Overlord (62 page)

“All hands, prepare for launch, five minutes until power-up. The DiMaggio line is in full retreat.”

The commodore heard the announcement sent from his communications center and then grimaced and was mumbling to himself, but Captain Lienanov overheard nonetheless.

“I must apologize personally to General Collins, he gave me ten minutes longer than I needed or expected.” Commodore Fremantle lowered his head. “Good show, old man.”

*   *   *

Jack had watched his command being mowed down one unit at a time and knew that over a quarter of his men lay dying in the snow and ice. The German Panzers had finally been decimated as they fought to give the 101st and 82nd Airborne time to break from their defensive positions on the DiMaggio line and head for the deep shelters that had been designated for complete withdrawal. It had been hard for Collins to have the order issued.

“General, it’s time for you to go.” Will Mendenhall thrust Jack’s web gear into his arms. “We’ll get the rest out, now go, your Black Hawk won’t last long out there. We just received a message; we have over a hundred Super Hornets heading in from the
Washington
and
Stennis
Battle Groups. Go, General.”

Collins nodded for Farbeaux and the others to get to the Black Hawk. Sebastian and Tram gathered their gear but refused to move until the general came with them; he was now their responsibility. Jack locked eyes with the Frenchman as he eyed the young captain.

“General, a ground attack force of Grays, over a thousand strong, is heading straight here and are only three minutes out.”

“Okay, get out,” he said to the young 101st Airborne communications man.

The soldier looked at Mendenhall and the Frenchman. “I’ll stay, sir.”

Henri removed the nine millimeter and chambered a round, then holstered the weapon. He looked from Collins to the young black man he had never cared for. Now he knew the reason why: he never liked the perception of lacking in dedication to his craft, as he saw from the young officer studying him. He nodded at Will and then turned back to Jack as laser blasts started shaking loose ice from the last control bunker still operating.

“I’ll be staying as well, General,” the Frenchman said, to the amazement of Mendenhall and a stunned General Collins.

“It’s not your style, Henri,” Jack said as he was starting to be pulled away by the remainder of his staff to get him to leave. He angrily pulled away.

“It once was, Jack, now kiss little Sarah for me.” He picked up the radio to prepare to make the call that would call down death from above.

Jack turned to Will and stuck out his hand. “The best damn soldier I’ve ever known. So long, Will.” He dropped the offered hand and hugged the young captain.

“Sir,” Mendenhall said, knowing that anything else would be pointless. He had to give the general time to leave. “Kick Ryan in the ass for me.”

“Damn you, Captain, I should have left you at home.” Jack Collins released Will and took a step back.

Mendenhall smiled and looked back at Henri, who had turned away and was leaning heavily on the desk where the radio sat.

“You know I wouldn’t have accepted that. Now go, and when you get home, tell Doc Ellenshaw to keep swinging away, the rest of the world will catch up to him eventually.” Will smiled and then looked at Farbeaux. “You know, Jack, he’s not Ryan, or the rest of my friends, but I could go out with a far worse soldier.”

Jack nodded, unable to say the words he so wanted to say to a friend, so he turned and left. He ran hard toward the waiting Black Hawk as if the running would stop the feeling of utter despair.

Will zipped up his parka and then faced Farbeaux and the 101st Airborne lieutenant. He then removed his own automatic and chambered a round, then nodded to Henri, who raised the microphone to his lips as the sound of the Black Hawk started moving away. Jack was safe for the moment to fight again. The Frenchman waited until Collins and his team were clear and the Grays thought the line was still holding the defense. He made the call.

“St. Bernard, St. Bernard, this is Raven’s Wing, this is Raven’s Wing. Broken Arrow, I repeat, Broken Arrow,” Henri called and then gently placed the radio down. “I don’t know about you gentlemen, but I would prefer to be outside in the fresh air.”

Will nodded in total agreement with the man he had hated for many years, who was now going to be with him for a very long time.

“After you, Colonel—sir.”

*   *   *

Jack looked out of the Black Hawk’s large door window as Tram and Sebastian lowered their heads in shame for leaving the three men behind. They knew it was a necessity to delay the Grays as long as possible to bring them into the killing zone, but that didn’t make the two professional soldiers hurt any less.

As Jack Collins watched, over a thousand Grays surrounded the last remaining bunker on the DiMaggio fallback position just as the roar of the attacking air wings of the United States Navy was heard four miles distant. Then the world exploded right over the top of his friends.

18

As the last Black Hawk fought for altitude, a hundred streaks of blue and green laser light lit the skies around it. The army warrant officer pulled hard right on the stick and brought the large helicopter almost to a stall position to avoid a line of tracer-like cannon fire. They were being bracketed by not only five of the remaining twenty saucers but also the surviving Grays of the ground assault.

U.S. Navy Hornets buzzed the battlefield in an effort to engage the enemy, but the saucers were much too fast to get missile-lock. The naval aviators finally started using their twenty-millimeter cannon to engage at close range. Their goal was to protect the remains of the German infantry element left stranded by the destruction of their own shield of burning Panzers. The two airborne units had climbed aboard anything that was still operational when the orders had been given from the command-and-control bunker to break for the designated deep shelters prepared months in advance of the attack. For the first time since Operation Market-Garden during the air assault and invasion of Holland in World War II, did the two American airborne divisions actually leave a battlefield in the hands of an enemy. The soldiers of the 101st and 82nd did not like what was happening.

The retreating soldiers set up pockets of rearguard action and fired TOW missiles from the backs of Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles; they struck mostly air as the wire-guided weapons flew past the speeding saucers. The Gray reinforcements on the ground were paying a heavy toll for every foot of ground they took as missile after missile struck among their ranks. Heavy-caliber weaponry fired by the rearguard sent thousands upon thousands of tracer rounds into the saucers and the Grays on the ground. The effect was chilling to behold as the airborne units and the German infantry fought for all they were worth. Bradleys opened up with their Bushmaster weapons and started mowing down the Grays as they advanced, with each armored transport succumbing eventually to enemy handheld laser fire. The mechanized monsters Jack remembered from the Peruvian mines made their appearance as they rolled free of the saucers and then broke into their original forms and started deliberately walking toward Poseidon’s Nest. Their arms were extended and heavy-caliber kinetic weaponry opened up in all directions as the enemy advance continued.

The command Black Hawk swooped low over the retreating units as the men inside wanted desperately to join them.

Jack slammed his hand into the glass of the window as he saw three Bradleys explode simultaneously below.

Four more of the saucers had landed at the spot where the command bunker used to sit and thousands of Grays and their automatons ran down the metal ramps. It was like watching ants emptying a hill.

The American and German forces had been completely overrun and were now just trying to survive.

The Black Hawk pilot slammed the stick to the left as a line of cannon fire hit her four-bladed rotor. The helicopter shook but remained in the air and the pilot cursed as he brought the army bird directly over Poseidon’s Nest.

*   *   *

The three tons of charges had been placed when the false ceiling of the three hundred tons of camouflaging ice had been frozen over by the U.S. Army and Royal Corps of Engineers years before in anticipation of the
Lee
’s breakout of Poseidon’s Nest. The loud warning blasts of horns could be heard throughout Camp Alamo and Poseidon’s Nest and every man and woman braced for one of the largest explosions ever detonated by man over an occupied zone.

“All camp personnel brace for shock wave,” came the automated announcement that echoed off the ice walls of the now-deserted hangar.

Carl and his men looked at one another and most felt as if they would never reach the IP position for their assault to take place. The men in the two squads had set their odds of the
Lee
making it into the air as 75–1. Everett had not wanted to place his money on the outcome because the odds he had figured were far worse.

Inside the hangar the sound of the powerful ion engines pulsed with the power of the alien power plant. Blue-colored venting started to flare from her six thirty-five-foot-in-diameter bell housings at the stern of the battleship. The paint marking the name
Garrison Lee,
stenciled on the fifty-foot fantail, started to peel and fly away from the tremendous heat being generated from the giant engines. Plastic wire-ties left by the workers flared and melted away, and even a scaffolding left by the yard started to melt like ice cream in the summer sun until it fell like melting wax to the frozen ground beneath the last of the support struts, and even these enormous pieces of steel started glowing red hot as the engine exhaust became too much, even with the six engines at idle.

The HMS
Garrison Lee
was as ready as she ever would be as she shook in her red-hot mountings with the power of the Martian technology flowing through her structural lines.

“Ceiling detonation in ten, nine, eight, seven…,”

Carl braced himself for the impact that would be caused by one hundred tons of hardened ice striking the ship as the man-made roof opened to the sky. He hoped the Martians knew what they were doing in their design of the large battlewagon.

*   *   *

The Black Hawk took another direct hit on the tail boom and the rear rotor barely hung on after ten feet of aluminum housing tore free.

Suddenly the world seemed to go silent. The illusion could be attested to by men caught in the opening moments of an artillery barrage as the mind played a protecting trick on the body. It was if the world slowed down so the human reaction could spark movement in the speedy detonation around them.

The Black Hawk vanished in a hail of shattered ice as the false roof of Poseidon’s Nest exploded upward. Four square miles of ice and snow disappeared in a millisecond as the explosives were electronically detonated by computer.

The passengers and crew were thrown against the sound-reducing roof of the helicopter as the impact first lifted and then flipped her onto her side, and then the Black Hawk rolled over upside down. Her tail boom was ripped completely free of her main body and the five-bladed rotors were sheared away by one-ton blocks of ice that were thrown into the sky like Styrofoam. The helicopter spun in a dizzying circle as she fell from the sky in flames and falling ice.

*   *   *

Everett closed his eyes as the impact started beating a horrible sound against the
Lee
’s superstructure as the millions of tons of ice fell free and onto the decks of the warship. The giant battleship shook and was nearly pushed from her remaining support beams as she righted herself and then shook even more as five delayed charges exploded against her superstructure. When the shaking and battering stopped and the
Lee
ceased her frightening roll, Carl chanced a look onto the upper deck of the battleship to see falling blocks of ice striking the ship with terrifying loudness. The view that he had was amazing and horrifying at the same time, even as several of his assault team members shouted their approval at the adrenaline-producing scene.

Everett’s eyes widened when he saw amongst the falling ice, the dark shape of something his brain didn’t recognize at first. Then he realized it was the damaged main section of a Black Hawk. It struck the deck and then bounced, stopping only when it was inundated with falling ice from above. Carl immediately released his harness and sprinted for the emergency hatch only feet away. The opening would lead him toward the deck and superstructure beyond. The two Special Forces lieutenants had seen the same thing as the admiral and also unsnapped their harnesses and ran after Carl, finding it hard to lift their feet against the grip of the Velcro flooring. They admonished the rest of the men to stay put as several of them attempted to follow.

Everett ignored the hatch-open warning and even the yelling from the engineering section on the bridge to secure the hatch. He finally managed to break the hard seal and he was nearly crushed as ice continued to fall. He covered his head, cursing himself for not bringing his helmet as he was joined by the two team leaders. They dodged and ran along the laced girder superstructure that made up the forward decking just aft of the giant deflector plow. The Black Hawk was starting to burn as it was wedged into the sharpened rear of the immense plow.

“Check the other side!” he yelled as he ran for the shattered door of the upside-down helicopter. Ice fell and warning alarms once more sounded inside the immense cave.

“Booster ignition in two minutes,” came the announcement that eerily echoed and bounced off the ice walls three hundred feet away.

The three men struggled getting both sets of sliding doors open. Finally Everett smashed the Plexiglas and slid inside, careful not to puncture or slice his environmental suit. He bounced down inside the upside-down compartment. He landed on at least two men. The two team leaders could not get the wedged-in door open and couldn’t reach the glass window because of the immensity of the deflector plow. They ran to Carl’s side and helped him lift the first live passenger out. It was a small man, to the relief of the Delta and SEAL as they roughly pulled the man free.