They had waited while the evacuation proceeded, following Hudro’s crazy plan. With an attack expected at any time, Powell had set a time limit, after which the safety of the aircraft would have to come first. They would leave and endeavor to make contact with the others again later, somehow. Despite his sickening visions of being parted from Marie yet again, Cade had been unable to argue. Gerofsky reached them on radio minutes before the deadline was up. Now, all they had to do was find him.
“Okay, we’re airborne, turning your way,” Powell said into his mike. “Keeping it down, just above stalling. Let us know when you have visual.”
“Jesus, it’s a mess down there,” Koyne said, craning on the other side of the cockpit. “Whatever happened up front? They’re streaming back everywhere.” Cade stared down. How could the confidence that had been everywhere this morning have degenerated to this in one day? Hudro looked out sadly, shook his head, and said nothing.
They took a slow, winding course, banking to sweep left and right. Suddenly, Powell announced, “They’ve got us!” Then, into his mike, “Roger, Major. I read you. Turning as directed. . . . Yes, I see a ridge with a track. Okay, got it. . . . I’m going to have to go around again and line up. . . .”
It was a bone-shaking landing, but they made it. Nyarl climbed in first, still with his camera. Marie followed, and then Gerofsky. With them were three young, frightened soldiers they had run into on the way. Powell took them aboard.
Marie collapsed into Cade’s arms before the plane had even commenced its run. She was pale and gaunt, with a look in her eyes that Cade had never seen before—the kind of look that might never completely go away. He looked at her and shook his head uncomprehendingly, not sure what to say. She leaned her head against his shoulder for what seemed a long time. “Oh God, Roland,” she managed finally. “It was horrible. I thought I was tougher than this by now. . . . This has become insane.”
“Was always insane,” Hudro said neutrally from his seat farther back.
Cade pulled her close and pressed her head against him. “We don’t split up again,” he told her. “Through whatever happens, wherever it leads. We’re together until the end now.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
THEY FLEW WEST INTO THE NIGHT, heading north of Tulsa toward what had seemed to be a major staging area. Koyne reported air activity in the vicinity and registered numerous radar contacts. There were many fires along the route: some isolated and confined, suggesting burning vehicles or downed planes; others covering whole areas. In one place a sizable town looked to be ablaze from end to end. With the navigation aids disrupted, it was difficult to say exactly where it was.
The snippets coming in over the radio were garbled and panicky. A Union spearhead was already halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City, with another thrusting north along the Mississippi valley and threatening a massive left hook at Chicago, which would cut off the Federation armies that had advanced into Indiana and Illinois—assuming they hadn’t been annihilated already. To the south they were reported to be near Shreveport, and the Dallas area was under attack. Gerofsky shook his head in bewilderment as Nyarl read off the details. “How is it possible? Under combat conditions? Nothing could move that fast.”
“I tell you, you don’t have mobility,” Hudro said. “They don’t move like you think. Hyadeans unroll carpet from sky.” Twenty minutes later, Nyarl proved it with a shot he had received from somewhere along the Missouri valley, of Union armor emerging from huge, lumpy, gray vessels, looking like wedge-shaped landing craft, that had descended from the sky. “They’re the size of battleships!” a commentator’s terrified voice jabbered. “The defense is just coming apart! We’ve got a total rout on our hands here.”
There were some heroics to record. West of St. Louis, a Federation Ranger force drew a detachment of Hyadean ground troops that had been landed on a flank into a classic ambush with pre-targeted mortars and prepared mines, and wiped them out. A pair of aging F-15s destroyed one of the flying pyramid-fortresses at Texarkana—and Nyarl got a clip of it. But the overall picture was grim. But still there seemed to be no word from Sacramento to call it off. Gerofsky’s guess was that events had happened so quickly, and communications were in such chaos, that nobody there had grasped the enormity of what was going on.