As the metal underbelly of the helicopter struck a clear portion of the deck, it screeched and came to a stop.
Miller heard the back door slide open. A burst of cold air filled the cabin with a violent swirl of snow. He leaned over to Hammaker and fought to unbuckle him. His sore arm and the weather slowed him. As the ship, and helicopter, pitched forward once again, Miller heard Vesely shouting his name like a distant foghorn. But he wouldn’t leave Hammaker. He couldn’t.
Then he remembered Adler. Captured.
And the rest of the world. Red flakes would soon fall from the sky and kill every last non-Nazi on the planet.
For a moment, he considered leaving Hammaker, measuring one life against billions. But then he thought of Arwen. She wouldn’t leave the man. She’d die trying to save his life.
He pushed Hammaker forward, thrust his arms under the man’s shoulders, and dragged him into the passenger’s seat. The pain in his left arm was excruciating, but focused him on the task.
The helicopter skidded over the ice again, headed for the ocean.
Miller twisted the door handle, pushed hard with his legs, and emerged from the door like a penguin leaping from the water.
He hit the deck hard. Hammaker landed on top of him, knocking out the little air left in Miller’s lungs.
The helicopter, riding on a bed of smooth metal, slipped past them.
There was a crash.
The sting of freezing water covered Miller’s body.
He heard shouting voices, but couldn’t make out the words.
All of his effort went into one thing—holding on to Hammaker.
Even if it meant they would die together.
50
Miller was back in the cryogenic chamber. Cold stabbed his body with icy talons, piercing his muscles and scraping his bones.
But his arms locked around Hammaker’s body and never let go. Not when frigid salt water filled his mouth. Not when the stitches in his arm popped like over-tight guitar strings. Not even when he felt himself lifted up and dragged away.
When his senses returned he found himself on a stretcher covered in heated blankets, being carried through the delightfully warm hallways of the George Washington. He recovered from the cold more quickly than when he was in the actual cryogenic chamber, and realized that the burn of recovery lacked the intensity of his time in the heated river.
Exposure must not have been that long, he thought.
He looked for Vesely, somehow knowing the man would never leave his side. He found him following the pair of medics carrying the stretcher. “How long were we out there?”
The man smiled wide. “I told them you would not stay unconscious long.”
The man carrying the stretcher confirmed it with a grin and a nod. “He did.”
“More than once,” said the other man.
They turned the corner and Vesely said, “You were hit by two waves. Nearly swept you off deck.”
“Was it you?” Miller asked. “Did you pull us off the deck?”
“No,” Vesely said. “Was them.” He motioned to the men carrying the stretcher. Miller looked at them. Their faces were red from exposure to the elements.
“Thank you,” he said to them.
“Just doing our jobs,” said the man in the back.
Miller had never felt more proud of his navy service. Never mind the fact that a portion of the armed services had been infiltrated by the enemy, those that were true Americans never ceased to make him proud.
Like Hammaker.
Miller opened his mouth to ask about the man, when Vesely said, “Kidd is unconscious, but alive. Hit his head hard, they think. Getting X-rays. Will live, but will not be coming with us.”
Probably for the better, Miller thought. The Kidd was brave as hell, a good pilot, and had earned his Vesely-style code name. But his inexperience in a down-and-dirty, no-holds-barred firefight could be a liability. It was always harder to kill people when you were worried about someone else’s well-being. Vesely had no formal training—that Miller knew of—but had proven himself more than once.
“Did he just say ‘coming with us’?” asked one of the men carrying the stretcher.
“He did,” Miller said, sitting up. His head ached, as did most of his body, but he pushed through it. The motion caused the two men carrying the stretcher to stop. Miller spun his legs around and got to his feet. Veseley helped keep him up, but he stood on his own after a moment. He turned to the first man. “Find someone who will patch me up fast. Meet me on the bridge. Go.”
The man nodded quickly, impressed and intimidated by Miller’s show of strength, and then hurried off. Miller turned to the second man.
“How long is this storm supposed to last?”
The man nodded. “Four hours, tops.”
“Any F-22s on board?” Miller asked.
“Yes, sir,” the man replied. “Four of them.”
“Find Ensign Partin. Tell him I need two F-22 Raptors and two F/A-18s fueled and ready to leave the second this storm lets up.”
The man nodded and left.
Miller looked back to Vesely. “Go find our pilots. Bring them to me.”
“Is fun to see you in action, Survivor,” Vesely said with a grin, and then went in search of the pilots. Satisfied that the three men would follow his orders, Miller headed for the bridge, and when he got there, he cranked up the heat.
* * *
The storm let up three hours later, just as the black sky turned a dark hue of purple. The sun would rise slowly, peek over the horizon for a few hours, and then begin its slow descent. But Miller planned to be in an entirely different hemisphere by the time that happened.
His wounds had been expertly attended to. His body temperature had been brought back up. He’d received two IV fluid bags and a bag of blood to replace the amount he’d lost—it wasn’t a dangerous amount thanks to Vesely’s stitching, but his body would tire more quickly if it was fighting to restore his blood supply while he was in the field. The stitches were tight and dressed properly. He’d been given some heavy-hitting antibiotics to fight off any potential infections and took eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen along with six hundred milligrams of acetaminophen for the pain. His stomach would be spared discomfort because he’d eaten a lot of food with the drugs, but his liver would be working overtime. He had the same dosage in his pocket and would take the drugs again before landing. But even with the high double dose, the pain would merely be dulled, and only for a few hours. After that, pain would consume his body.
After learning what Miller was up against, the medic had given him a small vacuum-sealed preloaded syringe of morphine. “It might make you a little loopy,” she’d said, “but it will keep you in the fight if the pain gets too bad.”
To stay awake he’d been given a pack of caffeine gum, which the medic wouldn’t normally recommend, given his condition, but knew he’d be going back into the fight with or without it, and she’d managed to talk him out of the strong caffeine pills. He’d burned through half of the gum already and cut himself off when the storm began slowing. He didn’t want to be fidgety while sitting in the backseat of an F/A-18. He could chew the rest when they got nearer to their destination—which had been the subject of debate for the past hour.
Miller wanted to kick in the front door, guns blazing. But Vesely had put the kibosh on that idea. Dulce was an underground base, mostly likely designed to survive a nuclear assault. A direct hit might do them in, but short of that, the base could very well be locked up tight—at the ground level, which was little more than a group of faux buildings anyway.
Vesely believed Los Alamos and its fabled underground high-speed rail to be the best entry route. With both facilities likely under the enemy’s control, he thought the rail would be up and running. They would go in quietly. Covert. No guns blazing. No doors kicked in. No trail of dead neo-Nazis. The plan did little to sate Miller’s anger at being duped by Brodeur, the kidnapping of Adler, and the murders of m
illions of people. But he ultimately agreed.
Miller went over the plan in his head one more time while the F/A-18’s canopy closed over him and the pilot. There was a lot of guesswork involved, despite the intel they’d gathered at the Antarctic base, but it was the best they could do. And since the skeleton crew of the George Washington had not yet discovered how their long-range communications were being jammed, they were on their own. An ex-Navy SEAL. A Czech conspiracy theorist/wanna-be cowboy. Two F/A-18s. Two F-22s. And four pilots. They were all that stood in the way of the rise of the Fourth Reich.
“Hey, Cowboy,” Miller said into his headset. They’d be using code names from here on out. Vesely named the pilots White Horse, Red Horse, Black Horse, and Pale Horse after the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The Pale Horse brought Death, and he sent his victims to Hades. Miller understood the analogy and appreciated it because the Pale Horse was his pilot, and it carried him. He was Death and had every intention of sending the men he killed to Hell.
“I’m here, Survivor,” Vesely said. He was in another F/A-18 waiting for Miller’s to take off.
“Just wanted to say I appreciate everything you’ve done,” Miller said. “Thought I should say it now in case one or both of us die.”
He heard Vesely laugh for a moment. “Two things, Survivor. One, you need to work on motivational speeches. Watch locker room speech from Any Given Sunday. Will help. Two, you are Death now. Riding on Pale Horse. Leave emotions on boat. It does not matter if I die. Only thing that matters is that our enemies die. That we stop the red sky. ‘When Lamb opened fourth seal, I heard voice of fourth living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over fourth of earth to kill by sword, famine, and plague, and by wild beasts of the earth.’ We are wild beasts, Survivor. We are sword. Plague. Is time to slay our enemies.”
Miller grinned, gave his pilot’s helmet a tap, and said, “You heard the man, Pale Horse; is time to go.”
Engines roared. Adrenaline pumped into Miller’s body as the F/A-18 rocketed across the George Washington’s deck. G-forces pinned him to his seat as they tilted up toward the now blue sky and accelerated toward Mach 1.8. He heard Vesely cheer as his F/A-18 followed close behind. A moment later, the two F-22s followed.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were airborne.
51
Despite the distance from the George Washington to United States airspace over southern Texas being a 6,600-mile, five-and-a-half-hour flight, there was no time to rest. While Miller and Vesely discussed various aspects of their not-so-perfect plan, the pilots arranged for refueling flights en route. Miller kept expecting to be attacked as they reached out to every air base on the way, but they were left alone. Perhaps they flew unhindered because two F/A-18 Hornets and two F-22 Raptors would be a losing fight for anyone not flying similar aircraft, but Miller didn’t think so. With Huber’s five-day time limit just twenty-four hours away, the remaining Nazi elements embedded in the military would be seeking shelter.
They passed over Texas in what felt like just minutes, the whole state sliding beneath them as a beige blur. Three hundred miles from their target, the two F/A-18 Hornets reduced speed and dropped down to one hundred feet, hugging the ground. While it would be hard to escape any radar systems protecting Los Alamos forever, they could get lost in the ground clutter—buildings, trees, hills, and mountains—for as long as possible. The two F-22s, with their transponders switched off, were invisible to detection and remained at a higher altitude.
As Pale Horse guided the jet across the terrain, Miller took the second megadose of ibuprofen and acetaminophen. His immobilized body had grown stiff, and would ache like a bastard when he started moving again. Even more when the fighting started. He followed the pain relievers with six sticks of caffeine gum. The stimulant would wake him up, but also rush the pain medication into his system. It was far from a perfect solution—like duct tape on a submarine leak—but if it kept him going for the next few hours, it might be enough.
“Pale Horse, this is Red Horse. Over.”
“I read you, Red Horse. Over.”
“Are you guys seeing this?”
Miller heard a tinge of nervousness in the man’s voice. Red Horse, whose real name Miller never learned, struck him as the strong, silent type. Followed orders. Flew with precision. And was absolutely deadly behind the controls of the world’s most sophisticated fighter jet.
So what’s making him afraid? Miller wondered.
Tick.
The sound was barely audible.
But it repeated.
Tick.
Tick, tick, tick.
Miller looked out the window. The ground flew past in a blur of desert sand, trees, cacti, and boulders. They followed the twists and turns of a dry riverbed, allowing them to travel well under the radar. Everything was a blur, though.
Tick, tick, tick.
He looked up, wondering if he might see the F-22s, but saw nothing.
Or did he?
As his eyes adjusted to the distance, his view of the deep blue—almost purple—New Mexico sky appeared hazy.
Static-filled.
“Survivor,” came Vesely’s voice. “I think Huber’s prediction was off by a day.”
Tcktcktcktcktck.
Miller gaped in silence as his mind struggled to comprehend the unthinkable. The sky was filled with red flakes. Oxidized iron. The process of purging oxygen from the Earth’s lower atmosphere had begun. Their twenty-four-hour window had just been reduced to hours. It would take time for all of the oxygen to be used up, though many people would be poisoned beyond recovery long before that. If they didn’t find a way to stop the cosmic attack in the next few hours, it would already be too late.
The red flakes triggered several memories for Miller. Surfacing at the Aquarius life support buoy and taking his first breath of blood-flavored, oxygenless air. The tiger shark. The pink-covered streets of Key Largo. Miami. Arwen. The gang. It all felt like a lifetime ago. So much had happened in the past few days.
Another memory came back, slapping him out of his reverie. He’d told the president, “If you haven’t heard from me, and red flakes start falling from the sky, track my phone’s location and drop a nuke on it.” That time had come.
Hopefully the president would realize that his current Mach 1 speed meant he was still fighting and would delay a strike for as long as possible, but he couldn’t bank on it. He’d tried calling the president several times already, but never found a signal. He wasn’t sure he’d find one in the middle of New Mexico, either, but had to try.
“Any cities ahead?” Miller asked Pale Horse.
“Passing by Santa Fe in a few minutes. We’ll reach the LZ ten minutes after that.”
“Are you there, Survivor?” Vesely asked.
Miller held the phone up, watching for a bar to appear. “Going to make a phone call. See if we can avoid being nuked for a few more hours.”
“Is good idea,” Vesely said.
A bar appeared. Then two. Then three. Miller knew they would leave the cell tower’s range just as quick as they’d entered it. He hit the Call button, heard just a single ring, and then—shit—voicemail.
Are you serious? Miller thought, but then realized the president was most likely already underground.
Beep.
“Bensson, it’s Miller. If you get this, hold off on that nuke for as long as you can. In case I don’t make it there, the target is Dulce Base in New Mexico. That’s the stronghold. That’s where I’m headed. If you can, get a message to Arwen for me. Tell her—”
Beep, beep, beep.
Signal lost.
Miller was about to let loose with a string of curses, but Red Horse interrupted.
“We have incoming. Six bandits—F-16 Falcons. Closing fast from the north. ETA five minutes.”
Five minutes. They would be intercepted before reaching Los Ala
mos. If they could survive the next ten, the plan might still work, but being shot down over the New Mexico desert would put a rather large wrinkle in things.
“Can we outrun them?” Miller asked.
“F-16 is light and fast. Our top speed is Mach one point eight. Falcon is Mach two.”
“Do we have any advantage?” Miller asked.
“Just one,” Pale Horse replied. “Better pilots.”
“Don’t forget us,” said Black Horse, the second F-22 Raptor pilot.
“Yeah, yeah,” Pale Horse said. “White Horse, stay on my six. Let’s cut the grass and hit the gas.”
“Copy that,” White Horse said.
The ease with which the four pilots coordinated made Miller relax. They had the element of surprise with two F-22s, and their goal was only seven minutes out now. All they had to do was make it there. What happened to the planes after that didn’t matter.
Miller felt the anti-G suit he wore expand on his body as the jet rocketed toward a violent encounter. Bladders within the suit expanded as the G-forces increased, keeping his blood from rushing away from his brain. Without it, he and the pilot would have fallen unconscious.
They were so close to the ground now that Miller felt sure they’d be leaving trails of kicked-up dust behind them.
“I have visual,” Black Horse said. “Coming your way. Over.”
“They’re not locking missiles?” Miller said.
“They’ll swing around behind us for a better lock. Head on, this close to the ground, it’s nearly impossible to get a— Holy shit!”
Miller’s world spun upside down and righted itself so quickly he wasn’t sure what had happened, but he’d swallowed his gum. He had a brief memory of seeing another plane, headed in the opposite direction, but nothing more.
“Sons a bitches tried to ram us!” Pale Horse said. “White Horse, you still with us? Over.”
SecondWorld Page 27