Collateral Damage (34 page)

27

Over Libya

A
s far as Danny Freah was concerned, Neil Kharon's body wasn't important enough to risk going back for.

It was a cold decision, but one he had no trouble making. There was still sporadic fire in the area, and he had Rubeo and the robots aboard.

“We'll get him if things calm down,” Danny told Rubeo, kneeling on the deck of the Osprey as the aircraft sped northward. “Zen is working on it.”

“It doesn't matter, really,” said Rubeo blankly. “It doesn't really matter.”

“Antiair battery to the east activating radar,” warned the copilot. “Radar—we have a lot of radars. Everything they got.”

Danny got up and grabbed his phone. He was still dialed into Zen's private line.

“Zen, are you there?”

“I'm here, Danny.”

“We could really use that cease-fire you promised,” he said as the aircraft tucked down toward the ground. They would attempt to bypass the radar by staying close to the earth, where it would have trouble seeing them.

“The defense minister is on the phone with the air force right now,” Zen told him.

“There's an antiair battery north of us. It—”

“All right, hold on.” Zen said something Danny couldn't hear, then came back on the line. “Give me a GPS reading.”

“Every goddamn radar in the country is lighting up,” said Danny. “Get them all.”

Zen didn't answer. Danny could hear someone speaking sharply on the other side of the line but couldn't make out what they were saying.

“Radars are turning off,” said the pilot.

Danny waited. Zen came on the line a few minutes later.

“Danny?”

“I'm here. The radars are off. Thanks.”

“Not a problem.”

“What'd you tell him?”

“I said we'd blow them up if they weren't off in sixty seconds,” said Zen. “I wish every negotiation was that easy.”

28

Over Libya

T
horoughly confused by the electronic countermeasures and now at the far end of their range, the last two missiles blew themselves up several miles from their targets, destroying themselves in a futile hope that their shrapnel might take out something nearby.

Turk pulled the Tigershark higher as he got his bearings. The A–10s were forming up to the north, taking stock and preparing for the flight back home.

All except Shooter One, which was climbing to the east.

At first Turk assumed that Ginella was checking on the tanks, making sure they had been destroyed. He left her, and checked in with Danny, who said they had recovered Rubeo and his gear and were on their way back to Sicily. Then he talked to the air controller, who said frostily that there were no longer any Libyan aircraft in the skies.

“State your intentions,” added the controller, sounding as if he were challenging a potentially hostile aircraft.

“I'm going to escort Whiplash Osprey back to Sicily,” said Turk, setting up a course.

“Acknowledged.”

I bet you'll be testifying at my court-martial, thought Turk.

He radioed the Osprey pilot. With the Libyan radars now silent, the aircraft was climbing, aiming to get high enough to escape any stray ground fire.

“Stay on your present course and I'll be with you in zero-five,” said Turk.

The computer estimated he would catch up in two minutes. He checked his instruments, working systematically as he took stock.

The Tigershark had performed well, and according to her indicators was in prime condition, none the worse for having fired more slugs in anger in five minutes than in her entire life.

They could say or do what they wanted about Turk; the aircraft had passed every real-life test thrown at it. As for the Sabres—once whatever had screwed them up was fixed, they too were ready for front-line duty.

He'd proven himself. Whatever he had missed the other day with Grizzly—if he'd missed anything—it wasn't because he was afraid to fire. He wasn't a coward or a shirker or anything else.

He was sure he hadn't missed the weapon. But one way or another, he was sure of his ability to fly and fight.

Turk felt himself start to relax. He tried to resist—it was dangerous to ease up before you landed.

He checked the sitrep map. The French Mirages had shot down one MiG and now, ironically, were helping guide an allied rescue helicopter in. The other government planes had fled south—not to their base, but to Chad.

The pilots were getting out while the getting out was good, Turk thought.

He zoomed the sitrep to check on the Hogs. They had separated. Shooter Two and Three were flying north, heading on a straight line back toward Sicily. Four, meanwhile, was flying west toward Shooter One, which was climbing to the east.

Which seemed odd to Turk.

Given his history with Ginella, he hesitated to ask what was going on. Still, her flight path was almost directly across the Osprey's.

“Shooter One, this is Tigershark. Wondering if you're setting up on a threat in Whiplash Osprey's direction,” he said lightly.

There was no response. Turk tried again.

OK, he thought when she didn't answer. Be that way. He checked his location; he was about a minute and a half behind the Osprey, catching up fast. Ginella was going to pass just to the north, but would clear the MV–22 by a good distance—she was at 30,000 feet and climbing.

Turk remembered an old joke about the Hogs, to the effect that the pilots climbing to altitude packed a lunch. The new engines took a lot of the punch out of the joke.

He told the Osprey he was coming up on his six. The Osprey pilot asked him what was up with the A–10; there had been no communication from Shooter One.

“I'm adjusting course to the west just to widen the distance,” said the pilot, giving himself an even wider margin for error. “Are you in contact?”

“Negative.”

Not acknowledging his hails was one thing, but not acknowledging the Osprey pilot's was, at best, extremely unprofessional—so much so that Turk realized something must be wrong with Ginella. He was just about to try hailing her again when Li called on his frequency.

“Tigershark, this is Shooter Four. Are you in contact with Shooter One?”

“Negative, Shooter Four. I have been trying to hail her.”

“Same here. There's got to be some sort of problem with her aircraft,” added Li. “Can you assist?”

“Stand by.”

Turk talked to Danny and the Osprey pilot, telling them that he thought the Hog was having some sort of emergency. Both assured him that the flight could get back on its own if necessary. A few moments later the flight controller came on, requesting that he help make contact with the Hog.

Turk acknowledged and changed course, accelerating to catch up quickly with the A–10. The aircraft had continued to climb, and was now at nearly 35,000 feet.

“Was Shooter One damaged in the fight?” Turk asked Li.

“She said she got a shrapnel hit but that it wasn't much. Her last transmission said she was in good shape and going to check on the tanks.”

“Sound giddy?”

“Hard to say. You think she's OK?”

“I'd say no. I'm guessing hypoxia.”

“Yeah. Or worse.”

Hypoxia was the medical term for lack of oxygen. There was a whole range of symptoms, the most critical in this case being loss of consciousness. Turk suspected that Ginella's plane was flying itself. With no one at the controls, it would keep going until it crashed.

She might in fact already be dead.

He tried hailing her several times, using both her squadron frequency and the international emergency channel. A pair of F/A–18s were coming southwest from a carrier in the eastern Mediterranean, but Turk was much closer, and within a minute saw the distinctive tail of the aircraft dead ahead.

“Shooter Four, I'm coming up on her six.”

“Four acknowledges.”

Turk backed off the throttle, easing the Tigershark into position over the Hog's right wing. He zoomed the camera covering that direction so he could look into the bubble canopy of the A–10E. At first glance there seemed to be nothing wrong beyond a few shrapnel nicks in the aircraft's skin. But when he zoomed on Ginella, he saw her helmet slumped to the side.

Turk radioed Li and the controller, giving his position and heading, then telling them what he saw.

“She's gotta be out of it,” he added. “Autopilot has to be flying the plane. I don't know if we can rouse her.”

“Maybe if you buzz nearby,” suggested Li. “Maybe the buffet will wake her up.”

It was a long shot, but worth a try. Turk took a deep breath, then moved his hand forward on the simulated throttle.

S
ome twenty miles west, Danny Freah listened to the pilots as they attempted to rouse the Hog squadron commander. He'd heard of some similar incidents in the past, including one that had involved an A–10A that was lost over the U.S.

Any pilot flying above 12,000 or so could easily succumb to hypoxia, even in an ostensibly pressurized aircraft, if he wasn't receiving the proper mix of oxygen, or if something otherwise impeded the body's absorption of that oxygen.

How ironic, he thought, for a pilot to survive combat only to succumb to a run-of-the-mill problem.

“I knew his mother,” said Rubeo, who was sitting on the bench next to him.

“Who?” Danny lifted the visor on his helmet and turned to Rubeo. “Who are you talking about?”

“Neil Kharon. The man who jumped. His mother worked at Dreamland. It was before your time.”

“I'm sorry.”

Rubeo nodded.

“I was listening to a transmission,” said Danny. “One of the aircraft that was helping us is having a flight emergency. They can't raise the pilot.”

“I see.”

“Turk thinks she lost oxygen.”

Rubeo stared at him. Danny was about to turn away when the scientist asked what type of airplane it was.

“An A–10E. One of the Hogs I mentioned earlier.”

“Have the Tigershark take it over,” suggested Rubeo.

“How?”

“Give me your com set.”

“It's in the helmet.”

“Then give me the helmet.”

T
urk pulled the Tigershark back parallel to the A–10, this time on its left side. Three swoops and Ginella had not woken.

The plane, however, had moved into a circular pattern, apparently responding to a slight shift of pressure on the controls.

“She's going to be bingo fuel soon,” said Li, begging the question of how her own fuel was.

“I'm not sure what else we can do,” Turk said. “Maybe as she starts to run out of fuel the plane will descend. Once she's below twelve thousand feet, she'll regain consciousness and she can bail.”

Li didn't answer. The odds of that scenario coming true, let alone having a good outcome, were incalculable.

“Tigershark, this is Ray Rubeo.” The transmission came from Danny's helmet, but Rubeo's ID flashed on the screen, the Whiplash system automatically recognizing his voice. “Are you on the line?”

“Affirmative, Dr. Rubeo.”

“You are following an A–10E. Am I correct?”

“Yes, sir. The plane is flying in a circular pattern. I'm guessing she has a very slight input on the stick because—”

“No response from the pilot?”

“Copy that. No response.”

“The A–10E is equipped with a remote suite that can be controlled from your aircraft by tuning to the proper frequency and using the coded command sequence, just as if it was Flighthawk or Sabre.”

“Yeah, roger,” said Turk. “I did some of the testing. But the pilots told me the circuitry is inactive in these planes.”

“Inactive but not nonexistent, Captain. Stand by, please. I need to consult one of my people.”

T
he dilemma invigorated Rubeo, giving him something to focus on other than Neil Kharon and his horrendously wasted talent and life.

The A–10E system had been adopted from one of the control setups developed for the early Flighthawks. It wasn't quite cutting edge, but that was by design, since the Air Force specs called for a system that was both “compact and robust”—service-ese for a small but well-proven unit.

One of the primary requirements—and one of the things that had caused the main contractor on the project serious headaches—was the need to make the remote flight system entirely secondary to the “ordinary” pilot system. Unlike the Tigershark, which had been built from the ground up as a remote aircraft, the A–10E had to include legacy systems, most significantly in this case the autopilot, which had only been added to the plane in the A–10C conversions. Because of that, one of Rubeo's companies had worked closely with the main contractor, developing a system that allowed both to coexist in the aircraft.

The head of that project was Rick Terci, an engineer based in Seattle. Rubeo's call woke him up.

“The system won't dead start in the air if it's been under human control,” said Terci when Rubeo explained what was happening. “Not without her permission. The only way I can think of to get the remote on would be to turn the autopilot on first. Then you could cut in with the command. That would work. But you have to get the autopilot on.”

“Yes.” Rubeo saw the unit in his head, a black box located at the right side of the fuselage just in front of the canopy. For a normal aircraft, the shot would be almost impossible. But the Tigershark's rail gun could hit the spot with precision.

How, then, would they get the remote control to engage?

“I'm thinking if we could jolt the plane electronically,” Rubeo told Terci. “If we could surge the power, and the computer would reset. At that point we can contact it and take over.”

“You mean reboot the entire electrical system? In the air? Sure, but how do we do that? And still have something left?”

“Well how
would
you do it?” Rubeo asked. He let his mind wander, trying to visualize the system.

“Can't think of a way,” said Terci. “Not while it's flying. Not and still have the plane able to fly.”

“If we shoot out the generators?”

“Then you have no power at all. Not going to work.” Terci made a strange sound with his mouth. Rubeo realized the engineer was biting his thumbnail.

A good sign; he only did that when he was on the verge of an idea.

“No, it's simpler,” said Terci. “Just have a flight condition where the autopilot takes over. Then sign in from there. But you have to get the autopilot on . . . Say there's a sudden dip so the airplane loses altitude.”

“The safety protocol won't allow the system to take over if it went into autopilot while under pilot control,” said Rubeo. “We still need to have the system reboot somehow.”

“Yes,” said Terci, repeating Rubeo's point. “You need an electric shock to delete what was originally programmed, or it will just return to the pilot. It just has to reboot—no, wait—you could just delete that part of the memory. No, just make the computer think there's an anomaly. You don't need a massive event, just a reset.”

“How?”

“Hmmph.”

“What if we overload a data collector circuit so the computer reads it as a fault and has to reset? If the circuit no longer exists, it will reset into test mode.”

“Yes. You take over in retest. Sure, because it's resetting the program registers.”

“Will that work?”

“Maybe. I'm not sure. But what circuit would be the right one to blow out?”

“There must be a dozen. Can you access the schematics?”

“I don't know if my computer is on. Then I have to get into the company mainframes.”

“You have less than ten minutes to discover the proper circuit,” said Rubeo. “Please do not waste them by saying how difficult the task is.”