Starship was daydreaming so much about what he would do that he almost missed the computer cue as it flashed in his screen: POSSIBLE SEARCH OBJECT SIGHTED.
He tapped the boxed highlight, then turned the Flighthawk to the north to get a better view.
“Missile one has obliterated enemy missile,” reported Sullivan. “Two — enemy missile two is gone.”
The second missile was so close to the first that shrapnel from the exploding Anaconda missile had taken it out.
“Retarget Anaconda Two for one of the other missiles,” said Dog calmly.
“Roger that. Retargeting. Missiles three and four are on course — Chinese aircraft starting a turn to the west, coming for our tail, I bet.”
Dog was already tracking the aircraft on his own screen. The MiGs had slowed down somewhat but were traveling at nearly twenty miles a minute. They launched two more missiles — and then Sullivan practically leaped from his seat.
“
Dog pushed the Megafortress closer to the nearby mountain peaks, aiming to drop as close as possible to a jagged pass. Even though it was nighttime, the aircraft’s computers synthesized a crisp view before him, detailing the nooks and crannies in the peaks nearby. Dog pushed the aircraft toward the rocks, pitching hard on his left wing to get as close as possible.
A proximity warning sounded, telling him he was within one hundred feet. He ignored it.
“Missile three is off the screen,” said Sullivan. “Anaconda is targeting missile four.”
Rager gave him some ranges and speeds on the other two missiles. Again they all appeared to be passive radar homers.
“Target the last two missiles with Anacondas,” Dog told Sullivan.
“Two more aircraft, at long range, Colonel,” said Rager. “ID’d as Shenyang J6s.”
“Hold that thought, Sergeant,” said Dog. “Sullivan, take out those missiles.”
Starship walked the Flighthawk over the rectangular slice of earth marked out by the search program, moving toward the highlighted box the computer claimed contained the warhead. All he could see was a square shadow at the edge of much rounder shadows. Freeze-framed and enlarged, it still looked pretty much like a shadow.
He took the Flighthawk around for another pass, dropping his forward speed to just over 110 knots, about as slow as he could go. But the image was not much better; it might be part of a missile control surface, like a tailfin, he decided, but it could also be ten or twenty other things.
He pulled up, circled around, and tried to replicate the course a missile would have taken getting there. Flying a straight line from the base it had been launched from revealed nothing. Then he realized that the theory that placed the missile here called for it to have veered off course sharply when the T-Rays hit. Dreamland Command hadn’t given him the course, but it wasn’t difficult to approximate, since the original projections showed where the missiles were when the EEMWBs went off.
Starship’s first plot was a straight line, angling sixty degrees from the point where the T-Rays hit the missile. Even as he swooped toward the ground, he realized that the missile wouldn’t have gone in a straight line; most likely it veered in some sort of elliptical curve. But he flew the vector anyway, passing just to the west of the squarish shadow and continuing over a rocky valley. The boulder suggested another theory — the missile had buried itself in an avalanche after it crashed.
As he circled back, he saw what looked like a gouge in the side of a rock peak opposite the first missile part. Starship did a 180, swinging back around and flying beyond the rocks.
The computer’s search program began IDing pieces of metal on a plain just beyond the rockslide.
“Flighthawk leader to
“Good, Starship. I’ll get back to you.”
The choking sound shook Zen awake, pulling him from a twisted dream of dark shapes and roiling winds. He grabbed at Breanna next to him, not sure what to do or how to help her, only that he had to.
Her body heaved against his. She must have something stuck in her throat, he thought, and he reached his arms and hands down, fishing for her stomach and diaphragm so he could perform the Heimlich maneuver.
He pulled once, violently jerking his fists against her organs. He’d done this in a first aid class years ago, but it felt nothing like this. He was amazed at how empty his wife felt, her body offering no resistance to his pressure.
She coughed and he pushed his hands up again. A gasping squeal replaced the cough, then Breanna began to wheeze. She shuddered, and Zen shuddered with her.
He held her as he had when they were first sleeping together, completely wrapped around her, so close that every movement she made registered in his own body.
Breanna breathed normally again. Gradually, Zen began to wonder what had happened. She couldn’t have been choking on something, he thought; she’d had nothing to eat. She hadn’t vomited. But he hadn’t imagined or dreamed it.
Gradually, he forced his mind to drift away from the possibilities of what had happened and focus on one thought — whatever had happened, she was still alive. He drifted for a time in a silver space between fatigue and dream before finally losing consciousness.
“Having trouble locking on that last missile, Colonel. I’m looking at it, but the computer refuses to accept it.”
“Keep trying,” Dog told Sullivan calmly. He got ready to turn the Megafortress around, intending to swing his tail toward the missiles so they could use the Stinger air-mine weapon in the tail.
Not to be confused with the shoulder-launched missile of the same name, the Stinger air mines were essentially large explosive disks that detonated near their target. When they ignited, they sent shards of tungsten into the path of a pursuer. Generally much more effective against aircraft, recent upgrades to the targeting radar and an increase in size had made them useful against missiles, but only as a last resort.
“Bandit missile four is down,” reported Rager. “Five and six still pursuing.”
“Sullivan?”
“Lock on Bandit missile six. Firing.”
The moment Dog heard the whoosh, he threw the
“Stinger up,” he told Sullivan. “Get ready in case the Anaconda misses.”
“Missile five is down. Missile six is closing to ten miles.”
Dog’s turn slowed the Megafortress, but even had he been going in a straight line, there was no chance of outrunning the remaining enemy missile. At 1,400 knots, it was traveling more than twenty miles a minute.
“Stinger ready,” said Sullivan, breathing hard.
“Arm autodefense,” Dog told him.
“Stinger autodefense.”
The sky flashed white.
“Our Anaconda took down the last missile,” said Rager. “Wow.”
Brian Daly, who’d been silently manning the ground radar station during the entire incident, let out a whoop.
“All right, guys,” Dog told them. “We still have two more aircraft to worry about. Let’s stay on our game.”
Starship surveyed the area of the crash, the video camera in the nose of the Flighthawk recording the roughly two-mile swath where the missile had crashed. He could make a reasonable guess about what had happened. The missile had scraped against the side of the mountain peak, slammed across the second, causing an avalanche, and then landed — in pieces — on the small plain in front of him.
