Ted Bell - Phantom

A renewed burst of cheers and applause erupted from the crowd at this amazing feat of sheer power.

A frown crossed the general’s face. He covered the microphone with his hand and leaned down to whisper to the scientist seated beside him. “Is it supposed to do that? Was it reprogrammed? Without my express authority?”

The shaken man, a worried expression on his face, shook his head no. The other men on the dais were turning to each other, whispering, trying to hide the shock on their faces.

“Good God,” the general said, picking up his binoculars and searching for his silver bird. It had already climbed so high it was lost to sight. Had they somehow lost the damn thing? Had it just gone off on its own, streaking upward through space until it ran out of fuel and tumbled to earth like a dead sparrow?

But just as suddenly it was back-he saw it now-streaking down out of the heavens in a steep, nearly vertical dive, at supersonic speed, headed directly toward Negev. At two thousand feet, mercifully, it leveled off, skimming the tops of the surrounding hills. Miraculously, it seemed to have resumed its programmed flight path, and the general dared to breathe a sigh of relief. Raptor had banked hard right and lined up on the runway, about five miles out.

It was on its final approach.

But then, the general held his breath, his eyes widening, simply unable or unwilling to process what he was seeing. Because — because Raptor X did not seem to be slowing for the touchdown at the far end of the runway…

No, in fact, to the increasing horror of everyone present, Raptor X was still streaking toward the hangar, flying barely fifty feet above the runway, traveling at six hundred miles per hour. The crowd, aghast and confused, wondered: Is this possibly part of the air show demonstration? After all, planes performed daredevil stunts like this all the time at air shows, didn’t they? Outside loops that brushed the treetops. Yes. A spectacular end to today’s show that would conclude with the plane nosing up, clearing the hangar roof by inches before circling and landing.

But now, bright yellow flashes appeared along the leading edges of the swept-back wings.

The six 30mm cannons, three on each side of the aircraft’s forward wingtips, had suddenly opened fire. People, even as they disintegrated, screamed and dove for cover. But there was no cover. Everyone on the ground was literally shredded to pieces.

No one was alive to see the Raptor X nose down sharply and then witness the robot aircraft as it slammed into the hangar at immense speed, slicing through the aluminum structure before plowing into the dormitories and research buildings that stood behind it, destroying everything and everyone in its path.

Elon Tennenbaum, returning across the tarmac from the checkpoint, witnessed the enormity of the blinding multiple explosions through the windshield of the Toyota. He thought, At least no one will be around who can blame this on me.

He realized he’d uttered this blasphemy aloud and accelerated toward the scene, urgently saying a silent prayer for the dead and asking God’s mercy for the badly wounded. He wanted to help.

But there was nothing left to do.

London

Sunday mornings were a time Alex Hawke looked forward to all week long. On this particular such morning, he was especially happy. He was back home in London once more, with his son sleeping under his father’s roof, and all was well. Beyond a nearby window, Hawke could catch a glimpse of Seagrave House, home of the Royal Defense College founded by Winston Churchill. Hawke had attended there for a time. Formerly a great private home, it was still one of the loveliest buildings in London.

While Hawke had been away, his friend and butler, Pelham, to Hawke’s great delight, had taken it upon himself to have the interior decor specialists at Harrods come to the Hawke family’s stately mansion on Upper Belgrave Street.

The decorators had created and installed a complete nursery up on the fourth floor. Right down to the carousel lampshades that twirled in the dark, casting pink images of prancing ponies on the pale blue walls. Miss Spooner’s quarters were also on the fourth floor, right next door to the new nursery.

His three-year-old son seemed to be growing up before his very eyes. And he seemed quite happy in the big old family house on Belgrave Square. There was no end of nooks and crannies for Alexei to hide or discover, and he and Miss Spooner devised endless games with inscrutable rules resulting in screeches of wild delight or surprise. Happy laughter echoed about the house on this sunny Sunday morning in late summer, as it had not done since Hawke himself had been but a boy of three.

Hawke was still in his dark maroon dressing gown, propped up against the pillows in his great, canopied bed, sipping his coffee, reading. A tray with his breakfast dishes sat atop a pile of unread books on his bedside table, and the bed itself was strewn with various newspapers. He’d hurried through them and picked up the novel he’d been reading when he’d fallen asleep the night before. Entitled The Comedians, it was a tale by one of his favorite authors, Graham Greene.

It was the delightful saga of an Englishman who inherits a decrepit hilltop resort hotel in Haiti in the time of the murderous Papa Doc Duvalier and his evil voodoo minions, the Tontons Macoutes. The English chap has difficulty making ends meet as he has only a cook and a one-legged bartender for company, there being precious few tourists willing to risk their lives for a week in the barren, impoverished, and war-torn paradise.

He turned the page. The English hotelier, improbably named Brown, was just about to have a midnight go at his married German mistress in the backseat of an old Peugeot parked beneath a statue of Christopher Columbus in Port-au-Prince when there came a knock at Hawke’s bedroom door.

“Come in,” Hawke said, putting the book on his bedcovers.

“Good morning, sir,” Miss Spooner said brightly. “So sorry to disturb, but it is a lovely morning, no rain at all, and I was thinking of taking Alexei for our weekly Sunday picnic in Hyde Park. We were wondering if you’d like to join us?”

Alexei was holding Spooner’s hand but when he saw and heard his father’s voice, he ran to the bedside and raised his arms to be lifted up, crying, “Daddy! Daddy! Pick me up!” Hawke reached down with one hand and swept him up onto the bed, kissing his forehead. Having recently discovered the joys of bed-jumping, the little boy immediately began bouncing up and down on the mattress, falling on his bottom, quickly rising to have another go.

“You know, I’m tempted,” Hawke said, catching Alexei at the last second before he tumbled off the bed. “But I’m afraid Ambrose and I have a lunch on with my employer, Sir David Trulove, sorry to say. That awful tragedy with the drone fighter aircraft in Israel last week. We’ve got to find out who is behind these bloody incidents and soon. They’ve managed to put the whole world on edge, haven’t they?”

“Yes, sir. My colleagues at MI5 are certainly edgy. So far, Britain has been spared. But that’s hardly a comfort.”

“How do you stop someone with the power to use your own weapons against you?”

Neither had an immediate answer and so they stood there looking at each other in silence, neither of them willing to acknowledge the powerful attraction they had begun to feel for each other. Being under the same roof with her was no help at all, Hawke thought. But she was invaluable, had saved Alexei’s life, and-bloody hell-his child’s mother had married another man. He was free to do as he damn well pleased, wasn’t he?

“Precisely, sir,” she said finally, after his question had hung unanswered in the air for so long Hawke hadn’t the faintest idea what he’d asked her to begin with.