made' .. the rest was ripped away."
"Good God. almighty," muttered Gerald Anthony, reaching into the breast pocket of his Trench military fatigues and pulling up a scrap of a wrinkled note.
"I did the same damn thing. I found this in JAger's chapel, at the foot of an altar that shouldn't be there.
Since then I've looked at it every once in a while, trying to figure out the handwriting. I did, and it fits with Mrs. de Vries's information.
These are the words: "Aus Stoff und Holz," that's 'of cloth and wood."
""Aircraft made of cloth and wood," said De Vries.
"Gliders," added Latham quietly.
"Gliders."
"Arritez!" cried the radar specialist, breaking off the conversation.
"The aircraft have reentered our space! They are within forty kilometers of the water!"
"Prepare to activate the missiles!" shouted the general's son into a third telephone..
London. Zero hour minus three minutes ten seconds.
"Unidentified aircraft reappearing on screen! Direction, Code Intolerable!"
Washington, D.C. Zero hour minus two minutes forty nine seconds.
"Son of a bitch! The unknowns are back and heading our way!"
Beauvais. Zero hour minus two minutes twenty-eigbt seconds.
"Scramble military aircraft everywhere!" roared Latham.
"Get that to London and Washington!"
"But the missiles," cried the general's son.
"Blast them off!"
"Then why the fighter planes?"
"For what the missiles don't get! Inform London and Washington.
Do it!"
"It is done."
In the dark skies above Beauvais, London, and Washington, the computerized neo-Nazi jets swept down toward their respective fields, their tail hooks released for the final approach.
"Fire rockets!"
"Fire rockets!"
"Fire rockets!"
Below, in three stretches of cut grass, there were instant explosions ballistic fire below the wings of all six Messerschmitt cargo gliders. Each reached a pre released ground thrust of four hundred miles an hour as the jets raced above them, their hooks grappling the cables, the huge gliders instantaneously matching the acceleration of their lifting crafts. Within seconds all were airborne, and at barely a hundred feet the underside rockets were released into the fields. Unencumbered, the gliders above London, Beauvais, and Georgetown were pulled to the prescribed, computerized altitude of twenty-seven hundred feet. The cables were snapped, the gliders free to begin their circling descents to the targets.
Suddenly, at higher altitudes, the skies were lit up like compressed bolts of lightning as the jets were blown out of the air, each exploding in erratic splashes of fire. Yet below, each glider pilot, aided by his own computers, knew his mission well. Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer!
Beauvais. Zero hour.
"We've got them!" yelled the general as the splotches of white appeared on the radar screen.
"They're utterly destroyed. We've beat Water Lightning!"
"London and Washington agree!" shouted the major.
"The results were the same. We have won!"
"No, you haven't!" roared Drew.
"Look at the radar grids! Those explosions took place thousands of feet above the initial entry level.
Look at them! Tell London and Washington to do the same.. .. Now look below at those far less visible, skeleton like images. Look.
They're the gliders! "
"Oh, my God!" said Captain Dietz.
"Jeezus!" exclaimed Lieutenant Anthony.
"What do you estimate the altitude, Mr. Radar?"
"I can more than estimate, monsieur. Those 'images' are between eighteen and nineteen hundred feet. They rotate in slow, descending, wide circles of between three and four hundred feet-"
"Why would they do that, Radar Man?"
"One must presume for accuracy."
"How about the time to touch down? Can you give us a figure?"
"The winds change, so here I will estimate. Between four and six minutes."
"That's four or six hours in jet time. Major, alert London and D.C. and tell them to get their fighter planes to circle the perimeters of the reservoirs starting at fifteen hundred feet! Yours too. Now!"
"If they are there, we I will shoot them out of existence," said the general's son, picking up his red telephone.
"Are you crazy?" screamed Latham.
"Those aircraft are loaded with poison, probably liquid, and the casings will self-destruct instantly when they hit water or land Maneuver the fighters so their jet streams blow the gliders off course, into unpopulated areas, fields or woods, but for Christ's sake, not where there are people.
So instruct Washington and London!"
"Yes, of course. Understood, monsieur. I have both on a combined line."
The next few minutes were like waiting for mass slaughter, everyone present a part of that mass. All eyes were on the radar screen, when suddenly the skeletal images veered in different directions, violently to the left and the right, away from the target zone, the Beauvais reservoir.
"Check London," said Drew, "check Washington."
"They're on the line now," replied the major.
"They're experiencing precisely what we have experienced. The gliders have been blown away from the water reserves,