by Dan Hampton
The red symbology box was overlapping with the Delta airliner. He frowned and expanded again around the DL 275 contact. That was odd. The contacts were drifting apart now . . . They weren’t coupled to each other like they had been. Like an ambiguity would be.
He expanded again. The airliner was at an altitude of 5,000 feet heading southwest for the landing runway at Chiang Kai-shek. There was no altitude return on the ambiguity.
The officer sat back. He’d never seen two contacts diverge like this. They usually resolved or just stayed coupled together. He made up his mind and reached for the phone.
“So what is making you nervous, Chia?” Captain Wang was standing by his console. He had his coat on and had been ready to leave when the ICC hotline buzzed. “We’d already decided this was an ambiguity within the weapons computer.”
“I know that, sir.” The lieutenant spoke hurriedly. “But one of the ambiguities has separated from the primary contact. I’ve never seen it happen before.”
Visions of his naked girlfriend still filled Wang’s head and he rolled his eyes at his replacement, another senior captain.
“Well, run an expanded plot and see what it says.”
“I did sir . . . at 64-to-1 resolution.”
“And . . .”
“Well . . . it was a Confidence Level One.”
Wang snorted derisively. “Level One, Lieutenant? That could be anything. That could be someone’s cell phone!”
The other captain chuckled.
But Lieutenant Chia persisted. “Sir, at least look at it yourself. The ambiguity had split from the main contact and the 64-to-1 expansion showed it almost a mile away. There’s no altitude readout, but the range is decreasing. It wasn’t just hanging in space. If it was ambiguous with the commercial flight, then—”
“Then the altitudes would be the same.” Wang sat down and tapped his console to life. “I know the system too.”
Rapidly manipulating the display, he got down to the twenty-mile range scale and stared at the DL 275 tag. It was on an eight-mile final to Runway 23 at 190 knots and 1,200 feet. Right where it should be.
The other captain got up and stood behind Wang but he didn’t notice. He expanded to the maximum around the airliner and saw nothing. No ambiguity. No second contact.
He ran the mouse up to the toolbar and scanned the drop-down menu.
RF EMISSION/LPI
Radar Frequency (RF) emissions and Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) contacts. This permitted the PAC-3 to locate targets based upon side lobes, like a radar that was on but in standby mode. It was seldom used because fighter and bomber aircraft normally had enough things emitting from them to allow an easy track.
He called it up and the screen was flooded with returns. This was one reason why it was rarely used. Weather radars, air traffic radars and even microwave cell phone towers. The PAC-3 was so sensitive that virtually anything emitting RF energy out there would register.
Reflected RF energy would register as well. Chaff would do that. But airliners don’t carry chaff.
He disregarded anything yellow or green. There were four red-coded contacts within 20 miles.
BG700 . . . he ignored that. It was the search radar at Anpu and was parametrically similar to the Russian-built SA-5 missile system. As was TS2. That could mean a TIGERSONG tracking radar anywhere else. But there were none on Taiwan and he knew from its location that it was ambiguous with a navigation beacon at Chilung.
The other captain leaned over his shoulder and pointed.
ZHUK-PH.
Wang saw it and swallowed hard. He stared at the range rings. It was at four miles and coming straight at him—fast. Eyes wide, he expanded on it. It could be nothing. It could be any number of ambiguities.
CON 1 and no altitude . . . shit.
It could be . . . His heart sank in his chest and a shot of pure fear lanced through his bowels.
The other officer cleared his throat nervously.
“Sir . . .” Lieutenant Chia’s voice came over the speaker. “Sir, what do we do?”
Shit!
Wang spun the chair around and knocked the other captain backward. He leaped across the console and hit the alarm button.
But he knew it was far too late.
The mercenary pulled the fighter hard to the right, rolled out, and began to count.
One.
The jet was bouncing badly in the rough low-altitude air and he felt its raw power vibrating up through his spine.
Two.
The pilot’s eyes flickered to the weapons display. Six GAT-7 cluster bombs. All set to function at 1,500 feet. The MASTER ARM switch was toggled on. The bombs would now function and detonate as programmed.
Three.
Reefing back hard on the stick, he pulled the big fighter up about twenty degrees above the horizon and immediately looked off the nose to the right. He’d committed the details to memory but went through it anyway.
Big to small.
Taipei and its suburbs were to the far right and the big highway lay northeast from the city.
Swiveling back to the HUD, he eyeballed the altitude. 800 feet.
Back outside. There was a smaller road halfway to Taipei running north toward the coast.
1200 feet.
The road ended at an irregular but highly illuminated area next to the sea. A huge military compound lit up at regular intervals.
1700 feet. He checked the steering line. Dead center. Airspeed was 480 knots and decreasing, but there was nothing to do about that without using the afterburners.
Which wouldn’t be smart at all right now.
Top right section of the compound. A big white building that showed up gray in the goggles. He looked and focused.
There!
2200 feet.
Everything was slightly washed out under the goggles but it couldn’t be helped. He could see the big van to the left of the building and smiled grimly. They parked there because it was close to the toilets in the main administration building.
2800 feet. He rolled the fighter hard left and pulled. It was all airspeed and altitude now, but he kept his eyes locked on the van.
Nearly inverted, the pilot glanced between the altitude information in the HUD and the target outside. As the altitude hit 3,200 feet he snapped the FLANKER upright and leveled the wings. He was in a thirteen-degree dive with the van in the center of his HUD.
Steep . . . but too late now and he yanked the throttles back to idle. Diving would help keep the airspeed up and by pulling the power he’d have more time to refine his aim. It was all about aim now.
2700 feet. A little right . . . a little right. He took his feet off the rudder pedals to prevent yawing the jet. The aiming circle, or pipper, was rising from the bottom of the HUD toward the target and his right thumb was poised over the weapons release button on the stick.
Almost . . . almost . . .
Now.
2500 feet, and the pipper touched the base of the van. The pilot mashed down hard with his thumb and, incredibly, there was a flash of light from the van as a door opened and several figures tumbled out.
The wings rocked as the heavy cluster bombs kicked off. He grunted and instantly pulled the jet straight up away from the ground. The trick now was to get clear before his own bombs killed him.
As the nose rose heavily toward the horizon, the mercenary rolled, pulled left, and j
ammed the throttles into full power. Straining hard against the Gs, he kept pulling the jet around to ninety degrees off the attack heading. Bunting over violently, his butt came off the seat and his helmet hit the top of the canopy but he didn’t care.
Have to get low . . . low.
As the FLANKER dropped past 500 feet the darkness suddenly peeled away and the inside of his canopy glowed orange. Risking a glance backward, the mercenary saw the entire compound disappear under rolling waves of fire. He grinned savagely and shoved the throttles full forward.
Suddenly two missiles shot up through the fireball. The pilot tensed and reacted instantly from deeply ingrained habit patterns. He cranked the fighter over, pulled sideways and thumped out a few more chaff bundles. Twisting around to watch the missiles, he saw them arc strangely over toward the earth, not toward him. One went north out to sea and the other simply nosed over into the ground. Ballistically launched with no guidance. It was the death throes of a dying system.
Smiling coldly, the mercenary brought the fighter around to the south and quickly scanned the cockpit. Calmly adjusting his goggles, he shifted in the seat and stared out at the wall of mountains ahead of him.
Now all he had to do was get away.
Wang slid away from the table and wheeled toward the technicians operating the bank of displays.
“Low-light cameras . . . on!” he jabbed a finger at another man. “You call the command post . . . Alarm Alpha.”
The man nodded dumbly but reached for the phone. Alpha alarms were only for imminent attacks. Still . . . his captain had told him to do it.
“ICC . . . go to AUTO now!” Wang screamed at the speakerphone where Lieutenant Chia was still waiting.
“No!” The other captain spoke for the first time. “The airliner is on short final. We can’t!”
“Captain!” The technician on the low-light camera spun around and shouted. “Captain . . .” he pointed at the 42-inch high-definition flat screen.
Against the greenish-black background a huge gray shape was dimly visible. The automatic tracking lagged a frame or two behind the image but the aircraft was turning. The drooping wasp nose and twin tails were unmistakable to an air-defense expert. It was an SU-27.
A FLANKER.
And it was turning directly toward them. Turning . . . and growing bigger.
Wang stopped giving orders. He stopped planning. Movement seemed to stop in the BTOK and he could hear a buzzing begin to rise in his ears. Must move! Must move NOW!
“Out!” he finally rasped. Recovering his voice, he sprang to his feet and began shoving people toward the door. “OUT!”
Wang grabbed the last technician and they both tumbled outside and down the steps. The coolness of the night hit him harder than the packed earth of the compound. He lay for a moment and gasped, staring openmouthed at the night sky and trying to catch his breath. Great holes had been torn in the cloud deck and glinting pinpricks of stars shone through. Wang was conscious of the shouting around him and the wet of the ground soaking though his tunic. His ears were still buzzing.
Then he heard it. A powerful throbbing roar. It was growing by the second like a train rushing toward him. Rolling over on an elbow, Wang looked up to the northeast. He dragged an arm across his face and blinked.
Then he saw it.
A winged shadow silhouetted beneath the gray underbelly of the clouds. It was fast. Unbelievably fast. And it was pulling down to point . . . directly at them. All around him people were scrambling to their feet and running away.
But he knew it wouldn’t matter. The BTOK. It was attacking the BTOK.
The roaring thunder of the jet rolled over him like a warm wave and then it was gone. For a split second Wang thought it had overflown the compound. Maybe it was going to attack another target. Maybe it missed. Maybe . . .
Then the earth erupted around him with shaking explosions of fire and whistling metal. As his eardrums exploded, Wang staggered to his feet and tried to clap his hands over his head. But he had no hands. Staring dumbly at the mangled stumps where his arms should have been, he collapsed to his knees, tears streaming down his bloody face. Wang looked up to see hundreds of columns of flame leap from the earth directly in front of him. Tearing the ground, tearing the night . . . tearing into him. He felt himself lifted up and pierced through by hot metal in a moment of excruciating pain as his body came apart . . .
Chapter 2
Soaked with sweat, the mercenary pulled the FLANKER over one last ridgeline. The goggles were heavy and his neck ached. His fingers were like claws from gripping the stick and throttles. The pilot was exhilarated but tired after bouncing through eighty miles of dark canyons and narrow mountain valleys at 500 knots. Rolling upright, he bunted the jet over the hill and breathed a little easier as the mountains tumbled away into foothills. Off to the right was the glow from Taichung and up ahead the inky blackness of the sea. Leveling off at 200 feet, he dropped his mask, shoved the throttles forward again, and the fighter streaked across fifteen miles of flats to the water and safety.
The mercenary exhaled, wiped his sweaty face, and rapidly scanned the night sky for lights. A good set of goggles could pick out a contact at a hundred miles or so under the right conditions. There were lots of flashing lights way up high that had to be airliners and since the Taipei to Hong Kong route was one of the busiest in the world, he expected the traffic. But nothing was moving fast enough to worry him. Why would they? No one even knew he was here.
Seconds later, the bone-colored beach vanished beneath his tails and he was “feet wet” again. Over water. Angling a little north to avoid Penghu Island, he bumped up to 500 feet, glanced at the fuel gauges and pulled both throttles back to hold 400 knots. He called up his final destination steer point on the NAV display and whistled softly. Gas would be tight. The SU-27 carried a huge amount of fuel for a fighter but he’d flown an extra eighty miles very fast at low altitude. The Chinese mission planners hadn’t built that into the plan because he hadn’t told them.
And that was his ace in the hole. He always had an edge, even if he made it for himself. It was obvious that the Chinese would consider him a liability after the mission was finished. What was he to them other than a means to an end? And the best way to deal with liabilities was to dispose of them. Others had felt that way before.
Holding the jet steady, he checked the HUD. Level at 510 feet. Clicking on the autopilot he let go of the stick. His eyes wandered around the cockpit and stopped on the radar. He was now eleven miles off the coast and toyed with the notion of turning it on. Even a radar in standby mode emits small amounts of energy that can be detected, so he left it in standby. What would be the point? No one would be looking for him.
Except the Chinese.
He glanced at the time display. The original plan had been to head immediately out to sea after the attack. Dash across the Formosa Straits and back into China before anyone could react. He was to lose himself in the cluster of islands near Longtian and then head north up the coast, back to Luqiao, and land.
The mercenary smiled humorlessly. He was certain the Chinese had planned a short ride into the forest for him and a bullet in the head. And he had no intention of spending eternity in a shallow grave under the trees on Luqiao Air Base.
So instead he did what no one would expect and flew due south from Taipei through the mountains. The Chinese didn’t train to fly low altitude at night and wouldn’t expect that. Only a western-trained fighter pilot could do that. So he’d popped out where no one would think to look and was now flying like a striped ape across the wide part of the straits. From the midpoint he planned to an
gle southwest and parallel China for thirty minutes, then head inland over the barren coast near Shantou. South of there lay a highway airstrip called Huifeng that the Chinese Air Force maintained for alert aircraft.
It was long. It was clean. And it was completely deserted unless international tensions were high and at the moment they weren’t. It also had one other important attribute. It was only ninety three miles by water to Hong Kong.
That was his back door. Land the FLANKER at the deserted strip and take the sea route into Hong Kong. He had a Tiger 42 fast cigarette boat in a cove barely a mile from the Huifeng airstrip. From there he could make Victoria Harbor in under four hours.
Of course, the Chinese could withhold final payment for his contract but he had accounted for that. The FLANKER had a data transfer cartridge that recorded every switch action, every flight-control movement, and everything on the multifunction displays. This information would show the jet’s point of origin from a Chinese airfield and its route of flight to the target in Taiwan. Even if Beijing claimed the jet had been stolen, the international repercussions would be politically unrecoverable. No one would believe it. He would take the cartridge when he landed the jet and bargain with it for his payment.
Off to his left a few jagged islands rose out of the green NVG gloom. Looking ahead, the pilot could see a ragged cloud deck hanging over the water. Probably 700 feet or so, and he gently bunted over to stay below it. At 300 feet the clouds still swirled over the canopy so he dropped even lower.
Banking the fighter around to the southwest, he was now paralleling China fifty miles off the coast. Another fifteen minutes and he could head for land. Shrugging his shoulders to ease the tension, the pilot realized he was hungry. Clicking on the autopilot, he reached into the G-suit ankle pocket and pulled out a hard-boiled egg.
