lock—”
“Missiles in the air! Sukhois are firing — AGMs — ship missiles, I mean. Shit!”
“PACCOM wants to talk, sir,” said the lieutenant just as Dog was going to take a quick break. “Admiral Allen.”
“Don’t they sleep out there?” asked the colonel, returning to his console.
“It’s only about nine in Pearl.”
“Rhetorical question,” said Dog. “Let ’er rip.”
The screen at the front of the room blinked white, then transformed into a high-resolution video feed showing a small office area filled with a half-dozen frowning Navy commanders. The script at the bottom of the screen identified the source as CinCPacSIT, a top-level secure facility for Pacific Command. Admiral Allen, with his sleeves rolled up, stood in front of a large map table, his face as red as the flag used to provoke the proverbial bull.
“What in hell are you doing out there?” Allen demanded.
“Excuse me?” said Dog.
“Bullshit on that.”
“With all due respect—”
“Stow it, Bastian. What is happening out there? Why are you picking a fight with the Chinese?”
“I’m not, sir.”
“Are you trying to be the second coming of Brad Elliott?”
“Colonel Bastian hadn’t expected Admiral Allen to be happy about the incident. But he didn’t anticipate the personal attack. Nor did he appreciate the comment about General Elliot. “Sir, I’m operating under strict orders,” he told the screen, controlling his own rising anger.
“What yahoo gave the order to start a war with China?” demanded Allen. “I want an explanation, Bastian.”
Allen made an obvious attempt to control his temper, his hands pulling down the sides of is shirt.
“As you can read on the Web net,” Dog said, pausing between nearly every word, “two Sukhois Su-33’s took off from a Chinese carrier and approached our aircraft while on routine patrol. They seemed to think the U/MFs were missiles, they took evasive action, and one of the Chinese pilots put is plane into an unrecoverable spin. His loss was regrettable.”
“I don’t believe it happened that way,” said Allen. “You’re telling me the Chinese pilots are that bad?”
“I’m not critiquing the flying abilities of the Chinese, sir.”
“Why wasn’t I notified immediately?”
“By?”
“Damn straight. You didn’t even clear the mission with my people.”
“It’s not my role to inform you.” Dog wasn’t exactly sure what had happened — generally, the theater commander would be notified of an important operation by Washington, and the Navy certainly had had input prior to the Whiplash Order being issued. It was possible Allen had been bushwhacked by Washington — but it was also possible he was trying to exert control over Colonel Bastian and the operation.
Which wasn’t going to fly.
“This isn’t over, Colonel,” said Allen. The feed died with a pop that sounded very much like an explosion.
“I wouldn’t think we’d be that lucky,” Dog told the blank screen.
Breanna steadied the plane at nine thousand feet as they sorted out the attack. The Chinese planes had launched eight missiles and then immediately begun to turn back north.
“I’ve got a lock on one Sukhois,” reported Chris. “We can shoot him down.”
“Negative,” said Breanna. “Let’s focus on the missiles.”
“Eight in the air, skimming down in a pattern similar to Exocets,” he told her. One of the standard Megafortress simulation routines used the Scorpion AMRAAM-pluses to shoot down French-made Exocet antiship missiles. Though slightly outside of the Scorpion’s design parameters, properly handled, the execution was not difficult. Except they only had four Scorpions, and ordinarily would use two apiece on the target to assure a hit.
“What’s their target?” Breanna asked.
“I’d guess the sub,” said Chris.
Torbin concurred. “There’s no way they’re going to come close to the sub, though,” he added. “It’s going to take them another four minutes to get into the area. If they’re Exocets, or something like them, they’ll run on inertia guidance, pop up, and then hit whatever they can in the area.
“They’re moving at just over five hundred knots,” said Chris. “We can get two.”
“Let’s target them singly,” Breanna told him.
“Not a high-percentage shot.”
“Target them,” she told her copilot.
“Tracking. They’re low.”
“Bay.”
“Bay open. We’re locked.”
“Go.”
“Fire Fox One,” he said, indicating that a radar missile was being launched. The Scorpions rolled off the launcher as soon as it rotated into position.
“ECMs,” said Breanna after the last air-to-air missile had left.
“Working,” said Torbin. “Not going to have much of an impact until they pop up and look for a target. May not work even then, I’m not sure what we’re looking at.”
“Do your best,” said Breanna. “Chris, see if you can plot out a course to have us sweep in front of them and dish out Stinger air mines. Maybe we can out enough shrapnel in the air to knock them down.”
“I was just playing with that. I think we can get a shot at two, but there are two on outside patterns sweeping around in an arc,” he told her.
“Missiles are tentatively ID’d as VJ-2’s, back-engineered Exocets,” said Torbin. “But I don’t know. They were launched from sixty miles, which ought to be beyond their range.”
“Let’s not get too hung up on their exact specifications,” said Breanna. “Are they communicating with the Sukhois for guidance?”
“Negative,” said Collins.
“Alert civilians,” she added. “Though I’m not sure what good that’s going to do.”
Chris hit a button that popped a flight path onto Bree’s navigation screen. “Here’s the course, Captain. Kind of a stutter step with a V in it. I don’t know.”
“Doable,” said Breanna as the three-dimension overlay swirled around on the lower-right screen area. Her mind and body translated the sweeping arcs into a succession of forces; her muscles rehearsed the pulls.
“Two minutes to pop-up,” said Torbin.
“Hawk Leader, this is Quicksilver,” said Bree. She could feel her tongue and cheeks tightening, a clipped precision taking over her brain. “We’re going to try and take out two of those remaining missiles. It doesn’t look like we can reach numbers three and eight on that targeting screen Chris downloaded to you.”
“They’re mine,” said Zen.
“Missile one is a home run!” interrupted Chris as their first AMRAAM hit its target.
“Thanks, Jeff,” Bree told her husband. “Hang on. This is going to be a bit of a ride.”
She took a breath, then put her hand on the throttle slide, goosing the engines as she tucked her wings, pirouetting the big plane in the sky. The massive Megafortress responded as nimbly as an F/A-18, turning with the grace of a veteran ballerina. Bree felt the impact all across her body, the cells in her speed suit inflating as they pulled over seven Gs.
She’d never feel that flying the B-5. She’d be sitting in a bunker at Dreamland, commanding the plane through a series of dedicated satellites. Gravity would be just another formula on the screen.
“Chinese sub is diving,” said Collins.
