by Ted Bell
There was authentic applause, and the general continued.
“This project was initiated some two years ago at my direction and with the prime minister’s approval. It is called the ‘Raptor Project.’ And the results are inside the hangar behind me, waiting patiently to be unveiled. Open the hangar doors, please.”
The heavy aluminum doors parted and slid slowly open along their tracks. The crowd on both sides leaned forward and tried to peer inside, hoping for a first glimpse. But the lights were deliberately left off, and all they could see was a strangely shaped silhouette, big and black and threatening.
The general let the suspense build a bit (his job, after all, entailed not a little showmanship) and then leaned into the microphone and said, “Ladies and gentleman, the next generation of airborne war-fighting machines… the Raptor X!”
As the brilliant arc lights inside the hangar roof snapped on, illuminating the new weapon that stood like some futuristic insect, black and menacing, people literally gasped, the aircraft’s looks were so startling. Especially the downturned nose, which resembled nothing so much as a hawk’s beak. But the sound of its two powerful engines at the tail exploding to life and the sight of the massive thing slowly moving forward into the sunlight was awe-inspiring.
“Stop! Stop!” the general barked at the machine with a smile.
The Raptor X braked to a halt directly between the two tents, and the engines quickly decreased the painful decibel level as they went to idle.
“You see, it, unlike many, listens to the voice of authority.”
The crowd laughed loudly. And out came the cell phones, everyone snapping photographs of the airplane with them.
The ramrod-straight air force officer standing next to Elon grabbed his elbow roughly and whispered fiercely in his ear.
“You allowed these people to come in here with fucking cell phones?”
“No! Of course not. They were to be told at the security checkpoint to leave all cell phones with the officer in charge.”
“Well, goddamit, they didn’t do that, did they? You get in that vehicle right there, son, and get your ass over to security checkpoint. You tell those sons of bitches that Major Lev Rabin wants everybody leaving this facility to be relieved of their phones until every damn picture of this airplane is deleted. You got that? Go!”
Elon started to turn for the Toyota truck parked outside the hangar, then turned back to the major.
“Major, what about the people who are e-mailing pictures from their phones now? Shouldn’t we tell the general to make an announcement saying-”
“Saying we screwed up? I don’t think so, son. Now get your ass over to that checkpoint!”
Elon got into the Toyota and hauled ass out of there.
“The future of military aviation… is now!” the general continued, and his audience was on its feet applauding this bizarre yet exquisitely designed machine, its futuristic silver fuselage now gleaming brilliantly in the desert sun. Indeed, it did look like something out of the distant future. It looked, as someone said, like “something out of this world!”
It was a curvy bat-shaped flying wing with a fifty-foot wingspan. There was no tail at the rear to disrupt its flowing lines. It was easily the size of a modern stealth fighter jet but lacked another common feature of conventional craft.
It had no cockpit.
Where the pilot would normally sit was a scowling black slit of a mouth, obviously the primary air intake.
The smiling general, proud of his baby, waited for the applause to die down.
He said, “In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a historic moment in aviation. Historians will rank it along with Lucky Lindbergh’s solo crossing of the Atlantic and Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind. Raptor X represents a dramatic breakthrough in aerial combat. It is the world’s first full, fighter-sized robotic stealth jet. No pilot, no ground control. A combat ceiling of one hundred thousand feet. Speed, Mach 4. You upload a mission to the Raptor’s onboard computer systems and the aircraft runs the entire mission on its own. From takeoff, through the mission itself, and then landing, all without any human intervention at all.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Raptor X will now execute a bombing run in the desert. Free of any human interaction, it will operate completely autonomously. It has been preloaded with a simple mission: take off, destroy the concrete bunker on that distant hilltop with one of its four bunker-buster bombs, and circle around for a landing. It will then taxi back to this location where it will officially be made operational and welcomed into service in the Israeli Air Force. Binoculars have been distributed for those who would like to use them during the flight.”
The Raptor X’s monstrous twin turbofan jets spooled up once more, and the excruciating roar made many of those present cover their ears. A moment later it lurched forward and began its roll, accelerating so rapidly that it seemed to literally disappear down the runway. Then it was visible lifting off and climbing almost vertically into the clear blue sky, the sun glinting off its wings. It executed a few barrel rolls before leveling off. Then it was streaking straight toward the target.
Those with binoculars could actually see the bomb released from beneath the fuselage and scoring a direct hit on the hilltop bunker. The resulting explosion shook the desert floor and a giant red-orange fireball climbed into the sky followed by a plume of black smoke and massive chunks of debris. As the smoke cleared, driven by desert winds, it was apparent that the entire top half of the hill was now gone along with the bunker that had stood there seconds earlier.
The cheering crowd broke into applause, all straining to keep their eyes on the maneuvers of the silver streak in the distance.
The robotic stealth fighter suddenly went into a vertical climb. Standing on its tail, it accelerated like a shuttle launch shortly after leaving the pad at Cape Kennedy.
A renewed burst of cheers and applause erupted from the crowd at this amazing feat of sheer power.
A frown crossed the general’s face. He covered the microphone with his hand and leaned down to whisper to the scientist seated beside him. “Is it supposed to do that? Was it reprogrammed? Without my express authority?”
The shaken man, a worried expression on his face, shook his head no. The other men on the dais were turning to each other, whispering, trying to hide the shock on their faces.
“Good God,” the general said, picking up his binoculars and searching for his silver bird. It had already climbed so high it was lost to sight. Had they somehow lost the damn thing? Had it just gone off on its own, streaking upward through space until it ran out of fuel and tumbled to earth like a dead sparrow?
But just as suddenly it was back-he saw it now-streaking down out of the heavens in a steep, nearly vertical dive, at supersonic speed, headed directly toward Negev. At two thousand feet, mercifully, it leveled off, skimming the tops of the surrounding hills. Miraculously, it seemed to have resumed its programmed flight path, and the general dared to breathe a sigh of relief. Raptor had banked hard right and lined up on the runway, about five miles out.
It was on its final approach.
But then, the general held his breath, his eyes widening, simply unable or unwilling to process what he was seeing. Because — because Raptor X did not seem to be slowing for the touchdown at the far end of the runway…
No, in fact, to the increasing horror of everyone present, Raptor X was still streaking toward the hangar, flying barely fifty feet above the runway, traveling at six hundred miles per hour. The crowd, aghast and confused, wondered: Is this possibly part of the air show demonstration? After all, planes performed daredevil stunts like this all the time at air shows, didn’t they? Outside loops that brushed the treetops. Yes. A spectacular end to today’s show that would conclude with the plane nosing up, clearing the hangar roof by inches before circling and landing.
But now, bright yellow flashes appeared along the leading edges of the swept-back wings.
The six 30mm cannons,
three on each side of the aircraft’s forward wingtips, had suddenly opened fire. People, even as they disintegrated, screamed and dove for cover. But there was no cover. Everyone on the ground was literally shredded to pieces.
No one was alive to see the Raptor X nose down sharply and then witness the robot aircraft as it slammed into the hangar at immense speed, slicing through the aluminum structure before plowing into the dormitories and research buildings that stood behind it, destroying everything and everyone in its path.
Elon Tennenbaum, returning across the tarmac from the checkpoint, witnessed the enormity of the blinding multiple explosions through the windshield of the Toyota. He thought, At least no one will be around who can blame this on me.
He realized he’d uttered this blasphemy aloud and accelerated toward the scene, urgently saying a silent prayer for the dead and asking God’s mercy for the badly wounded. He wanted to help.
But there was nothing left to do.
Thirty-one
London
Sunday mornings were a time Alex Hawke looked forward to all week long. On this particular such morning, he was especially happy. He was back home in London once more, with his son sleeping under his father’s roof, and all was well. Beyond a nearby window, Hawke could catch a glimpse of Seagrave House, home of the Royal Defense College founded by Winston Churchill. Hawke had attended there for a time. Formerly a great private home, it was still one of the loveliest buildings in London.
While Hawke had been away, his friend and butler, Pelham, to Hawke’s great delight, had taken it upon himself to have the interior decor specialists at Harrods come to the Hawke family’s stately mansion on Upper Belgrave Street.
The decorators had created and installed a complete nursery up on the fourth floor. Right down to the carousel lampshades that twirled in the dark, casting pink images of prancing ponies on the pale blue walls. Miss Spooner’s quarters were also on the fourth floor, right next door to the new nursery.
His three-year-old son seemed to be growing up before his very eyes. And he seemed quite happy in the big old family house on Belgrave Square. There was no end of nooks and crannies for Alexei to hide or discover, and he and Miss Spooner devised endless games with inscrutable rules resulting in screeches of wild delight or surprise. Happy laughter echoed about the house on this sunny Sunday morning in late summer, as it had not done since Hawke himself had been but a boy of three.
Hawke was still in his dark maroon dressing gown, propped up against the pillows in his great, canopied bed, sipping his coffee, reading. A tray with his breakfast dishes sat atop a pile of unread books on his bedside table, and the bed itself was strewn with various newspapers. He’d hurried through them and picked up the novel he’d been reading when he’d fallen asleep the night before. Entitled The Comedians, it was a tale by one of his favorite authors, Graham Greene.
It was the delightful saga of an Englishman who inherits a decrepit hilltop resort hotel in Haiti in the time of the murderous Papa Doc Duvalier and his evil voodoo minions, the Tontons Macoutes. The English chap has difficulty making ends meet as he has only a cook and a one-legged bartender for company, there being precious few tourists willing to risk their lives for a week in the barren, impoverished, and war-torn paradise.
He turned the page. The English hotelier, improbably named Brown, was just about to have a midnight go at his married German mistress in the backseat of an old Peugeot parked beneath a statue of Christopher Columbus in Port-au-Prince when there came a knock at Hawke’s bedroom door.
“Come in,” Hawke said, putting the book on his bedcovers.
“Good morning, sir,” Miss Spooner said brightly. “So sorry to disturb, but it is a lovely morning, no rain at all, and I was thinking of taking Alexei for our weekly Sunday picnic in Hyde Park. We were wondering if you’d like to join us?”
Alexei was holding Spooner’s hand but when he saw and heard his father’s voice, he ran to the bedside and raised his arms to be lifted up, crying, “Daddy! Daddy! Pick me up!” Hawke reached down with one hand and swept him up onto the bed, kissing his forehead. Having recently discovered the joys of bed-jumping, the little boy immediately began bouncing up and down on the mattress, falling on his bottom, quickly rising to have another go.
“You know, I’m tempted,” Hawke said, catching Alexei at the last second before he tumbled off the bed. “But I’m afraid Ambrose and I have a lunch on with my employer, Sir David Trulove, sorry to say. That awful tragedy with the drone fighter aircraft in Israel last week. We’ve got to find out who is behind these bloody incidents and soon. They’ve managed to put the whole world on edge, haven’t they?”
“Yes, sir. My colleagues at MI5 are certainly edgy. So far, Britain has been spared. But that’s hardly a comfort.”
“How do you stop someone with the power to use your own weapons against you?”
Neither had an immediate answer and so they stood there looking at each other in silence, neither of them willing to acknowledge the powerful attraction they had begun to feel for each other. Being under the same roof with her was no help at all, Hawke thought. But she was invaluable, had saved Alexei’s life, and-bloody hell-his child’s mother had married another man. He was free to do as he damn well pleased, wasn’t he?
“Precisely, sir,” she said finally, after his question had hung unanswered in the air for so long Hawke hadn’t the faintest idea what he’d asked her to begin with.
Hawke looked at her for a few moments and said, “Do you like Indian food at all, Miss Spooner?”
“Indian food? Well. I suppose I do, sir, very much.”
“I was thinking, there’s a little restaurant I quite like, not too far away, over in Mayfair. Taboori. Perhaps one night we might go for a curry?”
“That would be lovely, sir. I’d like that very much. Very much indeed.”
“Good… very good,” Hawke replied, fumbling for the rest of his sentence and finding himself simply unable to supply further dialogue. She came to his rescue.
“Indeed, sir. Well, I suppose we should be off. He goes down for his nap at two and I don’t want him to get overtired.”
“No, no. Of course not. You two run along. It’s a perfect day for a picnic in the park.”
“Come along, Alexei,” she said, holding her arms out to him. He laughed and leaped from the bed into her waiting arms after kissing his father on both cheeks.
“Bye-bye, Daddy!” he said, holding Spooner’s hand as they left the room.
Hawke put his hands behind his head and gazed up into the folds of dark blue silk canopy above.
Had he ever been happier?
N ell Spooner and her young charge entered the park through the Rutland Gate. They were headed for her favorite spot in the middle of a big meadow with a view toward the Serpentine. It was the place she went on her afternoons off, taking a blanket, some fruit, and a book to spend a few hours of quiet reading and much-needed solitude. She liked the view and so had chosen this as their weekly picnic spot as well.
Today in her canvas shoulder bag, in addition to a blanket, her own book and a couple for Alexei, she’d packed fruit, bottles of water and apple juice, animal crackers, cheese sandwiches, crisps, sliced apples, and a SIG Sauer. 45 automatic pistol.
“Horsies!” Alexei said, as a close-knit group of riders sped by at full gallop, their mounts kicking up big clods of dark earth in their wake. There were quite a number of them and they had to wait some time for them all to pass. Finally, there was a gap. Two men on horseback, trotting at a leisurely pace, reined in their mounts and, smiling, waited so the two of them could dash across the riding trail.
“Thanks so much,” Nell shouted at the two gentlemen once they were safely across the wide riding path.
“Horsies,” Alexei said again, intently watching the parade of them pass.
“Nice horsies,” Nell said, taking his hand and striding through the rich green grass toward the Serpentine, the snake-shaped lake glittering in the strong sunl
ight. The area of the meadow she chose was hardly ever crowded for some unknown reason, one of the reasons she liked it so much.
“Here’s our spot, Alexei,” she said, putting down her shoulder bag and flinging the blanket open. She spread it out, got herself situated, and then began unpacking her bag. She realized Alexei must be quite thirsty after the long walk from Belgrave Square and pulled out the apple juice first. Unscrewing the top, she said, “Here you go, tiger, I must say you are very…”
She looked around. The boy was nowhere in sight. She’d only taken her eyes off him for a minute or two and he’d wandered off. She jumped to her feet, calling his name. Hearing no reply, and beginning to get a bit nervous, she ran around a large hedgerow beyond which was a pathway that led to the Peter Pan sculpture. He loved the story of the flying boy and they’d visited the statue many times. Perhaps that’s where the child had wandered Yes. There he was. Toddling as fast as his little legs could carry him down the path toward Peter Pan, oblivious to the parade of puppies on leashes, prams, and other toddlers heading his way.
“Alexei, stop!”
He turned around, saw her, and started running faster. Everything was a game. She quickly caught up, snatched him up into her arms, and gave him a good talking to on the way back to the blanket. She was sure it did no good at all, but she was angry with herself for letting him out of her sight and the lecture was as much for her benefit as his.
“Now, finish your cheese sandwich and I’ll read you the rest of Peter Pan. There’s a good boy. So Wendy and Michael Darling had just settled into their wee beds when they saw a strange glow flit through the opened window. ‘Oh! Wendy said, that’s-’ ”
“Captain Hook!” Alexei interrupted. “Where is Captain Hook? And the alligator with the clock in his tummy?”
“That comes later, remember? Now, where was I?”
She was flipping through the pages of the big picture book when she saw something exceedingly odd. Two men on horseback riding across the meadow. It was strictly forbidden, of course; one had to stay on the path at all times, otherwise you’d have people The two mounted riders were heading directly toward where she and Alexei were sitting. And they weren’t trotting now, no, not at all, they were riding at a full gallop, gaining ground very quickly. She could see their faces now; it was clearly the two men who’d let them pass, and it was suddenly abundantly clear to her what they intended.