all the way down, and a burst of 20mm shells punched a fat hole in the boat’s midsection.
“Get the other mother,” said Starship.
“Yeah, no shit,” said Kick. He tried pirouetting the Flighthawk on her wing but had too much speed to get the right position; he had to nose down and bank around, far out of position and cursing himself for trying to do too much.
Not too much for the plane. He’d seen both Zen and Starship pull that hard a maneuver several times during various flight exercises. He didn’t quite have the right feel for it; he wasn’t really sure where the performance edge was, and maybe hesitated a little as he got near it.
Not a problem, he told himself. He didn’t have to fly like Zen did, or even Starship. His job was to take the boat.
And that could be done very easily.
Starship snickered to himself as Kick tried to get on the second boat in the first pass; it was obvious from the screen that he hadn’t set himself up right for the hard slam downward that it would require to pirouette the Flighthawk back in that direction. Sure enough, Kick had to pull off and get into a wider approach.
Dream Command said something about the boat being ID’d as a Mainland commando group.
They had carte blanche to take it out.
About time, he thought.
“Sink the boats,” said Colonel Bastian, breaking in from
“Roger that,” said Starship. “We’re on it.”
As he clicked off his mike, he realized he’d covered Kick’s own acknowledgment.
“Sorry about that, roomie,” he muttered as the cannon in the U/MF lit up.
Dog studied the feed on the small video screen as Zen finished his sweep. There was gunfire on the port side and stern of the
Dog had no trouble giving approval to take out the Chinese boats attacking Kaohisiung himself; it was necessary to protect his people and clearly authorized by his governing orders. The situation below, however, was not quite so clear-cut. The Navy destroyers that were supposed to assist had been authorized only to stop the ship, with the minimal amount of force required to make it comply.
Given the circumstances, however, Dog decided he had to take out the clone and the ship or the UAV would fall into communist hands.
“I can pepper the submarines with cannonfire,” Zen told Dog. “Get them to back off until the destroyers get here.”
“Negative, Hawk leader. It’s too late for that. We’re going to sink that ship. Stand off.”
Dog told Delaney to open the bay doors.
“Bays,” said the copilot, who functioned as a weapons officer in the slimmed-down crew structure.
The large rotating bomb rack in the bay of the aircraft spun around, preparing to launch one of the two Harpoon missiles aboard. While the AGM-84 (Block 1D) missile had been developed by the Navy, B-52s had actually carried the tried-and-true antiship missile for more than a decade. A noodge over twelve and a half feet long, the missile carried five hundred pounds of explosives in its nose. Designed as a fire-and-forget weapon that could be launched from at least seventy-five nautical miles away, the Harpoon would duck toward the waves and then skim the surface of the ocean, extremely hard to detect and even harder to stop.
“Ready to launch on your command,” said Delaney.
“Jed Barclay in the Pentagon situation room for you,” interrupted Major Catsman at Dream Command. “You want Channel Two. It’s scrambled.”
“Jed, make it quick,” said Dog as the NSC aide’s face flickered onto the com screen.
“Colonel, we’re monitoring the situation here at the Pentagon.”
“Then you know I have two Chinese submarines taking over the ship that controls the ghost clone,” said Dog, trying in vain to muzzle his anger. “They have to be stopped now.”
“Stand by,” said Jed.
“What the hell?” said Delaney.
The defense secretary came on the line.
“Colonel, we don’t want you to hit the Chinese submarines.”
“Understood,” said Dog. “That’s why we have to strike right away.”
Modern communications technology could be a blessing — he had a team of highly trained experts backing him up halfway across the globe at Dreamland. But it also gave the Washington types unprecedented ability to screw things up.
“We can’t afford collateral damage,” added Chastain.
“Look,” said Dog, his patience nearly gone. “I have about thirty seconds to decide whether to try to sink the tanker or not. If the robot plane is aboard, the communist commandos will grab it.”
“Colonel, we’re on their radar,” said Delaney, breaking in. “This may be some sort of unbriefed fire control radar — the computer is doping it out as an SA-6. Has to be a mistake… ”
The SA-6 was a Russian-made ground-based antiaircraft missile; there was no way it could be aboard the Chinese submarine.
Then again, this wasn’t a particularly good time to be wrong.
“You’re cleared to take down the
“Fire the Harpoon,” Dog told his copilot. Then reached to the panel and killed the connection to Dreamland — and the Pentagon. “Missile status?”
“I’ve gone to ECMs. Computer says those subs carry no missiles.”
“Is it on the tanker?”
“Searching.”
“Zen, can you get a look at the decks of those submarines?”
“Roger that,” acknowledged the Flighthawk pilot.
“Watch out for the Harpoon,” warned Delaney. “It’s terminal.”
“No shit,” said Zen.
Zen checked
“Harpoon hit,” he told Dog.
“Negative!” said Delaney. “It’s still en route.”
Zen saw the shadow streaking toward the middle of the tanker at the bottom of his screen, then realized what had happened as the tanker exploded.
“I have a launch. The ghost clone is airborne!”
“Take it out,” said Dog.
Jennifer punched the mike button again, trying to tell Zen that she was ready to upload the program. But they’d lost contact with the Megafortress.
Dog had punched it out, she knew, pissed at interference from the Pentagon people.
Just like him to shut off the rest of the world.
She slammed her hand down on the desk counter so hard it stung.
“Damn it,” she shouted. “I want to upload!”
