Rogue Forces

THE NEXT MORNING

“Masters Two-Two, this is White Sands.” The portable radio squawked to life, splitting the still, early-morning air. “You are cleared for takeoff, runway one-zero, winds calm, altimeter two-niner-niner-seven. Threat condition red, repeat, red, read back.”

“Roger, Masters Two-Two copies, cleared for takeoff, runway one-zero, threat condition red.”

A large, rather strange-looking aircraft spooled up its engines and prepared to take the active runway. It somewhat resembled a B-2 Spirit “flying-wing” stealth bomber, but it was vastly more bulbous than the intercontinental bomber, suggesting a far larger payload capacity. Instead of the engines embedded inside the fuselage, the aircraft had three engines mounted atop the rear of the fuselage on short pylons.

As the weird “winged guppy” aircraft taxied across the hold line onto the active runway, about a mile to the west a man wearing a cloth cap, balaclava, a thick protective green jacket, and heavy gloves lifted a MANPADS, or Man-Portable Air Defense System, launcher onto his right shoulder. He first inserted a vegetable-can-size device into the bottom of the launcher, which provided argon gas coolant for the infrared seeker and battery power for the device.

“Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar,” the man intoned in a quiet voice. He then got to his feet and aimed the weapon east toward the gradually increasing sound of the aircraft’s engines spooling up for takeoff. It was not yet light enough to see the plane from that distance, so the missileer lowered a pair of night-vision goggles over his eyes, carefully adjusting his head position so he could still aim the MANPADS through its mechanical sights. He activated the weapon by pressing and releasing the integrated safety and actuator lever. He could hear the gyros spinning up in the missile’s guidance section even over the noise of the airliner rumbling across the desert.

As soon as he centered the sights on the green-and-white image of the retreating jetliner, he heard a low growling sound in his headphones, indicating that the MANPADS’ infrared sensor had just locked onto the jetliner’s engine exhausts. He then pressed and held the “uncage” lever, and the acquisition tone got louder, telling him that the missile was tracking a good target.

He waited until the aircraft was airborne, since if he hit it while it was still on the ground, the crew could probably stop the plane safely on the runway and put the fire out quickly, minimizing loss. The most vulnerable time was five seconds after liftoff, because the plane was accelerating slowly and its landing gear were in transit; if it lost an engine, the crew would have to react swiftly and precisely to avoid a catastrophe.

Now it was time. He whispered another Allah Akbar, super-elevated the launcher so that the target was on the lower left corner of the mechanical sights, held his breath to avoid inhaling any missile exhaust, then squeezed the trigger.

The small ejection motor fired the missile out of the barrel about thirty feet into the air. Just as the missile began to fall, its first-stage solid rocket motor fired, and the missile headed for its target, with the sensor solidly locked on. Then the missileer lowered the MAN-PADS and watched the engagement with glee through his night- vision goggles as an instant later he saw the missile explode in a cloud of fire. “Allah friggin’ Akbar,” he muttered. “That was cool.”

But the counterattack wasn’t over yet. As soon as the sound of the explosion reached him a second later, the missileer suddenly felt an intense burning sensation all throughout his body. He threw the spent launcher onto the ground, confused and disoriented. It felt as if his entire body had suddenly burst into flames. He dropped to the ground, hoping to extinguish the flames by rolling around, but the heat got more intense by the second. He could do nothing but curl into a protective ball and cover his eyes, hoping to avoid being blinded or burned alive. He screamed as the flames spread, engulfing him…

“Whoa, boss, what happened?” he heard a voice say in his headphones. “Are you okay? We’re on the way. Hold on!”

The man found his chest heaving and his heart pounding with the sudden surge of adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream, and he found it hard to speak for several moments…but the severe burning sensation had suddenly stopped. Finally, he got up and dusted himself off. There was no evidence whatsoever that anything had happened to him except for the awful memory of that intense pain. “No…well, maybe…well, yes,” the missileer, Dr. Jonathan Colin Masters, replied shakily. “Maybe a little.”

Jon Masters had just turned fifty years of age, but he still looked and probably would forever look like a teenager with his thin features, big ears, gangly body movements, crooked grin, and naturally tousled brown hair under his headset. He was the chief operations officer of Sky Masters Inc., a small defense research and development company he’d founded that for the past twenty years had been developing absolute cutting-edge aviation, satellite, weapons, sensors, and advanced materials technology for the United States.

Although he no longer owned the company that still bore his name—a board of directors, led by his ex-wife and business partner Helen Kaddiri, and the company’s young president, Dr. Kelsey Duffield, ran company affairs now—and was rich enough to travel the world for the rest of his life if he chose, Jon enjoyed spending time either in the lab designing new gadgets or out in the field testing them. No one really knew if the board of directors allowed him to do things like fire live MANPADS missiles or stay out on the missile range during a test just to humor him…or because they were hoping he’d get dusted by his own inventions, something that had nearly happened many times over the years.

Several Humvees and support vehicles—including an ambulance, just in case—rolled up, illuminating Jon with headlights and spotlights. A man jumped out of the first Humvee on the scene and ran over to him. “You okay, Jon?” asked Hunter “Boomer” Noble. Boomer was the twenty-five year-old vice president in charge of air weapon development for Sky Masters Inc. Formerly a U.S. Air Force test pilot, engineer, and astronaut, Boomer once had the enviable job of designing exotic aircraft spacecraft systems and then being able to fly the finished product himself. Flying the revolutionary XR-A9 Black Stallion single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane, Boomer had been in orbit more times in the past two years than the rest of the American astronaut corps combined had been in the past ten years. “Jeez, you gave us a scare back there!”

“I told you, I’m fine,” Jon said, grateful that his voice didn’t sound as shaky as it had a few minutes earlier. “I guess we dialed the emitter power up a little too high, eh, Boomer?”

“I set it to the lowest power setting, boss, and I checked and double-checked it,” Boomer said. “You were probably too close. The laser has a fifty-mile range—you were less than two when you got hit. Probably not a good idea to star in your own tests, boss.”

“Thanks for the advice, Boomer,” Jon replied weakly, hoping no one would notice his shaking hands. “Great going, Boomer. I’d say the Slingshot automatic countermissile weapon test was a complete success.”

“So would I, Boomer,” another voice behind him said. Two men approached from another Humvee, wearing business suits, long dark coats, and gloves to ward off the early-morning chill. They were followed by two more men, similarly dressed, but their coats were open…which made it easier for them to get at the automatic weapons slung on harnesses underneath. The man with the longish salt-and-pepper hair and goatee shook his finger at Jon and continued: “You almost succeeded in killing yourself, Jon…again.”

“Nah…it went exactly as planned, Mr. President,” Jon responded.

The man, former president of the United States Kevin Martindale, rolled his eyes in disbelief. A Washington establishment figure for decades, Martindale served six terms in Congress, two terms as vice president, and one term as president before being voted out of office; he then became only the second man in the history of the United States to be voted back in again.

He also had the distinction of being the first vice president ever to be divorced while in office, and he was still a confirmed bachelor who was often seen in the company of young female actors and athletes. Although over sixty years old, Martindale was still ruggedly handsome, self-confident, and almost devilish with his goatee and long, wavy hair, featuring the famous “photographer’s dream” twin curling silvery locks that automatically appeared across his forehead whenever he was angry or emotional.

“He still likes being involved in his own tests, Mr. President—the more outrageous, the better,” the man beside him, retired Lieutenant-General Patrick McLanahan, said. Shorter than Martindale but considerably more solidly built, McLanahan was as much a legend as Martindale, except only in the shadowy world of strategic aerial combat. He’d served five years as a B-52G Stratofortress navigator and bombardier in the U.S. Air Force before being chosen to join a top-secret research-and-development unit known as the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, or HAWC, based at an uncharted air base in the Nevada desert known as “Dreamland.”

Led by its audacious and slightly uncontrollable first commander, Lieutenant-General Bradley James Elliott,