Cally stared out the open door of the Agusta and felt her heart skip a beat. A beam of energy, so strong it ionized the air and turned it deep mauve, seemed to be engulfing Michael. Staring down, she was almost blinded by its intensity. He was there, she was sure, but where she could not tell.
Then it shut off for a second, and she realized it had been directed toward the base of VX-1. Next came an enormous clap of thunder as the splintered air collapsed on itself, sending out shock waves. Just like lightning, she thought. The Cyclops is sending energy as though it were lightning. . . .
Then the blue flashed again, and this time it began microsecond pulses, like a massive strobe light. All the action was now highlighted in jerky snippets of vision, as unreal as a disco dance floor. The air around the beam was being turned to plasma, ionized pure atoms . . . but the next burst of energy came from the propulsion unit of VX-1, which slowly began discharging a concentrated plume out of its nozzles, a primal green instead of the usual reds and oranges of a conventional rocket.
The Cyclops had just gone critical, right on the money, ionizing the dry-ice propellant in VX-1. Would the impulse be enough to lift it off? she wondered. Was Isaac's grand scheme going to work? Years had been spent planning for this moment. She felt her heart stop as she waited for the answer, totally forgetting the man who was dangling just below the chopper, bathed in the hard, pulsing strobes.
As Manny Jackson grappled for the collective, blinded by the intense monochromatic light engulfing him, a clap of thunder sounded about his ears, deafening him to the roar of the Apache's turboshafts.
What in hell! Had one of the nuclear devices been detonated? No, his instincts lectured, he was still alive. If it had been a nuke, he would be atoms by now, sprayed into space. This had to be something else.
Now his vision was returning, the blue receding into quick flashes, and the chopper seemed to be stabilizing. Maybe, he thought, I'm not going to be permanently blind. But I've got to get this bird on the ground. We'll just have to take our chances. Then the realization of what had happened finally sank in. The damned Cyclops laser had switched on. They had arrived too late. . . .
He was thrown against the windscreen as the Apache slammed into the asphalt and collapsed the starboard leg of the retractable gear.