by Dale Brown
“I have the MiG on the left.”
“Two,” acknowledged the wingman.
Zen could visualize it perfectly. The pilots would have their heaters—AIM-9 Sidewinders—selected as the enemy planes grew in their HUDs. The missiles would growl, indicating they could sniff the enemy tailpipes.
But the Eagle jocks would wait a few seconds more, closing the gap. At the last second the MiG pilots would sense something, catch a reflection, a shadow, a hint—they’d start to maneuver, but it would be too late.
“Fox Two!” said both pilots, nearly in unison, as they launched their heat seekers.
“Connection loss in five seconds,” warned the computer.
Zen tucked Hawk One back to the east and gave Two a little more gas, catching up to Quicksilver. He got another contact in the bushes; it seemed to be turning.
MiG-29. Bingo.
“Quicksilver, I have a bogie. I need you to break ninety,” Zen told Breanna, asking her to cut hard to the east.
“Negative, Flighthawk commander. Give the contact to Eagle Flight.”
Screw that, thought Zen. The MiG turned toward him, and now there was a second contact. The planes were flying so low they could be pickup trucks.
Twenty-five miles away. If the Flighthawks had radar missiles, they’d be dead meat. But the U/MFs were fitted with cannons only.
“Mission on Eight-eight Bravo is complete,” said Ferris. “We’re cleared.”
The MiG-29s continued their turns, heading south now, running away. They’d probably caught his radar.
He’d have to juice it to nail them.
Hit them now before they got within range of the RAF flight.
“Bree! I need you to stay with me. Check the Flighthawk screen.”
“Hawk commander, we’re following our game plan.
The bogies are out of reach.”
“Shit! I have them positively ID’d as MiG-29s. There’s an RAF attack package just southeast of them.”
“Location has been given to Eagle flight and Coyote, ” said Ferris.
“Shit!” Zen fought the urge to rip his helmet off and throw it against the side of the cabin.
“Jeff, they’re out of range,” said Bree.
“Yeah, now.”
“Missiles in the air!” warned O’Brien. “Launch—no wait—no launch, no launch. Slot Back radar, may be looking at an SA-2. Jeez—everything’s crazy. What the hell? I’m blank.”
“ECMS,” BREANNA TOLD CHRIS.
“On it already. We’re clean.”
She nosed Quicksilver ten degrees to the west, following their briefed course.
“Bree—we could have nailed those MiGs,” said Zen.
His voice frothed with anger.
Her thumb twitched, but she stayed on her course.
“Flighthawk leader, our priority was the attack mission.”
“We could have nailed them,” Zen told her.
She didn’t answer.
“Our fuel’s okay,” Chris told her.
She nodded instead of saying anything, checked her instruments quickly, then asked O’Brien about the SA-2 contacts he’d reported.
“I’m not sure—I got some sort of indication, a flash from the east. I’m not sure if it was a screw-up or what.”
“No missiles?”
“Not that I could find. Maybe they tried a launch and had an explosion, or it could have been something on the ground totally unrelated. Two or three radars flicked on at the same time, including at least one standard airport job.
Iran had a long-distance air traffic on as well. I haven’t had a chance to go back and sort it out.”
“Laser?”
“Well, not that I can tell. No IR reading. I can go back and run Jennifer’s filter over the data.”
“Wait till we get down. We’re fifteen minutes from High Top, maybe a little closer.”
“Hey, Bree, you might want to listen in to this,” said Chris. “AWACS is reporting they lost contact with an RAF Tornado. The plane disappeared completely from their screens.”
IV
Unnecessary Risk
High Top, Turkey
29 May 1997 1200
“NEVER EVER TALK TO ME THAT WAY WHEN WE’RE FLYING.
Never.” Breanna felt her heart pumping as she confronted her husband beneath the plane.
“I could have had those MiGs,” Zen said.
“The attack flight was our priority.”
“Those MiGs nailed the Tornado.”
“No way.”
“Listen, Bree—”
“No, you listen, Jeff.” Breanna clasped her hands together to keep them from shaking. “Anyone else talked to me that way, I’d have them thrown off the plane.”
“Oh, bullshit. I outrank you.”
“I’m in charge of the aircraft, not you.”
“Those MiGs nailed the Tornado, and I could have gotten them,” said Zen. He pushed his wheelchair back slightly on the pavement below the right wing of the Megafortress. “We could have prevented that.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“Bullshit yourself.”
“I have work to do.” Breanna turned, furious with him, furious with herself. She had done the right thing, she thought, and there was no way the MiGs nailed the Tornado. The F-15s would have been all over them.
Each stride was a grenade as she stomped toward the mess tent. Every glance pulverized the rocks around her.
The large tent was nearly empty; only Mack Smith sat in the far corner, nursing a cup of coffee. She took a bottle of water and a sandwich from the serving counter, then walked to the table farthest away from him, even though it was also the farthest from the heaters.
The wrapper claimed the sandwich was ham and cheese, though the meat looked suspiciously like roast beef. She bit into it; it tasted more like pastrami.
“Better than MREs, huh?” said Mack, coming over.
“Next Pave Low’s bringing steaks.”
“Leave me alone,” she snapped.
“Uh-oh, somebody’s in a bad mood. Tell Uncle Mack all about it.”
“One of these days, Major, someone’s going to knock that smirk so far down your throat it comes out your ass.”
“I only hope it’s you,” said Smith, taking another swig of his coffee.
ZEN FURLED HIS ARMS IN FRONT OF HIS CHEST. BREANNA was right—he’d been out of line to talk to her that way in the plane.
He was right about everything else, but he still shouldn’t have talked to her that way.
But damn—he could have nailed both of those bastards. The Eagles claimed they chased the MiGs away—they said they headed into the bushes and ran back to base—but that was just cover-my-ass bullshit, he thought.
If the MiGs didn’t get the Tornado, who did?
There were a dozen candidates, starting with a stray Zeus flak dealer and ending with General Elliott’s Razor clone. Not to mention plain old mechanical failure or even pilot error; he knew of at least one Tornado that had pancaked into a mountain during the Gulf War because the pilot had lost his situational awareness.
Still, the Eagles should have made sure the MiGs were down. And out. He would’ve.
But Breanna was right about their priorities; where Quicksilver went was her call. His job was to escort, to protect her. Yes, he extended their reach, flushed out threats, and passed along the information to everyone else in the air. But his job, bottom line, was to protect her, not the other way around.
Had he wanted to nail the MiGs for the glory?
Bullshit on that.
But he could have nailed the mothers.
He owed Breanna an apology. Unsure where she’d gone, he wheeled himself toward the mobile Whiplash command post, then decided the mess tent was a better bet.
I’m sorry, he rehearsed. I was a hothead. I used to be cool but now I’m just a hothead. I’ve lost a lot of self-control since the accident.
No. Don’t blame it on the accident. That
was bush league.
I’m sorry. I was out of line.
Zen was still trying to decide exactly what he would say when he entered the mess tent. Breanna was there, sitting next to Mack Smith.
Zen pushed himself toward the serving tables. A small refrigerator held drinks; there was a pile of sandwiches next to it and a large metal pot of soup, or at least something that smelled like soup. Zen took two of the sandwiches and a Coke and wheeled himself over to the table.
“Hey,” he said to Breanna.
“Hey there, robot brain,” said Mack. “Have fun this morning?”
“I always have fun, Mack.” Zen pushed his chair as close to the end of the table as he could get it, but that still left a decent gap between his chest and the surface.
He had to lean forward to put his soda and sandwiches down.
“Those sandwiches are about a week old,” said Mack.
“Check ‘em for mold before you take a bite.” Zen bit into them defiantly. He was halfway through the second when Danny Freah, Chris Ferris, Captain Fentress, and the two mission specialists crewing Quicksilver came in. Fentress had a map rolled up under his arm, along with a pair of folded maps in his hand.
“Majors, Captain,” said Danny. “Just talked with Major Alou. He’s inbound. We want to have a briefing over in the trailer as soon as he’s down. CentCom is going to nail that SA-2 site we picked up and they need our help.”
“Is that what got the Tornado?” Zen asked.
“No one’s sure,” said Danny. “At this point it’s possible he wasn’t even shot down. But CentCom wants to hit something, and it’s the biggest target in the area. Even if it didn’t get them—and I don’t think it did—it should be taken down.”
“How close were the MiGs Major Stockard saw?” Breanna asked O’Brien.
“It’s possible they could have gotten the RAF flight if they were using very long-range missiles,” said Chris Ferris, answering for the radar specialist. “But we didn’t sniff anything in the air, and as far as we know, the AWACS didn’t have any contacts either. Not even the Eagles could find them.”
“Nothing,” added O’Brien. “If they fired Alamos, we would have known it. Their guidance systems would have given them away.”
“Alamos with heat sensors,” suggested Zen. The Alamo missiles—Russian-made AA-10s—came in at least three varieties, including a heat-seeker. But the longest-range version known to the West, the AA-10C, had a range of roughly twenty-two miles and used an active radar, which would have been detected. The infrared or heat-seeking version would have a much shorter range.
“Million-in-one shot,” said Ferris.
“Alamos at twenty-five miles?” said Mack. “What the hell are you guys talking about?” As Ferris explained, Zen looked at Breanna. She was still steaming, he could tell. He tried to send his apology via ESP, but it didn’t take.
“Had to be a laser,” said Mack when he heard the details. “Only explanation.”
“So where is it, then? With the SA-2s?” said Ferris.
“Shit, they’d hide it in a mosque or something,” said Mack. “You know these ragheads.”
“That might be right,” said Danny.
“Maybe it’s with one of these radars that flicks on and off,” said Zen.
“Possible,” said Ferris. “On the other hand, none of the sites seem large enough to house an energy weapon.”
“It doesn’t have to be that big,” said Zen. “Razor’s not big at all. It moves a tank chassis.”
“I don’t think the Iraqis could make it that small,” said Ferris.
“I bet it’s in a mosque,” said Mack.
“Whatever size, they’d try to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible,” said Bree.
“There—we look for what’s inconspicuous,” said Mack.
He meant it as a joke, but nobody laughed.
“Our best lead is the radars,” said Zen. “Because even if it were mobile, it would have to be getting a feed from them somehow. Maybe it can go from one unit to another.”
“Or they have a dedicated landline, with high speed connections, fiber optics,” suggested Bree.
“You really think the Iraqis can do that?” said Ferris.
“They’re doing something,” said Mack.
“I think I can narrow the area down on where that Slot Back radar was if you give me a half hour,” said O’Brien.
“It wasn’t briefed. There may even be another one down there, though the signal was really weak. I’ll tell you one thing,” he added, “either the operator is damn good or they’ve got some sort of new equipment down there, because the computer couldn’t lock it down.” JENNIFER GLEASON FOLDED HER HANDS OVER HER MOUTH and nose almost if she were praying. She had only a rudimentary notion of how the coding for the program governing the IR detection modes worked, and without either the documentation or the raw power of Dreamland’s code analyzers, she could only guess how to modify it. The secure data-link with Dreamland was still pending; once it was in place, she would be able to speak with the people there who had developed the detector. But the pilots wanted the plane to fly before then, and she thought it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out. She replayed the EB-52’s recorded inputs from the last mission, watching the coding to see how she might tweak the IR detector to find a momentary burst in the infrared spectrum.
Shorter than a launch, but stronger?
Jennifer reached for her soda on the floor of Quicksilver‘s flight deck, pulling it up deliberately. She took two sips and then set it down, all the while staring at the blank multipurpose screens at the radar-intercept operator’s station. She ran the detection loops over again, watching her laptop screen where the major components of the code were displayed. The interface program took data from different sensors and configured it for the screens; it was monstrously complex because it had to accept data from a number of different sensors, which had been designed without a common bus.
Her laptop flagged a bug in the interface that had to do with an errant integer cache. It was minor—the interface program simply ignored the error.
Odd. It should have been trapped out by the interface.
The error handling section was comprehensive, and in any event included an “if all else fails” section where anything unexpected should have gone.
But it hadn’t. Jennifer traced the error to an ambient reading from the sensor. The detector had flicked onto something and sent a matrix of information about it on to the interface. The interface didn’t understand one of the parameters.
An error in the sensor that hadn’t been caught during the rigorous debugging of the interface at Dreamland?
Certainly possible. Happened all the time.
Except …
Jennifer reached down for her soda again. It could just be an error—there must have been a million lines of code there, and mistakes were inevitable.
But if it wasn’t a mistake, it would be what they were looking for.
Well, no, it could be anything. But anything wasn’t what she was interested in. She needed a theory, and this was it.
She could get a base line with some flares, see what happened, try to screw it up. Use those numbers to compare to the error, calculate.
Calculate what, exactly?
Something, anything. She just needed a theory.
If Tecumseh were here, she thought, he would tell her to figure it out. He would fold his arms around her and rub her breasts and tell her to figure it out.
Jennifer jumped up from the station, scooped up her can of soda, and ran to find Garcia.
Incirlik, Turkey
1230
TORBIN FINISHED HIS TAE KWON DO ROUTINE, BOWING TO the blank wall. He was alone in the workout room, still a leper despite the semiofficial admission from General Harding that his gear and the mission tapes checked out; he wasn’t at fault in the shoot-downs.
Not at fault, but impotent nonetheless. The Phantom remained grounded until further notice. Its next f
light would undoubtedly be to the boneyard.
Torbin folded his arms at his sides, trying to maintain his composure. He belonged back in the rear seat of the Weasel, back over Iraq. They could nail the damn radars one by one, no matter what bullshit tactics they were pulling. Hell, maybe he could jimmy around with the gear somehow and scope out their tactics.
Whatever.
Something heavy roared off the nearby runway.
Ought to be me, he thought, deciding to run through his routine again.
High Top
1300
THE HEAT WAS SO HIGH IN THE TRAILER, DANNY FELT SWEAT rolling down his neck as he studied the map. On the other side of the table Major Alou finished telling the others about CentCom’s plans. There was no doubt now that Iraq had some sort of new weapon or weapons. Six planes had been shot down; four men were still missing. The ratio of sortie to loss was just above twenty to one. Even the most conservative reckoning of the statistics from the Gulf War put the sortie-to-loss ratio well over a hundred to one. Maybe it wasn’t a laser, but something big and bad was going down.
“They’re bringing in a pair of U-2s from the States to increase surveillance,” said Alou, “but they’re worried about how vulnerable they’ll be, and in any event they won’t arrive for another twenty-four hours or so. The game plan in the meantime is to take out every radar and missile site we can find.”
“The bastards keep rolling them out,” said Chris Ferris.
“They’ve been keeping them in the closet, or what?”
“They’ve spent the money they got for food the past five years on rebuilding their defenses,” said Alou.
“Damn country’s starving while Saddam’s buying new radar dishes and vans. The missiles they’ve had. They just haven’t fired them until now.”
“They’re not on long enough to hit anything,” said O’Brien. “Has to be a laser.”
“They might be synthesizing the radar input,” said Ferris. “If you had a sophisticated computer, you could compile all of the inputs from a diverse net, then launch. No one radar would ever stay on long enough to seem like the culprit. They could move the radars around, use some and not others—that would explain why they duck the Weasels and the other jammers.”
“Pretty sophisticated,” said O’Brien.
