or placing him on the ticket as vice president for the next election.
“We’re a little worried about Chinese reaction,” added Blitz.
D’Amici shrugged. “If they’re the ones who have the plane, their reaction is irrelevant. And if they don’t, well, we’ll deal with that down the line. You don’t think this is parallel Chinese technology?”
The CIA had raised that possibility yesterday, claiming that their review of the strikes showed differences in the weaponry. Bonham’s experts had snickered, and Blitz sided with them.
“Doubtful. And it’s definitely not Russian. They’re clearly years behind.”
“So the Pakistanis stole it?”
“I just don’t see that,” said Blitz. The Pakistani theory — that they had stolen the plane to protect themselves from just such an attack — was popular at the Pentagon but had no evidence to back it up, especially given the plane’s flight path from the time it was spotted off the Indian coast. A task force of intel experts was trying to piece together the plane’s flight path prior to that, but had made little progress.
“Someone took it. I doubt the original crew hijacked it for Greenpeace,” he said sarcastically.
“I agree,” said Blitz. “Maybe the Russians.”
“Then why aren’t they talking about the shootdown, or the fact that they lost the aircraft?” The President was referring to intercepted communications, not public announcements, since saying anything would implicate their guilt in taking it.
“They know we can read them.”
D’Amici bent to the floor and poured himself another cup of coffee. “Congress is going to approve the augmented-ABM funding, as long as next week’s tests go well. We’re riding a wave, Professor. Riding a wave. The end of war as we know it.” He picked up a folded newspaper from the floor, holding open the editorial page. The lead editorial, congratulating him, bore that title: “The end of war as we know it.”
Blitz looked up as a familiar set of footsteps echoed through the second-floor hallway. Mozelle appeared from behind a pair of Secret Service agents. She greeted the President first, then looked at Blitz, tacitly asking whether she should speak. But there was really no option: D’Amici didn’t like secrets, especially ones so obvious.
“McIntyre is missing,” she said. “We’re not sure yet, but it looks like he was at one of the Indian bases in Kashmir. No one’s heard from him since the exchange.”
Chapter 6
Pure oxygen was a tried-and-true hangover cure, and while Howe didn’t have a hangover, the O2worked wonders, clearing his foggy head and wiping away much of his fatigue as he and Timmy began their search for the downed aircraft believed to be Cyclops One.
A day and a half’s worth of analysis had yielded a five-hundred-square-mile box where Unk-2—still not positively ID’d as Cyclops One — had apparently been hit by an Indian SAM before going down. The area, which Howe and Timmy were just entering, included a small portion of Pakistan and India as well as China and Nepal. The peaks rose over six thousand meters — eighteen thousand feet.
What would he do if he found her — if Megan were down there in the snow or worse, crumpled in the rocks?
Kick her in the face?
No, he couldn’t. He’d bend down, ask her why.
It wouldn’t be like that. He’d be in the plane, and if there were a body rather than leg or mangled bit of burnt flesh…Howe took a slow, deep breath, forcing himself to concentrate on flying the aircraft. The ground-scanning mode of the radar had been tweaked by one of the engineers, allowing the AI tactics module to assist in the search. In effect, it was like having a backseater with a magnifying glass going over the readout.
“It thinks it’s looking for a squished Scud,” the technical expert had explained.
He shrugged again now, remembering, reliving the conversation.
“The Waste Land
Her laughter dissolved the memory. It was a joke, a reference to a line in the poem, as she’d explained later by reading it to him. It was an interesting, kaleidoscopic poem — not that he knew much about or, to be honest, cared about poems. But they were as real to her as airplanes, and that intrigued him. It was different; it was one of the things that was interesting about her beyond her eyes, beyond the smooth curve of her hips.
Yet, he still hated her for being a traitor.
“What are we doing, Bird One?” asked Timmy, bringing him back to the present.
“Two, we’re going to start the sweeps as we planned,” he told his wingman. “Anything on Guard?”
“Negativo.”
“Let’s do it.”
The two delta-shaped aircraft plunged downward, arrowheads hurled by a god toward the snowy mountains below. There were no clouds today; under other circumstances this might have seemed a purely majestic view.
“Don’t even see any mountain goats down there,” said Timmy in Bird Two.
Howe let his speed bleed off gradually, coming below three hundred knots as he banked into the next search track. He lifted his right wing slightly, concentrating on the view ahead. They took a circuit and then another one, reaching the edge of their search box, then pulled around and began again, retracing their steps backward.
The climate and terrain combined to make this a very difficult place to live, yet settlements dotted the valleys and roads ran around the steepest mountains.
Resourceful species, humans.
“Got a couple of aircraft at long distance,” said Timmy. “Shenyang F-8s, pretty far off — two hundred miles.”
The Chinese F-8MII interceptors were double-engined interceptors that could be viewed as outgrowths of the MiG-21 family. In contrast to their forebears, they were not particularly maneuverable, but they could go relatively fast. Howe thought of them as a poor man’s updated MiG-25; equipped with radar missiles, they could be a severe annoyance.
Not today. The planes soon passed out of range to the east. Howe kept making his tracks, varying his path and trying to keep his memories of Megan at bay.
Something caught his eye when he reached the southeast corner of their search area for the fourth time. The sun had flashed off something a few miles farther into China — or maybe not, because when he stared in that direction he saw nothing.
The tactical screen was clear, and the computer hadn’t said boo to him about seeing anything.
