until two seconds later. When it did, it shook the ground so hard, their table collapsed in their laps.
The explosion rocked the landscape for blocks around. When Yaz dared to look back at the building, he saw that it was completely engulfed in flames and already crumbling brick by brick.
He turned to see that Elvis had thrown himself to the pavement, flinging his hat away and intentionally ripping his uniform's collar.
"Act natural," he hissed up to Yaz and Ace. "Look shocked . . ."
The owner and patrons of their cafe came running outside to see the building down the block
69
surrounded by a mass of flames and two Afrikaner officers treating a third who had been knocked over by the explosion.
Soon the streets were filled with soldiers-both Circle and allied. Patrol cars and even a couple cannon-armed APCs screeched up to the site. Circle officers were barking orders to the lower troops, telling them to spread out and look for suspects. Off in the distance, Yaz could hear the sirens of the approaching fire equipment.
Elvis was playing the part of a wounded officer very well. He had rolled his eyes up into his head and held his tongue out, as if he was in a seizure. He had crushed a fake blood capsule between his teeth and was now letting the red liquid drool profusely from his mouth. The act was so convincing, two Circle soldiers ran up to them, took one look at Elvis, and kept right on going.
The saboteurs stayed that way for another minute or so as the pandemonium in the street built up around them. The fire equipment arrived, all of it manned by Circle troops.
They had just started to play the first water hose onto the roaring inferno when Ace detonated the second bomb.
70
CHAPTER 11
The specially-equipped, high-flying CH-53 Super Stallion leveled off at 21,000
feet and started to circle.
Inside, Hunter, Ben Wa and Toomey were all huddled in heavy arctic gear as the temperature inside the helicopter's cabin plunged to below zero.
"Goddamn, it's cold," Wa said, pulling his collar up around his neck. "You think they would have insulated these birds when they made them a high flyer."
"Hey, at least we know the equipment will work and they can't see us up here,"
Hunter shrugged, tapping on of the dials in front of him.
He was sitting before a somewhat jury-rigged terrain guidance radar imaging device. By bouncing radar waves off the surface of the earth four miles down they were able to map not only structures on the ground but also those below ground. This was how Hunter and the Western Forces came to first learn the layout of the catacombs beneath the streets
71
of Football City.
Now, in their third and hopefully final radar mapping mission, Hunter was intent on solving the final clues of the jigsaw patterns of the catacombs.
"We have a fairly direct route from where the main prisoner holding center is to the flood tunnel," he told Wa as he focused in the radar-imaging screen.
"But we have two POW concentrations downtown, plus many exit routes for the civvies that have to be evacuated."
Hunter tried to breathe some warmth onto his bare hands. He had to turn so many knobs and push so many buttons on the radar imager that even his thin and warm flight gloves were a hindrance.
"You are right over the target area right now, Hawk," Toomey yelled over his shoulder to him.
Hunter centered the surface initial signal on the imager and pulled a bank of switches to On. Deep in the back of the Sea Stallion, he heard the business end of the radar imager start to hum. Slowly, a more detailed outline of the surface came onto the video screen. Hunter punched in a code into the imager's computer, committing the video read-out to memory. Then he flipped a half dozen more switches and watched as the original image slowly dissolved, to be replaced by a series of thick and slender colored lines, which quickly grew contours. These were the catacombs as depicted by the radar imager. Hunter set the computer's memory to
The explosion rocked the landscape for blocks around. When Yaz dared to look back at the building, he saw that it was completely engulfed in flames and already crumbling brick by brick.
He turned to see that Elvis had thrown himself to the pavement, flinging his hat away and intentionally ripping his uniform's collar.
"Act natural," he hissed up to Yaz and Ace. "Look shocked . . ."
The owner and patrons of their cafe came running outside to see the building down the block
69
surrounded by a mass of flames and two Afrikaner officers treating a third who had been knocked over by the explosion.
Soon the streets were filled with soldiers-both Circle and allied. Patrol cars and even a couple cannon-armed APCs screeched up to the site. Circle officers were barking orders to the lower troops, telling them to spread out and look for suspects. Off in the distance, Yaz could hear the sirens of the approaching fire equipment.
Elvis was playing the part of a wounded officer very well. He had rolled his eyes up into his head and held his tongue out, as if he was in a seizure. He had crushed a fake blood capsule between his teeth and was now letting the red liquid drool profusely from his mouth. The act was so convincing, two Circle soldiers ran up to them, took one look at Elvis, and kept right on going.
The saboteurs stayed that way for another minute or so as the pandemonium in the street built up around them. The fire equipment arrived, all of it manned by Circle troops.
They had just started to play the first water hose onto the roaring inferno when Ace detonated the second bomb.
70
CHAPTER 11
The specially-equipped, high-flying CH-53 Super Stallion leveled off at 21,000
feet and started to circle.
Inside, Hunter, Ben Wa and Toomey were all huddled in heavy arctic gear as the temperature inside the helicopter's cabin plunged to below zero.
"Goddamn, it's cold," Wa said, pulling his collar up around his neck. "You think they would have insulated these birds when they made them a high flyer."
"Hey, at least we know the equipment will work and they can't see us up here,"
Hunter shrugged, tapping on of the dials in front of him.
He was sitting before a somewhat jury-rigged terrain guidance radar imaging device. By bouncing radar waves off the surface of the earth four miles down they were able to map not only structures on the ground but also those below ground. This was how Hunter and the Western Forces came to first learn the layout of the catacombs beneath the streets
71
of Football City.
Now, in their third and hopefully final radar mapping mission, Hunter was intent on solving the final clues of the jigsaw patterns of the catacombs.
"We have a fairly direct route from where the main prisoner holding center is to the flood tunnel," he told Wa as he focused in the radar-imaging screen.
"But we have two POW concentrations downtown, plus many exit routes for the civvies that have to be evacuated."
Hunter tried to breathe some warmth onto his bare hands. He had to turn so many knobs and push so many buttons on the radar imager that even his thin and warm flight gloves were a hindrance.
"You are right over the target area right now, Hawk," Toomey yelled over his shoulder to him.
Hunter centered the surface initial signal on the imager and pulled a bank of switches to On. Deep in the back of the Sea Stallion, he heard the business end of the radar imager start to hum. Slowly, a more detailed outline of the surface came onto the video screen. Hunter punched in a code into the imager's computer, committing the video read-out to memory. Then he flipped a half dozen more switches and watched as the original image slowly dissolved, to be replaced by a series of thick and slender colored lines, which quickly grew contours. These were the catacombs as depicted by the radar imager. Hunter set the computer's memory to
Similar Books
