Strike Zone

by Dale Brown

  “We will wait as long as possible. I calculate an optimum launch in twenty minutes,” he told the scientists.

  “The communists are reacting to action by the Americans. They are scrambling fighters, alerting their troops. I’ve seen the radar and radio intercepts and—”

  “We will wait as long as possible.”

  Aboard Raven

  0140

  ACCORDING TO THE manual, a “stock” B-52H could make 516 knots at altitude. B-52s had long ago ceased to be “stock,” and in practice the typical Stratofortress’s hull was so cluttered with add-ons and extra gear that even 500 knots in level flight could be more fantasy than reality.

  Dreamland’s EB-52s—which in most cases had started their lives as B-52Hs—contained no external blisters to slow them down. Thirty-something years of work on jet engine technology allowed their four power plants to do the work of the original eight more efficiently, and the use of more alloy and composites in the wing and tail structures did the same for the airfoil. In short, if an entry for the Megafortress’s top speed were to be made in a reference book, it would be listed at close to 600 knots, along with an asterisk indicating that, depending on the configuration of the power plants and the load the massive plane carried, it might do considerably better.

  Dog, with full military power selected, passed the 600-knot mark as he pushed northward through the Taiwan Strait, the two U/MF-3s leading the way.

  Mainland China and Taiwan existed side by side in an intricate and highly charged relationship. On the one hand, their governments considered each other bitter enemies. On the other, there was a myriad of commercial relationships between the pair. Among those relationships were regular flights from Taipei to a number of Mainland cities, most especially Shanghai.

  Such flights might give cover to a 767 loaded with a UAV and nuclear device, Dog thought.

  “Raven to Dream Command. Major Catsman, have we located that other 767 yet?”

  “We’re going over the airport right now,” said Catsman. “We have CIA assets on the ground.”

  “Copy that.”

  Dog looked over at his fuel panel. They had about three more hours of flying time before nudging into the reserve cushion, depending on what twists and turns Dog took.

  He brought up another set of instrument readings on the configurable screen, focusing on his aircraft’s performance. Raven could have been used to set the benchmarks for a maintenance manual.

  Come to think of it, it had.

  “Danny, what’s your situation?” he asked Captain Freah, bouncing back onto the Dreamland line.

  “We’re secure here. Still going over everything, but it looks about as clean as a diner an hour before the health department inspectors arrive. Authorities are at the gate,” Danny added. “We’re holding them off—got about another ten to fifteen minutes of searching to get through.”

  “Roger that.”

  On the Ground in Kaohisiung

  0151

  STONER SAW THE panel behind the vat of sulfuric acid a second or two after the Marines did, and had to shout at them to keep back.

  “Very good chance the sucker’s booby-trapped,” he told the two men, who unlike him were wearing special chem suits with breathers to protect them from the acidic fumes.

  It wasn’t that Stoner liked to take unnecessary risks; he knew people worked in this plant with the acid all the time, and figured his brief exposure was nothing like what they exposed themselves to.

  Not that it was pleasant. He went to the floor panel and knelt down, instantly soaking his knees in the residue of a thousand car batteries. He could feel the material get sodden and start to tickle at his skin.

  “Back,” he told the Marines, pulling out a long knife.

  One of the men began to object; if the panel was booby-trapped, they had a special squad trained to defuse it. But Stoner had already found two wires with his knife; he pulled them up gently, scraped some of the insulation off, then checked the current with a small meter the size of pen top. A yellow light flashed on; he clipped another set of alligator clips to the wires and got a green.

  “You’re fucking lucky,” said one of the Marines as he jimmied open the lock.

  “How’s that?”

  “Could have just as easily blown when it was shorted.”

  “Well, only if my sensor here screwed up. It’s all right—my guess is it’s just an alarm and it was taken out by the E-bomb,” said Stoner, shining around the flashlight. “There aren’t any charges here.”

  He’d suspected that; the acid would have made keeping explosives here fairly dangerous, especially with people working all around the area. What he hadn’t expected was that the panel led to a ladder, which disappeared downward.

  “Come on,” he told the Marines as he positioned his NOD monocle and pulled out his Beretta. “Cover me.”

  Aboard Penn

  0200

  KICK LEANED BACK as the computer took the Flighthawk further out into the harbor, still searching for any other Mainland boats or submarines. The Taiwanese port authorities, local police, and navy assets were all rushing to the area, and a search-and-rescue operation was under way. Penn had vectored in some of the SAR assets, but communication with the local units was torturous because of the different radio frequencies and, more importantly, accents. Still, several of the Mainlanders had already been recovered.

  If he were in their place, he wouldn’t want to be saved.

  “Major Alou is asking you to check that merchant ship out, just about head on at two miles,” relayed Starship.

  “Yeah, roger that, thanks.”

  “Easy man, you’re jerking your stick like you’re muscling a Hog,” added Starship. “This is fly by wire. Fly by remote wire.”

  “You know, Starship, I really don’t need your help.”

  “Fuck yourself then.”

  “And fuck yourself back.”

  Starship laughed. Kick started to laugh too.

  STARSHIP WATCHED THE small trawler grow large in the display. There were two or three people on deck, but the ship had no lights on at all.

  He suspected the craft had launched the commandos they’d intercepted in the harbor. But they’d already run a check on the registry and found that it was owned by a company in the Philippines.

  That would undoubtedly prove to be bogus, but at the moment there was nothing they could do about it.

  Kick brought the Flighthawk across the bow in a gentle arc, still a bit unsure of himself as he flew. That was reassuring in a way. Kick would never be as good a pilot, even a remote pilot, as Starship; he could compare himself to Kick any time and know he was ahead.

  It didn’t take away the jitter he felt in his chest, though. And he was thirsty, very thirsty. And for something more than the bottled water in the galley fridge at the back of the compartment.

  “See any antiair?” Kick asked.

  “Negative.”

  “This has to be the ship. Think we ought to splash it?”

  Starship looked at the shadow of the ship. They could say they saw someone with a shoulder-launched missile on deck—thought they saw someone.

  Shoot out the rudder, stop the damn boat cold.

  Be heroes.

  That wasn’t their job, though.

  “I think we better tell Major Alou it’s clean but suspicious,” said Starship. “Get the Taiwan or Navy people on it.”

  “Yeah. Better. I’d love to nail the mother.”

  “You and me both.”

  On the Ground in Kaohisiung

  0200

  STONER COULD HEAR the sound of water dripping in the distance as he walked down the hall the ladder had led down to. Six feet wide and seven feet high, the passage ran straight for about ten feet, then took a sharp turn to the right.

  Stoner stopped at the corner, his hand on the smooth concrete. There could be anything around the bend.

  One of the Marines stepped forward with his M-16. Stoner grabbed the man’s shoulde
r, stopping him.

  He wasn’t going to let anyone else do his job.

  “Just cover me,” he said, and before the two Marines could stop him, Stoner had thrown himself onto the floor, sliding into the middle of the open space with his pistol ready.

  The hallway was empty. It went on for about fifteen feet, then took another bend to the right. Stoner jumped up and scrambled down it.

  The Marines were at most a half step behind him, their gear clacking as they whipped the noses of their rifles up and down across the space. One of the young men started forward. Stoner grabbed him.

  “No—a motion detector. This bunker must’ve been shielded somehow against the E-bomb.”

  As he finished the sentence, the space behind them exploded.

  Aboard Raven

  0200

  ZEN REQUESTED A refuel for Hawk Three as Raven neared the north end of the Taiwan Strait. Dog acknowledged and started backing down his speed—anything over 400 knots made for a very difficult tank, even when handled by the computer.

  The Taiwan air force, officially known as Chung-kuo Kung Chuan or the Republic of China Air Force, had launched several patrols, including a full set of submarine hunters to chase the commando craft in the south. A Grumman E-2T radar plane, escorted by a group of F-5Es, was just taking up a station in the strait to the north, its radar sweeping the area for Mainland attackers.

  The E-2Ts were essentially the same aircraft as the U.S. Navy’s E-2C Hawkeye, extremely capable, fleet, airborne radar craft. The longish nose of the planes carried a forward-looking Litton AN-ALR-73 Passive Detection System antenna; three other antennas were stuffed into other locations in the plane. But the truly unique feature of the Hawkeye was its radardome, a twenty-four-foot flying saucer mounted over the wings and fuselage. The E-2T could find an airplane at roughly 260 nautical miles; the computers aboard allowed it to track at least six hundred air targets (later-model American planes could handle over two thousand). In practice, “only” forty or so intercepts could be controlled at one time; even so, that would allow one E-2T to nail more than half of the attack sorties in the Battle of Midway in one shot.

  Zen listened to the Raven copilot exchange pleasantries with the Taiwanese as he came in for the refuel. The computer painted cues on the screen, making it unnecessary for the Megafortress to carry the director lights common on dedicated tankers like the KC-10. As the small robot closed, Zen turned the procedure over to C3, which fought through the rough eddies of air rushing off the Megafortress’s bulky body. As the robot plane slapped into the straw, the automated system aboard the Megafortress exchanged some code with the Flighthawk—the digital equivalent of “Fill ‘er up”—and the jet fuel began to flow.

  REFUEL COMPLETE, DOG checked their position against the GPS screen and turned the helm over to his copilot so he could stretch his legs. But before he could unsnap his restraints, Major Catsman’s overstressed voice came over the Dreamland channel.

  “Colonel, we have an update on that leased 767 that Chen’s company owned,” said Major Catsman. “We’re still trying to pull together information, but it was moved to Hualin two weeks ago. It underwent work there to one of the wings.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Unknown. We also think there may be another UAV but we haven’t anything definitive. The thinking here is that the alterations to the wing would have been to air-launch the aircraft, or possibly to carry a bomb.”

  Major Catsman had already done some checking and narrowed down the possible suspects to three 767s.

  “We should get the airports shut down,” said Dog. “Let’s get the Taiwan air force involved. I need a direct line to the general in charge. Can you set that up there?”

  “Will do. Jed Barclay wants to talk to you in the meantime.”

  “And I want to talk to him,” said Dog.

  On the Ground in Kaohisiung

  0205

  STONER CLOSED HIS eyes and pushed down his head, knowing he was going to die but not wanting to give in. It seemed like a waste to go out here, when he hadn’t even figured out what had happened to the bombs the bastards had made.

  Dirt pushed into his pores. He couldn’t hear and he couldn’t see.

  Poor fucking Marines. Poor Marines. Shit. He couldn’t let those guys die.

  He pushed up against the massive blocks that had smothered his head. They began to give way.

  I’m like Samson, he thought. Where is this strength coming from?

  A light flashed in his eyes. He blinked.

  Was this what death felt like? Did God really send an angel out to get you?

  There was a groan behind the light.

  One of the Marines.

  He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t even buried. One of the Marines had fallen on him, probably trying to protect him.

  Idiot Marines, always trying to do their job.

  The kid was breathing. Good. But the chamber was blocked off with rubble—he could see the pile reflected in the flashlight’s shadow as the dust finally settled.

  “Stoner,” said the Marine with the light.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” said the CIA officer, dragging himself up. The NOD lay on the ground; he didn’t even bother picking it up to see if it was working, turning on his wristlight instead.

  “The charge was back in the main tunnel. It blew down the entrance.”

  Stoner stood. “Help him,” he told the other Marine. “I’m going to see where this hole goes.”

  “You think we’re trapped?” asked the Marine. There was no fear in his voice; he might have been asking about the daily special at a restaurant.

  “If we are, Danny Freah’ll get us out,” said Stoner. He took his radio out and gave it to the Marine. “Make sure Captain Freah knows we’re here and take care of your buddy. I won’t be long.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Aboard Raven

  0220

  ZEN RAN HAWK Three ahead of Raven, concentrating on intercepting the first of the planes to be checked, a 767 supposedly chartered by an English tour group headed for China. The Boeing carried identification gear that could be queried to show its identity. As he drew close, Zen used the Ident gear; the registry jibed with the flight that had taken off. The gear was not foolproof, however, and they had to assume that anyone clever enough to manufacture the UAV and a nuclear device would have the wherewithal to fake an ID. Zen pushed the Flighthawk toward the aircraft, needing a visual to make sure the plane was in fact what it said it was.

  The massive Boeing lumbered ten miles ahead, flying at 32,000 feet, about 5,000 below the tiny Flighthawk. Zen checked Hawk Four in the bottom screen—he’d had the computer take her in to be topped off, getting potential fuel problems out the way—then nudged Hawk Three’s nose gently earthward so he could get a look under the 767’s wings. He had to check his speed, however; Raven had slowed to complete the refuel, and he got a warning from C3 that the connection was about to break.

  “Zen, be advised we have some communications coming off the target plane indicating there are passengers aboard,” said Wes Brown, one of the Elint operators. “Cell phone communications.”

  “Roger that,” said Zen.

  The infrared cameras on the Flighthawk synthesized an image for Zen in the main screen, gradually sharpening their focus as he pulled closer to the tail of the massive airliner.

  Clean.

  “They don’t have a UAV,” Zen told Dog.

  “Copy that,” said Colonel Bastian.

  “Think they have a bomb aboard?” asked Zen.

  “I doubt it, but the Taiwanese authorities are looking for a divert field so it can be inspected. Let ’em know you’re there, see how they react.”

  Zen tucked his wing and slid away from the airplane, running down and then coming back up close to the cockpit area. As he rose, he contacted the pilot, asking him to identify himself. Though there was surprise in his voice, nothing the civilian captain said indicated he was flying anything but a charter packed wit
h tourists. The sensors on the Flighthawk couldn’t get a comprehensive read on the interior of the moving plane, but there were clearly passengers aboard.

  “Taiwanese are sending two F-5s north for him,” said Dog. “They’re going to order him home.”

  “Roger that.”

  “I have our second target north at one hundred miles, making 400 knots. We’ll take him next.”

  “Hawk leader,” said Zen, acknowledging.

  Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

  1420

  JED BARCLAY LISTENED as the secretary of defense and the secretary of state debated whether to inform the Communist Chinese of what was going on. The Mainlanders were already scrambling aircraft, probably in response to the Taiwan activity.

  “They’ll just shoot all the planes down,” said Secretary of Defense Chastain. “I would.”

  “If a nuclear device is exploded in China, they will retaliate,” answered Hartman.

  “Not necessarily,” said the defense secretary.

  “That’s what Chen Lee is counting on,” said the secretary of state. “It’s insanity.”

  Jed glanced at the video screen from the White House, where his boss was sitting with the President, listening to the debate. Before leaving to come over here, Jed had given Freeman a briefing paper from the CIA that argued that Mainland China would not nuke Taiwan; instead, they’d invade the island using conventional forces. An appendix to the paper suggested that the communists would threaten America with nuclear missiles if it interfered.

  “Can we stop all of the aircraft that have taken off in the last hour before they’re over China?” asked the President.

  “We can get close,” said Jed. “But there’s no guarantee that we can stop them.”

  “We can shoot them down ourselves,” suggested Hartman.

  “In that case, I’d rather inform the Chinese and let them do it,” said the President.

  “Then they may consider it a first strike and retaliate,” said Hartman. “They may obliterate Taiwan.”