Strike Zone (40 page)

“Where is it now?”

“Unknown. We also think there may be another UAV but we haven't anything definitive. The thinking here is that the alterations to the wing would have been to air-launch the aircraft, or possibly to carry a bomb.”

Major Catsman had already done some checking and narrowed down the possible suspects to three 767s.

“We should get the airports shut down,” said Dog. “Let's get the Taiwan air force involved. I need a direct line to the general in charge. Can you set that up there?”

“Will do. Jed Barclay wants to talk to you in the meantime.”

“And I want to talk to him,” said Dog.

On the Ground in Kaohisiung
0205

S
TONER CLOSED HIS
eyes and pushed down his head, knowing he was going to die but not wanting to give in. It seemed like a waste to go out here, when he hadn't even figured out what had happened to the bombs the bastards had made.

Dirt pushed into his pores. He couldn't hear and he couldn't see.

Poor fucking Marines. Poor Marines. Shit. He couldn't let those guys die.

He pushed up against the massive blocks that had smothered his head. They began to give way.

I'm like Samson, he thought. Where is this strength coming from?

A light flashed in his eyes. He blinked.

Was this what death felt like? Did God really send an angel out to get you?

There was a groan behind the light.

One of the Marines.

He wasn't dead. He wasn't even buried. One of the Marines had fallen on him, probably trying to protect him.

Idiot Marines, always trying to do their job.

The kid was breathing. Good. But the chamber was blocked off with rubble—he could see the pile reflected in the flashlight's shadow as the dust finally settled.

“Stoner,” said the Marine with the light.

“Yeah, I'm here,” said the CIA officer, dragging himself up. The NOD lay on the ground; he didn't
even bother picking it up to see if it was working, turning on his wristlight instead.

“The charge was back in the main tunnel. It blew down the entrance.”

Stoner stood. “Help him,” he told the other Marine. “I'm going to see where this hole goes.”

“You think we're trapped?” asked the Marine. There was no fear in his voice; he might have been asking about the daily special at a restaurant.

“If we are, Danny Freah'll get us out,” said Stoner. He took his radio out and gave it to the Marine. “Make sure Captain Freah knows we're here and take care of your buddy. I won't be long.”

“Yes, sir.”

Aboard
Raven
0220

Z
EN RAN
H
AWK
Three
ahead of
Raven
, concentrating on intercepting the first of the planes to be checked, a 767 supposedly chartered by an English tour group headed for China. The Boeing carried identification gear that could be queried to show its identity. As he drew close, Zen used the Ident gear; the registry jibed with the flight that had taken off. The gear was not foolproof, however, and they had to assume that anyone clever enough to manufacture the UAV and a nuclear device would have the wherewithal to fake an ID. Zen pushed the Flighthawk toward the aircraft, needing a visual to make sure the plane was in fact what it said it was.

The massive Boeing lumbered ten miles ahead, flying at 32,000 feet, about 5,000 below the tiny Flighthawk. Zen checked
Hawk Four
in the bottom screen—he'd had the computer take her in to be topped off, getting potential fuel problems out the way—then nudged
Hawk Three
's nose gently earthward so he could get a look under the 767's wings. He had to check his speed, however;
Raven
had slowed to complete the refuel, and he got a warning from C
³
that the connection was about to break.

“Zen, be advised we have some communications coming off the target plane indicating there are passengers aboard,” said Wes Brown, one of the Elint operators. “Cell phone communications.”

“Roger that,” said Zen.

The infrared cameras on the Flighthawk synthesized an image for Zen in the main screen, gradually sharpening their focus as he pulled closer to the tail of the massive airliner.

Clean.

“They don't have a UAV,” Zen told Dog.

“Copy that,” said Colonel Bastian.

“Think they have a bomb aboard?” asked Zen.

“I doubt it, but the Taiwanese authorities are looking for a divert field so it can be inspected. Let 'em know you're there, see how they react.”

Zen tucked his wing and slid away from the airplane, running down and then coming back up close to the cockpit area. As he rose, he contacted the pilot, asking him to identify himself. Though there was surprise in his voice, nothing the civilian captain said indicated he was flying anything but a charter packed
with tourists. The sensors on the Flighthawk couldn't get a comprehensive read on the interior of the moving plane, but there were clearly passengers aboard.

“Taiwanese are sending two F-5s north for him,” said Dog. “They're going to order him home.”

“Roger that.”

“I have our second target north at one hundred miles, making 400 knots. We'll take him next.”

“Hawk leader,” said Zen, acknowledging.

Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
1420

J
ED
B
ARCLAY LISTENED
as the secretary of defense and the secretary of state debated whether to inform the Communist Chinese of what was going on. The Mainlanders were already scrambling aircraft, probably in response to the Taiwan activity.

“They'll just shoot all the planes down,” said Secretary of Defense Chastain. “I would.”

“If a nuclear device is exploded in China, they will retaliate,” answered Hartman.

“Not necessarily,” said the defense secretary.

“That's what Chen Lee is counting on,” said the secretary of state. “It's insanity.”

Jed glanced at the video screen from the White House, where his boss was sitting with the President, listening to the debate. Before leaving to come over here, Jed had given Freeman a briefing paper from the CIA that argued that Mainland China would not nuke Taiwan; instead, they'd invade the island using
conventional forces. An appendix to the paper suggested that the communists would threaten America with nuclear missiles if it interfered.

“Can we stop all of the aircraft that have taken off in the last hour before they're over China?” asked the President.

“We can get close,” said Jed. “But there's no guarantee that we can stop them.”

“We can shoot them down ourselves,” suggested Hartman.

“In that case, I'd rather inform the Chinese and let them do it,” said the President.

“Then they may consider it a first strike and retaliate,” said Hartman. “They may obliterate Taiwan.”

“We're not even sure that Chen launched his plane,” noted Freeman. “Let's give the Dreamland people a little more time to work on it.”

“The way the intercepts are lined up right now,” said Jed, checking the feed from Dreamland that gave the planes' positions, “Colonel Bastian is going to fly into Chinese territory just off the coast to check that last flight.”

“Then that's what they'll have to do,” said the President.

Aboard
Raven
0250

T
HERE WERE NOW
four different flights of interceptors within fifty miles of
Raven
, two from Mainland China and two from Taiwan. The Taiwan flights—all F-5Es—were out at the end of their normal operating
radius and would have to return to base fairly soon. The Mainland interceptors were J-8s, grouped in twos and also getting close to bingo. A pair of JJ-2 “Midgets” ordinarily used for training and not particularly adept at night operations were also in the air over Wenzhou on the coast, but were probably not much of a threat to anyone but themselves. Dog's crew had its hands full sorting through the intercepted communications; Zen, meanwhile, pressed on toward the next craft they had been tasked to intercept, a 767 cargo craft.

“We're on the Chinese ground intercept radars,” reported the copilot. “Tracking us. They'll vector the fighters at us any second.”

Dog grunted in acknowledgment. A pair of spanking new Taiwanese Mirage 2000s had just selected afterburners, pushing their delta-winged airframes north to come up and take a look what was going on.

“Target plane is at ten miles,” said Zen. “Ident checks. Hailing him.”

One of the communist flights did the same to Raven, telling Dog he was violating Chinese airspace.

“Bullshit,” said Delaney. “We're more than fifty miles off the coast.”

“Standard Chinese practice,” said Dog.

“Like I said, bullshit.”

Dog answered that they were in international airspace and pursuing their flight plan. While true as far as it went, the statement was not particularly informative, and the Chinese pilot countered that the American plane had better turn around.

“What's his controller
telling him?” Dog asked Wes, who was listening in on the frequency.

“Telling him to challenge us and take no nonsense or something along those lines,” said Wes. The transmission was in Mandarin, but the computer gear aboard
Raven
included a competent on-the-fly translator.

“Activating his weapons radar,” warned Delaney. “Asshole.”

The J-8 challenging them was roughly fifty miles away, and flying a nearly parallel course—there was no way the aircraft could hit the Megafortress with anything but four-letter words.

“Want to go to ECMs?” asked the copilot.

“Let's not give him the satisfaction.”

Sure enough, the communist pilot gave up a few seconds later, turning back toward his base on the Mainland.

 

T
HE 767 APPEARED
on Zen's screen, a blur at eight miles away. While the ID checked out, the pilot had not answered Zen's hail.

The blur slowly drew into focus.

Was there something under the right wing?

Zen nudged the throttle for more speed, but got a warning from the computer that he was too far from
Raven
. He backed off, telling himself not to get too impatient. The two-engine plane slowly came into better focus.

The wing was clean.

Converting a civilian plane into a conventional bomber was not particularly difficult; a bomb bay could be cut into the floor in an afternoon with plenty of time left over for the crew to catch happy hour. Add some proper targeting gear, and the Boeing could be at least as accurate as the aircraft used in World War II.
Of course, a 767 would never stand a chance against an interceptor or a ground-defense system—unless it had the element of surprise on its side.

“Wes, Target Two is not answering my hails,” Zen told the op upstairs over the interphone. “Why don't you take a shot at it with the translator?”

“Doing so now, Zen.”

Zen continued to fly toward the plane, trying to get a look at the body. If there were bottom-opening doors beneath the fuselage, they weren't obvious.

Unlike the 767 he had intercepted earlier, there were no cabin lights, even though he could see the outlines of windows.

“No answer,” said Wes.

“Try all frequencies.”

“I've tried every one known to man.”

“Dog, I think we may have found our target,” said Zen.

Dreamland
1155

J
ENNIFER TOOK A
sip of her Diet Pepsi as she continued to scan the NSA intercepts of telemetry being gathered in real time over the South China Sea by Elint satellites and an RC-135. She'd programmed the computer to tell her if anything came across similar to the segment from the email. Reams and reams of material were now being intercepted by satellite and listening stations all over the South China Sea, and even with the computer's help, looking for the UAV would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Zen had just pulled close to one of the 767 flights. It wasn't answering hails—this looked to be a good bet. She heard Colonel Bastian talking to the White House directly, asking for instructions.

They were going to tell him to shoot it down, she knew.

Jennifer reached to flick her hair back behind her ear, belatedly remembering she had cut it off.

Dog was telling Jed they had the plane.

Something in her reacted viciously to that. Anger at her lover, or ex-lover? She clicked on the circuit.

“Colonel, that's not the plane,” she snapped.

“Jen?”

“That's not the plane,” she insisted.

“You sure?”

She wasn't sure at all—logically, it probably was. But she insisted she was.

Why?

Jennifer wanted to argue with him. She wanted to tell him to screw off. And she wanted everyone to see her telling him off.

She wanted to be right, and she wanted everyone to know it.

But she wasn't, was she? Because it had to be the plane.

“Colonel Bastian, you are authorized to use all necessary force to terminate that flight if they won't turn back,” said a deep, sonorous voice over the Dreamland Command frequency.

The President himself.

“It's not the right plane,” Jennifer insisted. She slapped her computer keyboard, backing out from the
intercept screen to the communications profiles stored earlier. The 767 had taken off from Taipei—they had some data from it somewhere in the vast storehouse of intercepts, didn't they?

“Jen, this is Colonel Bastian. Can you explain?”

Fuck yourself, thought Jennifer. She began paging through data.

“Major Catsman?” said Dog.

“Um, just a second, Colonel. Jennifer's working on something here.”

Aboard
Raven
0259