Strike Zone

The computer blinked at him, as if asking: Want to see what would happen in a three-way brouhaha?

And then there was yet another J-7, now within three miles of Hawk Four, flying toward Raven from the northwest. He was now within radar-missile range of the Megafortress.

“Raven, what do you want me to do with that J-7?” Zen asked.

“Stay on his wing,” said Dog. “He ought to be bingo soon.”

“You want me to make him see me or not?” asked Zen. The radar in the J-7 was not adept enough to pick up the stealthy U/MF.

“Negative. No sense losing the element of surprise. He hasn’t turned on his weapons. He’s not much of a problem.”

“Hawk leader,” acknowledged Zen, somewhat disappointed that he couldn’t scare the bejesus out of the fighter pilot. He put Hawk Four into a bank, turning parallel as the other plane approached. He would accelerate and ride about two miles behind the J-7 as it came in.

Or not — the fighter abruptly rolled its wing and turned toward the Mainland.

“Getting boring,” Zen told Dog.

“Well, stay awake long enough to check out that 767,” said Dog. “Then we can go home.”

“Roger that. I think this has all been a wild-goose chase.”

“Better than the alternative.”

* * *

“We’re getting into our fuel reserve,” Delaney told Dog on the flightdeck. “If we have to duck those idiot commies on the way back, we may run into trouble.”

“How much time before Zen gets within viewing range?”

“Still a good eight minutes.”

“That’s not going to kill us.”

“Famous last words. Those F-8s are coming hard.”

“They’ll probably turn around like everyone else.”

“Says you.”

“You sound like a pessimist, Mr. Delaney.”

The copilot laughed. “Guess I am.”

Dog checked in with Jed Barclay back in D.C. “We have one last flight to look at. IDs have come back good and it looks like it’s clean. More than likely they never had a bomb to begin with.”

“That’s a relief,” said Jed.

“Sure is,” said Dog.

On the Ground in Kaohisiung

0330

Stoner paid no attention to the noise in the hall, figuring it was Danny coming for him. He continued to work at the documents; they were a kind of personal history, detailing Professor Ai’s mother’s flight from the Mainland.

Ai didn’t want to take back China so much as destroy it. His mother had been accused of being a whore or traitor — the words weren’t clear to him.

“Mr. Stoner,” said one of the Whiplash troopers from down the hall.

“Yo!” yelled Stoner.

Boston trotted into the room, two Marines in tow.

Stoner looked up from the desk. “I need to talk to Captain Freah.”

“Gotta come up to do it. We’re not in line of sight, and we’re too deep under the concrete for the sat transmission. That would be why your radio didn’t work,” the sergeant added.

Stoner smiled. He realized he hadn’t even tried it.

“Mr. Stoner?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Hang on a second. Let me finish this one section here. Then we gotta go find your boss. Quickly.”

Aboard Raven

0330

With The F-8IIs on a northern intercept, Zen turned Hawk Four onto their noses and changed Hawk Three ’s course so he could fly by the 767 and continue out toward them. He was at 35,000 feet, about 8,000 higher than his target but lower than the Chinese Communist planes. He pushed his nose down slightly, figuring he would ride just above the airliner, close enough to get a good view but still give himself room to react to the Mainlanders.

The image of the 767 appeared in his screen, synthesized first by the long-range radar. He switched back to infrared, getting the now-familiar blur. The computer counted down the intercept in the lower left-hand side of the screen, time over miles. As he passed the five-mile mark, he saw the faint glow of the cabin lights.

“Looks like passengers aboard,” he told Dog.

* * *

Dog acknowledged and glanced at Delaney, who was already looking at him, probably ready with another warning about their dwindling fuel.

Before the copilot could do that, Danny Freah interrupted on the Dreamland Command frequency.

“Go ahead, Danny.”

“I have Stoner here. He has more information.”

There was a pause, some static on the line.

“Colonel, I found some sort of document here prepared by the man who did most of the work on the UAV and some weapons. They do have a nuke.”

“You sure?”

“Oh yeah. It’s not an ordinary nuke — it’s a neutron bomb. A scientist named Ai Hira Bai developed it. I’m looking at what I guess you’d call kind of his life story. I haven’t translated everything. It’s kind of rambling about his past and family and the Japanese. He was close to Chen Lee, but apparently Chen Lee died.”

“When?”

“Not clear. Recently, according to this. My guess is that if they have a bomb they’ll try to detonate it over the capital, kill the Chinese leadership. They’ll take out the leaders but spare the buildings. I’m pretty sure about that.”

“Thanks for the advice,” said Dog.

“One other thing — they have two bombs, not one.”

“Two? You’re sure?”

“The symbol for two happens to be one of the first things I ever learned,” he said. “Looks like two missiles in a box. Yeah, I’m sure.”

Aboard Island Flight A101

0331

Professor Ai felt the sweat starting to pour down the back of his neck. He was not worried about death; he was concerned with failure. They must launch the dragon plane with its bomb now, or they would fail. The communists and the Americans were too close.

“It is time,” he told Chen Lo Fann through the aircraft’s radio. “We must act.”

“Yes. Launch the plane.”

Ai went through the procedure quickly, directing the pilot to begin his descent only a few seconds after he had ascertained all was ready.

The small UAV fell free of the wing. Ai’s hands shook as he watched the plane’s progress on his computer screen.

He tapped the command and severed the communications tie. The computer program aboard the UAV would carry it on its way.

Now he could carry out his own plan.

“Change course,” he told the pilot, giving him new coordinates. Then he got up to go to the back of the aircraft.