by Dale Brown
Braxton wondered if he’d been too cautious. He was about to tell Talbot to turn back to the north when they were hailed again, and this time told to stop dead in the water or face an attack.
“They can’t possibly be talking to us,” said Braxton.
“They’re using the Malaysian registration number of the launch,” said Talbot.
“How would they have gotten that?” Braxton asked. It was a rhetorical question—surely the Chinese had plenty of spies in Malaysia who could have supplied it. “It has to be a bluff.”
“Should I answer?”
“Absolutely not.”
Braxton went back to scanning the horizon. The way in front of them was clear, but there was another shadow now to the north.
“It may be a trick from the Dreamland people,” said Braxton, thinking out loud.
He had defeated the locator circuitry in the Sabres as part of the process of taking them over. It had to have worked, he thought; otherwise they would have been all over him when he recovered the planes, if they even let him get that far.
Were the Chinese really following?
“Talbot, when was the last time you used the launch?” he asked.
“Couple of days ago, after we left Brunei.”
“Was it scanned?”
“For bugs? Of course.”
But they were tracking them, weren’t they? How?
Braxton went to the GPS unit.
“Has this been tampered with?” he asked, examining the holder plate. “These screws have been replaced.”
Talbot bent to look at it. “I think you’re getting paranoid.”
“No. It’s either been monkeyed with or replaced. It may even be the same unit; they just have to know which signal is pinging the satellites. Damn.”
He yanked it out and threw it in the water, though if it had been bugged, the damage was already done.
The speck to the north was growing exponentially. Braxton noticed that it was above the water—a helicopter.
He took out the H&K 417 from its case beneath the seats.
“I can handle the gun if you take the wheel,” said Talbot.
“Just steer.”
In a few minutes the helicopter revealed itself as a drone—an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft used by the Chinese navy and generally flown off small patrol vessels. It was rare that they were this far from land.
Braxton hesitated as it approached on the port side of the launch, unsure whether shooting at it would make things worse. It came within thirty meters, passing without slowing or seeming to notice. As it circled back, Braxton raised the gun. He waited until the black bulb of the aircraft’s nose filled his scope, then fired on full automatic, sending two long bursts at the middle of the aircraft. Seemingly unfazed, the aircraft continued past on the starboard side, flying for about a half mile before turning back toward him.
“I can’t believe I missed,” said Braxton, aiming again.
This time the bullets burst the forward portion of the fuselage. The hardened plastic and metal splattered into the air. Part of the shrapnel damaged the rotors, and the aircraft’s tail began to spin slowly. Braxton poured the rest of the magazine into it; flames began spewing from the gas tank as it quickly rotated itself down into the water. It crashed with a satisfying hiss.
Braxton had barely any time to savor his victory—two more drone helicopters appeared from the same area as the other. Meanwhile, the dot on the horizon that had been following them had grown considerably larger and separated into two small fast patrol boats. They looked like speedboats, barely bigger than Braxton’s launch—but considerably faster and undoubtedly armed.
“How far are we from Daela?” he asked Talbot.
“Ten miles.”
“We have to get there ahead of them,” said Braxton, slamming a new magazine box into the gun. “Or we’re through.”
10
South China Sea
TURK TRIED TO relax as the Tigershark raced toward the cargo container vessel and the oceangoing tug, its array of sensors and optical cameras working overtime to record everything below. He was at 25,000 feet, not quite invisible to the naked eye but certainly far enough away that he’d look like little more than a blur in the distance. Neither of the two ships seemed to have a radar system capable of tracking him, let alone direct a weapons system to shoot him down. And yet he somehow felt vulnerable, as if he were being shadowed by an enemy he couldn’t identify, let alone defeat.
It wasn’t the fact that he didn’t have the Sabres escorting him, although it felt strange to fly without them. Nor was he really worried about the Chinese fleet sailing a few hundred miles away—he knew he could fly the pants off a dozen J-15s.
But the fact that someone had managed to take over the Sabres—had proven they were more advanced and smarter than OSP, Dreamland, Rubeo, and everyone else—that was a little unnerving.
And that, he decided as he checked his course, had to be the problem.
The Sabres were grounded until the brain trust figured out what was going on, but Turk had to now wonder if they could take over the Tigershark as well. It used a completely different intelligence system to help him fly, but its interface connected with that of the Sabres. Maybe these bastards could worm their way in through the UAVs’ interface.
Rubeo had insisted it was impossible—but wouldn’t he have said that about the Sabres as well?
“Whiplash Shark, we need you to take another pass at high altitude,” said Danny Freah over the radio. Freah was in one of the Osprey assault aircraft, heading toward the ships.
“Roger that, Colonel. Stand by.”
Turk brought the Tigershark through a bank and came back over the two ships a lot slower this time. He zoomed the infrared image on the left side of his screen, using the computer’s filter to identify where the people were. There were about twenty on the deck of the cargo carrier, and only eight topside on the tug. The infrared could get no images of anyone belowdecks.
“The cargo containers are shielded from the penetrating radar,” noted Danny. He was looking at his own set of images. The tops of the containers were lined with multiple layers of material arranged to confuse the penetrating waves of lower-powered units such as those carried by the Tigershark. “We need you to keep an eye on them.”
“Roger that.”
Turk selected the array of cargo containers on the forward deck, then instructed the computer to alert him to any physical change in that section. He took some more slow circuits of the area, extending his orbit to a five mile radius around the cargo ship. She was moving at about twelve knots, a decent pace for the vessel, though as far as Turk was concerned she could have been standing still. Satisfied the area was clear and the sensors hadn’t missed anything obvious, he pushed down to 15,000 feet and started a run directly over the two vessels. Nothing had changed; the same number of people were on the decks of each ship.
“All right,” said Danny, watching the feeds. “We’re ten minutes from go. Make your last pass at H minus 02 minutes.”
“Roger that,” said Turk, checking his time.
DANNY FREAH FORWARDED the image of the tugboat to the helmets of the rest of the Whiplash assault team.
“We have eight people on the deck of our ship,” he told the troopers. “No weapons are visible. We go in exactly as we planned. Secure the bridge and work down. Everyone good?”
One by one the Whiplashers chimed in. Achmoody, now the team leader with Boston back at the base, pointed out that six of the crewmen were on the stern deck. He suggested they land some of the Marines with the two Whiplashers assigned there, assuming the crewmen on deck remained roughly where they were.
“That way it will be easier to hold them without having to shoot anyone,” he explained. “If they see a bunch of people, they’re more likely just to stay put and not make a fuss. Safer for them, easier for us.”
Danny agreed. He went over to the Marines and showed them the setup using his tablet, then asked if t
hey’d have a problem fast-roping down.
“Fast-roping is our middle name,” said Sergeant Hurst, the Marine NCO in charge.
Danny rolled his eyes, then called over Baby Joe and Glenn Fulsom to work with the Marines.
“Four Marines go in on the stern,” he told the sergeant. “The rest remain aboard as reserve; we use them on whichever ship needs support. These guys will lead you down.”
COWBOY TOOK HIS position on Greenstreet’s wing, then checked his systems one last time. The plan was to buzz the cargo container ship fast and low, a show of force ahead of the assault. They’d ride bow to stern, with about twenty feet clearance directly over the deck—assuming, of course, that Turk didn’t see something happening before then.
If he did, they’d deal with it. Besides the small-diameter bombs, two of the four F-35s in the squadron formation were carrying “Slammers”—ARM-84 SLAM-ER Block 1Fs, long-range antiship missiles capable of sinking the large cargo ship with a single hit. While not quite as capable as the newer ALAM-ATA Block 1G—a Slammer with the ability to change targets and “reattack” following other missile hits or misses—the weapon was more than capable of dealing with a lumbering cargo vessel.
Cowboy was not carrying a Slammer; tasked to be on the lookout against the drones, he had a pair of AMRAAMs and Sidewinders to go with his small-diameter bombs.
Satisfied that his aircraft was ready for the fight, Cowboy pushed his head back against the top of his ejection seat and tried to slow-breathe away the growing tension and adrenaline. He needed to stay loose and relaxed—nearly impossible tasks this close to showtime. He was like a football player waiting for the Super Bowl to begin; it was just too damn important, too damn exciting, to calm down for.
He loved it.
Working for Whiplash would be like this all the time. Whatever it took, he was going to find a way to get there.
First, this, Cowboy reminded himself. Let’s get this show on the road.
TURK WATCHED THE numbers marking his altitude drain on the screen. He’d taken the Tigershark down to 5,000 feet above sea level—low enough to get 4k images of every bolt head on deck.
It was also low enough to get him blown out of the sky if he wasn’t careful. So even though this looked like a cake walk, he knew he couldn’t take it for granted.
“Two minutes,” he told Danny over the Whiplash circuit. “Moving in.”
The Flighthawk bucked a bit as he started out of his turn toward the stern of the cargo carrier, shaking off a burst of turbulence. The sun glinted off the waves, round and bright and big. The back end of the cargo container looked like the squashed bulbous rear of a hippopotamus. The ship sat high in the water, fat and awkward. It was large enough to fit three stacks of containers top to bottom on the stern deck behind the superstructure, eight across. But there were only two there now, brown rectangles whose sides and tops were dotted with patches of rust.
The superstructure, which included the stack for the engine exhaust and all the important crew compartments from the chart room to the bridge, rose high above the stern deck, some eight stories—or container equivalents—high. There was a man on the rail at the starboard side, looking out toward the stern.
There were two large crane structures on the long forward deck. They looked like massive beams or pieces from a suspension bridge; they made it possible for the ship to load and unload containers and other items in ports unequipped to handle large-scale container operations. Turk went straight over the middle of the structures, drawing a line that split the ship in half.
Three dozen containers sat on the forward deck area, arranged in an irregular pattern from one to four high, which left plenty of room not only on the deck itself but on each successive layer, except for the highest, where a single container sat near the centerline of the vessel.
Turk’s flight over the ship lasted no more than a second or two. Rising as he cleared the vessel, he slid left, riding his wing into a tight twist that got him headed back toward the two ships. This time he put his nose on the tugboat’s bow and let his altitude bleed down to 3,500 feet, exactly. His airspeed had slowed as well, though at 250 knots the Tigershark wasn’t exactly standing still.
Unlike its cousins that worked in harbors, the oceangoing tug was a good-sized vessel, nearly three hundred feet long, with a boom behind the wheelhouse big enough to haul the cargo carrier behind her. The flat stern deck was long and low in comparison to the rest of the ship, but it still towered over the waves; the tug was small only in comparison to its companion.
These guys have got serious amounts of money, Turk realized as he pulled the Tigershark away from the two ships.
It was of course an obvious fact—they would never have been able to build the UAVs otherwise, let alone grab the Sabres—but he hadn’t considered the seriousness of the threat they posed until now. It wasn’t just that they could take American secrets and use them against her interests: the conspiracy could, in effect, change the entire order of world politics.
Turk might have considered this further, or at least scolded himself for coming so late to such an obvious conclusion, but for a blaring warning that nearly pierced his eardrums—someone aboard the cargo ship had just launched a missile at his tailpipe.
11
South China Sea
BRAXTON WAS LESS than four miles from the island, but he wasn’t going to make it before the Chinese reached him.
He’d gone through nearly all of his ammunition trying to push the helicopters away. At least ninety percent of his bullets had missed—the robots were quick and small, and he was shooting from a moving boat. They ducked and weaved and moved off, and when one finally went down, a fourth took its place.
He had a single box of ammunition and an RPG launcher with a single grenade. But that wasn’t going to do it. Sensing that he was running low on ammo, the helicopters moved across their bow, egging him to fire.
Braxton picked up the rifle, then decided against firing it. He guessed that they wouldn’t actually allow a collision and told Talbot to keep the throttle wide-open. The aircraft zoomed close, the lead helicopter coming within inches of striking the forward prow of the launch before edging upward.
Maybe he could shoot it down on the next pass, but what was the point? The two motor torpedo boats chasing them were now practically even with them, flanking their sides. Small craft with a machine gun dominating the forward deck and a pair of stubby torpedoes on either side of their gunwales, the boats looked like souped-up versions of World War II American PT boats, with long platforms at the rear for the robot helicopters. The Chinese boats had sleek, speedboat-style hulls and open cockpit-style wheelhouses—and, more ominously, three or four sailors aboard each, pointing Chinese ZH-05 assault rifles at them. They flew Chinese flags from their masts.
“You will stop or be sunk,” said the Chinese commander over a loudspeaker.
“You gonna use the grenade launcher?” Talbot asked him. His face had grown increasingly pale as they’d fled; Braxton thought it might turn transparent soon.
“If I do that, they’ll rake us with their guns. I can’t sink them both.”
“Right. But what do we do?”
“Keep steady. Once we’re on the island they can’t touch us.”
Another two miles and they would be there, and then he could do just about anything. But it might just as well be 2,000 miles. Braxton grabbed the radio and called Fortine back on the cargo vessel.
“We are about to come under attack from the Americans,” said Fortine, before Braxton could say anything. “They’ve warned us they’re going to board.”
Braxton was taken by surprise, and momentarily forgot about his own predicament. “Are you sure it’s the Americans?”
“Yes. They’ve said as much. We’re fighting back,” Fortine added. “I’m not going to be taken prisoner.”
“The Chinese have caught up to us,” said Braxton. “Do what you think is best.”
He was talking more to himse
lf than to Fortine. He might have tried to talk someone else into surrendering, but he’d known from the start that the fatalist captain would never give in to any government.
“We will win in the end,” said Fortine.
The line was covered with static—one of the Chinese boats was blocking the transmission.
“You will surrender!” said the Chinese commander over his loudspeaker. “There will be no other warnings!”
Just in case they didn’t get the message, the machine gunner in the boat on the starboard side fired a dozen shots into the launch’s bow. They weren’t simply warning shots—the bullets splintered the side of the craft.
“All right,” Braxton told Talbot. “We’ll let them take us. We’ll have to think of something on the fly.”
Talbot frowned, but he, too, had reached that conclusion. He put his hand on the throttle and slowly killed the engine.
12
South China Sea
TURK HAD BEEN fired on dozens of times before. But that didn’t lessen the amount of sweat rolling from the back of his head down his neck, or keep a knot from forming in his stomach. A cloud of small decoy flares automatically exploded behind his aircraft as a laser-detonating system hunted for the enemy warhead, but even so, he and his aircraft were perilously close to twenty-some pounds of high explosive.
It might not sound like a lot, but up close and personal with an airplane, it was more than enough to ruin a day. The Tigershark’s small engine red-lined as Turk pushed the aircraft away from the missile; he held steady until he saw the missile explode harmlessly behind him, far enough away that the shock blast was lost in the wake of the aircraft’s escape.
Now it was his turn. Turk banked out of his climb, lining up on the rear deck of the cargo container ship. There were three men there, one with a bino, and two others working over a case.
The computer ID’ed the kit as a 9K38 Igla, a Russian-made antiaircraft missile known to the U.S. and NATO as the SA-18 Grouse.
“I have two targets preparing a MANPAD,” said Turk, recording what he was seeing as well as broadcasting it to Danny. “Preparing to take them out.”
