by Stuart Slade
DAMS exploited the weakness that all missiles, even air-to-airs, had. They were predictable. Fired from a given point, tracking a given target, they would follow a projectable course - and that made them vulnerable. The trick was to respond quickly enough to make the prediction worthwhile. That was where Sigrun's fourth ring of defenses came in. DAMS predicted an intercepting missile's flight path and calculated when to launch a Pyewacket defense missile. Even better, the DAMS could predict when the intercepting fighter would launch its missiles so that inbound and Pyewacket would be sent on their way almost simultaneously.
"DAMS is launching, Seejay." Henty's voice was neutral. In this battle between air intercept radar and DAMS, he was barely more than a spectator. The two MiG-25s in a favorable attack aspect had launched four missiles ‘at' Sigrun although the safety offset meant that they would miss their target. That actually made DAMS job a little harder. It didn't matter though, there was a barely perceptible lurch as the Pyewacket launcher in Sigrun's belly launched four Pyewackets.
The missiles were weird, they didn't look like missiles at all. More like a discus thrown by athletes. Pyewacket was a perfectly circular disk, 70 inches across, 12 inches deep and weighing 550 pounds, powered by three 10,200 pound thrust rocket engines. Their weight was perfectly dispersed across the disk, giving the Pyewacket stunning maneuverability as it accelerated at over 320 g to reach its full speed, just over Mach 7.0. Their original course had been fed into them by the DAMS computer, but they had an infra-red guidance system to finish the job.
They screamed away from Sigrun ripping up the distance between themselves and the inbound R-40s. Four brilliant flashes as their high explosive warheads shredded the inbound missiles told Sigrun's crew that her fifth ring of defenses wouldn't be needed. Sigrun's turn had already left the last two MiG-25s behind her; now O'Seven started to reverse the turn to take him around the intercepting fighters.
"What is happening to Gray-531?" Sigrun's voice was wary, concerned.
"Good question." Jim Hook used his electro-optical system to focus on the lead MiG-25. "Crazy Russian hasn't given up, he's still trying to catch us. He must have pulled a 9 plus G turn as soon as we started to, he's turning inside us. He might make it too, I've never seen a Pchela pull a turn like that." There was a brief pause. "Uh-oh, he's got a problem."
In the screen, the brilliant light from the MiG-25s afterburners suddenly vanished. "My God will you look at THAT!" The MiG-25 looked as if it had suddenly run into a wall in the sky and two enormous gouts of flame shot forward out of its air intakes. O'Seven flipped the microphone onto the shared channel.
"Gray-531, you appear to have had a triple-sonic compressor stall."
"You think, Sigrun?" the Russian pilot's voice was shaky. "Perhaps that might explain why I am flying the world's fastest glider?"
"How bad? I'm Seejay O'Seven by the way."
"Paul Lazaruski. Very bad. Both engines gone and will not restart. Powered controls gone, most of the aircraft systems are out. The explosion must have ripped up the systems in the engine bay."
"Recommend you get out of there Paul, she's gone."
"Negative, Seejay." One thing about the Russians attending Red Sun was that their pilots not only spoke reasonable English, they'd picked up SAC-speak as well. "If we lose my Anya, we will not know what went wrong. Then some other pilot must find out. No, I will try and bring her in."
"Ramenskoye?"
"Sheremetevo. I do not have the control authority to make the turn for Ramenskoye."
"You hang in there Paul, we'll escort you in." O'Seven flipped to the appropriate radio channel. "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is SAC B-70 Sigrun calling a mayday for PVO MiG-25 Gray-531. Gray-531 has suffered double compressor stall and has both engines and many essential systems out. Aircraft will make an emergency landing at Sheremetevo. Please clear all other traffic out of the way. We will be escorting the casualty in. Air defense exercise is terminated. How you doing in there Paul?"
"Badly I think. I am dumping fuel now and we are slowing."
"Dumping fuel? Can I have some?" Sigrun's voice was concerned. Her fuel consumption was rising steeply as her speed dropped to keep station on the crippled MiG-25. Another little quirk of the B-70; her cruising speed was, in every essential, the same as her maximum speed. Anything less than maximum and fuel consumption rose. At Mach 3.4 she sipped fuel for every mile she traveled; at Mach 2.1 she was gulping it.
Outside, the stricken MiG was clearly visible. Its smooth blue-gray paint was seared and blackened around the engine bay and the air intakes. The Valkyrie slowly moved relative to the MiG as Hook used his electro-optics to survey for visible damage.
"Paul, there's no visible damage on ... what's your aircraft's name?"
"For Anya Petrovna, Anya for short. My cousin, killed by the fascists."
"Thank you. Anya doesn't appear to be hurt, there's no external damage we can see and our camera's looked pretty close. Whatever's wrong is inside. You know you've still got your missiles on board?"
"Not any more Seejay. Six black objects tumbled from the MiG. "I've blown the underwing and underbelly missiles. What is our speed please?"
"We're down to Mach 1.3. You've lost instrumentation?"
"I do not think I can trust it. I have never seen so many red lights in a cockpit before."
Ahead of them, the two parallel runways of Sheremetevo were visible in the distance. Both were designed to take a B-52 landing without brakes: long and wide. For Anya Petrovna could take one, Sigrun would use the other. Speed was now subsonic and the runways were approaching fast. The problem was that the MiG-25 had all the gliding characteristics of a well-thrown brick.
"Sheremetevo Control here. Gray 531 and Sigrun you are cleared for landing. Sigrun please take the runway on the right and thank you for your assistance." The voice chuckled slightly, more with tension than real humor. "And welcome to Russia."
"Control, Gray-531 I have an additional problem, undercarriage will not lower." Get out of there Paul, O'Seven thought, she can't be saved. "I am going to skid in on my belly missile rails."
"Can he do that?"
"Nobody's ever said it can't be done. Keep reading out airspeed and altitude John. And watch him with your box of tricks."
The routine readout of landing data was started. Ahead of them, the left-hand runway was brilliant white. Foam was being sprayed on the surface, to help the wheel-less fighter slide and to cut down the risk of fire. Just as O'Seven felt Sigrun's undercarriage touch the runway surface, the MiG-25, a hundred yards or so away on the other runway, touched the foam layer, looking for all the world like a water-skier who lost his balance and made a belly-flop into the water. Two great arcs of foam hurled skywards and sparkled in the pale Moscow sun. Sigrun slowed quickly as her brakes and drag chute brought her to a halt; the MiG raced ahead of them, still plowing through the foam, the airport emergency vehicles racing alongside to keep up. Finally, Anya halted and the rescue crews in their silver heat-insulation suits swarmed over her. The cockpit opened and they saw the pilot hauled out of the cockpit and rushed to a stretcher. In the EO camera screen, Hook could see him waving to Sigrun.
"Would you believe it? He's made it. Looks OK too, I think the stretcher's routine. I thought he was going to blow on the runway."
"So did I. That little epic deserves beer. Lots and lots of beer."
"And vodka," added Sigrun.
Private Conference Room, National Security Council Building, Washington D.C.
The 13th floor conference room was filled to overflowing, something rare and unusual. A thin trickle of people were still coming in, mostly those who had arrived earlier, seen the crowd and had the initiative to go to an adjoining office and get a chair. The rest of the overflow were sitting on the floor. Another unusual point, the Seer noted. A few of those here weren't the usual inhabitants of this building or its equivalents scattered over Washington. It made a point that was easy to forget, wrapped up in the cocoon inside the
beltway.
There were 6,000 of his people scattered across the United States, of whom only about twenty percent worked for the federal administration. A few more worked for the state or local governments, but the vast majority just lived in the community, pursuing whatever work it was that met their needs. They had never been famous, and never would be, but every one of them depended on the NSC for new identities when needed and as a security net to fall back on if trouble arrived. The "Witness Protection Program" might have been founded to protect people who wanted to testify in court against the Mob, but it had far more useful purposes.
When news of the attack had been broadcast, some of those people living in the suburbs of Washington, headed this way. Partly to express support for the people who'd helped them; more, the Seer suspected, from a desire to find out what was going on and take a look at the mysterious NSC building. Getting the strangers in had been an interesting challenge; most were now wearing "visitor" badges to satisfy the security hounds. At the moment everybody was milling around, introducing each other and vouching for others known personally to them. More security and this time deathly essential. Strangers, not known to the group, could be identified and their bona fides established. Nobody spoke of what would happen if such an infiltrator was found. Fortunately, the eventuality had never arisen.
"Hi Seer!" The voice cut across the room. It was Judith Peterson, a resident of Alexandria. She worked as a realtor there, her husband was a building contractor. Both their businesses were successes; to add extra income, every so often she used her real estate connections to find and buy a run-down property and her husband rebuilt it for sale at a fabulous profit. They did very well, all things considered; except for one small point. Judith Peterson's husband was from outside this group, a stranger. She'd been warned against it, Nefertiti had tried to argue her out of it but Judith had been adamant.
The Seer banged a gavel and the room quieted. "Are we all known to each other? Are there any here who need to be identified? No? Very well, I declare the lodge tyled.
"We've gathered here to discuss the implications of the attack this afternoon on the Senatorial Administration Building. First of all, does anybody here need to know what went down?"
There was some backing and filling at that; people not wanting to admit they were out of the loop. Eventually, one voice spoke out from the back of the room. "I heard there had been an attack on the building and that the Presidents Executive Assistant had been caught in the line of fire. That's all though."
"Fair enough. Quick recap. Sixteen-thirty this afternoon, a car did a drive-by on the Senatorial Admin Building. Used a machine gun to spray the steps. Killed five people." In the background Lillith held up six fingers. "Sorry six, the girl didn't make it honey?"
"Bled out on the operating table. Bullet winged her aorta. When it let go she went in seconds."
The Seer shook his head, the girl had been some junior typist or other, meeting her boyfriend on the steps so she could impress him with the importance of her new job. Waste. "About twenty wounded. Naamah and Henry were on the steps when the drive-by went down. Thanks to Henry's quick reactions, they both escaped unhurt. Henry got off six shots in reply. By the way, Henry, the Secret Service found the car, you put all six through the back window and there was blood inside. Looks like you got somebody. Superior shooting under the circumstances if I may say so."
"This from the man who can't hit a barn standing inside it and still keeps going for head-shots." Achillea's voice was affectionate although her criticism had an edge to it. Beside the Seer, Nefertiti frowned slightly, then grinned. The interjection had solved a problem she'd been wrestling with.
The Seer stared at Achillea coldly. "Quite. I've got some information from the FBI and the Secret Service. Henry, what do you make of it?"
"The cops retrieved a total of 186 rounds fired at the steps. Allowing for the ones they haven't found yet, we can be pretty sure it was 200. The rounds were .45 ACP, hollow-points. Straight hollow points, as if that isn't bad enough, not poisoned. So, we're looking at a Tommy gun with a hundred round drum magazine. My guess is two of them; their foregrips wedged in the car window, one rear grip held in each hand. That sound familiar Seer?"
"Vincent ‘Mad Dog' Coll?
"Or Jack ‘Machine Gun' McGurn." Beside them, Nefertiti looked confused. McCarty smiled. "Chicago in the 1920s Neffie. They didn't call them the Roaring Twenties for nothing. Can't be those two though, they're both dead. Worth remembering the style is similar, though. Car was waiting the other side of the road. It accelerated out, swung across the road, sprayed the steps and they headed off down thataway."
"Which gives us three questions Henry. First one, who pulled this stunt? Second, were you and Naamah the targets or was this an attack on the Senate staff as a whole? Third, if you and Naamah were the targets, is it because of your - specifically her -position in the government or because of what we all are?"
"The style isn't Caliphate Seer. They'd have doped the bullets with ricin or something. The whole idea of a drive-by like this, its . . I don't know . . . cars and machine guns, it's American somehow. If it had been a suicide bomber on the steps or a car bomb I could have thought Caliphate. This smells of the Mob, or at least somebody trying to look like them. But why would the Mob machine-gun a Senate building? It's the one thing they wouldn't do, it would bring all kinds of heat down on them. Be very bad for business. If this was a couple of Mob people doing some freelance work for some reason, expect to find their bodies in the trunk of a burned-out car. And don't think they were dead when the car started to burn."
"So, question two. Were you and Naamah the targets?"
McCarty tapped his teeth with a pencil. Age and eating properly had eliminated the overbite so prominent in his early pictures. "I went through the stuff you got from the FBI and the USSS and drew this up." There was an easel in one corner of the room and he put a chart on it. A beautifully-drawn picture of the steps with the bullet hits marked individually and surrounded by a red oval. When The Seer had first met ‘William' in Chicago's ‘The Lagoon' club, he'd seen an old man in a menial job and fitted for little else. Still, he'd the feeling to go on and that told him ‘William' was one of his people. It had taken a little effort to find him and bring him in but when he'd managed it, he'd been stunned to find who the old doorman really was.
He'd been doubly stunned when something else had happened to Henry McCarty. The incredible ability with a hand gun was still there but his mind opened up. Perhaps it was having time to learn. Perhaps it was simply that, for probably the first time in his life he'd been with people who'd accepted him for what he was, who didn't expect anything of him. Who'd made him part of something, gave him somewhere he belonged. Hidden underneath the old man in the menial job had been a brain, a fine and analytical one that only needed encouragement and information to blossom. Thinking about it, it had to have been there all the time, a man couldn't be a gunfighter without the ability to instantly analyze a situation and act accordingly. Now, Henry McCarty was using that gift and every time he used it, it developed just that little bit more.
"Look how the pattern of bullets swept across the steps. It's an s-shape. That's why I think the barrels of the guns were wedged in place. When the car swung out, the side facing the steps dipped slightly with the curve so the bullet stream went low. Then, as the car reversed the turn to head parallel to the steps, that side rose so the bullets went high. Then the car straightened out and the stream leveled out here. Finally, when the car swung away, the side facing the steps rose again and the last of the shots went high. Gunman were lucky by the way; those hundred round drums were bad for jamming. We were lucky too, Naamah, we were where the bullets went high. If we'd been further down, that burst would have cut us in half. Like poor old Vinnie Coll in New York."
"So the burst was aimed at you and Naamah?"
"Perhaps. If it was, the target was Naamah, not me. I only went to meet her on a whim, nobody could have guessed I woul
d be there."
"Naamah, honey, you don't usually work out of that building, who knew you'd be there?"
"Most of the office staff. It's not a routine stop for me though. If somebody set this up, they'd have had less than an hour to do it and that doesn't ring right."
"I agree Seer, the method and timing are wrong for this to be a hit on us specifically. My guess is that this was aimed at the Senatorial staffers in general. If it was aimed at Naamah, her presence was a way of increasing the value of the target set. That mane of red hair you sport is pretty distinctive Naamah. I think they saw you and decided to go for it while you were in the killing ground."
Naamah shuddered slightly. It wasn't the first time somebody had planned - or tried - to kill her but it never ceased being an unpleasant sensation. The Seer grinned comfortingly at her and then looked around the room. "Right people, that's what appeared to happen. Anybody got any questions?"
Judith Peterson put her hand up "Are we sure it isn't the Mob after us?" She'd grown up in the era of the New York gang wars and Mafia violence was something she still feared.
"I think so. We're not sure what's happening here but I can't think why the Mob would take the risk of pulling a stunt like this just to get even with us for something. They're businessmen, the harm this is going to do to their income can't be offset by revenge. Anyway, revenge for what?"
"Perhaps they found out what happened to Jimmy Hoffa?" The voice came from the back of the room. The ex-Union boss had fallen on hard times when the Mob had decided to kill him. Hoffa had duly vanished and everybody assumed the Mob had succeeded. The law enforcement people were still looking for his body. In reality, he'd been spirited out the country and was now running a small transport company in Siberia - and knew that if he showed his face in America again, his life would be measured in hours.
