twilight, swinging this way, and that, to finally start directly for the fishing boat.
With a growing feeling of dread, a woman grabbed her two children and dove over the side of the vessel. Dropping a book, a thin man began throwing small children overboard as fast as he could, then everybody scrambled to get off the deck, fueled more by family loyalty than fear.
The last man clumsily dove over the stern to belly flop loudly in the salty water a split second before the stealth missile slammed into the boat. The wooden hull shattered into pieces as it came out the other side, and then exploded, the ancient wood just barely offering enough resistance to trigger the warhead.
The chemical hellstorm filled the area, illuminated the ocean for miles, the blast smashing the Allendale into kindling and slamming the assorted swimmers deep underwater. But only a few moments later they bobbed to the surface again, coughing and spitting, treading water furiously.
“Grandpa, how...how did you know?” a man asked, his hair plastered flat onto his head.
But the old man merely shook his head in reply, already starting the arduous journey back to shore. There were no sharks, or barracudas in the area, so with some luck his family would reach the shore alive. However, he couldn’t say the same thing for whomever that swarm of military gunships was after. God help them all, he thought, the poor bastards.
Cape Canaveral, Florida
W HENEVER NASA HAD A ROCKET on the launch pad, they guarded it with a staggering display of physical defenses. A dozen Navy warships encircled the launch facility, and the sky overhead was full of Air Force jetfighters, chasing away the curious and ready to strike with lethal force any more determined advance. Navy submarines patrolled the deep waters, radar filled the sky, sonar probed the sea, and NORAD satellites watched everything from high in orbit. The cost of this military “ring of steel” was staggering, but deemed well worth it.
At any other time of the year, NASA and the sprawling launch facility used only standard security protocols established for any government facility in an effort to save the taxpayers some money. That was deemed prudent and cost-effective by the politicians, scientists and anybody who wasn’t trained in military tactics or security.
Following a modified version of the old Japanese plan of attack on Pearl Harbor, the forces of Daylight swept in from the west, maintaining tight formation, flying below the radar, and destroying any vessel they encountered in the open water. A dozen assorted boats were sunk with long-range heatseekers to remove any chance of advance warning to NASA. The Apaches were the fastest craft, so they hung back in the rear, and let the slower Cobras take the lead, with the armed Black Hawks maintaining a cluster formation in the middle, especially the one medical Black Hawk. That was assigned as their command ship, and contained Dalton Greene.
Bent over a table covered with maps and satellite photographs, the Australian billionaire was directing the mission using the one form of communication that couldn’t be effectively blocked—a Gertrude.
Everybody in the civilized world knew how submarines used a sonar “ping” to locate obstructions underwater. Fewer people had any idea that sonar would be modified into a form of underwater transmitter that somewhere along the way had gotten the odd nickname of Gertrude, original source unknown.
It broadcast a powerful pulse into the water, one that everybody and anybody within range could hear, which rendered it useless for general combat. There had been numerous attempts to scramble the pulses that never seemed to work because of countless technical difficulties. Encoded underwater transmissions weren’t possible, only general broadcasts, which the Navy strongly disliked. Even in times of peace, one submarine commander chatting with another could reveal far too much valuable information to non-Navy listeners. So the practice was strongly discouraged. When the commanders wanted to talk, they would “ping” each other, then rise to the surface and use more conventional forms of communications.
However, Greene had spent years laying plans for these attacks. The initial sortie on NASA was crucial, and after spending millions on experiments, his scientists had finally managed to shift the operational frequency of a Gertrude into the ultrasonic range, where nobody could hear it but dogs. And since one hundred percent of all airplanes, even seaplanes, didn’t have sonar receivers, nobody else in the air could even receive the transmission, much less understand. The failed form of underwater communications had proved highly successful in the lab. But only between helicopters in close-quarter combat. Airplanes and jetfighters simply made too much noise.
Those were the first obstacles to overcome today.
A self-made millionaire, Dalton Greene had been born in South Africa. When the white regime fell and Nelson Mandela took over, a disgusted Greene fled to Australia.
But now, swarms of immigrants were flooding into his adopted homeland, and Greene knew that soon it would became a nation of mongrels—just like South Africa. In a desperate effort to stop the influx of immigrants, Greene decided to liquidate his vast financial holdings and save Australia from the unwanted invasion in the only way possible—by starting a new world war.
Radiating a broad spectrum of radio, radar and cellular telephone jammers, the armada of stolen helicopters separated into groups. The forces of Daylight attacked from five directions, with Greene steadily issuing commands over the modified Gertrude.
Coming in from the west, the first salvo of missiles from Alpha Wing was sent arching over the horizon long before the American space base even came into view. The guided missiles matched the terrain below to the maps in their computers, and dove for the kill.
At the first indication of jamming, the local Air Force base assigned to protect NASA scrambled a full wing of Hornets, and the jets were just taxiing along the runway when the missiles arrived to slam into the tarmac and unleash a tidal wave of napalm.
The jetfighters were drenched by the sticky compound, and dripping flame. The pilots first tried to extinguish the hellish blaze by going faster, but that only seemed to feed the fire, making it hotter, the fuselage of the Hornets starting to soften in spots, the temperature gauges registering off the dial. With no other choice, the pilots decided to eject—only to realize that they were dangerously close to the civilian territory: homes, schools and hospitals.
Trapped between duty and honor, the grim Air Force pilots made the hard choice, and directed their melting jetfighters toward the open sea. Not one of them made it there.
Only moments later, the SAM bunkers assigned to protect the space facility cut loose with multiple salvos. But, designed to stop incoming missiles and enemy planes, the heatseekers went completely out of control at the wall of napalm, and streaked down to crash into the burning tarmac, removing any possibility of additional jetfighters attempting to take off.
“This is Zed Commander. Take out the helicopter hangar and fuel depot!” Greene commanded, moving small figures across the map. “Bravo Wing, go-go-go!”
Flashing across Coco Beach, Bravo Wing easily located the city power station and took it out with a single concentrated salvo. Then, following the high-tension powerlines, they systematically destroyed each substation encountered until the electric grid for Florida collapsed and half of the state went dark.
Right on cue, dozens of computer hackers across the world began flooding the internet with conflicting message about what was happening, blocking any possible attempt by the National Guard or the police to coordinate local defenses using bleep transmissions, or even email. Pretending to be trapped victims, the hackers claimed there were Cuban warships hitting Miami harbor, al-Qaeda overwhelming Tallahassee, and suicide bombers killing everybody at all of the larger amusement parks.
