by Dale Brown
“What sort of attack?”
“I don’t have all the details yet. May have been some sort of missile or mortar rounds.”
“Missile? From terrorists? More likely they snuck in there and planted a bomb.”
“Could be. Should we get up in the air or not?”
“We have fuel?”
“We have fuel.”
“All right. Send up a two-plane patrol and have another stand by. You lead the first flight; report in when you know the situation. Get the Megafortress ready.”
“Done and done,” said McKenna.
“I may marry you yet, McKenna.”
For the first time since they’d met, she didn’t have a snappy comeback. “Coffee’ll be waiting at the hangar,” she said.
* * *
As he got dressed, Mack decided he would take Breanna up on her offer to hang around for a few more days; he could use an aggressive pilot in the cockpit of the EB-52. Then he realized that her flight home would have left an hour ago.
So he decided he’d take the plane up himself.
While Mack respected the capabilities of the EB-52, he’d never been particularly enamored with the plane. Early on during his stay at Dreamland, he had gone through the familiarization courses and did well enough to have been offered a pilot’s slot in the program. But for all the sleek modifications and sophisticated upgrades, the big jet was still a big jet, a lumbering bomb truck, a B-52. Mack Smith flew pointy-nose go-fast jets, not big ugly fat fellas.
But you did what you had to do. By the time he got to the airport, the ground crew was fueling the plane. Mack stopped at the tower where his ground operations center was coordinating mission information and getting updates from the other services. McKenna’s flight had taken off twenty minutes before and was patrolling over the tank farm, twenty miles away. Meanwhile, other guerilla attacks were reported on the outskirts of the capital.
Security at the airport was primarily provided by the army, but Mack had a small force of his own soldiers; after checking over at the hangar to make sure the Megafortress was nearly ready to go, he turned his attention to his ground force. He saw the apprehension in their eyes when he told them they were authorized to shoot to kill.
“But that won’t be necessary, Mr. Minister,” said the captain in charge of the detail, trying to reassure the men.
“It damn well may be necessary,” said Mack. “Anyone comes up to that gate and doesn’t stop when you challenge them, you shoot them. Make sure we have patrols around the whole perimeter, and double-check with the army. Tell them this is serious shit. Got me?”
The captain looked as if he had swallowed his lips. Mack looked at his soldiers — all eight of them, none older than twenty-three. They were well trained, thanks largely to the British, who had supplied instructors from the Special Air Service or SAS, the British inspiration for America’s Delta Force. Still, these were kids who had never had to fire their weapons in anger before; there was no telling how they would do until things were really on the line. Mack sensed that he should tell them something, leave them on a high note. Colonel Bastian did that sort of thing all the time, not so much with a speech but with his voice. Mack tried it now, making himself sound a hell of a lot more confident than he felt.
“Your job is to keep this place safe,” he said. “I’m counting on you.”
“Yes, sir,” said the captain.
“Good,” said Mack. He snapped off a salute, then walked back toward the hangar, wishing he could have come up with something more eloquent.
The Megafortress crew had arrived at the hangar and was suiting up. Mack called the two pilots over and told them he was coming aboard as commander and would fly, but both men were needed in the aircraft. The scheduled pilot looked relieved — which bothered Mack quite a bit, since in his mind that meant the man wasn’t aggressive enough. He himself would have thrown a fit if he were replaced, even by Dog himself.
Mack got his gear and went to check with the acting head of the ground crew. They were just topping off the tanks, moving a little awkwardly, both because of the hour and the fact that the plane and its systems were still unfamiliar. Mack longed for the snap of the air force’s Dreamland maintainers — God protect the airman, let alone a sergeant, who wasn’t in exactly the right place when Chief Master Sergeant “Greasy Hands” Parsons was scrambling to get one of his aircraft ready. But you didn’t really appreciate the job Chief Parsons and his people did until they weren’t there to do it.
Mack went over to the crew with the idea of telling them to move faster. As he approached, a look of horror spread over the face of the sergeant supervising the fueling operation.
Yelling at the man wasn’t going to get the job done any faster or better, Mack realized as he opened his mouth. Once more, Dog popped into his head as a model. He changed his message to something he hoped was encouraging—”Let’s do it, boys” — and gave them a thumbs-up.
Whether that worked or not, Mack couldn’t tell. He walked under the big aircraft and went up the fold-down steps into the belly, landing on the stripped-out Flighthawk deck. Then he climbed up to the flight deck, where he was surprised to find Deci Gordon, the Dreamland radar expert, at one of the operator stations.
“Deci, you coming with us?” said Mack.
“Figured you’d want me to.”
“Yeah,” said Mack. He started toward the pilot’s seat, then stopped, realizing from Deci’s frown that he’d somehow managed to say the wrong thing.
How would Colonel Bastian handle it? Mack asked himself.
Just like that, or even simpler, with a nod. But somehow, what worked for Bastian didn’t work for Mack. Mack turned and saw Deci frowning at him.
“Listen, I’d appreciate it if you came with us,” said Mack. “I really would.”
Deci looked at him, as if expecting a trick. Not sure what else to do, Mack nodded and climbed into the pilot’s seat.
They were off the runway in twenty minutes, which would have been a decent time for a scrambling Dreamland crew, Mack thought. McKenna checked in a few minutes after Mack cleaned the landing gear and began a wide patrol orbit, climbing up through fifteen thousand feet, en route to thirty-five thousand.
“Dragon One to Jersey,” said McKenna. “We came up negative on our search. No speedboat, no nothing.”
“Roger that,” said Mack. His patrol circuit took him over the ocean; Deci and the radar operator handling the surface contacts ID’d a freighter approaching from the west about ten miles away; it was the only sizeable ship except for Brunei coastal patrols in the area.
“Say, Mack, I think I have the Sukhoi again,” said Deci. “Planes we picked up the other day. Coming up toward the coast.”
“Feed me a vector,” said Mack.
Chapter 28
San Francisco
10 October 1997, 1810
Dog had planned it all out so well that the cab was just pulling up to the flight service building as he shut down the aircraft after their flight from Nevada. They got in, and arrived just in time for their reservation at Il Cenacolo, an Italian restaurant a few miles northwest of the city, which Jennifer had mentioned once during a date. The host greeted them by name; Jennifer seemed to float across the room, and Dog thought to himself that things could not be going more perfectly.
It was at that moment that he heard the voice from across the room.
“Tecumseh Bastian, what are you doing in San Francisco?”
He closed his eyes, but he knew it was useless. His ex-wife had somehow managed to ruin the one perfect romantic moment of his life.
“Karen, how are you?” said Dog, turning in the direction of the voice.
Dr. Karen Melenger was sitting with three other women at a table near the side of the room. She rose, came over, and made a show of kissing his cheek. Dog stepped back and, with as much politeness as he could muster, introduced Jennifer.
“Your girlfriend?” said Karen. She held out her hand as if she were the Qu
een Mother and expected it to be kissed.
Dog thought he saw a smirk in the corner of Jennifer’s mouth. She said hello, declining the handshake without calling attention to it, and said how nice it was to meet a person Dog spoke so highly of.
It was a remarkably smooth lie, thought Dog, and even Karen seemed taken in. But Jennifer then made the mistake of suggesting that they all get together for a drink sometime.
Dog cringed, knowing Karen would accept — sooner, rather than later.
“Tomorrow night would be perfect,” she said. “The convention ends in the afternoon, but I’m not flying back to Las Vegas until Sunday afternoon”
“How lucky,” said Dog, nudging Jennifer away.
“Where are you staying?” Karen asked.
“At a hotel,” said Dog. “We’ll call you.”
“We’ll I’m at the Max,” said Karen. It was naturally one of the most expensive hotels in the area. “You won’t forget?”
“No.”
“Jennifer, make sure he doesn’t forget.”
“Tecumseh is definitely responsible for his own actions.”
“Yes, he is, isn’t he?” said Karen.
Chapter 29
Brunei
11 October 1997, 1013
“They’re still over Malaysian territory,” Deci told Mack as he turned the Megafortress in the direction of the Sukhois. “No indication they see us. Range is one hundred and fifty miles. They’re doing about five hundred knots, still at twenty-two thousand and twenty thousand feet, respectively.”
“You have that on your screen, Jalan?” Mack asked the copilot.
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. What we’re going to do is run as close to them as we can but still stay over Brunei territory. It’s going to take us one loop down at the south before they’re in range to pick us up”
“You want them to pick us up?” asked Jalan.
“I want them to attack us,” said Mack.
“You think they’ll attack?” Jalan didn’t sound worried so much as surprised.
“Probably not,” said Mack. ‘But if they do, we want to be ready for them. And if they come over our border, we’ll have justification to follow them. I’d like to find out for sure where they’re operating from.”
“Yes, sir.”
One thing in Jalan’s favor, thought Mack: he didn’t point out that the only weapon the Meagfortress carried was the Stinger air-mine dispenser in the tail, which was designed to work against pursuing aircraft at close range.
“Be ready with the ECMs if we get close,” Mack told his copilot. The ECMs disrupted the guidance systems of enemy missiles, rendering them useless. “The computer can blind that sucker and any missile he’s carrying, don’t worry. These planes have done it a dozen times. It knows those avionics systems better than we know our names”
“Yes, sir.”
If the Sukhois were operating from the base Mack had seen on the satellite images, he’d have to fly fairly far from Brunei territory to get the proof he wanted. It was a calculated risk, given that he didn’t know whether or not there might be more aircraft. But he would have to take some risks to find out what the Sukhois were up to; ignorance was much more dangerous in the long run.
Mack checked back with his controller at the airport to see what the situation was. The controller had double-checked with the spy network to find out if there had been activity at any of the other airfields on Borneo; a few helicopters were missing from Kuching in the southwest, but otherwise the situation seemed to be status quo.
The situation with the terrorists, however, was anything but. The Royal Brunei Police Force now reported several disturbances and attacks throughout the kingdom; Mack told the liaison officer to call over to the headquarters and see if any of the units needed assistance.
“Already have. They’ve declined.”
“Call the regional offices, as well,” said Mack. “Let’s see if they have a different opinion.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Minister.”
The Brunei border ran parallel to his flight path about five miles off his left wing; it extended only about fifty miles south. Doing roughly four hundred knots, they would have to turn in six or seven minutes if they were going to stay over their part of the island.
“Sukhois are changing course, Mack,” said Deci.
“Where are they going?”
“Not clear at the moment. Heading …” Deci hesitated. “They’re coming west, picking up speed, uh, angling down a bit.”
The Sukhois had made a sharp left turn and started to descend from twenty thousand feet. The two Malaysian planes were now flying a course that would take them directly over the border. According to Deci, they hadn’t seen the Megafortress — they were not using their radars, a sign to Mack that they didn’t want to be detected. They had also selected their afterburners for a burst of speed as they dropped down closer to the mountain tops.
“Setting up for a bombing raid?” Mack asked Deci.
“Too soon to tell.”
“Get on with the liaison and have him send an alert.”
“Got it.”
Mack continued southward for another minute and a half, trying to visualize what the Malaysian jets were up to. They continued to descend, passing through seventeen thousand feet en route to sixteen; it wasn’t a rapid descent but by the same token they showed no sign of leveling off. They’d backed off the afterburners but were still moving very quickly, up around five hundred and fifty knots.
“There guerilla camps in that direction?” Mack asked. He meant the question for Deci but Jalan answered.
“There are guerillas along the mountain sides, yes, Minister, but on the south side, not north,” said the copilot.
“One thing I’d point out, this model Su-27 ordinarily wouldn’t be carrying air-to-ground weapons,” said Deci.
“Yeah,” said Mack. The early Su-27s were intended primarily as interceptors, but they did have some capability to drop bombs, and in any event might have been upgraded to do so. “You talk to ground?”
“Passed it along. Entire army is already on alert.”
“Minister, two helicopters approaching Brunei territory southwest of Labi,” said one of his operators. It was the first time the crewmen had called out a contact on their own.
“Good work,” said Mack. He clicked into McKenna’s frequency. “Yo, Dragon One, I got a job for you. Stand by for a brief.”
* * *
McKenna acknowledged the information about the helicopters and snapped onto the new course, her hand slapping the throttle to full military power. Her wingman, Captain Yayasan, acknowledged tersely when she called over to make sure he was following along.
“Pedal to the metal,” she told him. “Look sharp, eh?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The Bruneians didn’t particularly like taking orders from women, and McKenna could hear the resentment in her wing-man’s voice.
Have to kick his butt when we get down, she thought to herself.
“Make sure your cannon is ready and keep your head in the game,” she told Yayasan. Not expecting a response, McKenna leaned forward against her restraints, urging the A-37B to get a move on. At roughly one hundred miles away, it would take just under eight minutes for them to get there. By then it might be too late.
* * *
The Sukhois took another sharp turn to the northwest, now at five thousand feet over the Limbang River Valley. They were still over Malaysian territory.
“I think they’re aiming for one of the guerilla camps at the southwest side of the river,” said Deci.
“What do we have near there?” Mack asked.
“Police barracks on the other side of the border,” said Jalan.
Mack punched up the map on his left-hand display screen, studying the border area. He was just over three minutes away.
“Deci, can we jam the Sukhois?”
“Uh, you mean screw up their bombs with ECMs?”
“E
xactly”
“No way. Unless it’s an air-to-ground missile working off a GPS system, and even then it’d have an internal backup.”
“Then I guess we’ll just have to get in their faces,” said Mack.
“Minister, are you sure they’re going to attack our barracks?” asked Jalan.
“Not at all,” said Mack. “But I don’t intend on giving them the chance”
He reached to the throttle slide at the side of his seat, coaxing more power from the EB-52’s four engines.
“It’s going to get a bit twisty at the end:’ he told his crew. ‘The pilot has put on the no-smoking sign. Please fasten your seatbelts. Remember to keep your hands inside the car at all times.”
He pitched the plane onto her wing, sliding down in a three-dimensional pirouette as he got the Megafortress’s nose turned toward the border post. The EB-52 growled at him as the G-forces shot up exponentially, but it complied nonetheless, speed increasing as he dove down toward the border. The copilot began reading off the altitude as the altimeter ladder revolved downward. Meanwhile, the Sukhois had not altered course.
“Try getting them on the radio,” Mack told Jalan. “Tell them they better not go over the border.”
Jalan broadcast on the Malaysian air-force frequencies, but got no response.
“They’re sixty seconds from the border,” said Deci.
“There they are!” said Jalan. His voice lost its professional calm and he jerked his hand toward the windscreen, pointing out the window toward the two airplanes, black blurs in the lower left-hand quadrant of the glass. “Motherfuckers.”
It was the first curse — in English at least — Mack had heard from a member of his crew.
“You’re starting to get the hang of this piloting thing, Jalan,” he said. “I’m proud of you.”
“Computer’s optical system confirms they’re carrying bombs beneath their wings,” said Deci. “Something in the 250-pound range”
Mack held to his course to the last possible second, then pulled sharply on the stick, sending the EB-52 into a controlled skid across the sky in front of the two Sukhois.
