Текст книги "Retribution"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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But this wasn’t about Samson. It was about Terence “Ax”

Gibbs. If he worked things out properly, he would arrive in the civilian world just after Florida’s high tourist season.

Prices on charter boats would be reduced, and he would be able to use a small portion of his tidy Air Force nest egg to set himself up as a boat operator.

Tough getting used to all that sun after decades of working indoors, but everyone needed a challenge, especially in retirement.

Aboard the Abner Read

2200

HAVING OBTAINED THE HARPOONS, STORM ENDEAVORED TO

get into position to use them. He remained on a southerly 188

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course toward the Indian Ocean. The Chinese aircraft carrier Khan, meanwhile, was heading in roughly the same direction, presumably intending to go around the southern tip of India and head home.

In the days when wind powered a sailing ship, a captain had a great deal of autonomy and could easily set a course that would bring him against an enemy; it was how many a master had won the accolades of triumph and treasure. Even a captain in the early Cold War era often had leeway to sail more or less where he pleased; there was simply no way for the admirals to keep complete track of him.

But Storm belonged to a different time.

“Why is your course paralleling the Khan’s?” demanded Admiral Woods over the secure link.

“We’re just remaining in a position to be of use if necessary,” said Storm.

“The Decatur is more than prepared to do the job,” said Woods. “The Los Angeles will meet it near Ceylon. Together they will trail it to its home port. You are to proceed to resupply.”

“I have resupplied,” said Storm. “I have Harpoon missiles and my ship is ready for combat.”

“Where did you get the missiles?”

“Dreamland gave them to me,” he said.

The admiral’s face turned even redder.

“We don’t have a full complement, but I have more than enough to sink the Khan, ” said Storm.

“You will not sink the Khan. Storm, have you lost your mind?”

“I meant—”

“Let me talk to your executive officer.”

“But—”

“Now!”

Storm felt his legs tremble beneath the small desk where he was sitting. He knew the video camera was showing Woods everything he was doing, so he moved as deliberately as possible, picking up the handset on his desk and calmly RETRIBUTION

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asking Eyes to his cabin. When he returned the phone to its cradle, he looked at the screen, trying to narrow his eyes in a show of concentration and sincerity. It wasn’t a lie; he was being both focused and forthright. But he wanted his face to match what he felt.

“Admiral,” said Storm, “let me make my case. I simply want to be nearby if—”

“There is no case to be made, Storm. No ifs. No anything.

Your ship is not to engage the Khan.”

“I’m talking about making sure the Khan leaves the area without being a threat,” said Storm.

“Flight operations from the Khan have stopped. They are no longer capable of even providing their own air cover,” said Woods. “I am not going to risk an international incident with them.”

“They’ve already shot at our planes.”

“Not in two days. And for all we know, Bastian egged them on,” said Woods. “Is that why he gave you the missiles?

Are you two trying to start a war?”

“That’s unfair. We carried out orders—”

“Then carry out these.”

Storm clamped his teeth together, knowing that if he said one word he’d say a dozen, and if he said a dozen he’d say a hundred, each an expletive.

There was a knock at the cabin door. Storm got up and opened it.

“You wanted to see me?” Eyes asked.

Storm pointed to the video screen. Looking a bit bewil-dered, the executive officer sat down in Storm’s extra chair.

“Lieutenant Commander Eisenberg,” said Admiral Woods.

“If Captain Gale makes an aggressive move toward the Chinese aircraft carrier Khan, you are to immediately relieve him of command. Is that understood?”

“I, well, uh—”

“Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“These are your orders, gentlemen. Since you have found a 190

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way to resupply and do not wish to rest, you are to sail to the area of the Cherbani Reef and act as a picket ship for any of our vessels moving toward the Lincoln task group. You are to go no farther south than twelve degrees longitude, and you are not to engage any ship—Indian or Chinese—without my explicit permission. Under any circumstances. Is that understood?”

“What if we’re fired on?” blurted Storm.

“Then you badly screwed up.”

“I have to be able to defend myself.”

“You better not be in a position where you need to.”

Eyes glanced at Storm. “Admiral, I’m not sure—”

“What is it that you’re unsure of, Commander? Following orders?”

“I can follow orders, Admiral.”

“Then do it.”

The picture dissolved into black.

Southeastern Pakistan

2200

SERGEANT LIU BELIEVED THE MAN WAS TELLING THE TRUTH, but he’d learned long ago that belief and reality were sometimes different things. He pulled the car off the road a half mile from the man’s house and sent Blow and Sergeant Kurt Jones up the road to check out the house. Ten minutes later Jonesy checked in over the short-range Whiplash channel.

“House is clear—this lady is about to drop an egg any second, Liu. Better get the mojo on.”

Jones hadn’t been exaggerating. By the time Liu and her husband got inside, the woman’s grunts were shaking the small two-room house. The only illumination came from a small kerosene lantern on a dresser set at the side of the room.

Jonesy’s flashlight, shined on the small bed where the wife was giving birth. “I can see the head, Sarge. A lot of hair,” he added. “I think Blow’s the dad.”

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“Har har.”

Liu set down his medical bag and dropped to his knees. As he did, the baby’s head and upper torso appeared, along with a gush of meconium, the greenish liquid waste and birth flu-ids. The baby’s eyebrows appeared, then disappeared as the mother’s contractions starting to tug it back inside.

“You have to stay with us, little one,” said Liu, starting to grab for the newborn.

Just as he got his hands down, the mother’s body gave one last shudder. Her new son slid out into Liu’s arms. Jones reached in and cut the cord with his knife.

“Towels, swabs—we got to clean his face. Can’t let him eat this crap,” said Liu, cradling the infant in his arm so he could wipe the meconium from the infant’s mouth.

“It’s turning blue, Nurse,” said Blow, pointing as he handed over a towel.

The baby wasn’t breathing. Liu gave the child a gentle smack, but that didn’t seem to have an effect. He placed it down on the floor, bending over to try mouth-to-mouth re-suscitation.

As he did, the father began to scream and started pounding Liu on the back. Blow grabbed him and threw him against the wall. Then the mother started to scream too. Jonesy dropped down to hold her arms.

The only people in the room who were quiet were the baby and Liu. The sergeant struggled to get the infant to breathe.

The infant seemed to gasp, but then gave up. The sergeant kept trying.

“Come on, kid!” shouted Blow.

“Let me try, Sarge,” said Jonesy.

Liu ignored them, working steadily though he was starting to give up hope.

The baby’s heart wasn’t beating. He started CPR.

“I’ll respirate,” said Blow, dropping down beside him.

They worked together, desperate, for more than ten minutes, long past the point that there was any chance of the baby surviving. Finally, tears streaming from his eyes, Liu 192

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put his hand out to Blow, signaling that it was time to stop.

He looked up at the father, who shrieked and ran from the room.

“Damn,” said Blow, jumping up to get him.

Just as he reached the door, automatic rifle fire lit up the front of the house.

Aboard Dreamland Bennett,

over Pakistan

2255

DOG LOOKED AT THE LATEST PROJECTIONS OF WHERE THE

remaining missiles had landed. There was just too much territory to cover.

“You’re going to have to narrow this down, Ray,” he told the scientist. “You’re including Afghanistan and half of China.”

“That’s an exaggeration, Colonel,” said Rubeo.

“Not by much.”

“We’re working on it. We have a theory on the solenoid valves. We think that rather than surviving the T-Rays, some of them may have locked the engines open. Ms. Gleason is still gathering data.”

Dog frowned but said nothing.

“If we could find a second missile and examine it, we could narrow the projections down considerably.”

“Is there any projection you’re surest of?” Dog asked.

“Statistically, they’re all the same,” said Rubeo. “But there is one where the geography makes the search easiest. Unfortunately, it’s the farthest from the U-2’s present track.

“Then we’ll take it,” said Dog.

“It is I-20, northeast of Siakor on the border.”

Dog looked at the long finger marked on the map as the search area. It was at the extreme southeastern end of Pakistan, roughly 450 miles from the base camp Danny and the Marines were using in the desert.

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“Colonel, has Major Catsman had a chance to speak to you about General Samson?” said Rubeo.

“I’m sorry, I haven’t had a chance to talk to Major Catsman about that. I assume you’ve heard he’s replacing General Magnus.”

“That’s not exactly how it’s going to work,” said Rubeo.

“He’s here. For the duration.”

“The duration?”

“It’s not going to be like the arrangement with Magnus.

He’s taking over your job, Colonel. They’re going back to the arrangement that existed under Brad Elliott.”

Dog wasn’t surprised. Under ordinary circumstances, a base the size of Dreamland—let alone one of its importance—would be run by a general, not a lieutenant colonel.

When he’d been assigned, everyone assumed he was there to close the place down.

Everyone except him. He’d fought for the Whiplash concept—a fighting force working closely with the developers of cutting-edge technology. The idea had proven itself long ago.

And now the bureaucracy was catching up, folding Dreamland back into the regular hierarchy.

It was going to be a tough transition for a lot of people.

Including himself.

“General Samson was making a distraction of himself in Dreamland Command,” continued Rubeo. “I nearly had him removed.”

“You what?”

“I can give you the entire sordid tale if you wish, Colonel, but I assume you have better things to do. In any event, it’s irrelevant. I’ll be handing in my resignation at the end of this mission.”

“What?”

“Yes, Colonel. It’s been a pleasure working with you too.”

“Ray—”

“You’ll excuse me, Colonel. I have work to attend to.”

The screen blanked. Dog stared at the black space on the 194

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dash in disbelief for nearly a full minute before turning to Sullivan and telling him to prepare for the course change.

Southeastern Pakistan

2255

STRUCK POINT-BLANK IN THE CHEST BY THE BULLETS, Blow fell back into the room. Liu scrambled to pull his Beretta from its holster and get out of the line of fire at the same time. A barrel appeared, then flashed. Liu brought up his pistol and began to fire. Before he realized it, he’d emptied the magazine into the Pakistani father.

Jones and Blow had both been shot by the father. Fortunately, they were wearing lightweight Dreamland body armor. Blow’s left ribs had been seriously bruised and possibly broken, but otherwise he was not seriously wounded. Jones had taken two bullets in the side, where neither did any damage; a ricochet had splintered some wood, which flew into his arm, cutting him, but that was the extent of his injuries.

The same could not be said for the Pakistani’s wife. Two of her husband’s bullets had struck her in the face, and another hit her heart. Any one of the wounds would have been fatal.

“This sucks,” groaned Jones. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. We were helping them, damn it.”

Liu paced the small room, not quite in a state of shock but not quite in full control of his senses either. The kerosene lamp flickered, casting its dim yellow shadows around the wretched scene. The dead infant lay nearby, its body splattered with blood as well as the green meconium it had been bathed in at birth. Blow had loosened his vest and was gingerly touching his side.

Jones suddenly rushed at the dead man and began kicking him. “You jackass. We didn’t kill your son. We were trying to help him.”

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Liu grabbed him and pulled him out into the night. “It wasn’t our fault,” he said to Jones. “It wasn’t.”

“This sucks,” said Jones again. And then he started to cry.

DANNY LISTENED GRIMLY AS LIU RECOUNTED WHAT HAD

happened over the radio.

“Should we bury the bodies?” Liu asked.

“No,” said Danny. “Use the smart helmets to take as much video of the scene as possible. Leave things the way you found them. Leave the car. Come back by foot.”

“Take us about forty minutes, Cap.”

“Make it thirty. We’re just about ready to leave.”

Aboard Dreamland Bennett,

over Pakistan

2310

DOG HAD NEVER HEARD DANNY’S VOICE TREMBLE BEFORE.

“I take full responsibility for what happened, Colonel. I should never have sent them.”

“It was a tough call,” said Dog, not knowing what else to say.

“They’re on their way back now. They videotaped the scene.

I told them to leave it the way it was,” said Danny. “They’re pretty broken up. I’ll evac them as soon as I get a chance.”

“We have to inform Admiral Woods,” said Dog.

“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 him -

self 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.

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“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.”

V

Long Day’s Night

Aboard Dreamland Bennett,

over Pakistan

2315

THE 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 Solo-viev 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.

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“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 RETRIBUTION

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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.”

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“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.”

STARSHIP STRUGGLED TO REMAIN FOCUSED ON THE FLIGHT-hawk 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.

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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.

“MISSILE 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.

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“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.”

STARSHIP WALKED THE FLIGHTHAWK 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.

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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

THE CHOKING SOUND SHOOK ZEN 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.

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Aboard Dreamland Bennett,

over Pakistan

2320

“HAVING TROUBLE LOCKING ON THAT LAST MISSILE, COLOnel. 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.”

“Missile five is down. Missile six is closing to ten miles.”

Dog’s turn slowed the Megafortress, but even had he been going in a straight line, there was no chance of outrunning the remaining enemy missile. At 1,400 knots, it was traveling more than twenty miles a minute.

“Stinger ready,” said Sullivan, breathing hard.

“Arm autodefense,” Dog told him.

“Stinger autodefense.”

The sky flashed white.

“Our Anaconda took down the last missile,” said Rager.

“Wow.”

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Brian Daly, who’d been silently manning the ground radar station during the entire incident, let out a whoop.

“All right, guys,” Dog told them. “We still have two more aircraft to worry about. Let’s stay on our game.”

STARSHIP SURVEYED THE AREA OF THE CRASH, THE VIDEO

camera in the nose of the Flighthawk recording the roughly two-mile swath where the missile had crashed. He could make a reasonable guess about what had happened. The missile had scraped against the side of the mountain peak, slammed across the second, causing an avalanche, and then landed—in pieces—on the small plain in front of him.

But where was the warhead? The debris trail petered out at the edge of a solid plain.

He’d already pulled his nose up when he realized that the plain wasn’t a plain at all—it was a small lake.

He also realized something else—people were crouched at the far end, watching the Flighthawk as it zipped by.

They weren’t just admiring the black shape as it sailed past the full moon either. Something flared from the ground as he passed—a shoulder-launched missile, aimed not at the U/MF, but at the Megafortress almost directly above.

“STINGER MISSILE!” SAID SULLIVAN, PRACTICALLY SHRIEKing over the interphone.

“Flares,” said Dog. “Prepare for evasive maneuvers.”

Dog had dealt with shoulder-fired missiles dozens of times before, but even he felt his heart begin to race as the decoys showered behind the Megafortress.

The FIM-92 Stinger shoulder-launched missile was designed as an easy-to-use, no-hassle-to-maintain antiaircraft weapon that could be fired by soldiers in the field with minimal training. There were several variants, but this was almost certainly an original FIM-92A model, the type given to mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan to use against the Russians there, and then later sold to terror groups around the world.

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Once launched, the missile homed in on the heat source its nose sensor had locked onto, flying over the speed of sound and able to climb to about three miles. At 2.2 pounds, its explosive warhead was relatively small, but nonetheless deadly.