End Game

by Dale Brown

  “He’s going to shoot the Chinese planes down if they don’t break off,” said Breanna.

  Stewart nodded to herself. How could Breanna be so calm? All hell was breaking loose—besides the two J-13s, another pair of jets had just taken off from the Chinese carrier and were turning in their direction. There were all sorts of missiles in the air, radars, aircraft—Stewart couldn’t keep track of any of it.

  She had dealt with just this sort of chaos dozens of times in simulations. But this was exponentially different.

  “Try the Chinese one more time,” said Breanna.

  As Stewart went to push the communication button to broadcast simultaneously on all-known frequencies, she realized she already had set the unit to do so. “Dreamland Levitow to Chinese J-13s following the Osprey aircraft—that’s one of ours. He’s on a rescue mission. Don’t fire on him, damn you. Acknowledge. Or else we’re shooting you down!”

  She pressed the button on the next panel down, rebroadcasting the radio transmission in Chinese. Then, trying to anticipate what Bree would want to do, she went to the weapons screen and got ready to launch an AMRAAM-plus.

  MACK SAW THE OSPREY IN THE LONG-RANGE SCAN, DANCING over the burning tank farm. The pilot seemed to be using the fire as a way to deke any missiles launched at him. It seemed like a good idea, though it sure looked dangerous—the aircraft dipped and disappeared in the flames, bobbing upward only to zip down again.

  The J-13 appeared on his screen, coming in from the right about three miles ahead of him. Mack began angling toward its tail, his heart starting to race as the targeting bar blinked yellow. He was going to nail this sucker, and it was going to feel good.

  Just as the targeting bar began blinking red, the J-13 stretched in his screen. It was an optical illusion—the plane was veering hard to the right. Mack hung with it; the bar went solid red.

  “He’s turning off, Mack,” said Breanna. “The Chinese aircraft is turning off.”

  Too late, thought Mack. He’s dead.

  But he lifted his finger off the trigger.

  Aboard the Shiva,

  in the northern Arabian Sea

  0335

  THE GUNS IMMEDIATELY BELOW THE BRIDGE BEGAN TO FIRE, their steady staccato the sound of a jackhammer tearing through thin concrete. Memon stared in the direction of the steam of bullets but couldn’t see their target. Then yellow light rose from below. Memon saw the shadow of a man loom before him, then heaved over, the deck suddenly cut away. He felt hot and wet, surrounded by screams, and a curtain of pain stunned his vision black.

  Aboard the Wisconsin,

  in the northern Arabian Sea

  0336

  “TWO J-13S HEADING IN THE DIRECTION OF THE ABNER Read,” T-Bone told Dog, reading the screens at his airborne radar station. “Twenty-five feet above sea level. Not clear that they have the ship ID’d as a target. Approximately twenty-five miles from the Abner Read. Computer says they have very large missiles aboard, Colonel—Chinese variation of Styx, designation C-106.”

  “Bay,” Dog told Jazz, changing course to intercept them.

  The copilot acknowledged and the bomb bay door swung open.

  “Dreamland Wisconsin to Abner Read. Two aircraft are heading in your direction. They appear equipped with versions of the Russian Styx.”

  “Bastian, what do you have?” said Eyes.

  “J-13s coming at you hot. Each has a Styx cruise missile. I can take them out, but you have to decide right now.”

  “Stand by.”

  The com line went silent. Almost a full minute passed before Storm came back on the line.

  “They’re homing in on our radar,” said Storm. “They may think we’re one of the Indian screening ships. We’ve broadcast a warning and they haven’t responded. If they don’t turn back in sixty seconds, shoot them down.”

  “Copy that.”

  Aboard Dreamland Osprey,

  near Karachi

  0336

  A WALL OF FLAMES APPEARED DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF THE OSPREY. Before Danny could blink, they’d flown into them. The aircraft shot sideways, shimmying and shaking and jerking like a train that had suddenly come off its tracks. Finally, the nose moved upward in a gentle tilt and they climbed away from the raging fires.

  Danny saw figures running along a pier near the northern side of the terminal. The water around them seemed to be on fire.

  “Let’s see if we can rescue them,” he told the pilot. “We’ll break out the rescue basket and winch it down.”

  “The whole place is on fire,” said the pilot.

  “Which means we better hurry.”

  Danny ran to the rear of the aircraft and told Boston and Pretty Boy that they were going to try and pull the people off the pier. As they pulled the stretcher basket out from its compartment below the web seats, Danny clicked back into the Dreamland command line.

  “Whiplash leader to Dreamland Levitow—Bree, you there?”

  “Go ahead, Danny.”

  “Listen, there are some people stranded on a pier here and we’re going to try helping them. In the meantime, we saw a wake west of the oil farm about ten minutes ago. We didn’t see anything on the surface, and then those fighters started chasing us. Maybe it’s your submarine.”

  “Roger that. Thanks.”

  Aboard the Shiva,

  in the northern Arabian Sea

  0336

  A THOUSAND DEMONS ROARED IN MEMON’S EARS, CURSING the sun, swearing that it would never rise again. Shiva, the Hindu god of war, leered before him. The god’s tongue was pure fire; the flames licked at Memon’s eyes, burning through the sockets.

  Memon rolled away. He found himself facedown on the deck, hands so hot they seemed to be on fire. He pushed upright and struggled to his knees.

  A man’s body lay next to him. It seemed to have grown another arm in the middle of its chest, fingers curled around a knife. Memon struggled to comprehend what he was seeing—a sailor impaled by a huge piece of metal.

  “Deputy Minister Memon! Help the deputy minister!”

  Memon felt himself being pulled to his feet. A klaxon horn sounded nearby. There were shouts. Memon heard a sound like water running into a tub, then realized it was the whimper of a man dying nearby. His right arm had been sheered two-thirds off and he lay in a pool of blood.

  Memon looked away. A hole had been blown in the side of the ship’s island, and the compartment next to them obliterated. He could see stars in the distance, twinkling white above the red-tinged sea.

  “The admiral is dead,” said a sailor.

  Memon shook his head, as if he might shake away the chaos and confusion. Someone was talking to him—Captain Adri—but he could not process the words. Memon tried to force himself to understand, but could not. The captain seemed very insistent, repeating whatever he was saying over and over. Finally, not sure what he was agreeing to, Memon nodded his head to make Adri go away.

  Northern Arabian Sea

  0336

  STARSHIP SPLIT HIS MAIN SCREEN INTO TWO VIEWS, ONE WITH the image of the Chinese carrier and the other focused on the Indian. The antiaircraft systems of both ships picked him up, but in neither case was he targeted, possibly because the human operators aboard the ships thought any helicopter this close had to be on their side. Starship knew this wouldn’t last—sooner or later, he thought, he’d be shot down—but he figured that until then he’d get as good a view of what was going on as possible. He bobbed and wove, hovering for a bit and then flitting off, trying to pay equal attention to each aircraft. Two missiles had hit the Indian carrier, one just below the forward deck where its main missile batteries were located, the other, more devastatingly, at the forward part of the carrier’s island, about where the bridge should be. The ship’s guns had shot down several other missiles.

  The Chinese carrier had been hit once, almost straight on the starboard arm of its V-shaped flight deck. Two of its helicopters were hovering above the damage, preparing to conduct a rescue mission or other
wise render assistance.

  “Werewolf, see if you can get closer to the Chinese ship,” said Eyes.

  “They’re tracking me. If I get much closer they may fire.”

  “Just do it.”

  Starship put Werewolf Two into an orbit around the Indian ship and gave it to the computer to control. That done, he pushed Werewolf One forward, zigging in the direction of the Chinese carrier’s stern. The carrier had a pair of twin 37mm close-in weapons and a larger caliber 57mm weapon mounted on deck bulges just below the flight deck on either side of the stern, but they were positioned in a way that made it difficult for them to strike anything approaching directly at the flight deck. Like most aircraft carriers, protection was meant to come from the escorts and the ships’ planes; anything that actually made it through the screen faced relatively light defenses.

  But not impotent ones—the 57mm gun on the port side began firing its large shells as the Werewolf skipped around. The stream of lead passed over the aircraft; Starship knew he was lucky. Now lined up perfectly with the stern, he took the aircraft up to fifty feet above the waves, then had a sudden inspiration: Why not fly directly over the flight deck?

  “Hope this is close enough for you, Navy,” he said, pushing the robot aircraft forward.

  Aboard the Wisconsin,

  above the northern Arabian Sea

  0338

  THE J-13S WERE FLYING FROM THE NORTHEAST TOWARD THE Abner Read. To get them with the AMRAAM-plus Scorpions, Dog had to change course and close down the angle the missiles would have to take. Doing so, he’d make the Megafortress itself an easier target.

  The real problem was that he had only two Scorpions. They’d filled the other slots on the rotating bomb dispenser with additional sonar and Piranha buoys.

  “Start the turn now,” said Jazz, cuing him with the help of the flight computers.

  “Wisconsin, I can take these guys,” said Cantor.

  “There’s two of them.”

  “Yeah, but I can get them.”

  “Do it,” said Dog.

  CANTOR SWUNG FLIGHTHAWK ONE AWAY FROM THE MEGAFORTRESS’S wing, pirouetting around the bigger aircraft as it maneuvered to put itself into a firing position to attack the J-13s. The nose of the robot aircraft was now on a parallel plane to the approaching enemy fighters. The J-13s were moving very quickly; as soon as he made his first turn, the computer told him he had to turn again. He did, and found himself slightly ahead of the lead bogey. The J-13 was going so fast that it slipped right up under him in the blink of an eye; Cantor barely had time to press the trigger.

  The 20mm slugs that poured from the belly of the U/MF were not the largest bullets in the world, but scattered artfully around the Chinese jet, they tore it to shreds. The outer third of the J-13’s right wing seemed to fold away; the aircraft turned into an unguided missile, its nose pushing toward the sea.

  So far the intercept had played out perfectly; in fact, it followed to the millimeter a training simulation based on several of Zen’s real-life encounters. But the similarity to the exercise had a downside: As he recovered, Cantor expected the other aircraft to come up on his right, just as it did in the computer program. But as he edged in that direction, the display showed that the plane had already cut left. Belatedly changing course, he failed to anticipate another cut by the J-13 and sailed past the plane without a chance for a shot.

  Cantor corrected, twisting back toward the weaving aircraft. The Chinese plane turned in his direction, and even though he knew he didn’t have a good shot—the targeting bar was yellow—Cantor pressed his trigger.

  The bullets trailed off to the left but got the J-13 pilot’s attention; worried about whoever it was behind him, the Chinese pilot pulled hard left. The turn was a mistake, taking away the bigger plane’s speed advantage. Cantor, with his much smaller turning radius, cut inside the other plane, narrowing the distance enough to get on his tail as he cut back. The bogey flew into the sweet spot in his targeting screen. Cantor pressed the trigger.

  His bullets shot like a thick sword into his target’s heart. Parts flew from the aircraft; Cantor pulled off as it exploded.

  “Missile away,” said T-Bone, the airborne radar operator on the deck above. The Chinese pilot had managed to target and fire his missile, probably at the cost of his own life.

  Aboard the Abner Read,

  in the northern Arabian Sea

  0340

  STORM SAW THE WARNING ON THE HOLOGRAPHIC MAP TABLE before he heard the alarm. A second later the ship’s defensive weapons operator reported they were tracking a Styx missile headed in their direction.

  “Distance to ship, twelve miles. Tracking. Missile does not appear to have locked onto target.”

  The Chinese-made missile guided itself to the general vicinity of the target via an internal navigational system; once it got close, on-board radar would take over. The missile would descend to about twenty-five feet above the water, aiming not only to strike as low as possible but avoiding shipboard defenses. The Abner Read’s stealthy radar profile made it a difficult target for the missile, though anytime five hundred kilos of explosives were flying at you, it could not be taken lightly.

  The missile covered roughly a third of a mile in a second. Before thirty seconds had passed, the Phalanx close-in 25mm cannon battery had zeroed in on the approaching missile and was ready to take it down. The missile had not yet found the Abner Read; it was tracking off to the west and still relatively high. This wasn’t a problem, however: The Chinese missile flew into a cloud of nickel, cobalt, and tungsten, immolating itself about a mile from the ship.

  By inclination and instinct, Storm wanted to retaliate against the Chinese. In his mind, he’d be completely justified sinking the aircraft carrier that had launched the plane. But his orders were very clear; he was to avoid conflict at all cost.

  Still.

  Still.

  “Communications—get that Chinese carrier. I want to find out why the hell we were attacked. If they don’t apologize…”

  He let his voice trail off. If they didn’t apologize, he’d sink the damn ship, consequences be damned.

  “Excellent work, Weapons,” said Storm, switching into their circuit. “Dreamland owes us one.”

  STARSHIP SPUN THE WEREWOLF DIRECTLY OVER THE SPLIT IN the Deng Xiaoping’s flight deck, the aircraft’s cameras recording the scramble of the crew as it prepared to recover two of its aircraft. He felt as if he were a voyeur who’d snuck into a foreign palace. A J-13 slammed to a stop at the far side of the deck; men swarmed over it, wrestling it off the arrestor cables and wheeling it forward to an elevator.

  A second J-13 appeared in the distance, making its approach.

  “Werewolf, check out the escort ships in the Chinese group,” said Eyes. “Look for the frigate. We have enough on the carrier now. Stand by for coordinates.”

  The J-13 landed, and once more the crew swarmed over her. A notion seized Starship as they began pushing the plane forward: Why not get a look at the hangar deck of the carrier? Just hover right over the other aircraft as it went down, spin around, then shoot the hell out of there.

  Before he fully considered the idea, Starship had pushed the Werewolf forward, skittering across the flat surface of the Chinese vessel about eight feet from the deck. The ship’s lights threw a crosshatch of white and black in his face. The J-13 had just been secured on the elevator; as he approached, he saw the startled face of one of the deck crew diving for cover.

  Starship thought he’d made his move too soon—the J-13 sat below him, not moving. Two figures were crouched near the folded-up wings. He spun the Werewolf around, picking up his tail slightly to give the forward camera a better view. Disappointed, he was just about to hit the gas and get out of there when the elevator began cranking downward.

  Starship descended as well. He moved a little too fast—the skids smacked against the J-13. He jerked upward, then settled back down, hitting his floodlights. When the elevator stopped at hangar level, he
was just above the airplane, with maybe four or five feet worth of clearance between him and the roof. He spun around once as slowly as he dared, glimpsing aircraft, people, machinery, all in a blur. Then he jerked the Werewolf straight up, praying that he was still in the same position as when he’d descended.

  “What the hell are you doing?” yelled Eyes.

  “Taking a look inside the sardine box,” Starship told him. “What were those coordinates?”

  Aboard the Shiva,

  in the northern Arabian Sea

  0345

  THE DOCTOR HELD HIS SMALL PENLIGHT UP AND TOLD Memon he had received a mild concussion.

  “You should rest,” he said.

  “The ship,” said Memon. “I’m responsible.”

  “Captain Adri is in charge.”

  “Adri, yes. Where is he?”

  “You just came from him.”

  “Someone take me to him.”

  Memon pushed himself off the cot. The doctor grabbed his arm to help steady him, then passed him gently to a sailor, who led him back through the corridor, up a flight of stairs, then through another passage to the combat center. Adri and several other officers were stooped over a set of charts, discussing something.

  “We have to strike them again,” said Adri, his voice rising above the din in the low-ceiling room. “We must drive home our gains.”

  Adri? Adri was talking of attack?

  Memon was amazed. Adri had opposed him earlier. He and Bhaskar had done everything they could to avoid a fight.

  And they’d been right.

  They’d been right!

  “We should not attack,” said Memon, approaching them.

  Adri looked up. “What?”

  “We should withdraw.”

  “You? You’re saying that?”

  “Yes. You were right earlier. We should withdraw.”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  The flash had done something to his vision, Memon thought—the world had shaded deep red. Even the lights appeared to be crimson rather than yellowish white.

  “Thank you for your advice,” sneered Adri. “Someone please take Mr. Memon back to sickbay.”