“Can we stop all of the aircraft that have taken off in the last hour before they’re over China?” asked the President.
“We can get close,” said Jed. “But there’s no guarantee that we can stop them.”
“We can shoot them down ourselves,” suggested Hartman.
“In that case, I’d rather inform the Chinese and let them do it,” said the President.
“Then they may consider it a first strike and retaliate,” said Hartman. “They may obliterate Taiwan.”
“We’re not even sure that Chen launched his plane,” noted Freeman. “Let’s give the Dreamland people a little more time to work on it.”
“The way the intercepts are lined up right now,” said Jed, checking the feed from Dreamland that gave the planes’ positions, “Colonel Bastian is going to fly into Chinese territory just off the coast to check that last flight.”
“Then that’s what they’ll have to do,” said the President.
There were now four different flights of interceptors within fifty miles of
“We’re on the Chinese ground intercept radars,” reported the copilot. “Tracking us. They’ll vector the fighters at us any second.”
Dog grunted in acknowledgment. A pair of spanking new Taiwanese Mirage 2000s had just selected afterburners, pushing their delta-winged airframes north to come up and take a look what was going on.
“Target plane is at ten miles,” said Zen. “Ident checks. Hailing him.”
One of the communist flights did the same to Raven, telling Dog he was violating Chinese airspace.
“Bullshit,” said Delaney. “We’re more than fifty miles off the coast.”
“Standard Chinese practice,” said Dog.
“Like I said, bullshit.”
Dog answered that they were in international airspace and pursuing their flight plan. While true as far as it went, the statement was not particularly informative, and the Chinese pilot countered that the American plane had better turn around.
“What’s his controller telling him?” Dog asked Wes, who was listening in on the frequency.
“Telling him to challenge us and take no nonsense or something along those lines,” said Wes. The transmission was in Mandarin, but the computer gear aboard
“Activating his weapons radar,” warned Delaney. “Asshole.”
The J-8 challenging them was roughly fifty miles away, and flying a nearly parallel course — there was no way the aircraft could hit the Megafortress with anything but four-letter words.
“Want to go to ECMs?” asked the copilot.
“Let’s not give him the satisfaction.”
Sure enough, the communist pilot gave up a few seconds later, turning back toward his base on the Mainland.
The 767 appeared on Zen’s screen, a blur at eight miles away. While the ID checked out, the pilot had not answered Zen’s hail.
The blur slowly drew into focus.
Was there something under the right wing?
Zen nudged the throttle for more speed, but got a warning from the computer that he was too far from
The wing was clean.
Converting a civilian plane into a conventional bomber was not particularly difficult; a bomb bay could be cut into the floor in an afternoon with plenty of time left over for the crew to catch happy hour. Add some proper targeting gear, and the Boeing could be at least as accurate as the aircraft used in World War II. Of course, a 767 would never stand a chance against an interceptor or a ground-defense system — unless it had the element of surprise on its side.
“Wes, Target Two is not answering my hails,” Zen told the op upstairs over the interphone. “Why don’t you take a shot at it with the translator?”
“Doing so now, Zen.”
Zen continued to fly toward the plane, trying to get a look at the body. If there were bottom-opening doors beneath the fuselage, they weren’t obvious.
Unlike the 767 he had intercepted earlier, there were no cabin lights, even though he could see the outlines of windows.
“No answer,” said Wes.
“Try all frequencies.”
“I’ve tried every one known to man.”
“Dog, I think we may have found our target,” said Zen.
Jennifer took a sip of her Diet Pepsi as she continued to scan the NSA intercepts of telemetry being gathered in real time over the South China Sea by Elint satellites and an RC-135. She’d programmed the computer to tell her if anything came across similar to the segment from the email. Reams and reams of material were now being intercepted by satellite and listening stations all over the South China Sea, and even with the computer’s help, looking for the UAV would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Zen had just pulled close to one of the 767 flights. It wasn’t answering hails — this looked to be a good bet. She heard Colonel Bastian talking to the White House directly, asking for instructions.
They were going to tell him to shoot it down, she knew.
Jennifer reached to flick her hair back behind her ear, belatedly remembering she had cut it off.
Dog was telling Jed they had the plane.
Something in her reacted viciously to that. Anger at her lover, or ex-lover? She clicked on the circuit.
“Colonel, that’s not the plane,” she snapped.
“Jen?”
“That’s not the plane,” she insisted.
“You sure?”
She wasn’t sure at all — logically, it probably was. But she insisted she was.
Why?
Jennifer wanted to argue with him. She wanted to tell him to screw off. And she wanted everyone to see her telling him off.
She wanted to be right, and she wanted everyone to know it.
But she wasn’t, was she? Because it had to be the plane.
“Colonel Bastian, you are authorized to use all necessary force to terminate that flight if they won’t turn back,” said a deep, sonorous voice over the Dreamland Command frequency.
The President himself.
“It’s not the right plane,” Jennifer insisted. She slapped her computer keyboard, backing out from the intercept screen to the communications profiles stored earlier. The 767 had taken off from Taipei — they had some data from it somewhere in the vast storehouse of intercepts, didn’t they?
“Jen, this is Colonel Bastian. Can you explain?”
