Thunderbolt

by M. L. Buchman

  F-15s? Sure, learn Japanese because your butt would be in Japan along with the rest of the 18th Operations Group.

  America wanted its A-10s close to the DMZ and he had no complaints. And Korean women were always intrigued by five-ten of blond-haired blue-eyed corn-country American, fluent in their language. Fluent enough anyway.

  Last night he’d landed a very chic pair of hipster twins—a first for him. Un-be-lievable! Koreans had a thing for thigh-high skirts with knee socks that he completely approved of. Matching cable-knit sweaters. Short purple hair matching purple Converse, and long silver hair matching silver Converse. Both even had that weird flat-brimmed flat-top hipster hat that seemed to be required for indie music lovers.

  He’d gotten to chase both those tails all night and had been sure to rub it in all morning during preflight.

  “Where are you guys going?” Because indeed the rest of the four-plane flight was veering away from him toward the DMZ itself—a major no-fly zone.

  “We’re following protocol. Two kilometers off the zone.”

  “I show that’s where my ass is.”

  “Hold. This is Flight Lead. Check in position by the numbers.”

  “Flight Two. On flight plan. Confirmed GPS coordinates and inertial tracking.”

  “Flight Three. On flight plan. GPS and inertial tracking confirmed.”

  “That’s three to one,” Tomahawk came back. “Your plane’s busted.”

  “Roger that. All else appears functional. I’ll form up on you.” He prayed Tomahawk didn’t kick him back to base for a malfunctioning nav system. It was too beautiful a day to miss flying.

  The ground team had pulled his own plane for scheduled maintenance, so he was flying a backup bird this morning. Looks like it needed some maintenance too.

  “Roger, take the four slot.”

  They were flying a simple diamond; except he was no longer the right-hand part of the diamond because he’d vectored away from the group even before they’d formed up. “Big Boy” moved up to the Number Three position and he slid in behind.

  Now Chaser’s plane was bracketed between two functioning A-10 navigation systems and following the flight leader from a position just a little high so that he didn’t get wing-tip turbulence or engine exhaust off the lead plane.

  “This is Chaser, deep in the tail slot.”

  “Roger that.” It earned him a background chuckle, but no more.

  There was no room for joking once they came up to the DMZ. More landmines per square meter than anywhere else in the world wasn’t the Demilitarized Zone’s only line of defense. North Korea also had the largest number of anti-aircraft guns in the world. You didn’t mess with that, but you had to let them know they couldn’t just get away with shit.

  Today was a standard show-of-force flight.

  Four A-10 Thunderbolt IIs buzzing the entire, curving length of the DMZ at two kilometers to the southern side. Visible to the North, but clearly obeying the rules.

  He flicked a finger against his GPS map on the screen display. It insisted they were approaching the Zone.

  More than approaching, passing into it.

  “Stupid electronics.”

  Chaser looked around to double check. Not much to see from here though. Just a lot of rugged mountains on both sides of the Zone.

  The harsh terrain lay less than five thousand feet below—no point in having a show-of-force flight if they were too high for everyone to see.

  They were flying over Yeoncheon County…

  Except the Imjin River was wrong.

  It took a very distinctive massive double-S curve through the hills that he’d flown over at least a hundred times.

  If they were two klicks off the DMZ, the S should be directly below them.

  Except it was off to their right.

  Well off to their right.

  More than just two kilometers.

  “Tomahawk, this is Chaser.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The river doesn’t look right, sir.”

  There was a long pause. North of Yeoncheon, the DMZ followed the west bank of the Imjin in a long curve to the southeast.

  Which also lay off to his right.

  Which meant—

  “Bank hard right!” Tomahawk snapped over the radio.

  As if they were a single aircraft, the diamond formation banked south.

  But it was too late.

  The North Koreans didn’t send up interceptors to escort them back to the south.

  They didn’t fire their anti-aircraft guns at the American formation. The A-10s were tough enough to probably survive that.

  Instead, a local commander, who’d been dying for an excuse to test his newest weapon, unleashed four KN-06 surface-to-air missiles.

  Seven meters of missile—each fully half the length of an A-10C Thunderbolt II and half a meter across—went rapidly supersonic.

  As they were fired at close range—from almost directly below the straying aircraft—it was less than two seconds before they reached the aircraft.

  The KN-06 wasn’t some little Stinger with a three-kilo warhead or even an AIM-9 Sidewinder with ten kilos of high explosive packed into its warhead.

  Each KN-06 delivered two hundred kilos of nitramide RDX explosive.

  The A-10s weren’t hit—they were disintegrated.

  Three of the missiles turned the four aircraft into a rapidly expanding cloud of burning gases and metal shrapnel that would litter several kilometers of the rugged mountainsides—some north of the DMZ, but most in the heart of no-man’s land.

  One missile missed.

  The missile’s comm package received a destruct signal.

  A connection in the electronics, weak due to poor soldering during assembly, had broken during the shaking and high g-force of takeoff.

  The signal never reached the warhead-ignition trigger.

  The KN-06 flew on, continuing to accelerate past Mach 5.

  It covered three hundred and ninety-four kilometers—a hundred and forty-four kilometers farther than Western sources had estimated as the extreme limit of its range—in three minutes and fifty-seven seconds.

  By chance, it impacted on the island of Iki in Japan’s Nagasaki Prefecture.

  The KN-06 missile’s two hundred kilogram warhead of high explosive destroyed a section of a highly valued paleolithic archeological site, shattered all the glass windows within half a kilometer, and killed a herd of grazing cattle.

  In under five minutes, Japan had scrambled six alert fighters—all F-35B Lightning IIs.

  Ten minutes from the death of twenty-four head of cattle, another eight F-15 Eagle jet fighters were aloft.

  By that time, automated alerts recalled all military personnel from leave.

  Two minutes later, the fifty-six thousand additional reservists were called to duty.

  Within the hour, three of Japan’s four helicopter destroyers were away from the dock and driving into the Sea of Japan.

  The two Izumo-class craft shifted the bulk of their helicopters ashore. Even as they departed, more F-35s were en route to the destroyers to be forward deployed.

  Two of the country’s four KC-767J refueling tankers pulled aloft to service the F-35s.

  No parachutes had deployed over Yeoncheon.

  45

  “You are presently the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee for Airland.”

  Not at all where he’d been expecting Clarissa Reese to start as she lounged back in the sofa even more.

  Senator Hunter Ramson nodded carefully.

  “Clint Howards is presently the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee itself.”

  He tried breathing, but couldn’t seem to find any air. Even a nod was beyond him at the moment.

  “Yes, he is,” Rose swept into the room wearing a bathrobe that matched his own, but only in its material. On Rose it was breathtaking. Her blonde hair was perfect—she had paused at least that long before joining them.

 
; Her well-toned and tanned legs swished through the front overlap. Where he had pulled his own bathrobe tight to cover his chest, Rose’s ample cleavage was on display well past the lower bra-line—except she wasn’t wearing one.

  She scooted onto the small loveseat beside him, offering him an excellent view. There really wasn’t room to sit side-by-side, so he raised his arm and placed it across her shoulders.

  When he went to flip one of the lapels over her barely concealed breast, she patted his hand, then brushed it aside.

  He stopped trying to cover her.

  “Dear Clint,” Rose was saying in a pleasant tone. “He’s been a good friend for so long.” Her tone said, “far, far too long.”

  “As I thought,” Reese said politely and seemed to relax, stretching an arm across the back of the sofa the way a man would. It emphasized her chest quite splendidly.

  “Perhaps you heard that he’s announcing his campaign for reelection on Monday.”

  “I had heard,” Reese smiled. “I was curious that the senator…” she nodded at him but she continued speaking to Rose.

  As if he wasn’t sitting right here!

  “…has never sought higher office.”

  Rose responded before he could open his mouth.

  “Oh, no. Not my Hunter. Hunter has no aspirations beyond serving his country—year after year.”

  Ramson could only blink at her. It was exactly as she’d recommended all along. Power for six-year term after six-year term as senator. Perhaps the presidency at the tail end…

  But Rose had said no every time he brought it up.

  He waited, sometimes years, then tried again.

  Each time she would point out that Ted Kennedy had served forty-seven years in the Senate and Strom Thurmond forty-eight. Robert Byrd had been a senator for fifty-one after a four-year stint as a congressman.

  Perhaps Rose was right, though he liked the sound of President Ramson.

  The last thing blocking his path to getting control of the Armed Services Committee was…Clint.

  And Reese thought she could sweep him aside?

  In next year’s election?

  He tried to keep his heart rate under control, but was having a very hard time of it.

  “Of course…” Reese waved a hand negligently.

  “Yes?” Rose asked politely as she crossed her legs and the robe slid aside to expose her perfectly toned musculature almost to her hip.

  That’s when he figured out what she was doing. Rose was showing her that Reese wasn’t the only savvy woman in the room.

  “There are many people wishing to serve their country, in various roles,” Reese offered with a chilling smile. Snake was too kind and shark was too understated.

  Ramson wondered what role Reese wanted.

  Why had she asked if he was interested in the presidency?

  And why had Rose been so fast to assure her that he wasn’t?

  Oh, God save them all!

  Reese wanted the presidency!

  But how? No one knew who she was.

  It would be laughable…if she wasn’t sitting here so casually in the room playing power games with his wife.

  “My dear friend Clark, for one,” Reese said easily.

  And Ramson felt far better. Clark might be a crafty power broker, but he wasn’t a twisty devil like Reese.

  “He has developed such a fine working relationship with President Cole these last months. It is such a pity that they can’t work more closely together for the next election.”

  Rose smiled radiantly.

  It was the Miss Utah smile.

  The Top Ten Miss USA smile.

  It lit up cameras to this day. Always demure. But always at just the right amount, close beside him when the moment came. He’d witnessed the power of that smile on far more poor sods than himself.

  “Ms. Reese,” Rose said pleasantly. “I’m sure that you and Hunter can help each other in this matter.” Then she patted his thigh.

  Help her? Help her get Director Clark Winston the vice presidency in next year’s election?

  That would mean knocking Ricky Mulroney out of the vice presidency. To do that…

  Oh! No, that wouldn’t be hard at all. It was the same lever he himself had used to get on the Senate Arms Committee to begin with. Mulroney had a weak spot, the exact kind that someone like Reese would know how to leverage.

  “Won’t you stay for dinner?” Rose asked ever so politely.

  Reese inclined her head in polite acceptance.

  “Dear,” Rose turned to him. “Why don’t you call down and have them add the Sea Scallops to our order? They sound simply delicious.”

  As Hunter reached for the phone, he knew that the rest of his evening wasn’t shaping up at all the way he’d planned. They were a long way from getting back to the bedroom.

  46

  Daemon hadn’t quite expected that.

  A little straying.

  Three bad nav computers. Would have been four if the fourth jet hadn’t gone in for service at the last moment—she hadn’t noticed the airframe changeout. Too late to reprogram the replacement’s onboard systems.

  A North Korean Shenyang J-5 or J-6, just as old and primitive as the A-10s but much less well maintained, should have come up and chased them back out of the territory. The report should have been about failing equipment on the aging Thunderbolts.

  Instead, North Korea had just sent five million dollars’ worth of missiles aloft to kill four pre-historic jets.

  It was quite the show.

  She played it back again from a different angle—the US had a vast array of surveillance cameras along the entire DMZ. It only took a moment to find the right one that provided the best angle.

  Definitely dead.

  But it didn’t give her what her client needed.

  She tapped into their radio logs, which had been automatically recorded back at Osan Air Base.

  Yes, this time she had proof that it was the A-10s’ failing and not some supposed pilot error or Taliban lucky shot.

  She took a moment to sync the two together. Then, to make sure word got out, she dropped it into the anonymous drop sites for CNN, Fox, and Al Jazeera.

  Finally, she forwarded the change-value command to a phone in Singapore. It dialed a number in Manhattan, which…

  47

  The code block loaded onto the Cray XC50 supercomputer in Subbasement 2 of the AFAMS building. She had preset the value of the R14A10DMZ variable to true before loading it.

  The subroutine proceeded through the next four steps:

  Generate a short acronym.

  Deliver the phrase to three separate secure cellphones.

  After all three phones provided a delivery confirmation, drop the external connection.

  Finally, the subroutine erased itself and the program that had called it.

  48

  DMZ.

  “Jesus Christ, lady. What did you just do?” Senator Ramson was staring at his phone.

  Clarissa looked at her own phone again. It didn’t make sense. “Nothing was planned there.”

  “It damn well better not be. That place is a goddamn powder keg with the fuse already lit,” Ramson found the remote and turned on CNN.

  “The news wouldn’t have had time to get…” she tapered off as an unsteady fireball filled the screen. Shot on someone’s phone from the south side of the DMZ.

  “And this just in,” the news anchor flipped to another video. “We’re just seeing this for the first time ourselves.”

  This time the image was rock solid, with high resolution.

  Three jets flying in tight formation—and one well off to the side.

  The fourth one rejoined the others in a tight diamond.

  They shrank into the distance for a long minute.

  Then, four bright streaks rose from the bottom of the screen.

  A massive fireball erupted.

  “And here it is again, with the pilots’ actual voices.” The anchor sounde
d harried, as if the control room had only just found out there was an audio track.

  “Where the hell you going, Chaser?”

  “Where are you guys going?”

  “We’re following protocol. Two kilometers off the zone.”

  “I show that’s where my ass is.”

  “Hold. This is Flight Lead. Check in position by the numbers.”

  “Flight Two. On flight plan. Confirmed GPS coordinates and inertial tracking.”

  “Flight Three. On flight plan. GPS and inertial tracking confirmed.”

  “That’s three to one. Your plane’s busted.”

  “Roger that. All else appears functional. I’ll form up on you.”

  “Roger, take the four slot.” The straying jet rejoined the others and slid into the base of the diamond formation.

  “This is Chaser, deep in the tail slot.”

  “Roger that.”

  A long pause as the flight continued to shrink with distance. Someone in the control room did a shaky zoom, losing the jets twice before getting their blurry images centered on the screen.

  “Tomahawk, this is Chaser.” The transmission remained clear and ungarbled.

  “Go ahead.”

  “The river doesn’t look right, sir.”

  A much shorter pause.

  “Bank hard right!”

  Seconds later, while they were still banking, all four jets disappeared in a brilliant explosion.

  Hunter turned to Clarissa. “That certainly sounds like us.”

  It did. Client F had gone completely out of control. She’d take the bastard down right now—if she knew who it was.

  CNN started reporting on the alarming mobilization of Japanese aircraft and warships.

  Rose stood slowly to her feet and drew her robe tightly closed.

  “Hunter. What have you two done?”

  49

  “What the hell is going on out there, General?”

  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, four-star General Drake Nason wished to God he knew what to tell the President. All of the information that should be flowing into the White House Situation Room—wasn’t.