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 – sound 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. “Mack 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 MiG, 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 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, voice began shouting above and behind him – Cheshire and the crew barking instructions back and forth, the MiGs coming on. The U/MF’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’d 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?
“Active radar,” he ordered. “Ground-attack mode. Max filter.”
“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 lever 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 he 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 close,” Jennifer broke in. “We’ve lost the laser-communication 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 – semi-active radar missiles and Lark look-down radar. But they had no clue what they were up against; Raven’s EVMs 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
