Retribution

he pushed his Mirage around and fired a pair of heat-seeking missiles at the Flighthawk.

As soon as he got the launch warning, Starship hit his flares and pulled hard on the stick to tuck away.

“Computer, return Hawk One for refuel,” he said, switching planes.

The Mirage continued to move in Hawk One’s direction, trying to close for another shot. Either his radar had completely lost Hawk Two in the scrum or the pilot just didn’t pay attention to his scope, because the Flighthawk was driving hard toward the Mirage’s tail. Within twenty seconds Starship had it lined up for a cannon shot on the Indian plane’s wing. He pressed the trigger.

The bullets tore a jagged line up the middle of the Mirage’s right wing. The canopy of the French-made jet burst upward, its pilot ejecting almost before Starship could let go of the trigger.

“Flighthawk leader to Bennett. Mirages are down. Hawk One is coming in to tank. What’s our game plan?”

“Looks like every SAM from here to the coast is going to take potshots at us,” said Englehardt. “We’re heading west and not stopping.”

“Roger that.”

Near the Chinese-Pakistani border

0025

“Claims they didn’t get anything, Captain. He says we got here just a few minutes after they did.”

Danny Freah looked from the Marine to the prisoner. He was a kid, maybe seventeen, probably younger. He didn’t look very threatening, or determined to die for his cause. But bitter experience had proved that looks could be deceiving.

“You’re lying,” Danny told the guerrilla. “Why are you lying?”

The Marine translated the words into Arabic. The guerrilla got a pained look on his face. He shook his head violently, then began to speak.

“He comes from Egypt,” said the Marine. “He joined what he calls the Brotherhood. He was going to fight against the infidels in Kashmir. He says he’s not a terrorist. He only fights soldiers.”

“That’s nice,” said Danny. “Get some plastic cuffs on him.”

* * *

Jennifer picked up the last piece of metal and handed it to the Marine helping her.

“We’re good to go,” she told him, and started walking back toward the landing area. As she did, an AK-47 barked up on the ridge.

Jennifer dropped to one knee and pushed the helmet she’d been given down against her head as the Marines began to answer. She saw someone moving on the ridge, then a white flash, followed by an explosion and more gunfire. The weapons sounded furious, rattling the air with a beat that crescendoed with another explosion.

Then, silence.

The Marine she’d been walking with rose slowly. Two other Marines trotted over, making sure she was all right.

“I’m OK, it’s OK,” she said, getting up. “Let’s go.”

She watched them for a few minutes, then began walking toward a small ravine at the side of the plain, planning to get out of the way of the Osprey. As she did, she felt a bee sting her in the ribs. The next thing she knew, she was falling on the ground, lying on her back, her knee, head, and chest howling with pain.

What hit me? she wondered, then blacked out.

* * *

The Osprey’s roar drowned out the gunfire. The sniper had taken at least two shots before Danny saw the muzzle flash.

He threw himself to the ground and peppered the rocks with his assault rifle. Dust and dirt sprayed around him as the Osprey passed overhead. He pushed himself up and began running toward the sniper’s position.

A gun barrel appeared between the rocks; Danny flew forward, barely diving out of the line of fire. He tried to roll to his right to get into a ditch, but found his way blocked by a fresh hail of bullets.

Crawling on his belly, the Whiplash captain managed to get behind a pair of boulders about knee high. He burned the rest of his magazine, then reloaded. Two Marines had started to fire at the sniper from the north, pinning the gunman down. Danny jumped up and ran toward a line of rocks that jutted from the enemy position, making it just before the sniper turned his attention and rifle back in his direction.

Hunkering down beneath the stones, splinters and dirt flying around him, Danny waited for the man to shoot through his ammunition. The firing stopped; Danny raised his gun then brought it back down as the bullets began to fly again.

“Grenade!” one of the Marines shouted over the din.

Danny curled as low to the ground as he could. The explosion was a low thud, a soft sound that seemed to come from very far away. It was followed by the loud buzzing of several M16s as the Marines poured bullets into the sniper’s position.

Finally the gunfire stopped. Danny raised his head, then his body. Raising his left hand, he ran toward the rocks.

A slight figure lay hunched over in the bottom of the shallow depression, head and back drenched black with blood. An AK-47 and two magazine boxes lay nearby. The moon coaxed a gleam from the weapon’s polished wooden furniture.

“Make sure we don’t have any more of these bastards around,” Danny told the Marines running up to him. “And good work.”

“Corpsman!” yelled a Marine back by the missile wreckage. “We need a corpsman!”

“Oh, Jesus,” muttered Danny, running for him. Somehow he knew that Jennifer had been hit, even before he saw her prone figure splayed on the ground.

Aboard Dreamland Bennett, over India

0028

They managed to duck two more sets of SAM missiles, then had an uneventful thirty minutes flying an almost straight line southwest. But as they passed south of Ahmadabad, Englehardt found himself targeted by a trio of SA-2 missile sites; he decided he had no choice but to take out their ground guidance units. No sooner had the three Anaconda missiles left the bomb bay than Rager reported a pair of Su-27s taking off from Jamnagar, to the northwest.

The Sukhois chased them for only ten minutes before giving up. By then Englehardt had altered his course to avoid yet another set of missile batteries.

They were almost to the coast when Rager sounded another warning — four Su-30s, advanced versions of the Su-27 and the most capable aircraft in the Indian air force, had just taken off from Daman.

“Target them,” Englehardt told Sullivan.

“We only have three missiles.”

Which is exactly why he didn’t want to use them earlier, Englehardt thought.

“Use what we have.”

* * *

“I’ll take the lead Sukhoi,” Starship told Englehardt and Sullivan. “You guys get everything else.”

A two-seater, the Su-30 bore roughly the same relationship to the Su-27 as the Super Hornet bore to the original F/A-18 Hornet. Starship knew that if he didn’t fly just right, the Su-30 could easily get past him. And even if he did, it still might.

His first move was to push Hawk One ahead of Hawk Two, increasing his separation to roughly five miles. Expecting the Sukhoi radar to pick up the Flighthawk, he put Hawk One on an intercept that would take it directly into the Sukhoi’s windscreen. The two aircraft were closing at a rate of almost 1,400 miles an hour, or roughly 23 miles a minute. That would give the Sukhoi pilot only a few seconds to react before his aircraft was in range of the Flighthawk’s cannon.

A head-on attack at high speed had a limited chance of success, even with the computer aiming the gun. But Starship wasn’t counting on Hawk One to shoot the plane down. He wanted to attract the Indian’s attention and break its charge. Once it began to maneuver, it would necessarily lose speed, taking away some of its advantage over the Flighthawks.