Terror Descending

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Aside from the paramilitary group known as Genesis.

Entrenched just to the south of the dried mud lake was a flat expanse of gleaming white concrete. Set off safely to the side was a series of massive fuel tanks, and on the opposite side of the airfield were several concrete bunkers, the rooftops bristling with radar, optical scanners, dish microphones, squat Vulcan miniguns and SAM launchers. An acre of strong canvas stretched between two outcroppings covered several B-52 bombers parked on the ground. One was partially disassembled, and another had been reduced to a mere skeleton, every salvageable part already removed, but the others were in perfect condition, the fuselages gleaming with fresh paint, their bomb bays heavy with deadly cargo.

Encircling the entire airfield was a double row of burnished steel rods that hummed softly whenever a condor flew overhead or a leaf fluttered past the finely tuned proximity sensors. Buried between the rows were land mines of every conceivable type, some automatic, others remotely controlled. Many of them were linked together. There was no gate or access road. The only way to reach the base on land was through the mines. Setting off one would cause a score of others to detonate, spreading a wave of destruction that would herald a corona of deadly shrapnel. Some mines were hidden outside the row of sensors, an additional trap for any possible invaders foolhardy enough to risk approaching the somber headquarters for Genesis.

Jouncing over the irregular terrain, Rexton held tightly on to the steering wheel, the hood of his parka flipping backward to reveal his starkly handsome features. The man looked like an aging movie star using plastic surgery to hold on to the last few years of beauty, but that was merely his natural countenance. The plastic surgery would come later, after the fall of America.

As the vehicle came into visible sight of the base, the weapons on top of the bunkers instantly locked on to the moving target, the multiple barrels of the Vulcans automatically spinning to a blur as they prepared to fire.

Heading for the bunkers, Rexton touched an electronic device strapped to his wrist and the Vulcans promptly powered down and returned to their ready status.

Knowing that any variation in speed would trigger the live mines, the man maintained a steady course through the defensive barrier and safely reached the other side without undue incident. He barked a laugh at that as if gaining access to the base was some sort of minor victory.

Passing a low dome barely visible above the ground, Rexton waved in greeting to the armed guards inside the kiosk. A thin layer of concrete covered the muzzles of the old German 88 cannons, and anybody who did not wave, with the left hand only, was killed on sight. Some of his people complained about all of the complex security regulations, but the leader of Genesis was fully aware of what sort of violent countermeasures the brutal American government would take if it ever learned who was behind the bombings of the major airports. They had to be ready at all times for a full-scale invasion, both from above and from the ground. At least they were safe from the river, as it was frozen solid for most of the year, and even when warm, it was hardly of sufficient depth for the U.S. Navy to send in an attack submarine or even a squad a SEALs.

No, the base was secure, the terrorist noted mentally. We’re well protected in every direction. Genesis would be safe here, until the coming war was over, and sanity finally returned to the world.

Braking to a halt in front of an unmarked bunker, Rexton killed the engine and stepped out of the Jeep to plug an electric cord into an external socket. If the vehicles were not kept constantly warm, the engines would freeze and refuse to start until the motors were disassembled and thoroughly cleaned. He hated to waste electricity, the group tried to be ecologically aware, but such was the price to pay for saving the world. A garage would have served the same purpose, but those were always a prime target for a commando attack. So the bunker marked as the garage was actually just a solid dome of concrete.

Let the fools hit it with all the missiles they wanted, Rexton thought proudly. It would accomplish nothing. Everything had been taken into account. The battle plan was perfect. Perfect! And there was nothing America could do to stop them this time. Greenwich would be avenged!

Heading for the front door of the bunker, Rexton blew into his gloved hands, privately wishing that they could have been heated electrically like his jacket and boots. But the danger of a short-circuit had been too great. Pity, because it was exceptionally cold this day, but slowly getting warmer. Winter was over, and there was a sense of spring in the air. Life was returning to the frozen landscape. A more than fitting analogy. Soon Patagonia, the most remote spot on the globe, would become the center of a new civilization. His civilization. A society of peace and love and tolerance.

After we kill off all of the warmongers, that is, Rexton admitted privately. Back in 1774, Thomas Paine had said it plainly enough in his book Common Sense. Occasionally the tree of liberty had to be watered with the blood of patriots. Sad, but true. Though in the thousands, no doubt, the killings would be kept to an absolute minimum. He was no madman, just the savior of humanity. But if anything went wrong, then St. James would have no choice but to use the Dragon. At which point, he thought grimly, God help us all.

But that was a worst-case scenario, and so far everything had gone off strictly according to schedule. It had taken Genesis more than thirty years to build the base, and almost that long to acquire the three B-52 bombers needed for the operation. And then, buying the bombs had taken almost every last dime Genesis had accumulated. Their fathers had started the Great Project, but they wanted to be the generation that brought it to fruition. To end war, every war, all wars, forever! There was no higher or more noble goal. It was just like performing surgery to remove cancer. He could kill the cancer, to save the patient. True, it was a pity that so many people had to die to achieve worldwide peace, but such was life.

Way back in the 1960s a group of students called Genesis had tried to save America by forcing the government to end the war in Vietnam. They had some limited success, but then the full might of the FBI was turned against the fledging group, and the main leaders were either slain by police bullets or sent to prison. Only a handful of followers escaped, along with most of the cash the freedom fighters had liberated from numerous banks. Once situated safely here in Chile, they took new identities and stayed low, far from public scrutiny, and they invested wisely in oil and steel, then communications and finally advanced computer software.

Now worth millions, the children of Genesis had decided to finish the war for independence started by their parents. They hired mercenaries to teach them how to fight, and they studied the art of war in colleges, and psychology at universities, across the world. Unfortunately, America had grown fat over the decades, and once more was waging political warfare, trading blood for oil, a conflict that was certain to escalate horribly out of control when some terrorist group finally managed to build a hydrogen bomb and started a nuclear world war that nobody could win. Many years sooner than planned, Genesis was facing the end of the human race and had been forced to rush their plans into completion. But now, at last, they were ready to force peace upon the world no matter what. Victory or death.

Tapping an access code into a small keypad, Rexton waited a few seconds as the heavy door slid aside. Then he tapped a second code into the pad, and the door closed, then opened once more, this time with the antipersonnel mines buried inside the jamb deactivated.

Stopping at an alcove, Rexton luxuriated in the waves of heat pouring from a wall vent while he hung up the heavy parka and ski mask, the tattered remains of the glove going into a waste receptacle. Pounds lighter, the man proceeded deeper into the bunker, vainly adjusting his cuffs and collar.

Seeking the approval of the staff and the pilots, Rexton always came to the command center dressed in sneakers, blue jeans and a red flannel shirt. The clothing of a humble working man. It helped him to stay focused on the goals of the group, to free the people.

Smiling at a security camera high in the corner of the ceiling, Rexton nodded in passing to an armed guard sitting in a small alcove.

“Welcome back, brother,” the guard said, smiling, then it vanished. “Were those noises just more ice coming off a glacier or…” He left the sentence hanging.

“Just a penguin,” Rexton replied stoically.

Sagging slightly, the guard sighed. Penguin, that was the code word for civilian. “Then may God guide their spirit into the next world,” he whispered, touching his heart, lips and forehead, in an ancient blessing.

Gripping the man by the shoulder, Rexton squeezed hard, as if the death of some nobody had actually bothered him. After he was satisfied by the amount of guilt demonstrated, Rexton moved onward, eager to get back to work. When would these people ever learn that death was the only act that changed the world?

Impatiently lengthening his stride down the hallway, Rexton placed a palm to a glowing plate set into the wall alongside an armored door. He felt a faint tingling as an electrical current surged through his hand to verify whether he was alive, or merely a disembodied limb stolen by enemy forces to gain entrance. Their chief scientist, Professor Dimitri Oughton, was an electronics wizard who had both Genesis bases prepared for any possible contingency.

A technical genius, “Dizzy” Oughton could have easily run the entire operation himself from Lightning Base, which was why Rexton maintained strict control of the supercomputers down here in Thunder Base. The microsecond delay between the two bases was considered an acceptable danger. The other members of Genesis might think the organization was a democracy, as it had been in the days of their parents, but that was a polite fallacy. Rexton ruthlessly maintained an iron control over absolutely everything. If it became necessary to invoke the final option, there would be a rebellion, and he was ready to kill the rest of the staff to achieve victory. A thousand would die to save six billion. What did the military call that again? Oh yes, a soldier’s burden.

With a soft pneumatic sigh, the heavy door slid aside and Rexton entered the busy control room.

“Morning, brothers,” he called, heading for the master console.

Everybody looked up at the arrival, several of the women smiling widely. He did the same in return. Rexton knew that he was good-looking, although some thought he was almost too handsome. Clearly, his face was the result of delicate plastic surgery performed by experts. His father had dearly wanted Rexton to fly the planes that would awaken America, but after his second crash, that had proved to be impossible. The teenager simply had not possessed the lightning-fast reflexes of a combat pilot. Instead, he studied tactics, and eventually assumed the job of leading Genesis.

Situated in the exact middle of the heavy dome, the control room was wide and spacious, the ceiling arching overhead. Truncating the room was a wall of double-thick Lexan plastic, behind which the massive IBM Blue Gene supercomputer hummed softly, the rows of blade-class servers chilled by liquid nitrogen to temperatures far more deadly to human life than the icy glacier outside.

Across the room was a curved row of consoles facing a huge plasma-screen monitor. At the moment, it was divided into four sections, with a scroll across the bottom giving constant reports on their stolen satellites. The staff was dressed in heavy jumpsuits as protection from the chill coming off the Lexan wall separating them from the supercomputer.

“What is the current situation?” Rexton asked, easing into a chair. The leather was old and cracked, but it settled around him like an old friend.

In the center of the main screen was a vector graphic of the world, tiny blue triangles showing the locations of the three B-52 bombers, along with a dozen green squares, computer-generated shadows. Professor Oughton was firmly convinced that no hacker in the world could figure out which were the real planes, and which the fake, in time to do anything. So far, he had been proved correct.

“Good and bad,” Oughton replied from a section on the monitor. “ Greenwich ’s captain reports they received some damage from flak during the strike on NATO. But they managed to escape into the civilian traffic over the Channel.”

“Any pursuit?” Rexton asked, tapping a few buttons on the console to briefly review the monitor readout on the progress of the B-52 bombers.

“None worth mentioning,” Oughton replied. “NATO put a dozen planes on the hunt, but each is heading in the wrong direction. They have no idea where the Greenwich went.”

“Excellent,” Rexton said, a hand brushing across his perfect cheek. The physical scars were gone, but the memories of the fiery crash remained inside his mind. The former pilot had never flown again since his last crash, and did not even like to review the paint jobs on the B-52 bombers that made them resemble a Boeing 707. Even if it meant his own life, Rexton would never again set foot inside a plane. End of discussion.

“Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the rest of the fleet,” Alyssa Dean announced tersely, swiveling away from her console. Weighing less than a hundred pounds, the tiny blonde had a slim, almost boyish figure, but she possessed the face of an angel even without any cosmetics. A steaming cup of coffee sat dangerously near the keyboard of her console, and a long-barrel Uzi .22 conversion hung across the back of her chair, a space clip attached to the leather strap.

“Report,” Rexton said in a whipcrack tone.

“Captain Tomashevsky in the Berkeley is en route to Eastern Europe. He stopped at our Tunisia base for refueling, and took on a full load of ordnance, so no problems there,” Dean stated brusquely. “Unfortunately, Captain Whitehorn in the Detroit has reported finding a fuel leak. They’re down to quarter tanks, and will never reach our refueling depot in the Caicos Islands in time.”

“Dizzy, can you send them a tanker?” Rexton asked, looking at the picture of Oughton.

“Not halfway around the world,” the professor said. “Sorry, but there’s nothing we can do to help.”

Sitting back in his chair, Rexton glanced at the clock on the curved wall. This was intolerable! How could they have possibly lost a bomber this early in the fight?

“Captain Whitehorn could risk landing at a commercial airport in South Carolina,” Dean offered hesitantly, making a vague gesture at the main screen. “The professor could fake them an ID easily enough, and I can transfer all the funds needed to a local bank. However—”

“However, if anything goes wrong they could be detained by the local police,” Rexton finished for the woman. “Or worse, captured by American Special Forces who would turn our brothers over to the CIA to be brutally tortured until they revealed the location of our two main bases.”

“The bastards can’t catch us, we’re mobile,” Oughton stated defiantly.

“But we are not,” Rexton countered. “Millions of dollars, and years of hard work, would end in total failure, which in turn would spell disaster for the rest of humanity.” Leaning forward, the man sat upright in his chair. “Okay, give me options.”

Neither Oughton nor Dean spoke for a minute, then they shook their heads.

“Anybody?” Rexton asked the room in general.

There came a negative chorus from the staff.

“I see,” Rexton growled. “Then we have no choice. Alyssa, have the Detroit head out to sea. We’ll need to hide the wreckage. Do they have a raft onboard?”

“Parachutes, but no rafts,” Dean replied grimly. “And any water landing would be immediately investigated by the Coast Guard.”

“We all knew how the mission could end, sir,” Oughton said, his face a grim mask.

Sir? Hearing the honorific, Rexton understood. “Then so be it, we at least spare them the horror of being interrogated by the madmen of the CIA,” he said, taking a chain from around his neck. There was a small key attached, and he slipped it into a slot on the console, first twisting to the left, then sharply to the right. Off by itself, a red light began to glow.

“Goodbye, old friends.” Rexton sighed, placing a finger on the button.

“No, wait!” a woman shouted from the door.

Lifting his hand, Rexton turned to scowl at the rapidly approaching woman. Tall, with a cascade of ebony hair that reached past her trim waist, Dr. Carolina Barry was wearing a white medical jacket over a winter-camouflage ghillie suit. A stun gun was holstered at her side, a medical bag slung over a shoulder in case of an emergency.

“What is it, Carolina?” Rexton demanded.

“Marshall,” the physician replied. “Land them in Marshall, to refuel on the ground.”

“Is the airstrip long enough?”

“For a landing, certainly. But they’ll need some JATO units to take off again.”

“They have those on board,” Dean said, a note of hope back in her voice.

“But what about the fuel?” Rexton asked suspiciously.

“Marshall is near a major airport,” Barry countered. “It shouldn’t be very hard for them to buy, or steal, enough fuel to allow them to reach Tornado Base for a proper refueling.”

“That just might work,” Dean muttered, bending to work out some figures on her keyboard calculator. “Yes, they can do it!”

“But if they’re caught…” Oughton began.

Crossing her arms, Barry scoffed. “At an abandoned airstrip, in the middle of a cornfield?”

“It’s worth a try,” Rexton said, turning off the remote destruction button. Slowly, the red light died away. “However, I want them to get some protection. Send along some mercs to guard the crew until they’re safely back in the air.”

“Not a problem, we have lots of friends in that area,” Dean replied. “However, once the mercs hear about what happened at Brussels, they’ll know who we are and try to blackmail us for more money.”

“Or sell us outright to the Pentagon,” Oughton snapped over the video screen.

“Then have Whitehorn blow the airfield off the map once he’s flying again,” Rexton stated coldly.

“Not a problem,” Dean said, swinging back to her console, her fingers dancing across the keyboard. “But once the word of our betrayal spreads, we’ll never be able to trust any mercs again.”

“After tomorrow, there will be no need,” Rexton replied, going back to studying the map of the world on the main screen.

CHAPTER FIVE

Columbus, Ohio

Ghosting out of the darkness, a large black Hummer rolled along the cracked asphalt of the city street. The windows were darkly tinted, the license plate splattered with dried mud, and the VIN plate on the dashboard innocently covered with a folded map. To a casual glance, this was just an expensive car. But a trained observer would have noticed that the car was riding too low and there was no manufacturer’s name on the tires. The Hummer was illegally armored, and riding on bulletproof military tires. For all intents and purposes, the vehicle was a private tank.

Lounging on a street corner near a closed gas station, a group of older teenagers were industriously doing nothing, drinking beer from oversize cans and smoking an assortment of cigarettes and joints.

Listening to the rock music coming from down the street, their casual conversation stopped instantly at the appearance of the Hummer as it cruised around a burned-down grocery store. Immediately drawing weapons, mostly cheap pistols and old revolvers, they eased back into a nearby alleyway merging with the blackness. A car like that, in this neighborhood, could only mean customers for Delacort, and they wanted no part of his business. Some hardass enforcers from the Cincinnati mob had tried to hijack one of his shipments, and the next day the men were found dead, stripped naked, castrated and nailed to a billboard sign along Route 465. The crazy gunrunner had crucified them and left the bodies in public view! After that, even the cops were hesitant to bother Armando “Crazy Mondo” Delacort.

Passing a bar, the music from inside rattling the windows, the Hummer took the next corner and left the paved road to start along a ragged pathway of busted concrete and weeds. The streetlights were soon left behind, and the armored car moved through the darkness, accompanied by the soft purr of its engine and the crunch of the tires over the loose gravel and shards of old glass beer bottles.

Concrete pylons appeared in the gloom, the thick pillars rising to reach the beltway high overhead. Fifty feet above the ground, Route 270 encircled the entire city of Columbus.

Past the beltway, the Hummer turned on halogen headlights, the brilliant beams helping the driver to maneuver through a maze of railroad ties, K-rails and mounds of refuse that probably would have been unnamable in broad daylight.

Beyond the wall of garbage, the people in the Hummer saw the dark outline of the old canning factory dominating a flat empty field. Weeds ruled the landscape, with huge rusting machines of some sort standing about and gradually decaying back into the soil from which they had been originally mined.

Reaching the sagging remains of an electrical substation, the Hummer’s driver parked the vehicle and killed the lights before sounding the horn twice, then twice more. Moments later a light answered from the murky factory, the beam blinking the same pattern in reply.

Turning off the engine, Carl Lyons stepped down from the Hummer and straightened the collar of his Hugo Boss suit. “Keep control of your fucking temper, Knuckles,” he growled, looking sideways at Schwarz. “We’re here for business. Savvy?”

“Yeah, yeah, stop stepping on my dick, will ya,” Schwarz replied with a snort, lifting an M-16/M-203 assault rifle combo from inside the Hummer. Working the arming bolt on the 5.56 mm rifle, he checked the load in the 40 mm grenade launcher, then rested the dire weapon on a shoulder. Ready for instant use, but not pointing in anybody’s direction.

“We shoulda left the ape behind,” Blancanales rasped in displeasure, drawing his Colt .380 automatic pistol and clicking off the safety before holstering the weapon again. “Somebody might offer him a banana, and he’ll go all postal on us.”

“Blow it out your ass, clotheshorse,” Schwarz retorted, not even looking in the direction of the man. “Gotta have one real man along to do any heavy lifting.”

“Which would be me,” Blancanales said loftily. “So what are you here for again, landfill?”

“Shaddup, the both of ya,” Lyons ordered, smoothing down his hair with both hands before starting forward at an easy walk. His .357 Magnum Colt Python was resting in a belly holster, but the former cop felt oddly vulnerable without easy access to his Atchisson autoshotgun. But that didn’t fit into this role for this night. Instead he was carrying a soft leather briefcase, the kind that a lawyer would use to tote mounds of paperwork. The contents bulged slightly and felt heavy.