Diablo Mesa(99)

The jeep hit the ramp at full speed, suspension bottoming out, then roared up and out through the door into the fresh night breeze, catching air briefly before slamming to the ground and skidding over gravel and sand. Corrie tried to put on the lights, realized—of course—they’d been shot out, but maintained full speed nevertheless, gunning it down the track and along the route they had followed so recently from the perimeter gate, weaving among the fleeing soldiers. Watts, braced, fired the automatic weapon he’d appropriated at any threatening soldiers, but most were paying them no attention in their panic to get out. Skip fired the Peacemaker with an ear-splitting roar, while Tappan, plucking the service piece from Corrie’s holster, shot back at soldiers foolish enough to take potshots at them.

But now, as if to ensure complete destruction, mounted weapons rose up from hidden silos in the ground, six-barrel rotary mini-guns that swiveled around, seeking motion, firing at everything.

Corrie swerved and swerved again as the guns fired across their path, spitting thousands of rounds a minute and tearing up fleeing soldiers indiscriminately. Now, beyond the mini-guns, additional munitions were appearing from hidden emplacements in the surrounding landscape, their long evil barrels lowering from a skyward elevation to a few degrees above the surface.

“Jesus!” said Tappan. “Are those 40-millimeters?”

“Old Bofors, from the look of them!” Watts yelled in return. “Probably antiaircraft defense, retrofitted for automatic deployment!”

“Think they still work?” Tappan shouted. But his question was answered by the roar of the autocannons as they began pumping out shells with a hellish muzzle velocity. All around, soldiers disappeared into reddish clouds of matter as the armored shells rammed into the ground. The shock waves and cavitations caused by the explosions almost made Corrie lose control.

Two jeeps were behind them and one was pulling alongside. As it did, mini-gun rounds tore through its armor like butter, throwing the vehicle sideways, where it flipped and rolled.

Corrie swerved again as yet another line of fire rippled past them, kicking up a twenty-foot curtain of dirt, missing them by inches.

And then, with the shriek of a harpy, a 40-millimeter round tore obliquely through the side of the jeep, throwing it over on two wheels. Corrie—temporarily blinded as well as deafened—robotically kept her hands on the wheel and her foot pressed to the floor. A second passed before the other two wheels crashed back to earth and her vision began to return. In the glow of the firefight, she noted with horror that the passenger seat beside her—and its occupant, Cecilia Toth—was missing. All that remained was a ragged circle of punctured metal where the door had been.

Instinctively, Corrie let up on the gas.

“Keep going!” Tappan said, leaning forward and yelling into her ear, his face covered with gore. “She’s gone!”

The gate was up ahead and it was rolling closed. Corrie accelerated one more time, hit it as it was halfway shut, ripping the left section off its track and flinging it out into the dark. The front end of their vehicle sheered to one side, but with grim determination she quickly regained control.

Down the sandy arroyo the jeep sped, fishtailing in the sand, wheels spinning, until Corrie began gaining traction. The vehicle behind them hit the right half of gate just as it closed and electrified. There was a sound like a monstrous bug zapper, and then a fountain of sparks lit up the sky like lightning.

Corrie continued down the arroyo, possessed with the singular purpose of getting as far from the base as possible before the main explosion. And then it happened: the night sky behind her was illuminated by a burst as bright as the sunrise, followed by a rippling series of booms that accelerated into a single gigantic roar. Glancing once again over her shoulder, Corrie glimpsed a horrifying sight: the entire landscape was rising up, fragmented into a web of white and gold cracks. Brighter and brighter, a mountain of fire escalated into the night like an eruption from hell itself, and then a blast of overpressure slammed into them, knocking the vehicle sideways.

The flaming debris now began to fall like bombs all around as Corrie recovered and continued speeding down the arroyo, weaving and slaloming among the flaming meteors. A few terrifying minutes later, they were out of range.

She brought the jeep to a halt. Everyone, exhausted beyond speech, looked back at the boiling fire-mushroom in the sky, half a mile tall and climbing, shot through with purple and green, the atmosphere reverberating with the thunder of secondary explosions.

“Armageddon,” murmured Skip at last.

But Corrie was most shocked by the expression on Tappan’s face. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, glistening in the reflected light.

“We’ll never know,” he said. “Now we’ll never know.”





66





3 months later




THE SLEEK BOEING 737, its only marking a red cheatline running horizontally along the windows, banked over the desert and began its final approach. The jet’s configuration was unusual: it was not divided into first and coach classes, but rather had twenty rows of seats, two on each side, positioned to face each other in groups of four, with an aisle down the center. There was a single flight attendant: a young man who wordlessly brought the passengers flavored seltzer shortly after takeoff from Alamogordo, then disappeared. Nora sat next to Skip, with Corrie by the window on the other side. Tappan sat across from Nora, beside a general who had identified himself only as Greyburn. He was dressed in field camo, two black stars embroidered on the front of his uniform.