“Smart man,” said Torbin.
“Missile Two missed. Suck,” said Ferris.
“All right. Full suite of ECMs.” She told Torbin.
“We’re singing every songs we know, backwards and forwards,” he answered, working his gear.
“Chris, give us chaff as we start the sweep. Anything we can do to confuse them.”
“Okay. We can get that number-two missile in the sweep.”
“Hang on.”
The Megafortress’s flight computer projected the intercept course on her HUD display as an orange dash along a crosshair at the center of the screen. Breanna moved her hand on the stick gently, holding the plane precisely onto the line. The approaching missiles were not yet visible to the naked eye, but the radar handed their positions to the computer, which obligingly painted them as red arrow-heads on the screen. Truth be told, this was almost as fly-by-numbers as anything she did in the UMB. Breanna didn’t have to be in the plane at all — and, in fact, didn’t really have to do anything more than tell the computer to follow the dotted line.
She loved the pull of this plane around here, the feel and idea of it as it swayed in the air, the long, swept wings and their variable leading and trailing edges tilting Quicksilver at a thirty-degree angel as the chaff canisters popped out in the air, spreading a metallic curtain above the ocean. She loved the hard hit of gravity as she cranked the plane 180 degrees, holding her turn so tight the computer complained, dishing up a stall warning. She snickered — she knew this aircraft better than any computer program, and it was nowhere near its performance envelope and was miles away — miles — from stalling or even losing more momentum than she wanted.
“Thirty seconds to intercept!” said Chris, his voice rising like the high soprano of a boy in a children’’ choir, the excitement overwhelming him.
What computer could do that?
“Here comes the zags,” Bree told her crew. She slammed the plane hard south, dipping her wing momentarily and then gliding into a banking climb. The plane’s tailbone jutted down, tracking the targets.
“Firing,” said Chris.
Breanna held the plane against the staccato rumble, rising and sliding across the air, standing the massive, heavy plane up at nearly fifty degrees as the engines groaned, walking Quicksilver across the sky as if she were a dolphin skipping across the waves. Gravity and adrenaline punched against each other barely balancing the contrary forces.
Sex might be better than this, but some nights it could be damn close.
Zen pushed the Flighthawks away from the Megafortress. He had to turn the U/MFs, then trade altitude for acceleration as the missiles came on, as if they were pursuing fighters. The VJ-2’s were flying low, relatively straight courses. Shooting down the small, fast-moving missiles was not an easy task: C?’s tactics section estimated the odds at under fifty percent apiece.
Forty-three and thirty-eight, to be exact.
The two missiles were separated so far apart that Zen had to stick one U/MF on each. He’d have to let the computer take one of them — thousands and thousands of hours and experience showed it was nearly impossible to control both robots successfully in a high-speed furball.
Quicksilver’s tracking gear guessed at the missiles’ targets from their courses. The missile arcing in from the west was flying for the tanker; the other had the cruise ship in its sites.
No-brainer. Give the computer the one on the tanker. It had the easier shot besides.
“Computer, take Hawk Two. Complete intercept. Destroy target.”
“Computer acknowledges.”
Zen jumped into Hawk One as the plane whipped through a turn to get on the Chinese VJ-2’s tail as it came on. There was so much electronic tinsel and ECM fuzz in the air, the computer warned the command signal had degraded; Zen pushed away the warning, pushed away everything but the streaking gray blur that whipped into the bottom corner of his viewscreen. He had his throttle slide at max, his stick pressed forward slightly, the Flighthawk at a shallow-angle dive over the rear of its target. His pipper glowed yellow, then pulsed, then went back to yellow. He pushed his nose down harder, trying to get his gun on the missile. The white blur of the cruise ship illuminated the other end of his screen, the ocean swirled into blue.
He had yellow. He had red. He pressed the trigger as the missile tucked hard right. Zen shoved his stick to follow, his tail flying up, the Flighthawk wallowing in the air.
A red triangle. Zen nailed down the trigger, pushing a stream of 20mm bullets into the rolling silver-gray blur sliding diagonally toward the right corner of his screen.
Firing 20mm bullets at an aircraft while flying between four and five hundred miles an hour is an iffy thing. The laws of motion get complicated; not only are you dealing with the momentum of both aircraft, but the actions of the bullets and gun greatly complicate the equation. A relatively small aircraft like the Flighthawk could be greatly affected by the spin and recoil action of the revolving Gat, even though these were reduced in the modified M61 it carried in its nose. The bullets, meanwhile, reacted in several dimensions at once, torn between their own momentum and that of the plane. With a target as relatively thick as the tail section of a Sukhois fighter-bomber, the complicated physics made a direct hit hard enough; reduce the target size by a factor of thirty or so, and hitting the bull’s-eye became exceedingly difficult.
None of which consoled Zen for missing.
Though the waves were now less than a thousand feet away, Zen hung on, still holding his nose down. The cruise ship grew rapidly into the size of a brick. He sprayed shells at the sea, and saw the swells grabbing them. At a hundred feet, Zen got a proximity warning, pulled up slightly, and kept firing. The splutter of bullets sailed all around the spinning gray cylinder. Suddenly, the stream connected. The missile shot into a somersault and then exploded. Zen yanked back on the stick, said, “Computer, take One,” and jumped into the cockpit of Hawk Two.
The computer had already started to fire. Its target jerked left, then nosed up. Zen overrode the computer, pressing the trigger though his pipper was yellow. The ocean suddenly was all he could see — the missile was riding straight into the water.
He jerked upward, thinking the ship had been saved. But even as he did, he caught a large splotch of black in his face, and realized he was a lot closer than he’d thought to the tanker. Even before climbing back and spinning around to get a good view of the battle area, Zen realized the missile had survived just long enough to find its target, slamming into the side of the vessel at five hundred knots.
Mark Stoner stepped off the helicopter swiftly, ducking reflexively as the whirling rotors whipped grit against his face and clothes. He moved quickly toward the edge of the concrete, lugging his two Alice packs with him. The concrete ran surprisingly smooth, though there were a few spots where men were working on burning up roots and vines, and at the northern end a bulldozer and a buzz saw or two were hacking down a thick row of overhanging trees. Overall, the strip looked long, wide, and amazingly well-prepared.
The Whiplash people had established a sensor perimeter, using audio sensors, land radar, and optical and IR mini-cams tied by land lines to a sandbagged area about ten yards off the southern end of the airstrip. Stoner spotted it and began walking in that direction, ignoring the wind whipping from the wash of the Chinook that had deposited him on the island. Captain Danny Freah, the young Air Force officer who headed the deployment team, stood with his hands on his hips looking over the shoulder of a Whiplash trooper as they surveyed the array of video tubes.
Stoner recognized the captain’s frown; he’d seen it on the face of every one of is superiors when he was in the Navy. Bastards must be issued it the day they graduate officer’s school.
“Captain,” said Stoner.
“Hey,” responded Danny. “Be with you in a second.” He leaned over his man and began tapping one of the two keyboards. About twice the size of a computer keyboard, it had two rows of oversized buttons at the top and several fat sections of others on either side of the QWERTY layout. There were tiny legends on several, but most merely had letters and numbers, like “A4” and “DD-2.”
“Impressive,” said Stoner when Danny straightened. “Shows you the whole perimeter?”
“Yeah,” said Danny.
“What’s that?” One of the video screens was focused on two pieces of cloth stretched in a clearing beyond a
