Raider

by M. L. Buchman

  Metin took it.

  43

  Inside Groom Lake’s Hangar 33B, Andi slid her hands onto the controls of the quiescent S-97 Raider.

  “How’s that feel, Captain?”

  “I can’t say, sir.” She really couldn’t. She had no idea what she was supposed to be feeling.

  That Ken should be sitting beside rather than Colonel Stimson?

  That something that scared her so much couldn’t possibly feel as right as her hands on the controls?

  That…

  “It sure as shit isn’t some miracle cure, sir, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Might have been. Even if I know better. Look, I’m sure it won’t help you to know, but I have a nephew about your age. Three tours in Afghanistan. Been out half a decade and still gets the night terrors. Can’t hold down a job for more than three months.”

  “Perfect, sir. Thanks so much for sharing.”

  The silence thudded into place over the intercom.

  “Sorry, sir. I get that you were trying to say you understand. Instead, what I’m hearing is that it’s a long and really fucking bleak tunnel laid out in front of me.”

  “I suppose I can see that.”

  “It’s not just a matter of getting back up on the bicycle, no matter how good these controls feel.”

  “Can you explain why it isn’t?” Colonel Stimson sounded as if he really wanted to know.

  For the first time she forced herself to turn and look at him. Both of their visors were still up, so she could see his face by the light filtering in from the still-sealed hangar.

  “Because every single second that I’m sitting here, I keep expecting you to blow up with a grenade caught in your vest, and make a widow out of one of my few friends.”

  “That would be awkward.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Checklist?”

  “Thank you, sir.” And he began reading out the Engine Start checklist.

  When they were done, Andi called out over the intercom.

  “You two ready back there?”

  There were two technician seats in the rear. An S-97 Raider could normally carry up to six troops internally. However, the Number Two bird was rigged up with enough test equipment to gag a helicopter. Miranda had chosen Jeremy to sit with her in the rear seats for the flight.

  “All monitor systems are up. We’re seeing feeds from your visors. Recorders running,” Jeremy reported, happier than her brother winning his first big lawsuit.

  Taking a deep breath as she snapped down her visor did little to help.

  The helmet felt both right and wrong. It had the familiarity of the S-97 Collins Aerospace helmet that she’d become used to during testing. So much more capable than her standard rig that she’d always felt handicapped upon returning to her Little Bird.

  However, it was a generic testing helmet, not the half-million-dollar version customized to her head. She wouldn’t be using it for weapons targeting or enemy detection, so that shouldn’t matter.

  With the four-layer terrain display as a background, flight instrumentation projected down either side, and basic engine data across the bottom, she reported that she was ready.

  Liar, liar, pants on fire.

  Stimson called out for the hangar doors to be opened.

  In between all of the meetings and planning sessions, and her hiding in the bathroom for twenty minutes trying to find enough nerve to do this after changing into a flightsuit, darkness had fallen over Groom Lake.

  She might still be in that bathroom if Holly hadn’t come in and kicked her ass.

  PTSD is the fucking arse end of the world, Holly had declared as she’d leaned back against a sink and folded her arms.

  You?

  Holly had nodded. Not your scale, but enough that I couldn’t stick with SASR. Couldn’t even stand to stay in Oz. Still catches me sometimes. She raised a hand and flexed it as if she was surprised to see her own fingers.

  But you’ve got it so together. Holly Harper was tall, beautiful, had Mike as a lover, and… You radiate confidence like its part of your breathing.

  I did just say I’m a Sheila from Oz, right? It’s a fucking birthright. Besides, I’ve got an image to maintain. So do you if you’re going to live up to this team’s standard. Now—one soldier to another—get your ass out on the line.

  Then Holly had given her a friendly punch on the arm and had stridden back out like she owned the world.

  And somehow…Andi had.

  The hangar door cracked wide into the night.

  She looked through the visor to make sure that Stimson’s hands were also on the controls. He’d insisted that she fly, but he’d promised to mirror her so that she didn’t kill them by having some stupid fit.

  Once clear of the hangar, she eased them up off the wheels. The DAS allowed her to glance over her shoulder, through the helicopter as though it wasn’t there, and watch the dark maw of the hangar doors close behind them.

  At half the Raider’s maximum speed, she tried to only focus on what was ahead.

  44

  He and Onur had set up the run.

  They had their own soundproofed office just off the main floor. The big window let him see all of the envy, which was righteous. They had a majorly big portal into Turkey’s fastest supercomputer, which was awesome.

  Everything they needed to make this work had been provided, right down to a small fridge filled with Red Bull and a cupboard of all the best junk food from Clip Sesame-Sticks to Pizza Kraker, and loads of individually wrapped Pop Kek chocolate muffins. There was a McDonald’s. But it was three kilometers away and he’d decided it was better to not ask for deliveries.

  And Firat’s threat that Asli’s life was on the line was a load heavy enough to crush him.

  Thankfully, the general left them alone during the prep for this run.

  “This sucks, Metin. Why did you agree? Did Firat ram a lightsaber up your ass or something?”

  “Can’t you just quit whining?” Metin hadn’t told him about the second folder and never would. Onur would freak.

  Onur laughed. “Sure, that was always your role anyway. If you whined less, Asli would like you a whole lot better, you know.”

  And the more she liked him, the more vulnerable she’d be to Firat as a useful tool to twist him.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Onur took his position at his four-screen console.

  Metin did the same at his. “Let’s do this.”

  “What, no high five? No, ‘That’s not a moon, that’s a space station’? Man, Firat really did ram a lightsaber up your ass, didn’t he?”

  “Initiating,” Metin launched his program with a code he hadn’t even given to Onur.

  If Firat had done that, it would have been far less painful.

  45

  Andi followed Morales’ final flight path. They had agreed to mirror his every motion, simply at a slower speed.

  South past The Jumbles.

  Over the dead tendrils of white that had once been saltwater rivers feeding the salt lake that had become Groom.

  Down to Dog Bone Lake. Though they had no missiles aboard to aim at the old tank parked there, she flew them over it.

  Rolling into the Pintwater Range felt like the most natural thing in the world. As if it was a flight she’d done a thousand times.

  There will be times of perfect clarity, when you think it’s all out of your system. Dramatic pause. It won’t be.

  Army psychs sucked.

  She flew north through the canyons.

  Where Morales had descended to three meters, she dropped to five.

  And slowed.

  By the time they reached the canyon leading toward the Tikaboo Valley, she was barely crawling.

  “Everything still lining up,” Stimson confirmed what she was seeing.

  Andi knew she was holding on to the controls too tightly.

  Loose wrist, her first instructor had repeated over and over.
/>   And it was probably the best advice anyone ever gave her.

  Except not at the moment because she couldn’t ease off from full clench no matter how she tried.

  She crept down the canyon.

  The vertical escarpment was clear on her right. The canyon widened to her left as it curved toward the valley.

  In the DAS she could see the little row of flags she and Miranda had stuck in the sand ridges.

  And around the corner…

  “There!”

  Exactly where memory said it should be.

  Through the semitransparent model of the cliff wall, around the curve, the pillar of quartzite was clear and distinct.

  “No pilot could miss that.”

  No one spoke.

  She rounded the corner and slid to a stable hover, fifty meters from the front of the pillar. All of the wreckage lay between her position and the pillar’s base.

  The pillar—visible in the DAS and clearly outlined by the radar—was exactly where the wire-frame model of the terrain said it would be. Because she’d come to a fixed hover, the inertial system had been able to resync and was showing zero drift.

  Everything lined up for them, but it was a sure bet that it hadn’t for Morales.

  “Is it okay to speak now?”

  “Go ahead, Miranda.” Andi hadn’t wanted to risk any civilian distraction while actually flying. Of course, no one probably understood the Sterile Cockpit rule of no side conversations during critical operations better than the NTSB’s top investigator.

  “Is the current terrain model loaded in this aircraft identical to the one loaded in the Number One test aircraft?”

  “The same load at the same time,” Stimson confirmed.

  “And you have no control from the cockpit that could alter the calibration of that system’s display?”

  “I have a limited brightness control,” Andi rolled it up and down, but the rock pillar didn’t go anywhere. “Which we know wasn’t turned down too far or Morales and Christianson wouldn’t have seen the misalignment. And if not for the terrain-model system, they’d never have seen it all.”

  “Or they’d never have attempted to hug an unknown cliff so tightly. But in all likelihood, they were proceeding forward in full expectation of the system’s accuracy—and then it wasn’t. The reasons are unknown at this time but, yes, your proof appears valid, Andi. I’m done here. We can return.”

  And Miranda dropped out of the circuit.

  No “thanks.” No “well done.” Though she didn’t know why she was expecting one.

  Andi shifted her hands to return them to base.

  Or rather…she tried to.

  They didn’t move.

  She looked down at them, but she was still seeing the DAS image on the inside of her visor.

  Instead of her recalcitrant hands, all she saw ahead of her was the wreckage of the S-97 Raider. Earlier, she’d walked it until she knew where each part lay.

  Is that what her wreckage would have looked like back in the Syrian desert?

  If she had taken a hand from the cyclic, maybe she could have fished the grenade out of Ken’s vest.

  Thrown it aside.

  Maybe taken the hit herself.

  But a nap-of-Earth flight was the most technical flying a pilot could do. To release the controls for even an instant when passing mere meters above the ground was high-speed suicide.

  Within hundredths of a second, her Little Bird would have caught a skid at a hundred and fifty miles per hour.

  No, the wreckage wouldn’t look like this.

  They’d have been scattered across a half-thousand meters of Syrian sand.

  But if she’d tried…

  Would Ken still be the one sitting be—

  “Captain?”

  —side her?

  “I have the controls.” A voice. Not Ken’s.

  This flight—

  “Captain!” A shout so loud that it hurt.

  Ken’s final plea for help that he would know could never come.

  A blow slammed into her forearm.

  The knife-edge slam of Stimson’s hand-strike knocking her clear?

  No!

  The explosion!

  After Ken’s death, she’d kept her hands steady on the controls.

  Leaned out into the wind to see around his blood smeared across the inside of windscreen.

  This time, when the explosion hit, she yanked both of her hands from the controls to cover her face. To block what she’d seen the moment after landing back at al-Tanf in the DCZ.

  The moment the skids were down and she’d dumped the cyclic, she’d turned to look at Ken.

  Her best friend had been replaced by some kind of ghoul monster. Shattered from within, his disconnected arm lay beneath the guts that had spilled into his lap. His chest caved so hollow that his head hung down face-first into it.

  Except he wasn’t here.

  Ken was dead.

  Wasn’t he?

  She was sure that he was.

  That meant…she was in an S-97 Raider at Groom Lake. Safe? Maybe.

  Before she could find the nerve to look, the helicopter maneuvered on its own.

  This time the crash would kill her.

  She’d have screamed, but she didn’t have a voice.

  46

  Metin set the target of the American 757 transport currently descending to land at Incirlik Air Base in eastern Turkey. The one Firat had shown him in the basement along with Asli’s file.

  The satellites, each shaped like thick, three-by-four-meter books with two large solar wings, orbited at twenty-one thousand kilometers above the Earth.

  Metin’s software was loaded into the seven GPS satellites visible to the target aircraft.

  Inside each satellite, the software overrode the transmitter buffers without interrupting the core code.

  Metin had enhanced the control of his software. The clocked and encrypted output was redirected into a set of chained memory addresses. These weren’t linked to the on-board atomic clock built into each satellite. Instead, they were driven by the clock cycle sent from the ground and time-compensated for distance of travel from the antenna farm at Gölbaşi, Turkey, twenty kilometers south of Siberkume in Ankara.

  On Metin’s mark, Onur cleared the hold on the queue, and the properly coded time signals were released at incorrect times.

  Once out of the queue, the twenty-nanowatt signal passed into the amplifier and was boosted to twenty-five watts. The antenna’s thirteen dBi signal gain boosted the signal to five hundred watts.

  The signal punched downward twenty thousand kilometers through space and the atmosphere.

  The free-space path loss dropped the signal to barely a hundred nanowatts at the aircraft’s GPS dual antennas mounted on the top of the fuselage.

  The signal was captured, decrypted, and used to alter the information displayed to the pilot.

  47

  “Forty-kilometers on straight-in final. Confirm airspace clear.”

  Lt. Colonel Brad Whitman focused on flying the Boeing 757-200.

  Colonel Abrams, a tank of a guy just like his name, was dealing with Air Traffic Control. A serious plus.

  Brad tuned them out.

  Thank God it was his last leg.

  Air Force Two was a sweet old bird that he typically enjoyed flying. But now it had been a long damn day, night, flight, whatever. Three long legs and two stops already under his belt. It would be nighttime now back in DC, and they’d lifted before lunch. He’d hit his maximum airtime for twenty-four hours, so the next leg of the Vice President’s European tour would be up to the relief crew. He looked forward to just kicking back and enjoying the flights for a while.

  The sunrise was a blinding straight-in shot, forcing most of his attention inside the cockpit.

  Incirlik Air Base’s goddamn ILS was flaking—cutting off like a switch just as he was picking up the signal. Couldn’t the Turks keep something as basic as an Instrument Landing System operationa
l?

  He paid attention to the chatter long enough to hear the field conditions. No surprises. Should be a smooth landing. He dialed in the barometric setting announced by Air Traffic Control and Abrams confirmed it.

  Incirlik’s runway lay at seven hundred and eighty-seven feet. As long as he avoided Mount Medetsiz at eleven-k, standing clear and proud off to his left, he was fine.

  “Cleared to descend to nine thousand.”

  “Roger,” he confirmed Abrams’ order, “descending to Flight Level Niner-zero.”

  After he called out reaching nine thousand, Abrams called landing gear and flaps at five. Running it all by the numbers.

  A quick scan to either side of the blinding sun showed clear airspace.

  When he glanced back inside, he had to blink hard several times to see the displays. Even then, he had to stare at each screen individually to see it clearly.

  Everything right where it should be.

  The altimeter still read nine-zero and the highest thing in the area was a mountain ridge at seven thousand. Once past the ridge, there was nothing but falling flatlands until he reached the airport.

  He glanced sideways to check the central radar display placed between the two pilot positions, then returned his attention to airspeed and percentage of engine…

  His gaze drifted back to the radar display.

  Lieutenant Colonel Brad Whitman firewalled the pair of Pratt & Whitney turbofans to full power.

  Within one-point-seven seconds, eighty-seven thousand pounds of combined thrust poured out of the twin Pratt & Whitney PW2000 engines. Nearly empty, except for passengers and a double reserve of fuel, the 757 weighed barely a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. At a hundred thousand pounds lighter than its maximum take-off weight—the 757 leapt for the skies.

  The alarm began to double whoop and announce, Terrain. Pull Up.

  “No kidding. Read me airspeed,” Brad called out.

  Abrams did.

  Brad rode his numbers at the edge of stall speed, feeding everything he had into gaining elevation quickly. Or even at all.