Текст книги "Strike Zone"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“Lieutenant Colonel Bastian,” snapped Cortend.

“Excuse me a second,” said Dog, rising. He turned his attention to Cortend for just a moment as he got up, and by the time he looked back at the door she was gone.

Gone?

Dog walked out into the outer office, past the reception area and then into the hall.

It was empty. The elevator was open.

Hallucination?

No, she’d definitely been here. Somewhere.

Jen would have taken the stairs. She’d seen Cortend’s people or the back of her head, and split.

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Wise move, really. Too bad he couldn’t do that.

Dog walked back to his office. This time he pulled the door closed behind him.

“Sorry about that. Where were we?”

“You are seeing Ms. Gleason, are you not?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“Colonel, let me remind you—”

“I’m not denying that I see her. But for the record, my personal life is my personal life.”

“Ms. Gleason is a civilian employee under your supervision,” said Cortend. “As a matter of law and regulation, it would be possible for her to charge you with sexual harassment.”

“Has she?” said Dog.

“She has not.”

“You don’t really think she’s a spy, do you?” he said, tiring of her games. His voice was considerably more level than he felt.

“I try not to form judgments before I finish my job,” said Cortend. “I understand the situation might be difficult for you.”

“And?”

“I have a number of technical questions that I’d like answered,” said Cortend, completely changing the subject.

Capitulation?

Or another one of her tactics?

“They have to do with compartmented areas, and I need to know what can be broached and what can’t be,” Cortend continued. “If you wish, it can wait until morning.”

She didn’t get up, and it was clear she wouldn’t until he answered the questions.

“I have orders from the President. We’re deploying at 0400.”

If Cortend was impressed, she gave no hint.

“We’ll discuss it informally first,” she told him. “Then I can bring my people in. I want to be careful to delineate the areas, as my report will be read by—”

A knock at the door interrupted her.

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“Come,” said Dog.

Mack Smith opened the door. The major looked a little tired, walking rather than bounding as he normally did. When he saw Cortend he blanched.

“You wanted to see me, Colonel?”

“Yes, come in, Mack. Colonel, this will only take a minute.”

“Of course,” said Cortend, getting up. As she left, she gave Mack the look one might use to dismiss a whipped dog.

“Watch her, Colonel,” said Mack as the door was closed. “She’s evil.”

“I’m sure she’s just doing her job,” Dog said.

“No.”

Mack didn’t offer any other explanation. Dog decided it wasn’t worth pursuing—it was pretty clear that Cortend got off on intimidating people. Smith ordinarily wasn’t easy to intimidate; maybe he’d ask her for some pointers when she came back in.

That would be the day.

“I need a political officer,” Dog told Mack. “A liaison, actually.”

“How’s that?” asked Mack.

“We’re deploying to Brunei, first thing in the morning,” Dog told him. “I’ll go into details if you’re in.

Otherwise, good night.”

“Colonel, is she coming?”

“Colonel Cortend? No. Her investigation’s here.”

“Sign me up,” said Mack, so relieved he looked as if he’d won the lottery.

“We have to leave at 0400.”

“Whatever. I’ll scrub toilets if you need it. Just take me with you.”

Dreamland Personnel Building Two

2105

BY THE TIMEshe got back to her apartment, Jennifer’s hands were shaking so badly that she had trouble with the lock. Inside, she dropped her glass as she filled it with water from the faucet in the kitchenette; fortunately, it was plastic and didn’t break, rebounding instead across the room.

The expression on his face when he saw her—anger and surprise …

Hate?

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No, he couldn’t hate her. He couldn’t.

Did he think she was a traitor? How could he think that?

What had Dog been doing with that she-bitch Cortend? Had he put her up to this?

Dog?

It couldn’t possibly be. There was no way. No way.

But Cortend was in his office.

Of course she was. Dog was the base commander; there were a million reasons for her to be there.

Dog, everyone, thought she was a traitor.

She was just tired, overwrought.

The bitch Cortend was playing with her mind.

Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

She wasn’t a traitor. She wasn’t.

That had to be what they were thinking. Even Dog?

Even him.

The phone rang. Jennifer took a step toward it, then stopped.

What if it was Cortend, asking for more questions?

God no, she told herself. No more. Not tonight.

She let the phone ring until it stopped. As she stared at it, she realized her hand and shirt were wet, and so was the floor, but she couldn’t remember why.

II

Paradise

Negra Brunei Darussalam

(Kingdom of Brunei, Abode of Peace)

9 September 1997

0900

“ACOUPLE OFhours in paradise and already you’re sleeping late,” Zen told Lieutenant Kirk “Starship”

Andrews as the young Flighthawk pilot sat down at the table across from him. Starship’s breakfast tray contained two large cups of coffee and nothing else.

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“My body’s still back in Dreamland,” mumbled Starship.

“You sure it’s not with the hospitality people?” said Lieutenant James “Kick” Colby, the other Flighthawk pilot Zen had taken on the deployment.

“It wants to be,” said Starship.

“Natives are off-limits,” said Zen. “You can look but you cannot touch. Got that? And be careful how you talk to them.”

“How about the State Department liaison?” asked Kick. “She’s hot.”

“Out of your league,” said Zen.

“Mack Smith’s eyeing her already,” said Starship.

“Oh there’s serious competition,” said Kick.

“I’ll take one of the waitress babes,” said Starship, lifting his gaze toward the buffet at the front of the room. Six of the most gorgeous women in Asia stood at attention behind the table. Zen had his back to them, but he could practically feel the warmth of their smiles beaming across the room.

The Dreamland pilots and crew were being housed at a hotel just outside the airfield where they’d set up operations. “Mess” consisted of a lavishly appointed private room—thick tablecloths, hand-woven silk rugs, paint that seemed to contain speckles of gold—on the ground floor of the hotel. The room was part of a restaurant that back in the States would rate four stars—the wine list was a little too restricted to make five.

For breakfast, the Dreamland personnel—crew dogs and officers alike—had sorted through an all-you-can eat array of various meats, cooked-to-order eggs and omelets, a pyramid of exotic fruits, and enough donuts, rolls, and pastries to make a small town diabetic.

Zen had chosen his usual oatmeal and bananas, though he had made a concession to local tastes by sampling the pinkish-green juice. It was sweet, but tomorrow he’d go for the orange.

The coffee, however, was a real keeper. He might have to arrange for a pipeline back home when the mission ended.

“So are all the deployments like this?” asked Kick. He’d come to Dreamland from an assignment as a Hog “driver,” piloting A-10As. The story went that his nickname came from early flight training, when he needed a kick to get going; if so, that need had long since disappeared.

“What do you mean?” asked Zen. “In terms of food?”

“The hotel rooms, the women. Everything.”

“Usually it’s cots and tents,” said Zen. “Brunei’s just a special place.”

Starship and Kick had been with the program only a short time; neither man had logged a hundred hours with the robot aircraft. But Fentress had been the only other pilot with real experience. While the two Page 56

youngsters had their drawbacks, both could handle a single plane reasonably well, and consistently scored high in the simulations and exercises. It was time for them to take the next step.

“Paradise,” mumbled Starship.

“You have a hangover, Lieutenant?” asked Zen.

“Uh, no, sir. Whacked on the time difference, though. My body thinks it’s yesterday.”

“Tomorrow,” said Kick. “Nine o’clock is five o’clock last night tomorrow.”

“Huh?” asked Starship.

“I’ll give you an example. 2200 here is 0600 at Dreamland, same day. 0900 here would be 1700

there—but they’re back a day. So while we’re out on a day patrol, they’re sleeping. 1200 is 2000

yesterday there. Or 2300 in Washington, D.C.”

Starship blinked at him. “You do weather and traffic, too?”

“Fifteen hours’ difference. Would be sixteen, except the States are on Daylight Saving Time,” said Kick.

“You know it’s Saving, not Savings?”

“Eat hardy, gentlemen,” Zen said, pushing away from the table. “We brief at 1000, and we’re in the air at 1300. And watch the alcohol, Starship. Those clubs are not officially sanctioned. No matter what Mack Smith says.”

Brunei IAP, Field Seven

0910

BOSTON SLID HIShand along his M-16A3 and rolled his head on his neck. He figured he didn’t hate guard duty any more than the next guy—but that meant he hated it pretty bad.

From what the others on the Whiplash team were telling him, guard duty was about all he was going to be doing for the next six months. He hoped they were just busting his chops because he was the team nugget, or new guy. He’d clearly drawn the worst assignment—he’d been standing out here since four A.M.local, and had another hour to go.

And when that was over, he wouldn’t be hitting the sack—he was supposed to report to the Whiplash trailer, known as Mobile Command, and get himself educated on the high-tech communications gear they used. Whiplash team members were expected to act as communications specialists during the deployment.

All that SF training, and basically he was a radio operator and a guard dog.

In fact, he wasn’t even a guard dog. The real sentries were high-tech sensor arrays placed at the edge of the field where they were assigned. The arrays were monitored in the trailer (at the moment, Egg Reagan had the con). A special computer screened video, infrared, motion, and sound detectors. Those inputs could be piped into Boston’s Smart Helmet, supplementing the helmet’s own infrared, short-range radar, and optical sensors.

The thing was, the helmet was pretty damn heavy and hot besides. Fortunately, Egg had told him it Page 57

wasn’t necessary to wear it; he’d alert him to any problem. The helmet was clipped to his belt.

Boston wasn’t the only flesh-and-blood sentry. A battalion of Brunei soldiers blocked access to the area Dreamland had been assigned. There was also an honor guard—a mixed unit built around British Gurkhas, a storied unit of foreign troops that had originated in Nepal—which conducted a ceremonial changing of the guard on the apron twenty yards away every fifteen minutes, or so it seemed.

“Yo, Boston, trucks coming,” said Egg in his earbud.

“Another ceremony?” asked Boston. His mike was clipped to the top of his carbon-boron bulletproof vest; it was sensitive enough so that he could whisper and be heard over the Dreamland com system.

“Negative,” said Egg. “These are customized SUVs. Not military.”

“I hear them,” said Boston. He brought his gun up, though there was no way any intruder could get by the Brunei soldiers, whose weapons included several antitank missiles.

Unless, of course, they stood back and let the trucks pass.

“What’s this?” Egg said in his ear.

The first truck—a large black Chevy Suburban with a block of lights across the top and enough chrome to make a drug dealer jealous—roared straight toward Boston.

“If he doesn’t stop, I’m taking him out.”

“Careful. I think they’re VIPs,” said Egg.

“If he doesn’t stop, I’m taking him out,” repeated Boston. He drew back, squaring as if to fire.

The driver of the SUV slammed on his brakes and swerved, stopping a few yards away. Two other SUVs pulled in alongside.

The doors of the vehicles flew open together. Men in lightweight civilian suits emerged from the trucks.

Bruisers all, they were clearly bodyguards, with vests under their jackets.

“No weapons,” said Egg, giving him the read from the monitor.

“If you say so,” said Boston.

A short, slightly paunchy man stepped forward from the other side of the middle vehicle. He was obviously a local, and was wearing what seemed to be relatively expensive clothes.

“Hello,” said the man with a jovial smile.

“I’m sorry,” said Boston, his voice hard enough to make it clear that was a lie. “No one is allowed past this point. No one.”

The man laughed.

“Sir, no one is allowed past this point,” said Boston. “Not even the sultan.”

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“Oh well,” laughed the man. “I’m just his nephew.”

Thoroughly confused, Boston had the man covered. Someone else got out of the SUV from the other side.

“Colonel Bastian is on his way,” said Egg. “Oh, I see now—that’s Mack Smith.”

“Who’s Smith?” Boston said.

“Major Smith—he’s ours. The guy getting out of the SUV. Colonel Bastian brought him as a political officer.”

The somewhat bedraggled man came out from around the truck and approached Mack.

“It’s all right,” he told Boston. “They’re with me.”

“Sorry, sir,” said Boston. “I have very strict orders. No one gets past me. I’m authorized to shoot,” he added, as Mack continued to within a few feet of him.

Smith squinted at him. “You know who this is?”

“The sultan’s nephew, sir.”

“A prince,” said Mack. “His Royal Highness Pehin bin Awg. Very, very important man in Brunei.”

“I don’t doubt it, sir. But he’s not coming past unless my orders change.”

“You really going to shoot?” asked Mack, taking another step forward.

“Bet your ass. Sir.”

“Jeez.”

Bin Awg laughed. “No need for an upset, Mack. We can come back another time.”

“Colonel Bastian’s at the gate,” said Egg.

“Sir, my colonel is on his way,” Boston told bin Awg. “I apologize, but my orders are very explicit.”

“Let’s have breakfast, then come back,” the prince said, turning back to his vehicle. “Come on, Mack.”

Smith frowned. Boston caught a whiff of perfume, stale cigarettes, and even staler alcohol as the major walked back to the SUV.

“That was really Smith?” asked Boston.

“The one and only.”

Aboard EB-52 Pennsylvania, South China Sea

Near the Vietnamese coast

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10 September 1997

1430

“ACTION ATDANang,” the EB-52’s copilot, Kevin McNamara, said over the interphone, the Megafortress’s onboard communications system. “We have two MiG-21s taking off. We’re tracking.

You have the data.”

Starship felt his throat constrict. His hand involuntarily tightened on the control yoke, even though he didn’t have control of the plane yet.

“Hawk leader copies,” said Zen. “They have two more coming, huh?”

“Looks like it.”

“Should we go ahead with the handoff?” asked Starship, sitting next to Zen on the Flighthawk control deck. They had just begun the prehandoff checklist before the MiGs scrambled from the Vietnamese airfield about a hundred miles to the northeast.

“Absolutely,” said Zen. “You all right?”

Five minutes earlier, Starship would have told him that he’d never felt better in his life. Aspirin and the Brunei coffee had helped him get over the banger of a headache he’d had this morning, a hangover obtained courtesy of a few whiskey sours with Major Smith after the official reception.

But with McNamara’s warning, his headache had returned. His muscles were twitching and his mouth felt dry.

Nothing a shot couldn’t cure, but that wasn’t possible here.

“Let’s do it,” he told Zen, forcing enthusiasm into his voice.

The Flighthawk commander gave verbal authorization. Starship acceded. Zen hit the keys on his panel and gave up control of the bird.

“Authorization Zed Zed Stockard,” said Zen as the computer asked for final confirmation. C3buzzed in Starship’s ear, turning over the helm.

“Handoff complete,” said Starship. “On course.”

He read off his bearing, altitude, and course speed—a prissy bit of the procedure in his opinion, though no one was asking—then worked through a full instrument check with the computer. Starship went by the book, aware that not only Zen but Kick were watching everything he did, ready to point out the slightest deviation from Major Stockard’s prescriptions.

While ostensibly designed to familiarize the crew with the area and procedures for communicating with the ASEAN task force, Starship sensed that today’s mission was really a tryout. Major Stockard had said during the preflight that he hadn’t decided who was going to take the U/MF-3 on the decoy flight tomorrow, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that today’s flight would help determine who got the glory and who sat on his thumbs in the fold-down rumble seat at the back of the compartment.

Starship liked Kick as a person, but he’d never be able to stomach playing number two to the other Page 60

lieutenant. Kick had never been a top jock. Heck, he’d been a Hog driver, flying A-10As before coming over to Dreamland, and everyone knew the A-10As were basically cannon fodder.

Granted, he was a hard worker and a decent guy, but he wasn’t first-team material. If he were, he’d’ve been in Eagles like Starship before transferring here.

“Be advised there are now two MiG-21s off Da Nang, bearing at three-one-five,” said McNamara. The Megafortress copilot customarily kept the crew apprised of the location of other players on the field.

“Climbing through eight thousand feet, accelerating—looks like they want to come say hello.”

Like many of the members of Dreamland’s Megafortress fleet, the Pennsylvania was named for a famous battleship, in this case the venerable battlewagon Pennsylvania, a member of the Iowa class that had served after World War II. She was equipped with a powerful AWACS-style radar, which rotated in a fuselage bulge around the wing root; augmented by a phased array unit in her nose and a host of other antennas and sensors, Penn could sniff out targets five hundred miles away. She and her sisters were intended as replacements for the venerable and considerably more vulnerable E-3 AWACS Sentry, though more mods and updates were planned before the type went operational with the “regular” Air Force.

Like Zen, Starship used a special control helmet to help him fly the robot plane; while heavier than the brain bucket he would have donned for an F-15 flight, it seemed more intuitive than the panels at the control station where he was sitting, which could also be used if he wished. Infinitely configurable, the display screen in the helmet could be divided into several panels. This allowed the pilot to simultaneously see what was in front of him, glance down at a “sitrep” of the area fed from the EB-52’s sensors, and a full array of instrument readings. Though he wasn’t yet rated to handle multiple planes, the helmet could in theory control up to four Flighthawks at a time, switching its views, sensor, and instrument data between them by voice command or keyboard toggle. Most times, Starship used a standard screen view that provided a nose camera shot in the top screen, with a sitrep at the lower left and various flight info on the right.

The MiGs blinked in the sitrep, two red triangles flying above the gray-shadowed coastline toward the light blue ocean. Penn was about two hundred miles east of them. If they were headed here, it was because of the ground radar and a controller; their own radars were far too limited to see the Megafortress.

And the Flighthawk was invisible to just about everybody, with the exception of Penn.

On the far right of the sitrep, a green-hued rectangle bore the tagYUBARI. If Starship asked for the information, C3would have looked into its memory banks and announced that Yubari was a Japanese patrol ship, carrying some surface-to-air missiles but primarily intended for antisubmarine work. She was sailing roughly a hundred miles to the east, part of the ASEAN exercises. The ship was working with an Australian cruiser, which was temporarily off the screen further east.

“Those suckers got to be thirty years old,” said Kick, wearing a headset and standing behind him. He was referring to the MiGs, which indeed had been built before any of the men on the Flighthawk had been born.

“The sucker we’re flying in is close to fifty,” said Zen.

“I meant it in a good way,” said the other pilot.

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“The ground radars picked up the Megafortress and scrambled these guys to take a look,” Zen added, using a voice that sounded to Starship like the one his Philosophy 101 professor used to explain Plato’s theory that humans saw reality like shadows on a cave. “The MiGs are still picking up speed, but they’re not going to come on too much faster or they’ll end up with fuel issues. C3has already figured out an intercept. See it Kick, on the dedicated screen?”

“Got it.”

“Obviously, it relies on you to know the ROEs,” said Zen, referring to the rules of engagement that governed when—and if—force could be used. “As far as the computer is concerned, war is always in order.”

“As it should be,” said Kick.

Brown nose.

“Still coming at us,” said Starship. He’d told Zen he’d gotten the nickname because of his first name—Kirk, as in James T. Kirk, the commander of the starship Enterprise. That was partly true—his parents had been serious Trekkies, and had the show in mind when they named him. But he’d actually earned the nickname during flight training for rashly predicting that he would pilot the space shuttle or its successor someday.

A prediction he meant to make good on.

“Mission commander’s call on how to proceed,” said Zen, still in instructor mode. “On a typical radar mission, the profile we’re following, your job is going to be to run interference. But the pilot of the EB-52

is going to have to balance the situation. Let’s say you have two bandits. If they’re hostile and coming at you, he may be under orders to get the hell out of there. Never mind that a Flighthawk could take them in a snap.”

Zen paused. Starship knew the major was speaking from experience—he had a lot of notches on his belt.

“What you don’t want to do is put the Flighthawks in a position where they’re going to get deadheaded,” said Zen. “So you keep with what the EB-52 is doing.”

Deadheaded meant that the command link had been severed. When that happened, the Flighthawk would revert to a preprogrammed mode and fly back toward the mother ship. It happened just beyond twenty-five miles, depending on the flight conditions. Because the U/MFs were so maneuverable and the EB-52 was flying its own course, it could happen relatively easily in combat.

But loss of a connection was the ultimate spanking, and Starship meant to avoid it. He was currently fifteen miles ahead of Penn, accelerating slightly.

“Zen, they’re going to afterburners,” said Major Merce Alou, the Penn’s pilot. The pilot’s decision to communicate the information signaled that he was concerned about the situation.

“Roger that. I think we can hold on course,” Zen told him. “We’re plotting an intercept.”

“Roger that. We’re monitoring them up here. They’re not targeting us at this time.”

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“You get all that?” Zen asked Starship.

“Yup,” said Starship. He had the Flighthawk at 27,000 feet on a direct line toward the lead MiG; they were now closing to fifty miles. “If this were an F-15, I could take them out in sixty seconds.”

“Yeah, what’s a little court-martial for creating an international incident?” said Kick.

“What do you think of what the computer is suggesting?” asked Zen.

“It has me slashing down and getting that lead plane, then whipping back for the second in one swoop,”

said Starship. “Awful optimistic with a cannon.”

“Yeah, especially for you,” said Kick.

“Hey, I’ve seen you on the range, Mr. Marksman,” snapped Starship. “They put you in a Hog so the bullets would be big enough that you couldn’t miss.”

“It is optimistic. The computer thinks it never misses. It’s almost right,” added Zen. “But the thing here is that it’s figuring that the MiGs will stay on course. You can tell it to anticipate what they’ll do, and it’ll give you more options.”

“I thought I shouldn’t do that because we’re not in attack mode,” said Starship. He also felt that he was a bit beyond taking combat cues from a computer. That was okay for Kick, whose cockpit time had been spent largely in a ground-attack plane. Starship’s entire training had been for air-to-air combat, and he’d flown against MiG-21s in numerous exercises.

Of course, he’d never gotten this close to real enemy fighters in an F-15.

Not that the Vietnamese MiGs were the enemy. They had as much right to be here as he did.

Starship checked his airspeed and heading carefully, trying to will away the dry taste in his mouth. He could feel Kick hovering over his shoulder, waiting for the chance to jump in.

“They’re not acknowledging,” said Alou after he hailed them, first in English, then with the help of the translation module in the EB-52’s computer. He tried again, giving the MiGs his bearing and location, emphasizing that he was in international waters and on a peaceful mission.

The MiGs still didn’t respond.

“Let’s give them a Dreamland welcome,” Zen told Starship.

Starship took a breath, then flicked the control stick left. The U/MF tipped its wing and whipped downward, its speed ramping toward Mach 1.

The odd thing was the feel. Rather than having his stomach pushing against his rib cage, it stayed perfectly calm and centered in the middle of his body. The disjunction between the Flighthawk and the Megafortress was one of the hardest things for the pilot to get used to.

Zen had warned him about that.

“Flares,” said the Flighthawk pilot. He kicked out flares normally intended for deking heat-seeking Page 63

missiles, making himself clearly visible to the Vietnamese fighters, who were now roughly two miles away.

The Vietnamese pilots reacted immediately, turning together to the north, possibly convinced they were seeing UFOs or the fiery manifestation of a Buddhist god.

“Stay on your game plan,” coached Zen.

Starship realized he’d started to pull up a little too sharply. He easily compensated, but he felt apprehensive nonetheless; Kick was standing behind him, after all, taking mental notes.

Even an F-15C Eagle would have had trouble climbing back and turning as tightly as Starship’s Flighthawk as he whipped his plane onto the tail of the opposing flight, aiming to paint the enemy cockpit with his shadow.

Not enemy. Not enemy, he reminded himself. Relax.

“How long do you want me to sit here?” he asked Zen.

“Break off once they turn,” said Zen. “There you go,” he added as the first MiG changed direction.

“Come on back to Penn. They look homeward bound.”

“Roger that.”

Aboard the Dragon Prince, South China Sea

1506

PROFESSORAIHIRABai monitored the communist MiGs as they circled northward, away from the American Megafortress. The planes were more than one hundred miles from his own UAV, the Dragon, well out of range of its onboard sensors. To see them, he would ordinarily have had to rely on the limited data fed from the buoy network that helped guide the small robot plane, but the ASEAN maneuvers provided better opportunities.

The ships involved in the exercise were testing links that allowed data from one ship to be shared among the entire task force over a wide area. Since Professor Ai had been able to tap into an Australian frigate’s communications system, he too had a full data set that included wide-ranging radar coverage courtesy of two Japanese Aegis-equipped destroyers.

Ai watched the screen with fascination. He was interested in the performance of the Flighthawk, though this was difficult to ascertain from the radar data, even as the robot plane passed almost directly overhead of one of the ships. The craft was clearly faster and more maneuverable than his own plane. Its data flow with the mother ship, of course, was extremely rich—he’d known that since their long-range intercepts of the signals. He would have given much to be able to decode the information that passed between them.

On the other hand, his own invention was not without its advantages. The buoy and satellite system that relayed its control signals allowed him to fly the aircraft far beyond its remote station—although in some circumstances there was a noticeable lag as the commands were transmitted. And his plane was not only stealthier, but its signal carrier included what he called a “mocking device” that could spit back bits of intercepted code to confuse a nearby Elint gatherer.

“Should we engage?” asked Kuo, who was helping fly the UAV.

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“No,” said Professor Ai. “Not today. Let us simply observe and see what our friends do. We may have only one chance, and we must choose it wisely.”

Aboard Penn, South China Sea

1538

STARSHIP HAD JUSTtraded places with Kick when the pair of Chinese fighters appeared. These were Shenyang J-8IIs, more formidable than the ancient MiGs the Vietnamese had sent, but they too made a rather pedestrian and predictable approach, flying a routine intercept about fifty miles east of Guangdong.

“Same routine as Brother Starship,” Zen told Kick.

Starship tensed, even though he knew Zen meant it as a joke.

Kick started his move about six thousand feet above the interceptors, rolling into a banking turn that would take him across their course. But they broke before he went for his flares, apparently in response to the Megafortress pilot’s hail. Kick held on to his disposables and began to climb again, intending to circle back close to the Megafortress until it was clear what the Chinese were doing.

Conservative move, Starship thought. He would have tucked back toward them and hit the gas.

“They’re looking for you,” Zen told the two lieutenants. “They know the Megafortresses fly with U/MF

escorts. They want to draw you out.”

“What should I do?” Kick asked.

“Give me the controls,” said Starship without missing a beat.

“Fuck off.”

“Wait until they come out of that turn,” said Zen. “They aren’t particularly maneuverable, and it’ll be obvious where they intend to go. You’ve got good position.”

One of the J-8s—in some respects it was a supersized J-7, itself a kind of new and improved MiG-21—swung into a wide arc, trying to get nose on nose for the Megafortress, which the computer’s dotted line showed would happen at about sixty miles away. The other plane ducked down toward the waves heading in the opposite direction.