“Give the coordinates to Chris as soon as you can. Buoys first.”
Realizing his presence made the men nervous, Chen Lo Fann had refrained from coming into the operator’s suite until the robot planes were approaching the fleet. Now, his place was in this room.
They rose as one as he entered, bowing stiffly. After he returned their salute, they went back to what they were doing.
The long LCD screen at the center of the room was gray. He started at it, wondering why he had not been told of the malfunction, before realizing he was seeing clouds.
“We will descend from the clouds in thirty seconds,” said Professor Ai. Overcoming the mishap with the crane seemed somehow to have calmed him, or at least drained some of his energy. He spoke slowly now, more himself. “The carriers will be in the far corner to your left. There is one Sukhoi approaching, but its radar has not detected us.”
“At what point will it do so?” asked Chen.
“We are not sure. We will be ready in any event.”
“Yes,” said Chen.
One of the radio operators at the far corner of the room held up his hand. “There is a report the Megafortress is firing on our ship near its probe,” said the man.
Chen considered this. “Have them back away. Tell them to leave the area.”
The robot supplying the video feed finally broke through the cloud bank. The operator adjusted the picture, compensating for the fading light. The Chinese aircraft carrier sat like a large, gray cow at the top of the screen.
His robot was equipped with two small missiles, adapted from antitank weapons. They would do almost no damage on a target so vast. The thought occurred to him that he could crash his plane into the carrier, it would not sink, but the fire would kill many men.
Relatives of his perhaps; much of his family had not escaped the Communists, and he knew that a few were now in their Navy. Fortune’s irony.
“The Indian planes?” he asked Professor Ai.
“They are still in their patrol pattern to the south.”
“Look!” said one of the men at the console. He jumped to his feet and pointed at the LCD screen.
Something blossomed beyond the Chinese aircraft carrier, the dull bud of an early spring flower.
There were two other wakes approaching it.
Torpedoes. Either they had come from the Indian submarine that had failed earlier, or from the American.
It must have been an American. For surely, the Indian was gone by now.
“Halt the attack,” said Chen Lo Fann, his satisfaction so deep that he could not possibly hide it. “Stay only close enough to observe the destruction, but remain undetected if possible.”
“Can we stop the torpedoes?” Bree asked.
“No way,” said Chris.
“They see them,” said Collins. “They’re trying to get out of the way. Too late.”
There was an explosion in the water, a geyser back near the carrier force. But Breanna was too busy to watch it.
“Long-range radar I can’t ID,” said Torbin.
“Indians?”
“Wrong direction,” said the radar intercept officer. “I-band, okay. Woah, woah. APG-73—no way!”
“Torbinm what the hell are you talking about?”
“The radar — the computer is IDing the source as an F/A-18 unit. No way.”
“One torpedoes hit the carrier, maybe two,” said Chris.
“I have telemetry out near your contact,” Collins told Torbin
“I don’t know what the hell kind of radar this is,” said Torbin. “Shit. I mean, it could be an F/A-18. Chris?”
“No American flights within a hundred miles. I have nothing on radar. You sure about this?”
“Sure as shit.”
“All right, everybody take a breath,” Breanna said in her calmest command voice. “Fentress, did we sink that buoy?”
“Still trying to get the connection to the first one.”
“Tell me when we’re on.”
“Explosion!” said Chris. “Carrier’s hit.”
“I need you to stay close to the buoy,” said Fentress.
“Sukhois are trying to lock on us — we’re spiked!” said Torbin. The RWR screen flashed with a warning as well, showing the bearing of the radar looking for them.
“Full ECMS,” said Breanna. “Hang on everyone.”
Breanna threw the Megafortress into as sharp a turn as she could manage, dipping the wing and sliding in the direction of the buoy. Fentress, Collins, and Torbin all tried to speak at the same time; the computer gave her a warning she was approaching maximum Gs. Breanna filtered everything out but the plane, trying to beam the Doppler-pulse radar that had locked on them. there was a missile warning — one of the Sukhois had launched.
“Chris, when you have the chance, broadcast the we’re-the-white-hats message in every language you can think of,” she said calmly.
“I am.” His voice was three octaves higher than normal, which itself wasn’t exactly a bass.
A silver needle shot across Quicksilver’s bow, no more than fifty yards away. It was the missile.
“Optically aimed flak from that destroyer,” said the copilot. “Way out of range.”
“I see it,” said Bree.
“Sukhois coming down through ten thousand feet. “We’re jamming. They’re going to line up for an IR shot.”
“Get the Stinger ready.”
“On it.”
“SAM radar active. I’m jamming,” said Torbin.
“Fentress, we have to get moving here, friend,” said Bree.
“I’m still having trouble with the link,” he said. “We’re too high. I need you as close as you can get. The jinking’s not helping.”
“Getting shot down won’t help either.” She regretted snapping back like that, but there was no time to apologize — one of the ships launched antiaircraft missiles.
“SA-N-4, basicallt an SA-8 tweaked for shipboard use,” reported Torbin. “We’re at the far end of their envelope. Jamming.”
“Chaff, flares, kitchen sink,” she said.
Breanna began to turn, then realized she was moving toward the Sukhois. She pulled back on the stick abruptly, then twisted her left wing downward. The big jet did a half-gainer toward the waves, gravity and momentum pulling at its wings badly, one of the sensors in the wing-root assembly freaked out. The alert board lit with possible structural damage and the computer squawked at her for exceeding the design limit of the plane — not an easy feat.
Breanna’s body was pounded by the rush of Gs; she felt as if her head had been pounded by an anvil. A gray fuzz pushed in from her temples and something cold and prickly filled her lungs; she started to cough, but something scraped deep down in her throat. There were all sorts of warning lights now, but she rode the wild maneuver steady, forcing the plane through an invert as the Sukhois she had spotted earlier fired its missiles from almost head-on. Fortunately, they were both heat-seekers, and despite their advertised all-aspect ability, were easily shunted by the flares Chris had managed to dish out into the air.
As the gray veil pulled back, Breanna saw a much darker one reaching up from the sea to smack her. Her
