The impact stopped both vehicles abruptly, and Sam heard the helicopter fly past, gifting a brief reprieve from the deadly machine gun fire. The helicopter pilot had killed his own men at the checkpoint and was surely not done with him yet, leaving him seconds to figure something out.
Sam scrambled out of the foot well uprighting himself to survey the situation. The cars had ended up smashed against each other and they were now blocking both lanes of the road. Looking through the broken windows in the direction he had been traveling, Sam saw a line of stopped vehicles at the end of which was the hovering helicopter, level with the road at the cliff edge. Sam’s stomach dropped as he realized what was about to happen.
The helicopter opened fire on the farthest car, decimating it quickly and smoothly hovering towards the next car in line. The hailstorm of bullets was punctuated with periodic missile releases making quick work of the helpless victims. Sam was frozen in place not sure what to do. The helicopter was getting closer by the second with six cars, a tour bus and then two more cars between them now.
Sitting in the taxi was a sure way to be killed so he quickly exited and skittered in a crouch to the front of the car and took cover. The mountainside next to him was far too steep to climb and the cliff edge was instant death. He was completely exposed and only three cars separated the helicopter from the bus now. Sam had no defense.
In full panic mode, Sam took a chance. He ran down the center of the road alongside the stopped vehicles at full speed, working the taxi driver’s smoker lungs hard. He leapt onto the hood of a black Mercedes and then jumped up on the front of the tour bus scrambling to get on top.
The helicopter was two cars away from the bus now and at least 10 feet back from the cliff edge. Sam started running as fast as he could towards the helicopter across the top of the bus. The pilot noticed him about halfway and began rotating to take aim at Sam.
Just as the pilot lined up Sam in his sights, Sam ran out of roof and leapt off the edge of the bus. Sam was airborne over the cliff edge with nothing below for hundreds of feet. He stretched as far as he could, but the helicopter’s powerful downdraft held back his momentum; he wasn't going to make it. Caught off guard, the pilot jerked the cyclic stick, momentarily tilting the front skids down a couple feet. Had it been six inches less, Sam would have fallen to his death but the sudden dip was miraculously just enough for Sam to get one hand on the metal skid.
Hanging on for dear life, Sam frantically searched for the telltale mind energy signature of the pilots. He hoped there would be a continuous conduction path from the steel skids through the metal bird to the pilots. Sure enough there they were. Locking in to one of them he transferred and was suddenly in the head of the pilot, control stick in his hands.
The pilot, feeling the sudden shift in weight from the taxi driver’s body, and the intrusion of an internal presence, tried to steady the helicopter. Sam immediately grabbed control, feigned a little difficulty in order to maneuver over the road long enough for the taxi driver to drop the 20 feet from the skid safely down to the road.
Sam pretended to have more trouble with the controls and informed the copilot through their headsets that the helicopter was not responding properly and he was going to bring it back to the base for a check.
The copilot was a lesser rank and whether he believed Sam or not he didn't respond. Sam started flying in the direction he had previously been driving assuming that was the direction that they needed to go. He also made the assumption that the helicopter base was the same as the Army base he needed to get to. While not a bad guess, approaching a heavily defended military facility could prove fatal if he was wrong.
Quickly poking around the pilot’s mind, Sam confirmed his assumptions with no time to spare as the attack helicopter covered the five miles in just minutes. He slowed as the base came into view in the distance. Sam simultaneously scanned the pilot’s mind and what he could see of the base, identifying where he should land, and headed toward a group of other parked helicopters.
The outdoor portion of the base was not that large, and was enclosed by a heavy perimeter wall fortified with artillery. The wall had a gate for entrance and exit to the road he had previously been driving on.
The mountain was steep in this location and there was a flat area between the side of the mountain and the perimeter wall the depth of which varied between 20 and 100 yards. This was where the helicopters were parked along with a variety of land-based vehicles.
Sam could see a few man-sized doors set into the side of the mountain along with two much larger doors which looked able to accommodate large vehicles and potentially a helicopter. As one of the three main bases surrounding Beijing, and in this case as a critical defensive position and gateway from the north, this base should be much larger. Sam guessed significant excavation had been done to this mountain to hollow out enough space to contain the majority of the base personnel, equipment, and of particular interest, the data center and second Dragonfly operations center—the point of this mission.
79
JEAN BELLAMY WIPED A BEAD of sweat from her brow as she gave the all clear for the 15th consecutive F35 to take off. She was the on-duty air traffic controller at the Air Force base in Misawa, Japan when the order came in to get 20 fully loaded F35’s in the air immediately. The past few days had been tense keeping the base at DEFCON 3, which meant they had to be ready at all times to mobilize within 15 minutes. All the bases in the area stood ready on this alert, some of which were also launching planes. The call that just came in raised them to DEFCON 2 which shortened the readiness time to 6 minutes. That would have been stressful on its own but the order to load and launch 20 planes immediately was testing her resolve.
The F35s were the latest stealth planes in the U.S. arsenal and had only arrived recently at Misawa. They were a challenge for air traffic controllers since they did not show up on radar.
To allow safe coordination of movement in the busy air space near these bases, pilots turned on beacons to force a radar signature. The planes taking off today kept their beacons off, and Jean watched them disappear into the distance out the window. After that they were on their own, invisible to her equipment.
Colonel Richard James, Ajax to anyone who knew him, stared out of Miss Nancy’s cockpit canopy, down the runway at the Guam U.S. Air Force base. Miss Nancy was his B2 bomber affectionately named after his seventh grade teacher.
Through just the right balance of strictness and understanding, Miss Nancy had been able to re-direct Ajax’s negative energy and get him on the path that led him to a successful career in the Air Force. Colonel Richard James had picked up his call sign from a prior disciplinary action when he had to clean all the latrines on base and it had stuck ever since.
Colonel James heard the order for takeoff in his headset and dialed up the B2’s engines. For the first time in his career he would be carrying a live nuclear payload and was surprised to find himself contemplating his convictions.
Miss Nancy was loaded with four B61 Mod 12 low-yield nuclear bombs. The bomb itself had been around since the 1960’s and the Mod 12 designation indicated the latest variant modified for extremely accurate bunker busting. The yield for each bomb could be selected at 0.3, 1.5, 10, or 50 kilotons. Miss Nancy held two 0.3 yield and two 1.5 yield and his instructions were to drop them them one at a time at the target starting with the lowest yield. He would be instructed after each drop as to whether the target was destroyed, and whether to drop the next bomb or return home.
He would be accompanied by another B2 carrying four 10 kiloton yield bombs in case the first four were not enough.
The nuclear bombs dropped on Japan during World War II were 13 and 21 kiloton bombs, and nuclear weapons had not been used since. Until now…
80
CLOSE TO LINING UP HIS descent, Sam saw ground crew who seemed to be waving him off. Why would they not want him to land? For that matter, why had the helicopter opened fire on their own men at the checkpoint? Sam probed
the pilot’s mind again for an explanation. Shit! he cursed himself for not looking for this information immediately upon integration. He now understood there was a scorched earth protocol in place - anyone who came within 20 feet of an off-base person, or engaged in live fire, was to be destroyed. Not just killed but destroyed. Since this helicopter had been engaged in a firefight, it was considered tainted and not allowed to return to base. The ground crew were selfishly waving him off so they wouldn’t become tainted also—not that he blamed them. The personnel at the checkpoint had allowed him, as the taxi driver, to get within 20 feet of them. That was why the helicopter had fired on them.
It was clear they had determined Sam could transfer into people from a distance but still didn’t fully understand how, and perhaps incorrectly thought it also had something to do with live fire and weapons. Either way, the scorched earth protocol was a brutal line of defense that had Li’s fingerprints all over it.
Now understanding the protocol, Sam wondered why the co-pilot hadn’t told him not to return to base? Sam glanced at the copilot: he found himself looking down the barrel of a revolver pointed shakily at him. Reacting without thinking, Sam brought his hand up as quickly as possible pushing the gun up while leaning back to try to get off the gun’s trajectory line and transferred simultaneously. He strangely heard the report from the gun in stereo from both men’s ears. Fully transitioned he saw through the co-pilot’s eyes that, as the pilot, he had not gotten completely out of the line of fire. A neat hole near the top of the pilot’s helmet seeped blood, as he slumped sideways against the window.
The helicopter was veering wildly, and Sam again worked to gentle the machine. As he smoothed out the hover, alarms started beeping in his headset, and warning lights came to life on the control panel. Muzzle flashes caught his eye, and he looked down out of the window where he saw heavy machine guns firing at him. He hadn’t heard the guns due to the engine noise and it might already be too late. They were going to shoot him down!
81
INSTINCTIVELY SAM SLAMMED THE COLLECTIVE all the way down, reducing the pitch of the main rotor blades and dropping the helicopter’s elevation to get out of the immediate line of fire. He flipped the safety cover over the missile launch button up and pressed the button, firing a missile towards the gunner on his left. He missed wide by about 10 feet but it nonetheless paused the attack concussing the operators at least momentarily. Additional guns from the right now fired their 30 mm shells at him - he was a sitting, well actually flying, duck hanging out at close range in front of the base and it’s heavy artillery.
How did he get in this situation, which kept getting worse? Oh right, he volunteered. He was going to have to really thank Julia for talking him into this. Even with his life in constant danger for the past couple days, Sam felt this was something he had to do, that SOMEONE had to do. He was uniquely qualified in some ways but otherwise had no business playing GI Joe. But the nagging need for justice kept pushing him forward. Now if he could just get his ass out of this situation.
With artillery triangulated on him from the left and right, Sam dove straight toward the base in between their positions, forcing the guns to stop firing to avoid shooting each other. Now let’s open up one of these doors, Sam thought as he fired the remaining six missiles into one of the doors set into the mountain directly in front of him. Slowed, but still with some forward momentum, he brought the helicopter down hard and bailed out, crumpling to his knees and rolling on the pavement, as the machine skidded across the concrete towards the side of the mountain where he had fired the missiles. Sparks flew from the metal where the juggernaut ground against the concrete. The rotors made first contact with the mountain face followed by the main body slamming into the rock wall. The explosion of the remaining fuel and the momentum from the rotors sent the entire craft rebounding diagonally off the mountain face, and, like a slow pitch hit by a home run batter, the ball of flaming machinery headed for the outfield perimeter wall faster than it had come in.
Luckily the direction Sam rolled had taken him out of the trajectory of the rebounding debris and actually screened him from that side of the base as he made a run for the flaming entrance to the mountain.
Sam could make out a blackish rectangle through the flames and char on the mountain face which he presumed was the door or where the door used to be. Closing the distance he braced for the impact of bullets from his right, which was not screened by the helicopter wreckage, but thankfully none arrived. Debris along the base of the mountain was in various states of “on fire”. A three foot high pile directly in front of the door lazily simmered throwing up a thick cloud of black smoke. Without hesitation Sam leapt over the pile into the cloud, but misjudging his trajectory by six inches, his right shoulder caught the side of the door opening spinning him around in midair. His flight through the blinding black smoke was stopped abruptly by another impact. His head, followed by his body, connected heavily with an immovable solid surface and then again with the floor as he slid down and fell backward onto his side as he lost consciousness.
82
SAM CAME TO WITH A start. Lying in a fetal position on his side, he had a sidelong view into an enormous room which could only be the interior of the base. Luckily his pilot host wore a helmet. He wasn’t sure what would have happened from the impact without it. Sam saw black skid marks on the floor in front of him terminating at a smoking metal panel 50 yards farther into the room; this must be the door that had been blown in.
Beyond the door panel fire guttered from multiple vehicles where frantic soldiers were trying to extinguish the flames. Unsure how long he had been unconscious, Sam tested his limbs and movement rolling to his back. Looking straight up, Sam saw black smoke curling towards the high ceiling. Pain throbbed in his head as he tipped it back towards the source: the exterior door opening a couple feet beyond his shoulders. To his immediate right was a three foot square column which must be what he had collided with. Major body parts having passed inspection, he sat up, righting his view along with his body. If he hadn’t clipped the door he would have landed without incident on the flat concrete floor. It appeared at least one of the missiles had better luck than he had and made it through the door opening and traveled uninterrupted to the vehicles deeper in the base, setting them alight. If not for the ongoing fires and the attention they required from the soldiers, he would probably have been spotted by now. If the scorched earth order held inside the base the same as outside, that would have been the end of this adventure.
Sam’s first point of business was to ditch the flight suit and find clothes or another host, to blend in with the regular troops he saw running around. He took off his helmet and connected communications equipment and stashed them off to the side near his unfriendly column. The remaining flight suit was still different from the soldier’s uniforms, but was as good as he could do for now.
Sam stood and surveyed the inside of the base. There was a large open area to the right where larger equipment could be brought in and stored or worked on. The major support columns for the space were located directly on his right and left and created something of a corridor leading towards the inner areas of the facility. Sam was incredulous that a missile from the helicopter threaded the corridor of columns without hitting them and bringing down part of the ceiling. The double column corridor system was repeated on the other side of the large hangar to allow a column-free space in the middle with large beams spanning overhead.
The columns provided a good amount of visual screening, and Sam started toward the burning wreckage farther into the base. Seeing a fire extinguisher he picked it up as if he was going to help with the fires and rushed to the aid of his fellow men in arms.
Once in range, Sam started spraying the extinguisher at one of the fires while scanning farther ahead for his next move. The immense concave ceiling curved down and met the floor another 25 yards past the burning vehicles. There were multiple doors set into the stone wall which Sam assumed led to the inner sa
nctum where he needed to go. He quickly handed his extinguisher off to another soldier and made haste for nearest of the doors.
83
JULIA AWOKE WITH A START to the sound of buzzsaws. She had a moment of disorientation until she remembered she had laid down on a couch in one of the embassy’s offices on the perimeter of the main open office space. Her watch showed 12:32 am. She shed the haze of sleep as she sat up but the strange buzzsaw noises continued; something was happening.
She had closed the door and mini-blinds in the office, and she cautiously raised one of the slats to peer into the main office area. Julia was surprised to see people moving frantically about the room and watched as one of them fed a sheaf of papers into a shredder. Shit, it’s happening.
Julia jumped as her pocket vibrated, and she pulled out the sat phone.
“Hello,” Julia answered, already sure of who it was.
“Julia, it’s Paul. You have about an hour before the shit hits the fan over there. There is a private plane waiting for you and the embassy staff—”
“ONE HOUR! What happens in an hour, Paul?”
“The President has ordered an air strike to take out the target facility.”
Julia paused, thinking about Sam. He’d be killed along with the hundreds of others at the Chinese base.
Paul broke the silence, “You need to protect our people and get them on the plane.”
“But if Sam succeeds, there’s still time,” Julia said with as much conviction as she could muster. Yet her hope dissipated with her words, like the contrails of the incoming jets fading behind them.
The Slip Page 19