by Dale Brown
God, he thought, I’m going to kill dozens if not a hundred.
God.
What if there isn’t a bomb in that plane?
Zen had killed a fair share of people in combat, but this felt very, very different. He had no proof that there was a bomb in the airplane; Stoner had told him he thought Chen had enough material for two weapons, but that didn’t mean one was aboard the plane in front of him, or even that they had been made.
The windows seemed to grow, though this was an optical illusion. Zen pushed his nose down, the pipper just turning red.
He had his orders, lawful orders. They had come from the President himself.
What justification was that if he killed innocent men and women and children?
The pipper blinked. Zen pressed the trigger.
Three seconds later, his stream of bullets ignited one of the wing tanks of the 767.
“BOTH SCORPION AMRAAMS missed,” said Delaney. “I’m having trouble picking him up—the Chinese are jamming us, or trying to.”
“Hang with it,” said Dog. He checked the sitrep; they were about thirty seconds from crossing into Chinese airspace; in fact, Hawk Four already had.
“Now that they know we’re here, they’re going to use our radar to home in on us,” said Delaney. “If we turn it off, they’ll have a much harder time finding us.”
“Can we follow the UAV without the radar?” asked Dog.
“No. There’s no signal coming from the ghost clone for us to follow,” said Delaney.
“Then we’re going to have to leave the radar on.”
“Fan Song radar dead ahead,” said Deci Gordon. “We’re going to fly right over it. They’ll see us.”
“Jam it when it does,” said Dog.
“Flight identified as Island Flight A101 is on fire and descending toward the ocean,” reported Zen. His voice was as cold as the computer’s synthesized tones.
“Can you get Hawk Four on the UAV?” asked Dog.
“Those F-8s are coming for us,” warned Delaney.
“Zen, you’re going to have to shoot down the UAV,” repeated Dog.
“Roger that.”
Dreamland
1240
JENNIFER STARED AT the large screen at the front of the room. The Megafortress and its two Flighthawks were crossing into Chinese Mainland territory.
They were already being targeted by ground radars, surface-to-air missiles, interceptors—even a Megafortress couldn’t survive the onslaught.
God, she thought, let him live. Let him live.
She did love him. Even if he had failed her, she did love him.
“Jen, this is Dog,” he said to her.
“I love you,” she said, thinking it was a dream.
“The programming you uploaded earlier. Can we use it?”
It wasn’t a dream—he was talking to her. Jennifer felt her face flush deep red.
But there was no time to be embarrassed.
“You have to be within twenty miles. No, wait.” Her mind wasn’t clear. She shook her head, reached to pull her hair back behind her ear.
Nothing.
“The mother ship, you destroyed it. The UAV will be on its own. It’ll default—we may not be able to take it over.”
“How close do we have to be?”
“Twenty miles,” said Jennifer. “But listen, if it’s on default—it probably won’t deviate from its course once it’s set. But you can try it.”
“Understood. Thanks,” said Dog. “And I love you too.”
Aboard Raven
0342
ZEN HAD TWO tasks—protect the Megafortress from the F-8s, and overtake the ghost clone.
Fortunately, he had two planes.
He let the computer take Hawk Four in pursuit of the UAV, using the information piped down to the computer from Raven’s sensors. In the meantime, he put Hawk Three on the noses of the two communist interceptors. They were swinging east to set up a rear-quarter attack, obviously planning on using their superior speed to close the gap behind the big American plane. Zen had to hang back and wait for them to get closer, his need to stay tethered to the Megafortress limiting his options. The Chinese defenses were handicapped by Raven’s near-stealth profile, but its need to use the powerful search radar to find the UAV, and the fact that it had to fly a more or less straight line, nearly canceled that advantage completely. Once they were in the general area of the Megafortress, the F-8s could use Raven’s radar as a beacon to show them where the plane was.
“Missiles!” said Delaney as the Chinese planes began to close in. A pair of radar homers had been kicked off from the lead F-8 at about thirty miles—probably too far to hit them, but they couldn’t take a chance.
The Megafortress’s ECM blared, not only killing the guidance systems in the missiles but giving the Shenyang pilots fits as well. Zen started an intercept that would allow him to slap the lead bandit with a cannon burst, then dip his wing and take on the wingmate.
The lead F-8 came on faster than he expected, its Liyang turbojet obviously feeling its oats. Zen got a shot, but just barely. The computer helped him put the bullets out in front of the Mainlander—in effect, the Chinese pilot ran into them. He got a hit, but it wasn’t enough to stop the plane.
It was too late to worry about it. He tucked his wing, the targeting screen going yellow as the second F-8 flew into range.
“LEAD F-8 CLOSING. He’s setting for heat-seekers,” warned Delaney.
“Stinger,” said Dog calmly, referring to the airmine unit in the Megafortress’s tail. A replacement for the tail cannon that had graced the original B-52, the Stinger spit out cylinders of tungsten-wrapped explosive. When the fuse in the airmines sensed a proximate object, they ignited their charges, sending a spray of hot metal into the air. The metal would shred a jet turbine as easily as a screwdriver puncturing a Dixie cup.
“Coming at us. Missile.”
Dog hit his flares and jinked left, then right. Meanwhile, Delaney worked the Stinger. The combination of the F-8’s speed and Raven’s evasive maneuvers kept the Mainlander from serious harm; on the other hand, his missile missed and his evasive actions took him temporarily out of the game.
“We have two AMRAAMs,” said Delaney.
“Save ’em in case we need them to get the clone.”
“Shit,” said the copilot. “We’ve lost the UAV from the radar.”
ZEN’S TARGETING CUE framed the cockpit of the F-8. He saw the outline of his opponent and thought of the people in the civilian jet he had just been ordered to shoot down.
He pressed his trigger, but he’d already blown the shot.
Zen kicked himself mentally, then checked the sitrep to line up for another shot.
He didn’t have to—the Taiwanese Mirages were now in range of the F-8s. There was a whole lot of chatter in the air—two missiles were launched, then a third and a fourth. The Mainlanders decided the prudent thing to do was select afterburner and live for another day. They rode north, pursued by the ROC missiles.
A GROUND MISSILE battery—a Chinese HQ-9, roughly the equivalent of the long-range Russian SA-10 on which it was based—came on-line as Raven crossed over Chinese territory south of Shanghai.
“We’re spiked,” said Delaney, meaning that the ground radar had found and locked on the aircraft. It could launch a missile at any time.
“Break it,” said Dog.
“Broke it,” said Delaney. The copilot’s voice had become hoarse.
“Good,” said Dog. “You have the UAV?”
“Not on the scope. Negative.”
“Wes?”
“No transmissions,” said the specialist, who was monitoring the airwaves. “Chinese know we’re here, though. About a million people gunning for us. Battery of FT-2000s antirad missiles trying to find us. Uh, some command problems there.”
The FT-2000 homed in on ECMs and other electromagnetic radiation; it was a real threat to Raven since the best and possibly only way to defeat it would be
to turn off the countermeasures and other gear. They had no decoys aboard.
“Is it up?” Dog asked.
“Doesn’t appear to be.”
“UAV?”
“They don’t seem to see it. They think we’re the threat.”
“Do we have it?”
“Negative,” said Wes.
“If it’s going to Beijing, it’s got a good distance to travel,” said Delaney.
Dog remembered what Jennifer had said about the UAV—more than likely it would fly straight to its target, no fancy stuff in between. He plotted a line to Beijing on his multiuse display.
“If that’s the way we’re going, we’ll never make it,” said Delaney looking at the course he’d laid in.
“We better,” said Dog.
Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
1545
JED BARCLAY LOOKED at the table as the debate continued on whether to alert the Chinese government to what exactly was going on. Raven had just crossed over land, so the incursion itself was evident, but the President’s advisors weren’t sure precisely what if anything to tell the Chinese.
The secretary of state argued that admitting the bomb existed would scuttle the summit before it started. The President asked if the UAV could be shot down without Chinese help.
Probably, thought Jed—but sooner or later the communists would take out Raven. If that happened first, and the UAV got away, they’d be blamed.
And that would undoubtedly lead to a full-scale nuclear exchange.
One of the Air Force experts was describing the radar and missile defenses in the corridor Raven had entered. He told the President that the Chinese ground defenses were not advanced enough to find, let alone track, the UAV or the Flighthawks. Raven’s onboard ECMs, however, should protect it from most of the missile systems.
Balboa wanted to declare Raven a renegade unit. It wasn’t far from the truth, he argued.
Jed tried to speak but the words died in a mumbled stutter on his tongue.
“What do you think, Jed?” asked the President.
“I-I—”
“I think we can give them a few minutes more,” interrupted the secretary of state. “They’ve never failed us before. This is Dreamland we’re talking about.”
“No!” His voice was so loud it echoed against the paneled walls of the sit room. Everyone around him stopped and looked at him.
“I’m sorry, but not even a Megafortress can survive the gauntlet around Beijing. The multilayered defenses, the f-fact they’re flying in a straight line, and they’re also low on fuel. It’s not going to work. And the Taiwanese UAV—it’s not as fast as the Flighthawk or the Megafortress but it has a good lead. It may take another twenty minutes to catch. We don’t know what onb-b-board defenses it m-might have.”
“What’s your advice, Jed?” asked the President.
“Um, uh—”
Jed clenched his fist, trying to get the stutter to go away. “We have to tell the Chinese what’s g-going on.”
“That won’t remove the risk to our people,” said Chastain. “They still may be targeted.”
“We have to tell them everything,” said Jed. “They’ll think we set this up otherwise.”
He looked at the screen, trying to see his boss. What did he think?
Probably that Jed was a stuttering jerk.
“Jed’s right,” said Freeman.
“Make the connection,” said the President.
Aboard Raven
0350
FROM THIRTY THOUSAND feet, with no clouds and a starlit night sky, the Chinese countryside looked remarkably peaceful. By day, the heavily populated eastern portions of the country bustled with a booming, rapidly changing economy, but at night the country still looked as it had fifty or sixty years before, largely rural though well populated.
But Zen wasn’t relying merely on the optical feed. His screen was littered with purple blobs showing antiair radars, fingers grabbing for the stealthy little plane. The U/MF could zip right by them for the most part, its body too sleek to be picked up. Raven, however, had to fly a line directly through several of the blobs. It was making full use of its countermeasures to boink the radars. As of yet, no one had fired at them, but Zen knew that was only a matter of time.
A four-ship element of Su-27 fighters, purchased from Russia only a few months before, was bearing down on Raven from the north. Indeed, there were so many boogies in the air at the moment that Zen told the computer to show only those in the flight path or with a better than sixty percent chance of intercepting them.
The Taiwanese UAV had completely disappeared. Zen was sure it was still flying—he was convinced he’d have seen the crash. But where exactly it was, he couldn’t say. The only thing they had to go on was Stoner’s guess that it was headed toward Beijing, and Jennifer’s belief that it would have to fly a fairly straight course once it was out of its mother ship’s control.
“Pricks are calling us killers,” said Wes on the interphone.
He was talking to Dog, but Zen couldn’t help asking what he meant.
“Killer Fortress—they blame us for shooting down the SAR plane a few days ago. That’s what the controllers are saying,” said Wes. “They want us.”
We ought to let the UAV blow up Beijing, Zen thought. These were the same bastards who had put his wife in the hospital, nearly killing her. The same bastards who had killed Fentress and the others. Let them all fry.
Zen tightened his grip on the Flighthawk stick. He nudged Hawk Four further east as a JJ-7, a version of the Chinese-developed MiG-21 ordinarily used as a trainer, darted toward Raven. It fired a heat-seeker from seven miles out—obviously the pilot’s training hadn’t gotten very far—then kept coming.
“Turn off,” Zen told the pilot, speaking on his frequency in English. “If you don’t, I’ll nail you.”
Whether the pilot heard or not, he kept coming. Zen’s targeting screen went from yellow to red as the JJ-7 pulled to within three miles of the Megafortress. Zen pumped thirty rounds into the plane’s engine.
Fifteen seconds later, the canopy blew off and the pilot hit the silk.
Zen gave the computer Hawk Four, telling it to fly back into the escort position. Then he jumped into Three …
… and saw the dim glow of the Taiwanese UAV’s tailpipe fifteen miles ahead.
DOG SHOVED THE Megafortress hard right as the first wave of Chinese surface-to-air missiles climbed in the air ahead of them. The missiles were the Chinese equivalent of SA-6s and would be easily confused by Raven’s ECMs, but there were a half dozen of them, and with a warhead of just over 175 pounds, they couldn’t be completely ignored. Delaney tracked them and pointed out another barrage of antiair a few miles ahead. Dog swung back west, zigging around the missiles.
“We’re pretty visible up here,” said the copilot. “One of their radar planes is on a line to the east. I don’t think he sees us with his radar—I think he’s homing in on ours.”
“Can we get him with AMRAAM?” Dog asked.
“Sixty miles away,” said Delaney.
That meant no. It also meant that it was too far for the Flighthawks.
“Raven, I have our target visually,” said Zen. “He’s in the weeds, maybe ten feet AGL. Ten miles and closing.”
No wonder they hadn’t found the UAV, Dog realized; it was so low to the ground the radar couldn’t sort it out through the ground clutter—odd reflections of the radio waves off the terrain.
But flying that low also cut down on the UAV’s speed.
“Intercept in four minutes, a bunch of seconds,” added Zen.
“Are we close enough for Jen’s takeover program?” Dog asked.
“Negative,” said Zen. “It’s thirty miles away total. I’ll be close enough to shoot it down before you’re in range.”
“Missiles!” warned Delaney. “Breaking.”
The copilot said something else, but Dog lost it. Both of the operators at the stations behind him were now spending the
ir time jamming radars and communications systems in their path. Dog had two more antiair missiles left aboard; he wanted to reserve at least one for the UAV, in case the Flighthawks missed.
“Sukhois on our six at twenty miles and closing,” said Delaney.
“When they’re close enough, let them have it with the Stinger,” said Dog.
“Yeah.”
“Colonel, I’m going to put Hawk Four on that flight of J-8s coming at us from the west,” said Zen.
Dog had to glance at the sitrep map to remind himself exactly which flight Zen was talking about. All of Raven’s high-tech gear and whiz-bang computers, ergonomic controls, and audiovisual doodads couldn’t completely erase the limits of situational awareness. There were just too many threats for Dog to process everything at once.
“Go,” he told Zen.
“I have to let the computer handle it. It’s four on one—we may lose it.”
“Our priority is the ghost clone,” said Dog.
“Understood.”
“FT-2000 in the air!” warned Delaney. “He’s homing in on our ECMs.”
“Can we break it?” asked Dog.
“Only if you want everything else they’re firing to hit us.”
THE FOUR CHINESE J-8 fighters came at Raven in a staggered line, each plane separated by about a mile and flying at different altitudes. The computer quickly recognized the pattern and calculated the best attack posture, prioritizing the targets in the order of the greatest threat to Raven. The strategy—a slashing attack that would take Hawk Four across the course of the flight and allow it to fire on at least two of the aircraft before maneuvering to catch a third from behind—was solid, and took into account the abilities of the enemy planes as well as the Flighthawk. It also gave the computer time to recover and change its strategy if the bandits drastically altered course and speed. The only problem with it was that by the time Hawk Four turned to catch the third plane, it would be out of communications range from Raven. Zen nonetheless approved the strategy as the best course, telling C3 to stay in dogfight mode even if the connection snapped—otherwise Hawk Four would have defaulted back to escort and tried to find Raven.
