Strike Zone

“Can you launch an AMRAAM?” asked Dog, wrestling with the controls.

Delaney didn’t waste his tortured throat. The question wasn’t really serious — the AMRAAM-plus would have to go backward to do any good.

This was going to be it, thought Dog.

“Zen — we need you to take the target out now,” he said calmly. “Crew, prepare to eject. Begin the self- destruct sequences on the gear.”

* * *

The pregnant W danced upward and to the right. It must be answering Jennifer’s control sequence somehow, thought Zen, trying to follow.

As he tucked his wing to the right, he got a yellow firing cue. And then a ball of red fire opened above him — shrapnel from a Chinese missile.

His screen blanked. Hawk Three was gone.

Zen pushed back in his seat, finally defeated.

Son of a bitch, he thought.

They were going out. That was going to be fun — he’d be dead meat wherever he landed.

No way. He’d go down with the plane.

Zen reached to pull his helmet off but then stopped.Hawk Four had returned, flying off its left wing in Trail One, a preset position.

“Four,” he told the computer.

The main screen came on, along with a warning — he had five more minutes of fuel.

At this point, that was like having a full tank.

Zen accelerated over the stricken Megafortress. The Taiwan UAV was five miles ahead, still climbing.

The pipper began to blink.

Red.

He pressed the trigger. The 20mm shells spit out in an arc, falling to the left of the target. He nudged his stick, moving the stream slowly slowly slowly.

He eased off the trigger, pushed the stick hard to the right, felt Raven lurch in the air, fired again.

The Taiwanese UAV erupted in a fireball.

* * *

“He got it! He got it!” shouted Delaney.

Dog, following his own self-destruct checklist, had wiped out the coding in the computer that helped him fly Raven and was too busy wrestling with the plane to answer.

He could fly with two engines, even if they were on the same side. What he couldn’t continue to do, however, was duck enemy planes. And that Sukhoi behind was closing in for the kill.

“Dream Command, this is Dog — we have the clone down,” he said. “Repeat, we have the clone down.”

The answer came back broken up.

“We’re hit pretty bad,” added Dog. “We’re into our destruct checklist on sensitive gear. Be advised we’ve told the Chinese that we were targeting a cruise missile bound for their capital.”

Dog took a breath. He had gone against his orders to keep the mission secret, but in his judgment, the broadcast had made sense. Certainly the Chinese would find out about the attack at some point, and informing them now had been a valid attempt to save his people.

And screw anybody who second-guessed him.

“Dream?” he said, not hearing an answer.

“Washington is trying to contact the Chinese themselves and tell them what’s going on,” said Catsman through the static. Dog tried to ask for more details but got no response.

“Wes, have we wiped out all our radio antennas?” Dog asked over the interphone.

“Next thing on my list. I wait for your order unless, uh, unless it looks like you’re not going to be giving it,” said the lieutenant. Dog heard him mumbling to himself and punching his panel. “Colonel — the Chinese controllers are ordering their planes to stand down.”

“They don’t seem to be following orders,” said Delaney as tracers flashed over their wing.

* * *

Downstairs on the Flighthawk deck, Zen loosened his restraints.Hawk Four was low on fuel and now out of bullets, but it could still be of some use. He had the computer plot an intercept to the Su-27 behind them, and held on as it closed. The computer gave him two proximity warnings, then closed its eyes as the Flighthawk slammed into the front quarter of the Chinese plane.

But that was it. The fight was over. Four more planes were galloping in from the west, and two were closing ahead.

Zen initiated the self-destruct procedures. The first stage started a series of programs that wiped the drives and other memory devices. Then small charges began blowing up the Megafortress’s side of C³. The explosives were carefully calibrated to take out the circuitry but not damage the shell of the aircraft.

He took off his control helmet. The helmet was supposed to be physically destroyed with a small hatchet kept near the rear of the compartment. He had to lift himself from the ejection seat and get into his wheelchair to do that. He undid his restraints and pulled over the chair, wedging it into the space. As he pushed down to get in, the aircraft dropped twenty or more feet in an instant and he lost his balance, flopping back in the ejection seat rather than his chair.

So this was what it felt like to go down.

Zen remembered Stoner trying to tell him about the enemy he faced.

“They don’t trust us,” said Stoner.

Actually, he’d said that about Zen, hadn’t he?

Zen scooped up his helmet and pulled it back on. “Dog — jettison our weapons and put the gear down.”

“They’ll shoot us for sure.”

“No. They’ll either accept our surrender, or they’ll back off, thinking it’s a trap,” said Zen. “They will — they’ll think it’s a trap. They thought we lured their other planes close to us by making ourselves seem vulnerable and shot them down with a secret weapon. If we look defenseless, they’ll hesitate. They’re paranoid about us — they probably think we’re broadcasting the orders from their controllers. It’ll work. It’s our only shot, one way or the other.”

* * *

“The Su-27 pilots still aren’t responding,” said Wes. “Their controllers are just about screaming at them.”

Dog thought about what Zen had said.

If they put down their gear, dropped their weapons — would the Chinese figure they were surrendering and let them alone?

Maybe.

More likely, they’d think it was a trick.

But at this point, it didn’t make much difference. One of the Chinese planes rode in over their wing, slowing down and hanging so close he could have hopped from his wing to Raven ’s.

“Open the bay,” Dog told Delaney. “Eject the missiles. I’ll get the gear down.”

Delaney was too hoarse to argue. Dog lowered the gear, the plane objecting strongly. His airspeed dropped and he got a stall warning.

A fresh flood of tracers shot across their bow. The interceptors closed into tight formation all around them, adjusting their own speed as if they were flying an air show demonstration. Though they might have been temporarily confused, it was just a matter of time — seconds, really — before one of their bursts nailed them.

Dog reached over and hit their lights — everything, even the cockpit lights.

“Two on our tail, one on each wing,” said Delaney, his voice a croak.

“Wave at ’em,” Colonel Bastian said. “Show them we know they’re there. Wave.”

Dog turned to the cockpit window on his left and gave the high sign.

“Wave, Wes,” said Dog. “Like we have the whole thing under control.”

He waved again, then turned his attention back to the front of the plane. The tracers had stopped.