They proceeded in such a manner, Vince trying his best to navigate a safe course toward the voices that continued to sound in the distance. Though he failed to uncover a single trip wire or booby trap, they were unable to escape the overhanging tree limbs that scratched their faces and threatened to gouge out their eyes, the thorn bushes that grabbed at their clothes and skin like barbed wire, and the ankle-twisting, rock-filled potholes.
“Oh, sweet Jesus, Pa, ain’t there nothin’ we can do for him?”
sounded Miriam’s pleading voice from nearby.
Vince carefully scanned the forest in the direction of her voice. Because of the lack of direct light and the abundance of vegetation, it was all but impossible for him to see more than a few feet ahead. Andrew Chapman was practically standing on his heels, and Vince turned around and whispered, “They appear to be on the other side of this scrub. Please follow my every step, sir, and try to keep your distance.”
To reach the others, they had to tear their way through a bramble patch, step over a succession of fallen timber, and circumnavigate an immense limestone boulder. This put them in what appeared to be a clearing of some sort. Stars could be seen twinkling from above, where the last light of dusk illuminated a scene that Vince would not soon forget.
Huddled in the center of the clearing were Amos, Miriam, and Tiny. C.J. lay in a bloody heap at their feet, his skull cracked open and his intestines hanging out of the large hole that had been blown in his lower abdomen. Junior was kneeling close to his fallen friend’s side, his face covered in blood, the stiff corpse of Satan held tightly in his grasp.
“When I catch the bastards responsible for this slaughter, there’s gonna be hell to pay!” warned Amos, who watched C.J/s body issue a frenzied spasm before surrendering to the final throes of death.
“Not only did they set that trap. Pa, but they went and cut Satan’s throat,” the still-sobbing Junior managed to mutter.
“They’re nothin’ but a spineless bunch of cowards!”
While Andrew Chapman moved in to comfort the bereaved, Vince pleaded for them to keep their voices down. Then he surveyed the clearing in which they stood. It didn’t take him long to discover the piece of nylon fishing line that had served as the trip wire, and the jagged piece of green plastic proving a claymore mine was responsible for killing C.J. The claymore was a favorite weapon of SOG, and Vince scanned the surrounding woods, knowing full well that Mariano’s forces were surely close by.
“I think it’s best if we got out of this hollow with all due haste,” Vince advised.
“Mr. Vice President, I insist that we get moving this moment. Either you come with me voluntarily, or I’ll carry you out of here by force if necessary.”
Andrew Chapman was comforting Miriam. He had his arm draped over her shoulders, and as Vince moved in to enforce his ultimatum, a pair of green-faced, ghillie-suited individuals dropped out of the overhanging trees. At the same time, three heavily armed, BDUclad commandos emerged from the woods, and though Tiny bravely charged into their ranks, Vince knew in an instant that resistance was futile.
Chapter 41
Saturday, July 3, 0217 Zulu
Nightwatch 676
“… which leads me to believe that they plan to target both General Spencer aboard Iron Man One and the Vice President in the Ozarks.”
Coach and Red breathlessly listened to Brittany’s chilling words of warning from the hushed confines of the upper-deck rest area. Their worst fears were now realized, and they struggled to put the entire situation into perspective.
“Whomever the Chairman called in the Ozarks, they’d better have one hell of a fallout shelter if Yankee Hotel is ever implemented,” Coach said with a worried shake of his head.
“With both the VP and Iron Man One out of the way, Warner will have effectively wiped out the opposition.”
“With the individual military units that he contacted standing by, should any unexpected obstacles be encountered,” added Red.
“I still can’t believe he really thinks he can get away with it,” said Brittany.
“And what could his motives possibly be?”
“Megalomania, delusions of grandeur, or some infantile shortcoming that he never fulfilled — it really doesn’t matter at the moment,” replied Coach.
“The one thing we have to focus on is how we’re going to stop him.”
“If only we could get the Vice President to address the American people,” suggested Red.
“Once they see him alive, and he’s sworn in as the new President, Warner’s forces won’t stand a chance.”
The cabin shook slightly, and Coach replied while steadying himself on the edge of the table he was standing beside.
“The question remains, how can we help the VP in the meantime?”
“I think it’s only obvious that we have to share our findings with General Spencer,” offered Brittany.
“As the EAO aboard Iron Man One, he’s the second most powerful man in the country until the next President’s sworn in, and with TACAMO at his disposal, he’s in the best position to directly challenge Warner.”
“You don’t feel that Spencer could be part of the coup?”
asked Coach, carefully testing the waters.
“At some point we’ve got to trust someone in a position of real power, and the General appears to be our only safe bet,” answered Brittany.
“I agree,” concurred Red.
“I can’t forget the way Spencer took on the Chairman earlier. They were arguing away like a bunch of schoolboys, and even if it does turn out that Spencer’s a coup insider, he can’t be a happy camper.”
“Then we’d better be giving the good General a call,” said Coach, who removed the “NO FEAR” ball cap he was wearing, and smoothed back his full head of wavy black hair.
“As aircraft commander, I’ll shoulder the responsibility of passing on the bad news. Now all I need is a secure line to Iron Man One.”
Red flashed him a thumbsup, and less than five minutes later. Coach was sitting alone in the upper-deck rest area, sharing his suspicions of the impending coup with General Lowell Spencer.
“Sir, we’ve got a security compromise — upper flight deck rest area, unauthorized SATCOM transmission.”
Trent Warner had been dozing on his stateroom’s cot when this call arrived. He snapped awake instantly upon hearing the gravelly voice of his SIOP advisor, his mind already considering the manner in which they’d react to this serious infraction.
“Who’s the call directed to?” he queried.
“Iron Man One,” answered Hewlett.
“Shit!” cursed the Chairman.
“Major, tap the call, and quietly assemble the security team. We’ll meet at the forward entry area.
And let’s pray that someone up there is only schmoozing with an old friend on Uncle Sam’s dime.”
“… I’ll try to get that information to you. General … So I understand, sir. I’d rather not reveal their names at the moment, but rest assured that they’re trusted members of the battle staff…”
Coach got the impression that Spencer appeared to be genuinely stunned by their accusations, and if he was in fact a coup insider, he was certainly doing a superb job of expressing his shock. The General was in the process of relaying his own suspicions regarding the Chairman’s actions of late when Coach noticed a newcomer at the head of the upper-deck stairway. One glimpse at the pistol this individual carried in his right hand was all Coach needed to abruptly disconnect the line. He was just hanging up the handset when the head of the airplane’s security team emerged from the stairs, followed by Major Hewlett and the Chairman.
“Sergeant, arrest that man!” ordered the Chairman, pointing at the stunned pilot.
Coach tried his best to control his pounding pulse, and he raised his hands overhead and addressed Admiral Warner in his most innocent manner.
“Excuse me, sir. Did I do something wrong?”
“How about treason fo
r starters!” replied the Chairman, who beckoned toward Coach and spoke to the security man.
“Sergeant, handcuff the Major and hold him in protective custody in my stateroom until further notice.”
“Sergeant,” countered Coach, “it’s Admiral Warner who’s to be arrested. As aircraft commander, I officially charge the Chairman with complicity to carry out a coup against the government of the United States of America.”
A look of confusion momentarily crossed the Sergeant’s face, and the Chairman alertly retorted, “Sergeant, I said to handcuff Major Foard and to detain him in my stateroom. The man’s delirious, his paranoid rantings the byproduct of Russian misinformation.”
The barrel-chested security man had no choice but to carry out the Chairman’s instructions, so he handcuffed the pilot’s wrists behind his back and prepared to escort him down the stairway.
Coach knew that it would be a waste of energy to further resist, and he looked at the Chairman and shook his head.
“Admiral, why don’t you admit to yourself that the game is over? I know all about your involvement with the assassination of the President and the attempted murder of Andrew Chapman.
You might lock me away, but rest assured that I’m not the only one in a position of power who knows about your misdirected coup attempt.”
“From what little I’ve heard already, it appears that you’ve already managed to pass on quite an earful to General Spencer,” revealed the Chairman, an icy coolness to his glance.
“I’m certain that the good General will be fascinated to hear all about your nervous breakdown. Major. Do you promise to go quietly, or must we incapacitate you with a narcotic?”
Coach reluctantly bowed his head, signaling his wish to proceed without further resistance. As he was led down the stairway, the Chairman looked at his SIOP advisor and discreetly whispered:
“Major, before I attempt damage control with the good General, I think it’s time to contact the U.S.S. Truman. Under the circumstances, I feel it’s only prudent that both Nightwatch and Iron Man One have a proper escort, and a flight of Tomcats should be sufficient. Then we’d better get Lassiter to take Foard’s place inside the flight deck, and find out who the hell the Major’s been working with inside this airplane.”
Chapter 42
Saturday, July 3, 0228 Zulu
Ironman One
Thirty years of military service had done little to prepare Lowell Spencer for the perplexing situation that he currently faced. He had just completed the second of two bizarre phone calls, both of which had originated from Nightwatch 676.
The first of these calls was made by the 747’s senior pilot.
Spencer knew Major William Foard personally. He was a likable young man, with a propensity for wire-rimmed sunglasses and unauthorized headgear. Both of them had been B-52 commanders in the earlier stages of their careers. Although the General had never flown with Foard, for the Yale graduate to go from nuclear-armed bombers to an important assignment such as Nightwatch spoke well for his many talents.
With such vast responsibilities to shoulder, Foard wouldn’t be the type of person prone to baseless accusations. That was only one of the reasons Spencer had listened closely to the wild tale he had hurriedly related — a story purporting that Admiral Trent Warner was currently attempting to orchestrate a coup d’etat.
According to Foard, it was the Chairman who was responsible for killing the President and attempting to assassinate the Vice President, who was still alive in the Missouri Ozarks and running for his very life.
Foard had also stated that he had solid proof that the Chairman had recently contacted his fellow coup forces in the Ozarks, and had also alerted various military units throughout the CONUS. And to take this wild tale one step further, he claimed that Warner had also created an SIOP file, in which both the Ozarks and the airspace above Iron Man One’s patrol sector off the coast of Georgia were to be targeted by a pair of the U.S.S. Rhode Island’s Tridents.
Before he could learn the grounds for Foard’s accusations, the pilot had abruptly signed off, leaving Spencer seated at his console inside TACAMO’s battle-staff compartment, scratching his head in pure bewilderment. There was always the possibility that Foard was telling the truth — that his facts were accurate — and that a coup was indeed being orchestrated by Warner aboard Nightwatch. Coach could also be the victim of misinformation.
Or he could have snapped.
It was this latter condition that Trent Warner had just called to warn him about. During the course of this curt, one sided conversation, the Chairman revealed his reluctant decision to have Foard placed in protective custody because of a complete nervous breakdown.
Spencer cautiously acknowledged the receipt of a recent phone call from Foard. He also admitted that the pilot had made some pretty wild accusations. To appease the Chairman, he readily accepted his apology for Foard’s aberrant behavior, and they signed off without further mention of the entire incident.
In his thirty years of Air Force service, he had certainly seen his fair share of men who had taken the sudden, unexpected plunge into insanity. No matter the stringent, psychological tests that all pilots had to pass both before and after they received their wings, the pressures of the Cold War had broken many a bomber pilot’s spirit. Perfectly sane one moment, completely deranged the next, they suffered the cost of doing business under stress levels that no man was impervious to.
Foard could very well have succumbed to the enormous pressures of his job, and this breakdown could have generated the paranoid delusions he had so passionately warned about. Yet what if he hadn’t gone insane and the coup was real? Was Trent Warner trying to pull the wool over his adversary’s eyes?
Spencer couldn’t forget how unwilling the Chairman had been to place the blame on the Russians for assassinating the President. He had even balked at accusing the Russians of colliding with the U.S.S. Rhode Island, and had subsequently resisted altering the nation’s alert status in the face of these belligerent acts. Was the reason for his hesitance based on an unwillingness to go to war with Russia for acts that his own forces were responsible for? Spencer hated the idea of having to even consider such a distasteful scenario, though he’d be negligent for ignoring it completely.
“Comm,” he said to his communications officer, who was seated in the aft portion of the battle-staff compartment.
“Now that Nightwatch six-seven-six has got its feet wet, keep me informed of any alert traffic that it might attempt to transmit on its own.”
Almost as an afterthought, he personally contacted the headquarters of the 1st Air Force in Langley, Virginia, and ordered a flight of F-15 Eagles skyward, to escort Nightwatch as it approached U.S. airspace.
Chapter 43
Friday, July 2.
Beneath Freeman Hollow
“So you came back after all. Sergeant Spit and Polish. And just look who you brought along. Good evening, Mr. Vice President.
Welcome to your worst nightmare!”
Vince, Andrew Chapman, the Stoddards, and Tiny stood in the darkened corner of an immense cavern. From their vantage point, their surroundings indeed looked like they belonged in a bad dream. Stiletto-shaped stalactites hung from the jagged rock ceiling, with thick gray stalagmites forming much of the cave’s floor.
Dick Mariano orchestrated this nightmare from the center of the dimly lit chamber. The ex-SEAL was dressed in black VC pajamas and leather thongs. He held a Colt M4 carbine loosely at his side, and relishing this moment of triumph, he bowed in further greeting, a wide grin visible on his bearded face.
“You made me proud constructing that IED like you did. Sergeant Spit and Polish. And now you’re back here, just liked I planned. By the way, your fifteen minutes are up. Are you ready to die, Kellogg?”
Mariano inserted a fresh magazine into his rifle, and Andrew Chapman dared to intercede.
“What could possibly be so important as to warrant taking another man’s life?”
; “I believe you’re more than qualified to answer your own question,” said Mariano.
“After all, that’s what you do every time you send a soldier into battle for another one of your worthless, no-account, good-for-nothing causes.”
With polished expertise, the ex-SEAL rammed a bullet into the rifle’s chamber, clicked off the safety, and waved the barrel of the weapon toward them.
“I want all of you to step backward and put your big butts against the wall. It’s time to complete this cocksucking mission by putting the entire lot of you out of your fucking misery.”
Vince sensed that Mariano wasn’t bluffing, and that he intended to execute them right here in the cavern. As he joined the VP and the others up against the cold rock wall, he spoke out in a desperate attempt to stall for time.
“The very least you owe us is an explanation, Mariano. What did we do to warrant your wrath?”
“Goddamn it. Sergeant Spit and Polish! I’ve already gone over that with you. I’m tired, bored, and horny as all hell, and I want out of this infernal shit hole. So the sooner I take you gee ks down, the better.”
Junior was still seething with anger from the deaths of C.J. and Satan, and he brazenly rushed forward, oblivious to the rifle barrel that was soon pointed his way.
“Junior, no!” warned Amos, too late to stop the deafening burst of gunfire that filled the cavern with ear-shattering sound.
Bullets whined overhead, and Vince yanked the VP to the smooth rock floor and covered Chapman’s body with his own.
A ricocheting round careened off a stalagmite and passed inches overhead, so close that Vince could practically feel it shoot past his ear.
The firing stopped, and Vince looked up. Mariano stood before them laughing. Junior lay sprawled out on the ground, blood pouring from his right leg. His father and sister were already rushing to his side, and Tiny was close by, pointing at the ex SEAL and boldly taunting.
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