“Two Nodongs at presurveyed launch points?” Nancy Cheshire asked. “Sounds like a lot more than coincidence to me.”
“Same here,” Dave said as he relayed the new information back to Dreamland. “This could be the prelude to another rebel missile launch.”
“Hey, we’ve got an air target behind us!” Patrick said. He had just completed another LADAR sweep all around the Megafortress. It was flying at about thirty thousand feet over the Sea of Japan, heading toward them from the southeast at over five hundred knots. “No ID yet, but it’s gotta be a fighter.”
“But we didn’t pick up any radar indication on him,” Nancy said. She continued a moment later: “A MiG-29. It’s gotta be a Japanese MiG-29, using GPS for navigation and his IRSTS for targeting.” The IRSTS, or infrared search and track system, was a sophisticated Russian-designed heat-seeking sensor that allowed a MiG-29 to scan large sections of sky for enemy aircraft without being detected. Used along with GPS satellite navigation, the MiG would never have to use his radar except for very long-range attacks — most enemies would never know he was there until he fired his missiles. “Are they still patrolling the peninsula with the Koreans?”
“I’m sure the Koreans are happy to have them up here,” Patrick said. “Korea might be providing the ground control information for the MiG. I think that as long as we stay farther than twenty miles from that MiG and we don’t aim our exhausts right at him, he won’t spot us. Dave, why don’t you drop a note to General Samson and ask him to ask the White House to find a way to tell the Japanese we’re up here. I’d hate to be jumped by a Japanese MiG. Maybe we can exchange Mode Two codes or something.”
“You got it,” Luger said. “I should be able to find out what his interplane or command frequency is too, so if the shit really hits the fan you can talk to him. You can… Hey, looks like fighters launching from Korea.” When Patrick expanded his supercockpit display to a full God’s-eye view, he saw the new information: relayed from Korea’s own air traffic control radar system, two high-speed aircraft were climbing rapidly through the night sky, headed northeast. “Two fighters off from Seoul, headed your way.”
“Getting crowded up here,” Nancy said. “Maybe we should go low and hide in some…”
Just then the LADAR system issued a shrill warning tone, and an icon began blinking near one of the suspected Nodong missile units.
Nancy Cheshire shoved all four throttles to max afterburner and yanked the EB-1 Megafortress to the left. They could see the missile launch clearly: a tiny sparkle of light on the horizon, followed by a bright yellow column of fire rising rapidly through the atmosphere. Patrick’s turn pointed the nose in precisely the right direction to lead the missile as it climbed.
“Bomb doors coming open! Wolverine away!” Patrick had immediately launched one of the powered glide bombs at the Nodong launcher. “Bomb doors closed! Okay, Nance, follow that missile!”
Nancy raised the nose only slightly to start her tail-chase climb. At first it seemed as if they might overfly or pass the missile — the Nodong didn’t look as though it was accelerating so fast, while the Megafortress was rapidly picking up speed. But this was an illusion. Seconds later it was obvious how fast that ballistic missile was traveling. In the blink of an eye the Nodong was above them, accelerating rapidly on a tongue of fire. By this time, Nancy had the speed built up to almost Mach 1 and she easily kept the nose aimed at the missile. They never reached the Mach, however, and the higher Cheshire pulled the nose up to point it at the Nodong missile, the quicker the airspeed bled off.
“Punch it out quick, sir,” Nancy urged him. “Airspeed’s falling way off already. You got about six seconds…”
“Stand by… doors coming open… missile away!” Seconds later they heard a loud thundering rocket blast, and one of the Lancelot missiles shot past their windscreen on its own plume of fire. “Clear to unload, Nance! Doors closed!” Nancy released back pressure on the control stick, lowered the nose to the horizon, and pulled the throttles out of afterburner. They were rewarded by a spectacular multicolored globe of sparks and fire in the sky as the Lancelot intercepted its quarry.
“
“Could have been,” Patrick said. “Maybe a partial yield, five or ten kilotons. Lancelot intercepted it about fifty-one miles downrange, eighty thousand feet altitude.” Then a heavy rumble of turbulence rocked the Megafortress. “Yep, maybe a nuclear burst, all right. All our systems look okay.” Patrick switched to the imaging infrared view from the Wolverine missile, only long enough to clearly see the outline of the Nodong missile train. He had just enough time to roll the aiming cursor onto the car with the erector-launcher still extended in firing position before the missile hit.
Then came another warning message blinking on the supercockpit display. “Another missile launch! Left ninety, max AB,
“Stand by… doors coming open… missile away!” Patrick shouted. Nancy shielded her eyes from the bright glare of the Lancelot missile’s first-stage rocket motor as the big missile streaked into the night sky. “Doors closed, clear to—”
He was interrupted by a high-pitched
They saw another explosion in the sky, not as big as the first one, but spectacular nonetheless. “Looks like we got the second Nodong,” Patrick said, “but I don’t know what happened to the second Wolverine. It might’ve been shot down.”
“By who? Who is shooting at us?” Nancy shouted.
“That motherfucker Japanese MiG-29 sneaked up behind you when you plugged in your ’burners and shot two missiles at you!” Dave replied.
“Why would he do that — other than the fact there are missiles flying everywhere and he might’ve thought we launched all of them,” Patrick declared. “You got his frequency yet, Dave?”
“I’m getting it now,” Dave replied. “He’s talking to Seoul GCI and those two Korean fighters. I think they’re going to try to box you in… I got it. I set the freq in radio two. They’re unsecure.”
“Let me talk to ’em,” Nancy said. She moved her comm switch to radio number two and keyed the mike button: “Hey, boys, we’re on your side. Stop shooting at us!”
“Unidentified aircraft, this is the United Republic of Korea Air Force,” a voice replied in a thick Korean accent. “You have violated Korean airspace. Roll wings level, slow down, and lower your landing gear immediately or you will be shot down! This is your final warning!”
The supercockpit display showed the deployment of the air targets. “Looks like those Korean fighters are F- 16Ks, judging by their radar signature — they don’t have us on radar yet,” Patrick said. “We are well inside Seoul radar coverage, but we can be out of it in less than two minutes at mil power. The MiG-29 might still have us on IRSTS. There’s squat we can do to escape him unless we get beyond his sensor’s max range, which is about ten miles. That’s pretty unlikely — he can fly just as fast as we can up here.”
“Unidentified aircraft, this is your final warning!” the Korean voice repeated. “Slow and lower your landing gear now or we open fire!”
“Warm up a Scorpion missile, Patrick,” Nancy Cheshire said. “We’ve got no choice — it’s him or us.”
“I’d rather not shoot the bastard down, Nance — he may have shot at us, but he’s a good guy.” Instead, Patrick activated the laser radar once more, got a fix on the MiG-29, then designated a Wolverine cruise missile
