Dale Brown's Dreamland

by Dale Brown

  “No aircraft,” said Jennifer.

  “Yeah,” said Zen, concentrating on returning the Flight-hawk to its briefed flight path. The fact that the antiaircraft weapons used a Western-made radar could mean that it was a rebel unit opposed to the pro-Libyan government—or not. In any event, their Anotonov didn’t seem to be there.

  Exhausted, Zen returned to the programmed course. He had to have a break; reluctantly he turned the controls over to the computer and reached down for his Gatorade. He was so thirsty he drained it and had to reach for his backup, sitting in a case on the floor by his feet.

  “Hard work, huh?” asked Jennifer.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re doing good.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want some advice?”

  “Advice?”

  “You’re doing a lot of the routine stuff the computer can handle,” said Gleason.

  Anger welled inside, but before he could say anything, Gleason reached over and touched him on the shoulder. It felt electric, almost unworldly—his mind was still out with the Flighthawks, as if he were actually in their cockpits.

  “You’re doing fine, Major,” she said. “Let the computer do the routine stuff. That’s what it was designed for. You do what’s important. You’re trying to control both planes at the same time.”

  Zen glanced at the instrument screens, making sure the UM/Fs were operating fine, then pushed up the helmet to see her.

  “It’s almost like you’re afraid the computer’s going to take your job,” Jennifer said. “I know we haven’t had a chance to run many flights with two planes since you’ve been back, but you’re getting twitchy. You’re not letting the computer fly like you used to.”

  “It’s my job to fly them,” he told her.

  “Absolutely,” said the scientist. “But you can’t split yourself in half. You can trust the computer.”

  “I do trust it,” he said.

  Jennifer smiled. Jeff wasn’t sure what to say. In the old days, before the accident, had he let the computer do more?

  Maybe.

  Maybe he didn’t trust it because of the accident. And maybe she was right—maybe he was worried it would take his job, leave him with nothing to do but sit in a corner and gather dust all day.

  Wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t a fucking cripple, legs be damned.

  “Zero-ten to Delta,” said Cheshire, announcing the upcoming turn.

  “Flighthawks acknowledge,” he told her, pulling the visor back on. “Zero-ten to Delta.”

  “Scopes are clean, everything is looking very good,” said Cheshire. “Flighthawks are doing a slam-dunk job, Zen.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I know it’s needle-in-a-haystack country down here,” she added. “But the Navy planes have the most likely territory. Nothing lives down here except sand.”

  Zen got ready for the new turn. Cheshire was right—the ground they were covering hadn’t seen rain in eons. Devoid of water, there were only a few sparse settlements, and no nomads to speak of.

  Except for the ones they’d seen a short while before, who’d been parked in the middle of sand.

  Grazing animals over sand?

  “Bobby, do me a favor, would you?” he asked the navigator. “Look at where our nomads were. They over a water hole?”

  The navigator took a few minutes to get back to him. “Not on the map, but maybe those guys know where the water is.”

  “Yeah. We got a satellite map that detects underground water sources?”

  “What do you think this is, the library?” said the navigator with a laugh.

  “Just checking.”

  “There’s got to be water there,” said Bobby. “The cattle have been there for at least two days.”

  “Two days?”

  “More. They’re on the U-2 photo and the satellite image Madcap Magician gave us, which is at least three or four.”

  Stationary nomads over a dry patch of land.

  “Computer, hold Hawk One on the preset course,” said Zen. “Hawk Two, power to ninety percent.”

  “What’s up, Zen?” asked Major Cheshire, who’d heard his conversation with Bobby.

  “Stationary nomads—sounds odd to me,” Jeff told her. “I think I can just skirt close enough to them on your programmed course.”

  “I’ll shift two degrees and it’ll be easy.”

  “Make it one and I can keep Hawk One where it is.”

  “I told the computer to plot a new one,” said Jennifer. “Just in case.”

  “Input it,” Zen told her.

  “I-Band interceptor-type airborne radar detected, active, source beyond range,” yelped Bobby over the aircraft’s interphone. The Megafortress’s passive detectors had picked up two MiG-25’s at nearly fifty thousand feet. “These babies are running, not walking,” he warned. “Mach 2. We’ll be within their theoretical detection envelope in thirty seconds. We can jam at will.”

  The Soviet-era active radars on the MiGs had a detection range of roughly fifty miles. But with its stealthy profile, it was likely—though not certain—that the MiGs wouldn’t pick up the Megafortress until they were less than ten miles away.

  Which would happen in two minutes at present course and speed. The Flighthawks, on the other hand, were too low and too small to be detected. Their own threat screens, powered by less capable sensors, were blank; they hadn’t picked up the MiGs.

  The I-band radars used by early models of the Soviet-era MiG-25 had been compromised years before; Raven’s ECM gear would have no problem defeating them. But that would alert not only the MiGs, but potentially the people they were looking for, that they were in the air. It was better to try to pass undetected.

  “Prepare for evasive maneuvers,” ordered Cheshire. “We’ll hold on to our ECMs and missiles until they’re necessary. Bobby, watch their detection envelope for us.”

  “Bandits are positively ID’d as MiG-25’s, probably with Acrid AA-6’s,” he reported. “They’ll be in range to see us—let’s call it ninety seconds. Ducking them’s a crapshoot, Major.”

  “Hawk Leader?”

  “I say duck them,” Zen said. “Get down in the ground clutter and odds are they’ll go right by. Even if they catch a sniff, it’ll take them time to find us, let alone lock. In the meantime, I can check that camp.”

  “I agree. We’ll chance it. Hang tight,” said Cheshire, rolling the Megafortress. “Way down.”

  Zen told Hawk One to double back and initiate one of its preset routines, closing on Raven to fall into a trail off the mother plane’s right wing. Then he concentrated on Hawk Two.

  Nothing but desert showed in the FLIR screen. His body started to shove sideways with the Megafortress’s evasive maneuvers; it felt odd with the Flighthawk flying level. His bearings started to slide out of whack, his equilibrium upset.

  Zen fought the creeping dizziness, pushing the nose of the Flighthawk down. As he dropped below three thousand feet, voices began shouting above and behind him—Cheshire and the crew barking instructions back and forth, the MiGs coming on. The UM/F’s threat screen plotted the I-band radar’s detection envelope as a wavy line of yellow floating above it.

  An ocean of hot orange appeared in front of him, the cattle or whatever in the camp moving around. The shadows moved like silent eddies.

  A trio of tents sat to one side. Something else, relatively hot, was half buried in the sand, or maybe behind the sand.

  Or sandbags with a tarp.

  Optics. Nada.

  Back to FLIR. A truck motor maybe?

  He was past it. One of the MiGs was almost directly overhead. The threat screen went completely red, then blank.

  He could pop up behind the SOB and nail him. The Libyan would never know what hit him.

  “Alert—approaching maximum operational range,” warned the computer.

  Zen pitched the Flighthawk back toward the Megafortress. He lost sight of the camp.

  “They’re turning. They’re
behind us,” Bobby warned. “They may know we’re here. We were close. Suggest we break and run.”

  “Negative,” said Cheshire calmly. “Staying on course.”

  Zen pushed the others away, pushed himself back into his own cockpit—he banked hard in the direction of his target.

  Nothing. The FLIR blanked with interference—sand or something, a fog of some type, was being kicked up, and that was all he could see.

  An aircraft?

  “Zen!”

  Something edged out of the sandstorm, lumbering into the air.

  He pushed to follow. He was the Flighthawk now, not its pilot—his body moved with the plane, his head, his eyes, his hands, even his dead legs.

  “Alert—approaching maximum operational range,” warned the computer.

  “Radar to scan and search, low-altitude, maximum aperture,” demanded Zen. “Synthetic radar view.”

  “Disconnect in five seconds at present course. Auto-recovery to mother ship. Fail-safe level one. Three seconds to level two.”

  He saw it for a second, the heat source hot now, then buried in the cloud of dust. An aircraft, definitely an aircraft.

  “Two, one—”

  Zen pulled the joystick back, ducking just close enough to the Megafortress to retain control. He lost the aircraft that had taken off from the Bedouin camp in the ground haze. The Flighthawk was barely twenty feet from the ground and the computer began spitting error codes.

  “You have to get higher and closer,” Jennifer broke in. “We’ve lost the laser-communications mode completely, and the radio error coefficient’s climbing. Jeff! Jeff!”

  He was out there with it, beyond the tether. He went back to the FLIR view screen and saw the Pchelka dead ahead, its two antiquated engines churning a whirlpool of dust as it lumbered over the dunes.

  His thumb clicked on the weapon-select button, toggling over to arm, then designate.

  He didn’t want to shoot it down.

  Fly over it. Force it down.

  Zen eased back on the throttle, nudging the weapon-select toggle back to safe as he began to pull the stick back, gaining altitude even as his forward airspeed slowed.

  And then everything went blank, the command link snapping.

  “Shit!” he cursed.

  “I know, I know,” yelled Jennifer. “It’s okay, it’s okay; it dropped into fail-safe. Damn. We’re maneuvering too violently at too far a distance. We’re under attack.”

  Zen pushed his head back, realizing for the first time that they were under fire.

  “TAKE THE SON OF A BITCH THAT FIRED THE MISSILES OUT,” Cheshire ordered as she snapped the Megafortress onto a new course heading. The Libyans were somewhat better armed than they had been led to believe—semiactive radar missiles and Lark look-down radar. But they had no clue what they were up against; Raven’s ECMs quickly jammed the four missiles that had been fired—and every radar within two hundred miles for good measure.

  She still had her hands full. The interceptors could go nearly three times as fast as the Megafortress with its antique power plants. And they were behind her—if they closed fast enough, they could use their heat-seekers, which were immune to Raven’s ECMs.

  As the lead MiG closed, Cheshire swooped to the left, hoping to get the enemy planes to overtake her and provide an easy rear-quarter shot for her own weapons officer.

  No dice. One of the MiGs dropped back while the other cut south. Cheshire tried turning into the second interceptor, only to nearly collide with one of the Flighthawks.

  “Zen, Jesus!” she managed as she punched the plane lower.

  “Targeting MiG. Bay,” called the weapons officer. “Fox One!”

  He’d launched a Scorpion radar missile.

  ZEN CURSED TO HIMSELF AS HE BROUGHT HAWK ONE back under control. The flight computer had become confused by the mother ship’s maneuverings, almost fatally. He had to go to bird’s-eye view on the main screen to sort it all out, dropping speed on both planes. To make things worse, his left forefinger began to cramp; he went to voice control on the throttle for Hawk One. He needed the computer’s help to get both planes in their set positions, a half mile behind the Raven’s wings. By that time, the Pchelka was well off the screen.

  “Splash one MiG!” declared the weapons officer. His nickname was “Deadeye,” the kind of moniker often applied ironically. From today on, it’d be said with respect.

  “Second MiG going west. He’s running hot. My guess is he’s turning tail back for Libya,” reported the radar/ navigator. “Whoo—looks like he’s got some friends. More contacts, well north. Unidentified, but definitely not friendlies.”

  “Okay, folks, this is where we round up our horses and head out of town,” said Cheshire.

  “Major, that was the Pchelka,” said Zen.

  “I’ve already radioed their location and direction,” replied Cheshire. “They’re headed into the Navy search sectors.”

  “Shit. They’re miles from the nearest patrol route.”

  “I have no control over that, Jeff.”

  “We can’t leave them now.”

  Cheshire didn’t answer. But he could tell she wasn’t turning the plane around either.

  “Nancy, damn it.”

  “Zen, at this point, there’s nothing we can do. Now get those UM/Fs in tow. They’ve got to be at bingo by now. You run out of fuel and there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that,” said Zen.

  “Like what?”

  Like I’m a moron and a fucking cripple, he thought—but he kept his mouth shut. She was right about the planes being at “bingo”—a theoretical turnaround point computed to give them enough fuel to return home without running the fuel tanks dry.

  “Bandits have turned around. They’re going north. Still looking for us. We’re clean,” reported Bobby. “That Pchelka’s off my screen too.”

  “Computer, combat trail, standard offset,” Zen told the Flighthawk computer.

  Sudan

  23 October, 2000 local

  “SO, MAJOR, IT IS YOU AND I THEN,” SAID THE IMAM, standing at the edge of the camp. The Pchelka, with Gunny and Howland, had vanished in the distance. Overhead, the warplanes rumbled; Mack saw a flash in the distance.

  “Have you ever been to Tripoli, Major?” asked the Imam. “It is a beautiful city, looking out on the ocean.”

  “That where we’re going?”

  “Our journey is long,” said the Imam. “That is but one stop.”

  “I hope we’re not walking.”

  The Imam said nothing. As the jets above cleared,

  Mack heard the low drone of a helicopter approaching. “What’s going to happen to them?” Knife said. “They will be put on trial, then shot.”

  “Same as me?”

  “Not yet,” the Imam said. “My superiors have taken an interest in you.”

  “Why?” Knife’s ears started to ring—this didn’t sound good.

  “At first it was suggested you be punished for attacking one of our soldiers while a prisoner in captivity, which, as you know under the Geneva Conventions, is attempted murder, a serious offense. But then we received some interesting information. For some unknown reason, Major Mack Smith, you seemed to disappear from the Air Force roster for a long time. You were flying F-15’s for a time, then you disappeared, then you reappeared flying F-16’s. Odd.”

  The Iranian delighted in seeing Knife swallow nervously.

  “Well, Major, are you more than just another swaggering but incompetent fighter pilot?” he went on. “Perhaps you were involved in some secret activities? As you say in your insipid American television commercials, ‘Inquiring minds want to know.’ Inquiring minds in many nations in the Islamic brotherhood, and perhaps beyond. We shall find out what your official records do not tell us.”

  “What do the Geneva Conventions say about taking prisoners of war to another country?” Smith asked. “You seem to apply the law only when it suits you.”

  “A
nd what of your country? An undeclared war against a peaceful nation? You forfeited your right to protection under the law when you accepted this unlawful mission.”

  “Do whatever you want with me. I’m not talking to you or your so-called brotherhood.”

  The Iranian smiled but said nothing.

  Mack snorted with contempt. It was about all he could do—besides the manacles on his hands, there were four guards flanking him with their AK-47’s.

  He felt like making a run for it anyway. In the long run, it probably didn’t matter—if anything, it was at least arguably better to be shot here, before they could use him for whatever propaganda extravaganza they were cooking up.

  One thing was certain, this wasn’t exactly helping his military career. So much for being part of the A team. “Major, you find me amusing?”

  “No. I’m laughing at myself.”

  “Good. That is the first step on the road to enlightenment. You will be assisted on the second step,” he added, grinning at his joke as a Jet Ranger whipped in for a landing.

  Ethiopia

  24 October, 0400

  FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE HE’D BEGUN REHABILITATION, Jeff wished he had a self-propelled chair. As he rolled from Raven to the waiting truck, his arms began to feel like thin pieces of glass, ready to break; his shoulders became uncoordinated pieces of meat, barely able to propel them. The Ethiopian base drummed with activity. Army engineers had added nearly a thousand feet to the runway, as well a second parking area. Four new C-130’s had arrived, and there were at least five times as many vehicles as when they’d left. Things were popping.

  That was a bad sign. They were starting to plan for long-term operations, not quick-hit emergency actions.

  He’d been so damn close.

  The problem was that he couldn’t use both planes together. It was too difficult to keep track of them. But the computer couldn’t be trusted—it had nearly nailed Raven.

  They could fix that. Jennifer was already working on the adjustments.