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Frank had felt G.o.d’s touch earlier than most. It came with pain, as did all things truly worth having. Carol knew something had changed. She knew even before Frank did, to be honest. He’d made some comment about disciplining Sh.e.l.ly. He still couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said, but when he woke up the next morning, Carol and Sh.e.l.ly were both gone. That was too bad, because from that morning on he’d known exactly what he would have done to them both.
Frank had left his house and just wandered. His first kill had been a mouthy old lady. Leave me alone, the b.i.t.c.h had said. Can you imagine? Please, no, she had said. The nerve of some people.
He discovered new friends. Together, they found humans, killed them. Then word came of a true leader, a leader asking for everyone with military experience. Emperor Stanton and General Brownstone gave him a wonderful responsibility — a Stinger missile.
For two days, Frank Sokolovsky had frozen his a.s.s off atop the Hanc.o.c.k. People brought him food. Once they’d brought him a whole arm, already cooked. There was probably half of that left.
Finally, though, the waiting was over.
He stood still, mostly hidden from sight, the Stinger on his right shoulder, watching the Apache fly down Michigan Avenue about thirty feet below his rooftop elevation. The helicopter’s nose was tipped down, its 30-millimeter chain gun transforming the street below into a sparkling river of death.
The screaming war machine flew past.
Just before Frank pressed the “fire” b.u.t.ton, he understood — without a doubt — that everything happened for a reason. He had needed money for college, so he joined the army. He’d served in Afghanistan, where he’d learned to fire this kind of weapon, where he’d suffered the injury that brought him home so he could become enlightened at just the right time. Anyone who considered that a coincidence was a fool. Frank knew the hand of G.o.d when he saw it, and for that guidance he whispered a fast prayer of thanks.
He pressed the b.u.t.ton.
A Stinger launcher fires a FIM-92B missile: sixty inches long, twenty-two pounds. It is supersonic capable and can reach speeds of Mach 2.2. Frank’s missile didn’t attain that speed, because it was only in the air for three seconds — one second of flight powered by the launcher’s ejection motor, which hurled the missile out into the predawn sky, and two seconds of flight powered by the missile’s solid fuel rocket engine.
The FIM-92B penetrated right between the Apache’s twin turboshaft engines. The warhead erupted, blowing both engines off the machine with such force that one flew three hundred feet to hammer into the gla.s.s and steel of Water Tower Place. The other engine clipped a building roof before comet-streaking into Chestnut Street, disintegrating into a cloud of tumbling, red-hot shards that shredded everything in their path.
In an Apache, the gunner sits in front, the pilot above and behind him, an armored wall between them. The explosion killed the pilot instantly. The armor kept the gunner alive long enough for the flaming helicopter to fall seven hundred feet to the street below, where he died on impact.
The wreckage smashed into the Converted running down Michigan Avenue, a rolling fireball that pounded flesh into paste. Pieces of the Apache broke off and crashed into stores, shattering gla.s.s, breaking walls and starting several fires.
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