The Eye of Moloch

Chapter 56

Though the aircraft was shot full of holes and whistling like a sieve, no one inside had been struck by any of the bullets that had passed through the outer skin. And, as the Rocky Mountains were behind them and theirs was now the only plane aloft in the entirety of U.S. airspace, the odds of a midair collision seemed nil. These were the only two bits of reassuring news that Noah Gardner could come up with at the moment.

The instant they’d broken ground they’d been picked up on radar and the tower had ordered them to land immediately. Bill McCord was known to the controllers at Centennial and at first he’d responded with a vague tale of a medical emergency on board the plane. That dodge didn’t hold up for very long; the familiar, concerned voices in their headsets were soon replaced by others. As the climb-out continued toward cruising altitude the firm orders coming over the radio escalated rapidly to warnings, and then to threats. The commander at Buckley Air Force Base, having earlier brought his forces to their highest level of alert, was already in the process of sending up four fighters to intercept them, and if necessary, to bring them down.

“We’ve got three choices now,” McCord said, “and none of them are great.” He punched a button and the urgent chatter on the radio went quiet. “We can land now and get arrested, we can keep doing what we’re doing and get shot down, or we can try to evade the pursuit and run.”

“Run? How can we outrun an F-16?”

“We can’t, but we can go where they’d have a hell of a hard time trying to follow us.”

Noah looked his pilot over. The man was gray as a ghost and already breathing hard from even the initial ordeal he’d already been through; who could tell how he might fare against what could lay ahead?

“Are you all right, Bill?”

“I’ve been better. Now go and see what your friends want to do.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back.”

“And I’ll be right here.”

Before he even asked them he’d already known what Molly’s answer would be. She was bound for Pennsylvania, come what may. Ellen didn’t put up a fight; she seemed stoically resigned at this point to whatever gruesome death the fates might bring. But Noah also had another concern to share with her.

He bent to her ear and said, “Doctor, I think after this next part you need to come up and have a look at Mr. McCord.”

“Why not right now?”

“Because if we take his mind off his business right now we might not get to the next part at all.”

As Noah strapped himself into his seat again he told Bill McCord that they’d decided not to surrender, but to press on. The man nodded, and then he pointed out the altimeter on the control panel and carefully explained how to read it.

“We’re going down to the deck pretty soon and I’m going to have my hands full and my eyes straight ahead. When that needle starts to drop I want you to call out every thousand feet and then do the same in hundreds toward the end. Got it?”

“Got it. So we’re at almost ten thousand feet right now, and I’ll call out every thousand on the way down.”

“And then hundreds, below two thousand. That’s what I need.”

With that understood the pilot put the plane into a shallow bank to the right. When he leveled off again the compass read due east and there was a solid wall of churning black clouds dead ahead, a massive curtain drawn across the sky that towered from the surface up higher into the heavens than the eye could see.

“We’re not going that way,” Noah said.

“Pennsylvania’s that way.”

“We’re going into the storm?”

“That weather will blot us out on the radar, and if they actually follow us in, with any luck those jets’ll be looking for us up high while we’re running down low.”

“What do you mean, if they follow us?”

“You’ve gotta be real smart to be a fighter pilot”—McCord nodded ahead—“and a man would have to be dumb as a bag of hammers to fly into that.”

The plane shook violently as a pair of shock waves pounded against the outer hull. Two jets had come from behind and streaked past on either side, so fast that it looked like the old C-60 was standing still. Before they reached the approaching storm front the fighters peeled off in opposite directions, heading around in wide arcs that would ultimately bring them into position for another warning pass, or for an easy kill.

Bill McCord hit more switches. The navigation lights and strobes outside went dark, as did all interior lights except for the dim glow from the dials in the control panel.

“Cinch up your seat belts!” McCord shouted behind. “This is going to get pretty rough!”

Seconds later the windshield went completely gray as they breached the wall of the storm. The craft lurched suddenly upward; it felt like an elevator shooting to the top floor ten times too fast, only to be dropped again into a plummeting dive to a level far below where they’d started. Noah had his eyes glued to the altimeter and he watched as the needles fought to keep up with the rapid, random changes.

“Grab on to the yoke,” McCord said. There was a duplicate set of controls in front of the right-hand seat. “Don’t add or take away from what you feel me trying to do. I just want you to be ready to give me a little more strength if I need it.”

“Okay.” As he took his grip Noah could feel the violence of the weather tearing at the control surfaces outside, but also there, in answer, were the sure and steady responses from the man right beside him.

“Here we go,” McCord said.

The yoke pushed slightly forward. With no horizon or any other visual reference out the windows, there was only a gradually building press of acceleration and the counterclockwise wheeling of the altimeter to tell them they were now descending.

“Eight thousand feet,” Noah said.

The plane was buffeted by a rapid series of powerful forces, some rocking them to the side, others lifting, others punching down from above. Three of the bullet holes in the front windshield suddenly joined as a whitened crack snapped between them.

“Seven thousand,” Noah said, and only seconds later he had to call out again. “Six!”

He felt the forward pressure on the yoke begin to ease and then pull back. “Five thousand.” Their rate of descent was barely slowing at all.

“Give me a hand!” McCord shouted.

Together they pulled back as one, and Noah watched as the altimeter responded, but only sluggishly. A sudden burst of hailstones hit them all at once and then was gone.

“Four thousand feet.” A blinding flash of light illuminated the clouds outside as a crack of nearby thunder reverberated through the interior. The yoke was fighting them both and it seemed the storm was intent on pushing its foolish intruders all the way to the ground.

“Twenty-five hundred!” Noah shouted, having missed the previous mark by a second or two. “Two thousand!”

There was another bright flash outside and for the first time since they’d taken off he could see the earth down below. He’d begun by then to call out the altitude in hundred-foot increments.

“Thirteen hundred. Twelve hundred. Eleven hundred . . . one thousand . . .” The descent was slowing at last, and Noah could feel the press of the Gs shifting as the plane finally passed through the bottom of a leveling curve. “Nine hundred,” he said, and after a few seconds more added, “and holding steady there.”