Overlord (63 page)

Lieutenant Tram was seriously hurt from a bleeding head wound as the Delta lieutenant threw him over his shoulder and ran for the open hatch thirty feet away, still dodging the falling ice.

Everett checked the next man after discovering the two pilots dead in the seats. He rolled the large body over and saw that it was Major Krell. His blank and staring eyes told the admiral the major was dead. This gave him a start as he realized both men were a part of Jack’s command staff.

“Jack!” Everett yelled as the countdown outside started at exactly at one minute.

Finally Everett found Collins lying underneath their field gear and rolled him over. His head was bleeding from several large gashes and he looked as if he were having difficulty breathing.

“Oh no, you don’t—not here, not now!” he shouted into Collins’s face as the big SEAL lifted him free from the debris. He practically tossed Jack through the broken window and didn’t wait to see if anyone caught him as he too scrambled free of the Black Hawk.

“Booster ignition in thirty seconds,” the computerized voice stated.

Carl quickly ran for the fast-retreating Delta lieutenant, who had the heavy general in a fireman’s carry as he made for the hatchway. Carl wasn’t far behind.

Helping hands took Jack and placed him on the deck. Then the men quickly strapped themselves in. Everett and the Delta lieutenant threw themselves on top of the two unconscious men and braced them as best they could. Several of the assault team reached out with their legs and slammed their booted feet down across the two men and the rescued passengers to assist in holding them down.

“Three, two, one, ignition.”

Outside the pressure hull a tremendous explosion rocked the
Garrison Lee
as one hundred and fifty solid fuel boosters flared to life at once. The
Lee
shook and then rocked in her cradle as the giant battleship dangerously rolled to starboard as the synchronization of the igniting rocket port boosters was off by 2.3 milliseconds. The men hung on as the
Lee
bounced several times, crushing the remaining support beams holding her in place.

*   *   *

Flames erupted all along the central line of midsection of the battleship as she strained against gravity to rise. On the command bridge the officers and men were being shaken as if a 12.0 earthquake had erupted under the ship.

“Gimbal main drive engines one to six to maximum down angle,” Commodore Freemantle said calmly into his headset and mic. “Maneuvering thrusters 150 degrees down angle, full power, gentlemen. Let’s see if the Martians knew how to fly!” That command was the only excitement they had ever heard from their stoic commander.

The added thrust of
Lee
’s six main engines coupled with her maneuvering jets pushed the
Garrison Lee
into a slow climb.

The power of the booster and the main engines melted ten million gallons of ice lining Poseidon’s Nest, instantaneously inundating the superstructure with a wall of water.

The
Lee
rose like a slow-moving airship as her boosters lifted her clear of her remaining support beams. As it did the thrust melted even these.

Still the enormous battleship rose majestically skyward as embedded cameras broadcast the images to the world as major networks were ordered from every capital on the planet to break in.

The HMS
Garrison Lee
broke through the remaining ice that clung tenaciously to the sides of the tunnel walls. Melting ice fell like Niagara as her engines burned and scorched steel support beams holding the walls intact, and still she rose.

The battleship shook and rocked as her bulk finally cleared the opening. Two of the hovering saucers were hit hard and bounced away as the
Lee
blasted into the open with brilliant sparkles of sunlight illuminating the thirty tons of ice crystals whose luminescence was excited by the combination of heat and color as the engines exploded her into the clear.

The world watched in awe as Operation Overlord became active and the
Garrison Lee
rose faster and faster into the brilliant blue sky, incinerating thousands of attacking Grays on the snow-covered ground.

The Earth trembled at the hybrid mix of Martian and Earth technology, and the idea advanced by a small alien in Arizona became reality.

Operation Overlord was going on the attack.

WALTER REED NATIONAL MILITARY MEDICAL CENTER

BETHESDA, MARYLAND

The president was propped up in bed. His eyes were both blackened and his head was still bandaged. Both arms had been broken and the casts were being held up by nylon lines that kept a tight traction on the arms and shoulders. The first lady was standing next to her husband and as they watched the
Garrison Lee
rise into the air, the water glass she was holding slowly tilted forward and water inundated the commander-in-chief. He didn’t notice as his lips were moving but nothing was coming out of his mouth.

Niles Compton was at the foot of his friend’s bed and Max Caulfield and Virginia Pollock were at each of the handles of the wheelchair, watching in awed silence as the scene from Antarctica was played out before them and six billion other citizens of the world. In an instant the military expenditures incurred by the major contributors to Overlord immediately explained the enormous bill for the project as every advanced technology made by every nation on Earth was utilized in the discovery, excavation, reverse engineering, and repair of the Martian technology that was 700 million years old.

It was two of the six Secret Service agents who voiced the hopes of the world as they simultaneously screamed encouragement as the stirring sight unfolded before them.

“Go, go, go!” they shouted, ignoring the flinching people around them.

Finally the man who had just awakened from a coma less than three hours before joined the men in their enthusiasm. He tried to swing his arms but only succeeded in knocking the rest of the water glass being held by his wife onto his head and he still didn’t notice; neither did the first lady.

As the
Lee
rose higher and higher, a chase plane from the USS
John C. Stennis,
an old Grumman A-6 Intruder, had to turn sharply out of the path of the largest object to ever move on land, sea, or air, but her cameras kept rolling. It was Niles Compton who saw the carnage on the ground as the Intruder’s cameras caught the scene as she straightened and accidentally showed a panoramic view of the battlefield beneath the
Garrison Lee.
He looked at the view of devastation as hundreds of burning and smashed armored vehicles were clearly seen below. Men of the 101st and 82nd Airborne and the German 23rd Panzer divisions were lying dead across the scorched field of ice. Aircraft from the Royal Navy and the remains of Hornets from the
Washington
and
Stennis
aircraft carriers were crushed and in flames where their sliced and smashed aluminum frames had impacted the ice.

Niles lowered his bandaged head as he realized it was his plan that had sent so many men and women to their deaths. Max Caulfield, ever the general who cared for his men, had seen the same devastation as Compton, and Virginia allowed her tears to flow for the first time without wiping them away. Niles was only seeing, within his deepest soul, the smiling faces of the friends he had sent into harm’s way—friends who could never be replaced. Caulfield squeezed Compton’s undamaged shoulder in sympathy because he knew exactly how the director felt. Virginia Pollock could no longer stay in the room and turned and left.

On the television screen the
Lee
burst through the thickened cumulus clouds and vanished.

THE PENTAGON

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Acting President Giles Camden realized that many of the soldiers who owed their allegiance to him were the loudest of all the officers in the situation room. He turned as the British-christened warship reached the sky and the cheers inside the room erupted in earnest. For show the president waved his official photographer over by whipping his head around. The man raised the camera and started taking shots as he stood on his high perch and placed his hands over his head and clasped them together and shook them like a prize fighter after a KO.

Daniel Peachtree watched the show put on by the president and knew that somehow he was to be blamed because the grand experiment had succeeded when he said it would fail and Camden had gone with his advice.

The military men who had been in the acting president’s camp earlier in the day were now stunned at the exhibition being put on by a man they knew had wished Overlord to fail; who had insisted it wasn’t real in the first place. As for Peachtree, he wanted to throttle the man because he wasn’t watching the rats leaving a sinking ship, he was actually pushing them off himself. It didn’t take long for many of the enlisted personnel to see the man above them behind the glass and they slowly lost their enthusiasm for cheering. Finally Peachtree stood and moved to the front and acted as if he were studying the situation boards. Since the awakening of the real commander-in-chief, not only had the two battle groups changed course and assisted in the battle in Antarctica, the
Nimitz
Battle Group in the Arabian Sea was steaming at flank speed toward the Indian coast. The man having his picture taken had yet to realize that he was no longer in charge. As he stepped to the glass he spoke out of the side of his mouth to get the fool to acknowledge the reality of what was happening.

“The president is giving orders from Walter Reed, if you hadn’t noticed.”

Camden nodded at the photographer and then turned around. “I am well aware of that, and that is why I have had you summon the chief justice and the attorney general.”

“Well, they’re meeting with
a
president, but it’s not you. My men tell me they’re currently inside the president’s suite of rooms, more than likely telling him the procedures for getting you out of his office.”

Camden lost a lot of the bravado he had been feeling just a moment before.

“Either that or he’s asking for arrest warrants for a few men that seem to have been at odds with their oaths of office.”

“What are you saying?”

Peachtree wanted to turn and shake the fool out of his dreamlike slowness. Finally he turned and faced him directly as many eyes turned their way.

“This is not about hanging onto power any longer, it’s about what prison they send us to after that power is yanked right out of your hands. We have to stop everything right now and put an end to…” he stopped for a moment and lowered his voice to a hard whisper, “Recall the Black Team and immediately eliminate Vickers—he’s the only one that has more than just innuendo and rumor on us. He has knowledge that can hang both of us, and not just about technology buying and selling. Other things.”

“Well, we had already decided that, so what?” Camden said, still not fully grasping the situation. “When he goes, the problem goes.”

Peachtree gave up and walked out of the situation room.

*   *   *

The moment he was outside in the grassy area between the E ring and the glass doors of the D, he pulled his cell phone out and hit one number.

“Yes?” came the cold voice.

“Mission cancelled. Eliminate the problem that you have currently in your possession.”

“It looked like the asset wasn’t going to utilize this out-of-the-way facility anyway, and the other problem is right in front of me at the moment.”

“Also, after you finish, lay low for a while, a long while. Your payment has been deposited in your regular account.”

Peachtree didn’t wait for a response. He closed the cell phone and then looked over at the two Marines standing guard by the glass doors. For some strange reason it seemed as if the two men knew what sort of man he had become, like they could see his very thoughts. He decided that he would return to his office and await the fate that had been destined for him since he first threw in with the likes of the former Speaker of the House.

This particular rat was on the gunnels of the ship and he was seriously thinking about jumping.

CAMP ALAMO

ANTARCTICA

Poseidon’s Nest was now completely destroyed. The HMS
Garrison Lee
and her powerful booster rockets, coupled with her ion drive engines, had completely melted the entirety of the ancient inland sea. As the command group, Sir Darcy Bennett, admirals Kinkaid and Huffington, and Lord Durnsford watched from monitors inside the defense zone created by the SAS, the tremendous heat had caused the largest cave-in in world history. Water heated by the ion drive had created waterfalls that cascaded back into the light green, blue, and white void that once was the birthplace of the
Lee.

All eyes went to the surface cameras and they knew immediately that the Grays had not taken too kindly to their destruction of their landing force and were even now landing two of their saucers to eliminate any further threat from the site. Camp Alamo, however, was buried so deep not even their powerful lasing systems could strike at them.

“Well, gentlemen, it seems our little secret is out and the landlord has come to evict us.” Lord Durnsford stood from his chair and walked closer to the nearest monitor. “How far out is the remaining Royal and U.S. Marine force from the
George Washington
and the
Stennis
?”

Admiral Kinkaid looked at his watch and then frowned. It was Huffington who answered.

“It seems we will be getting our hands dirty before they arrive.”

“Oh, Lord,” Sir Darcy said as he too stood and watched the embedded monitors that showed the battlefield high above their heads. “There are men still alive out there.”

As all eyes went to the many screens around the command center they saw boys being rounded up by the advancing Grays. Men no older than these gentlemen’s grandsons were being pushed and prodded toward the waiting saucers as thousands of Grays were rounding up the survivors of General Collins’s defensive forces, and from what they could see there were far more survivors than the men ever thought possible.