Razor's Edge

by Dale Brown

  The Megafortress was equipped with two fire suppression systems. One injected high-pressure foam into non-crew areas of the aircraft; this worked automatically. The other, a carbon-dioxide system designed to deprive a fire of oxygen, required a positive command from the flight deck, since anyone not on oxygen would be smothered along with the flames. Breanna could see that everyone was okay on the flight deck, but she had no way of checking downstairs. Zen would certainly have on his gear, but the techies who flew with him almost never did. Which meant that fighting the fire might very well kill Jennifer Gleason.

  Her father’s girlfriend.

  “Jen—get on oxygen,” she said. “Everyone—now! We have a fire.”

  There was no acknowledgment. The plane’s com system was dead.

  Breanna pressed the manual warning switch. The cockpit was supposed to flash red but it didn’t.

  Smoke was now pouring into the cockpit. She had to put it out.

  “Fire suppression!” she shouted as she reached over and thumbed the guard away from the button.

  *

  *

  *

  JEFF HEARD THE METALLIC HUSH OF THE CARBON-DIOXIDE fire suppression system, then felt his teeth sting—the sound was remarkably similar to the sound of a dentist’s suction tool, amplified about a hundred times. The sudden change in the pressure as the gas whipped in made the cabin feel like a wind tunnel.

  There’d been no warning light or tone.

  Jennifer—she never wore the gear. She’d be breathing pure carbon dioxide.

  “Trail Two,” he told the Flighthawk computer. He pushed up his visor and turned toward her station.

  She wasn’t there.

  Something cold hit him on his right shoulder. He turned and saw her standing there, shaking her head vigorously up and down, a mask on her face.

  BREANNA RESTABILIZED THE PRESSURE IN THE CABIN, RESTORED the normal airflow, then began dealing with the caution lights on her panel, assessing the damage. Fuel tanks were intact. Environmental controls—the AC system—was on backup. Oil pressure in the number four engine was now high, but just barely in the yellow. The flight computer was off line, as were the interphone and the radios. All of her backup instruments were operating.

  The flight controls felt a bit kludgy on hydraulic backup, but otherwise were fine. The interface with the Flighthawks, which forwarded data from the robots’ sensors, was out.

  Small bits of shrapnel had burst through the cockpit; one had apparently hit Ferris in the helmet, knocking him unconscious. There was some blood on his arm, but judging from his breathing, he was okay. Habib and O’Brien both gave her thumbs up.

  When Breanna pulled off her mask to talk to her two crewmen, her nose tingled with the metallic smell that lingered from the CO2 system. Power to the radar tracking station had been cut completely; Habib’s eavesdrop-ping gear had been knocked off line, but some circuits still had power. Breanna told O’Brien to go downstairs and see about the others while Habib worked to see if he could get something from the radio.

  “God, let Jeff be okay,” she found herself saying as she ran a quick self-check on the INS. “Don’t let him die. Not after everything else.”

  JENNIFER HELD HER MASK TO THE SIDE TO TELL JEFF WHAT she’d found at the circuit locker at the rear of the Flighthawk deck. The breaker on the lines regulating the com link between the Megafortress and the Flighthawks had blown out and wouldn’t reset, but otherwise they had full power. Whatever had hit the Megafortress seemed to have taken out the right underfuselage quadrant of the Flighthawk’s wide-band antennas, but his backups should be sufficient.

  “We have full power on the monitoring suite, but the interphone system is off line,” she told him. “I think they’re on backup.”

  “The fire,” he yelled, still facing forward and controlling the U/MFs.

  “I think it’s out.”

  “It is if you can breathe.” Zen pulled his mask off and looked up at her. “What the hell hit us?”

  “No idea. Should I go up and see if they’re okay on the flightdeck?”

  “Yeah,” he told her. “Tell them I’ll survey the outside and pipe it up. Something hit the fuselage on the right side—I saw the fire. Jen—” He grabbed her arm as she started for the ladder. “It may be pretty brutal.”

  “No shit.” She pulled free, then bolted for the ladder.

  Someone was coming down. “Hey!” Jennifer yelled, stepping aside.

  “Hey, yourself,” said O’Brien. “You guys okay?”

  “Yeah—what’s going on up there?”

  “My gear’s out. Captain Stockard’s okay. Captain Ferris got hit by something, knocked cold.”

  “Radio?”

  He shook his head.

  “Where was the fire?” Jennifer asked.

  “Not sure.”

  “Come on, we have to check the gear in the rear bay.”

  “I’ll go,” said O’Brien, spinning around and charging up the ladder to the rear area.

  Jennifer clambered after him, reaching the top in time to hear him scream in agony.

  “My hand! My hand!” he yelled, rolling on the metal grate of the floor and cursing in agony.

  One of the equipment panels was open; Jennifer guessed that a short had juiced the panel. She reached into the small passage between the bay and the flight deck, grabbing the first aid kit off the wall. O’Brien writhed in pain so badly the first thing she did was stab him with the morphine syringe. She rammed it into his leg, right through his uniform. Then she dug into the box for the burn spray—a high-pressure can of antiseptic solution that was so cold as she sprayed, her own hands turned to ice. By the time she had gauze on his hands, O’Brien had calmed down. She helped him back onto the flight deck and got him strapped into his seat as his eyes closed.

  “What happened?” asked Breanna.

  “One of the panels is hot—there’s a short. Maybe if I had a schematic—can you access the on-line manual?” “Negative—everything associated with the computer is out.”

  “If you have control of the plane, we shouldn’t mess with it,” said Jennifer. “I don’t want to screw up something else.”

  “Agreed,” said Breanna. “How’s Jeff?”

  “He’s fine,” said Jennifer. “He should be giving you a visual.”

  “I have no feed from him,” said Breanna. “The computer’s out.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, he’s fine. He was worried about you,” she added. Jennifer thought of Breanna’s father, worried about him for a moment, even though he wasn’t the one in danger. “I’ll find out what it looks like and come back.”

  “Good luck,” said Breanna. “We’re about ten minutes out of High Top. If the damage is too bad, we’ll have to go on to Incirlik. I don’t want to mess with a short-field landing.” IT LOOKED LIKE A GIANT HAD STUCK HIS THUMB ONTO Quicksilver‘s fuselage just before the wing on the right side. The center of the thumbprint was dark black; streaks of silver extended in an oblong starburst toward the rear where bits of the radar-evading hull had been burned away. There were one or two long lines extending toward the back of the plane, along with a small burn mark on the panel where the rear landing gear carriage folded up.

  There were some other pockmarks, including a large dent on the cover to the chute they needed to deploy to land on the short field.

  “The thing looks bad, but it looks intact,” Jeff told Jennifer. “I don’t know about the chute, though.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tell Bree I think I should land the Flighthawks at High Top and we should go on to Incirlik. I should be able to talk to the AWACS through Hawk One in about thirty seconds. I’ll have the controller about a minute after that. You’ll have to play messenger.”

  “Not a problem,” she said, starting back.

  He checked his instruments. The U/MFs themselves were in good shape.

  The only thing that could have done this sort of damage was a laser. Maybe they’d believe Brad Elliott now.


  High Top

  1830

  CAPTAIN FENTRESS DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON UNTIL he saw Major Alou hustling toward his plane, followed a good ten yards back by the rest of his crew. He ran after them, shouting for information. Kevin Marg, the copilot, explained that Quicksilver had been hit by a SAM.

  Zen and Bree and the others—oh God.

  Zen.

  “The Flighthawks—they’ll be in a fail-safe orbit if the control unit was blown out,” Fentress told them. “They can help us find them if they go down. Let me come with you?”

  Alou yelled something that he took to be a yes. But as he ducked under the plane he heard the soft whine of a Flighthawk in the distance. Fentress trotted back out in time to see the robot tilt her nose up above the far end of the runway, skimming in like a graceful eagle hooking its prey. The second plane came in two seconds later, just as smoothly.

  Would he ever be able to land like that?

  He had fifty times—on the simulator.

  “Hey, Quicksilver‘s heading over to Incirlik,” yelled the copilot from the ladder. “We’re going to fly shotgun—Major Alou wants to know if you’re coming aboard or not.”

  “I better look after the Flighthawks,” said Fentress.

  “You got it, Curly.”

  “I’m not Curly,” he shouted, starting to trot toward the robot planes.

  Aboard Quicksilver,

  on the ground at Incirlik

  1905

  ZEN WATCHED FROM HIS WHEELCHAIR AT THE BACK OF THE Flighthawk deck as they carried O’Brien and then Ferris out. Jennifer had already gone down to see if Alou was landing or if she could talk to him over the radio; Raven had escorted them here but there had been no way to communicate outside of hand signals.

  After he landed the Flighthawks, he’d had plenty of time to go back over the video. There was only one site in the area they had flown over that could have possibly held a laser—a dilapidated factory a half mile off a highway, a mile and a half from a fair-size town in northeastern Iraq.

  Two trailers were parked outside of it. There were no defensive positions that they could see, but there was a long trench running between the trailers into the building. Cables might be buried there.

  While the fire had cost them the data needed to coordinate it positively, it was at least roughly where the cell phone calls and radio transmissions had originated from.

  It had to be where the laser was.

  “Hey,” said Breanna, coming down the ladder. “You okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  She glanced back upward, as if she’d forgotten no one else was aboard. “Listen, I’m sorry,” she told him.

  “What for?”

  “We haven’t—you and I have been kind of off kilter lately. I don’t know why.”

  Zen shrugged.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Yeah, I love you too,” he said. The words sounded odd to him, too rushed or too quick, not as sincere as he meant. But if she noticed, she didn’t say.

  High Top

  2010

  DANNY FREAH GLANCED OVER FROM THE COMMUNICATIONS section in the Whiplash trailer, making sure he was still alone; the HQ had become something like a rec room for the base personnel. Ordinarily he didn’t mind, but the conferences with Dreamland Command and Raven were to be conducted in total secrecy.

  Bison was at the door, enforcing the secure protocol with his M16A3, full-body armor, and a day and a half’s worth of unshowered B.O. Danny gave him a quick wave, then turned back to the main com screen, adjusting the volume on his headset. The excitement of the rescue—and the harried ride back on only one engine—had been eclipsed by news of what happened to Quicksilver.

  “The damage was done by some sort of energy discharge weapon,” said Alou, who was en route back to High Top Base in Raven. “I saw it myself. Had to be laser.”

  “We concur,” said Dog.

  “The radio transmission data points to a small warehouse complex, more like a building and some trailers in Box AB-04,” said Alou. “It should be just about big enough for a laser.”

  “Give me the coordinates and we’ll look at it,” said Dog. “The mini-KH is now on line. We can have it maneuvered into place by morning.”

  “I want to move right away,” said Alou. “I say we return to refuel, and go.”

  “The colonel and I have been discussing another option,” said Danny before Dog could answer. “I’d like to get us in there and take a look at it before we blow it.”

  “Why?” asked Alou.

  “Because if we just destroy it, we’re not going to settle any of the questions,” Danny said. His words raced from his mouth. “I say we get on the complex ASAP, Colonel.

  From what Jennifer Gleason relayed, it’s an easy shot.”

  “You don’t know that the laser itself is there,” said Alou. “It’s probably mobile.”

  “It may be mobile,” said Dr. Rubeo, who was in the secure room with Colonel Bastian. “If it’s as advanced as Razor. If—a big question.”

  “See—we have to get that question answered,” said Danny.

  “There’s no way you’ll have the Osprey repaired in time to join us,” said Alou.

  “We’ll find other transportation,” said Danny, who already knew it would be several days before they had a new engine to replace the damaged one. “If this map is right, there are no defenses whatsoever. Nearest armed units would be in a town a mile and a half away. We’re in and out before they know what hit them. Ten minutes of video on the ground, maybe grab some pieces—that would be invaluable.”

  “Big risks,” said Bastian. “Even just a bombing mission. Granted that Quicksilver was more vulnerable to radar, but Raven will still have to open its bomb bay to fire. That would make even a B-2 visible, at least in theory.”

  “I concur,” said Rubeo.

  “One thing I noticed,” cut in Alou. “And maybe it’s a coincidence or maybe it has to do with the radars, but the altitude of all the planes hit was at least twenty thousand feet.”

  “And?” said Dog.

  “Maybe it can only hit aircraft at that altitude or higher.

  Maybe it’s optimized for that.”

  “If this is a laser, it can strike anything from five centimeters to thirty-five meters off the ground,” said Rubeo.

  His face filled the screen as he spoke, the video feed automatically concurring with the active voice feed. “I suggest we wait and plan a full raid,” added the scientist. “I agree with Captain Freah about the utility of a close inspection, but the operation should be properly planned.

  We’ll have the mini-KH positioned in six hours.”

  “They may move it by then,” said Alou.

  “Unlikely,” said Rubeo.

  “Razor’s mobile.”

  “Pul-ease. We are dealing with Iraq,” answered the scientist. “Even if this is mobile, they can’t go scurrying around the countryside with it. They’ll hide it in a building.”

  “I agree with Merce,” said Danny. “The sooner the better. They won’t be expecting it.”

  “We’re not sure if this is the site, though,” said Dog.

  “It’s got to be, right, Doc?” asked Danny, sensing the scientist would back him.

  “Possibly. It’s within parameters. Even if they were a full generation behind—and let us say that is more likely—the building needed for the director would not have to be very large,” said Rubeo. “I believe anything above two thousand square feet would do, assuming some of the equipment were contained on a second level or even in an auxiliary station. The director itself is not particularly large, and at least a portion of it has to be exposed so it can fire. Razor, of course, can be mounted on a large tank chassis. That greatly increases the possible number of sites.”

  “What the hell is the director?” asked Danny. “The command post?”

  Rubeo gave him one of his best “what a bonehead I’m dealing with” expressions.

  “The direc
tor focuses the laser or high energy beam,” explained Colonel Bastian. “It’ll look a little like a very large searchlight. It will have some baffling on it to prevent ambient light from changing the focus during daylight.”

  “Precisely,” said Rubeo. “We will feed you some conceptual drawings that you can use for a target. It’s the easiest part to destroy. Now, if the Iraqis are more than a generation behind—”

  “Then it wouldn’t work at all,” said Colonel Bastian.

  “Precisely,” said Rubeo. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Good,” said Danny.

  “The director itself is interesting, but not the highest priority for intelligence,” said Rubeo. “The software that controls it would be extremely interesting. We’d want to ID the gas makeup, of course. An exact signature could help us determine who built it and—”

  “I’ll get you everything you want,” said Danny.

  “The chemical warfare sniffers you carry can be modified to give us a reading,” said Rubeo. “You’ll have to find Sergeant Garcia and tell him to follow the directions I send.”

  “Whoa, not so fast boys,” said Dog. “You haven’t outlined the risks, and we haven’t solved the problem of getting there, or of grabbing intelligence for the strike.”

  “We can use the Flighthawks for intelligence,” said Alou. “They’re at High Top.”

  “Zen isn’t.”

  “Captain Fentress is there. He’ll fly them,” said Alou.

  “The risks are worth it, Colonel,” said Rubeo. “If this is a laser, intelligence on it would be overwhelmingly valuable.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” said Dog. “What are the risks?”

  “Well, the risks—we could fail,” said Danny, leaving it at that.

  “And you get there how?” asked Dog.

  “I was hoping to chop one of those Marine transports, but we won’t have any inbound until daybreak,” said Danny, who’d checked twice. “But I have something else in mind, something much better, that we could use right away.”

  “YOU’RE OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND, FREAH. OUT OF your fucking mind.” Mack Smith shook his head, then slapped the side of the OV-10. “You want to ride in the back of this?”

  “Plenty of room. Garcia tells me four or five guys can fit, with full gear.”