maureen Tate,
reported. The entire AW ACS crew was silent, everyone realizing what had just
happened—a terrorist 747 had just hit
Washington
,
D.C.

 
          
“Bandit..
. Bandit-2 now twelve miles southeast of the capital,” Maureen Tate stammered,
trying to force her brain back to the task at hand. “Groundspeed ninety-three
knots, in a slow descent. ETA to the capital area, nine minutes.” ,

 
          
“SD,
Weapons-3, I need to bingo Lima-Golf-31,” the weapons controller reported.
Lima-Golf-31 was the F-15 out of
Langley
that had tried to chase down the 747. “He
has less gas than he thought. He won’t make it to the capital.” The F-15 had
been in full afterburner power ever since takeoff, and he probably didn’t start
with a full load of fuel anyway. “Andrews is closed, and National is a zoo
right now, with planes stacked up all over the place—I recommend
Navy-Patuxent
River
.” Tate turned to
Milford
, who nodded his agreement. That was their
last chance of stopping the new bandit. All they could do right now was wait
for it to hit. . .

 
          
...
no,
no,
there
had
to be something still out there. He once had several dozen air
defense units operational in the
s
D.C. area—it was inconceivable
that Cazaux or any army of terrorists could have gotten them all in just a
matter of minutes.

 
          
Just
one shot was all they needed to stop this last threat...

 
          
“Comm,
MC, sweep all the tactical channels and try to raise any of the Leather air defense
units,”
Milford
ordered. “Someone out there must still be
operational. If possible, try to get some of the Avenger units from the
Pentagon, Dulles, or National over to the capital area to try to stop
Bandit-2.”

           
“Any Leather unit, any Leather unit,
this is Leather-90 Control,” the communications technician radioed. “If you
hear me, come up on any tactical frequency or on VHF 105.0. Repeat, if you hear
me, come up on any tactical frequency. Over.”

 

 
          
Near the
Washington
Monument That Same Time

 

           
The entire front of the top turret
of the Avenger was crushed inwards and blackened, obviously by a hit from' a
small but powerful antitank weapon. The front of the HMMWV itself was still
smoking from the fire in the engine compartment, and the turret looked
cockeyed, as if shoved off its moorings. Hardcastle used a fire extinguisher he
found on the rear deck of the Avenger to put out the last bit of fire in the
front so he could reach the driver and gunner. Both were dead. He found the
third man in the Avenger crew nearby, shot to death by machine-gun fire. Cazaux
was nothing if not a very efficient killer, Hardcastle thought. “Dear God,”
Hardcastle said half-aloud, “you may not want it, but I’d give all of my
remaining years for an assurance from you that Cazaux is really—”

 
          
Hardcastle
started on the grisly task of removing the bodies from the Avenger. As he
removed the driver’s hel-. met, he heard through the headphones, “Any Leather
unit; any Leather unit, this is Leather-90 Control. If you hear me, come up on
any tactical frequency or on VHF 105.0. Repeat, if you hear me, come up on any
tactical frequency. Over.” Somebody was still calling, trying to see if anyone
was still alive. Hardcastle tried to remember who “Leather” was, but it really
didn’t matter. This Avenger unit was definitely dead. It wasn’t going anywhere,
and the turret and sensors were cooked.

 
          
“Unknown
rider, unknown rider,” another radio in the Avenger blurted, “unidentified
aircraft on the Washington National one-two-five degree radial, two miles, this
is Leather Control on GUARD, turn south immediately or you may be fired upon
without warning. You are in Washington National Class B airspace and are
approaching prohibited airspace. Turn south immediately and squawk 7700.
Attention all aircraft, stay outside Andrews or Washington National ten DME,
air defense emergency in progress. I say again, unknown rider ...”

 
          
Holy shit!
Hardcastle gasped.

BOOK: Brown, Dale - Independent 04
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