Strike Zone

0350

From thirty thousand feet, with no clouds and a starlit night sky, the Chinese countryside looked remarkably peaceful. By day, the heavily populated eastern portions of the country bustled with a booming, rapidly changing economy, but at night the country still looked as it had fifty or sixty years before, largely rural though well populated.

But Zen wasn’t relying merely on the optical feed. His screen was littered with purple blobs showing antiair radars, fingers grabbing for the stealthy little plane. The U/MF could zip right by them for the most part, its body too sleek to be picked up. Raven, however, had to fly a line directly through several of the blobs. It was making full use of its countermeasures to boink the radars. As of yet, no one had fired at them, but Zen knew that was only a matter of time.

A four-ship element of Su-27 fighters, purchased from Russia only a few months before, was bearing down on Raven from the north. Indeed, there were so many boogies in the air at the moment that Zen told the computer to show only those in the flight path or with a better than sixty percent chance of intercepting them.

The Taiwanese UAV had completely disappeared. Zen was sure it was still flying — he was convinced he’d have seen the crash. But where exactly it was, he couldn’t say. The only thing they had to go on was Stoner’s guess that it was headed toward Beijing, and Jennifer’s belief that it would have to fly a fairly straight course once it was out of its mother ship’s control.

“Pricks are calling us killers,” said Wes on the interphone.

He was talking to Dog, but Zen couldn’t help asking what he meant.

“Killer Fortress — they blame us for shooting down the SAR plane a few days ago. That’s what the controllers are saying,” said Wes. “They want us.”

We ought to let the UAV blow up Beijing, Zen thought. These were the same bastards who had put his wife in the hospital, nearly killing her. The same bastards who had killed Fentress and the others. Let them all fry.

Zen tightened his grip on the Flighthawk stick. He nudged Hawk Four further east as a JJ-7, a version of the Chinese-developed MiG-21 ordinarily used as a trainer, darted toward Raven. It fired a heat-seeker from seven miles out — obviously the pilot’s training hadn’t gotten very far — then kept coming.

“Turn off,” Zen told the pilot, speaking on his frequency in English. “If you don’t, I’ll nail you.”

Whether the pilot heard or not, he kept coming. Zen’s targeting screen went from yellow to red as the JJ-7 pulled to within three miles of the Megafortress. Zen pumped thirty rounds into the plane’s engine.

Fifteen seconds later, the canopy blew off and the pilot hit the silk.

Zen gave the computer Hawk Four, telling it to fly back into the escort position. Then he jumped into Three…

… and saw the dim glow of the Taiwanese UAV’s tailpipe fifteen miles ahead.

* * *

Dog shoved the Megafortress hard right as the first wave of Chinese surface-to-air missiles climbed in the air ahead of them. The missiles were the Chinese equivalent of SA-6s and would be easily confused by Raven ’s ECMs, but there were a half dozen of them, and with a warhead of just over 175 pounds, they couldn’t be completely ignored. Delaney tracked them and pointed out another barrage of antiair a few miles ahead. Dog swung back west, zigging around the missiles.

“We’re pretty visible up here,” said the copilot. “One of their radar planes is on a line to the east. I don’t think he sees us with his radar — I think he’s homing in on ours.”

“Can we get him with AMRAAM?” Dog asked.

“Sixty miles away,” said Delaney.

That meant no. It also meant that it was too far for the Flighthawks.

“Raven, I have our target visually,” said Zen. “He’s in the weeds, maybe ten feet AGL. Ten miles and closing.”

No wonder they hadn’t found the UAV, Dog realized; it was so low to the ground the radar couldn’t sort it out through the ground clutter — odd reflections of the radio waves off the terrain.

But flying that low also cut down on the UAV’s speed.

“Intercept in four minutes, a bunch of seconds,” added Zen.

“Are we close enough for Jen’s takeover program?” Dog asked.

“Negative,” said Zen. “It’s thirty miles away total. I’ll be close enough to shoot it down before you’re in range.”

“Missiles!” warned Delaney. “Breaking.”

The copilot said something else, but Dog lost it. Both of the operators at the stations behind him were now spending their time jamming radars and communications systems in their path. Dog had two more antiair missiles left aboard; he wanted to reserve at least one for the UAV, in case the Flighthawks missed.

“Sukhois on our six at twenty miles and closing,” said Delaney.

“When they’re close enough, let them have it with the Stinger,” said Dog.

“Yeah.”

“Colonel, I’m going to put Hawk Four on that flight of J-8s coming at us from the west,” said Zen.

Dog had to glance at the sitrep map to remind himself exactly which flight Zen was talking about. All of Raven ’s high-tech gear and whiz-bang computers, ergonomic controls, and audiovisual doodads couldn’t completely erase the limits of situational awareness. There were just too many threats for Dog to process everything at once.

“Go,” he told Zen.

“I have to let the computer handle it. It’s four on one — we may lose it.”

“Our priority is the ghost clone,” said Dog.

“Understood.”

“FT-2000 in the air!” warned Delaney. “He’s homing in on our ECMs.”

“Can we break it?” asked Dog.

“Only if you want everything else they’re firing to hit us.”

* * *

The four Chinese J-8 fighters came at Raven in a staggered line, each plane separated by about a mile and flying at different altitudes. The computer quickly recognized the pattern and calculated the best attack posture, prioritizing the targets in the order of the greatest threat to Raven. The strategy — a slashing attack that would take Hawk Four across the course of the flight and allow it to fire on at least two of the aircraft before maneuvering to catch a third from behind — was solid, and took into account the abilities of the enemy planes as well as the Flighthawk. It also gave the computer time to recover and change its strategy if the bandits drastically altered course and speed. The only problem with it was that by the time Hawk Four turned to catch the third plane, it would be out of communications range from Raven. Zen nonetheless approved the strategy as the best course, telling C³ to stay in dogfight mode even if the connection snapped — otherwise Hawk Four would have defaulted back to escort and tried to find Raven.

“Go for it,” he told the computer, using exactly the same tone he would have used for Kick or Starship.

The computer’s verbal translation system had been “trained” to recognize much of Zen’s slang, and took Hawk Four on the intercept.

Zen turned his full attention back to Hawk Three. The Taiwanese UAV was now just five miles ahead.

A warning flashed on his screen:

Connection loss in three seconds

* * *

Two more missiles exploded to the east of Raven. Dog saw a pair of Su-27s heading in from the northeast, coming on at about ten degrees off his nose. They were at twenty miles, firing radar missiles.