DEADLY DILEMMA by Dan Stratman (story read aloud .txt) 📗

Cyndi took her hands off the controls. “You want to do it?”

“Touché,” Lance replied sheepishly, with his hands raised in surrender. “You fly. I’ll figure out how to fire the missiles.” He searched the instrument panel for the right switches.

“I don’t have to aim the helicopter; the missiles are laser guided. Put the crosshairs next to the silo, and the missile will do the rest.”

Lance turned on the laser designator. Then he powered up the forward-looking infrared camera under the chin of the helicopter. A black-and-white view of the site popped up on one of the cockpit screens. The infrared camera didn’t actually see the scene ahead. It translated minute differences in the temperature of objects into pictures.

Through trial and error, Lance figured out how to move the crosshairs. He placed them ten feet away from the silo opening.

Cyndi put the helicopter in a shallow dive, doing her best to keep it steady in the gusty winds. “Okay, get ready. When I say, squeeze the trigger on your stick.”

Lance pointed at the screen. “There’s a problem.”

A glowing white blob in the shape of a man, was running across the grounds.

Cyndi shook her head in disgust. “Crap, it’s Pierce.”

This unexpected news forced Cyndi and Lance to focus even more sharply on their tasks.

“Cleared to arm the missile,” Cyndi said.

“Master arm switch on.”

He held the crosshairs right on target while Cyndi made final adjustments to their flight path.

“Now!”

Lance squeezed the trigger.

The Hellfire missile roared off the rail.

The white blob on the screen stopped moving, then immediately started running perpendicular to the path of the missile.

The guidance system in the nose of the missile locked on to the spot where the laser reflected off the ground. It hit exactly where Lance had aimed it.

Cyndi pulled up and passed over the silo. When she looked back, a small cloud of dust billowed up from the site, but the nose cone of the Minuteman IV was still clearly visible.

The apron around the silo was covered in concrete that was four feet thick. It needed to be that deep to support the weight of the massive truck that had transported the new missile to the site.

The aptly named Transporter Erector Loader truck weighed over 107,000 pounds with a missile inside its custom-built trailer. Every foot of the dirt road leading to the site, all the way back to the highway, had to be torn up and replaced with high-strength concrete to support the thirty-two wheels on the enormous truck. All courtesy of Uncle Sam.

The TEL driver would back his truck up to the silo, raise the missile up vertically, then try to carefully lower the rocket into the silo without accidentally banging it into the wall. The job felt like playing the classic kid’s game Operation but with much graver consequences for failure than a red light and buzzer.

The Hellfire missile had done a bang-up job splintering the thick concrete apron, but that’s all.

“Only one missile left,” Lance said, stating the obvious.

Cyndi faced a crucial decision: destroy the remainder of the building and access to the elevator with the last missile or take a second shot at the ground next to the silo, hoping to bury the missile in debris.

Instead of concern, a confident look suddenly spread across her face. She hadn’t put in hundreds of hours studying for the weekly readiness tests for nothing.

She pulled the helicopter up into a steep climb. Just as the craft stalled out, she stomped on the right anti-torque pedal. The AH-6M performed an acrobatic pirouette in the sky, spinning 180 degrees. With the nose now pointed straight down, it rapidly gained airspeed. Cyndi smoothly pulled out of the dive and set up for another pass. She tapped the picture on the screen and smiled. “Put the crosshairs right here.”

Chapter Forty-Two

“That should definitely do the trick,” Lance replied, with an equally big smile.

He slewed the crosshairs over a large metal cylinder behind the building. Two thousand gallons of diesel fuel was stored in the tank. The fuel was used to power generators on site in the event the local electric grid went down.

The destructive power of the high-explosive warhead on the Hellfire missile would be multiplied a hundred times by the exploding fuel.

Now it was up to the laws of physics to determine if that would be enough to cut off both paths to the warheads.

As Lance adjusted the crosshairs on the screen, he could see the glowing outline of Major Pierce huddled against the fence. His warm body stood out like a beacon against the snowy terrain. Bright white flashes were seen coming from his outstretched hand. In a last-ditch attempt to get revenge, he was firing his Glock at the helicopter as it set up for its run. The small bullets went harmlessly wide or bounced off the solidly built attack helicopter.

Lance placed the crosshairs over the center of the fuel tank.

“Missile armed, waiting for your command.”

Cyndi shut out every distraction around her. She concentrated on flying a glidepath as perfectly focused as the laser that illuminated the fuel tank.

“Fire!”

The Hellfire missile streaked toward the tank at over one thousand miles per hour. Halfway to its target, the missile suddenly lurched upward. Its guidance system computer had mistaken the thick-walled fuel tank for a T-90 Russian tank.

As the missile crossed over the fence it pitched sharply down and struck the fuel tank from directly overhead—the same way it would attack the relatively vulnerable turret on the top of a tank.

Alpha One erupted.

A huge mushroom cloud of boiling fire shot into the air.

Cyndi banked hard right to avoid being consumed by the fireball. The shock wave punched the small helicopter like it had been hit by the hand of God.

“Jesus Christ!” Lance bellowed.

The fact that he was still in one piece—and able to shout out such an apropos exclamation—told him the warheads had not detonated.

Wood, steel, dirt, and concrete were hurled hundreds of feet into the air. It rained down on the open silo,