Dale Brown - Storming Heaven

by Storming Heaven [lit]

  He was tall and powerful-looking, with an athletic body that could not be hidden even by all the combat hardware on his combat harness.

  "This officer is hurt," Hardcastle tried. "Who the hell are you?" The gunman pulled off his balaclava hood, revealing a narrow face and close-cropped hair.

  "I am your old friend Henri, Admiral.

  Henri Ca7aux." Hardcastle's face registered shock, then pure white-hot anger.

  He tried to jump to his feet and tackle Cazaux. The terrorist merely kicked Hardcastle aside with a sharp snapping kick to the head, accomplishing the move quite easily.

  "This is perfect, Admiral, just perfect," Cazaux said. He peered into the car door, checking Harley and taking away her rifle. He quickly checked the glove compartment, removing a.30 automatic backup pistol.

  "She looks beautiful even with her wounds," Cazaux said. He turned back to Hardcastle and said, "First I encounter my old friend and your colleague Colonel vincenti, and now you." "Vincenti? his "He is out there," Cazaux said, waving toward the Lincoln Memorial and the Iwojima Memorial to the west, "trying to stop my 747 from crashing into the Capitol.

  "Oh, yes, Admiral," Cazaux crooned.

  "You and the young lady have wonderful seats for my final spectacle. You will witness the destruction of the Capitol as my 747 crashes into it, and then witness the destruction of the White House when my fuel-air explosives destroy it. Of course, I think we might be a bit too close to the explosion at the White House--they assure me everything within a half-mile will be damaged or destroyed by the explosion. If the Fates let you live, then you probably deserve it.

  Unfortunately, I won't have the opportunity to see any of this--it is a poor soldier who stops to admire the destruction he causes. Au revoir, Admiral. I hope to--" "Freeze!

  FBI!" a voice behind them shouted. "Drop your weapon!" Cazaux let the submachine gun clatter to the ground.

  "Now raise your--".

  Cazaux didn't hesitate--he ducked down behind the car, drew a sidearm, and dragged Hardcastle to his feet, holding the pistol to his head. It was judge Lam Wilkes, drawing down on Cazaux from about twenty yards away.

  "Drop the gun, now!" she shouted.

  "My luck is running true to form tonight," Cazaux cackled.

  "It is none other than the beautiful FBI Director, Lam Wilkes! I think you should drop your gun, Madame Director, or I'll blow the Admiral's brains out right now. Don't you move in that car either, Treasury agent!" he shouted as he noticed movement inside the car.

  "Bad move, Henri," Hardcastle said, his voice weakened by the steel-like arm across his throat.

  "The lady would probably give you a citation if you pulled the trigger. Judge, meet Henri Cazaux.

  Henri, FBI Director Wilkes." He could see Wilkes' stunned expression even in the semidarkness of the lights surrounding the Washington Monument.

  "My extreme pleasure, madame," Cazaux said gallantly.

  "Admiral, it was convenient of you to wear a bulletproof vest tonight.

  Madame Director, I'll make you a sporting proposition. If you don't lower your weapon, I'll kill the Admiral and I'll still escape.

  Toss your weapons away, give me a head start, and the chase starts anew, on equal terms.

  Agreed?" "It's not going to happen, Cazaux," Wilkes said, her voice faltering from the strain, confusion, and outright surprise. "No one is going to give up their weapons his "Ah, your voice says otherwise, Madame Director," Cazaux said.

  "You have faith in your agents, I assume.

  Surely they can capture me in the nation's capital? Now drop your gun. This is my final warning." To Hardcastle's surprise, Wilkes let her service revolver roll on her trigger finger, barrel pointing upward. "Wilkes, don't do it." Hardcastle groaned. "He'll kill me anyway." "Freeze! D.c. Police!" they heard.

  The plainclothes D.c. Police officer had chugged his way over to the monument, drawing down on Cazaux. Cazaux instinctively raised his pistol toward him... and Hardcastle reached up and grabbed his right wrist, shoving it upward. The officer fired, but he was too far away and missed.

  Cazaux shrugged out of Hardcastle's grasp with ease and fired three shots at the officer, two rounds hitting him in the chest. Wilkes dropped to one knee, swinging her service revolver back up.

  Cazaux aimed.

  ... and they fired simultaneously.

  Three.45 caliber rounds hit Wilkes, one in the shoulder and two in the chest; two.38 caliber rounds hit Cazaux in the stomach and left shoulder.

  Wilkes collapsed onto her back and was still.

  Cazaux stood there, a hand over the stomach wound, but he was still standing. He swung his pistol down at Hardcastle, but suddenly his knees gave way and he went down on one knee. Realizing he was really hurt, Cazaux stood up shakily, ignoring Hardcastle, and started running south toward the Sylvan Theater and the Tidal Basin. He started to pick up amazing speed. Before Hardcastle could react and reach for one of the Steyour rifles, Cazaux had almost reached Independence Avenue and was lost in the darkness.

  Hardcastle's first thought was to go after Cazaux, but not with three wounded officers around him. The D.c. Police officer was dead.

  Lam Wilkes was alive but hurt very badly.

  "I was on the way to the White House... heard the radio call... where.

  where's Cazaux?" she gasped.

  "He got away," Hardcastle said. He tried to stuff a handkerchief into one of the wounds and tried to compress the other with his bare hand--the bleeding was serious.

  "Don't... don't let him get away, Hardcastle, damn you..." "Lie steaJudge. Help is on the way," Hardcastle lied.

  "Violence... this violence is sickening," Wilkes gasped.

  "When will it end? When will it... ever... end... ?" And her voice trailed off into a whisper, then nothing.

  "Shit!" Hardcastle swore aloud. "You bastard!" He turned to retrieve his Steyour bullpup rifle, and found Harley on her feet, headed toward him. "Deborah, stay down." "Is she dead?" "She's hurt badly. The cop is dead," Hardcastle said. "I'm going after Cazaux. Stay here and see if you can help Wilkes." "No way.

  Where did he go? I'll call it in." "Call it in, but you're--" He turned and looked toward the Lincoln Memorial as the loud scream of an airliner got closer and closer.

  "Oh, my God, there it is!" Hardcastle shouted, pointing toward the Iwojima Memorial. "It's headed this...jesus, Deborah, get down, gel down!" Harley ran over, grabbed Wilkes by the arms, and dragged her behind the Washington Monument to safety.

  ... just as all hell broke loose.

  Near the Iwo Jima Memorial That Same Moment Just as the 747 was north of the Iwo Jima Memorial and over the interstate, Vincenti closed his eyes and flew his F-16 Fighting Falcon into the right rear portion of the fuselage, between the wing trailing edge and the forward edge of the horizontal stabilizer.

  The impact sliced off most of the'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 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-mile-wide, 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 terror, 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'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 hit the 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 across 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 it. 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.

  "Lam Wilkes saved my life. How am I ever going to live that down?" Aboard the E-3Can 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 AWACS 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 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 helmet, 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 air
craft 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.

  Cazaux's second terrorist aircraft!

  He had almost forgotten--Cazaux said he had a second aircraft inbound to bomb the White House with a fuel-air explosive.

  That "unknown rider" was it--and it was only a few miles away.

  He donned the Avenger driver's thick bulletproof Kevlar helmet, moved the microphone toward his lips, and keyed the transmit button: "Leather Control, this is... ah, this is Admiral Ian Hardcastle, on board an Avenger unit on the Mall. How do you read this transmitter?" "Calling Leather Control, say again." "Leather Control, this is Admiral Hardcastle on board one of the Army Avenger units on The Mall. Can you read me?" "Person calling Leather Control, this is an aviation emergency channel only, if you require medical or police response, change to VHF 121.5 or U.h.f 243.0, over." "Listen to me. Henri Cazaux is flying some kind of aircraft toward Washington, D.c and it's loaded with explosives. I'm on the ground near one of your Avengers. Your crew here is dead.