Dale Brown's Dreamland--Strike Zone

by Dreamland--Strike Zone(Lit)

  “LEADF-8 CLOSING. He’s setting for heat-seekers,” warned Delaney.

  “Stinger,” said Dog calmly, referring to the airmine unit in the Megafortress’s tail. A replacement for the tail cannon that had graced the original B-52, the Stinger spit out cylinders of tungsten-wrapped explosive. When the fuse in the airmines sensed a proximate object, they ignited their charges, sending a spray of hot metal into the air. The metal would shred a jet turbine as easily as a screwdriver puncturing a Dixie cup.

  “Coming at us. Missile.”

  Dog hit his flares and jinked left, then right. Meanwhile, Delaney worked the Stinger. The combination of the F-8’s speed andRaven ’s evasive maneuvers kept the Mainlander from serious harm; on the other hand, his missile missed and his evasive actions took him temporarily out of the game.

  “We have two AMRAAMs,” said Delaney.

  “Save ’em in case we need them to get the clone.”

  “Shit,” said the copilot. “We’ve lost the UAV from the radar.”

  ZEN’S TARGETING CUEframed the cockpit of the F-8. He saw the outline of his opponent and thought of the people in the civilian jet he had just been ordered to shoot down.

  He pressed his trigger, but he’d already blown the shot.

  Zen kicked himself mentally, then checked the sitrep to line up for another shot.

  He didn’t have to—the Taiwanese Mirages were now in range of the F-8s. There was a whole lot of chatter in the air—two missiles were launched, then a third and a fourth. The Mainlanders decided the prudent thing to do was select afterburner and live for another day. They rode north, pursued by the ROC missiles.

  AGROUND MISSILEbattery—a Chinese HQ-9, roughly the equivalent of the long-range Russian SA-10 on which it was based—came on-line asRaven crossed over Chinese territory south of Shanghai.

  “We’re spiked,” said Delaney, meaning that the ground radar had found and locked on the aircraft. It could launch a missile at any time.

  “Break it,” said Dog.

  “Broke it,” said Delaney. The copilot’s voice had become hoarse.

  “Good,” said Dog. “You have the UAV?”

  “Not on the scope. Negative.”

  “Wes?”

  “No transmissions,” said the specialist, who was monitoring the airwaves. “Chinese know we’re here, though. About a million people gunning for us. Battery of FT-2000s antirad missiles trying to find us. Uh, some command problems there.”

  The FT-2000 homed in on ECMs and other electromagnetic radiation; it was a real threat toRaven since the best and possibly only way to defeat it would be to turn off the countermeasures and other gear. They had no decoys aboard.

  “Is it up?” Dog asked.

  “Doesn’t appear to be.”

  “UAV?”

  “They don’t seem to see it. They think we’re the threat.”

  “Do we have it?”

  “Negative,” said Wes.

  “If it’s going to Beijing, it’s got a good distance to travel,” said Delaney.

  Dog remembered what Jennifer had said about the UAV—more than likely it would fly straight to its target, no fancy stuff in between. He plotted a line to Beijing on his multiuse display.

  “If that’s the way we’re going, we’ll never make it,” said Delaney looking at the course he’d laid in.

  “We better,” said Dog.

  Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

  1545

  JEDBARCLAY LOOKEDat the table as the debate continued on whether to alert the Chinese government to what exactly was going on.Raven had just crossed over land, so the incursion itself was evident, but the President’s advisors weren’t sure precisely what if anything to tell the Chinese.

  The secretary of state argued that admitting the bomb existed would scuttle the summit before it started. The President asked if the UAV could be shot down without Chinese help.

  Probably, thought Jed—but sooner or later the communists would take outRaven . If that happened first, and the UAV got away, they’d be blamed.

  And that would undoubtedly lead to a full-scale nuclear exchange.

  One of the Air Force experts was describing the radar and missile defenses in the corridorRaven had entered. He told the President that the Chinese ground defenses were not advanced enough to find, let alone track, the UAV or the Flighthawks.Raven ’s onboard ECMs, however, should protect it from most of the missile systems.

  Balboa wanted to declareRaven a renegade unit. It wasn’t far from the truth, he argued.

  Jed tried to speak but the words died in a mumbled stutter on his tongue.

  “What do you think, Jed?” asked the President.

  “I-I—”

  “I think we can give them a few minutes more,” interrupted the secretary of state. “They’ve never failed us before. This is Dreamland we’re talking about.”

  “No!” His voice was so loud it echoed against the paneled walls of the sit room. Everyone around him stopped and looked at him.

  “I’m sorry, but not even a Megafortress can survive the gauntlet around Beijing. The multilayered defenses, the f-fact they’re flying in a straight line, and they’re also low on fuel. It’s not going to work. And the Taiwanese UAV—it’s not as fast as the Flighthawk or the Megafortress but it has a good lead. It may take another twenty minutes to catch. We don’t know what onb-b-board defenses it m-might have.”

  “What’s your advice, Jed?” asked the President.

  “Um, uh—”

  Jed clenched his fist, trying to get the stutter to go away. “We have to tell the Chinese what’s g-going on.”

  “That won’t remove the risk to our people,” said Chastain. “They still may be targeted.”

  “We have to tell them everything,” said Jed. “They’ll think we set this up otherwise.”

  He looked at the screen, trying to see his boss. What did he think?

  Probably that Jed was a stuttering jerk.

  “Jed’s right,” said Freeman.

  “Make the connection,” said the President.

  AboardRaven

  0350

  FROM THIRTY THOUSANDfeet, with no clouds and a starlit night sky, the Chinese countryside looked remarkably peaceful. By day, the heavily populated eastern portions of the country bustled with a booming, rapidly changing economy, but at night the country still looked as it had fifty or sixty years before, largely rural though well populated.

  But Zen wasn’t relying merely on the optical feed. His screen was littered with purple blobs showing antiair radars, fingers grabbing for the stealthy little plane. The U/MF could zip right by them for the most part, its body too sleek to be picked up. Raven, however, had to fly a line directly through several of the blobs. It was making full use of its countermeasures to boink the radars. As of yet, no one had fired at them, but Zen knew that was only a matter of time.

  A four-ship element of Su-27 fighters, purchased from Russia only a few months before, was bearing down onRaven from the north. Indeed, there were so many boogies in the air at the moment that Zen told the computer to show only those in the flight path or with a better than sixty percent chance of intercepting them.

  The Taiwanese UAV had completely disappeared. Zen was sure it was still flying—he was convinced he’d have seen the crash. But where exactly it was, he couldn’t say. The only thing they had to go on was Stoner’s guess that it was headed toward Beijing, and Jennifer’s belief that it would have to fly a fairly straight course once it was out of its mother ship’s control.

  “Pricks are calling us killers,” said Wes on the interphone.

  He was talking to Dog, but Zen couldn’t help asking what he meant.

  “Killer Fortress—they blame us for shooting down the SAR plane a few days ago. That’s what the controllers are saying,” said Wes. “They want us.”

  We ought to let the UAV blow up Beijing, Zen thought. These were the same bastards who had put his wife in the hospital, nearly killing her. The same bastards who ha
d killed Fentress and the others. Let them all fry.

  Zen tightened his grip on the Flighthawk stick. He nudgedHawk Four further east as a JJ-7, a version of the Chinese-developed MiG-21 ordinarily used as a trainer, darted towardRaven . It fired a heat-seeker from seven miles out—obviously the pilot’s training hadn’t gotten very far—then kept coming.

  “Turn off,” Zen told the pilot, speaking on his frequency in English. “If you don’t, I’ll nail you.”

  Whether the pilot heard or not, he kept coming. Zen’s targeting screen went from yellow to red as the JJ-7 pulled to within three miles of the Megafortress. Zen pumped thirty rounds into the plane’s engine.

  Fifteen seconds later, the canopy blew off and the pilot hit the silk.

  Zen gave the computerHawk Four , telling it to fly back into the escort position. Then he jumped intoThree . . .

  . . . and saw the dim glow of the Taiwanese UAV’s tailpipe fifteen miles ahead.

  DOG SHOVED THEMegafortress hard right as the first wave of Chinese surface-to-air missiles climbed in the air ahead of them. The missiles were the Chinese equivalent of SA-6s and would be easily confused byRaven ’s ECMs, but there were a half dozen of them, and with a warhead of just over 175 pounds, they couldn’t be completely ignored. Delaney tracked them and pointed out another barrage of antiair a few miles ahead. Dog swung back west, zigging around the missiles.

  “We’re pretty visible up here,” said the copilot. “One of their radar planes is on a line to the east. I don’t think he sees us with his radar—I think he’s homing in on ours.”

  “Can we get him with AMRAAM?” Dog asked.

  “Sixty miles away,” said Delaney.

  That meant no. It also meant that it was too far for the Flighthawks.

  “Raven, I have our target visually,” said Zen. “He’s in the weeds, maybe ten feet AGL. Ten miles and closing.”

  No wonder they hadn’t found the UAV, Dog realized; it was so low to the ground the radar couldn’t sort it out through the ground clutter—odd reflections of the radio waves off the terrain.

  But flying that low also cut down on the UAV’s speed.

  “Intercept in four minutes, a bunch of seconds,” added Zen.

  “Are we close enough for Jen’s takeover program?” Dog asked.

  “Negative,” said Zen. “It’s thirty miles away total. I’ll be close enough to shoot it down before you’re in range.”

  “Missiles!” warned Delaney. “Breaking.”

  The copilot said something else, but Dog lost it. Both of the operators at the stations behind him were now spending their time jamming radars and communications systems in their path. Dog had two more antiair missiles left aboard; he wanted to reserve at least one for the UAV, in case the Flighthawks missed.

  “Sukhois on our six at twenty miles and closing,” said Delaney.

  “When they’re close enough, let them have it with the Stinger,” said Dog.

  “Yeah.”

  “Colonel, I’m going to putHawk Four on that flight of J-8s coming at us from the west,” said Zen.

  Dog had to glance at the sitrep map to remind himself exactly which flight Zen was talking about. All ofRaven ’s high-tech gear and whiz-bang computers, ergonomic controls, and audiovisual doodads couldn’t completely erase the limits of situational awareness. There were just too many threats for Dog to process everything at once.

  “Go,” he told Zen.

  “I have to let the computer handle it. It’s four on one—we may lose it.”

  “Our priority is the ghost clone,” said Dog.

  “Understood.”

  “FT-2000 in the air!” warned Delaney. “He’s homing in on our ECMs.”

  “Can we break it?” asked Dog.

  “Only if you want everything else they’re firing to hit us.”

  THE FOURCHINESEJ-8 fighters came atRaven in a staggered line, each plane separated by about a mile and flying at different altitudes. The computer quickly recognized the pattern and calculated the best attack posture, prioritizing the targets in the order of the greatest threat toRaven . The strategy—a slashing attack that would takeHawk Four across the course of the flight and allow it to fire on at least two of the aircraft before maneuvering to catch a third from behind—was solid, and took into account the abilities of the enemy planes as well as the Flighthawk. It also gave the computer time to recover and change its strategy if the bandits drastically altered course and speed. The only problem with it was that by the timeHawk Four turned to catch the third plane, it would be out of communications range fromRaven . Zen nonetheless approved the strategy as the best course, telling C3to stay in dogfight mode even if the connection snapped—otherwiseHawk Four would have defaulted back to escort and tried to findRaven .

  “Go for it,” he told the computer, using exactly the same tone he would have used for Kick or Starship.

  The computer’s verbal translation system had been “trained” to recognize much of Zen’s slang, and tookHawk Four on the intercept.

  Zen turned his full attention back toHawk Three . The Taiwanese UAV was now just five miles ahead.

  A warning flashed on his screen:

  Connection loss in three seconds

  TWO MORE MISSILESexploded to the east ofRaven . Dog saw a pair of Su-27s heading in from the northeast, coming on at about ten degrees off his nose. They were at twenty miles, firing radar missiles.

  “They’re on us,” said Delaney.

  Dog hit his chaff, then jerked hard to beam the Doppler radar guiding the missiles. The maneuver would put the Megafortress at a right angle to the radar, temporarily confusing it.

  “FT-2000 is changing course,” reported Delaney. “It’s going for one of the missiles that was just launched.”

  That’s our one lucky break, thought Dog.

  “Raven—I need you closer. I’m going to loseHawk Three .”

  Dog jerked back toward the Flighthawk.

  “Raven—you have to get closer.”

  “I’m working on it, Zen,” said Dog. The throttle slide was at the last stop; he could hit the control with a sledge-hammer and the plane wouldn’t go any faster. “Wes, see if you can reach any of these units. Tell them we’re pursuing a cruise missile that’s going to attack Beijing.”

  “But—”

  “Do it, Wes,” said Dog. “Deci, try the control program Ms. Gleason uploaded earlier. I know we’re not in range yet but try it anyway.”

  Lieutenant Deci Gordon was the other electronics operator. While he could dupe Wes’s controls, he was tasked at the moment to ID and fuzz radars.

  “I have to clear the ECM board to load the program and use it. I won’t be able to bounce the radars,” explained the lieutenant.

  “Do it.”

  “On it, sir.”

  ZEN CUT HISspeed, just barely keeping the connection toHawk Three . The Flighthawk was undoubtedly a good deal faster and more capable than the plane he was chasing, but it wasRaven ’s speed that counted, and the big airplane was already huffing and puffing. All he could do was sit and wait, hopingRaven would catch up—and that the flak dealer Delaney was now warning about wouldn’t hit him in the meantime.

  Maybe it would get the Taiwan plane at least.

  Ravenrocked up and down but stayed on its course. Zen cursed to himself, pushing forward against his restraint.

  Come on, damn it. Come on!

  He tried selectingHawk Four , which had been out of contact since firing on the second fighter in the attack group. The feed fromRaven showed where it was—about five miles out of range, launching an attack on one of the Chinese fighters.

  It had already splashed two of the Sukhois. Not bad for a bunch of electrons.

  Ravenshuddered beneath him. Something had just hit the plane.

  Stinking Chinese. They didn’t deserve to be saved.

  Come on, baby. Come on.

  Something rumbled on Zen’s right—shrapnel from a missile had taken a nick out of the EB-52. Zen felt hims
elf sliding left, even though the Flighthawk remained level.

  The targeting screen blinked yellow.

  Ten more seconds and he’d be in range. He could see the fat belly of the Taiwanese bomb strapped to the fuselage of the UAV.

  Ravenstuttered in the air, her speed and altitude plummeting.

  Nine seconds. Eight . . .

  Connection loss in three seconds

  “Dog! I need six seconds!”

  ENGINE FOUR WASgone, and the oil pressure in three was dropping. The computer helped Dog compensate as Delaney struggled with the defenses.

  “I’m losingHawk Three !” shouted Zen over the interphone.

  The computer—prudently—wanted to shut down engine three. But Dog stayed with it, squeezing the last ounce of momentum forward, trying to keep close enough so Zen could complete the shootdown.

  Just wasn’t going to happen. Even the Megafortress could not defy all the laws of physics at the same time. The EB-52 shuddered violently.

  He was going to lose it.

  They had to get closer to the Flighthawk, or the whole mission would have been a waste.

  Dog pushed the nose of the big plane downward, picking up speed. They had a good deal of altitude to work with—but every foot made them more vulnerable to the air defenses.

  “Missiles!” said Delaney. His overstressed rasp sounded like an old man’s last gasp for air.

  “Zen, I’m going to try and dive as close toHawk Three as possible,” said Dog. “After that, we may be bailing.”

  “Roger that,” said Zen. “We need more speed—I don’t have the Flighthawk.”

  “WES, CAN YOUtry that program Jen gave us again?” he said. “Just broadcast it?”

  “I’m doing it,” answered Deci Gordon.

  The Flighthawk screen flickered.

  “Control,” said Zen.

  Red pipper.

  Yellow—no shot.

  Zen pressed the trigger anyway.

  Fire.

  Fire.

  Fire you goddamn son of a bitch.

  DOG COULD SEEa pair of flak guns starting to fire off his right wing. The Megafortress was still too high to be hit—but it wouldn’t be in about twenty seconds or so.