John Ringo: A Deeper Blue

So Joe hung out, hoping to get a sheriff’s slot or something, and humping his tail off in security in the meantime.

Despite only being at the airport gig for a few months, he’d come to know the regulars, and their planes, pretty well. He occasionally scagged rides and was half thinking about getting a pilot’s license. A couple of the regulars had even let him take the controls for small bits.

One of them was a judge, a former corporate lawyer, who lived up in Dunnellon. So when Joe saw a crew working around Mr. Morris’ plane he got a little suspicious. He knew it wasn’t up for maintenance any time soon. And sure as hell it wasn’t supposed to be going anywhere. So when the guys pulled the chocks he started trotting towards it.

One of the guys, both of whom were wearing blue coveralls, pulled out a device and opened the door. But it wasn’t keys to the plane, it was a pick gun, a device used by locksmiths and car thieves. The fuckers were stealing Bob’s plane!

“Hey,” he shouted, drawing the lousy .38 he was forced to carry. “Stop!”

The guy still on the ground reached down to the big toolbox they’d carried over and pulled out a Czech Skorpion submachine gun.

Joe realized he was totally fucked as he dropped to one knee. There wasn’t a bit of fucking cover anywhere. He triggered two rounds from the crappy little revolver and was glad to see them hit.

On the other hand, the fucker with the Skorpion had fired at the same time. The last thing Joe Pallozzi saw was the flash from the suppressor.

“Kildar.”

“Go,” Mike said, looking around Adventureland. Families with kids. Teenage girls. Teenage boys watching the teenage girls. Fucking nada. Disney security was starting to clear the road for the afternoon parade and moving through the crowd was getting harder.

“A plane has just been stolen from the Clearwater Air Park in Clearwater, Florida. That is just across the bay from MacDill Air Force Base. The plane is being tracked on radar and is heading for MacDill. SOCOM believes that this is the next attack.”

“Fuck,” Mike snarled, drawing a look from a passing tourist. “What about the CAP?”

“The current combat air patrol is four F-16s, operating out of MacDill. Two were over the Tampa Bay area but are east of the contact and are turning west. The other two were south of Orlando, covering the Orlando area. They are actually closer to the contact, so they have been vectored to intercept.”

Mike had heard the sonic booms in the distance a minute or so ago and filtered them out. Now he wanted to curse again.

“It’s a feint,” Mike said. “Call SOCOM and get the damned CAP turned around. You can’t rig a regular plane in a few minutes to drop this shit. It’s a damned deception plan. Is there an AWACS up?”

“Yes,” Greznya said. “And we’re getting the take from their local screens.”

“Keep an eye out for a liftoff soon,” Mike said. “And make sure that Dragon is aware of the situation. Put all the teams on high alert; we’re going to get hit soon.”

He looked around and blanched. The rides were emptying out as people gathered to pack along the street in anticipation of the parade.

“Oh. My. God.”

“Kildar, what?” Greznya said.

“The parade ,” Mike said, stepping under one of the barriers and starting to trot down the road towards Fantasyland. “Call Fisher. Tell him the target is the parade.”

Farzad started the engine of the Piper as soon as the three-man ground crew pushed him clear of the big doors and turned onto the empty stretch of pavement. He had gotten the word that Gibron had gotten into the air. He would soon be a martyr. But they were all martyrs, now. He did not expect to survive the flight.

The Piper nearly didn’t make it into the air but it managed to claw upwards at the end of the road and over the low pines surrounding the industrial park.

The flight time to the Magic Kingdom was only four minutes. It was a good time to pray.

“Kildar,” Greznya said. “A contact has just appeared that is not a cleared aircraft. It took off from just off Florida Highway 33 and is headed for Disney.”

“Dragon?” Mike asked. He was at the square behind Cinderella’s Castle and now sped up.

“Already lifting off,” Greznya said. “But she is out of position to intercept. She estimates she will reach the Magic Kingdom about the same time as the aircraft, but from the east instead of west. We anticipated that the attack would come from the Kissimmee area.”

“Tell her to hammer it,” Mike said, slowing down. The aircraft was going to be coming in from the northwest. It might hit Fantasyland, first, but he was just as sure that the target was the parade, which came down from Adventureland, turned at the square, then went south to Main Street. He pulled the communicator off his belt and keyed on the take from Greznya. Sure enough, the bird was coming from the northwest and already over Disney property. Dragon was up and hammering for the park but she was way out of position. “Greznya, gimme all teams,” Mike said. “All teams. Go hot at this time. Target coming in from the northwest. Converge near…” He looked around and shrugged. “Converge near Haunted Mansion. Grez, give me Colonel Olds…” he said, putting the communicator back on his belt and dumping his backpack.

“Colonel, it’s that Kildar guy,” the RTO said, holding out a telephone.

“What?” Olds snapped, taking the phone.

“We have an inbound at Disney. What is your intent?”

“As far as we can determine, it is a civilian aircraft that is off-course,” the colonel replied. “I don’t have a shoot order from higher.”

“You’re authorized to fire at your discretion,” Mike said, incredulously. “That’s why they gave you Slammers. Now are you going to take it out?”

“I… I do not have a shoot order,” the colonel stammered.

“FUCK SHOOT ORDERS,” the man screamed. “TAKE OUT THE DAMNED PLANE!”

“Colonel,” the RTO said. “One of the Slammers has eyeballs on the target and is requesting shoot authorization…”

“I will have to call you back,” the colonel said, handing the phone back to the RTO. “Get me Tallahassee. I need authorization to shoot…”

Sergeant Ray Thompson had been an Air Defense Artillery gunner since he’d first joined the Florida National Guard. However, in Iraq there wasn’t much need for ADA so his unit had been “converted” to infantry then back to ADA when they redeployed to the states.

In Iraq he’d pulled more than his share of guard duty on roadblocks, quite a few convoys and various other spots where mujahideen tried to add him to the growing list of dead and injured. And in the process he’d occasionally seen “The Look.” “The Look,” that is, of a guy who is bent on martyrdom. Not many guys who saw “The Look” lived to tell about it and it wasn’t precisely describable. It wasn’t wide-eyed it was more like a thousand mile stare crossed with, of all things, joy.

He was using a pair of 60x binoculars to ID the incoming craft. Piper Cub, steady approach, the bird was locked by the Slammer and it was headed straight for the Magic Kingdom. And he could see right in the cockpit, see the pilot’s eyes. And he had The Look.

“Tell higher that this is a definite bad-guy,” Ray said. “And we need a Go order.”

Mike zipped open the large backpack and started drawing out the parts of the M-60E4, assembling them as quickly as he could. He’d assembled one as a demonstration one time in under thirty seconds. He was trying to beat that record.

“Hey, buddy,” a man said, ducking under the barricade and running over to him. “What in the fuck are you doing?”