He rocketed down, doing almost Mach 2, checking the tac display for enemies who might be locking him up for a missile shot. He came out of burner and cracked his speed brakes a few inches to help him SLOW. Uh-oh, ten miles off to the right — another Zero, shifting to a high radar PRF (pulse repetition frequency) for a shot. Now it was on the display — why hadn’t Sky Eye seen the Zeroes when the F-22’s were inbound to the base?
He racked the F-22 into a hard right turn, nine G’s, over twenty degrees heading change per second at this speed. He saw the streak on the MFD as the enemy fighter launched a missile. Cassidy flipped his fighter over on its back, pulled the nose thirty degrees down, and lit the afterburners. His plane was automatically pumping out chaff and decoys — they would save him or they wouldn’t. He elected to go under the enemy fighter, too fast for the Zero to get his nose down for another shot. That was the way it worked out. The enemy’s missile didn’t guide. Cassidy came out of burner and pulled up to turn in behind the Zero, which was also turning hard to get on his tail, a fatal mistake. Nothing in the sky could turn with a Raptor. Cassidy selected his gun. He was going to get a shot, a blind, in-the-cloud shot. He was outturning the Zero. He kept the G on, fought against it as he tried to pull the aircraft vector dot through the target symbol on the HUD so that the two dots would cross at less than a mile. Now!
He squeezed the trigger and held it down. Fire poured from his Gatling gun.
In the Zero, the Japanese pilot had lost the American on his tactical display. He was turning hard, trying to reacquire the F-22 on radar so that he could fire another missile. He never knew what killed him. The first of the cannon shells from the F-22 passed behind the Zero and he never saw them. Then the river of high explosive swept across his plane. Several of the shells passed through the left horizontal stabilator; then four shells smashed the left engine to bits. Five shells shredded the main fuel cell behind the cockpit. Three of the shells struck the pilot, killing him instantly. Another two shells went through the nose of the aircraft, smashing the radar. The damage was done in a third of a second; then the stream of shells passed on ahead of the aircraft. The Zero flew on for three more seconds before fuel hit the hot engine parts and the aircraft exploded.
“Yankees check in.”
“Two’s up.” That was Hudek. “Three.” Dixie. Four should have sung out here, but he didn’t. “Four, are you there?” Cassidy asked. He was at full throttle, racing west from Zeya. No answer from Lacy. “Yankees, stay with me. Lacy, where are you, son?”
“I think he bit the big one, skipper.” That was Hudek. “Lacy, you flaky bastard, answer me, son. Where are you?”
When they landed back at Chita, night had fallen. The three fighters taxied to their respective revetments and shut down. In the office they used as a ready room, they put the video discs into the postcombat computer and played the mission again. The computer took the information from all three of the surviving planes, merged it, and presented it as a three-dimensional holograph. They saw the American aircraft and the Zeros, the maneuvering, the missiles flying — all of it was right there for everyone to watch. Every brilliant maneuver and every mistake was there for all to see. “We fired fifteen missiles and killed six Zeros. One gun kill. We lost a plane and pilot.”
“Too bad about Lacy.”
“God, that’s tough.”
“You wasted that AMRAAM when you squirted it at that Zero, Colonel. That Athena gear they have really works.”
“We never picked them up on the ECM. They didn’t turn on their radars until we were on top of them.”
“That was their mistake.”
“The satellite never saw these guys until they were on us.”
“Late-afternoon build-ups, lots of thermals …”
“Cost us a man.”
“Lacy screwed up, skipper,” Fur Ball Hudek said flatly. “Look at this sequence.” He pointed at two planes in the holographic display. “This villain passes behind Flake at a right angle, turns hard into him to get a firing solution. Flake is busy chasing these two over here. See that? Flake had target fixation; he lost the bubble. Clay Lacy’s dead because he fucked up.”
That was the nub of it. In this business errors were fatal. “Okay, let’s recap. The Zeros got into us before we knew they were around. Lacy screwed up and got hammered. But the Japs screwed up too. If they had sat fifty miles out squirting missiles at us, we couldn’t have touched them. They’ll learn from this. Just you watch.”
Cassidy got on the satellite telephone to Washington. He wound up with Colonel Eatherly at home. After Cassidy finished explaining the mission, Eatherly said, “We have satellites over that area most of the time. Sometimes they can see airplanes. I can’t say more than that. I’ll talk to General Tuck tomorrow. Maybe he’ll eat some ass. But I can tell you right now, Space Command is doing all they can with the technology.”
“I understand.”
“Sorry about your pilot.”
“If the wizards know Zeros are airborne, maybe they could call us on the sat phone. Back up all this techno- crap. Our duty officer could call out traffic over the base radio.”
“We’ll do it.”
Cassidy was exhausted. He had no appetite. He wandered off to the lower bunk he called home. He lay there staring at the ceiling. He had pulled the trigger repeatedly today. What if one of those Japanese pilots had been Jiro?
What would Sabrina say?
If he had killed Jiro … A wave of revulsion washed over him. He was too tired to sit up, yet he couldn’t sleep. He lay in the bunk with his eyes open, staring into the darkness.
19
Pavel Saratov was in Admiral Kolchak’s control room studying charts of Japanese waters when the XO called down from the sail cockpit. “Better come up here, Captain, and take a look.”
Saratov put down his pencil and compass and climbed the ladder. “Look, Captain.” Askold pointed. On the pier, General Esenin and his troops were milling smartly around a truck carrying four metal containers. A crowd of civilians was unloading welding equipment from another truck. “What is this, Captain?”
“I don’t know.”
“Those look like jet-engine shipping containers. Doesn’t make sense. Ummm. “Those are the sloppiest naval infantrymen I’ve ever seen,” Askold grumped. “They don’t wear their uniforms properly. They don’t know how to care for their equipment. They have little respect for superior officers … “He trailed off when he saw that Saratov had no intention of replying. After a few minutes, Esenin came across the gangway and called up to the officers on the bridge. “Come down, Captain, please.”
Saratov descended the ladder. Askold was right behind him. “I need your technical expertise, Captain Saratov. I wish to weld these four containers to the submarine. Where would you suggest?”
Saratov was dumbfounded. “Outside the pressure hull? Our speed will be drastically affected.”
“No doubt.”
“Worse, the water swirling around the containers will make noise.”
Esenin frowned. “What is in the containers, anyway?”
“We will discuss that later. Suffice it to say, I have been ordered to attach these containers to the hull of this ship and I intend to do so. The only question is where.”
“They are going to be in place when we submerge? While we are underwater?”
“Yes.”
“The noise—“
“Explain.” Esenin flicked his eyes across Saratov’s face.
“The more noise we make underwater, the easier we are to detect.”
“The easier we are to detect,” Askold added, “the easier we are to kill.”
Esenin shot Askold a withering look. “Don’t patronize me, little man. My bite is worse than my bark.”
“What is in the containers, General?” Saratov asked again.
“Each contains a nuclear weapon. They have been carefully waterproofed, packed, and so on. The job was cleverly done, believe me. The containers allow water to flow in and out so they will not be crushed when the
