by Dale Brown
“Sabres?” asked Bastian.
“A lot has changed since you’ve been gone, Tecumseh,” said Rubeo. “We can discuss it later. I need the sequence now. Breanna?”
“I’ll take the flash drive,” she said.
“It might be more useful to have your father with us,” said Rubeo. “To get past the passwords quickly.”
“All right, yes, let’s go, come on,” said Breanna, turning swiftly. “He’s with me,” she told the guards, and then in a louder voice, repeated it for the security system monitoring their movements.
22
South China Sea
THERE WAS NOTHING Turk could do to help the first Chinese fighter; his plane was already fried so badly, the pilot barely ejected before it blew to bits.
But in the seeds of that victory lay the enemy UAVs’ demise. They flew over the destroyed J-15’s path, banking south as a group while computing which target to hit next and how. Their course took them nearly perpendicular to Turk, and far below. He tipped his nose forward, turned slightly, and even before the rail gun was ready to fire he had locked up the lead UAV.
The Sabre rocked as three slugs sped from its nose. The UAV was a small target, but that just meant there wasn’t much left for the third bullet to hit. The first shattered the main section of the aircraft, destroying the “brain” as well as blowing a hole through the main fuel tank; the second slug blew through the engine. All the third could find was a large piece of shattered wing engulfed in flames.
Gently pressuring the stick at the right side of his seat, Turk put the Tigershark on the tail of the UAV at the end of the pack. The aircraft was starting a turn to the north; Turk rode with it, staying just to the outside as he waited for the small plane to swing back in reaction to his presence. It did so, then twisted sharply, spinning its wings and heading toward the waves.
It looked for all the world as if the plane had malfunctioned into a weird spin and was out of the game. But it was just a trick—one Turk had seen on the range many times. He followed, waiting for the UAV’s wings to flatten out. As soon as they stopped rotating, he fired a burst that caught it back to front, splitting it in two.
While Turk was busy following the UAV through its phony spin, the Chinese J-15s made the mistake of trying to tangle with the other two. As Turk looked skyward, he realized that the Chinese had managed to catch one of the UAVs in a sandwich between them.
“Break off, break off,” Turk warned. “Let me get them.”
There was no response from the Chinese fighters, and no indication that they had even heard him. The lead Chinese fighter accelerated upward, trying to swing the trailing UAV into a scissors maneuver where his wingman could fire heat seekers from behind. He was doing a reasonable job of jinking out of the UAV’s sights, but he hadn’t accounted for the other UAV, which suddenly attacked him from the side.
The J-15’s wingman fired a pair of heat-seeking missiles, but they went off course, apparently fooled by decoy flares the lead Chinese plane launched as he tried to escape. He turned hard west, only to have his right wing fly off—sheered clean by the UAV’s laser weapon.
The second flight of Chinese aircraft to the west turned in their direction, riding to the aid of their comrades. Inexplicably, two of the aircraft fired medium-range missiles—crazily, Turk thought, since they couldn’t possibly have locked on the targets.
If the missiles were intended to get the UAVs’ attention and break their attack, it didn’t work. The pair climbed east, preparing to circle back. By now it was clear the UAVs were following an order to attack the Chinese planes; they were closer to Turk’s Tigershark but ignored it, even though his active radar was now telling them where he was.
“All Chinese aircraft, break east,” radioed Turk, trying to get them to move toward him and make it easier to get the UAVs. When they didn’t respond, he gave them a heading and told them he would cut between them and the two surviving UAVs. But both J-15s near him continued south, toward the ships, as if they were intending to attack.
“The UAVs are your enemy,” he told them. “Not the people on the ships.”
They either didn’t hear or didn’t care, instead activating their attack radars to try to launch missiles on the large cargo carrier.
COWBOY SAW THE two Chinese J-15s lining up for shots on the big ship.
“I have Bandit Two,” he told Greenstreet.
“Roger that, Basher Two. Firing Fox Three.”
The F-35s launched their AMRAAMs toward the Chinese planes. At roughly the same moment, the air-to-surface missiles the J-20s were carrying dropped from their wings, heading for the cargo vessel. It was a sitting duck.
Suddenly, something exploded a mile and a half from the ship, directly in the path of the missiles. One of the missiles, which had started to arc for a final attack, abruptly dove and exploded. The other veered sharply, then wobbled back toward its course.
Turk had managed to get his aircraft between the missiles and the ship, and deked one of them into exploding with a shower of chaff. But the other was still moving toward the vessel.
TURK SAW THE second missile move into his pipper and squeezed the trigger without a solid lock. He got off three shots, but only the first was on target, and even that barely hit, blowing a hole through the rear propulsion area of the missile. The warhead had enough momentum to continue into the cargo ship, striking it near the bow.
Time moved in slow motion. His maneuvers had taken him below 5,000 feet; his forward airspeed had dropped below 250 knots. Both the UAVs and the Chinese fighters were somewhere above and behind him.
In other words, he was dead meat.
“Come on,” he told the Tigershark, leaning on the throttle and ignoring the warnings that he was being targeted. “Go! Go! Go!”
COWBOY’S THUMB WAS just about to press the cannon trigger to nail the J-15 on Turk’s tail when he realized that one of the UAVs was going to beat him to it. The Chinese pilot had been so intent on getting Turk that he’d ignored the slippery UAV behind him.
A nudge left, and Cowboy had the UAV in his crosshairs.
He fired a half second after the UAV’s laser burned a hole in the J-15’s tail.
The resulting cartwheel of explosions warmed Cowboy’s heart.
“Yee-haw!” he shouted over the radio. “Scratch one UAV!”
“Let’s stay focused,” scolded Greenstreet. “There’s a lot of work to do.”
23
Daela Reef
BRAXTON LED WEN-LO out of the command room and back into the bunker’s hallway.
“We have only a few minutes,” he said. “Once the UAVs reach the ships, we need to be back to control them.”
Wen-lo said nothing. The two guards who’d been standing in the hall stepped into line behind them, their automatic weapons clutched against their chests.
Braxton felt his heartbeat rising. Adrenaline was surging through his body so badly that his eardrums felt as if they were going to explode.
Was that possible? He certainly felt something. It was almost a high.
He’d felt this way when the deal to purchase his company was about to go through.
And years before that, working late with Jennifer Gleason. He’d tried to tell her that night how he felt about her, but he was too tongue-tied, too shy, and the moment and opportunity passed.
He’d always thought there’d be another chance. But things had changed too rapidly after that.
A lesson.
He walked to the end of the corridor, but instead of going to the main entrance, turned and opened a door at the side. There was another door just inside the tiny corridor.
“Where are you taking us?” demanded Wen-lo, grabbing his shoulder to stop him before he could open the second.
“To the launching area. Your men should be waiting.”
“No, I’ve changed my mind,” said Wen-lo. “You’re coming back to the boat.”
“You’re reneging on our deal?” Braxton felt his face flush.
“What deal?” asked Wen-lo, drawing his pistol.
“Just relax,” said Braxton. He raised his hands slowly, then glanced at Wen-lo’s goons, who’d raised the barrels of their guns. “You need my help. I’m very valuable.”
“I’ve seen your interface. It’s no more advanced than the general Flighthawk controls. I mastered those long ago.”
Braxton took a step back so that his foot was against the door. He needed to open it, but at the moment that didn’t look possible.
“You’re going to need help with the Sabres,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “Someone who can take them apart and examine them. Someone who’s worked on the systems already.”
“I have my pick of engineers. You’ll work for us, or you’ll die,” said Wen-lo.
“Quite an offer.”
“Take it or leave it.”
“Let me shut down the launch area, then.” Braxton turned and put his hand on the interior door. Wen-lo grabbed him and pulled him back.
“What is in there that you want?” he demanded. Without waiting for an answer, he told one of his men in Chinese to open the door.
Braxton dove to the ground as the hallway seemed to explode. A bright light flashed—the door and nearby hall were rigged as a giant flash bomb. The first door had been engineered to protect against the blast, but with it open, the concussion shocked the small space; it quickly filled with smoke.
He couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear, but he knew what he had to do—he leapt to his feet and ran to his left, back into the hall and the foyer, heading for the main door a few yards away. One of the guards scrambled after him, firing as he ran.
“Close door!” Braxton yelled as he reached the threshold. A thick metal panel slammed down behind him. It caught the guard in the arm, severing it as it closed.
Braxton fell against the steps.
“Gas them,” he told the security system. “Suffocate the bastards. Gas them and kill them all.”
24
South China Sea
THOUGH HE KNEW the planes were poised to attack, Danny was so intent on the hidden compartments they’d discovered that he stayed below, moving forward with the team as they checked the tugboat’s corridor. In short order they found two control rooms, both with gear that looked exactly like the ground stations for Flighthawks.
There was another compartment that looked like an arms locker. It had a full array of weapons, from rifles to grenade launchers. All looked brand new.
“Colonel, there’s something behind this panel in the corridor,” said Achmoody.
Danny went out to take a look. Achmoody and Glenn Fulsom were standing along the bulkhead, looking at the wall’s surface.
“Are you sure there’s a panel there?” asked Danny.
Achmoody held up a handheld sensor unit that detected magnetic fields and used them to find cavities and openings. There was a gap in the wall behind the panel that matched the dimensions of a hatchway.
“It’s behind the metal, so the smart helmet radar can’t detect it from the hall,” added Achmoody, referring to the low-power detection unit built into his Whiplash helmet. The device was intended for urban warfare situations, and could easily scan through conventional plaster and plasterboard walls. Metal was more problematic, though it took relatively sophisticated techniques to fool the system.
Kallipolis had proven they had those in spades.
“Can you get us in?” Danny asked.
“We have to blow a hole through. It’s thick.”
“Let’s do it.”
Danny went back topside as the demolitions were set. As soon as he reached the deck, he saw a fresh plume of smoke rising from the cargo ship’s bow.
“Captain Thomas, what’s going on over there?” he called over the radio.
“Bow of the ship was hit by a missile, an Exocet or something like that. No injuries here, but we’re taking on water.”
The missile was actually a Chinese YJ-82 (also known as a C-802), but the comparison to the French-made Exocet was apt. Even though its body had been splintered by Turk’s slug, the armor-piercing warhead of the missile had enough kinetic energy left to pierce the hull and deck area before exploding, ripping a gaping hole at the front of the ship. The container carrier was taking on water at an alarming rate, and even an experienced crew would have their hands full keeping her afloat.
“Abandon the ship,” Danny told Captain Thomas. “We found the control rooms over here. I’ll have the Ospreys pick you up.”
“Roger that.”
The Osprey pilots had moved south, trying to stay clear of the air battle raging above. They were still easy targets, but the pilots didn’t hesitate when Danny told them the Marines needed to be taken off the ship. It was Turk who told them to wait.
“Colonel, let me mop this up first,” he said, breaking into the transmission over the Whiplash common channel. “Then they can come in with no danger . . . and they won’t be in the way.”
“We’re fighting time.”
“I just need a few minutes. It’s simpler if they stay where they are.”
“Understood,” replied Danny. “You clear them in. Don’t let those Marines get wet.”
“Not gonna happen.”
A hatch work of contrails crisscrossed the sky. Two columns of black smoke rose in the north and puffs of black and gray were scattered along the horizon. But the scene was too pretty to suggest the ferocity of the raging air battle.
“Colonel, we found something on the stern deck you might be interested in,” said Corporal Mofitt, trotting over to Danny. “Looks like a hidden passage below.”
Danny followed him to a spot beneath a life raft, which the Marines had pulled away. The prisoners were standing nearby; two seemed angry, the others simply resigned.
“Locked shut from the inside, sir,” added Mofitt.
“I think we can blow it,” said the team’s sergeant, coming over.
“My explosives guy is below,” said Danny. “I’ll get him up here.”
“I can do it,” said Mofitt. He held up a small block of C-4.
“Go ahead,” said Danny. “Don’t use too much.”
He stepped back and then called down to Achmoody. They’d gone through the panel and found what the trooper called a rat’s nest of small, interconnecting rooms.
“We can hear sounds,” said Achmoody. “We think there are people.”
As he finished speaking, Danny heard the sound of automatic weapon fire in the background.
“Correction,” said Achmoody. “We found some people. And they’re armed.”
TURK BANKED IN the direction of the last UAV. It was five miles west, trying to follow the lone surviving Chinese fighters. If the J-15 lit its afterburner, it would escape; the UAV could not stay with the larger aircraft. But for some reason the Chinese pilot turned back toward the ships.
And Turk.
The UAV cut down the distance between them, driving toward the J-15’s rear quarter as the Chinese fighter pilot flew a nearly straight line toward the plane he thought was his enemy. Turk endeavored to save him, even though he suspected the pilot wouldn’t return the favor.
Starting a good 10,000 feet below the other two aircraft, Turk managed to close the gap to about 5,000 as he pushed into a firing slot to hit the UAV. Before he could fire, the drone realized it was being targeted from behind and gave up on the J-15, veering left.
Turk decided he would take advantage of his discovery of the aircraft’s laser weakness. He turned to follow the slippery UAV through the turn, letting the Tigershark get thrown out ahead of the slippery drone as it cut a tighter radius. That put the UAV behind him—right where he wanted it.
The RWR shrieked; the drone was trying to lock him up. But the turn had been so tight that the aircraft had lost considerable speed, and the gap between its nose and Turk’s tail was too wide for it to fire.
Ordinarily, that would have been a good thing—but Turk wanted his enemy to shoot. He corre
cted slightly in its direction, then waited for the UAV to catch up. It was just about in range to fire when Cowboy radioed a direction to him.
“Break left, break left!” rasped the Marine.
“No, no!” yelled Turk over the radio, but it was too late—a pair of heat seekers flashed from the F-35’s wings. Turk made his cut in the sky, diving away from what was now a one-on-one furball between Cowboy and the UAV.
TINY FLARES POURED from the back of the drone like little matches thrown by a pyromaniac. As Cowboy’s missiles sniffed for the heat source, the plane managed a cut so sharp that it looked like it was flying sideways. Knowing his missiles would miss, Cowboy started a turn to line up another shot. But the F-35 couldn’t match the smaller robot’s maneuverability, and within seconds he lost sight of the UAV.
It didn’t take a sixth sense or advanced radar to know it would now angle behind him. Cowboy started weaving desperately in the sky, drawing a convoluted ribbon that made it difficult for the UAV to get a bead on him. He saw Greenstreet passing in Basher One below him, and then the Tigershark—very disappointing, since it meant they weren’t in position to blow his pursuer out of the air.
“Let him target you and start to fire,” said Turk over the radio. “Then hit your chaff.”
“What?”
“Do it,” said Turk.
“Where are you?”
“Trust me.”
“Let this bastard lock on my tailpipe?”
“The chaff will blow him up. Make sure you hit it when I say.”
I don’t see how, thought Cowboy to himself.
TURK TIGHTENED HIS turn and then accelerated, trying to get on the UAV’s tail. But he was just too far away to get a lock.
The drone was tight on Cowboy’s six. What Turk was telling him to do surely went against every instinct the Marine aviator had, not to mention years of training. But it was the only way to get out of the situation if Turk couldn’t get a bead on the UAV.
The enemy robot tightened its noose around the F-35’s tailpipe. Even if Cowboy didn’t make a mistake, he was going to get creamed in a few seconds.
