Strike Zone

by Dale Brown

  “I have a launch. The ghost clone is airborne!”

  “Take it out,” said Dog.

  Dreamland

  14 September 1997

  0958

  JENNIFER PUNCHED THE mike button again, trying to tell Zen that she was ready to upload the program. But they’d lost contact with the Megafortress.

  Dog had punched it out, she knew, pissed at interference from the Pentagon people.

  Just like him to shut off the rest of the world.

  She slammed her hand down on the desk counter so hard it stung.

  “Damn it,” she shouted. “I want to upload!”

  “The telemetry circuits are open,” said Rubeo behind her, his voice soft and calm. “Go ahead. You don’t need to talk to them until the program is ready to run.”

  Aboard Raven

  15 September 1997

  0058

  ZEN SLAMMED THE throttle against the stop, coaxing Hawk Three out past Mach 1. He glanced at the sitrep, making sure Four was positioned in case he couldn’t catch up. C3 began calculating moves to stop the aircraft, its silicone brain prioritizing them according to the likely shootdown percentage.

  Catching the clone from behind with Hawk Three rated only fifth on the list, with a 65.3 percent shot.

  Zen laughed at the computer.

  “You just want all the glory, my friend,” he said, momentarily baffling the verbal instruction interpreter circuits.

  The clone had stopped accelerating. Its speed barely touched 200 knots. Zen gained rapidly and the targeting cue went to yellow as he started to close. But he had too much altitude and had to tug downward to get a better shot; his real danger was overshooting his target. One of the Elint operators upstairs started to tell him something, but just then the pipper went to red; Zen lit his cannon, riding a stream of hot lead down into the delta-winged aircraft.

  The clone shot left, zigging desperately out of the way. But it was already too late for the robot; the right wing had been hit in three places and now cracked under the pressure of the turn. A large hunk of metal separated as the UAV jerked back north; before Zen could squeeze his trigger again, the airplane exploded in a red fireball.

  DOG WAS TOO busy getting the Megafortress north to keep up with the U/MFs so he didn’t see the Harpoon’s strike on the tanker. He heard his copilot’s “Wha-hoo,” however, along with his more sober and professional “Good splash” pronouncement a few seconds later. By then, Zen had taken out the ghost clone, which collapsed into the water in its own fireball.

  “See if the experts back home can figure out if there was a bomb on it,” Dog told Zen.

  “Lost my link,” said Zen.

  Dog reached to the buttons and keyed it back, feeling somewhat sheepish. A cacophony of voices flooded into his ears over the circuit.

  “We’re talking first,” he said, trying to clear the line and the confusion. “Splash one ghost clone. We have a good hit on the tanker, Dragon Prince. Returning to assess the damage now.”

  “Was the bomb aboard the UAV?” asked Catsman, back in Dream Command.

  “We’re looking for your assessment,” said Dog.

  He noticed that the Pentagon people were quiet. He’d undoubtedly have to deal with them later. They would not be pleased that he had killed the link.

  So be it.

  “Colonel, this is Danny Freah.”

  “Go ahead, Danny. How are we?”

  “We have complete possession of the site. There are no nukes in Building Two or Building One. Repeat, we have found no devices.”

  “None? Did they have a bomb or not?”

  “They do,” said Stoner. “It must have been moved.”

  “It’s possible it was aboard the ship already. We’ve just sent it and the ghost clone to the bottom,” said Dog.

  “I say we keep looking here,” said Stoner.

  “Authorities are approaching the gate,” said Danny.

  “Hold them off until you’ve completed a thorough search,” said Dog. “Look under every pile of garbage there.”

  “That may take some time.”

  “Understood.”

  Chiang Kai-shek Airport, Hualin

  0059

  CHEN LO FANN strapped himself into the first officer’s seat of Island Flight A101, pulling on the headset. He had come from checking with Professor Ai in the back, making sure that the big jet was ready.

  Discovering that the Americans had placed bugging devices in the hangar of his grandfather’s 767-200ER had caused him to move up his plans. But otherwise it had not complicated things too badly—his grandfather had apparently foreseen the possibility that the first plane would be discovered, and so had prepared a nearly identical 767 with the necessary launch and control apparatus, storing it in Hualin. Chen Lee must have suspected something himself, since he had ordered the UAV and the weapon moved from Taipei twenty-four hours before. Most likely he was only concerned about the possibility that security would be increased at the international airport when the president took off, but it was a fortuitous move.

  Fate favored his plan. It was a sign that Chen Lo Fann had made the right decision to honor his grandfather’s wishes and fulfill his duty and destiny.

  The only difficulty to be overcome was the length of the runway here. At roughly three thousand meters, it could not be called short. Nonetheless, it did present a challenge to the 767, which was not only fully loaded with fuel but had to take off with the UAV under its wing. Chen Lo Fann could not have gotten the plane up himself, and was only too glad to follow the exact command of the pilot in the captain’s seat as they completed their checklist and prepared to taxi to the runway.

  Chen’s grandfather had disguised the aircraft well. It was a “combi” or combination passenger-cargo carrier; fake windows lined the fuselage, complete with lighting that helped simulate passengers moving around inside. The plane’s path from the hangar was obscured from the tower; the presence of the UAV under the wing could not be detected until it was off.

  And then it would be too late.

  The tower granted clearance. Chen Lo Fann took a long breath. The plane turned from the ramp.

  “Ready?” asked the captain.

  “Absolutely,” replied Chen, and the 767 began rumbling down the runway.

  V

  Vaporized

  * * *

  Aboard Raven

  15 September 1997

  0100

  DOG DID EVERYTHING but call a time-out, trying to settle his people down so the situation could be sorted out.

  Besides a thorough search of the harbor site and a look at the sinking ship, they needed to review all the data gathered during the exchange. Dog quickly confirmed that this was going on, then went to Jed at the Pentagon. Now was the time for Washington involvement, he thought, though he was far too tactful to say that.

  For now, anyway.

  “Looking good, Colonel,” said Jed. “We confirm the so-called ghost clone is down. Dragon Prince is split in half; bow is gone. Navy asset R-1 is arriving now.”

  R-1 was a specially equipped A-6 Intruder that carried a sensor array beneath its belly that would send live video (including near-infrared) back to the fleet, and from there back to the Tank. The destroyers, meanwhile, were close enough to see the flames from the stern section in the distance. “We’re ready to alert the authorities,” added Jed. “The ambassador is en route to the airport to meet with the Taiwan president.”

  “Why the airport?” asked Dog.

  “The president pushed up his flight to Beijing,” Jed said. “They’re getting out early in case there are any protestors at the airport.”

  Dog’s attention was diverted by the feed from Hawk Three, which showed that one of the Chinese submarines had begun to submerge.

  “They don’t look like they’re carrying out rescue operations,” Zen said. “They took in a few commandos, that’s it. Other sub is still on the surface, but looks like they’re bugging out too. Nothing big came aboard eith
er one.”

  “Roger that. We’re alerting the civil authorities,” said Dog.

  Dreamland

  14 September 1997

  1005

  WITH THE CLONE down, Jennifer went back to helping the team studying the data on the Taiwanese computer. She scrolled through the decrypted emails, trying to see if anything there might be useful.

  The information had been translated by a computer program into English. It was not exactly perfect, but it saved considerable time and could highlight key words; anything of special interest could be reviewed by a language specialist, either at Dreamland or back East at the NSA.

  Three emails spoke of packages, which an NSA analyst guessed meant bombs, though of course that was just speculation. The “meat” of the emails was simple:

  Package checked

  Package sent

  Package 3468×499986767×69696969

  The last string of numbers appeared to be part of the encryption that the computer couldn’t unlock, though it was impossible to tell.

  Jennifer began looking at more of the data on the computer. Apparently the men in the plant had initiated a scrubber program, and much of the drive had been erased. Danny’s team had located other computers, but they seemed to have been hit by the E-bomb. Data on all of them might be recoverable, but they would have to be analyzed back at Dreamland.

  Package checked and sent. Probably the bomb.

  Or the UAV.

  Or lettuce.

  She got up and went to look at the station where they were analyzing the video from Zen’s encounter with the UAV, checking pictures of the fuselage to see if a bomb had been carriaged below the fuselage. One of the technical experts had enhanced the image of the Taiwanese plane being launched from the ship; the image had been generated completely from radar, in some ways a more interesting technical feat than the creation of the UAV itself. Jennifer watched in fascination as the techie put the display into freeze-frame, then dialed in a program that analyzed the structure of the aircraft.

  “Are those vertical tabs?” Jennifer asked, pointing at two bars that protruded from the area near the top of the wing root.

  “Probably just weird radar echoes,” said the engineer. The frame advanced; the pieces remained on the aircraft.

  “If they weren’t echoes, what would they be?” Jennifer asked.

  “Hooks to recover the aircraft or hoist it onto the catapult.”

  “Or launch it from a plane,” said Jennifer. “Like the U/MF-3 Flighthawk.”

  “Sure.”

  Jennifer went back to her station. An NSA analyst looking at the data had just sent an instant message suggesting the number stream after “package” in the third email might be a key for a code to activate the bomb. Jennifer called it back.

  The repetition at the end of the number stream looked familiar, though by itself it seemed to mean nothing. She pulled over her laptop and brought up the code they had prepared for taking over the UAV.

  There were similar sequences in the tail of the communications streams, though she had no idea what they stood for.

  ¥69696969

  A coincidence?

  If the NSA analyst’s guess was correct, then the intercepted communications might mean that the ghost clone had been carrying a nuke when they first encountered it.

  But that was impossible—Jennifer turned to the screen on her right, clicking into the stored data to bring up the analysis prepared from the early intercepts. The performance seemed to rule out any bomb.

  Unless the code unlocked something in the com stream. Maybe it was part of an encryption key.

  What if the package was another UAV? Because maybe you’d want to know the key it used for communications.

  Maybe. She needed to look through the rest of the data.

  No time for that if there was another plane.

  “Ray—I think there’s another clone, another plane,” she said aloud. “Look at this.”

  On the Ground in Kaohisiung

  15 September 1997

  0109

  DANNY WATCHED THE Marine teams checking in with their captain, listening as they reviewed their findings. The men worked smoothly, running through the different piles of recycled material as if they’d done this sort of thing a million times before.

  “We’re getting some hits on one of the Geiger counters,” the Marine captain told Danny. “In the battery section.”

  “Let me check it out,” said Stoner.

  “You have to get the protective gear on,” said the Marine.

  “Yeah,” said the CIA officer, walking toward the shed anyway.

  Danny shook his head, then went over to check with Liu and Boston in Shed One.

  “Never been in a nuke factory before,” said Liu as Danny poked his head through the hole at the back that the two troopers had cut for access.

  “Looks more like a machine shop,” said Danny.

  “I thought it’d at least look like a science lab or something,” said Boston. “We gonna glow when we get out of here?”

  Danny laughed. They hadn’t detected any serious radiation levels; a visit to the dentist posed a greater health threat.

  A pair of Marines had begun carting out computer equipment. Boston, helping them, picked up a large memory unit and brought it out to the Osprey.

  “The guys back at Dreamland say they assembled them right in this area here,” said Liu. “Didn’t even use a clean room.”

  Danny looked around the building. It did look like a machine shop. Not even—an empty shed with a few large machines, bunch of computers.

  Was it that easy to build a bomb?

  He began walking around the shed, wondering to himself how difficult his job might be in five or ten years. If a private company could build a nuke, when would some crazy fundamentalist in the Middle East do so?

  There were crates against the wall, vegetable crates.

  “Bomb squad took out two five-hundred-pounders,” said Liu, referring to a small squad of demo experts tasked to deal with the weapons. “Said they didn’t have fuses and couldn’t go off, but nobody wanted to take any chances. Leave them for the authorities.”

  “They came in these boxes?” said Danny, pointing.

  “Don’t know. The boxes were there. I don’t know if they were crating them. Couldn’t figure it out.”

  “I saw some boxes like that in Taipei,” said Danny. “In a hangar there.”

  “Just vegetable boxes. Bring lettuce and stuff around, like that.”

  “A lot of lettuce gets eaten in Taipei.”

  “Tons.”

  Danny flicked his com control to talk to Dreamland.

  Aboard Raven

  0120

  WITH THE TAIWANESE and American authorities now arriving on the scene of the sinking, Raven and its Flighthawks were reduced to the role of spectators. Zen let C3 take both Flighthawks in a general patrol pattern; it was the down part of the mission, and once he had his own aircraft squared away, he turned his attention to his two young protégés aboard Penn.

  Zen shook his head as Starship and Kick engaged in some good-natured banter over how close the Chinese Communist missile had come to splashing the Osprey before Starship managed to get his Flighthawk in the way. The joking started a bit off-color and then went quite a bit further; about the only word that could be repeated in polite company was “road.”

  “All right guys, let’s not forget we’re working,” Zen told them finally.

  He felt more than a little proud, as if he were a high school basketball coach whose team had just won the championship. It wasn’t that bad a metaphor, actually—they were clucking away like high school kids, their jokes on a sophomore’s level.

  At best.

  “Check your fuel,” he added. “I don’t want you walking home.”

  Starship’s retort was cut off by Dog on the interphone.

  “Zen, I want you in on this. Go to the main Dreamland channel.”

  He clicked off without s
aying anything else to the two Flighthawk pilots, listening as Ray Rubeo detailed an argument for another UAV.

  “We’re trying to get a line on that plane,” added Rubeo. “The surveillance equipment that Captain Freah placed shows the other still in the hangar.”

  “What plane?” asked Zen.

  “Chen Lee’s companies have two 767s. One is in Taipei on the ground but we’re looking for another that they seem to have leased a few months back,” explained Dog. “The UAV has handles that could be used for an air launch. We have someone en route to the airport to take a look at it.”

  “Let’s get north,” said Zen.

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Dog.

  Aboard Island Flight A101

  0130

  FANN CHECKED THE course marker. The UAV had a range just over fifteen hundred miles, but that was without the extra weight of a bomb, and flying at medium to high altitude. Professor Ai had calculated that its fuel would take it roughly a thousand as presently configured. They were just approaching the thousand-mile mark now.

  The longer they waited, the less possibility there was of the small plane running out of fuel. But it also increased the chance that they would be found.

  He checked the map and his watch again. In less than two hours, Beijing would be destroyed.

  No—the communists would be destroyed. The capital, his capital, would be intact.

  He would return to Taipei, a hero.

  And a criminal, in the eyes of the communists and their collaborators in the present government. Undoubtedly he would be killed. But death merely meant a change; it was no more permanent than life.

  Waiting increased the chances of success, but it would also allow him to see the explosion. He would witness the moment of his grandfather’s triumph with his own eyes.

  “We are in range,” said Ai.