Strike Zone

by Dale Brown

  “We’re not even sure that Chen launched his plane,” noted Freeman. “Let’s give the Dreamland people a little more time to work on it.”

  “The way the intercepts are lined up right now,” said Jed, checking the feed from Dreamland that gave the planes’ positions, “Colonel Bastian is going to fly into Chinese territory just off the coast to check that last flight.”

  “Then that’s what they’ll have to do,” said the President.

  Aboard Raven

  0250

  THERE WERE NOW four different flights of interceptors within fifty miles of Raven, two from Mainland China and two from Taiwan. The Taiwan flights—all F-5Es—were out at the end of their normal operating radius and would have to return to base fairly soon. The Mainland interceptors were J-8s, grouped in twos and also getting close to bingo. A pair of JJ-2 “Midgets” ordinarily used for training and not particularly adept at night operations were also in the air over Wenzhou on the coast, but were probably not much of a threat to anyone but themselves. Dog’s crew had its hands full sorting through the intercepted communications; Zen, meanwhile, pressed on toward the next craft they had been tasked to intercept, a 767 cargo craft.

  “We’re on the Chinese ground intercept radars,” reported the copilot. “Tracking us. They’ll vector the fighters at us any second.”

  Dog grunted in acknowledgment. A pair of spanking new Taiwanese Mirage 2000s had just selected afterburners, pushing their delta-winged airframes north to come up and take a look what was going on.

  “Target plane is at ten miles,” said Zen. “Ident checks. Hailing him.”

  One of the communist flights did the same to Raven, telling Dog he was violating Chinese airspace.

  “Bullshit,” said Delaney. “We’re more than fifty miles off the coast.”

  “Standard Chinese practice,” said Dog.

  “Like I said, bullshit.”

  Dog answered that they were in international airspace and pursuing their flight plan. While true as far as it went, the statement was not particularly informative, and the Chinese pilot countered that the American plane had better turn around.

  “What’s his controller telling him?” Dog asked Wes, who was listening in on the frequency.

  “Telling him to challenge us and take no nonsense or something along those lines,” said Wes. The transmission was in Mandarin, but the computer gear aboard Raven included a competent on-the-fly translator.

  “Activating his weapons radar,” warned Delaney. “Asshole.”

  The J-8 challenging them was roughly fifty miles away, and flying a nearly parallel course—there was no way the aircraft could hit the Megafortress with anything but four-letter words.

  “Want to go to ECMs?” asked the copilot.

  “Let’s not give him the satisfaction.”

  Sure enough, the communist pilot gave up a few seconds later, turning back toward his base on the Mainland.

  THE 767 APPEARED on Zen’s screen, a blur at eight miles away. While the ID checked out, the pilot had not answered Zen’s hail.

  The blur slowly drew into focus.

  Was there something under the right wing?

  Zen nudged the throttle for more speed, but got a warning from the computer that he was too far from Raven. He backed off, telling himself not to get too impatient. The two-engine plane slowly came into better focus.

  The wing was clean.

  Converting a civilian plane into a conventional bomber was not particularly difficult; a bomb bay could be cut into the floor in an afternoon with plenty of time left over for the crew to catch happy hour. Add some proper targeting gear, and the Boeing could be at least as accurate as the aircraft used in World War II. Of course, a 767 would never stand a chance against an interceptor or a ground-defense system—unless it had the element of surprise on its side.

  “Wes, Target Two is not answering my hails,” Zen told the op upstairs over the interphone. “Why don’t you take a shot at it with the translator?”

  “Doing so now, Zen.”

  Zen continued to fly toward the plane, trying to get a look at the body. If there were bottom-opening doors beneath the fuselage, they weren’t obvious.

  Unlike the 767 he had intercepted earlier, there were no cabin lights, even though he could see the outlines of windows.

  “No answer,” said Wes.

  “Try all frequencies.”

  “I’ve tried every one known to man.”

  “Dog, I think we may have found our target,” said Zen.

  Dreamland

  1155

  JENNIFER TOOK A sip of her Diet Pepsi as she continued to scan the NSA intercepts of telemetry being gathered in real time over the South China Sea by Elint satellites and an RC-135. She’d programmed the computer to tell her if anything came across similar to the segment from the email. Reams and reams of material were now being intercepted by satellite and listening stations all over the South China Sea, and even with the computer’s help, looking for the UAV would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.

  Zen had just pulled close to one of the 767 flights. It wasn’t answering hails—this looked to be a good bet. She heard Colonel Bastian talking to the White House directly, asking for instructions.

  They were going to tell him to shoot it down, she knew.

  Jennifer reached to flick her hair back behind her ear, belatedly remembering she had cut it off.

  Dog was telling Jed they had the plane.

  Something in her reacted viciously to that. Anger at her lover, or ex-lover? She clicked on the circuit.

  “Colonel, that’s not the plane,” she snapped.

  “Jen?”

  “That’s not the plane,” she insisted.

  “You sure?”

  She wasn’t sure at all—logically, it probably was. But she insisted she was.

  Why?

  Jennifer wanted to argue with him. She wanted to tell him to screw off. And she wanted everyone to see her telling him off.

  She wanted to be right, and she wanted everyone to know it.

  But she wasn’t, was she? Because it had to be the plane.

  “Colonel Bastian, you are authorized to use all necessary force to terminate that flight if they won’t turn back,” said a deep, sonorous voice over the Dreamland Command frequency.

  The President himself.

  “It’s not the right plane,” Jennifer insisted. She slapped her computer keyboard, backing out from the intercept screen to the communications profiles stored earlier. The 767 had taken off from Taipei—they had some data from it somewhere in the vast storehouse of intercepts, didn’t they?

  “Jen, this is Colonel Bastian. Can you explain?”

  Fuck yourself, thought Jennifer. She began paging through data.

  “Major Catsman?” said Dog.

  “Um, just a second, Colonel. Jennifer’s working on something here.”

  Aboard Raven

  0259

  ZEN HAD THE plane fat in his target screen; two bursts from his cannon and it would go down. All he needed was an okay from Colonel Bastian.

  A Chinese Chengdu J-7 was on a rough intercept from the northwest, its intentions unclear. It wouldn’t be a factor for another two or three minutes, however; by then this should be over.

  As he waited, Zen checked Hawk Four, flying a routine trail behind Raven. He decided to put it into a preset position ahead of Raven called Escort Two; the robot would fly seven miles ahead of the mother ship’s left wingtip. That would give him a reasonable position to deal with the communist interceptor if it continued south and he was still hanging behind the 767.

  C3 acknowledged his command, whipping the tiny plane forward. When he’d first learned to handle the Flighthawks, Zen would have insisted on taking the plane himself. But he’d grown to trust the computer, and knew he could concentrate on Hawk Three and the 767.

  “Hawk leader to Raven. Colonel, what’s the story?”

  “Dream Command is checking on something.”
<
br />   “That J-7 is going to afterburners,” said Delaney.

  “Coming for us?” asked Zen.

  “We’ll know in a minute,” said Delaney.

  Dreamland

  1200

  JENNIFER SAW IT on the screen as Dog nagged them again for an update. She pointed to the break in the transmission so Major Catsman could see as well.

  “This back here is them saying they have radio trouble,” said Jennifer. She paged back to the translation screen, trying to get the right place.

  She couldn’t find it, and for a moment she doubted herself, thought that her anger at him had made her unconscious mind invent it. She stabbed at the cursors.

  Where is it? Where is it?

  “Wait,” said Catsman, grabbing her hand. “Calm down. Go back. Just relax. We have time.”

  Two backspaces.

  “Colonel, it looks like the aircraft you’re querying was having intermittent radio trouble shortly after takeoff. They may not be able to hear your hails. I’m not sure why they didn’t turn back,” said Catsman. “But maybe you can get their attention visually.”

  Jennifer pushed back from the screen. Tears were falling down her cheeks.

  She hadn’t invented it.

  “Are you all right?” asked Catsman.

  Slowly, she nodded.

  The major put her hand on Jennifer’s shoulder. “We won’t shoot down the wrong plane. We won’t.”

  Aboard Raven

  0305

  ZEN ACCELERATED OVER the right wing of the 767, pushing past the cockpit. The pilot in the big jet did what any self-respecting pilot would do when a UFO blasted across his bow—he ducked.

  And took the aircraft with him. Fortunately, the big jet was athletic enough to handle the violent jerk on her controls fairly calmly—if rolling through an invert can be considered calm.

  “Getting some radio flickers but nothing intelligible,” said Wes upstairs. “I think Jennifer’s right—I think he’s having radio problems and didn’t realize it.”

  “Wouldn’t he have checked in with civilian controllers?” Zen asked.

  “Well, given the situation between the two Chinas, I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t talk to them at all, and vice versa. His flight plan has him heading for South Korea.”

  Whatever the situation, the 767’s pilot appeared to realize he was in fact in trouble. Rather than coming back to his original course, he turned southward, as if he were heading back to Taiwan.

  “Taiwan Mirages have him on their radar,” said Dog. “They’re going to hook up and escort him home.”

  “Roger that,” said Zen. “But if he’s not our guy, who is?”

  On the Ground in Kaohisiung

  0305

  THE MARINE CAPTAIN wanted to blow the bunker entrance with C-4, but Danny wouldn’t let him.

  “That’ll kill them for sure,” said Danny. “Best bet’s to keep digging.”

  “Sooner or later they’re going to run out of air,” said the Marine. “We can’t get those big blocks out of the way.”

  “Maybe we can get some earthmovers from the city,” suggested Danny.

  “God knows how long it’ll take to get them here.”

  Danny stood back. Blowing the hole open looked like the only option—but it risked killing his men to save them. Even if they moved far from the entrance, the shock of the explosion might weaken the already damaged bunker.

  The rest of the facility had now been searched; it seemed a good bet that the nuke was down there.

  If they blew the concrete to bits, would they blow up the bomb as well?

  No—because if it weren’t safed against accidental explosions, it would have gone off already.

  Assuming it was there.

  Go with a minimum charge.

  “Set up the explosives,” Danny told the Marines reluctantly. “One of my men will help. Make sure the people inside know what we’re doing. Yo, Boston. Get over here and put some of your demo training to work.”

  STONER PUSHED THROUGH the dust, the dim beam from the flashlight dancing against the walls. The path had taken two turns and gone down two flights of stairs, widening somewhat as it went.

  The bunker had definitely been intended as more than a place to hide a nuke or two. As he walked, Stoner worried that he would run into guards. He’d retrieved his hideaway Glock from his leg—the Beretta had been lost in the blast—holding the gun in his hand. The flashlight was strapped to his wrist, casting the shadow of the gun ahead as he walked.

  He walked slowly, stopping every second or third step, waiting, listening.

  What was this place? he wondered. A cement hole in the ground, a hiding place?

  He turned the corner and something flashed in his face. He fired his gun and felt incredibly cold.

  Cement and the tang of gunpowder stung his eyes. No one was there—he’d tripped another EMP-shielded motion detector. He was at the entrance to a paneled room.

  He took a step, then froze, belatedly thinking of booby traps.

  Fortunately, there weren’t any.

  “My lucky fuckin’ day,” he said aloud.

  The room itself was empty, except for a small couch. A Taiwanese flag hung on the wall. On the wall opposite it were some framed papers and scrolls. Most were in Chinese, but one was in Latin with a name written in Roman letters:

  Ai Hira Bai

  A diploma or certificate of some sort. He was in the professor’s lair.

  A door on his right was ajar, revealing a bathroom.

  To the left, a set of steps led downward. Stoner walked to them. Another light came on, but this time he was prepared.

  The steps led to a small office dominated by a wooden desk with a glass top. Beneath the glass was a map of Mainland China. He reached for the top drawer, opening it gently. It was empty, except for an envelope with Chinese characters on it. Stoner’s ability to interpret ideographs was somewhat limited, but he thought the words meant “To the next generation.”

  BOSTON WATCHED THE Marines set the charges amid the rubble. The passage was blocked by an extremely large and thick piece of the wall; to get it out of the way they had to use considerable explosives. There was simply no way of knowing what other damage it might do.

  “How we looking down there, Boston?” asked Captain Freah.

  “Uh, the charges are just about set,” the sergeant told him. “A good hunk of C-4.”

  “Understood. Make sure you’re far enough away.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Something bothering you, Boston?”

  “Uh—”

  “Look, Sergeant, the thing about Whiplash is, you have an opinion, you share it. You got me? I didn’t pick you to join the squad because I thought you were stupid. I want to know what the hell it is you’re thinking. Talk to me.”

  Boston had been in the Air Force for a while, but no officer had ever spoken to him exactly like that. While there were definitely good officers around, the usual attitude toward NCOs and enlisted men in general edged more toward tolerance than partnership.

  Was Freah different?

  Maybe it was the fact that they were both black.

  Or maybe what he and Colonel Bastian and the others said was true—Dreamland was a team effort.

  “I have a weird, weird idea,” offered Boston. “We could use that Osprey to pull some of these big suckers off. I saw this big crane helicopter do that once back home when this building—”

  “Pull the charges out of there now,” said Freah, cutting him off. “Next time you get an idea, Sergeant, you share it right away, you got me?”

  “Damn straight, sir,” said Boston. “Damn straight.”

  Aboard Raven

  0315

  ZEN JUMPED INTO Hawk Four as the Chinese J-7 closed to within fifty miles of the Megafortress. The J-7 was essentially a MiG-21, with all the pluses and minuses of the venerable Russian design. Zen could take it in a heartbeat; as a matter of fact, the computer itself could handle the plane if pre
ssed—C3 had shot down almost enough MiGs to rate as a bona fide ace.

  The Chinese pilot repeated roughly the same challenge the others had, telling Raven they were in sovereign airspace and to get his Yankee butt home. Zen laughed; Chinese pilots seemed to think they could make up for the shortcomings of their aircraft by boasting. As a class, they had to rate among the most cocksure flyboys in the world—which was saying quite a lot.

  Dog gave a bland reply and held to his course.

  They had one more aircraft to check out, another 767 whose flight plan said it was heading for Beijing. The ID had already checked out. Hawk Four was about forty miles behind it; overtaking it at the present speed would take nearly eighteen more minutes, by which time the plane would be nearing landfall just south of Shanghai.

  “Controller’s telling that J-7 to hang with us,” said Wes. “He’s got fuel problems, though.”

  “Any transmissions from the 767?” asked Zen.

  “Negative.”

  “Zen, be advised we have a ground radar trying to track us,” said the copilot. “You see that on your screen? Fan Songstyle radar—getting some more action here.”

  “Just flashed in,” said Zen as the icons indicating different ground intercept and guidance radars began to appear on his screens. The Fan Song radar was associated with Chinese V-75 SA-2 Guideline missiles, originally designed by Russia in the late 1950s but updated at regular intervals since. “Stealthy” did not mean “invisible”; the long-wave radar could detect the EB-52 at roughly ten miles. But unless the Megafortress had to fly directly over the site, it was unlikely to be successfully targeted. The Flighthawk was even more difficult to detect.

  “We’re out of their range,” noted Delaney. “Fresh flight of Mirages en route from Taiwan coming up behind us, uh, should be on the radar in ten, a little less. Look here, J-7’s turning around. Looks like the skies are friendly once more.”

  “Roger that,” said Zen, jumping back into Hawk Three and pressing toward the 767.