fire from its nose, hitting not only the first truck, but the giant towering rocks on either side of the pass as well. This created an avalanche, with two large boulders tumbling down, crushing the truck, and immediately blocking the road.
At the same time, one mile away, the end of the column was just entering the mesa pass road. A similar two-prop aircraft suddenly appeared and did the same thing. It fired barrages at the cliffs on both sides of the pass, triggering another landslide and sealing off any means of retreat.
Now every vehicle in the column hit its brakes, and the parade of troop trucks ground to a halt.
That’s when the two old two-prop planes were joined overhead by four more, plus the accursed silver jet.
They peeled out of the sky in a very systematic fashion, the six B-25s and the gleaming Sabre, firing nose cannons, machine guns, and rockets. There were also gunners at the side doors of the Mitchells, firing twin fifties down on the hapless column.
It was like the Road to Basra. There was nowhere the AMC soldiers could run, nowhere they could hide. Back and forth, amid the tracers, the huge explosions, the sound of the loud propellers fighting their way through all the smoke, and the scream of the Sabre’s jet engine, it took less than fifteen minutes for Hunter and the B-25s to destroy the AMC column and just about everyone in it.
But as Hunter flew one way and the Mitchells the other, he knew it wouldn’t be that easy again.
Chapter 19
T HE SURVIVING AMC anti-aircraft units at Nellis were just coming back online when the mysterious silver jet appeared again.
It came in extremely low, just like the time before, flying under the radar net but making a lot of noise.
No sooner had it arrived than the ADS units opened up. Missiles, AA guns, automatic-weapons fire from the hundreds of base personnel who’d been armed after the first devastating attack. Even the personnel fighting the raging fuel dump fire were armed and shooting at the intruder.
The night was lit up like Baghdad, but somehow the jet made it through the firestorm—and then … disappeared.
Only a few people at the base saw what actually happened. After passing over the main runway, the jet made a sharp right hand bank and flew directly into the entrance of the underground highway.
And as improbable as it sounded, the jet was now flying inside the huge, hollowed-out thoroughfare.
There might be a time, Hunter realized, when he would just run out of ideas and not be able to come up with a great plan when he needed one. The question was: Would he know it ahead of time? Or would he learn that lesson the hard way, through catastrophe—or even mortal failure?
These thoughts were running through his mind as he simultaneously wondered if S4’s underground highway had been built arrow straight or with some curves.
He believed it was straight and his reasoning was simple: whoever constructed the massive subterranean roadway wouldn’t have needed to build in any curves or dips. This was the desert. The desert was mostly sand. They just had to tunnel under everything. Right? Because, if not, and he came to a curve or a turn, it would be curtains for him.
And he had another problem. He didn’t know where the other end of the underground highway was. He was sure he wasn’t flying in a closed system. He could tell he was moving against moving air, which would not be the case if the roadway had a dead end at its terminus. Of course, complicating all this deep thinking, he was flying at more than five hundred miles per hour in a relatively confined space.
That’s why just a few seconds into his extreme and possibly harebrained scheme, he thought, “I don’t think I’ve done this before.”
He radioed St. Louis, amazed that he could get through. His old friend could barely talk after Hunter told him what he was doing. But Hunter asked him only to relay some information to the FCSF people trapped inside S4, gave him his position,
At the same time, one mile away, the end of the column was just entering the mesa pass road. A similar two-prop aircraft suddenly appeared and did the same thing. It fired barrages at the cliffs on both sides of the pass, triggering another landslide and sealing off any means of retreat.
Now every vehicle in the column hit its brakes, and the parade of troop trucks ground to a halt.
That’s when the two old two-prop planes were joined overhead by four more, plus the accursed silver jet.
They peeled out of the sky in a very systematic fashion, the six B-25s and the gleaming Sabre, firing nose cannons, machine guns, and rockets. There were also gunners at the side doors of the Mitchells, firing twin fifties down on the hapless column.
It was like the Road to Basra. There was nowhere the AMC soldiers could run, nowhere they could hide. Back and forth, amid the tracers, the huge explosions, the sound of the loud propellers fighting their way through all the smoke, and the scream of the Sabre’s jet engine, it took less than fifteen minutes for Hunter and the B-25s to destroy the AMC column and just about everyone in it.
But as Hunter flew one way and the Mitchells the other, he knew it wouldn’t be that easy again.
Chapter 19
T HE SURVIVING AMC anti-aircraft units at Nellis were just coming back online when the mysterious silver jet appeared again.
It came in extremely low, just like the time before, flying under the radar net but making a lot of noise.
No sooner had it arrived than the ADS units opened up. Missiles, AA guns, automatic-weapons fire from the hundreds of base personnel who’d been armed after the first devastating attack. Even the personnel fighting the raging fuel dump fire were armed and shooting at the intruder.
The night was lit up like Baghdad, but somehow the jet made it through the firestorm—and then … disappeared.
Only a few people at the base saw what actually happened. After passing over the main runway, the jet made a sharp right hand bank and flew directly into the entrance of the underground highway.
And as improbable as it sounded, the jet was now flying inside the huge, hollowed-out thoroughfare.
There might be a time, Hunter realized, when he would just run out of ideas and not be able to come up with a great plan when he needed one. The question was: Would he know it ahead of time? Or would he learn that lesson the hard way, through catastrophe—or even mortal failure?
These thoughts were running through his mind as he simultaneously wondered if S4’s underground highway had been built arrow straight or with some curves.
He believed it was straight and his reasoning was simple: whoever constructed the massive subterranean roadway wouldn’t have needed to build in any curves or dips. This was the desert. The desert was mostly sand. They just had to tunnel under everything. Right? Because, if not, and he came to a curve or a turn, it would be curtains for him.
And he had another problem. He didn’t know where the other end of the underground highway was. He was sure he wasn’t flying in a closed system. He could tell he was moving against moving air, which would not be the case if the roadway had a dead end at its terminus. Of course, complicating all this deep thinking, he was flying at more than five hundred miles per hour in a relatively confined space.
That’s why just a few seconds into his extreme and possibly harebrained scheme, he thought, “I don’t think I’ve done this before.”
He radioed St. Louis, amazed that he could get through. His old friend could barely talk after Hunter told him what he was doing. But Hunter asked him only to relay some information to the FCSF people trapped inside S4, gave him his position,
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