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“Dell just radioed,” Pete shouted. “You didn’t respond.”
“Couldn’t hear,” Marcus shouted back. “Did you tell her the shooters are down?”
“Yeah, yeah, but listen to me,” Pete said. “When the shooting started, Roseboro shut down all air traffic in- and outbound to O’Hare and Midway.”
“Finally.”
“But there’s still a plane on approach. It’s not responding to any radio traffic, and it’s heading toward us.”
“What do you mean, us?”
“The stadium,” Pete screamed.
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of plane?” Jenny shouted.
“It’s a 737—a cargo plane, DHL.”
“From where?” Marcus asked.
“Grand Rapids.”
“How far out?”
“Six minutes—no more—and the Patriot system was destroyed.”
A chill went down Marcus’s spine.
He shot out of the stairwell and back onto the Skydeck. Moving to the east end, keeping away from the dead bodies and the blown-out windows, Marcus looked out over Lake Michigan. But despite clear blue skies and very few clouds over the lake, Marcus didn’t see a 737. He saw no planes of any kind. Of course, he’d pleaded with Hernandez and Roseboro to shut down all the airspace in the area until the event was over. He’d been overruled, and now . . .
No. Marcus wouldn’t let himself go down that road. There was no time for recriminations. Moving to one of the high-powered viewing machines, he suddenly realized he had no change on him. Neither did Jenny. Nor Pete. There was no way to power up the tourist telescopes.
Marcus tasked Pete with retrieving both rocket launchers and Jenny with getting whatever rockets had not been fired. As they did so, Marcus continued scanning the skies to the northeast. Dozens of questions flooded his mind. Was the plane really a threat? Or just having radio problems? And if it was a threat, how in the world had Kairos operatives seized it?
Out of the stairwell and thus deafened again by the roaring winds, Marcus needed a way to communicate with his team and commanders. Still seeing nothing in the eastern sky, he created a group text with Dell, Roseboro, Annie, Jenny, and Pete. The moment he did and explained his situation, data began streaming in.
The plane was forty-three miles out.
It was moving at 564 miles an hour.
9.4 miles per minute.
That gave him barely four minutes to spot the plane and take it out.
Marcus asked where the F-22s were.
Roseboro replied that they had been scrambled but might not make it in time.
How could the fighters not already be in the air? Marcus asked himself, furious, but chose not to respond. There wasn’t time, and it hardly mattered now.
Marcus looked up from his phone and strained to see anything in the distance. The visibility was perfect. He ought to be able to see up to fifty miles away. But so far, Marcus still saw nothing.
he wrote.
Dell replied.
A moment later:
Then:
Was that possible? Was Abu Nakba’s chief of intelligence flying this plane?
Another text came in.
he texted back.
Annie texted that the plane should be at Marcus’s nine o’clock, if he was looking northeast. That surprised him. Grand Rapids was northeast of Chicago. Thus, the plane should be right in front of him. Maybe it had headed west for a while to throw off air traffic controllers before banking and heading for the stadium.
Marcus looked up again. This time he saw it. It was only a glowing speck in the sky as the sun reflected off the fuselage. It was right where they said it would be, but now it appeared to be heading east to approach the stadium from over the lake to the north.
Pete and Jenny rushed up behind him. Pete had found only one rocket launcher. The other, Pete motioned, had been sucked out of the building. Jenny had two rockets, which she carried in her arms like babies. They all knew the risks. They were handling radioactive devices. But cancer wouldn’t kill them for years. This 737 could kill everyone left in the stadium in less than three minutes.
Pete loaded the SA-7. Jenny took the other rocket back into the stairwell, the safest place she could think of from the hole they were about to blast in the side of the building. Marcus smashed the glass of a fire control box next to the stairwell. From it, he pulled a fire hose, wrapped it several times around his waist, then double-checked and triple-checked to make sure the hose was properly screwed into the pipe running through the pillar. Then he took the rocket launcher from Pete, ordered his two friends back into the stairwell, and moved toward the northeast windows.
His hands were trembling, but this was it.
There was no time to practice.
He was out of time.
It was now or never.