Tomboy spread the stack of freshly developed photographs across the table in the admiral’s conference room. She was alone, and grateful to Batman for the offer of this room and the solitude it provided. She had the feeling that her terror might leap onto her face at any moment, and she refused to let anyone see that. Refused to see her dread reflected in the pitying faces of others.
Matthew, her husband, her love, was a prisoner of the Red Chinese. She still couldn’t get her mind around that fact. How often had she heard him talk about his father, himself a navy pilot who had been shot down over North Vietnam? First a POW, then MIA… Never seen again.
And now Tombstone.
A piece of the shirt Tombstone had been wearing when he left for Hong Kong had been left at the American Embassy in Hong Kong, along with a photograph showing Tombstone in the grasp of two Chinese men in PLA uniforms. No one knew who had left the package. There had been no note, no further information.
In the hours since then, the PRC had not denied being involved in the kidnapping. They hadn’t admitted it, either. There was a disturbing lid of silence over the second-largest nation in the world.
“We’ll find him,” Batman had promised her. “We’ll get him out.” Fine words. But how?
For now, she was better off not thinking about it. Better off concentrating on something she might actually be able to do something about.
So she stared at the photos she’d snapped of the bogey.
They weren’t very impressive. The damned plane was too skinny, too carefully camoflaged. All she had in her pictures was a discolored sliver in the sky, really. A shape like a staple with its flanges bent up slightly.
It was a radical shape; the kind of airframe that almost certainly depended on high-speed computers to maintain stability. All top-end fighter planes, including F-14s and the latest-generation Russian designs, were aerodynamically unstable. If it weren’t for the dozens of tiny corrections automatically made each second by the onboard computers, the aircraft would not be able to fly at all. This natural tendency to diverge from level flight resulted in extraordinary combat agility. But shut the computer down, and all that expensive hardware would tumble out of the sky like an autumn leaf.
Such sophisticated technology wasn’t developed overnight. Neither was a radical new airframe like this flying manta shape. How had the Chinese done it? Borrowed from the Russians? Unlikely. Like any technologically- advanced nation, the Russians kept their hottest new gear for themselves.
She went over the photos again and again. Many of them were enlarged. She picked up the last shot she’d made before being interrupted by the radar-lock alarm. She stared at it for a moment, then picked up its matching enlargement. Yes — there was a dark blob beneath the plane, almost like a fuel drop-tank, that wasn’t there in the previous shot. Then she realized what it was: a head-on view of the missile, extended into firing position.
Unfortunately, no more detail was visible even in the blow-ups. Too grainy. All she could tell was that the missile had popped out of some kind of internal bay. Still, she kept staring at the photo. Something about it…
She thought back to what she’d seen as the missile flashed under the Tomcat, and compared that to how much damage had been done to Hong Kong. Not a small missile, but not a behemoth like a Phoenix, either. A mid- sized weapon, then; like a Sparrow. The diameter of a Sparrow was eight inches. Given that measurement to work with, she could compare the cross-section of the missile to the shape of the aircraft that carried it and estimate the latter’s wingspan and overall thickness.
She did so, and frowned. It didn’t make sense. The span would be only about twenty-five feet, and its center thickness… no more than two feet.
That was impossible. The pilot would have to be lying flat to fit in such a tiny airframe. Of course, such a pilot position had been tried before. There was that experimental Northrop flying wing of the 1940s, the Flying Ram, whose pilot lay prone inside the center section of the wing….
But even the Flying Ram was significantly larger than this. If her estimate was correct, only a genuine midget could pilot the Chinese bogey, even assuming he was lying on his belly. And come to think of it, there was no clear view of a canopy in any of her photos. No variation in color or pattern that indicated a viewport or window of any kind.
It was as if…
“My God,” she said, and reached for the phone.
When Batman walked into the conference room, his Gang of Four was gathered around a collage of photographs on the table. The intensity of their concentration made him decide to wait before relating the message he had just received from CVIC. “What is this?” he asked.
Tomboy looked up. Her eyes burned like blue-hot coals in pits of ash. “I was just explaining that I don’t think the bogey that fired that missile at Hong Kong is a fighter at all.”
“What?” Batman moved closer to the photos and stared at them. Frowned. “Then what is it?”
“A UAV.”
Coyote shook his head. “But you said UAVs are single-warhead vehicles, sort of like ultra-smart cruise missiles. This thing was
“There’s no theoretical reason to bar that development from occurring.”
“Terrific,” Batman said, looking up at Tomboy. “So what made you so
“For starters, its size. Look at that photo right there. See the missile? Using that for comparison, I was able to determine that the aircraft itself is bigger than Tombstone’s UAV, but still too small to carry a human pilot. Also, see if you can spot a canopy.”
All the men examined the photos more closely. “These aren’t very clear,” Lab Rat said dubiously. He looked at Bird Dog. “When you were in the air with this thing, did you notice a canopy?”
“I didn’t see the bogey at
“It didn’t have a canopy,” Tomboy said firmly. “And it was too small to be piloted. I’m sure about this, Admiral.
Batman straightened, although he felt his heart going the other direction. “So what you’re talking about here is a low-cost, disposable fighter plane.”
“Something like that.”
“Is it supersonic?”
“Probably not. The platform doesn’t look right, and I doubt the engines are large enough to do the job anyway.”
“I agree,” Lab Rat said.
“So what?” Batman said. “It carries supersonic missiles.”
No one responded.
“All right,” Batman said. “Tell me what we should do if we have to go to war with these things.”
He’d tried to keep his voice neutral, but Tomboy didn’t miss a thing. “Is there something we should know?”
He gave a single nod. “The PLA just declared martial law in Hong Kong. No one gets in, no one gets out. COS, you might want to get to the bridge. The battle group has been ordered to steam toward Hong Kong and take up a close support position, in case action is necessary to defend American interests.”
“Yes, sir.” Coyote turned without another word and strode out of the room.
Batman faced the others. Their expressions were uniformly grim. “I don’t need to tell you what this could lead to. Washington is working for a diplomatic solution, but it’s our job to assume, and prepare for, the worst.” He pointed at the photos. “Which could include dealing with this thing — or things, if it’s got relatives. So, Tomboy, I repeat: How do we kill them?”
She chewed on her lip. “Okay. We can expect UAVs in general to be much more agile than a Tomcat or even a Hornet because G forces aren’t a problem for a pilot. They’ll also be tough targets for missiles; they have diffusion
