[The Fear Saga 01] - Fear the Sky (2014) (74 page)

The squadron leader stared in disbelief as the other jet powered downward, plummeting toward the appropriately named Kush Mountains thousands of feet below them. The man was suicidal.

Shahim reached Mach 2 in record time, but the supersonic missiles continued to close, unperturbed by his mad downward rush. As an internal clock inside Shahim’s head counted off the fleeting seconds, his speed increased, the ground rushing up to meet him. At the last possible moment, he pulled up hard, releasing decoys to blend with the peaks as the two missiles raced down to find him. The jet’s engine screamed like a tortured demon as he pulled up into a twelve-G curve, the jet-wash and shockwave lifting dust from the hitherto peaceful valley as he rocketed through.

Confused by Shahim’s sparkling decoy flares and the approaching peaks and valleys, the two missiles darted into the ground at over three thousand miles per hour like cosmic hammers, rocking the deserted plain which only moments before had born witness to Shahim’s thundering passage.

Pelishar One and Three surveyed the explosion site from their lofty height to see if their enemy had somehow survived the desperate nosedive. It was impossible to confirm it in the predawn mist, but the plane’s trajectory and speed had been insane, and the ensuing explosions huge. The squadron leader had just begun hesitantly reporting the rogue plane’s destruction when a fleeting blip registered on his radar screen.

“Let’s go down and take a look, Pelishar Three.” The other pilot acknowledged and the two powerful fighters both rolled and entered a steep-angled dive of their own, though without applying the afterburner of their maniac adversary.

Without warning, Pelishar Three’s radar suddenly blared with a radar lock.

“Someone is locking on to me!” he shouted in surprise as two missiles came streaking up out of the pluming cloud of smoke on the ground, quickly followed by the demonic plane itself.

“Dear Allah, he—” the pilot stopped talking as he frantically tried to maneuver, but there was no time. The missiles streaked upward at over two thousand miles per hour, even as he rushed toward them at several hundred.

As his colleague tried to break off, the squadron leader flinched, sensing the hopelessness of the maneuver. The missiles detonated on either side of Pelishar Three, ripping along its wings like a can opener and clipping the great bird. The pilot was somehow spared, surviving for the moment, only to realize his agile jet had just become his coffin. The man frantically started to pray as the plane continued to accelerate toward the ground: his systems fried, his eject sequence blown.

Trying to blank out the pure terror in his friend’s voice as it sputtered though the radio, the squadron leader focused his rage on the plane still rocketing up toward him, and Shahim in turn altered his course to lock on to the last F-16. They raced toward each other, both firing their Gatling guns in a Mach 2 game of chicken, seventy bullets per second ripping across the rapidly closing gap between them. But fury blinded the brave captain’s eyes in his last second before a hail of lead ripped his cockpit apart, mincing his body in an instant as it raced aft to do the same to his plane. As Pelishar One disintegrated, Shahim was already breaking upward in a spiraling turn to go after his American colleagues once more.

His face was resolute and he used his absolute control over his machine body and mind to blank out the last screams of the wingless Pelishar Three as it finally plummeted to the ground.

* * *

The general struggled to get his voice under control. Three F-16s gone in under a minute. Dear Allah, how could that be? Radar reported that the rogue Pelishar Four was now chasing after the remaining two planes of the squadron and he shook his head in despair. Why was this man doing this? How had some insurgent imposter managed to take out three highly trained pilots with such brutal dispatch? He shook his head, not even turning as his aide de camp finally came back into the room after his ill-fated trip to flight control.

“General Abashell, sir,” said the aide, trying to catch his breath, “the reports from the tower indicate that the pilot on Pelishar Four used the correct call signs and even emulated the voice of the pilot he apparently knocked unconscious.”

The general stayed staring forward, unsure how this new information helped the situation. So he was dealing with a very talented, well-informed imposter, who could fly better than any of his actual pilots. He frowned and summoned up his strength.

“Radio, call off the remaining members of Pelishar Squadron. Instruct them to join up with the support squadron coming up from the south and come under that squadron leader’s command.” He sounded resigned, almost defeated, and the room was quiet as they tried to ignore the bitter sound of their general’s waning tone.

He gathered himself, then said, “Bring up Missile Control, quadrant 7.”

The operator nodded, typing into his console to raise Missile Control on the main screen. The border with Afghanistan was dotted with small, mobile anti-air missile outposts designed to intercept any incursion from their neighbor. There weren’t nearly as many as there were along Pakistan’s contested border with India or their closely watched border with Iran, but as the big main screen changed to an aerial view of the northwestern border with Afghanistan, a series of red dots showing their current anti-air deployments appeared. On top of this view, the operator overlaid the path of the rogue F-16 and the remaining objects falling down into the atmosphere, and the general quietly praised the sergeant’s efficiency once more.

So, he thought, we have a rogue F-16 with three kills tracking to intercept a series of objects that seem to be blowing up all by themselves. And based on the reports of the squadron, before all hell broke loose, we may have some kind of stealthed plane out there too. What the hell did it all mean? The rugged old Pakistani stared in consternation at the screen and tried to analyze it all. If there was a stealth plane out there, that meant the Americans, but what the hell would they be doing here? And the pilots had also reported seeing the blue streak of a jet-propelled rocket approaching the last explosion.

He shook his head. He was a veteran of countless military clashes with Indian forces in Kashmir, the long and arduous Russian occupation of his neighbor Afghanistan, and of course the more recent and equally bitter conflict that had almost laid waste to every country from here to Jerusalem. But this was something new. It was something outside his extensive experience, and he was at a loss. And at this point, with three more men dead to add to the sea of dead and dying from the insurgent attack on the base, he was at a point where he almost didn’t care.

With the resignation of a man without options, he raised his voice and gave his next order, “I want all anti-air crews along that border line put on missile-ready status. They are to lock on to any object in range and shoot to kill. Bring our remaining forces onto a patrol run along the outside range of the anti-air platforms missiles and then issue the command.”

He turned to his aide and saw the normally placid man’s harried expression.

“Time to wipe the skies clean, Major Duranda.” he said in a quiet voice, resignedly, “Time to wipe them clean. Now I need you to get hold of the Allied Forces Command in Afghanistan and tell them about the explosions. They seem to be heading across the border so it is their problem now. Oh, and Major, I do not see any need to tell them about our encounter with Pelishar Four at this time. That should be resolved soon enough.”

He turned back to the big screen and braced his hands behind his back. Major Duranda nodded briefly and then spun on his heels and headed out of the room. The general would leave the Americans and Europeans to handle this latest phenomenon. His people had too many wounds to tend to.

* * *

As the remaining fighters disengaged and turned away, Shahim breathed a proverbial sigh of relief. He had no desire to fight any more of these men, any more than they had a desire to die at his hands, no doubt.

The burly warrior settled his fighter’s course to bring him on an intercept path with where he assumed Martin and Jack were flying. On cue with his internal time clock, he saw the B-2’s sixth cruise missile appear on his radar screen with a rapidly vanishing blip. Martin and Jack were clearly not leaving their bomb bays open for long in order to minimize their exposure to detection. But it was long enough to confirm his assessment of their location and he refined his course accordingly.

They saw him coming in and started to fret. It had been a confusing fifteen minutes as the squadron ducked and died on their radar screens, four of its planes seeming to fight with themselves in a spasm of movement that left only one of the four standing. When the two that had stood safely apart from the battle had broken off pursuit, that had been equally confusing. But that still left that sole survivor, and he was now closing in on Jack and Martin. Not on the next pod, and not on the missile they had just launched to destroy it, but on their supposedly invisible plane.

Their radio, silent for so many hours, suddenly spat out a voice, making them both jump.

“Jack, Martin, can you hear me?” said the disembodied voice and they stared at each other, shock turning to curiosity at the voice suddenly coming over their comm.

“That is a tight band,” said Jack to Martin, before opening the comms channel to respond, “that means it is close range. No more than a few miles.” He looked at his radar and realization dawned on him with a smile of overwhelming relief, as he clicked on his own mike and spoke in return, “Good morning, my friend. Agent Shahim, I assume?”

The reply was quick and sounded relieved, “Good morning to you. And please, call me Lord Mantil. I’ve had enough of that other name: it is time it was laid to rest.”

Jack and Martin looked at each other and shrugged, and Jack replied, “Happy to make your acquaintance, Lord Mantil. Well, it looks like we owe you a debt of gratitude. Thank you. What is your status, my friend? Did you sustain damage?”

“No, my plane is undamaged, though that is little consolation. I am sad to say I have just downed three Pakistani pilots to add to my list of crimes. I had hoped to head off more death, but I’m afraid it seems to follow me wherever I go. Anyway, that is in the past now, and they appear to be withdrawing the rest of their fighters.”

Jack confirmed that his radar showed the same thing, and then Lord Mantil, formerly Agent Shahim Al Khazar, suggested their next move. “Looks to me like you’ll have a clear path across the border, gentlemen. But after that we should assume that the Allied forces will come to check you out. No doubt Peshawar is informing them of the situation even now, at least the part about the explosions, and they will want to come see.”

“That had been our assumption. Once they’re in range, I imagine they’ll figure out what we are pretty quickly and then the shit will hit the fan back home. But that said, they should be very hesitant to shoot down an American bomber, even a rogue one, without express permission from the White House, so that will buy us some time. My bigger worry is what happens when we get close to the border with Iran. There is a large Iranian base near Mashhad in northern Iran and they have heavy strike capabilities. We won’t get far past them.”

“Agreed.” said Lord Mantil in return, “but by then you will have taken out nearly a thousand miles worth of the viral pods. You can’t have expected to do much more than that.”

“True, but there are hundreds of thousands of unprotected people there as well, Lord Mantil,” said Jack, somewhat dejectedly. “We have to try and get as far as we can.”

“Very well, Major Toranssen, I won’t try to dissuade you. Goodness knows you are saving more lives than we can yet count,” came the other pilot’s answer across the dawning sky. “But that said, I think it is best that I bid you farewell. I am afraid a rogue Pakistani plane will get an even worse reception in Afghanistan than a rogue US one, and I wouldn’t want to compromise you by accompanying you across the border. I will stay with you a little while longer to make sure the Pakistani air force doesn’t try anything else, and then I will probably head north and take this plane down in the mountains. If I eject late enough they shouldn’t even see that I made it out and I’ll be able to disappear before the army gets to the scene.”

Jack looked distressed. This man, or whatever he was, had just saved their lives, and they were going to leave him to crash land, alone, probably to be hunted like some fugitive. But as he considered trying to talk the Allied forces into letting the other man fly into Afghanistan, he knew that he and Martin were going to have a hard enough time negotiating for their own lives without the specter of a lone rogue fighter pilot on their wing.

Recognizing the wisdom and the selflessness of Shahim’s … Lord Mantil’s actions, Jack was about to wish the other pilot luck when he heard the fighter’s alarms sound through the radio. Shit! That sounded like missile lock.

“What is tha …” Jack began into the radio, but was cutoff by Shahim.

“I have been locked on by ground-based air defenses, Major, they must have been given the green light to launch on me. I am a sitting duck up here. That explains why the other fighters pulled back. Listen, I haven’t much time. I have to pull away from you or they may pick up your jet stream and take you out as well.” There was a brief hesitation as the alarm changed, registering launches now. Jack and Martin saw it too, four blips appearing below them as the missiles began their climb to intercept Shahim’s fighter. But the warrior had one more comment before he left.

“Before I go,” Lord Mantil said, “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Jack and Martin both spoke at once, “Sorry for what!” they both exclaimed.

“Sorry for bringing this all down on you. Sorry for coming here and starting this war … Sorry for all the death I have brought with me.” Martin and Jack tried to speak but the Agent did not pause long enough for them to break in, going on to say, “Thank you for trying to save as many as you can, Major, Dr. Sobleski, I am afraid the virus is still going to exact a terrible toll, but at least you tried, and before the week is out, countless men, women, and children will owe their lives to you. This is Commander Mantil, Lord of the Hamprect Empire, Guardian of the Mantilatchi Heartland and Second Arberator of the Orbital, bidding you farewell and good luck.”