Ghostrider - M. L. Buchman Page 0,81

doing. That somehow he’d screw up. Then JJ’s stolen plane would kill them, and it would all be his fault.

But they weren’t going to fight back.

That meant they were going to live. The only challenge now was to cripple but not kill the other plane.

“Damn,” Rosa said softly. “Their laser operator is awfully good. Look at the precision of those hits. All against physical rather than human targets.”

“That would be our Jeremy,” Holly announced happily.

“Where did he train?” Pierre asked as he prepared his weapons for the attack.

General Gray answered. “The first time he ever sat at a console was at Andrews Air Force Base. By the time we exited the plane, perhaps twenty minutes later, he was demonstrating the challenges of inverted firing tactics.”

Pierre glanced up at Rosa. She hadn’t shown him any of those. By her look, she’d never thought to try one.

He supposed it was always good to know when to be a little humbled. Her look of chagrin said the same. It had been a very humbling day in many ways—Rosa the greatest among those.

“How long until you’re in firing range, Master Sergeant?”

He turned to General Gray. “We’re just there now, ma’am.”

She took a deep breath, stared hard at her bright blue ring for a moment.

The future. There was going to be a future.

In that case, he’d have to get Rosa a nice ring. But not Air Force blue. Nor would any stone match her dark eyes; so he’d make it a diamond to shine light in them. And then they’d find a way to serve way below the radar.

“Master Sergeant,” the general’s voice was steady when she looked up from her ring. “Fire at will.”

With the stolen Ghostrider’s port wing pointed steeply down at the targeted mansion, the sensor ball on the left side of their fuselage was aimed nearly straight down. He instructed the pilots to make a high-speed dive and zoom-climb pass, dipping only momentarily low enough to target only the highly sensitive sensor array.

He narrowed the beam as tightly as possible.

At the bottom of the dive, he fired.

65

Their screens fuzzed for one long second, then blanked all at once. Only the sight camera on the howitzer’s barrel remained operative. A far less effective system.

“Continue firing,” JJ called over the intercom.

Taz did the best she could with the crippled system.

“Release bombs.”

Jeremy had trained her how to pre-align those so that she wouldn’t have to think about them during an attack, just release them.

She checked that the pilot was still maintaining his pylon turn so that the port wing was aimed at the center of the target.

He was.

Taz knew it was their last drop, so she didn’t attempt to conserve anything. She released everything that remained. Sixteen bombs—four thousand pounds of explosives—launched off the tail. The mansion had covered more than an acre.

More by luck than design, all of the bombs landed inside the compound walls. Everything was obliterated.

She continued firing the big howitzer into the devastation as fast as the crew could load it. It was their last target—ever.

“One last round,” the gun crew called.

“Thank you, everyone. Due north, please.” JJ announced over the intercom.

“Why north?” Jeremy asked quickly as the deck leveled.

“He’s taking you back home to the US. And removing this plane from potential capture by any foreign agency. Even an ally like Mexico. The border isn’t far.”

When the light went green, she aimed at the trailing fire. Just before she punched the Fire button to send the final round down into the conflagration where it could make no possible difference, the screen flared and blanked.

“What the—” Taz tried to stop the motion of her finger, but didn’t quite manage it.

66

“Massive explosion on the port side,” Pierre announced. “We have a massive explosion on the port side of the target Ghostrider.”

“What the hell did you do?” Someone shouted at him. Holly?

“I fired the laser at the barrel of the M102 howitzer as we agreed. My goal was to take out the sight camera along the barrel.”

“How hot would the barrel have become?” Miranda asked in the strangely analytical way that told him what had happened.

“They were already firing at the gun’s maximum rate. If they fired a round into a hot barrel at the same moment I was heating it with the laser… The round must have exploded as it was leaving the breech.”

“Flames now,” Rosa pointed.

“Oh shit!” Pierre could only watch in horror. “They’ve got a real fire over there. A bad one.”

67

“Go. Now!” Taz shoved the two parachutes she’d