Strike Zone (35 page)

Bottom line, Starship knew he was twice the pilot Kick was. Having his rival next to him in the Flighthawk bay flying his own aircraft seemed easier to deal with than having him hovering over his shoulder.

It didn't hurt either that Zen was off in the other plane.

“
Hawk One
is coming through 25,000 feet, on course and ready,” he told
Penn
's pilot, Major Alou. “Systems are solid. Instruments are in the green. I'm ready, Major.”

“Roger that,” said Alou, his voice so calm it sounded as if he were ready for a nap. “Preparing for alpha maneuver and launch on
Hawk Two
.”

The big aircraft began to dip, sleighriding downhill as it fell into the launch maneuver for the other U/MF. The launch went perfectly; Starship saw his wingman pop onto the sitrep to the west, picking up speed as the computer and pilot double-checked their systems.

“As we drew it up, boys,” said Major Alou. “Starship, you have the first run over the target area. Keep your altitude up; we don't want anyone hearing us. You ready?”

“Born ready,” said the pilot, tacking onto his course back toward land.

Aboard Dreamland MC-17
Quickmover
over the Taiwan Strait
2355

D
ANNY
F
REAH WAITED
until he had the infrared feed from the Flighthawk before clicking the bottom of the visor to get the computer-interpreted view from the Dreamland tactical computer system. Located deep in the computer bunkers below the Megafortress hangars, the computers were sifting through the data supplied by the camera and radar in
Hawk One
, interpolating it with what was already known about the site.

Building Two, their primary objective, was occupied by a single guard at the shore side of the compound. Another dozen men were nearby, in a building about a hundred yards away, most of them clumped in a basement suite they had identified as the security headquarters. The suite and its sensors would be blinded by the E-bomb, which would effectively fry any unshielded electronics within a half mile of its air-burst explosion. The bomb—actually a small laser-guided missile that could be controlled by Danny once launched—sat in
Penn
's bomb bay, ready to go.

“All right, listen up, you can see the schematic,” said Danny as the image of the site flashed into his team's helmets. “As we planned it. Liu and Boston on Shed One. My team has the security headquarters building. Bison and Reagan, you have the approach.
Make sure the Marines don't kill us,” he added, knowing it would get a laugh from his men.

Six Marines, all trained in SF warfare, were jumping with the team to help take control of the perimeter. They too were armed with nonlethal weapons—Remington shotguns, equipped with crowd-control shells, along with M-4s as backups. Frankly, the hardest part of his job so far had been convincing the Marines they had to stay behind his guys once they got on the ground.

Two companies of Marines had squeezed aboard the Dreamland Osprey and would roar in once the Whiplash team was down. Four small boats sat about a mile offshore, filled with Marines, ready to race into the harbor. Danny had worked with a number of Marine units over the past few years and was confident that, despite a bit of jawing back and forth, they'd do as good a job as his troopers.

What he hadn't worked with before in combat was the fogsuit. It was a great idea in practice, certainly, and had done well during the exercises. But jumping from a large aircraft in the middle of the night was always a risky venture. If the bulky suit felt uncomfortable to him, he was sure it would feel uncomfortable to most if not all of the others.

And being uncomfortable was never good.

But it was too late to take them off. The light flashed. The ramp at the back of the aircraft cranked open. The wind howled.

“We're going,” he told Major Alou aboard
Penn
.

“Missile launch is counting down,” replied the pilot over the Dreamland circuit.

Bison, the jumpmaster, put up his fist.

“Let's go,” Danny heard himself say.

Aboard
Raven
, over the Taiwan Strait
15 September 1997
0002

Z
EN HAD SPLIT
his lower control screen in half so he could see a sitrep feed from Dream Command showing the assault. The screen was tiny, especially in the helmet viewer, but he avoided the temptation to make it his main view—he was controlling two Flighthawks from the hold of the Megafortress, orbiting
Dragon Prince
, and watching for signs of activity. While the computer was presently doing most of the work, Zen couldn't afford to let his attention stray too far from the controls.

“First wave is out of the plane,” relayed Dog, who was piloting the plane. “Looking good.”

“Yeah.”

“Merce is ready to go with the E-bomb.”

“Roger that.”

Zen checked his instruments, purposely trying to draw his attention away from the other operation. His guys were good. They could handle it.

Best thing to do was let them.

“Hawk leader, you want to take a run over the ship's deck?” asked Dog. “Get a real close-up and see if we can spot the clone?”

Zen acknowledged, then took the helm of
Hawk Three
—his U/MFs were designated
Three
and
Four
to avoid confusion—and tucked toward the oil tanker, which was about ten nautical miles from the mouth of the Kaohisiun harbor.

The sitrep for the assault flickered.

“E-bomb went off as scheduled,” said Dog.
“The power is gone in that part of the city. Everything's on schedule.”

“Roger that,” said Zen, forcing himself to concentrate on the task at hand.

On the Ground in Kaohisiung
0004

D
ANNY HIT THE
roof of the building square in the middle, only a quarter meter from the point the computer had designated. With two quick snaps, he had unhooked his chute. He pressed the trigger on his taser lightly, activating its targeting mechanism. Its aimpoint appeared as a crisp red circle in his Smart Helmet visor. With the helmet's starscope vision showing him the night, there was no need to pop on the LED wristlight that was an integral part of the fogsuit; instead, he made his way to the end of the building above the door closest to the security headquarters. He saw the door open as he reached it. Kneeling, he waited as two of the company guards emerged from the building, each carrying a handgun. As the door started to close behind the men, he fired.

Vvvvrooop.

Vvvvrooop.

A net of blue light enveloped the men. Both Taiwanese spun slightly, stunned by the shock of electricity pulverizing every muscle and nerve in their bodies. Danny climbed over the edge of the roof and swung down, landing on his feet a few feet from the men he had downed. The shock had rendered them semiconscious.
He kicked the guns away, then Danny took a small plastic canister from his pocket. It looked like a grenade with an extra-long spoon handle. He pulled the handle and tossed it between the men, stepping back as netting material expanded over them. The sticky material was not escape-proof, but it would easily hold them in place until the reinforcements arrived.

Egg Reagan, meanwhile, had come around the side of the building. He slapped what looked like the head of a plunger on the door; it was actually a man-portable radar unit similar to SoldierVision to help them see inside. Using the unit rather than their own Smart Helmets would prevent anyone from homing in on the source of the radio waves and targeting them. Egg strung a wire to the unit and stepped around the corner, viewing it in his helmet visor after attaching the wire at the back.

“Clear,” said Egg.

The door was locked. Danny took out a Beretta loaded with metal slugs and fired point-blank through the mechanism.

“Still clear,” said Egg.

“In.”

The hall, dark because both the electricity and backup lighting had been knocked out by the E-bomb, made an L about twenty feet from the door. As they cleared the corner, the yellow beams of small flashlights danced at the far end.

“We'll zap them,” said Danny. “I have the ones on the left. Wait as long as we can; get them all in view.”

He edged toward the side of the hall as the first of the Taiwanese guards came around the corner.

As soon as one of the lights played across the floor
near Egg, Danny opened up, firing two bursts in rapid succession. Three guards shot back against the wall of the hallway, literally blasted off their feet. But another man had been behind them; unharmed, he began to retreat. Danny and Egg gave chase, running for all they were worth down the hall. The bulk of their suits and gear slowed them down, however; by the time they reached the corner, the hall was empty.

“Fuck,” said Egg.

“Yeah,” said Danny. “Let's see if we can find this joker.”

He tapped his Smart Helmet, activating the unit's penetrating radar mode. The mode emitted low-power radio waves that could penetrate walls roughly out to thirty feet. Their subject was nowhere in sight.

Danny flipped back into Dreamland connect mode, taking the display off the Flighthawk. But the U/MF was too far to the west to be of any use.

“Hawks, I need some coverage down here,” he said. “On my building.”

“Copy,” said Kick, gunning the aircraft back.

Aboard
Penn
0012

K
ICK HAD JUST
started the Flighthawk back when the Osprey veered across his path. He threw the small robot plane down hard toward the earth, realizing even as he did that he had overreacted. Cursing, but only to himself, he came back with the joystick control,
trying to swoop level and get back more or less on course. The robot fluttered slightly, her airspeed plummeting.

“
Hawk Two
, looking for that view,” said Captain Freah in his ear.

“Yeah, roger that,” said Kick. “We're working on it. A lot of things going on up here.”

Starship, whose aircraft was to the west covering the harbor approach to the complex, started to interrupt. “You want me to—”

“I'm on it,” insisted Kick, sliding his speed up. The target building was now dead-on in his screen. Kick let his speed continue to bleed off, determined to provide a detailed view to the ground team. The Osprey, meanwhile, began rotating its wings upward, driving down toward a field near the road to drop its men.

Someone shouted over the circuit—there were people on the ground, near where the Osprey was headed.

Several things happened at once—the chain gun in the Osprey's nose rotated, Kick threw his Flighthawk down toward the spot, Danny Freah yelled a warning and told the Osprey not to fire.

Kick struggled to keep his head clear, fighting the black fuzz of confusion creeping up from behind his neck.

“The boats,” someone said, and whether it was intended for him or not, Kick started to line up the Flighthawk for a view of the harbor. But he was already crossing over the dock toward the water; he accelerated and began banking to the south to try for another run.

On the Ground in Kaohisiung
0014

A
S SOON AS
Danny saw the Taiwanese guards emerging from the buildings beyond the battery recycling shed in his sitrep window, he shouted at the Osprey pilots to back out. He saw the Osprey whip away just as one of the men began firing an automatic weapon. An instant later, Sergeant Geraldo Hernandez launched a stun grenade and then fired his taser, scattering the guards.

“Two of the fuckers down,” said Hernandez.

It took Hernandez another sixty seconds to work around a pile of discarded metal before he could get close enough to take out the others. He popped a mesh grenade over the pile, then ran around the side and zapped them as they struggled.

“Osprey in,” said Danny.

“Can I get my view of the building now?” he asked Kick after the Marines flooded out of Osprey.

“Roger that,” said the Flighthawk pilot. “Two seconds away.”

Danny toggled between an IR and a penetrating radar view, preferring to see the details himself rather than using the synthesized and annotated image the computer provided.

“Freeze,” he said, getting a good visual of the facility. It looked like there was only one man here besides themselves; he was two corridors down to the right.

“With you,” said Egg, following as Danny set out cautiously.

Aboard
Penn
0015

S
TARSHIP SAW THE
boat darting into the harbor. He knew it wasn't theirs—the computer had the Marines dotted out with daggers—but he hesitated, as if his brain were trying to process the information and couldn't find the next branch in the logic tree.

Gun in the boat.

Big gun.

Something else.

“Company,” he said finally. “I'm taking them out.”

He leaned on the stick, starting the Flighthawk downward. But then something tingled in his brain—the other half of the thought that had started a millisecond before. He pulled back, nailing the throttle slide to full just as the missile flared from the boat.

Missile.

They were gunning for the Osprey, coming in over his right shoulder.

“Flares!” he yelled, hitting his diversionary devices.

Ordinarily, he would have jinked away, ducking the surface-to-air missile that had just been launched, getting himself to safety. But something had pushed off the instinct for survival; something deeper took over—he kept the Flighthawk on her course, directly into the path of the oncoming missile.

The shoulder-launched SA-14 hurtled upward at something approaching Mach 1. Though primitive by Dreamland standards, the Russian-designed heat-seeking missile was nonetheless an effective weapon when properly handled. The sensor in its nose ignored
the flares, sucking the heat signature of the large aircraft it had been aimed at. But then something juicier stuck itself in its face—the tailpipe of the Flighthawk, flashing within a few meters of the weapon. The missile jerked itself to the right, following the hot scent of its new target, but it couldn't quite keep up. Afraid that it would lose everything, it ignited its charge, sending a spray of shrapnel through the air.