It was called Lost View Lake and the name was appropriate. It was two miles long and a half mile wide, and an underground spring pumping warm water from its bottom almost always gave it a dense layer of fog on its top. This was especially true near the lake’s center, where the fog was frequently its thickest.
The strange mist was present in the morning hours, sometimes not burning off until noon, even in the warmest days of summer. It would return at dusk and linger again until the next day. For this reason, local boaters and fishermen avoided the rectangular lake, preferring to use one of the hundreds of others in the region for their recreation. There were no cottages on the lake, no hunting lodges, no tour boats. No people around at all. It was the perfect place to hide.
This is where the Sky Horse found itself this morning. Floating on its inflatable pontoons, all systems shut down, the five members of the ghost team trying to get some much-needed sleep but failing miserably at it, especially Ryder.
He was uncomfortably jammed in between the two pilots’ seats up on the flight deck. The others were flopped about in the cargo bay below. All the access doors and windows were shut tight. But still, some of Lost View Lake’s mysterious mist was seeping in.
“Are you sure none of those mooks we whacked had any cigarettes on them?” Ryder called down to the others now.
Only Puglisi stirred. “They did and we smoked them already,” he called back up to Ryder sleepily.
Ryder checked his own dilapidated pack of Marlboros. He had exactly two whole and three partially smoked cigarettes left. Under normal circumstances, that would have lasted him about an hour this early in the morning. That is, if he’d had a couple cups of coffee available to him. Which he didn’t.
He tried to stretch out his legs; with the light of morning, it would be impossible to keep trying for any substantial sleep. He knew it was unhealthy and that lack of winks would catch up with him sooner or later. But he wasn’t totally unhappy that he hadn’t caught any more than a nap or two since the team left Cape Lonely. With his psyche turned inside out, going to sleep risked an even greater possibility of unwanted dreams these past few days. It was bad enough that his late wife haunted just about every moment of his sleep time; when he closed his eyes now, he saw flashes of hatchets and huge .50-caliber rounds tearing into dark flesh, and tiny dead pigs, having their throats cut. He could hear the pleas of those soccer players who were about to have their bodies filleted, the choking sounds of their comrades having their mouths stuffed with bacon. For a Muslim to be buried with a pig was the ultimate disgrace. It would prevent said Muslim from ever entering heaven. So far, the tiny flash-frozen pigs had suited that purpose for the victims the team had been able to throw into a grave. Those they couldn’t bury, well, stuffing their mouths full of bacon would have to do.
Yes, this was a nasty business he was engaged in. He knew it. They all knew it, coming in. But it was nasty because it had to be. Brutal and nasty and painful and disgusting was the only language the Muslim fanatics understood, because that’s exactly the way they conducted themselves. This was what the ghost team was all about. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, American style. Their mission out here in Middle
America was long-winded but apt: If the terrorists believed that killing Americans and dying in the act would get them a ticket into heaven, with 77 virgins waiting for them—if they died without disgrace, that is—then it was up to the ghosts to at least make sure that, in addition to stopping them before they fired their Stinger missiles, they indeed must die in disgrace, as a warning to future terrorists that if the ghosts caught you, there would be no virgins waiting for you at the Pearly Gates. There would be no Pearly Gates. That’s why all the pork products. That’s why all the new fodder for his frequently disturbing dreams.
“And just for the record,” Ryder moaned now, “we don’t have anything that could be called ‘extra’ coffee?”
“One cup a day,” Puglisi replied rotely. He’d been given the job of lording over their scant provisions. “You can have it now, or tonight.”
Ryder yawned. Coffee would be better later in the day, when he really needed it. Master Chief Eddie Finch’s Care packages had been well intentioned. They were indeed stuffed with MRE field rations. (Food was not a problem—and if it ever was, well, they could always eat the frozen pigs, right?) But giving them just one jar of instant coffee was an astronomical miscalculation. With this crew, it was gone the first night.
And no cigarettes at all? That was almost inhuman with this group of smokestacks. Even Bates was smoking now.
Ryder surprised himself by actually dozing off—but only for a minute or so.
He was woken again by the sound of the William Tell Overture—in digital burps and bleats. In other words, a cell phone was ringing.
All five team members were up, awake, and alert in a second. Ryder jumped down to the cargo bay. Gallant started the copter’s generators running. Fox and Puglisi unsheathed their weapons and ammo. Bates, though, was especially animated. One side of the copter’s interior wall suddenly lit up with a barrage of colors. Green, yellow, blue,
red. Laptops were hanging all over the wall, their screens flashing madly, keyboards dropping as if on cue, modem wires going everywhere. This was Bates’s monster. He called it his Eyeball Machine. Built with giddy determination from a care package full of Radio Shack components and, as it turned out, some stolen NSA software, no one else on the copter had a prayer of understanding what it was exactly. They weren’t sure Bates understood it himself. But they all knew what it could do. It could find the Al Qaeda missile teams up to an hour before they were ready to strike.
It had taken Bates about two hours to put it together, maybe another three or four to get it working right. It was the stolen NSA software that did all the work. Very top-secret stuff that Bates didn’t even realize was inside the care package until he opened it. Who put it in there? Who would have been in a position to steal it in the first place? No one even asked the question. The team had stopped thinking about such things long ago.
Ryder had asked Bates how the Eyeball worked right after the Campo Raid. Bates had looked back at him like he was from the Stone Age.
“Do you really want to know?” Bates had asked him back.
“Sure,” Ryder told him, reminding him he’d flown X-planes for twenty years; he wasn’t such a rube to new technology.
“OK, do you know what a Tee-Voh is?” Bates then asked him. When Ryder shook his head no, Bates just let out a sigh.
He knew this was going to take a while.
As Bates explained it then, the popular TIVO device had the ability to continuously search for TV programs on its owner’s cable system, pulling in shows that its memory chips knew the owner had a preference for. Bates’s machine worked on the same concept, except his preferences were to track down the Al Qaeda missile teams, and instead of scanning a TV cable system, his rig was continuously scanning all of the information-gathering computers belonging to the
CIA, the FBI, the NRO, just about every U.S. intelligence agency in the alphabet soup of acronyms, including the NSA itself—and doing so quietly, of course. Again, the top-secret software did most of the work, worming its way into those agencies’ systems, revealing everything and leaving no tracks behind. And because much of the data flowing into those systems was in real time—satellite photos, wiretaps, intercepted Net communications—the information bouncing back to the 50-year-old chopper, floating in the middle of the foggy lake, was pretty much instantaneous. For many hours of the day, the ghosts were more plugged in than 99 percent of the intelligence officials in Washington.
As such, Bates’s monster could do many things. But it was most effective in intercepting and then tracking cell-phone calls. Of course, this was relatively easy to do if you happened to hold the cell phone the call was being made to. That’s why above the monster included a gallery of just that: cell phones. All different shapes, all different colors and sizes. Two dozen in all, with 24 different “rings,” these had belonged to the 12 terrorists they’d iced in the past 72 hours. Each mook had been carrying two cell phones on his person when the ghosts attacked. It was the first thing the ghosts looked for, before dispatching their unfortunate adversaries. The more cell phones they had, the closer they got to sniffing out the other “soccer players.”
The ghosts also knew how the underground Stinger cell worked; it worked the same as all Al Qaeda cells worked. The individual missile teams were broken down into subcells. They had no contact with one another once they’d been dropped off by the team bus at the place they were supposed to shoot down their target airliner. Only when they were in place in their snipers’ nest would they make a call to another subcell, not talking, simply letting it ring. A call coming in on that particular phone meant the team was established and ready to proceed. It was the twenty-first century version of simple tom-tom communication.
As they had taken all these phones from the terrorists, when one of them rang it meant another terrorist missile
team was slithering into position. Simple as that. Hearing that noise inside the Sky Horse, though, was the equivalent of hearing an air-raid siren going off.
And this was where the NSA software really came in handy. It could tap into the ultrasecret Keypad satellite. This was the spy system in the sky that could trace any cell-phone call in the world and put a location to it. So, once the missile team made the establishing call, it was like they were putting a target on their backs. And as the ghosts had the team’s schedule taken from the George Mann file, with each site marked 1 through 9, they knew approximately where the terrorists were going to strike next.
(Bates’s machine could do many other things as well, which meant that he was getting even less sleep than Ryder. When Bates wasn’t trying to track down the different missile squads, he was on the Internet nonstop, tapping into all kinds of things, in an effort to find the buses themselves. He routinely hacked into the Greyhound company’s corporate computers, trying to pick up a clue on the missing vehicles. He also monitored state police computers, highway department computers, even those set up in tollbooths along the highways of the Midwest, hoping to catch any stray report of a Greyhound bus “acting funny.” But the mooks had the advantage here. They could move day or night and not attract any undue attention. On the other hand the ghosts had to be very judicious in when and how they flew. They couldn’t give up precious flying in the dead of night to try to look for either bus; the time they used for that would probably allow one of the missile teams to get a clear shot at an airliner. So while they’d be able to catch the missile teams before they had a chance to act, they’d yet to catch up with the bus that was dropping the teams off. They were always just about a day behind.)
The team members crowded around the display of cell phones now.
Bates got the monster working. Jamming a pair of headphones down over his head, he started pounding on his keyboard like a madman, all while the cell phone continued to
ring. The others heard a storm of bleeps and clicks; then Bates reached over and finally turned the blinking cell phone to talk, in effect answering it. The other team members froze. The person on the other end quickly hung up, as he was supposed to. Bates typed some more, assaulting the keys at near light speed. Not two seconds later, he went thumbs-up. A colorful graph suddenly appeared on his main laptop screen. The others knew what this meant: Bates had been able to trace the call. They clenched their fists in silent triumph.
He began typing again. Now his main laptop graphic split in two—one was registering the residue of the call’s electrical pattern. Each one was unique. The other side of the graphic was showing a GPS screen. A flashing “pong” circle began moving down from the upper left-hand corner. It got smaller and smaller. They watched this screen closely until the circle stopped flashing. Only then did Bates reach over and finally push the phone to off.
Then he turned to the others and said, “Just as we thought. They’re close by … .”
They’d hit a home run with Campo. The flight over to Kentucky had been swift, low, and adventure-free. It was hard for the team members to think this way, because they were around it all the time, but the typical person on the ground, looking up, was not an expert on aircraft types. People saw a jet airliner—not a Boeing 737. They saw a military jet—not an F-15 or an F-16. They saw a helicopter—not a UH-60 or a CH-56. Or a half-century-old S-58 Sky Horse.
So the team members were able to make the initial trip with little ruckus. According to the Mann schedule, Campo was stop number 1 for the Hello Soccer club. It was rough terrain and because it was not far from Louisville Airport, planes flying in the area were either descending for landings or still climbing in their takeoffs. In either configuration, they were slow, their pilots were distracted, and the planes were without much maneuverability at all—in other words, extremely vulnerable to a hit by a Stinger missile. So, thinking that the terrorists would head for the highest point in the
Campo area had the ghosts locked in on Mount Winslow from the beginning.
Chicago had been a different matter. It was the second site on the soccer team’s schedule, yet it called for the Sky Horse to fly into the heart of a vast urban area without anyone knowing exactly who they were. While seeing a Coast Guard helicopter in the skies above the Windy City was not all that unusual, the team had to contend with the fact that they would have to pass in and out of three major radar nets, essentially as an unidentified aircraft. They got around this just as they used to get around various checkpoints when sailing in the containership during their first undercover mission: they simply and boldly lied to any air traffic control person who contacted them, claiming they were a training flight from the nearby military facility on the Great Lakes and while identifying themselves as Coast Guard never mentioning exactly what kind of CG craft they were riding in.
The overworked air traffic control guys at O’Hare, their hands full with the busiest airport in the world, let the team fly because they knew what to say and how to say it. Fox did the talking, as his authoritative yet smooth southern voice seemed to be the most convincing.
And apparently a helicopter landing atop a crack house disguised as a mosque was not much of an event in that part of the toddling town. The team members could clearly see people in their tenements or hanging in alleys as they flashed overhead. Because there were no graves this time, they’d resorted to the bacon instead. In all, the operation took less than 10 minutes, including the 2 minutes it took for them to find a place to set up the flag. It had been smooth all the way.
Nebraska, though, had been a mess. They rode in fine, everyone in position. But due to bad weather starting out, they’d arrived a little late. That’s why it turned into such a tussle with the mooks at the peak of the Big Rock.
Taking one of the terrorists with them had been a last-minute decision. They thought he would give them some information on where the team bus was heading next and how it was getting there. But either the mook was particularly
clever or he misunderstood their demands. He took them up to Saint Helena, where the team was supposed to play its next match. But the bus wasn’t there. The terrorist went out the door at 5,000 feet, courtesy of Puglisi. The team could still hear his screams all the way down.
Messy—but in the end, the result of the Nebraska action was the same as the two previous ones. Four dead mooks, another two missiles confiscated and destroyed. Another bloody message left for anyone who cared to look for it.
Now it was the next morning—and they were at it again.
Two minutes after they zeroed in on the latest cell-phone signal, the helicopter’s engines were started and its rotor was spinning. Ryder was behind the aircraft’s main controls; Gallant was turning on its makeshift laptop weapons system. Fox and Puglisi were sitting at the two cargo door guns. Bates was still glued in front of the cell-phone display.
They were getting good at this now.
Minneapolis Airport was 22 miles south of Lost View Lake. Bates’s information said that the person who had dialed the cell phone was inside a quarter-mile area about a mile north of the airport. But a topographic map called up on one of the flight-control laptops showed no naturally elevated locations around the airport, places the terrorists would be drawn to. However, there was an amusement park in the general vicinity. The locator ring was practically burning a hole in it on the GPS map.
Once airborne, they raced down the length of the foggy lake using its cover for as long at they could. Then they rose and turned due south, going right over the heavily populated Litchfield area, no doubt attracting attention from below. The air traffic control people at Minneapolis Airport tried to raise them; they’d been picked up by the airport’s radar when they were forced to go up and over some particularly hilly neighborhoods. But there was nothing they could do about that now. They simply shut off the radio, dipped back down to 200 feet, and went full throttle toward the amusement park.
Called the Great American Adventure Land, it was a huge
complex with everything from modern roller-coaster type rides to old-fashioned Ferris wheels. There was also a large water park, a concert arena, and many food concessions. One mile out, Ryder and Gallant clicked on their FLIR device. It gave them a heat register of the area. The first thing that jumped out at them was the hundreds of people lined up at the park’s main gate, waiting for the waterslide attraction to open.
“Damn,” Gallant cursed. “This isn’t going to be clean as we hoped.”
“Let’s make it quick then,” Ryder replied.
They did a scan of the interior of the park. It took a few moments, but then they found two heat signatures at the top of the tallest hill of the park’s roller-coaster-type attraction, something called Space Ride.
“Could be maintenance men,” Gallant said, compressing the image on the screen. “They have to check those things every day before they let anyone on them.”
“Could be our mooks, too,” Ryder replied. “It’s the highest point this side of the Rockies.”
“Let’s buzz them,” Gallant suggested.
And buzz them they did. Ryder put the copter into a quick, sharp bank, pulling a tight 180 degrees. This put their nose pointing directly at the top of the Space Ride’s highest hill. Then he pushed them to full throttle.
They roared over the metallic peak a second later. What they saw was two men in soccer-style clothing, sitting very casually atop the roller-coaster hill. They watched the chopper as it went by, playing it cool, even waving in a bid to seem friendly.
But then Gallant saw something else: On the ground, 200 feet below the structure, clear as day, were two bodies. They were wearing bright yellow and blue shirts and caps. The overall color scheme of the Space Ride and the park itself was the same shades of yellow and blue.
The three men riding in the back saw the bodies, too.
“Those are mooks up there!” Puglisi screamed up to the pilots. “They threw those two poor bastards right off the top!”
“That seems to be the case …” Fox agreed.
They turned sharply again and went back over the big hill. This time the two men weren’t waving at them. Everyone on the helicopter could see the telltale suitcase and tube assembly that was used to transport Stinger missiles. The two soccer players were sitting on it.
Ryder looked over at Gallant. “That’s enough for me,” he said.
Gallant just nodded. It was that time again.
He pushed a series of keys on one of the connected laptops. Its screen burst to life with an icon representing the large .50-caliber machine gun mounted in the chopper’s nose. The word READY flashed on the screen. Gallant hit the enter key. The huge nose gun burst to life. Two seconds was all it took. The two terrorists, their launcher, and about fifteen feet of the top of the Space Ride’s hill exploded into a cloud of fire and metallic dust. No sooner had this happened than a Northwest 747 airliner passed over the amusement park no more than 2,000 feet high and still climbing.
Ryder yanked back on the throttles as they passed over the remains of the big hill. There was no sign of the terrorists’ bodies. They’d been vaporized.
“We won’t have to waste a couple pigs on them,” Gallant said drily.
Ryder clicked the FLIR back on. The soccer cells always traveled together, four to a cell. This meant two more mooks were still down there somewhere. There was no way the team was going to let them go.
“There!” Gallant called out. He was pointing at the expanded FLIR screen that showed two figures running through the park’s concert arena, heading toward the food court. “The other two—I knew I could smell them all the way up here … .”
Fox was already disconnecting one of the side door fifties from its swivel mount. They would have to do an insertion to take care of this. Bates started gathering up ammunition. Puglisi was checking his knives. Ryder and Gallant just looked at each other. One of them would have to go, too.
“My turn,” Ryder said. Gallant had done the Campo Raid and the Nebraska job.
But Gallant just shook his head.
“I’ll go,” he said.
Ryder swung the Sky Horse down toward the center of the park. There was an open area to the left of the waterslide, hard by the food courts.
Puglisi threw out the access ladder and started down almost immediately. Fox was close behind, holding the big fifty by its strap below him. Bates went next, his skinny post–hippie dude frame weighed down by two bandoliers of ammo. Gallant went down last, carrying Bates’s gun as well as his own. And like Puglisi, Gallant was carrying a hatchet.
All four made it to the ground next to a huge attraction, a kind of high-tech fun house called the Angry Alien. Gallant gave Ryder the wave-off; Ryder immediately put some air under the chopper. He could see twice as many people pressed up against the park gate now. They were all looking in with great curiosity. Some were shouting; some were laughing. Some thinking it was perhaps a simulated battle being put on by the amusement park or maybe an antiterrorist security drill. Many were taking pictures and even videotaping the action. Ryder tried to keep his head together. It wouldn’t be the first time the team had performed before an audience. During the Hormuz adventure, they’d made headlines on CNN more than once.
But that didn’t mean he liked it.
The two remaining terrorists were hiding close by the waterslide, as it turned out. They’d scrambled behind the sparse cover of an overturned picnic table. On their right was the food court. On their left, the entrance to the Angry Alien. To their rear was the huge wave tank, which was the size of a small ocean. In front of them, the four heavily armed, and armored, American soldiers were advancing on them.
The Islamic gunmen hadn’t anticipated any of this. Why would they? They’d been led to believe that they would not
have to worry about getting caught or aggressively tracked down, at least not at first. They had been told that it had all been fixed. That when each four-man team was dropped off at their firing location there would be little to worry about concerning law enforcement agencies, that they’d be able to operate freely. They all had safe houses in Canada where they were to go once their individual missions were completed. As they understood it, someone high up in the U.S. government had even arranged it so they wouldn’t have to stop for a search at the border.
So who then were these strange soldiers in their very strange helicopter? So suddenly they had blown away their two colleagues at the top of the roller coaster’s big hill. This was not how the typical U.S. soldier acted. The terrorists knew this because each had fought Americans in either Afghanistan or Iraq. These days American soldiers did not shoot first and ask questions later but actually did the exact opposite. So sensitive were they to inflicting unwanted collateral damage, many gave up their own lives rather than harm an innocent civilian.
But not these soldiers. They’d turned their two colleagues into windblown gristle and now were making their way toward them. And they were trapped. There was nowhere inside the park for them to hide. The main gate was filled with hundreds of people—innocents true—but the terrorists didn’t have any firepower to shoot their way through them. The rest of the park was surrounded by a security fence that was simply too high for them to even consider climbing over—it had been erected to discouraged troublemakers from sneaking in. Plus they were armed only with pistols … .
But that wasn’t what drove all the fear into them. For now the soldiers were near enough for the terrorists to see them up close. The huge oversize helmets, the black combat suits, the gray body armor, the M16 lookalikes with trademark bayonets attached. But it was the patch the soldiers wore on their right shoulder that burned into their terrorists’ eyes. The Islamic gunmen knew it well. It showed a billowing American flag with the silhouette of the Twin Towers on it. The initials
NYPD and FDNY floating above. And below, a motto: We Will Never Forget.
Seeing the patch told them who these bloody Americans from the sky were. Who they had to be.
They were the Crazy Americans.
The scourge of their comrades back in Hormuz and at Singapore and almost in Manila. The men who’d killed their sheikh, Abdul Kazeel.
Now they were here, in America, to get them.
Foolishly, in sheer terror, the terrorists began shooting at the Americans with their popguns. The badly aimed fire only served to pinpoint their position. Bates and Gallant opened up with their M15s immediately. The mooks were firing at them from behind nothing more than a wooden bench. Puglisi added fire, and the three streams of bullets pounded into the table, shredding it. One terrorist was blown away in the fusillade. The other scrambled away, fleeing into the entrance to the Angry Alien.
Ryder was watching all this from above, at least as best he could from a stationary hover. But then he was distracted from the one-sided gunfight by a flash of light off to his left. He looked out past the crowd at the main gate, out into the parking lot. That’s when he saw the one thing he didn’t want to see.
A police car … .
Lights flashing, siren wailing, it was screaming right through the middle of the huge empty parking lot, heading for the main admission gate.
“Son of a bitch …” Ryder breathed. “This ain’t good … .”
The ghost team didn’t mind people seeing what they were doing—or at least having no misconceptions as to what they were up to. But they didn’t want to get caught in the act. Not by the police, not by anyone. That would put an end to this flying circus way too soon.
So, Ryder knew he had to do something—but what?
He raised the copter up and over the water park, over the remains of the smoldering roller-coaster hill, and headed toward the parking lot.
The police car had a lot of ground to cover—the parking lot was almost a quarter-mile long. Ryder brought the copter down to just 20 feet off the asphalt, perpendicular to the police car. He booted throttle and went rocketing over the top of the unsuspecting patrol car, carrying a storm of dust and noise along with him. The massive downdraft hit the vehicle full force, nearly tipping it over. There was a mighty screech of brakes; the two cops hadn’t seen him until the very last moment. The concussion was so severe, it caused both airbags to burst open.
Ryder turned the copter over and was soon pointing back at the police car again. No doubt, the cops inside were stunned—and baffled as well. He could see them wrestling with the airbags, trying to look out their front window at the same time. They’d been called here for a report of shots fired. Why would a Coast Guard helicopter begin buzzing them?
Ryder turned up and over again. The police car, its occupants recovered, started creeping forward once more. Lower and faster, Ryder came at them head-on. The downwash slammed into the roof of the car, forcing it almost down to its axles. It screeched to a halt again. Ryder turned, hoping he’d popped at least a couple of its tires.
No such luck, though. In fact, the cruiser started rolling forward yet again. Ryder could see one cop on the radio. The other was unhitching a shotgun from his dashboard.
Not good … .
He went around again, lost as to what to do next. Ryder could still see the cruiser’s driver, steering the car with one hand while on the radio with the other. The second cop was pumping his shotgun and getting ready to aim it out the window. Ryder’s mind was racing, weighing the circumstances. Then, reluctantly, he armed the copter’s forward gun.
He booted throttles and came at the police car head-on again. Making sure he was well out in front, he let loose a barrage from the big fifty. As always, it was blinding, noisy, and violent. The stream of tracer shells smashed into the parking lot 500 feet in front of the police cruiser, tearing up
a huge portion of asphalt. Still the police car kept coming.
Ryder came back around yet again and repeated the maneuver, this time laying down a barrage just 250 feet away from the patrol car. The police car kept on coming.
Ryder swore again, whipping the copter around tail first. These cops were fearless. Plus they were now halfway across the huge parking lot and getting near a cluster of parked cars. He bore down on them, not 20 feet off the ground, and put a surgically placed, noisy barrage right over the top of their roof. The concussion of the fussilade alone took out the flashing-light assembly on top of the cruiser, exploding it in hundreds of multicolored pieces.
That was all it took. The cops finally slammed on their brakes, put their car in reverse, and retreated.
Ryder breathed a sigh of relief. His hands were shaking.
“That was too fucking close,” he whispered.
Meanwhile, back in the park, Gallant was looking everywhere for the Sky Horse.
“Where the hell did he go?” he yelled to Puglisi.
The Delta soldier just shook his head. “I don’t know,” he yelled back to Gallant. “I just hope he doesn’t forget us down here.”
They both turned their attention back to the matter at hand. They had the last terrorist cornered in the Angry Alien fun house. But how could they get him out? They could hear the siren in the distance and maybe the clatter of gunfire—and maybe that’s where Ryder was. They could also hear the crowd at the main gate, yelling, shouting, screaming. It all added up to a shortage of time.
Puglisi and Gallant ran forward now, taking up positions near the ride’s entryway. It was a large building, not one of the newest attractions at the theme park but elaborate nevertheless. Bates had scrambled around to the back and confirmed there were no rear exits that he could see. So the last mook was indeed trapped. Trouble was, the ghosts didn’t have time to go in and flush him out.
Gallant and Puglisi just looked back at Fox, who had set up the big fifty near an ice-cream stand. All three just shrugged. Then Fox yelled, “Get Brainiac back out here!”
Gallant yelled for Bates; he soon came running back to the main midway, knowing what would happen next. Joining Gallant and Puglisi, they all retreated to Fox’s position. Bates immediately fed a belt of ammunition into the .50-caliber. Fox cocked the gun and then let loose a fierce barrage at the front of the fun house. He never let off the trigger. The stream of tracer bullets was frightening as the huge rounds perforated the saucer-shaped building. Pieces of wood and metal went flying, some sparkling with sudden heat. Fox just kept spraying back and forth, taking the building apart seemingly one board, one piece, at a time.
It took almost a half-minute, so long the barrel of the huge gun was nearly red-hot. But the building finally collapsed on itself; then it caught on fire.
“Who the fuck is going to pay for that!” Gallant yelled wildly.
The terrorist staggered out, burned and bloody. Puglisi ran forward, hatchet in hand. Bates had a small video camera he’d found in his care package. He recorded the mayhem that followed. The screams were horrible. Gallant and Fox had to look away. When it was over, though, they saw Puglisi stuffing hot dogs into the dead terrorist’s mouth.
“God damn,” Gallant said. “That’s freaking nasty.”
At that moment, they heard a great roar above them.
The Sky Horse had returned.
Ryder had picked up the action on the ground.
He saw the fifty take apart the fun house. He saw Puglisi first riddle the terrorist with bullets, then chop off his hands. And Puglisi was now stuffing frankfurters into the man’s mouth.
Are hot dogs made out of pork? Ryder found himself thinking.
Then he snapped back to reality. They were through here. It was time to go.
“Jesus, c’mon!” Ryder was yelling at his comrades on the ground now. Fox was already on the still-dangling ladder. Gallant was holding the bottom for Puglisi to start climbing. But where was Bates?
Ryder was straining his neck looking for the wayward computer whiz, this as he was doing his best to keep the old chopper steady as the others tried to ascend.
Fox reached the cargo bay and scrambled aboard.
“Where’s the Brain?” he yelled back to the DSA officer.
“Jesuzz, he was right behind me!” came the reply.
Now Puglisi fell into the cargo bay. He was carrying the dead terrorists’ weapons plus their cell phones. He didn’t know where Bates was, either. Ryder could just about see through a hole in the roller coaster, out through the main gate. He saw a small army of police cars now approaching the park.
“Damn!” he cried again.
He looked below and saw Gallant, still holding the bottom of the ladder, looking up at him and pointing to a spot deeper into the food court. Ryder turned to where Gallant was pointing, and that’s when he saw Bates. He was kicking the crap out of one of the concession vending machines and picking up its contents from the ground.
“Is he insane?” Fox roared. “We gotta get out of here!”
But then Ryder turned the chopper slightly, and this gave him a better view of Bates.
And he saw Bates wasn’t busting up a candy vendor or a Coke dispenser. He was robbing a cigarette machine.
Ryder let out a whoop.
“Atta boy!” he yelled. “Now you’re using your head!”