“Is it going to blow up if I do the wrong thing?” Jennifer asked.
“It may. It may very well go off if you do the
“I wish you had a sense of humor, Ray. Then I would think you were joking.”
Starship corrected slightly as the Indian MiG tacked gently to the north. The MiG was still on a dead run for the Megafortress, about a hundred miles away. The two planes were closing in on each other at a rate of about seventeen miles a minute.
“
“Let’s find out what their intentions are,” said Englehardt. “Sullivan, see if you can contact them.”
The pilot’s voice sounded a little shaky. Starship had flown with him once or twice, not long enough to form an opinion. He seemed tentative, but then the prospect of combat could do that the first time you faced it. Starship remembered his first combat sortie — he’d emptied his stomach as soon as they landed.
“Indians don’t answer our radio calls,” said Sullivan.
“Try again,” said Englehardt.
The Indians called the MiG-29 “Baez”—Eagle. The models coming toward the
The attack pattern Starship mapped out took advantage of that; it was unlikely that the MiG driver would know he was there until the first bullets began smashing through his fuselage.
Assuming Starship got the go-ahead to fire. While the MiGs had not answered the calls from the
“
“Just hang on a minute, Flighthawk leader,” said Englehardt.
“Roger that,” said Starship, throttling back.
Englehardt couldn’t believe this was happening to him. He just couldn’t think.
A voice inside his head seemed to be screaming at him:
“Still nothing,” said Sullivan in the copilot’s seat. “They obviously know we’re here.”
“Their attack radars on?”
“Negative.”
Not answering their hails was provocative, Englehardt thought, but not threatening. His orders of engagement were pretty clear that he was to fire only if threatened.
On the other hand, if he let these planes get much closer and they did turn on their attack radars, it might be too late to get away.
“
A good, legitimate question, Englehardt thought. And his good, legitimate answer was — he didn’t know.
“I don’t see these planes as a threat to us at the moment,” he told Starship.
“What if they’re carrying dumb bombs and are going to use them on the recovery team?” asked Sullivan.
He wants us to take them down, Englehardt thought. Maybe he’s right. Better safe than sorry.
“I have a suggestion,
“Make it,” said Englehardt.
“Let’s move our orbit away from the ground team. See if they follow. I’ll keep
Englehardt wondered why he hadn’t thought of it — it was a simple, obvious move.
“Good. Let’s do that,” he said. “Sully, we’re going east.”
“Hey, I got something on the ground, on the highway that runs to the valley,” said Sergeant Daly, working the ground radar. “Four trucks, Humvee-sized. Moving through the passes. Real hard to get these suckers on radar with these mountains and vegetation. Yeah, all right — they’re about ten miles from the recovery area. Four of them.”
“Tell Captain Freah,” said Englehardt, the screech creeping back into his voice.
“Nothing,” said Danny Freah. “Zero. No current.”
“Very good, Captain,” said Klondike. “Now we’re going to try the oscilloscope readings.”
Danny passed the information on to Jennifer, who sighed and sat back from the warhead, fluttering her fingers as if trying to get rid of a cramp.
“Can we take a short break?” Danny asked.
“As long as you need.”
Before Danny could acknowledge, there was a buzz on the line, indicating that someone else on the Dreamland network wanted to talk to him. He switched over to channel two, where Kevin Sullivan, the copilot of the
“They’re about ten miles south of you,” Sullivan warned. “Coming up that road that cuts back and forth through the valley. They’re hard to track because of the terrain and trees.”
“Copy that.”
Danny yelled to the Marine sergeant in charge of the detail, telling him to pass the word about the trucks. Then he switched back to Dreamland Command.
“How much longer before the warhead is safe to move?” he asked.
“Three more steps,” said Klondike.
“How long will it take?”
“Five minutes, maybe. But first we have a series of tests. If we get the wrong result—”
“We have ground troops moving in our direction,” Danny told her. “If I can get the hell out of here before they arrive, I’d be a very happy man.”
“Stand by.”
Danny flipped back to the
“Not very fast,” replied Sullivan. “Maybe fifteen miles an hour. That road takes a lot of turns and switchbacks.”
“Can you give me a visual from
“Affirmative. Stand by.”
“No, I’m going to have to get back to you,” said Danny. “I’ll talk directly to Starship.”
He ducked down to Jennifer and pulled off the helmet. “We have troops coming up the road in our direction. Find out the quickest way to get this thing ready to move. Then give me the helmet back, OK?”
She bit her lip, then nodded and took the helmet.
Starship turned
