Sixty seconds later, Breanna announced that they had lost it. “Stand by:’ she added.
Stand by yourself,
he thought. He had let his altitude slip to two thousand feet. He was passing just over a marina, but moving too fast to sort out what he saw.
“Pleasure boat,” he said with disgust, snapping the speak button as he tucked into a bank to check it out. “Hey, Jersey girl—did you have me chase a pleasure boat? There’s a marina down here.”
“You know a pleasure boat that goes three hundred knots? Stand by. We’re looking for it.”
Mack circled around. There were at least two dozen boats in the marina, but no airplanes.
“Not a seaplane?” he asked, though he didn’t see one. “Seaplane? If so the computer couldn’t find it on its index. Hold on.”
Mack pulled out the large area map from his kneeboard and unfolded it, checking to see where he was.
“Dragon One, we have it twenty-five miles to your northeast, along the coast:’ said Breanna over the radio.
“Your sure about that,
Jersey?”
“We’re as sure as—stand by,” she added, a note of disgust creeping into her voice.
Mack started a turn in the direction she had advised, but as he came to the new course Breanna told him they had lost the contact completely.
“Right,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re trying.”
“I’m looking at empty ocean.”
“You’re right on the vector.”
She added that the Brunei authorities had just reported a ship underway to rescue survivors at the stricken ship, which had now been identified as a freighter due to dock at 6 A.M. in Brunei. Mack flew about ten miles to the east-northeast, then banked into an orbit fifteen hundred feet over the waves, riding a curlicue as he looked for Breanna’s contact. He began heading toward the masts of a group of fishing vessels further northward on the shore.
“Flight
Jersey
to Dragon One,” said the airborne radar operator aboard the EB-52. “Report: Two Su-27s coming in your direction from the south. Report: bearing one-six-five. Report ..
Mack listened incredulously to the contact information. The two planes were over Malaysian territory, on a course that would take them out over Mack’s position. But Malaysia didn’t have any Su-27s, and all eighteen of their MiG-29s were over at Subang, a good thousand miles away. As the MiGs were the most capable planes in the region, two spies at the airport there were paid good money by the prince to keep them informed.
Two others were paid so-so money. All of the air bases operated by Indonesia and Malaysia, including the two Malaysian and one Indonesian fields on Borneo, were covered around the clock by spies. Mack surely would have known by now if these planes were operating there.
Whoever they belonged to, they were moving at a good clip—the radar operator warned that they were topping six hundred knots.
“We’re sure they’re not MiGs?” asked Mack.
“Yes, Minister. We’re sure.”
“Yeah, those are definitely Su-27s, and they’re hot,” confirmed Deci.
“Roger that,” said Mack, pulling back on his stick and climbing off the deck.
BREANNA DID A QUICK RUN THROUGH THE SCREENS THAT showed how the Megafortress was performing, and then brought up the fuel matrix, which gave the pilots a set of calculations showing how long they could stay up with the fuel remaining in their tanks. The Megafortress computer system could make the predictions seem terribly precise-42.35 minutes if they spent it doing these orbits and then headed straight home—but in reality fuel management remained more art than science. The screen gave the pilots several sets of reasonable guesses based on stock mission profiles as well as the programmed mission. It could also make calculations based on data inputted. Breanna brought a “profile map” up at the side of the touchscreen and quickly built a scenario from it by tapping a few options. They could climb to twenty-five thousand feet, engage the two Sukhois, and then slide back home.
Just.
Not that they could actually engage the Sukhois. They weren’t carrying any anti-air missiles. They didn’t have any shells for the Stinger air-mine tail weapon; the shrapnel discs were in relatively short supply and weren’t needed for training.
“Captain, what are your intentions regarding the Sukhois?” she asked the Megafortress pilot.
He replied that he would remain on station until Mack gave him other orders. It wasn’t the
wrong
response, exactly, but it wasn’t exactly the sort of answer that was going to set the world on fire.
“Should we take the initiative and ask the minister what he wants us to do?” she said, her patience starting to slip a little. “Maybe suggest we try and establish contact with the bogeys and get them to declare their intent? Maybe prepare an offensive or defensive posture?”
“By all means,” answered the pilot. “But the minister may prefer to deal with them himself.”
“The A-37B is a sitting duck,” she said.
To her surprise, the pilot chuckled. “The minister would not lose an engagement,” he said.
“He’s unarmed.”
The pilot chuckled again, his laughter implying that she didn’t understand the laws of physics—or Mack Smith. The minister could not be shot down, and anyone foolish enough to attack him would get their comeuppance—even if they were flying cutting-edge interceptors and he was in an unarmed plane designed as a trainer.
Breanna, no longer able to contain her frustration, hit the talk button. “Dragon One, what’s your call on the Sukhois?”
“I want to see what the hell they’re up to and where they came from:’ replied Mack. ‘Because there are no Sukhois on Borneo. Malaysia’s MiGs are way over in West Malaysia near the capital.”
“Mack, I can assure you, those are Sukhois, not MiGs and not ghosts. Your people are not screwing this up. Those planes are coming hot. What are you going to do if they turn hostile?”
“Hey, relax Bree. I’m cool.”
“You’re a sitting duck. And they haven’t answered our radio calls. If they get nasty—”
“Oh, give me a break, will you? I can handle them.”
One’s loonier than the other, Breanna thought.
MACK CONTINUED HIS LACKADAISICAL CLIMB, TRYING TO conserve his fuel while making sure the pointing-nose cowboys running for him knew he was here. They were now about eight minutes away, flying at roughly twenty thousand feet, separated by about a quarter-mile. Their radars were not yet in range to see the Dragonfly.
But given their speed and direction, it seemed highly coincidental that they were flying in his direction on a whim. “Mack, you’re in radar range of the Su-27s.”
“About time,” he said.
“You want us to jam them?”
“Hell no! I want to see who these guys are.”
“THEY KNOW HE’S THERE,” DECI TOLD BREANNA OVER THE interphone. “Altering course slightly. They should be in visual range of Mack in, uh, thirty seconds,” said Deci.
“I’ll pass it along,” said Breanna.
“Radar—uh, they just turned on their air-to-air weapons,” said Deci. “They may really want to shoot him down.”
MACK CAME OUT OF HIS TURN ABOUT THREE SECONDS TOO soon, and had to push into his dive before he saw the first Sukhoi. He got a glimpse of it in his left windscreen, then heard the RWR complain that one of the fighters had switched on its targeting radar.
“I was afraid of that,” he groused out loud, as if the device could do anything but whine. A second later it gave another pitched warning, indicating that the enemy’s radar had locked on him and was ready to fire.
Then the unit freaked out, obviously a result of Breanna’s ordering the Megafortress crew to jam the airwaves so he couldn’t be shot down.
Mack sighed. A completely unnecessary order, even if her heart was in the right place. Mack pulled his plane into a tight turn and put himself right below the Su-27s as they turned. Separated by ten thousand feet and a good bit of momentum, all he caught on the gun’s video camera—rigged for the training exercises—was a gray blur. He pounded the throttle but there was no hope of keeping up with the Su-27s. Within two minutes, they were beyond his radar.
And he was short on fuel.
“Jersey,
this is Dragon One. I’m bingo on fuel, headed for home”
“We’re close to our reserves, as well,” replied Breanna. “Did you get any sort of IDs on those Sukhois?”
“Negative,” said Breanna. “They had old-style N001 radars. Seem to be Su-27S models.”
The NOO1 was a competent but older radar type, and no match for the Megafortress’s ECMs or electronic countermeasures. It meant the planes themselves were relatively old and had been purchased second- or even third-hand. But it didn’t say who they might belong to. For the moment, at least, their identity would have to remain a mystery.
“Your seaplane didn’t show up?” he asked.
“I don’t think it was a seaplane.”
Probably not, thought Mack to himself. More than likely, his neophyte radar operators had bungled a routine contact with a speedboat, then sent him out on a wild goose chase.
He listened as Breanna updated the rescue situation—there were now two vessels conducting a search, with no survivors located as of yet.
“Time to pack it in,” he told the Jersey crew. “Head for the barn.”
He snapped off the mike, then did something that would not have occurred to him a few weeks ago.
“Hey, crew of the
Jersey—I
mean, crew of Brunei Mega-fortress One,” said Mack, touching his speak button. “Kick-ass job. Very, very good job. Attaboys all around.”
Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
0853
Sahurah Niu’s feet trembled as he got off the motorcycle in front of the gate. The bike roared away and Sahurah was left alone. He tried to take a deep breath but the air caught in his throat and instead he began to cough.
As he recovered, a soldier walked up to him, gun drawn. “Who are you?” demanded the soldier, pointing the pistol at him.
“I was sent,” said Sahurah. The gun comforted him for a reason he couldn’t have explained.
“What is your name?”
Sahurah gave the name he had been told to use—Mat Salleh, a historical figure who had led an ill-fated uprising against the British on Borneo in the nineteenth century.
The soldier frowned and gestured that he should hold his hands out at his sides to be searched.
If I were carrying a bomb, Sahurah thought to himself, I would detonate it now and be in Paradise.
But he was not carrying a bomb, nor any weapon, and the search went quickly.
“This way,” said the guard, pointing to the gate. “The captain is waiting. You have a long journey ahead”
Sahurah nodded, and followed along inside.
* * *
FLUSH WITH HIS VICTORY AT SEA, DAZHOU MET THE MUSLIM fanatic in his office.
“Have a drink,” he said to him, putting down a bottle on his desk. He laughed at the expression of horror on the man’s face. “It’s juice,” he told him, “but you needn’t drink it anyway.”
He looked at him more closely. “You’re the messenger?”
The fanatic nodded. There was no possibility of mistake—no rebel would show up here on his own. Unlike many of the rebels in the movement, Sahurah appeared to be a native of Borneo, very possibly of Malaysian extraction, though with thirty-one different ethnic groups on the large island there were many who could claim to be native here. Dazhou’s own family had been on Borneo for centuries.
“You know who I am?” Dazhou asked.
The young man—he was surely in his late twenties, though his face showed the pain of someone much older—shook his head.
‘That is just as well,” said Dazhou. “There is a bathroom there, if you need it. We will leave in five minutes. Once we start, we will not stop.”
Dreamland
7 October 1997, (local) 1630
After the botched demonstration of the robot warrior system, Danny’s day became an unrelieved series of frowns and down-turned glances. He avoided breakfast with the congressmen, claiming that he had to work with the technical team recovering the devices, and managed to skip lunch by tending to his normal duties as security chief on the base. But couldn’t avoid the afternoon debriefing sessions, which culminated in a show-and-tell session for the VIPs in one of the Dreamland auditoriums. Danny walked down the hallway to the room feeling like the proverbial Dead Man Walking.
The ARC robots had actually worked exactly according to spec. Unfortunately, they had been foxed by Boston, who exploited a weakness in the system to torpedo the mission. The inexpensive, off-the-shelf sensors in the units could not see very well through smoke. While the grenade that Boston’s team member had launched at the unit might not have blinded it for very long, once it started firing off its canisters the entire area was for all intents and purposes shrouded in an impenetrable fog. Boston had timed his intrusion just right, racing as fast as he could eight hundred and fifty meters to the downed airman, who by the exercise rules was unarmed and couldn’t hear him anyway because of the approaching Osprey. Armed with only his pistol—a rifle would have slowed him down—Boston incapacitated the airman, then waited for the rescuers.
It wouldn’t have worked in real life—the grenades would have been shrapnel rather than smoke, and presumably incapacitated or killed the intruders. But that distinction seemed lost on the congressmen who were watching the video feeds in the Dreamland conference center. And the army people present for the demonstration weren’t very happy about it either. The Army had supplied 90 percent of the development funding so far, and its contribution was up for review.
Danny stood gamely with the project officers and the science types as they opened the floor up to questioning. One of the congressmen started things off by asking where the man who had shown the way around the robots was.
“Sergeant Rockland is probably enjoying a well-earned rest right now,” said Danny, trying to force a smile. “One of my best men. We try to train them to think outside of the box”
“Or the robot,” said the congressman.