by Mark Walden
‘Call it in,’ Woods said.
‘I got nothing,’ the flight engineer sat behind him reported. ‘Comms are down. I can’t even raise the escorts.’
Woods looked out over the plane’s port wing at the F-22 fighter that was flying alongside. He wondered if they were experiencing the same problems.
‘Reboot the comms systems,’ Woods ordered. ‘Could be the hardware.’
Suddenly he felt turbulence shaking the control yoke in his hands.
‘Now what?’ he asked. He started at the sound and feeling of a jarring thud as something impacted the top of the aircraft. He pushed at the controls but they did not respond. Both of the F-22s flying escort broke violently away from Woods’ wing tips as something enormous, surely much too large to be another aircraft, just seemed to appear from thin air overhead.
‘Sweet Mary, mother of God,’ he whispered. He watched in horror as multiple white missile trails raced across the sky, converging with both escort fighters and turning them into blazing balls of tumbling debris before their pilots even had time to react. Knowing that no one would probably hear the transmission but aware that he had to make it anyway, he thumbed his radio control and spoke.
‘Mayday, Mayday, this is Air Force One, we are under attack, repeat, we are under attack.’
.
Chapter Eleven
‘Docking clamps locked in position,’ Drake’s tactical officer reported.
‘Escort fighters neutralised.’
‘Flight systems interface complete. Controls locked out. She’s ours, sir.’
Drake smiled. It had gone just as smoothly as he had hoped it would. It was hardly the sort of attack that the Americans could possibly have predicted; they had been caught unaware and unprepared, just as he had planned.
‘The Zeus Sphere?’ Drake asked.
‘Functioning perfectly, sir. We are storm-cloaked,’ the chief engineer reported. ‘As far as any satellite surveillance is concerned, Air Force One just disappeared in one of the worst storms that the Atlantic has ever seen. They can’t touch us in here.’
‘Excellent work, everyone,’ Drake said. He turned to Furan, who was standing beside him. ‘Begin the retrieval operation.’ Furan nodded and walked quickly off the bridge.
On board Air Force One there were scenes of complete chaos. Secret-service agents took up positions around the President’s office, their weapons drawn, waiting for whoever had captured the plane to make their next move.
Agent Fred Miller had only been in charge of the President’s protection detail for three months and he was determined that this President was not going to be the first to be kidnapped. He walked the length of the specially converted 747, checking on his men as they set up defensive positions around the President and his staff. They were armed with light sub-machine guns that contained special low-velocity rounds that were specifically designed not to penetrate the skin of the aircraft. The last thing they wanted to risk was an explosive decompression of the plane if a firefight broke out. The downside, of course, was that they were less effective against enemy agents wearing body armour, but that could not be helped.
As Miller reached the forward section of the aircraft, the number of agents increased dramatically, forming a heavily armed ring around the President’s office and the cockpit. Miller headed for the cockpit first. The two agents flanking the door acknowledged him with a nod, one of them tapping on the door. Inside, Colonel Woods heard the soft knock and checked the screen displaying a feed from the camera outside. He unlatched the armoured door and let Agent Miller on to the flight deck.
‘What the hell is that thing?’ Miller asked as he ducked down to get the best possible view of the underside of the Dreadnought’s hull through the cockpit window.
‘I have no idea,’ Woods replied. ‘I’m trained to recognise anything that flies and I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘It must be the size of an aircraft carrier,’ Miller said, craning his neck to see if he could make out any more details of the giant aircraft. ‘Chinese?’
‘If it is then the CIA need to up their game,’ Woods replied. ‘Don’t you think they would have an idea that they were building something like that?’
‘Yeah,’ Miller said, slightly distracted. ‘What systems do you guys still have?’
‘Nothing really, beyond basic support systems – lights, heat, air, that kind of thing. We’re not going anywhere. We’re moving at cruising speed, but even if we could get free we’d just drop like a stone without flight control systems.’
‘I was afraid you were going to say that,’ Miller replied. ‘Keep trying to raise someone on comms. Whatever you do, don’t let anyone in here.’
‘Wasn’t planning to,’ Woods replied with a grim smile.
Miller nodded and headed back towards the President’s office, where the majority of his men were positioned. He had a dozen men spread out in tactical positions around the office, all of whom were prepared to give their lives to protect the man inside. Miller knocked on the office door and a voice called out for him to enter. Miller stepped inside and nodded to the President and his Chief of Staff.
A military aide stood in one corner of the room, a black briefcase chained to his wrist.
‘Mr President,’ Miller said with a nod.
‘Agent Miller,’ the President replied, ‘I was just explaining to Mike here that we are entirely in your hands at this point.’
‘We won’t let you down, sir,’ Miller replied.
‘Any idea of who did this yet?’ the Chief of Staff asked.
‘No, sir,’ Miller replied honestly, ‘though the resources required to carry out an operation of this nature would suggest that whoever’s behind it is extremely well funded and organised.’
‘Given that they’ve literally just plucked Air Force One out of the sky, I think that much is clear, Fred,’ the President said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Did any of the crew of the escort jets make it?’
‘No, sir,’ Miller replied, ‘there were no chutes. They hit us too hard and too fast.’
‘And we have no communications, correct?’ the President asked.
‘No, sir. At this point I would normally recommend the use of the escape pod, but even that cannot be launched until we get control of our systems again,’ Miller explained. Air Force One was equipped with a one-man escape pod, but whoever had taken control of the plane had locked down its launch controls along with all of the other major systems.
‘Then we have little choice but to wait and see what our mysterious captors’ next move is,’ the President said with admirable calmness.
‘I’m afraid it rather looks that way, sir.’
‘I know that you and your men won’t let us down,’ the President added.
‘Count on it, sir,’ Miller replied and walked out of the office. He couldn’t help but respect the President’s ability to keep a cool head in a crisis like this. At least their attackers wanted them alive. If their intention had been to kill them, then they would have already done just that, and much as he hated to admit it, Miller knew that there wouldn’t have been a damn thing that he could have done about it. He was just glad that the First Lady and the President’s children had not been on board.
He went from man to man checking on his team. They were the best of the best, chosen from the elite units of the armed forces and law enforcement for their unique skills and resolve. If they couldn’t protect their commander-in-chief then no one could. He walked up to one of the newest recruits to the team, a graduate of the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team.
‘Ready, Agent Jackson?’ Miller asked.
‘Born ready, s-irrr . . .’ Jackson replied, slurring his words, his eyes losing focus. He looked at Miller for a moment, confused, and then his knees gave way and he collapsed to the floor. Miller tried to catch him but he too was feeling weak and disorientated. A little bit of his brain that was still functioning clearly fought to make his voice work properly.
‘Gas!�
�� Miller barked, flailing around for anything to grab on to. Whatever it was, it was colourless, odourless, fast-acting and filling every bit of the plane. He tried to take a step towards the locker where they kept the gas masks, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. He was the last of his men to drop unconscious to the ground.
On the lower deck the main hatch unlocked with a clunk and the door opened outwards. Furan led his men on to the plane, his pistol raised. He was not expecting to meet any resistance but he was not going to take any chances at this point. The gas that they had fed into the ventilation system had done its job; there appeared to be no one left conscious on board. Furan signalled for two of his men to follow him up the stairs to the upper deck and for the rest to deploy along the length of the plane. He pushed the unconscious secret-service agent slumped across the top of the stairs out of the way and moved quickly to the President’s office.
As he opened the door he immediately spotted one of his targets. He did not look much like the most powerful man on the planet right now, lying unconscious on the floor next to his Chief of Staff. Furan signalled for the two men with him to take the President, then moved over to the corner of the room. He pulled a small aerosol from his belt and sprayed the liquid nitrogen inside on to the chain securing the briefcase to the military aide’s wrist. Furan pulled at the case and the chain shattered like it was made of glass. He hurried out of the office and back to the main hatch, walking quickly back to the Dreadnought’s external air-lock. Once inside he pulled off his gas mask and spoke quickly into his throat mic.
‘Furan to control, we have the targets.’
Raven pushed the unconscious engineer into the locker. He had, perhaps unsurprisingly under the circumstances, been all too keen to tell her exactly where to find Darkdoom, or at least the location of the Dreadnought’s brig, which was where he assumed they were being held. She had rewarded him for his cooperation by depriving him of consciousness rather than life.
Moving quickly through the engineering deck, she passed a thick plexiglass window which looked in on what she assumed must be the Dreadnought’s fusion core. It was a huge, steel ring-shaped device that crackled with bright blue lightning and emitted a deep thrumming hum that she could feel as much as hear. Raven continued down the corridor to the staircase that would lead her to the upper decks. There were surprisingly few crew for a vessel of this size. She could only assume that Drake’s experience in designing unmanned aerial vehicles had meant that many of the Dreadnought’s systems were designed to function without human intervention.
As she reached the top of the staircase she heard voices nearby, heading in her direction. Raven leapt straight upwards and grabbed the exposed pipework that ran along the ceiling, pulling herself up into the shadows. She waited as a dozen well-armed men walked past beneath, oblivious to her presence. She weighed up her odds but she knew that even for her that was too many to take on at once. Then, just behind the heavily armed squad, Furan appeared carrying a black briefcase and walking along beside an unconscious figure on a stretcher. Raven could hardly believe her eyes as she recognised the man on the gurney – the face, the stars-and-stripes lapel pin, the immaculate dark blue suit. It made no sense, in fact it seemed impossible, but she couldn’t deny the evidence of her own eyes. What on earth was Drake doing?
Darkdoom stood in silence, watching the events unfold on the bridge. He knew Drake had been planning something spectacular and horrifying but he had not honestly expected anything on this scale. There was a reason that G.L.O.V.E. had always avoided operations of this nature in the past. Nation states were prepared to accept financial or material losses, but it was quite another matter when one directly attacked a head of state. In his experience it was akin to the difference between carefully opening a beehive and extracting the honey or, on the other hand, hitting the same beehive with a stick. One produced tangible rewards, the other a swarm of angry bees. The Americans especially. Attacking their President would bring their military and security forces down on the guilty parties like the wrath of God. Suddenly he began to understand why Drake appeared so keen for G.L.O.V.E. to be the fall guys for this operation.
‘Ahhh, our celebrity guest has arrived,’ Drake said happily as Furan’s squad marched on to the bridge with their prize. Drake walked over to the stretcher and looked down at the unconscious figure lying on it.
‘He’s taller than I expected,’ Drake said with a grin.
‘We have what we need,’ Furan said, ‘Should we dispose of the other passengers from the plane?’
‘No, not yet,’ Drake replied. ‘One can never have too many hostages. We’ll get rid of them later when the operation’s complete.’ Drake gestured for a man in a white coat standing nearby to come forward. ‘Wake him up.’
The man bent over the trolley and rolled up the President’s sleeve before taking out a syringe and sliding the needle into his arm. After a few seconds his eyelids fluttered and then opened, and a look of confusion was quickly replaced by one of anger.
‘Hello, Mr President,’ Drake said with a smile. ‘Allow me to introduce myself.’
‘I know who you are, Mr Drake,’ the President replied. ‘What I don’t know is what exactly you hope to achieve with all this. This isn’t just a kidnapping. A man as wealthy as you can’t possibly want something as simple as money. If you were going to kill me, you’d have done it already. So what is it that you want?’
‘Oh, I’m not going to kill you, Mr President,’ Drake replied calmly, ‘not yet anyway. There are a couple of things I need from you first.’
Drake gestured to the guards on either side of the President and they grabbed him roughly by the arms, restraining him. Drake stepped forwards and removed the President’s tie and undid the top two buttons of his shirt. He reached inside and pulled a key on a chain from the President’s neck. Furan stepped forward with the briefcase, placing it on the top of a nearby console. Drake turned the key in its lock, popping the latches open. As he opened the case there was a whirring sound and a small metal eyepiece rose up from the machine inside. Drake took out the plastic-coated folder that was packed into the case alongside the strange device.
‘I can’t kill you yet because there’s one problem with retinal scanners, and that is that they don’t work on a dead man’s eye.’
He gestured again to the guards holding the President and they pushed him roughly towards the open briefcase. They forced the struggling President’s head towards the eyepiece as he closed his eyes tightly.
‘That’s really quite pointless,’ Drake said with a sigh. ‘I could just cut your eyelid off but that would be so messy now, wouldn’t it?’ Drake grabbed his jaw and carefully forced the President’s eyelid open. There was a flash from the eyepiece and the steel plate at the bottom of the case slid aside and a small keyboard rose up out of the hidden recess. One of Drake’s technicians hurried forward as Drake offered him the plastic folder. The technician opened the folder and carefully typed in the series of coded entries that he found inside.
‘We have access,’ the technician said, swallowing nervously. ‘Slaving system control to our terminals.’
‘You know, I’ve never understood why they call this thing “the football”,’ Drake said, gesturing to the open case. ‘I mean, it looks nothing like a football.’
Darkdoom took a long deep breath, trying to stay calm. Drake’s words confirmed his worst fears. ‘The football’ was slang for the device that controlled access to the launch codes for America’s entire nuclear arsenal and it now appeared to be under Drake’s control. A truly terrifying prospect.
‘This will never work, you know,’ the President said defiantly. ‘The moment that Air Force One went missing they will have instituted a protocol to physically prevent any missiles from launching until they know what has happened to me. You can’t launch anything.’
‘Silly me,’ Drake said sarcastically. ‘Why didn’t I think of that? You’re right, of course, but there is one critical exception. There’
s one launch platform they can’t get to and physically deactivate and it’s the only one I need. Tell me, Mr President, have you heard of Thor’s Hammer?’
The President said nothing, but the way that his jaw muscles clenched as Drake mentioned the name suggested that he knew exactly what he was talking about.
‘A fascinating device,’ Drake continued, ‘above top secret, the blackest of black-budget projects. It took all of my resources to find out what it could do. Now what was it that my informant called it? . . . Oh yes, that’s right, a “mountain cracker” – a nuclear missile fired from orbit that can pierce so far into the ground before detonating that it could destroy, for example, an entire underground terrorist base in the blink of an eye. Most impressive. And when combined with the tracking capabilities of my Overwatch satellites, it was originally intended to bring a quick and brutal end to the “War on Terror”. Your predecessor nearly used it on several occasions, but there’s still a certain negative press attached to the nuclear option. Just look at how people have reacted over the past few hours to me setting off one little nuclear bomb in the middle of the desert. Imagine the reaction if you were ever to use the thing against a target on foreign soil. So, despite the expense of developing it, it was looking as though it was destined to become just another military white elephant floating around in orbit. Until now that is.’
‘Initiating manoeuvring thrusters,’ the technician reported from the console that was now attached to the device in the briefcase. ‘Time until target: forty-three minutes.’
‘You see, I have a new target for Thor’s Hammer,’ Drake said with an evil grin. ‘Not some mountain range on the other side of the planet; something much closer to home.’ He gestured at the screen behind them, where a digital map displayed a red cross hair moving towards an array of green target circles clustered in the north-western quarter of the United States.