Apocalypse Dawn (30 page)

“Calm down,” Jim advised, pushing himself to his feet. The satfeeds streaming in from Turkey had faltered as well, but he wasn’t sure if the problem lay there or within the Cheyenne Mountain complex. “There’s an explanation.”

“Yeah,” Sterling agreed wholeheartedly. He tapped keys on his keyboard, bringing up a view of space. “And we’re going to find it out there. Man, we thought we had problems in Turkey?” He shook his head. “I think we’re about to be invaded. These people missing? They’re just a sampling for whoever’s waiting out there.” He pointed at the screen full of stars.

Jim barely handled his own rising panic. He reached down and touched Colonel Turner’s uniform, trailing a finger along the edge of the name badge. It felt real, but this couldn’t really be happening. He watched as Sterling flipped through the different sectors of space available to them through the satellites they had access to.

General Farley strode from the observation post and stopped near Turner’s uniform. “Attention.” His voice was crisp and powerful.

The command center crew obeyed immediately. There was nothing like a general’s voice to bring an enlisted man up short.

“I’ve notified security. Whatever this matter is-” Farley glanced down at Turner’s abandoned uniform-“it’s being looked into by professionals. At this moment, I need all of you to be professional, to be the soldiers you were trained to be in this field, and I need that from you right this instant. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir!” The reply boomed from the twenty-three people left in the ranks.

“I need those information lines back up and running,” Farley said. “You’ve got American soldiers and our allies dying over there. If we don’t watch over them, give them some kind of heads-up, we’re going to lose more of them.” He paused. “I’m not going to stand for that on my watch. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir!”

““Then get back to it. I want everything you can find out, and I want it yesterday.”

Jim settled back in at his console. This was why there were generals, he thought. When the world got crazy, an order was still an order. But he remained uncomfortably aware of the vacated uniform lying behind him at the general’s feet.

He slipped his headset back on and cued the audible stream.

“Phoenix Leader, this is Alpha Two. We’ve lost men, Goose.” The man’s voice cracked with rising hysteria. “They’ve disappeared! There are empty uniforms everywhere!”

Jim lifted his head and gazed across the empty seat where Donna Kirkland had once sat. She had been warm and friendly and helped him familiarize himself with the demands he faced. Only her uniform remained in the chair now. He locked eyes with Sterling. “You listening to this?”

Sterling nodded. “It’s happening everywhere, Jim. It wasn’t just us.”

For a moment, Jim felt a little relieved that the disappearances weren’t held just to the Cheyenne facility. Then, a millisecond later, he realized that the other disappearances indicated that whatever enemy they were up against could strike possibly around the globe-at the very least on the other side of the world-at the same time and with apparent impunity. How were they supposed to deal with something like that?

United States 75th Rangers 3rd Battalion

Field Command Post

Even five miles back of the front line and safely entrenched-for the moment, at least-in the abandoned cinderblock building he’d selected as his field command post, Captain Cal Remington could smell the stench of war. Acrid explosive cordite and smoke gnawed at his lungs while dust particles coated the computer screens and irritated the eyes. The wind coming from the south had carried all of those things to them during the last hour and more.

But those things were logged in the back of the Ranger captain’s mind. His full attention was divided between the computer monitors and the uniform sitting in the chair where a young corporal had been only moments ago.

The preliminary head count among the intelligence crews showed 20 percent of Remington’s on-site teams had disappeared. One moment, those men and women had been at their stations, manning the computers and maintaining the perimeter around the building, and in the next moment they had been gone. All of them had left at once, and none of those who had been left behind had seen anything of the process that had carried those people away. They had left or been taken between heartbeats, as though everyone in the room had blinked at the same time.

Remington chafed over his inability to act on either the missing men or along the front line where his men were. He didn’t like taking a hit and not being able to retaliate immediately. But the communications lines had gone down yet again, interrupting the flow of information sent from the Cheyenne Mountain intelligence people as well as the feeds from LISS Wasp.

The com teams had promised Remington that they would be back on line in a matter of minutes, but the war along the TurkishSyrian border drew a terrible cost with each second that passed. Men died and military strength withered in seconds. And Remington knew he was losing precious time, resources, and ground that would be hard to do without or nearly impossible to replace.

The monitors relaying the satellite feeds showed grainy pictures of current activity. Bar lines scrolled slowly through the screens, showing the actual repixelization of the digital images passed along.

“Base, this is Cerberus Leader,” a voice called over the walkietalkie headset Remington wore. The field command post’s communications still worked up to three klicks away with only slight static.

Five klicks back from the front line, at a time when all the intelligence networks were on the blink, Cerberus was the perimeter security team charged with defending the command post. During the SCUD attack, a few of the missiles had landed nearby, but the cinderblock building had remained standing if somewhat battered.

Until the moment the people went missing from the unit, Remington had felt they were divinely protected, and that was a stretch for him. He believed in God, but he’d never once thought God had any interest in him or knew he’d been born.

“Go, Cerberus,” Remington replied.

“You can add three more to that list of MIAs,” Lieutenant Don Carmichael told him. “We found the uniforms and gear of one of the outer perimeter guard posts.”

“Affirmative, Cerberus Leader,” Remington replied. The information continued the trend of confirmed disappearances that had started only minutes ago. Everyone within the three-klick radius who hadn’t responded had been verified missing. Remington had ordered the others into search-and-rescue teams to sweep the area and systematically check on units that had gone missing in action. “Secure whatever gear you can salvage and continue your search. Supplies are going to be hard to come by for a time.”

“Understood, Base.”

The walkietalkie connection hissed sparks in Remington’s ear. He strode again, seeking to neutralize some of the nervous tension that filled him. More than anything, he wanted to hear from Goose. The first sergeant was more than just a friend; Goose was Remington’s third hand, the man who could see that things Remington wanted done got done, and that they-got-done Remington’s way.

Remington stepped in behind Private First Class Foster. The private had been on the second team, a step down from the individuals the captain had worked with in the past, but Foster was good with the computer.

“Let’s see the archived footage of the helos again,” Remington said. “A few seconds before the impact.” We’ve missed something. We had to.

“One monitor or both?” Foster asked.

“Both,” Remington replied. “Post four quadrants on the screens. All in one-third speed slo-mo.”

“Yes, sir.” Foster tapped the keyboard. Both monitors ceased struggling with the grainy digital video they were puking over at the moment. The images became crystal clear again, going back to the kind of performance Remington desired and was accustomed to.

The captain stood behind the computer operator and opened his vision. Remington had always been good at tracking more than one thing at a time. That was one of the abilities that had helped him get into OCS and had later helped him make the jump to captain.

The images scrolled again and again, changing by flickers. Besides the ground cams that had been assigned to the Rangers, the U.N. peacekeeping teams, and the Turkish army, several of the arriving helicopters and gunships had been equipped with cams as well. The satellites governed by NORAD’s command center had pumped the video and audio transmissions to Wasp and to Remington’s intelligence teams.

The offered views included ground viewpoint shots as well as shots from inside the helo cockpits.

Remington eyed the screens, blurring his attention and his peripheral vision, not looking at the individual action, but looking through the surface motions for the incongruent actions that didn’t fit. Something had gone wrong as the helos had swooped into the LZ, and he was going to see it this time.

The exterior views of the Sea Knight contingent showed the helos descending toward the 12 in perfect formation. The crimson haze from the smoke grenades Goose had used to establish quick visual sighting blossomed against the tops of the smoke clouds from the explosions like blood surfacing from the ocean during a shark attack. In the next instant, some of the helicopters suddenly veered into others.

Two Sea Knights in the lead collided and set off a chain of violence that whipped through the formation. Other helos slammed together in a string of aerial wrecks. Often, the blows were only glancing, or a brief meeting of rotor blades that shattered against each other, not full-blown collisions. Shards of carbonized steel ripped through the helos like fragmentation grenades, slashing through the metal sides and Plexiglas windows like tissue paper. Men died in that moment, and others died immediately afterward as the helicopters broke and went to pieces against the hard earth. Black, oily smoke mixed with flames and obscured the views of most of the few ship-carried cameras that had survived the impacts.

In a brief, frozen split second, the image of Goose on his knees beside a man who had been impaled by a long shard filled one of the helo cams as the Sea Knight heeled over out of control. The image was so stark, so unforgiving, that for a moment Remington was afraid Goose had been killed. He forced himself to remember that he had talked with the first sergeant just after that. When the helicopter made contact with the ground, the camera screen went black.

But Remington had seen something else. The image played at the back of his mind, gnawing like a terrier. He leaned forward. “Stop.”

Foster hit the keyboard. All the cycling images left onscreen halted, becoming silent, frozen images of destruction or impending destruction.

“This one.” Remington pointed to the lower left quadrant of the left monitor. “Can you identify this helicopter?”

Foster tapped keys and floated a legend into view on the screen. “Yes, sir. That was Lieutenant Briggs’s aircraft.”

Can you isolate Lieutenant Briggs’s aircraft in that formation?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then show me footage of the approach toward the LZ again and let’s see what that helo did.”

After a brief intermission for serious keyboarding, Foster put the results up on the right monitor. The helicopters froze onscreen. “This is fifteen seconds before the first crash,” Foster said. “And this is Briggs’s Sea Knight.” The private tapped a few more keystrokes.

A circle, as bright yellow as a tennis ball, surrounded the helicopter.

“Let’s go,” Remington said, leaning more closely. He watched with interest as Briggs’s aircraft suddenly veered out of control and locked rotors with the nearest Sea Knight on the left. Both aircraft fell to the ground like broken birds. “Briggs’s craft was one of those that went out of control.”

“Yes, sir.” Foster nodded. “I’ve got a list of the others. I can isolate their cameras, too, if you want.”

“We’ll see. For now, run the footage from the interior camera in Briggs’s helo backward. Frame by frame from the impact. You can cross-reference the time-date stamp on the videos, can’t you?”

“Yes, sir. That won’t be a problem. All the cameras and transmission equipment were calibrated for exact timing.” Foster shifted nervously.

“What is it?” Remington asked.

“It’s these cameras, sir. The ones used in the helos and by the ground teams? They shoot four thousand frames a minute. Even if you go back thirty seconds, that’s two thousand pictures to look at. Frame by frame is going to take some time.” Foster sounded apologetic. “Didn’t mean to interrupt, sir. lust thought you should know.”

Remington nodded. “I needed to know, Private. Can you sort the frames?”

“Sure.’

“Let me see every hundredth frame.”

Bending to the keyboard, Foster entered the parameters of the search. A new window opened on the monitor, filling with the frozen image of the interior of the Sea Knight’s cockpit.

The camera had been mounted inside the helicopter’s cockpit roof and peered over the pilot and copilot’s shoulders, cutting them out of the picture and not giving a clear indication of what had happened that had made the helo break formation. On normal operations, the Sea Knight carried a crew chief and a mechanic in addition to the pilot and copilot. During hot drops that entailed possible engagements with hostile ground forces, the mechanic was replaced with two door gunners.