Cyclops One (31 page)

The dust felt like heavy sackcloth, covering her face. Megan choked as she tried to get up, rubbing her eyes to clear enough grit away so she could get her bearings. She saw her three crewmen collapse behind her, falling as the helicopter made another pass.

Definitely a Russian. The bastards had figured it out somehow—as she had predicted.

“Rogers, blow up the plane,” she yelled to her copilot, who was lying next to her. When he didn’t move, she pulled at the pocket of his pant leg where the radio detonator was. “Do it! Do it!”

“I can’t,” he said. “Segrest told me not to blow the plane.”

“What?” She didn’t believe him, taking the radio device out anyway and pressing it. Nothing happened.

“He wants the laser,” said Rogers. “The detonator’s not rigged.”

“You bastard, these are Russian helicopters. This is Segrest?”

“No,” said Rogers. “I don’t think so.”

“Fuck, come on.”

“Where?”

“We can’t let them get the plane. We have to blow it up.”

“The detonator’s not set.”

“So help me set it.”

As she started to run, something popped in the air a few feet away. There was a roar and a rush of air. Megan felt herself pushed to the ground. One of the helicopters passed somewhere behind her, the ground shaking. Megan scratched forward a few feet, then got up and started to run again. She could hear the crackle of small-arms fire, felt her body becoming wet. She pressed the button on the detonator again and again as Rogers fell on top of her and rolled off, howling in pain, then awfully silent.

Luksha steadied his AK-74 automatic rifle at the fallen figure as he ran. It was the pilot. He had something in his hand, a radio no doubt. The pilot fumbled with it, trying to turn it in his hand.

Luksha kicked it under the jet, then pulled the man away, back to the side of the runway.

Not a man: a woman. The pilot was a woman.

Just like the Americans.

Luksha’s men swarmed over the aircraft. There was more gunfire, some shouts; for a moment he feared that more troops had been hiding on the island and they were about to be overwhelmed. The drumming of the helicopters rose and the wind swirled around him.

Then the chaos began to recede. There were no other troops, and there had been only four crewmen, three of whom were now dead. Only the woman remained alive.

Success. All of his planning, the decision to wait until the aircraft took off and returned from another flight—it had all paid off. They were his, considerably more easily than he had hoped.

“Call in the transports and technical crew,” Luksha told his communications specialist. He turned to his sergeant, who’d just run up next to him and was hunched over, collecting his breath. “Secure this woman. She is our prisoner, and a very valuable one.”

Howe had little trouble ducking the Russian’s Alamo missile, a semiactive radar home that had been launched from outside its optimum range. But his defensive maneuvering took up time and forced him to turn to the east; before he could recover and sort out the situation, four more Russian fighters, all MiG-29s, had appeared over the horizon. They had their pedals to the metal as they came to help out the two Super-Flankers that had launched the attack.

Howe’s computer buzzed as Timmy fired an AMRAAM at one of the nearby Russians, the missile track dotted in the HUD hologram.

“I have the bandit at the south,” Howe told his wingman, starting a turn to cut toward its tail. “Watch out for the four Johnny-come-latelies.”

“Oh yeah, copy that. Bring those suckers on,” said the wingman. “Got your back.”

Howe and the Sukhoi were separated by about five miles, just outside of a good Sidewinder shot. Howe went for more power, needing to accelerate but wary, anticipating that the enemy fighter would try to pull him into a quick turn. He blew a wad of air into his mask. His hand curled tightly on the stick, waiting for the sensor in the missile head to growl at him, indicating that it was ready. Howe told himself to ease off, to relax, to just follow. The missile got a good strong scent of the enemy plane and began screaming at him, telling him to fire. Howe waited a few more seconds, confident now he had him, confident he was gaining sufficiently on the enemy jet.

“Fire,” he told the computer.

The missile ripped out from the side bay of the Velociraptor, plunging downward momentarily and then pushing its nose too far to the left as the Sukhoi pilot came hard right. But the circuitry in the all-aspect Sidewinder, refined after generations of dogfights, quickly corrected, driving the missile back toward the big Russian jet and its hot tailpipe. The Sukhoi started to jink east just as the warhead exploded; shrapnel ripped through the left engine and severed the controls to the tailfin, leaving the pilot no option but to bail.

By that time Howe was already turning northward to meet the newcomers.

Timmy swept into the battle eagerly, his hand gripping the stick with the sort of gentle firmness he’d use to guide a date to bed. The encounter shaped up as an almost textbook four-on-two dustup, with the Russian MiG-29s blustering forward, seemingly oblivious to the approaching F/A-22Vs. The two Velociraptors were at fifteen thousand feet, a good five thousand below the MiGs, but that was their only disadvantage; they had an intercept from the east, and even thirty miles away the Russians seemed not to know where they were.

“I’m going to save one of my AMRAAMs in case the laser plane gets off,” Howe told him. “I have that lead one on the left.”

“Yeah, roger that. I have number two.”

Timmy’s HUD hologram had the target plane boxed and tied with a bow. He fired about a half-second after Howe, sliding around to get into position for a tailpipe shot on the last two MiGs in the formation. Belatedly, the MiGs began throwing chaff and hitting ECMs.

“Yours on the right,” said Howe as the bandits divided.

Timmy started to follow but quickly lost his Russian, who’d taken out a hammer and nailed his throttle on the last stop, burning through his relatively limited store of fuel in his bid to get back home in one piece. Timmy pulled off, circling to the south and looking for Howe.

The Velociraptor’s radar system was light-years beyond the primitive scopes that fighter pilots of old had to decipher as they rode their steeds into battle; the unit could select its own modes, interpret its contacts, fight off electronic countermeasures, and paint a three-dimensional picture of the battlefield, all with minimal input from the pilot. But no gee-whiz technology could eliminate the effects of high-g turns, mission fatigue, and what planners referred to as the fog of war. The pilot’s instincts and his ability to think clearly under stress were far more important than the convenient cues projected in glorious 3-D on his HUD, or the melodious warning tones of his RWR. Timmy pushed left; then, for some reason he couldn’t have explained, he jerked his stick and threw the Velociraptor the other way. The maneuver put him four miles behind one of the MiGs.

“I’m on him,” he told Howe.

He had a good closure rate on the enemy, who was just starting to accelerate after a series of maneuvers. The Sidewinder’s sensor began to growl; Timmy waited a second or two more, then fired, alerting Howe and once again breaking away, knowing he was northeast of the target island but not sure exactly where.

“Good shot, Two,” said Howe as the second Sidewinder tallied. “I want you to come south now. How’s your fuel?”

Low,
thought Timmy, without even looking. He found Howe three miles southeast of him. The island was roughly ten miles away.

He’d splashed three planes in the space of what, five minutes? Four?

Shit.

Super shit.

Between India and this, he’d lived the life of twenty fighter pilots inside a week. His heart raced in his chest, and his head wasn’t more than a half-stride behind.

Shit.

Super shit.

Like winning the Super Bowl, this. People’d be parading him all around, buying drinks. Women—God he was the man,
the
man.

Not that he hadn’t been before.

Shit.

Super shit.

“Fuel, Timmy,” prompted Howe.

He took a breath and got back to dealing with reality.

“Bird One, what’s your situation?” asked Jemma Gorman.

Howe laid it out for her, emphasizing their rapidly diminishing fuel states. The tanker was a little closer than he thought—five hundred miles—but even so, they had at best five minutes before having to head back. A pair of F-15s from the task group had tanked and were coming west, but they were still roughly a half hour away. The Eagles scrambling northward from Kadena were a little closer but still wouldn’t be in sight for about twenty minutes, maybe a little less.

Which, in his mind—and in any reasonable mind—meant the assault team should hold off.

“We need to be on that island now,” said Gorman. “I need the assault team down there. Take out the helicopters so they can land. Your tanker is en route.”

“It’s too far,” he told her. “Even if we left now, we’d be on a bingo profile. We’re way low on fuel.”

“Bail out or land on the damn island if you have to,” she told him. “Just take out the helicopters and cover the assault team.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind.”

“We need the laser,” said Gorman. “We’ve already tried contacting the Russian forces by radio and they’ve refused to acknowledge. They’re hostile.”

“Yeah, no shit they’re hostile,” said Howe. “I’ll take out the plane. I have two small-diameter bombs.”

“Take out the helicopters. My orders are to recover the laser intact if we can, and we can. My people want a look at that plane and what mods they’ve made.”

Howe squeezed the side stick, as if that might force the anger from his body. He needed to get rid of the emotion so he could think logically, figure this out.

It was damn easy for Gorman to tell him not to worry about refueling.

“Colonel, please acknowledge,” said Gorman.

Howe’s fingers were now so tight that his pinkie felt numb, and he’d started to grind his teeth. His head, though, remained clear: He had one of the helicopters hovering off the tip of the island, five miles away. He could go guns, sweep in, and nail it.

“Two, I want you to hang back and try and conserve fuel,” he told Timmy. “I’m going to take that chopper there on my left and then see if I can gun out the other bastard quick. Get a fresh ETA from the C-17 with the assault team, see what they’re up to.”

“Two,” acknowledged Timmy without comment.

Howe clicked his arms selector over to Gun and slid into the attack, still too far to fire.

Hitting a helicopter with the cannon could actually be quite difficult, depending on the circumstances; the F/A-22V’s speed advantage turned into a liability as it closed for the attack. As Howe pushed into a shallow dive, the chopper spit right. He began to fire, though he was still a little far off; the bullets trailed downward and well behind the helicopter. He let off of the trigger and came around wide, in effect backing off for a better pass. The helicopter, meanwhile, threw out flares and jinked toward the sea, obviously expecting a missile attack. Howe’s turn put him in the direction of the helo’s course; he got off a shot but was by too fast and at too hard an angle to score a hit. By the time he recovered, the helicopter was headed back toward the island. That was a mistake: Howe, whose speed had slid down through two hundred knots, lined up easily on the helo’s tail and began pumping it full of lead. The chopper tipped to the left but Howe had it mastered; he put a burst through the engines and then pulled up to avoid the fireball.

“Missile in the air!” warned Timmy.

Howe shot flares and jinked right. The shoulder-launched SS-16 was a potent little missile, at least arguably the equal of an American Stinger. It caught a whiff of one of the flares as well as the Velociraptor’s tailpipes; confused, it decided to explode. Shrapnel from the small warhead flew in an elongated mushroom through the air; two small red-hot pieces struck the back end of Howe’s aircraft, though they did little except dent the metal.

The pilot felt nothing, not even aware that the missile had exploded until Timmy told him. He continued to climb, checking his tactical display and then working quickly through his indicators, making sure he remained intact.

“That second helicopter is lifting off,” said Timmy.

Howe looked up. The helicopter rose in the right quadrant of his windscreen.

“I have it,” Howe said. He switched back to the missiles, deciding at this point there was no reason to save the last Sidewinder: The Backfire was making no sign of getting ready to take off, and he still had the AMRAAM.

The helicopter fired at him as he came in from the west, loosing not only an air-to-air missile but its cannon. Howe had already started a turn, swinging first to the south but then quickly northward, guessing that the helicopter might try to turn inside and take another missile shot; his maneuver would keep the heat-seeker well off his tail. But instead the helicopter ducked back east. It took Howe a few seconds to pick it out, but when he finally did he was almost in perfect position for the Sidewinder shot. He started to close, launched, then pulled back around amid a cascade of flares, anticipating that the bastards on the ground would be taking another shot at him.

“C-17 is less than two minutes off,” said Timmy. “I have a boat on the surface, high-speed. Don’t think it’s ours.”

“Take it,” said Howe.

“What I’m talking about.”

Timmy put the Velociraptor into a shallow dive, letting the patrol boat grow in his sight. Four fat ship-to-ship missile launchers dominated the rear half of the ship, massive gray suitcases jammed into the hull. Timmy lit his cannon, lacing the water as he worked to get the spray into the front quarter of the ship. His bullets found the bow as the twin 30mm AA gun began sparkling; he rode the stream into the gun housing, then the superstructure, tearing across the bridge and off the boat’s starboard side.

He dished flares and chaff, starting to recover. The Velociraptor’s tail wagged behind him, responding sluggishly to the control inputs. As Timmy got his nose up, warning lights started to pop; he’d taken some hits along the rear fuselage and tailplane. Before he could sort it out, something red flashed in front over him: an SA-N-12 from the patrol boat. Timmy started to turn away, only to be bracketed by two explosions from barrage-launched SA-N-5s, low-altitude heatseekers. The pilot struggled to hold his aircraft.

“Got a problem,” he told Howe.

“Come east, Timmy,” Howe told him. “Break ninety: Turn, damn it! You’re running back into his gunfire.”

Timmy couldn’t get the plane to turn fast enough to avoid the bubbling black mass as it rose in the sky. Wings peppered by flak, he fought desperately just to stay level. It didn’t matter how hard he pushed against the stick or throttle—the controls were electric, not hydraulic—but he muscled them anyway, as if his strength might somehow flow out to the control surfaces and buoy the plane.

From super shit to stuck in shit, all in less than sixty seconds. The cockpit looked like a Christmas display, warning lights flashing. Timmy heard something howling in his ears.

“Out,” Howe was saying. “Out!”

“Yeah, baby,” said the pilot.

He put his hand down to grab the yellow and black ejection handle. As he gripped it the last SA-N-5 from the patrol boat exploded just under the back end of the plane. Timmy pulled the handles. but it was already too late: He felt a sudden surge of heat behind him; then the world turned black and incredibly, instantly cold.

Howe saw his wingmate’s plane explode and felt his hand once more tighten involuntarily around the stick. He stared at the hurtling ball of metal, plastic, and fire, waiting, hoping, expecting the canopy to shoot off and the seat to appear, Timmy hurtling away with his good-ol’-boy chuckle. Howe got ready to note the location, follow the chute down, vector the SAR assets in.

Slowly he realized that wasn’t going to happen. The stricken Velociraptor disintegrated before his eyes, imploding from its many wounds. Howe flew on, finally forcing his eyes down to the tactical screen, pushing his head back into the game where it had to be.

The Russian ship was dead in the water, two miles from the island. Black smoke unfurled from the middle of the vessel. He pushed down, looked at the cue in the holographic HUD, the computer automatically drawing the dotted line for him.

“Fire,” he said, pressing the trigger as well.

One of his first bullets hit the Styx launcher on the port side; by the time he let off the trigger and began to climb, the rear half of the boat had vaporized.

“The helicopters and patrol boat are down,” he said over the shared frequency for the C-17. “If you’re coming, now’s the time to do it. I’ll rake the field.”