"You haven't missed a beat--same old song and dance, outnumbered and outgunned," Carl said as he fired two rounds into the dark, then risked a look back at the colonel. "Welcome home, Jack," he said with a smirk.

The air suddenly filled with a loud buzzing. The sound was almost recognizable as a V-22 Osprey, but the engine noise was different; it had more of a whine to it.

"Are the marines landing here at Nellis?" Mendenhall asked as he fired, emptying his weapon.

"I hope it's them," Ryan said just as his gun jammed.

Without warning, the hangar's interior lights were turned on and alarms started sounding. They could see close to fifty men inside as they suddenly tossed off goggles and held their hands to their eyes in the brightness of the floodlights.

"Well, someone back in the complex finally woke the hell up," Will said, pushing in another clip of ammunition.

Collins reached out, took a set of binoculars from the case of the camouflaged security man, brought them to his eyes, and rose up above the protection of the helicopter.

"Damn, I count over forty, no, fifty-plus bad guys ... and ... no, wait ... cease-fire.... cease-fire, damn it!" Jack called out. "They have hostages! What in the hell is happening here? Damn, they have the director."

Everett pulled the glasses from Jack and looked inside.

"Alice, the senator, Niles, Virginia--" he called out, and then he became silent, turned, and slid down the fuselage to a sitting position after seeing one other person who was being carried by two men in dark Nomex.

The sky above them screamed as a large aircraft, a kind they had never seen before, shot overhead and then flared at the last moment before flying headlong into the facade of the old hangar. It was an unrecognizable tilt-rotor craft. Then another and another, until the fourth set down outside the hangar. Large and fierce looking, the aircraft had two loud and piercing jet engines in the place of the turbofan propellers of the American V-22 Osprey. As they landed, the engines pivoted, and were positioned to pull the aircraft instead of providing it with lift.

As the security men of the Event Group watched helplessly, the hostile element was seen running with their captives to a lowering rear ramp. The tilt-engine craft was large enough to accommodate all of them easily. In two minutes, the black-painted aircraft revved its engines, pushed out of the hangar, and was airborne in five seconds. It shot low over the desert and was soon climbing. The other men ran to their assigned craft and loaded. Everett was impressed with the time it took to load their assault element. The egress from the landing zone was all done in less than thirty seconds.

Mendenhall tugged at Everett's sleeve and pointed into the dark sky. Two F-22 Raptors, America's newest top-of-the-line fighters, shot through the air in pursuit of the attacking craft.

"Inform Nellis combat ops to observe only, not to engage. American hostages are onboard," Carl said to Ryan as he commenced broadcasting with the handheld radio.

The sound of more fighters were heard as they went to afterburner to get airborne from the airstrip at the main base. Mendenhall counted ten in all, including the two already in pursuit of the attackers.

Finally, Collins sat hard into the sand and looked at Everett. "How in the hell could they have gotten in and kidnapped the four highest ranking people we have?"

Carl didn't answer right away. Instead he looked at his friend and hoped Jack was going to accept what he had to say.

"Jack, they're not the only people they took." He looked from Collins to Ryan, who was still talking with combat operations at Nellis. "I swear, I thought she was at home recovering," he finally said.

Jack didn't ask who. He just waited.

"They took Sarah."

Collins looked from Carl to the ground, and then slowly stood and stared out to the east, in the direction the strange aircraft had taken.

Ryan lowered the radio and Will Mendenhall looked from the sky to the colonel. Everett rose and watched as Jack Collins started walking determinedly toward the now-empty hangar. All three noticed he walked without the slightest bit of fatigue showing in his step.

The assault on the Event Group home had awakened a man who was not in the frame of mind to allow this attack to go unanswered.

As the F-22 Raptors took up station behind the four stubby winged aircraft, they saw their airspeed had vaulted just past the speed of sound, impossible for a tilt-jet airframe. Still, there it was, their instruments confirming that they were indeed creeping toward mach 1.4.

Every threat detector on all ten fighters suddenly illuminated and started screaming their warnings into the headphones of every pilot in the flight.

Overhead, the missiles that had been launched off the coast of New Jersey two hours before had been on glide mode until a signal was received by the strange lead craft the fighters were pursuing. Then the six cruise missiles dipped their rounded noses and streaked for the fighters far below. Suddenly the outer casings of reinforced composite material ripped free, sending three separate parts flying into the air, and releasing ten separate radar-guided missiles. Now instead of six missiles to contend with, the Raptors were faced with sixty. The odds failed to register with the air force pilots as they broke formation and started to scatter, trying to avoid the sixty projectiles heading right for them. Threat detectors warbled, and chaff and flares started to fly from each of the Raptors in the hopes of confusing the incoming threats. Each of the ten Americans couldn't believe their stealthy craft were being picked up so easily.

By twos the fighters screamed high overhead. Vacationers visiting Las Vegas turned their heads skyward as each jet slammed their throttles to their stops, going to afterburner in their attempted escape of the planned ambush. The guests of Las Vegas's fabulous hotels oohed and ahhed as even more bright flares of exhaust converged on the Raptors, which each had seven missiles targeted upon it.

The crowds gathered on the strip were suddenly startled when the smaller flares of fire merged with the larger exhausts of the F-22s, and bright flashes of explosions lit up the already bright Las Vegas night. They watched as two of the American fighters dove and then jinked, out-maneuvering their attackers. The Raptors flew so low that one of the composite wings smashed through the great light above the pyramid of the Luxor Casino, sending glass and debris raining down upon the running crowd.

Another Raptor was struck as it tried the same maneuver as the first two, but it wasn't as lucky. The radar-seeking missile exploded just as it pulled up from its dive. Shrapnel pierced the canopy, killing the pitot immediately, and then the plane careened off the roof of the old Flamingo Hotel and crashed into a parking garage across the street.

All told, the ambush that was ordered and launched two full hours before the attack on the Event Group complex to cover the escape of the terrorists had claimed five lives at the base and eight lives in the air.

The four large aircraft continued on their way without any further hostile actions by the United States. Their course: the Gulf of Mexico.

7

THE WHITE HOUSE,

WASHINGTON, D.C.

At the late hour, the president insisted the national security briefing take place in the less dramatic Oval Office instead of the war room below the White House. He was tired and he was angry. He listened to the briefing by the navy secretary without comment.