“Darn it, look at that!” Powell exclaimed suddenly, at the same time banking the plane sharply to port.
“What is it?” Gerofsky called from behind Cade.
Koyne half turned his head, keeping his eyes on the outside. “Tracer coming up. Friendly fire.”
“I guess there must be a lot of trigger-happy people down there tonight,” Powell growled.
“Let’s hope they’re nervous enough not to shoot straight,” Marie said. Even as she spoke, a series of flak bursts lit up ahead.
Powell throttled up and went into a tight, diving, starboard turn. “This is getting serious,” he muttered. Moments later, there was an explosion outside close enough to light up the inside of the cabin, and the plane shuddered under a hail of impacting fragments. Wind whipped through the cabin from a rent in the skin somewhere. Powell straightened out but held the dive, shedding altitude for ground cover. Something was beeping up front. From where he was sitting, Cade could see alarm indicators flashing and lighting up all over the instrument panel. Powell and Koyne went into an emergency check routine. “Losing fuel on one engine,” Powell called. “We’re going down. Be ready for fire.” Behind him, Davis broke out an extinguisher from a bulkhead rack. Marie found another at the rear of the cabin. Powell switched to emergency band and began sending out Mayday messages for a landing ground.
They found haven at a airstrip that was being used for night operations. A young Officer of the Watch who met them informed them they were twenty miles southeast of Wichita. The strip’s combat aircraft were being evacuated before dawn; then it would be handling ambulance flights for as long as possible. Apart from that, he didn’t know too much except that things seemed to be a mess everywhere. He sounded as if he was from New York.
The three soldiers that the C22-E had picked up left to find a unit to attach themselves to. While Powell and Davis began checking over the damage to the airplane, the others shared a beef stew supper with a maintenance crew in an Air Force trailer. Afterward, Gerofsky and Hudro borrowed a jeep and drove off in the direction of Wichita to seek news at the headquarters of an armored corps stationed in the area. A little over an hour later, a corporal from the signals unit serving the airstrip telephoned the trailer to report that he had Gerofsky on another channel with a data connection open, and could Nyarl get over with the material to be transmitted? Cade and Marie went with Nyarl to the sandbagged dugout that the CO’s staff and signals unit were occupying, close to the airstrip’s few buildings. Gerofsky had a landline connection to the Southern California Military Command in Los Angeles, and from there had succeeded in getting through to the Catacombs. So, finally, they were able to send through the recordings that had been accumulating. Yassem and Vrel were at the other end. Having spoken with Hudro and Gerofsky already, they had recovered by now from their anxiety at hearing nothing for two days.
They still had the link to Cairns, but it would be six or seven hours before Cairns would be able to link with the Querl. The unpublicized news from Beijing, obtained via Di Milestro’s line from Sacramento, was even more alarming than what had happened in the previous forty-eight hours in the Midwest. A Chinese nuclear antisatellite missile had knocked out a major Hyadean vessel in orbit, and the Hyadeans were retaliating against military targets on the Asian mainland. Nothing of the kind had been heard in Australia. The entire global situation was unstable. Collapse into universal catastrophe seemed only a matter of time.
“I don’t understand it,” Cade said to Yassem and Vrel. “Why isn’t Jeye doing anything to restrain them—after what’s happened here? He must know it’s all over.”
“But that’s the problem,” Yassem said. “I don’t think they do know. It’s as Major Gerofsky feared. They’re still talking about a decisive struggle going on along the Mississippi valley—as if they still think they really can be in Washington in days. None of the advisers there understands how fast Hyadeans can move. They’ve lost touch with the real world.”