I, Judas the 5th Gospel (14 page)

The system was working.

Within a minute, the
Pittsburgh
was at launch depth, cruising on a pre-determined path that was already programmed into the guidance system of the cruise missiles so they would know their launch position within a few feet. Inside the twelve launch tubes were missiles that were twenty-and–a-half feet in length and twenty-point-four inches in diameter. Each one weighed thirty-five hundred pounds, and cost the US taxpayers slightly over one million dollars each.

“I have a go authorization,” the communications officer announced, pulling the cup away from one of his ears.

The captain turned to the weapons officer. “Launch sequence.”

Missile hatches on the upper deck of the
Pittsburgh
slid open. The first Tomahawk propelled upward out of the water into the air by a solid rocket booster. At that point the shroud separated, the booster fell off, the small fins and wings on both sides deployed, and the air inlet duct opened. The missile tipped over from vertical to horizontal as the turbo-jet engine took over the propulsion. Even as the first was leveling off and heading toward Alaska, the second broke the surface. The sequence continued until there were a dozen missiles heading toward the forty-ninth state.

Moheli

The first of the jumpers touched down in the tiny clearing they’d selected using satellite imagery. The second landed less than ten feet away. They worked efficiently, having made hundreds of similar jumps, albeit under less strange situations, in the past.

They unhooked from their rigs. Without a word, they quickly marched along the ridge until they reached where it dropped off. They crept around the ridge to a point where they could see the camouflaged control center for the Mission and the runway covered in trees.

They shrugged off their rucksacks and weapons cases. Using the rucksacks as makeshift seats, they laid out the equipment they would use: from the two plastic cases they removed bulky sniper rifles—the same model Gates had used in Afghanistan—and bolted the barrels into the receiver groups. Both rifles had night scopes. Using their rucksacks, they made a solid rampart on which to place the rifle’s front bipod legs.

***************

The lead cruise missile skirted the eastern coast of Africa at an altitude of one hundred feet and a speed of five hundred and fifty miles an hour. Electronically linked to four ground positioning satellites, the missile’s route was being checked constantly. As a back up, an onboard computer was also comparing the coastline below it to a map.

*************

The man on the left laid down the gun and unfolded a small satellite dish. He hooked the cord from it to the receptor that stuck out of the side of his backpack, attaching it to the satellite radio inside. He removed his balaclava, put on a small headset with boom mike, and then replaced the balaclava.

While he did that, the other man pulled a laser designator out of his rucksack and turned it on.

The man with the radio spoke the first words since they went on oxygen inside the Talon. “Hammer, this is Eyes. Over.”

There was a moment of silence, then the small earpiece came alive. “Eyes, this is Hammer. Over.”

“We are in position and ready to light up target. Over.”

“Light it up. You have inbound. Out.”

The first man tapped the other on the shoulder and gave a thumbs-up. With a flick of a switch on the side of the designator, a laser beam was projected, pinpointing the location of the control building for the Mission. The other man then picked up his rifle.

***************

Inside the Mission, Monsignor Firth calmly looked up as one of his scientists threw open the door and rushed inside.

“We’re picking up SATCOM transmissions close by, Monsignor.”

Firth nodded but didn’t say anything, surprising the scientists.

“Sir, it sounds as though we are being targeted in some manner.”

“I would not worry about it, my son,” Firth said.

The scientist was confused and flustered. “But, Monsignor, our mission. The Great Commission?”

“All is going quite well,” Firth said. “Have faith, my son, have faith.”

The scientist turned and ran into the control room. Firth could see all the others who worked here gather around the man. There was an argument. Firth shook his head. This would separate those who had true faith from those who didn’t. It would be the first of many such occurrences around the world.

***************

The lead missile reached the African coast at the border between Tanzania and Mozambique, and the guidance system made a third targeting check with the laser beam locked onto the command center. Triple redundancy. There were to be no mistakes on this mission.

It turned left, heading over the ocean. It gained more altitude now, as programmed.

Within a few minutes, it went feet dry over the shore of Moheli.

***************

Inside the command center, Firth was standing at the window looking out over the Mission. He spread his arms wide. Out of the corner of his eye he could see two Range Rovers driving away on the gravel road. The faithless. From the control room he could hear the chanted prayers of those who truly believed.

Firth bowed his head. “Thank you for allowing me to serve, my Lord.”

***************

The cruise missile was at an altitude of slightly more than one thousand feet AGL— above ground level—when it tipped over and headed straight down. It hit directly in the center of the roof of the command center, punched through and was passing through the second story, when the thousand-pound conventional warhead in the nose cone exploded.

The man with the designator shifted to the bunker holding a Blackjack bomber.

The second through eleventh missiles were programmed to arrive in thirty second intervals. The warheads in the nose cones were bunker busters, designed to blast through reinforced concrete. In rapid sequence, the bunkers, with the planes inside, were destroyed.

The twelfth cruise missile was targeted for the command center, which was little more than a smoking hole. Redundancy again. Always hit something twice, just in case the first one missed.

The twelfth missile struck, making a larger crater.

*************

On the hillside the man turned off the infrared designator and picked up his rifle. Then both men turned their attention to the two Range Rovers spitting gravel from beneath their wheels, racing away.

“I’ve got lead,” the first jumper called.

The second man acknowledged by edging the muzzle of the .50 caliber Barrett toward the second four wheel drive vehicle. He centered the reticules on the engine block and pulled the trigger. The rounds the men were using were specially designed with depleted uranium cores. The bullet passed through the sheet metal on the side of the SUV as if it wasn’t there, ripped into the engine block, and continued out the other side.

The first man fired immediately after the second. His round had the same effect on the lead Range Rover. Both vehicles rolled to a halt, their engines dead. Men piled out of both vehicles, confused as to what had happened.

The confusion ended as both snipers began firing.

The last of the men who tried to escape made it as far as a hundred meters away from the trucks, desperately running, when the bullet hit him in the back, ripping his heart to shreds and sending the body tumbling.

The snipers spent several minutes scanning not only the area where the trucks had ground to a halt, but the entire airstrip and the smoking hole that had been the command center, using thermal technology to search for any signs of life. Satisfied there were none, they broke down the weapons and placed them back into the plastic cases.

The first one keyed the satellite radio. “Hammer, this is Eyes. Mission accomplished. Request exfiltration. Out.”

The Xingu River, Amazon.

Kopec powered up the satellite radio, using a small lantern to provide light. The others were asleep, having prepared for the departure until just a couple of hours ago. The metal case was handcuffed to his wrist, as it had been ever since leaving Atlanta, and he used it as a platform for the satellite radio. Getting a strong signal, he sent the confirmation code word to Atlanta indicating the team was on the ground and ready to go. Satisfied he had done his official job, he looked about furtively, then pulled a small burst transmitter out of his pocket. A message had already been data encoded in it. He transmitted the information in less than half a second. He turned off the radio and slipped away, back to his tent.

Twenty feet away, invisible in the darkness, Gates sat cross-legged, his MP-5 across his knees. His eyes had tracked everything Kopec did, but otherwise he did nothing. Waiting a few a minutes, he allowed his chin to drop to his chest and fell into a very light sleep, a combat sleep, one he was very accustomed to.

Airspace, Indian Ocean

The Tu-160 Blackjack that had projected the downward burst went ‘feet wet’ over the Indian Ocean just as the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile exploded in front of the wings. The crew died as the plane disintegrated, showering wreckage over dozens of miles of ocean.

The F-22 Raptor that had fired the missile was already tracking the second Blackjack. The crew of that bomber had less than 10 seconds to note the disappearance of the other plane before another AIM-120 locked on to it. The electronics officer had been well trained in the Russian Air Force and kept up to speed on his training once hired by The Brotherhood. He immediately activated the bomber’s jammer.

In less than a second, the missile switched from active radar homing on the Blackjack to homing in on the jamming signal. American technology trumped Russian as the second bomber blew apart upon impact.

The pilot of the Raptor kicked in his afterburners, breaking Mach-2 as he raced down the final Blackjack. The crew of the bomber, 400 miles south of the Raptor, headed for Africa, the pilot having received no response to his request for help from the Mission, and knowing the inevitability of the realities of air-to-air combat. His bomber was maxed out at Mach 2.05. The Raptor was closing at Mach 2.25. The AIM-120 had a range of seventy-five kilometers at a speed of over Mach 4.0.

The math was not good for the crew of the Blackjack.

The pilot of the Raptor momentarily throttled back to Mach 1.5 and hit the fire button for his third missile. The weapons bay doors in the belly of the fighter popped open, hydraulic arms shoved the missile out, and the doors slammed shut. All in less than a second.

An alarm sounded in the cockpit of the final Blackjack as the AIM-120 locked on.

The pilot could see the coast of Africa ahead and didn’t waste any more time. He slammed the eject button, swiftly followed by the other three crew members.

The air-to-air missile flashed by them and destroyed their craft two seconds later.

Earth

The data was analyzed, the math rechecked, and the result was the same. Collision. Catastrophe. Annihilation. Not only did they have the exact time of collision now, down to the second, given the fact it had appeared above Earth’s track around the sun, they knew it would hit on the northern edge of Greenland. Not that this made much difference in terms of overall survivability for those far away from the strike point. It just meant they would last a little longer and suffer more.

Of course, as more people became aware of the object, the rumors began to spread. Despite the best efforts of the various governments, the lid of secrecy began to rattle under the pressure of the scale of the immensity of the implications.

Suicides continued to rise.

More and more resources were being put into the diversion plan, and the countdowns for the first launches had already begun.

A plane bearing nuclear warheads from the United States landed in India.

But something else was happening. More and more people were turning to religion. Even though no official word had been breached about the Intruder, there was a feeling in many countries of impending doom. And in the face of that feeling, more people were turning to their faith or finding faith they hadn’t known they had.

Earth Orbit

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Forster was flying the X-37 by computer from the isolation of the life-pod inside the small cargo bay. He had no window or even video feed outside of the ship. Both had been considered unnecessary in the design of the craft. His world consisted of a small laptop computer on which his current position was marked by a small glowing green dot, and the location of the first satellite that was his objective was indicated by a red dot.

While the initial launch had put him into an orbit that would bring him close to the first satellite, the fine art of actually getting close enough so that he could space-walk over to the satellite required some fine adjustments on his part. So far he had done two very short burns of the X-37’s main engine, altering the craft’s orbit ever so slightly.

Other than those two adjustments, he’d had some time on his hands. He’d spent it praying. Forster felt blessed that he had been chosen for this important mission. Not that he’d always felt blessed. He had come to his faith late in life, having been raised an atheist by his parents. Not exactly atheist, but faith, religion, and God had never been an issue in his household. His parents had both been college astronomy professors, and they had taught him that the mind ruled supreme, and that man’s highest ambition was to reach out into space.