Worlds in Chaos (44 page)

“What do you want?” Lacey asked tightly.

“Good.” Delmaro nodded. “The aircraft that is about to land on the main runway now is carrying the visitors from Kronia, who are under armed supervision. Their well-being, I don’t have to remind you, is a matter of considerable importance to the government of this nation. It will therefore be in your own best interests to cooperate. We require safe passage for them to Security Gate Three, where they will be received by a force from inside this complex. Is that clear and understood?”

The screen split to show a view looking out into the night, showing hooded figures with rifles moving away from the camera through a chain-link gate, perhaps taken from a vehicle parked in the vicinity. The message was that the people Delmaro represented had the gate and its approach already secured.

“Quite clear,” Lacey replied.

“Then you will give the order.”

Lacey hesitated, glancing at Keene. Keene could do nothing but nod. Lacey turned his head to address the controller and inhaled a long breath. “Turn the approaching aircraft around at the north end, and have a truck in position to lead it through to Security Gate Three,” he instructed. “Hold all other movement.”

“Very sensible, Colonel,” Delmaro approved from the screen.

Now Keene was confused. If the aircraft currently landing was the one bringing the hostages and their captors—ironically, employing the same ruse that Keene and his group had intended using—then who was in the military jet performing low, screaming turns around the base? The situation promptly got even more confusing.

“The lame duck is down,” the operator reported. His voice held a puzzled note. “But it’s not alone. We have a second contact following it, heading in on approach.”

So now there were three out there?

“Get a view of the first from one of the crash trucks,” Lacey instructed.

“Tender Two. Do you read?”

“Two here, Roger. Proceeding.”

“We’re with you back here. What do you see?”

“Difficult to make it out. . . . Some kind of turboprop, high-wing.” A view on another screen showed landing lights approaching through curtains of smoky gloom. “No sign of engine trouble. It’s running straight and true.”

“Stay out there, Two. There’s another one coming in behind it.”

“
Another one?
What’s going on?”

“We’re not sure.”

The lights swept by, accompanied by a passing roar of healthy engines, and the shape disappeared, heading for the remote, northwest end of the main runway, where it would turn and taxi back to pick up the guide truck. Meanwhile, the view alongside Delmaro’s image showed the armed figures moving out into a dim pool of light from a lamp over the gate approach area.

All of a sudden, the other operator called out in an alarmed voice, “The intruder is descending from the southwest, lined up on Number Two runway. It looks as if it’s going to land right across them!”

“Warn it off! Warn it off!”
Lacey snapped.

“It isn’t responding to anything, sir. . . . Man, it’s coming down
steep
!”

“Get those crash tenders up the other end. Move ’em!”

“What in hell’s going on there?” Delmaro demanded, looking suspicious.

“We don’t know,” Lacey answered. “Except that everyone in those planes could be about to get killed.”

“The duck is at the far end, turning now,” one operator sang out.

“What about that intruder?”

“It’s down! I don’t know how he did it. Blind radar approach. It has to be a VTOL.”

“We’re getting a shot of him from the crash truck now,” the adjutant said. The bellow of powerful jet engines reversing thrust came from the screen showing the view from the tender racing back toward the north end of the main runway; then landing light beams appeared to the left, coming from a low, sleek shape sliding out of the night, closing until it seemed it was about to collide with the tender. The tender veered right as the driver started to evade, but then the intruder slewed around in a reckless turn that brought it ahead of the tender, going the same way.

“My God! It’s heading straight at the turboprop that just landed!” Colby cried out, horrified. “They’re going to hit head-on!”

And so, for an eternity of drawn-out seconds, it seemed, as the jet pulled away ahead of the tender, its tail silhouetted against the glare of the other aircraft’s lights approaching from the opposite direction. But the jet was braking hard, its shape growing larger again as the tender caught up with it. The lights of the turboprop beyond grew in brilliance until everyone watching was tensed, waiting for the impact that seemed inevitable . . . and then, at the last instant, the lights slewed sideways and then canted as the turboprop was forced off the runway. The crash tender pulled up seconds later, the view from its cab showing the two aircraft stopped with just yards separating them. Figures brandishing weapons were already pouring from doors on both sides of the intruder to take up positions around the plane it had headed off.

“How far away is that other plane that was following?” Lacey called out. “Can it get down in front of that mess? How much distance does it have?”

“It’s leveling out, sir. Looks like it’s changed its mind.”

“See, he already knows. That means they’re in contact. They must be together,” Charlie Hu said, trying to take it all in. Keene could only shake his head. Crazier and crazier.

“What was that other plane that just landed?” Delmaro demanded, looking worried now. “Where are the Kronians?”

“If they were in that first one, then they’re stranded at the top end of the runway,” Lacey said. “I can’t get there, neither can you, and I’m just as much in the dark as to what’s going on, whatever you think.” Delmaro’s composure was falling apart. He seemed about to say something, when the screen showing the scene at Gate Three suddenly brightened. He must have had a copy of the same view also, for he looked aside abruptly.

A ring of floodlights had come on, throwing the figures moving out from the gate—now revealed clearly to be FAST troopers—into sharp contrast against the darkness. There were maybe two dozen of them. Then an amplified voice boomed.
“Do not make any move! You are covered from all sides. Throw your weapons in front of you and step back three paces with your hands on your heads.”
The figures came to a confused halt, some raising arms to shield their eyes against the glare, others looking at each other questioningly.
“You have three seconds before we fire,”
the voice warned.

Keene, Colby, and Charlie Hu gasped in unison as they recognized the voice. “Jesus! . . . That’s Penalski,” Colby breathed. “He’s doing that with just si—” Keene signed to him frantically to shut up and nodded his head at the screen showing Delmaro. Colby put a hand to his mouth and turned away.

But it was true. Confident of having full surprise on their side, the FAST squad had not deployed into what they had presumed to be deserted surroundings, but just waited before the gate for the turboprop to roll up and deliver the hostages. Penalski had just six men with him out there in the darkness. Crazy Marines!

Delmaro hadn’t heard Colby, however, but was gaping on his screen, seemingly at a loss. Then the sound of a brief burst of automatic fire came from the screen showing the gate, and several of the figures ducked, presumably from bullets passing over their heads. Then, one by one, they began tossing down their guns.

Seizing the initiative, Lacey stepped forward to face the screen squarely. “You are Colonel Delmaro, I believe, right? Well, it’s over. You’re on your own, isolated from your hostages, and your men out here are disarmed. What are you going to do now? Shoot General Ullman? And what do you think that will achieve?”

Delmaro’s eyes shifted desperately. “There are still enough of us in here to take the Boxcar up,” he replied.

“Where to?” Lacey scoffed. “The
Osiris
? Do you know what happened to the last bunch that tried?” He shook his head. “Give it up, Colonel. Try and carry this through, and you’re definitely finished. Quit now, and you might work out a place for yourself in whatever comes next. But none of you is going to Kronia.”

Delmaro licked his lips and looked away. He seemed to be listening to others off-screen. Then he asked for a fifteen-minute hold. Lacey looked at Keene.

“Give it to them,” Keene murmured. Anything that calmed things down could only help.

“Fifteen minutes,” Lacey agreed.

The wind was causing sand and dust to rattle against the windows of the control tower as Keene and the others watched several vehicles carrying Air Police arrive to provide backup behind the cordon around the stranded turboprop transport. The turboprop’s doors opened, and figures began emerging to surrender in the light from the headlamps of the circle of vehicles. After them, the rescuers began leading out a procession of tall forms who could only be the Kronians. They were difficult to distinguish in the heavy outer garments they were wearing, until Gallian threw back the hood of his flapping parka to reveal his white hair as he shook hands with a helmeted figure toting a submachine gun, who seemed to be in charge of the rescue troops. Keene thought he glimpsed Sariena in the background, but it was impossible to be certain. And then the figure with Gallian turned to say something to one of the soldiers, at the same time removing the sand visor he was wearing and tilting back the helmet to scratch the front of a scrawny head. Keene’s knees almost buckled right there in the middle of the control tower floor. The figure who had arrived in the nick of time with his cavalry from the sky was—Leo Cavan!

Outside Gate Three, a truck filled with Air Police arrived to join the seven Marines in rounding up the incredulous FAST soldiers just as Delmaro reappeared on the screen, his face registering defeat. “Very well,” he agreed. “We have released General Ullman and are turning over our weapons.”

The other plane that had been following—a jet, from the sound—had been circling without making any further attempt to land. It broke off, finally, and flew away toward the south.

35

While the tower controllers got back to their business of dispatching the remaining transports, and ground crews towed the two recently landed aircraft into hangars for protection against the incoming storm, Keene, Colby, and Charlie Hu drove out with Lacey to meet the convoy from the north end at Gate Three, where others were appearing from inside the launch complex. The first feeble light of a restless, orange dawn was filtering through. Figures came tumbling out of vehicles laughing and back-slapping with relief after the tension, oblivious of the rising wind carrying needles of ocean spray mixed with the stinging dust. Colby went around shaking hands with the rescue team, who turned out to be a Special Forces unit that Cavan had “borrowed” from a friend in the Pentagon. Lacey poured congratulations on Lt. Penalski, who seemed slightly bewildered and not quite sure what he was supposed to have done that was exceptional. Keene sought out Gallian and Sariena to make sure they were all right, as well as others among his Kronian friends. And finally, he confronted Cavan.

“You’ve always had this habit of dropping surprises, Leo, but this time you’ve surpassed yourself,” he shouted above the wind. “Okay. How, for God’s sake?”

“Do you really want to stand out here discussing it, Landen, or shall we go inside first? I don’t know about you, but I could use a cup of strong coffee. We’ve been flying supersonic for over two hours. I don’t know how that aircraft held together. An incredible machine, Landen. Enough electronics to fly itself to China. It’s a long-range bomber airframe fitted with a modified power plant for Short and Vertical Take-Off and Landing—intended for getting Rapid Deployment units to odd corners of the world fast. Called the ‘Rustler.’ Just what we needed.”

“Where the hell did you get it?”

“Come on, Landen. I was in the Air Force for long enough as you well know. I still have friends there. Most of them have been at their wits’ end for something useful to do in all this. They were only too willing to help. I’ve been telling you for years: I wasn’t cut out for shuffling pieces of paper around.”

A broad figure wearing a beret under the hood of a combat smock and wearing a pistol as well as carrying what looked like an Uzi came out of the background. His insignia showed him to be a major. “Seems it’s all buttoned up,” he said to Cavan. Cavan gestured toward Keene.