Retribution (23 page)

“That’s my next call, Colonel.”

“They’re going to need to be debriefed.”

“I know, Colonel.”

There was nothing else to say, and nothing for Dog himself to do at this point.

No. He’d have to tell Samson.
That
was a conversation to look forward to.

Danny gave Dog a quick update on the warhead, then signed off. Before Dog could punch into the Dreamland channel and ask for Samson, Sergeant Rager sounded a warning.

“Colonel, I have two contacts at 250 miles, headed in our direction,” said the airborne radar operator. “Computer says they are Mikoyan MiG-31s.”

“Chinese?”

“Affirmative. They may be homing in on our radar,” Rager added. “They’re adjusting to our course. Looks like they’re going to afterburners. Colonel, these suckers are headed in our direction in a
serious
hurry.”

Aboard Dreamland
Bennett,
over Pakistan
2315

T
HE
MIG-31
HAD BEEN CREATED DURING THE HEIGHT OF
the Cold War with one goal in mind: shoot down B-52s.

On a spec sheet, it was an awesome aircraft. Its twin Soloviev D-30F6 power plants could push the plane over 1,600 knots at 60,000 feet; the aircraft was capable of breaking the sound barrier even at sea level. A two-seater, the Foxhound came standard with so-called look-down/shoot-down radar, allowing it to defeat the ground-hugging tactics of bombers and cruise missiles, which ordinarily took advantage of radar reflections from the ground to pass invisibly at very low altitude toward their target.

But the MiG-31 had one serious drawback: While it could go very fast in a straight line, it was about as maneuverable as a heavy freight train on a sheet of ice. The faster it went, the wider its turning radius; if a nimble aircraft like the F/A-18 could be said to turn on a dime, the Foxhound needed ten thousand quarters.

As built, the B-52 wasn’t known for cutting X’s in the sky either, but the aircraft responding to Dog’s pulls had been radically transformed before joining the Dreamland flock. He pushed his left wing down, trading altitude for speed as he pirouetted away from the intercept the MiG jocks had plotted.

“They’re changing course,” said the copilot, Kevin Sullivan. “Range is now 175 miles. Still closing.”

“Looks like they insist on saying hello,” said Dog.

“I have two launches,” said Rager at the airborne radar. He gave the location and bearing—the missiles were coming from the aircraft.

“They launched from that range?” said Dog.

“No way—those planes don’t even have their weapons radar activated,” said Sullivan, monitoring the Megafortress’s radar warning receiver. “And we’d be too far for them to lock onto even if they did.”

“Computer IDs missiles as Vympel R-27s, based on radar profile,” said Rager.

“Gotta be wrong,” said Sullivan.

While potent, the missile’s range was roughly 130 kilometers, or seventy miles, half what it had been fired at. The R-27—known to NATO as the AA-10 Alamo—came in several different “flavors,” defined by the guidance system used to home in on its target. By far the most popular version used a semiactive radar, following guidance from its launch ship. For that to have been the case here, the radar in the Foxhound would have “locked” on the Megafortress; the characteristic pattern was easily detected, and a warning would have sounded had it occurred.

“Definitely missiles in the air,” insisted Rager. “Heading for us.”

“ECMs, Colonel?” asked Sullivan.

“Not at this distance,” said Dog. “Those missiles will crash long before they’re a real threat.”

Hawk One
was covering Danny’s ground operation, while
Hawk Two
was conducting the search for warhead I-20. Dog told Starship to keep the Flighthawks where they were; the Megafortress could deal with the MiGs on its own.

The Chinese pilots he’d encountered in the past ranged from very professional to serious cowboys. None, however, had wasted missiles by firing them at such long range.

So what were they up to?

“Stand by for evasive maneuvers,” said Dog, pushing the Megafortress into a sharp turn, then dropping her toward a mountain range he’d seen earlier. He swung the Megafortress
so it would beam any radar aboard the MiGs—flying parallel to the waves, which made detection more difficult.

“MiGs are changing course,” said Sullivan. “So are the missiles.”

“All right. They have passive detectors,” said Dog. “They’re homing in on our radar.”

“Why’d they launch so early?” asked Sullivan. “We’re well out of their range.”

“We should be,” said Dog.

Dog took another turn, lengthening the distance the missiles had to travel. The missiles stayed with the Megafortress, and corrected once more as he took another leg south.

“They’re approaching what should be the limit of their range,” said Sullivan, tracking them.

“Kevin, broadcast on the Chinese frequency. Tell the MiG pilots that if they continue their hostile action, they will be shot down.”

“Kind of late for that, don’t you think, Colonel?”

“Broadcast it anyway.”

“No acknowledgment,” reported Sullivan a few seconds later. “Missiles are now fifty miles and closing. They should have crashed by now.”

“Target the missiles with the Anacondas,” said Dog.

“Targeted. Locked.”

“Open bay.”

The aircraft shook as the bomb bay doors opened.

“Fire,” said Dog.

Most missiles, even the sophisticated Scorpions, clunked when they left the bomb bay dispenser, dropping awkwardly for a few seconds before they fired up their motors and got under way. But the Anacondas leapt from the aircraft, lit up and ready for action. They made a distinctive
whooosh
as they sped away, the missiles shooting directly under the fuselage and then veering upward.

“Foxfire One,” said Sullivan, employing the time-honored code for a radar-guided missile launch. “Missile one away. Missile two away.”

“The MiGs have fired two more missiles,” warned Rager.

Dog started another turn, pushing the Megafortress so he could put the Megafortress head-on to the Chinese aircraft. He knew from experience that in a two-on-one matchup, Chinese pilots would typically go in opposite directions as they closed, aiming to take wide turns to get on their target’s tail. While the strategy made sense in many two versus one encounters, it wasn’t particularly effective against a Megafortress, which could use its Flighthawks to fend off one of the aircraft at long range while concentrating on the second plane.

These pilots, however, moved closer together as the Megafortress came to their bearing, the wingman looking to protect the lead’s tail as they approached. While it might just have been coincidental, Dog concluded that they knew how Megafortresses fought and were trying different tactics.

“Target the bandits,” said Dog.

“Locked.”

“Fire.”

S
TARSHIP STRUGGLED TO REMAIN FOCUSED ON THE
F
LIGHTHAWK
screen as the Megafortress jerked through a series of evasive maneuvers. Reconnaissance was an important mission, surely, but he felt as if his real duty was fifty miles away, taking down the Chinese fighters.

They were a lot faster than the Flighthawk. That was a serious advantage, and the first thing the remote pilot had to do was decide how to counter it. Starship—who had fought against MiG-31s only in a simulator, liked what he called the in-your-face attack: He’d fly the Flighthawk on a course that crossed in front of the MiG at very close range, close enough for the aircraft to seem to shoot out of nowhere. Success depended on the Flighthawk being invisible until the very last moment, which was possible because the radars in the export versions of the MiG-31, like most aircraft, couldn’t see the U/MF until it was in extremely close range.

The downside of such an attack was that there was only a very small window to fire. You had to be right on the cannon
as you came in, then swerve hard and maybe, maybe, get a chance at another burst as the aircraft moved away.

Starship was daydreaming so much about what he would do that he almost missed the computer cue as it flashed in his screen:
POSSIBLE SEARCH OBJECT SIGHTED
.

He tapped the boxed highlight, then turned the Flighthawk to the north to get a better view.

“M
ISSILE ONE HAS OBLITERATED ENEMY MISSILE
,”
REPORTED
Sullivan. “Two—enemy missile two is gone.”

The second missile was so close to the first that shrapnel from the exploding Anaconda missile had taken it out.

“Retarget Anaconda Two for one of the other missiles,” said Dog calmly.

“Roger that. Retargeting. Missiles three and four are on course—Chinese aircraft starting a turn to the west, coming for our tail, I bet.”

Dog was already tracking the aircraft on his own screen. The MiGs had slowed down somewhat but were traveling at nearly twenty miles a minute. They launched two more missiles—and then Sullivan practically leaped from his seat.

“
Knockdown, knockdown!
We got
Bandit One
.
Two!
We got
Two
! Oh wow! Holy shit.
Holy shit!
”

Dog pushed the Megafortress closer to the nearby mountain peaks, aiming to drop as close as possible to a jagged pass. Even though it was nighttime, the aircraft’s computers synthesized a crisp view before him, detailing the nooks and crannies in the peaks nearby. Dog pushed the aircraft toward the rocks, pitching hard on his left wing to get as close as possible.

A proximity warning sounded, telling him he was within one hundred feet. He ignored it.

“Missile three is off the screen,” said Sullivan. “Anaconda is targeting missile four.”

Rager gave him some ranges and speeds on the other two missiles. Again they all appeared to be passive radar homers.

“Target the last two missiles with Anacondas,” Dog told Sullivan.

“Two more aircraft, at long range, Colonel,” said Rager. “ID’d as Shenyang J6s.”

“Hold that thought, Sergeant,” said Dog. “Sullivan, take out those missiles.”

S
TARSHIP WALKED THE
F
LIGHTHAWK OVER THE RECTANGULAR
slice of earth marked out by the search program, moving toward the highlighted box the computer claimed contained the warhead. All he could see was a square shadow at the edge of much rounder shadows. Freeze-framed and enlarged, it still looked pretty much like a shadow.

He took the Flighthawk around for another pass, dropping his forward speed to just over 110 knots, about as slow as he could go. But the image was not much better; it might be part of a missile control surface, like a tailfin, he decided, but it could also be ten or twenty other things.

He pulled up, circled around, and tried to replicate the course a missile would have taken getting there. Flying a straight line from the base it had been launched from revealed nothing. Then he realized that the theory that placed the missile here called for it to have veered off course sharply when the T-Rays hit. Dreamland Command hadn’t given him the course, but it wasn’t difficult to approximate, since the original projections showed where the missiles were when the EEMWBs went off.

Starship’s first plot was a straight line, angling sixty degrees from the point where the T-Rays hit the missile. Even as he swooped toward the ground, he realized that the missile wouldn’t have gone in a straight line; most likely it veered in some sort of elliptical curve. But he flew the vector anyway, passing just to the west of the squarish shadow and continuing over a rocky valley. The boulder suggested another theory—the missile had buried itself in an avalanche after it crashed.

As he circled back, he saw what looked like a gouge in the side of a rock peak opposite the first missile part. Starship did a 180, swinging back around and flying beyond the rocks.

The computer’s search program began IDing pieces of metal on a plain just beyond the rockslide.

“Flighthawk leader to
Bennett
. Colonel, I think I’ve got something.”

“Good, Starship. I’ll get back to you.”

An atoll off the Indian Coast
Date and time unknown

T
HE CHOKING SOUND SHOOK
Z
EN AWAKE, PULLING HIM
from a twisted dream of dark shapes and roiling winds. He grabbed at Breanna next to him, not sure what to do or how to help her, only that he had to.

Her body heaved against his. She must have something stuck in her throat, he thought, and he reached his arms and hands down, fishing for her stomach and diaphragm so he could perform the Heimlich maneuver.

He pulled once, violently jerking his fists against her organs. He’d done this in a first aid class years ago, but it felt nothing like this. He was amazed at how empty his wife felt, her body offering no resistance to his pressure.

She coughed and he pushed his hands up again. A gasping squeal replaced the cough, then Breanna began to wheeze. She shuddered, and Zen shuddered with her.

He held her as he had when they were first sleeping together, completely wrapped around her, so close that every movement she made registered in his own body.

Breanna breathed normally again. Gradually, Zen began to wonder what had happened. She couldn’t have been choking on something, he thought; she’d had nothing to eat. She hadn’t vomited. But he hadn’t imagined or dreamed it.

Gradually, he forced his mind to drift away from the possibilities of what had happened and focus on one thought—whatever had happened, she was still alive. He drifted for a time in a silver space between fatigue and dream before finally losing consciousness.

Aboard Dreamland
Bennett,
over Pakistan
2320

“H
AVING TROUBLE LOCKING ON THAT LAST MISSILE
, C
OLONEL.
I’m looking at it, but the computer refuses to accept it.”

“Keep trying,” Dog told Sullivan calmly. He got ready to turn the Megafortress around, intending to swing his tail toward the missiles so they could use the Stinger air-mine weapon in the tail.

Not to be confused with the shoulder-launched missile of the same name, the Stinger air mines were essentially large explosive disks that detonated near their target. When they ignited, they sent shards of tungsten into the path of a pursuer. Generally much more effective against aircraft, recent upgrades to the targeting radar and an increase in size had made them useful against missiles, but only as a last resort.

“Bandit missile four is down,” reported Rager. “Five and six still pursuing.”

“Sullivan?”

“Lock on Bandit missile six. Firing.”

The moment Dog heard the whoosh, he threw the
Bennett
into the turn.

“Stinger up,” he told Sullivan. “Get ready in case the Anaconda misses.”