Текст книги "End Game"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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The computer buzzed a warning:

DETECTED. BEING TARGETED.

Stewart sensed her copilot’s smirk. If only it had been Jazz, or anyone other than Breanna Stockard.

“Defense—evade—ah, shit,” Stewart said, temporarily flustered.

ENEMY LASER LOCKED.

END GAME

61

“ECMs,” said Stewart, back in control. “Evasive maneuvers. Hold on.”

“ECMs,” acknowledged Breanna.

Stewart banked hard and nailed the throttle to the last stop, trying to pirouette away from the laser targeting them.

Her efforts were not in vain—the airborne antiaircraft laser fired and missed by about fifty yards. But the respite was brief. The EB-52 couldn’t rebuild momentum quickly enough, and the laser recycled and sent a full blast at the cockpit. Several thousand joules of energy—simulated—struck the ship just aft of the pilots’ station. The blast fused the satellite antenna and blew out the assorted electrical circuits, as well as punching a six-inch-wide hole across the top of the fuselage. The emergency panel in front of the pilots lit up like a Christmas tree, and alarms sounded throughout the aircraft. Ten seconds later a second salvo burned a hole through the metal covering the fuel bag immediately behind the wings. The temperature in the fuel de-livery piping increased tenfold in an instant, and an explosion ripped across the plane’s backbone.

“We’re dead,” said Breanna.

Stewart leveled off silently, easing back on the thrust as Breanna called the test range coordinator to acknowledge that they’d been wiped out.

“Roger that,” said the coordinator. “Got you on that second blast. Good work.”

“You want another run?”

“Negative. We’ve got plenty of data. Thank you very much.”

“Pleasure is ours,” said Breanna.

Stewart ground her back molars together, stifling a scream. She took the Megafortress up through eight thousand feet, circling at the eastern end of the range before contacting the control tower for permission to land.

“Tower to EB-52 Test Run, you’re cleared to land.

What’s wrong? Didn’t you have your Wheaties today?”

“Test Run,” snapped Stewart, acknowledging the clear-

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ance but not the sarcasm. The controller chortled as he gave her information about the wind, rubbing in the fact that she’d just had her clock cleaned by a pair of robots in a blimp and an ancient C-130.

“YOU’RE GETTING BETTER,” SAID BREANNA AS STEWART

rolled toward the hangar bunker.

“Don’t give me that, Stockard. I really don’t need a pep talk from you. I got toasted.”

“The purpose of the exercise was to get toasted. We’re just guinea pigs.”

“I could have made it past the ridge if you hadn’t made me pull up,” said Stewart angrily. “I had plenty of clearance.”

“The computer would have taken over for you if you hadn’t pulled back on the stick.”

“The safety protocols are too conservative.”

“Why are you so touchy? It’s only a test. Nobody’s keeping score. If we’d gotten through on that pass we would have had to take another run anyway.”

“I could have made it,” insisted Stewart, powering down at the signal from the crewman outside.

Breanna sighed, and pretended to busy herself with the postflight checklist. She’d had Stewart fly as pilot to give her more experience behind the stick, not to show her up.

Stewart had the qualifications to be a lead pilot, but so far she just wasn’t hacking it. Hopefully it would come in time.

If her personality let it.

“Hey, Bree, Dog’s looking for you,” said Danny Freah, sticking his head up at the rear of the cockpit area.

“What’s up?”

“We’re moving out. You’ll never guess where.”

“Mars.”

“I wish. Going back to the Gulf of Aden. We’re going to work with Xray Pop and the infamous Captain Storm. Hey, Stewart, you’re invited too. Looks like your first Whiplash deployment is about to begin.”

END GAME

63

“Great,” said Stewart, her tone suggesting the opposite.

“Newbies buy.”

“Screw yourself, Captain.”

“What’s buggin’ her?” said Danny after the pilot left the plane.

“Doesn’t like to buy,” said Breanna.

BY THE TIME BREANNA AND DANNY GOT TO CONFERENCE

Room 2 in the Taj Mahal, Colonel Bastian had started the briefing. A large map at the front of the room showed northeastern Africa, the Gulf of Aden, and part of the nearby Indian Ocean. Somalia sat like a large, misshapen 7 wrapped around the northern and eastern shores of the continent.

During its last deployment, the Dreamland Whiplash team and the Megafortresses supporting it had seen action on land and above the sea at the north, where the Gulf of Aden separated Africa from the Saudi peninsula. Today, the eastern shore of the war-torn country was highlighted, with a large X near the town of Hando on the Indian Ocean.

“I’m going to start by giving you all some background on political situation here,” said the colonel. “As many of you already know, pirates have been roaming the Gulf of Aden for nearly a year. They’ve been taking advantage of trouble elsewhere—specifically in the Balkans, in the Philippines, Japan, and Taiwan—to prey on oil tankers and other merchant ships traveling through the gulf.”

“While the cat’s away, the mice do play,” said Major Mack Smith down in front. He turned around, smiling for everyone behind him, as if he were in junior high and had just made the most clever statement in the world.

“The Navy sent a small warship called the Abner Read into the gulf a few months ago,” continued Dog, ignoring Smith. “Some of us supported them. We won a major victory against the strongest group of pirates two months ago.

Things have been relatively calm since, with some sporadic attacks but nothing on the order of what we’d seen before.

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Yesterday, however, there was a major attack on Port Somalia, an oil terminal that has just been opened by the Indians.

The Indians are blaming Pakistan and are threatening to retaliate. That’s not sitting too well with the Pakistanis, who say they had nothing to do with this attack. Both countries have nuclear weapons. Our satellites have detected preparations at the major Indian ballistic missile launching area and at its Pakistani counterpart.”

“Saber rattling,” said Mack.

“Our immediate mission is to beef up Xray Pop, the task force that the Abner Read heads. We’re going to help it figure out who’s behind the attack. We’re also going there to show both sides just how serious a matter this is.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers—” said Mack.

“Thank you, Major, but I can do without the running commentary,” said Dog. “We will be under the operational command of Xray Pop’s commander, Captain ‘Storm’

Gale. A lovely fellow.”

Everyone who had been on the last deployment snickered.

Dog turned to the projection behind him, using a laser pointer to highlight an X on the eastern coast of Somalia at the north.

“This is Port Somalia. It’s an oil terminal, the end point for a pipeline the Indians have paid to be built to deliver oil from northern Somalia and the Gulf of Aden. It’s part of an ambitious network that they are constructing that will give them access to oil from the entire Horn of Africa, all the way back to the Sudan. A second port is planned to open farther south later this year.”

The colonel clicked the remote control he had in his left hand and a new map appeared on the screen behind him. India sat at the right, Somalia on the left. The Arabian Sea, an arm of the Indian Ocean, sat between them. Above Somalia was the Saudi peninsula, with Yemen at the coast. Iran and Pakistan were at the northern shores of the sea, separating India from the Middle East.

END GAME

65

“To give you some idea of the distances involved here,”

said Dog, “it’s roughly fifteen hundred miles from Port Somalia to Mumbai, also known as Bombay, on the coast of India, not quite halfway down the Indian subcontinent.

Three hours flying time, give or take, for a Megafortress, a little less if Lightning Chu is at the controls.”

The pilots at the back laughed. Captain Tommy Chu had earned his new nickname during recent power-plant tests by averaging Mach 1.1 around the test course, defying the engineers’ predictions that the EB-52 could not be flown faster than the speed of sound for a sustained period in level flight.

“Timewise, we are eleven hours behind. When it is noon here, it is 2300 hours in Port Somalia, same time as Mo-gadishu. Problem, Cantor?”

Lieutenant Evan Cantor, one of the new Flighthawk jocks recently cleared for active combat missions, jerked upright in the second row. “Uh, no sir. Just figuring out days.

They’re a half day ahead. Just about.”

“Just about, Lieutenant. But don’t do the math yet. We’ll be based at Drigh Road, the Pakistani naval air base near Karachi. We’ll use Karachi time for reference. That’s thirteen hours ahead. A section of the base has already been cordoned off for us. Problem, Lieutenant Chu?”

“Just trying to figure out how many watches to wear,”

said Chu.

“Why Karachi?” said Breanna.

“Mostly because they won’t object, and they’re relatively close,” said Dog. “But we’ll have to be very, very aware that we’re in an Islamic country, and that our presence may be controversial to some.”

Controversial was putting it mildly. Stirred up by local radicals, civilians near the air base the Dreamland team had used in Saudi Arabia during their last deployment had come close to rioting before the Megafortresses relocated to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

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“We’ll have four Megafortresses: the Wisconsin, our old veteran; and three newcomers, the Levitow, the Fisher, and the Bennett. ”

The choice of the planes was not haphazard; all were radar surveillance planes, with both air and sea capabilities.

Information from the Megafortresses’s radars would be supplied to the Abner Read via a link developed by Dreamland’s computer scientists, giving the small littoral warrior a far-reaching picture of the air and oceans around it. Additionally, an underwater robot probe called Piranha could be controlled from one Flighthawk station on each plane, and special racks and other gear allowed the Megafortresses to drop and use sonar buoys.

“We’ll rotate through twelve-hour shifts, with overlapping patrols, so there are always at least two aircraft on station at any one time,” continued Colonel Bastian.

“Lieutenant Chu has worked up some of the patrol details, and I’ll let him go into the specifics. We’re to be in the air as soon as possible; no later than 1600.”

The trip would have been long enough if they’d been able to fly in a straight line—somewhere over nine thousand miles. But political considerations forced them to skirt Iran and Russia, adding to the journey.

“I believe everyone knows everyone else on the deployment. The one exception may be Major Mack Smith, who’s back with us after a working vacation in the Pacific. Mack has been pinch-hitting for Major Stockard while he’s on medical leave for a few weeks, and he’ll continue to head the Flighthawk squadron during the deployment.”

Mack, ever the showoff, turned and gave a wave to the pilots behind him.

Though he’d helped develop the Flighthawks, he had extremely little time flying them. That wasn’t a serious defi-ciency handling the odd piece of paperwork at Dreamland, where Zen was only a phone call away; it remained to be seen what would happen in the field.

“One question, Colonel,” said Danny Freah, whose END GAME

67

Whiplash team would provide security at the base. “How long are we going to be there?”

Dog’s mouth tightened at the corners—a sign, Breanna knew, that he was about to say something unpopular. “As long as it takes.”

Las Vegas University of Medicine,

Las Vegas, Nevada

1200

“I’LL JUST SAY I CAN’T GO.”

“No way. You can’t do that.”

“Sure I can do that. You’re my husband.”

“Yeah, I do seem to remember a ceremony somewhere.”

Zen laughed. The two nurses at the other end of the room looked over and gave him embarrassed smiles.

“Jeff—”

“No, listen Bree, it’s fine. Things are going great here. I still can’t eat anything, but other than that, I’m in great shape. I may even go for a walk later.”

“Don’t joke.”

“I’m not joking. It was a figure of speech.” Zen pulled his gown primly closer to his legs. When the phone call was finished, he’d go back facedown on the bed butt naked, but somehow it felt important to preserve what modesty he could.

“The operation was OK?”

“Bing-bing-bing. Didn’t feel anything. Laser looked pretty cool. The nurse are great,” he added. “I won’t describe them or you’ll get jealous.”

The women—neither of whom was under fifty—blushed.

“I love you, Jeff.”

“I love you too, Bree. Take care of yourself, all right?”

“You’re sure?”

“Shit yeah.”

“I’ll call.”

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“Call when you can.”

“Jeff?”

“Yup?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Southeastern Iran,

near the coast

8 January 1998

1312

CAPTAIN SATTARI’S KNEE, BRUISED IN THE RECENT ACTION AT

Port Somalia, started to give way as he climbed from the back of the Mercedes. He grabbed hold of the door to steady himself, pretending to admire the splendor of the private villa three miles east of Chah Bahar on Iran’s southern coast. Being thirty-nine meant the little tweaks and twists took longer to get over.

The villa was something to admire; its white marble pillars harked back to the greatness of the Persian past, and its proud, colorful red tower stood in marked contrast to the dullness that had descended over much of the land in the wake of the mullahs’ extreme puritanism. Jaamsheed Pevars had bought the house before he became the country’s oil minister. He was one of new upper class, a man who had earned his money under the black robes and thus owed them some allegiance. A decade before the small company he owned had won a contract to inspect oil tankers for safety violations before they entered Iranian waters. Inspection was mandatory, as was the thousand dollar fee, only half of which went to the government.

“Captain?” asked Sergeant Ibn, getting out from the other side.

“Impressive view.”

Sattari shrugged off his knee’s complaints, and the men walked up the stone-chipped path that led to the front door.

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A servant met them, bowing with the proper respect before leading them through the portico out into a garden where his host was waiting.

“Captain Sattari,” said Jaamsheed Pevars, rising as they entered. “I greet you on your great success.”

As Sattari started to take his hand, he saw Pevars was not alone. The captain immediately stiffened; visitors generally meant trouble, usually from the imams who were constantly demanding more progress. But the man with his back to him was not one of the black robes. As he turned, Sattari was startled to see it was his father. Smiling broadly, General Mansour Sattari clasped the younger man to his chest.

“Congratulations on your success,” said the general.

“Thank you, sir. Thank you.”

“And Sergeant Ibn. How are you?”

“Fine, General. Happy to see you.”

“And I you. Are you watching over my son?”

“The captain needs no one to oversee him.”

The general beamed. A servant came with sparkling water, setting down a large glass for the visitors.

“A great success,” Pevars said. “You have proven the concept. Now it is time to push the Indians further.”

“We are prepared.”

“Are you?” said the oil minister. “There have been questions.”

“Questions?” said Sattari. He glanced at his father. Was that why he was here? Did the general doubt his own son?

“Some of the black robes are demanding a return on the investment,” said Pevars. “The price of oil has sunk so quickly lately that they are becoming concerned. The timetable—”

“We’re completely ready.”

“The sooner you can press the attacks and instigate the conflict, the better,” added Pevars. “The commodities market shrugged off the attack.”

“They will not be able to ignore the next one.”

“My son is wondering why I am here,” the general told 70

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

Pevars. “And I should explain to him. Some of the imams in the council want to make sure the Indians are punished. And they want the war between the Indians and Pakistan to show that the Chinese cannot be trusted.”

“I can’t guarantee a war,” said Sattari. “The idea was to affect oil prices, not start a war. I have only a small force, four small aircraft and one large one, all primarily transports. I have one old ship, a hulk that just today we have covered with new paint. My four midget submarines are useful as transports but carry no weapons besides what a man can hold. I have thirty-six commandos. All brave men, all ready to die for Allah and Iran. That is the sum of my force.”

“You were chased by the Americans,” said his father.

“Yes. They complicated our escape.”

The Americans were a great enemy of Sattari’s father. A year before, a small force of commandos and aircraft had attacked one of the general’s installations in the North, destroying a secret antiaircraft laser he had developed. The strike had lessened his influence in the government; naturally, he wanted revenge.

“There was a rumor that you ran from them,” said Pevars.

“Who said that?”

“One of the black robes,” said his father.

So that was what this was about. Sattari guessed that the imam had a spy aboard the Mitra who had radioed back a report of the action before they reached port.

To be called a coward after the success of his mission!

That was typical of those fellows. It was a favorite tactic, to tear down everyone else.

But did his father think he was a coward? That was an entirely different matter.

“I did not run,” Sattari said. “Exposing our force would have been idiocy. Worse than cowardice.”

“I’m sure,” said the general. “Do not let lies depress you.”

“I won’t.”

END GAME

71

“Some sweets,” said the oil minister. He clapped his hands for the servant.

Aboard the Abner Read , off the coast of Somalia

1538

“WHAT DO YOU HAVE FOR ME, AIRFORCE?” ASKED STORM AS

Starship stepped onto the bridge.

“I was hoping I might have a word in private.”

“This is private enough,” said Storm, glancing around the bridge. There were only two other men on the bridge, one manning the wheel and the other the bridge navigation system. But as far as Storm was concerned, the entire ship’s company could be here. He expected everyone aboard to show discretion where it was appropriate, but otherwise there was no place for secrets. The Abner Read was a small vessel. Everyone eventually ended up knowing everyone’s business anyway.

“Captain, I was going to ask, considering that we now have two other men trained to handle the Werewolf, and that the Dreamland people are going to be based at Karachi—”

“You angling to leave us, mister?”

“I was thinking I might be more useful working with the Whiplash ground team, providing security. They can’t deploy the Werewolves there without another pilot because of commitments at the base.”

“Request denied. We need you out here, Airforce. You’re the only pilot worth a shit on this ship.”

The young man’s face shaded red.

“Don’t thank me,” added Storm. “Just do your job.”

“Yes, sir.”

Starship snapped off a quick, confused salute and left.

Storm went back to studying the holographic display. They 72

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

were two miles north of ’Abd Al-K¯ur¯ı, an island off the tip of Somalia. The submarine they had chased the other night had not reappeared. Nor, for that matter, had the guerrillas.

The intelligence people back in Washington had no idea who had launched the attack. The Indians were blaming the Pakistanis, but as far as anyone could tell, they had no evidence except for decades’ worth of animosities. Storm—who also had no evidence beyond the faint submarine contact—thought the Chinese were behind it. They were rivals for dominance of Asia, and it was possible they wanted to tweak the Indians’ noses while the world was preoccu-pied elsewhere.

“Eyes, what’s the status of the Dreamland patrols?”

“Due to start at 1800 hours. Looks like your old friend Colonel Bastian is taking the first patrol himself.”

Storm gritted his teeth. Bastian had proven himself a decent pilot and a good commander, but he was also a jerk.

Better that than the other way around, though.

“Have them report to me as soon as possible,” Storm said.

“Aye, Skipper. The Indian destroyer Calcutta is about a hundred miles east of Port Somalia. They should reach it in three or four hours. I thought we might send the Werewolf down to greet them. Let them know we’re here.”

“If the circumstances allow, be my guest.”

Aboard the Wisconsin,

taking off from Drigh Road,

Pakistani naval air base

1600

COLONEL BASTIAN PUT HIS HAND ON THE THROTTLE GLIDE

and brought the engines up to full takeoff power. The Megafortress rolled forward, quickly gaining momentum.

As the plane touched 200 knots, the flight computer gave Dog a cue to rotate or pull the nose of the aircraft upward.

END GAME

73

He did so, pushing the plane up sharply to minimize the noise for the surrounding area, much the same way a 747 or similar jet would when taking off from an urban area.

Passing through three thousand feet, the colonel trimmed the aircraft and began flying her like a warplane rather than an airliner trying to be a good neighbor. His copilot, Lieutenant Sergio “Jazz” Jackson, had already checked the systems; everything was in the green.

The ocean spread itself out before the aircraft as Dog banked the Megafortress westward. A cluster of small boats floated near the port; a pair of freighters chugged slowly away. A Pakistani gunboat sailed to the south, its course marked by a white curve cut into the blue paper of the sea.

Starting with his copilot, Dog checked with the crew members to make sure the computer’s impressions of the aircraft jibed with their experience. Immediately behind the two pilots on the flight deck, two radar operators manned a series of panels against each side of the fuselage. The specialist on the right, Sergeant Peter “Dish” Mallack, handled surface contacts; the operator on the left, Technical Sergeant Thomas “T-Bone” Boone, watched aircraft.

The Megafortress’s array of radars allowed it to “see”

aircraft hundreds of miles away. The actual distance depended on several factors, most of all the radar cross section of the targeted aircraft. Under the right conditions, an airliner might be seen four hundred nautical miles away; a stealthy F-22, shaped specifically to avoid radar, could generally get well inside one hundred before being spotted.

MiG-29s and Su-27s, the Russian-made fighters common in the area, could reliably be detected at two hundred nautical miles.

The surface search was handled by a radar set developed from the Nordon APY-3 used in the JSTARS battlefield surveillance and control aircraft. Again, its range depended on conditions. An older destroyer could be spotted at roughly two hundred miles; very small boats and stealthy 74

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

ships like the Abner Read were nearly invisible even at fifty miles under most circumstances. A radar designed for finding periscopes in rough seas had been added to the mission set; an extended periscope from a Kilo-class submarine could be seen at about twenty miles under the best conditions.

Downstairs from the flight deck, in the compartment where the navigator and bombardier would have sat in a traditional B-52, Cantor was preparing to launch the aircraft’s two Flighthawk U/MF-3 robot aircraft. The unmanned aerial vehicles could stray roughly twenty miles from their mother ship, providing air cover as well as the ability to closely inspect and attack surface targets if necessary.

The Flighthawks were flown with the help of a sophisticated computer system known as C3. The aircraft contained their own onboard units, which could execute a number of maneuvers on their own. In theory, a Flighthawk pilot could handle two aircraft at a time, though newer pilots generally had to prove themselves in combat with one first.

The Megafortress carried four Harpoon antiship missiles and four antiaircraft AMRAAM-plus Scorpion missiles on a rotating dispenser in the bomb bay. A four-pack of sonar buoys was installed on special racks at each wingtip.

“How are you doing, Cantor?” Dog asked.

“Just fine, Colonel.”

“How’s your pupil?”

“Um, Major Smith is, um, learning, sir.”

“I’ll bet,” said Dog.

“I’m good to go here, Colonel,” said Smith. “Everything is rock solid.”

“That’s good to hear, Mack. Don’t give Cantor any problems.”

“Problems? Why would I do that?”

Dog was too busy laughing to answer.

END GAME

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Indian Ocean

2000

THE TORPEDO WAS NOT A GOOD FIT. AT 4.7 METERS LONG—roughly fourteen feet—it just barely fit beneath the smooth round belly of the Sparrow. More importantly, at roughly seven hundred kilograms—a touch over fifteen hundred pounds—it represented nearly twice the aircraft’s rated payload, making the plane too heavy to take off with full fuel tanks.

But the limitations of the small, Russian-made seaplane were almost assets. For the Sparrow could “fly” across the waves at a hundred knots on a calm night like this, approaching its target at two or three times the speed of a conventional torpedo boat or small patrol boat, while being quite a bit harder to detect than a conventional aircraft.

When in range, about ten kilometers, it could fire the weapon, and then, considerably lighter, take to the sky and get away.

Which was the plan.

“Target is now fifty kilometers away,” said the copilot.

Their target, an oil tanker bound for India, was being tracked by the largest aircraft under Sattari’s command, an ancient but serviceable A-40 Beriev seaplane sold as surplus by the Russians some years before. The aircraft had just passed overhead at eighteen thousand feet, flying a course generally taken by a transport to India from Greece.

“Begin turn to target in ten seconds.”

Captain Sattari grunted. He was still angry over the meeting with the oil minister and his father earlier—so mad, in fact, that he had bumped the pilot from the mission and taken it himself. Not because he felt he needed to prove his courage or ability, but to help him master his rage.

Flying had always helped him in this way. It had nothing to do with the romance of the wind lifting you into the sky. No, what settled Sattari was the need for concentration, the utter surrender of your mind and senses to the job at hand. Plan-

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ning the mission, checking the plan, then flying it as precisely as possible—the process freed him, chasing the demons of anger and envy and frustration from his back, where they hovered.

“The A-40 reports that there is a warship south of the tanker,” reported the copilot. “Heading northward—three miles south of him. An Indian destroyer.”

A destroyer?

“Are they sure it’s Indian?”

“They’ve overheard transmissions.”

The tanker was a more important target, but if the black robes wanted to provoke a war, striking a destroyer would certainly make them angrier.

And no one could call him a coward then.

“Compute a new course,” said Sattari. “See if it’s possible to strike the destroyer if we use the tanker as a screen.

We can always drop back to our original prey.”

Aboard the Wisconsin , over the Gulf of Aden

2010

“MIGS ARE SCRAMBLING OFF THE NEW FIELD AT AL GHAYDA,”

T-Bone warned Colonel Bastian. “Two aircraft, MiG-29s.

Just about one hundred miles from us, Colonel.”

“Mack, Cantor, you hear that?”

“Roger that, Colonel. We’ll meet them.”

Dog keyed in the Dreamland communications channel to alert the Abner Read.

“Abner Read, this is Wisconsin. We have two MiG-29s coming off an airfield in Yemen. We expect them to be heading in our direction.”

“Bastian, this is Storm. What are you doing?”

“Minding our p’s and q’s, Captain. As normal.”

The Navy commander snorted. “Are you where you’re supposed to be?”

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Dog fought the urge to say something sarcastic, and instead answered that they were on the patrol route agreed to earlier. “I would expect that you can see that on the radar plot we’re providing,” he added. “Is it working?”

“It’s working,” snapped the Navy captain. “What’s with those airplanes?”

“I assume they’re coming to check us out. The Yemenis gave us quite a bit of trouble when we were out here a few months back.”

“If they get in your way, shoot them down.”

“I may just do that,” said Dog. “Wisconsin out.”

“Sounded kind of cranky,” said Jazz.

“Most pleasant conversation I’ve ever had with him,”

Dog told his copilot.

CANTOR GLANCED AT THE SITREP PANEL IN THE LOWER LEFT-hand corner of his screen, making sure the Flighthawks were positioned properly for the intercept.

“Fifty miles and closing,” Cantor told Mack. “Weapons radar is off.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” said Mack. “You’re lagging behind me, cowboy.”

“We’re going to do this like we rehearsed,” said Cantor.

“I’m going to swing out. You get in their face.”

“Flying wing isn’t the most efficient strategy.”

“We’re not flying F-15s, Major. This is the way Zen teaches it.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’ll work against these bozos,” said Mack.

“I’m just pointing out, it’s not the best strategy to shoot them down.”

“We’re not supposed to fire at them.”

“Hey, don’t bitch to me. Complain to Colonel Bastian.”

I will, thought Cantor. I definitely will.

MACK STEADIED HIS FOREARM ON THE NARROW SHELF IN

front of the control stick, listening as the Wisconsin’s copilot attempted to hail the MiGs. The bogeys were doing 78

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

about 500 knots; with his Flighthawk clocking about 480, they were now about ninety seconds from an intercept.

If he’d been in an F-15 or even an F-16, the MiGs would be toast by now. An F-22– fuggetaboutit. They’d be figments of Allah’s imagination already.

Mack jangled his right leg up and down. Unlike a normal aircraft, the Flighthawk control system did not use pedals; all the inputs came from a single control stick and voice commands. This might be all right for someone like Zen, stuck in a wheelchair, or even Cantor, who’d probably been playing video games since he was born, but not for him. He loved to fly. He had it in his belly and his bones. Pushing buttons and wiggling your wrist just didn’t do it.

“They’re breaking,” said Cantor.