Tidal Rip (11 page)

“Make a stand right here!” Jeffrey’s bodyguard said. He reloaded his Uzi with a long and heavy ammo clip. The driver pulled another Uzi from its mount under the dash.

Both men pulled out pistols. The driver turned to Jeffrey and his father. “You know how to use these?”

“I think so,” Michael Fuller said. “Which thing is the safety?”

Great,
Jeffrey told himself.
My dad’s a bunch of help.

Jeffrey took one of the weapons. He recognized a nine-millimeter Beretta, a standard military-issue weapon.

But the bad guys have assault rifles and rocket launchers.

“When I yell ‘Go,’” the bodyguard said, “everybody pop their doors and roll out and start shooting. Some of us might make it.”

Jeffrey knew it was useless, even before the new wave of attackers opened fire.

AK-47 bullets came at the town cars in short but terrifying bursts. These attackers were firing green tracer rounds so their victims could
see
the rounds in flight as they passed. They peppered the side doors of Jeffrey’s car. Four grown men were pinned in Jeffrey’s auto. The bodyguard’s plan to shoot their way out would be suicide.

Whoever they are, these attackers know exactly what they’re doing. They’re just too good.

Behind this deadly incoming suppressive fire, Jeffrey saw an attacker kneel and take aim with a rocket launcher. The man seemed to point it right at Jeffrey, right through the dirty, punched-up armored windshield of the car. The warhead’s antitank shaped charge would fill the car with a supersonic jet of white-hot gas and metal vapor, cooking everyone alive.

Somebody important really wants me dead.

Policemen on the parkway stopped their cars. They were trying to shoot at the attackers with whatever light weapons they had. Some of the attackers shifted their fire in that direction.

Jeffrey’s father made eye contact and took a deep breath, and let it out. “Whoever thought we’d buy it, both, like this?”

Jeffrey felt deeply violated, and angry. Not because he would die. He’d always known that someday—in combat or in old age—he would die. He felt enraged at this latest defamation of the nation’s capital, at the heartless sacrifice of civilians so a gang of paid assassins could get at
him
. Jeffrey also felt guilty.
People are dying here because of me.

The attacker with the rocket launcher exploded. A solid wall of bright red tracers poured at him out of the sky. There were brilliant flashes from the automatic-cannon rounds. The rocket launcher’s warhead and propellant fuel burst in half-blinding secondary detonations.

Above the pounding of his heart and the roaring in his ears, Jeffrey heard the noise of powerful turbines and the steady beat of military-helicopter rotor blades. He looked up in time to see two army Apache Longbow gunships racing by. More bursts from their chin-mounted Gatling guns pulverized the attackers’ position, mutilating the barricade of fallen trees.

“That’s it,”
the bodyguard said. “We got air support!
Let’s move it!
”

Jeffrey’s father looked doubtful. “Can’t we just get out and ford the stream?”

“Negative! There could be snipers
anywhere!
”

The town cars started up again. The ride was terribly rough. Both cars wobbled and bounced on their torn-up tires. Smoke was coming from under the hood of Jeffrey’s car.

How many more attack waves has the enemy prepared? How much more can this vehicle take?

Still both autos pressed on hard, forward along the ravine beside the creek. The Apache helicopters flew top cover, and the crowd of emergency vehicles kept pace along the parkway. Now there was no clearance between the creek and the embankment. The town cars tilted sideways, their damaged suspensions complaining. They threatened to lose all traction and smash against the heavy trees still lining the creek.

The parkway crossed overhead, and now the road was on Jeffrey’s right. Both town cars veered onto the road, swerving through panicky oncoming traffic. They got into the right lane and Jeffrey’s driver stepped on the gas. Suddenly the right rear tire of his car disintegrated altogether, from too much shrapnel damage, and the car sagged down on the wheel rim.

The driver just kept going. A steady shower of sparks and smoke was left in the wake of Jeffrey’s vehicle; the grinding noise of steel on the roadway was nearly unbearable. The smoke from under the front hood was getting heavier and heavier. The front windshield was gathering an ever-thicker coat of soot and oil and dirt. There were countless bullet pockmarks. The bodyguard had to open a window and stick out his head to help guide the driver as he steered. The car was hard to control and kept weaving onto the grassy shoulder.

“Watch for land mines!” the driver shouted.

“I’m trying to!”
the bodyguard yelled.

“Terrific,” Jeffrey’s father mumbled.

Jeffrey looked behind again.

The other car still followed, but had had to drop back so the driver wouldn’t be blinded by the smoke from Jeffrey’s car. Jeffrey and his father began to choke on all the fumes.

“We’re almost there!” the driver said.

The ravine grew broader and both side slopes became less steep. The town cars emerged from the park and jumped the curb and skidded to a halt. In front of them, barring further progress, was the wide Potomac itself. In an open area beside the river sat a huge Marine Corps transport helicopter. Both army Apache gunships orbited vigilantly overhead.

Heavily armed marines had already formed a perimeter. They motioned for everyone to get out of the cars.

The noise of the Marine Corps helo was painfully loud, even with its engines just on idle. The stink of the turbine exhaust added to all the other burning smells. There was grit in the air, blown by the spinning main rotor blades; the small tail rotor spun much faster, in a blur. The entire helo was painted in camouflage, a blotchy pattern of matte dark green and black and brown.

“Those men, the attackers,” Michael Fuller shouted in Jeffrey’s ear. “They looked liked Russians!”

Jeffrey nodded. “Former Spetznaz probably! Special forces, in the pay of the Axis now!”

Michael Fuller hesitated. “Is it always like this?”

“Is what like what?”

“The combat!”

Jeffrey looked his father right in the eyes. “Welcome to my world!” Jeffrey reached out a sweaty, smoke-stained hand. Jeffrey’s father shook it; Michael Fuller’s hand felt like an ice cube.

“I’ll see you, Dad!”

Marines hustled Jeffrey and Wilson and Ilse to the helo. The crew chief handed them cranials and floatation vests. The cranials were collapsible flight helmets. They opened like a clamshell, had built-in hearing protection, and came with big padded eye goggles. Jeffrey and Wilson and Ilse quickly got ready for the flight.

So close to the aircraft, conversation was impossible. The crew chief used sign language to show each of them where to sit. They climbed inside the helo. The seat frames were made of stark aluminum tubing, and the seat backs and bottoms were simple thick black vinyl sheets. Shoulder straps came over each shoulder. They clipped into the buckle of a belt that covered both thighs. Jeffrey pulled all the fittings very tight.

The helo was an SH-60 Seahawk. The transport compartment had seating for ten. On board were Jeffrey and Ilse, sitting side by side facing forward at the rear of the compartment. Wilson sat up front, facing Jeffrey. The only other passengers were the crew chief and his assistant, who slammed the door.

The engine noise grew stronger, even through the soundproof ear cups of Jeffrey’s helmet and the insulated padding of the fuselage walls. The vibrations through the seat and through the floor rose to a heavy rapid shaking. The Sea-hawk took to the air.

The helo rose quickly and headed out over the Potomac. The Pentagon was a huge gray squatting presence up ahead, the oblique perspective from the helo making the five-sided building seem oddly elongated and flat.

Jeffrey saw a thinning pillar of black smoke, rising from where the first ambush broke out.

They flew past Theodore Roosevelt Island and over bridges; the interior of the aircraft had a metallic, oily, hot-plastic smell. Then the helo was rushing along the Potomac, closer to and then right past the Pentagon and the airport, at 150 knots, at barely a hundred feet above the river.

The Apache helos flew armed escort. Jeffrey could see their Gatling guns pivoting in their chin mounts, scanning both banks of the river, cued to sights mounted on each gunner’s special helmet. Each Apache’s pilot sat above and behind the gunner in the long and narrow two-man combat helicopters.

Jeffrey tried to slow his pulse and just enjoy the ride and savor life. He’d hated the feeling before of just being a passenger, of having to huddle passively while others fought and died protecting
him
. He wasn’t used to this, and it galled him. He much preferred to be in charge, both of himself and of the ones who did the fighting and killing and dying.

The engine sounds swelled louder, and the rotor vibrations got more rough, each time the helo banked steeply right or left to follow the river. But the steady vibrations were reassuring. There was no incoming fire from either side of the Potomac. The direction of the golden sun, low on the horizon now to the right, confirmed for Jeffrey that the helos were heading south.

Then Commodore Wilson caught Jeffrey’s eye. The muscular black man gave Jeffrey a sidelong glance and pointed at Jeffrey’s chest, then shook a finger. Jeffrey looked down and saw why. His Medal of Honor was gone. It must have been torn off when he tried to get out of the town car to help that wounded pregnant woman lying in the street.

CHAPTER 6

A
half-hour flying time south of Washington, Jeffrey’s helicopter banked again, hard left and then hard right, along a wide curve in the Potomac near Fredericksburg, Virginia. Now that he was coming down from the emotional highs of combat and survival, he felt drowsy and thirsty and couldn’t really concentrate on organized work. That would come later—all too soon, when he rejoined his ship.

For now, buddy, just enjoy the ride.

The helos still followed the river, the Seahawk with its passengers and the Apaches with their Gatling guns. The Potomac began to open out and formed a broad tidal estuary, lined by scenic inlets and coves. Beyond the houses and occasional towns on both sides of the water, rolling southern pine forests stretched to the visible horizons. The forested terrain was sometimes sliced by roads, or railroads, or rights-of-way for high-voltage power lines. Once Jeffrey saw a freight train, with eight diesel locomotives and an endless stream of cars. The diesels were painted olive drab for camouflage—it was their straining exhaust plumes that gave them away.

Jeffrey’s Seahawk turned right and again headed south. Out of both sides of the aircraft, suddenly, he saw Chesapeake Bay. The water reflected the blue of the sky, shading to green in shallower places. Yellow-white sand beaches, grassy salt marshes, and tree-studded swamps rolled past as the helo kept up its high-speed dash. The two army Apaches continued flying escort, one close to each shore of the huge and elongated bay.

Civilian marinas were closed for the war’s duration, and Jeffrey saw no pleasure craft at all. The lowering sun cast a pink and melancholy glow on the deserted beaches, the sandbars, the marshes and abandoned cottages, and the many cargo ships moored in the sheltered bay; Jeffrey was sure these ships were waiting to sail in the convoy to Africa. Now and then he could see the three helos’ shadows cast on the water. The shadows appeared to pursue him, each one dark and insubstantial, sometimes far off and sometimes close. Jeffrey felt as if he were being chased by the ghosts of the dead.

The Seahawk’s crew chief listened on his flight helmet’s headphones for a moment, then said something into his lip mike. He caught Commodore Wilson’s eye and held up both hands balled into fists. He opened and closed all ten fingers three times. Wilson nodded.

Thirty minutes until we land,
Jeffrey knew the hand signals meant.
Land where?
More massed cargo vessels stretched below.

Jeffrey saw a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, one of the new class that were really major warships, steaming toward the mouth of the bay, to the battle-torn Atlantic. The cutter’s bow wave creamed high, foaming white as she made flank speed, nearly thirty-five knots. Her wake spread out behind her, faithfully following the ship like a V-shaped tail. Two helicopters flew ahead of the cutter, towing paravanes through the water to sweep for mines.

Jeffrey saw various aircraft at different altitudes, near and far. An air-force AWACS plane, its powerful radar enclosed in a saucer disk above the fuselage, coordinated military air traffic and monitored civilian airliners too. The AWACS also stood guard against enemy airborne incursions.

Four-engine long-endurance maritime patrol aircraft came and went; these planes carried airdropped antisubmarine torpedoes. Jeffrey saw a navy blimp. The blimps could stay aloft for days between refuelings and bore many sensors to keep a sharp eye on the sea. Jeffrey suspected that well concealed on the ground were other types of radars, antiaircraft guns, and anti-cruise-missile missile launchers—and hidden tanks and machine-gun nests.

Jeffrey seriously doubted that the land defenses all along the East Coast would ever face a full-blown invasion. That wasn’t a part of the Axis master plan. Berlin had openly said so. They were far more clever and calculating than to waste resources on such an impossible, preposterous task as a military occupation of the United States. Far better to unleash their unspeakable violence on the high seas, in international waters, to sever America’s lines of communication and trade abroad. Far more effective, for Axis aims, to
isolate
the U.S. than to invade it: let fear and deprivation gnaw away at American voters, until they chose en masse to allow Europe and Africa to fester on the far side of a gigantic ocean. Let Americans be frightened into accepting a new status quo, whittled down into making peace with a new Axis empire—at the price of America’s diminishing to a second-rate, also-ran power.