Don Pendleton: Terror Descending

Bitter smoke billowed across the water like a woolen blanket. In the air above them, there was only noise and flames, bellowing madness mixed with pitiful screams. Then a dark shadow swept across the lock as something massive blocked out the sun and was gone.

Hawkins started to shout something, then realized Phoenix Force wasn’t alone in the lock. A cargo ship was only yards away, the rust-streaked hull rising like an iron wall alongside the men.

“Move!” McCarter shouted, lurching into a furious swim. Starting low and slow, a swell began to lift the team from the water being compressed between the ship and the wall of the lock.

A split second of panic engulfed the Stony Man team as the hull came straight for them.

AMERICA’S ULTRA-COVER INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Nick Pollotta for his contribution to this work.

For those who fight the good fight

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

Provence, France

As silent as a thief in the night, a shadow moved across the lush countryside, briefly eclipsing the bright sun and casting the world into stygian gloom.

Suzette Perdue recoiled slightly as a titanic 757 jumbo jet noisily rumbled over the Marseilles Provence Airport, the thunderous wake of the rising airliner audibly shaking the unbreakable Plexiglas window of the passenger lounge.

Smiling in embarrassment, Perdue looked around, but thankfully, nobody had noticed her childish reaction. The bustling crowd was busy rushing to and from gates, buying things at the duty-free shops, eating, laughing or standing impatiently in long lines at the security checkpoints.

Uniformed soldiers of the 1st PIR—Parachute Infantry Regiment, the French Special Forces—stood alert behind low sandbag walls, some sort of double-barrel weapons held in their calloused hands. Machine gun, assault rifle, bazooka, Perdue had no idea what the bulky things were, but the weapons looked very deadly, and she timidly shied away from the burly men and women in their stark military uniforms. Swinging her cell phone toward the soldiers, Perdue saw one of them glance her way and frown. Immediately she lowered the device and timidly smiled in return until the stern man nodded in approval and looked away.

Turning her back to the troops, Perdue exhaled in relief. These were perilous times, and all of this new security was necessary to allow the nation to run smoothly. As her grandmother always said, freedom was anything but free.

“Flight 219 from Cairo, arriving at Gate 18,” a genderless voice announced over the PA system.

Excitedly, Perdue moved closer to the observation window, lifting the cell phone and switching back to the camera function to try to record the arrival of the jet. A special moment to remember forever. This was it, Jean-Pierre was coming. At any second now they would be together at last. After so many years of service, her fiancé was finally returning from war in the Middle East, along with some general famous for something she had never heard about. The city had a big celebration planned for him, but that had nothing to do with her and Jean-Pierre. While the general was wined and dined, they would be married at a small chapel downtown, and then quickly leave for their honeymoon in the motel near the lake.

Outside the window, the massive airport spread out for what seemed like miles. There were a dozen runways, wide and black, radiating in an overlapping pattern.

Suddenly voices were raised in anger from behind and she turned to see grim-faced soldiers converging on a checkpoint. Briefly, Perdue saw a fat man struggling to get away from their grasping hands, then his shirt ripped open and out poured an endless flow of glistening white powder. Cocaine, or heroin, it was impossible to say. She aimed the tiny camera lens of the phone at the scene, then lowered it. This was not going into her wedding book.

Using the butts of their rifles, the soldiers brutally subdued the drug smuggler and the limp body was dragged away. Only moments later, the line of passengers was moving smoothly again, and an old janitor arrived with a mop and pail to start cleaning the bloody powder off the smooth terrazzo floor, overseen by airport security.

Turning away from the awful sight, Perdue pressed her face against the observation window, trying to see into the misty sky, the forgotten phone clenched tightly in her hand. However, there were too many planes overhead, and it was impossible to tell which were about to land and which were streaking past the airport at supersonic speeds. Distance made the velocity of the aircraft illusory, the lower planes seeming much faster than the rocketing aircraft high overhead.

Just then a shadow moved over the rows of tarmac and a fiery explosion blew apart a baggage truck, bodies and suitcases flying skyward in a grisly volcano of death.

Recoiling in horror, Perdue raised a hand to her mouth as more explosions riddled the runway, fuel trucks detonating like a nuclear blast. A Canadian 757 airliner violently came apart, the crumpled pieces of the fuselage lifting off the ground on a writhing column of flame.

By now, multiple sirens were howling, the sounds growing steadily in volume and power as something large rumbled over the airport terminal, closely followed by a deafening series of strident detonations.

Everybody had stopped talking in the airport, and the French soldiers were quickly muttering into the mikes dangling from cords attached to their epaulets.

Unable to believe what was happening, Perdue watched the wreath of flames spread outward to engulf other planes, Russian, Japanese, American, British; in turn each erupted, chunks of wreckage and human limbs flying away in every direction.

Several more planes on the ground burst apart as they tried to taxi out of the area, adding to the tidal wave of destruction. Bricks sprayed out from the control tower as the building started to buckle in the middle, the tall structure audibly groaning as it eased over, the tons of masonry cascading onto a row of parked cars filled with screaming people.

In the sky, the arriving planes were turning away from the airport, and two of them touched for a brief second, the wings bending before they snapped off. Sharply angling around, the airliners slammed directly into each other and broke apart, the pieces and passengers tumbling downward like a rain from hell.

Steadily increasing in power and fury, the destruction of the airport continued unabated, fires raged out of control in a hundred locations. Sprawled bodies covered the tarmac. A few of the forms pitifully tried to crawl away, but the rest were ominously still.

As bright as daggers from the sun, fiery darts shot across the chaotic airport, and the distant hangars became engulfed in flames.

Galvanized into action, Perdue cast aside her cell phone and dashed for the nearby emergency exit, her every thought on reaching Flight 219. Jean-Pierre had to still be alive. He had to be! As she reached for the handle of the door, the wall changed into blinding light and something hard hit her in the back, stealing the breath from her lungs. Thrown to the debris-covered floor, Perdue tried to rise again, but her legs were numb, unfeeling lumps of flesh below her blood-splattered hem. Everything seemed to slow as she looked down to see a dark red stain spreading across the front of her dress, a long shard of the Plexiglas window sticking out of her belly like a transparent dagger. Her throat tightened, but no sob came. She felt oddly dizzy, and there was no pain. No pain at all. How very strange.