Nervous laughter came back over the radio and several men made jokes of their own. But just as they approached the nearest edge of the disk, shouting erupted. Movement was detected along the bottom of the craft. Reg immediately shed a thousand feet of altitude. When the Tornadoes followed him, they had a clear view of what was happening.
Mammoth hatch doors were lowering to create a mile-wide opening at the eye of the daisy design. A sparkling jade-green light spilled from the interior of the ship and washed over Jerusalem, illuminating the city as if it were some kind of magical kingdom. It was such a beautiful sight that, for a moment, it was possible to believe the aliens had benign intentions after all. But soon, the tip of a massive cone-shaped mechanism lowered through the opening.
“What in the world is that?” gasped Thomson.
Reg thought he knew. He clenched his teeth and fought against the impulse to abandon the novice pilots to make a run at the jewel-like cone. His fingers itched to unleash his Sidewinders at what he feared was some sort of weapon. But he remained on course, even as a tightly focused beam of white light stabbed downward from the tip of the cone and touched the golden cupola of the Dome of the Rock.
“Communications beam?” someone asked with withering hope.
Reg shook his head sadly. He did not say the words aloud, but mouthed them behind his oxygen mask: targeting laser. A moment later, to his horror, Reg saw that his instinct was right.
A blinding blast of light ripped out of the cone and smashed down on the golden domed mosque, shattering the building into a billion pieces from the inside out. A dense pillar of fire began to build up over the blast site as the weapon continued to fire, adding more and more energy. Then, all at once it exploded outward and began to rip through the city, a tidal wave of flame rolling across the ground, utterly destroying everything in its path. It only seemed to gather momentum as it moved. Spreading relentlessly from the epicenter, a fiery wall of destruction several hundred feet high moved beyond the walls of the city and into the surrounding hills and suburbs. With the speed and force of an atomic explosion, it scoured Jerusalem from the face of the Earth, vaporizing in a handful of seconds what it had taken humans two thousand years to build.
At length, the bright beam coming from the firing cone shut off. But still the explosion rolled outward. With a momentum of its own, the blast shot beyond the city limits, breaking apart the surrounding towns and villages. It threw automobiles, buildings and bridges hundreds of feet into the air before burying them under a molten sea of flames.
Even after the flames themselves stopped moving outward, the residual heat continued for another mile, killing everything it touched. Where one of the most beloved cities of the world had stood scant seconds before, there was now only a twenty-mile circle of scarred, scorched earth. Half a million human lives had been extinguished.
None of the English pilots had spoken a word since the blast began. Reg broke the silence with a terse command. “You men continue south.” Then he broke abruptly out of formation, turning to port for an attack run against the giant city destroyer.
He was not alone. From every corner of the sky, pilots from every nation in the Middle East temporarily forgot their longstanding rivalries to attack their common enemy. Without a word passing between them, Reg joined a group of eight Iranian jets which adjusted their positions to make room for him in their formation. He had only a few missiles loaded aboard his Hawk, but when the Iranian flight leader shouted the signal, he fired two of them. His AIM-9 Sidewinders kicked forward and joined the barrage of Iranian weapons. They all exploded at the same time, a full quarter mile before reaching the polished surface of the alien craft.
“What the hell was that?”
As the missiles detonated, they produced an odd atmospheric disturbance. The air surrounding the city destroyer rippled visibly like the surface of a pond disturbed by a handful of pebbles.
“Pull up!” Reg shouted to the Iranians. “They’ve got some kind of energy shield!”
The stunned pilots saw that he was right and yanked back hard on their yokes in a desperate bid to avoid the invisible barrier. For some, the warning came too late. Four of the eight splattered themselves against the shield and burst into flames without penetrating to the other side. As Reg and the others leveled off, they could see the same thing was happening all around them. Missiles and jets were exploding against the invisible wall protecting the dark ship.
In his headphones, Reg could hear Colonel Thomson screaming, cursing and demanding that he finish the job of escorting the squad out of the area. After studying the melee unfolding around him for another minute, Reg saw that there was little hope of damaging the ship. Reluctantly, he turned south to rejoin the Tornadoes.
Only a moment after he spotted the Tornadoes, the already-disastrous situation got worse, much worse. A fresh round of shouting erupted over the radio. Reg looked over his shoulder at the black tower that marked the prow of the city destroyer. Near the top of it, a portal had appeared. What had seemed like a solid surface only moments before now bore a wide opening from which hundreds of small craft were emerging. They ducked and turned with incredible aerodynamic agility, like an angry swarm of bees boiling out of a disturbed hive. They quickly split into packs and moved to confront the human jets.
“Finally,” Reg said to himself, “someone our own size to pick on.”
“What now?” Thomson shouted. “What do we do, Cummins?”
“There’s only thing you can do in a situation like this, Colonel. Run like hell. Get out of here as fast as you can. I’ll try to buy you some time.”
Reg wheeled around to face the oncoming enemy and spotted a gang of ten or twelve of them headed his way. They were sleek, lethal-looking machines with large reflective windows and curved rods extending from their noses like sets of pincers. Instead of a stable formation, they darted over and under one another in a continuous shuffle. As they streaked closer, white-hot energy pulses formed between the pincers before firing through the air. They look like the scarabs in the Egyptian Museum of Cairo, thought Reg, but they fly like bats.
Before Reg came within range, the alien detachment came under attack. Arabs, Israelis, Turks, Greeks and Africans closed in on them and filled the air with missiles and large-caliber gunfire. Reg flew toward the melee, bobbing and weaving to avoid the stray blasts from the alien pulse weapons that were streaking through the air. A moment after he joined forces with a Sudanese pilot, the man’s MiG burst into flames and disintegrated. The scarab that had fired the deadly shot buzzed over the top of Reg’s Hawk. In a heartbeat, Reg banked hard and fell in behind him. The alien pilot seemed not to realize he was being followed. Or perhaps he didn’t care. He swooped to attack another jet, an American F-15, but before he could fire another pulse blast, Reg locked on with his targeting system and sent a Sidewinder flashing through the air. It scored a solid hit, exploding with devastating power against the rear of the attacker.
“One confirmed kill!” he reported, keying his radio to the common band. But as the smoke cleared, he realized that he had spoken too soon. The attacker was still in one piece. It wobbled through the air for a moment, reeling from the force of the blast, before righting itself and moving on as if nothing had happened. “Bad news,” he shouted. “These little buggers have shields, too! Break off the engagement.”
That was easier said than done. The nimble alien attackers were destroying jets almost as fast as Reg could count them. It wasn’t a dogfight, but a one-sided aerial slaughter. Reg turned south again and tried to find a way through the mayhem. More than one of the aliens sighted on him and came in firing pulse blasts, forcing him to use every trick in his considerable repertoire to avoid being shot down. Reg managed to stay alive, but the less-skillful pilots around him were not so lucky. Shaking off the last of his alien pursuers, he leveled out at five thousand feet, pushed his twin turbo fan engines to their maximum speed and tore south along the coastline. He saw no sign of Thomson or the others
, and was thankful that they appeared to be safely out of the area. Then, a lone Tornado came roaring up behind him and stationed itself off his starboard wing.
“Who the hell is piloting that Tornado! You lot are supposed to be long gone!”
“It’s Airman Tye, sir. I’m your new wingman.”
A fast-moving pair of blips on Reg’s radar screen told him danger was approaching. Two of the scarab attackers were giving chase and they were gaining fast. He might be able to save himself with clever maneuvering, at least for a while, but now he had to worry about the young fool of a mechanic who had come to help. Burning with anger, he looked to his right and leveled an icy stare at the man in the Tornado’s cockpit.
Tye responded with an enthusiastic salute and a nod of the head.
“Listen to me,” Reg called. “Do you know if that plane has had its avionics update yet?”
“Installed it myself, Major,” Tye responded proudly a moment before a pulse blast sailed between their two planes.
“Major,” the young man shouted, “we’ve got aliens right behind us!”
“I see them,” said the Teacher as calmly as if he were conducting a routine training mission. “Now, here’s what I’d like you to do. Come up about twenty meters and fire off the portchaff.”
To Reg’s surprise, Tye executed the order quickly and with great precision. As the enemy closed in behind them, a cloud of aluminum slivers exploded into the air. Designed to confuse the homing systems of enemy air-to-air missiles, the tiny magnetically-charged bits of metal adhered to the attackers. Blinded and confused, they broke off the pursuit.
“Excellent work, lad!” roared Reg. “Where did you learn to fly like that?” Then, before Tye could answer, Reg laughed and said, “Forget I asked. I’m sure I don’t want to know.”
“Cummins! Where are you? Cummins, is that you?” The desperate voice on the radio belonged to Colonel Thomson. “For the love of God, man, where are you? Help us.”
“I’m here, Colonel. What is your position?”
“I don’t know. I think we’re… everyone’s dead, everyone’s been shot down. We tried to fight them off, but they have shields and they were everywhere. Everyone’s gone.”
Another Englishman shouted over the airwaves. “Guide Dog, this is Sutton. Colonel Thomson and I are circling just north of the Red Sea, over the town of Eilat.”
Within minutes, Reg and Tye spotted their companions and flew to meet them. Of the thirty-eight Tornadoes that had gone ahead, only two remained. Thomson had calmed down considerably by the time they arrived.
“We’re all that’s left,” he reported.
“What happened,” Reg demanded. “You should’ve been out of the area long ago.”
“We ran into the whole goddamn Egyptian Air Force,” Sutton snarled. “They came roaring north, headed straight at us, and it was all we could do to get out of their way. We were in the process of regrouping when those little alien bastards came out of nowhere and chewed us to pieces.”
“What do we do now?”
“I’m afraid escorting you to Kuwait is out of the question. Not enough fuel. Looks like I’ll have to bring you boys home with me to Khamis Moushalt.”
“Where the hell is that?” demanded Sutton.
“Just follow me,” Reg answered. Continuing south from Eilat and hugging the edge of the Red Sea, the quartet soon crossed into Saudi Arabia. Partly out of habit and partly to restore a sense of purpose, Reg formed them into a staggered diamond formation. This lone sense of order in the aftermath of the devastating air battle attracted every lost pilot for miles around. One by one, they joined Reg’s armada until they were nearly fifty strong. Soon, the group was flying over the dramatically contrasting Asir mountain chain. The green western slopes ran down to the Red Sea and were lush with vegetation, while the eastern slopes were devoid of life and marked the edge of a vast, inhospitable desert.
A few of the pilots had come mentally unglued. Through his radio, Reg could hear them sobbing like small children and jabbering uncontrollably in languages he didn’t understand. Trying to think, he blocked out the noise and almost missed the message coming from his home base. The voice was barely audible above the din. “Khamis Moushalt Airfield to southbound flight. Do you read?”
“Affirmative, Khamis Moushalt. This is RAF Major Cummins.”
“Major,” said the flight controller, “please instruct any RAF pilots in your group to switch to the private band. Over.” Reg and the other Brits quickly complied.
“Hello, Major,” Colonel Whitley said. “You’re still alive!”
“Yes, a few of us survived. But only by the skin of our teeth. They destroyed Jerusalem. Wiped it off the map.”
“Yes, I know. The attack was simultaneous and worldwide. All thirty-six of their ships fired at once. London, Paris, New York, Moscow, all of them. They’re all gone.”
“London,” Tye repeated softly, expressing a huge amount of grief with a single word.
“Listen,” Whitley went on, “I’ve been talking with the American commander. He’s got thirty F-16s ready to escort you in. Add our six instructors, and you’ve got thirty-six. Will that be enough to hold off those aliens?”
“Don’t bother,” Reg shot back. “If the aliens come after us, more planes won’t make any difference.” He began explaining the shields they’d encountered on both the city destroyer and the scarab attack craft, but Whitley cut him off.
“What do you mean if they come after you?” Whitley asked. “You’d better have a look at your long-range radar.”
Reg studied his screens and saw that they were clear. For a moment he hoped that the colonel was mistaken, but his heart sank into the pit of his stomach when he noticed a cluster of blips creeping into view at the top of the screen. It was a squadron of at least two dozen alien attackers.
“We are officially dead meat,” Sutton groaned. “It’s over.”
“Our intel officer here in the tower has been monitoring your situation for several minutes. He’s convinced the enemy is following you.” Whitley paused to let the pilots draw their own conclusions. “Change your mind about that escort?”
“Negative!” Reg shouted. “I’m telling you that won’t do any good.”
“Then we’ve got a major problem,” Whitley said, “because there’s no way the Yanks can get all their planes off the ground before you get here. They’ve got over two hundred birds parked on the tarmac and if you bring—”
“I understand,” Reg interrupted. “We’ll turn to the east and lead them away from you.”
“Very well,” Whitley said after a brief pause. “Good luck, Cummins, and good luck to the rest of you men.” Then he was gone.
Reg switched back to the common frequency and issued the new orders. “Turn away from the coast and proceed due east. We have a large force of alien attack craft closing to our rear. Turn east immediately.” Most of the pilots were still too shocked and confused to oppose the order, despite the fact that there was nothing but empty desert in that direction. The entire group turned away from the water. All except for three planes. Reg ordered them to rejoin the formation several times before deciding to chase after them. He called for Tye and Sutton, both of them decent pilots despite their lack of training, to form up on his wings.
Two of the renegade jets were Iraqis, the last people on Earth Reg wanted to shoot down. “Iraqi pilots, you are headed in the wrong direction. Our flight is heading east.”
One of them shouted back that Reg could go to hell. He said that he and his partner were low on fuel and that there was nowhere to land in the desert.
Reg considered explaining the situation to them, hoping he could persuade them to cooperate. But there wasn’t enough time so he adopted a more efficient approach. “British Tornadoes,” he said, “you are red and clear. Lock on and fire at will.”
“No! Wait!” cried the Iraqis. “We agree to follow you. We are turning!” Cursing energetically in Arabic, the two men reluctantly set
off to the east. Reg sent Tye and Sutton with them to make sure they rejoined the rest of the group. Then he closed quickly on the last southbound plane, a twenty-year-old Chinese J-7 with Egyptian markings. The pilot was muttering unintelligibly into his radio mouthpiece and didn’t respond to Reg’s repeated warnings.
Hoping to snap the Egyptian out of his stupor, Reg flipped his Hawk over and moved up until he was right on top of the J-7. The canopies of the two planes were separated by only a few feet. The Egyptian looked up and saw the Englishman hanging upside down above him pointing to the east, but the strange sight failed to register in his grief-stricken mind. He continued along the same path, muttering the whole while.
Reg saw no harm in letting the man go his own way. In his present condition, there was little chance of him leading the aliens to Khamis Moushalt or any other airfield. But Reg felt badly about leaving him, so he shot ahead and attempted to take the Egyptian “by the hand.” He maneuvered himself directly in front of the other plane and began a gradual turn to port, hoping the disoriented pilot would unthinkingly follow him. But something went horribly wrong. A warning buzzer sounded, and when Reg twisted around, he saw an R.550 Magic missile streaking toward him, homing in on his heat exhaust. Reg screamed and jerked the controls hard to port, lifting as he went. The missile chased after him, quickly closing the distance.
“Damn it! Somebody finally caught me with my guard down.” Although he’d been “fired” at hundreds of time in training exercises, he’d never been “killed.” Then again, he’d never made himself into a sitting duck the way he had for this demented Egyptian.
Reg continued to turn as tightly as his Hawk would allow, the G force crashing him against the right-hand wall of the cockpit until he was headed back toward the J-7. Although he hadn’t planned it, he realized that looping around had provided him with one last card to play, one last slim hope of avoiding being blown apart. He steered himself onto a collision course with the Egyptian, speeding toward him almost head-on, as the missile continued to hunt him down. He bore down on the plane until he was close enough to see the man’s eyes looking back at him blankly. Then, at the last possible moment, he swerved and felt the concussion behind him as the Magic missile destroyed the plane that had fired it.
Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The Page 53