by Tom Clancy
Unfortunate for them.
Between the explosion along the tracks and the heat produced by the train itself, Halverson had just created a secondary and much hotter heat source than her fighter. The S-500s had both infrared and active radar homing (ARH) guidance systems; however, those ARH systems lost their effectiveness the closer the target was.
As the train slowed, so did she, wheeling around to hover and descend beside the first few cars, with Russian troops plastering their faces against the windows in shock and pointing at her. She wasn’t cocky, didn’t wave. All she could think about were three words: speed, maneuver, evade.
The rest of the SAMs came in, striking the still-flaming tracks, now tearing apart the bridge in a near-blinding conflagration that lit up the whole gorge. The snow-capped mountains came alive with shadows and flashes of orange light as broad sections of the bridge tumbled like scaffolding ripped free by a twister, only to crash onto the rocky floor some four hundred meters below.
The train could not stop in time and was heading straight for the shattered tracks and the abyss.
According to Halverson’s radar, the Vympels, too, would take this new bait, as all four shifted course toward the SAM explosions, their own ARH systems homing in on the moving train . . .
Halverson drifted back from the gawking Russians, then hit the gas and burst from behind the train, rocketing straight up into the night sky.
Eyes watery, heart still racing, she wouldn’t sigh in relief. Not yet.
Those Interceptors were still up there, still had her on their radar—
And not a breath after she leveled off at just a thousand feet above the train, the alarms beeped again.
Two more Vympels. ETA fifteen seconds.
There must’ve been a third one as well, the one that exploded across her portside wing, the one that had never shown up on the radar, the one that caused her to lean forward against the centrifugal force, flip a panel, and detonate a tiny bomb inside the prototype radar system, effectively destroying it and its software.
Her F-35B was in a flat spin now, and she fought hard with the stick, realizing that no maneuver in the world could save her now.
She thought of her boyfriend, McAllen, the way he’d run his fingers through her long, brown hair. She thought of pizza and the smell of that perfume she loved so much, and she thought about her father, an Air Force pilot like her who’d flown missions in Afghanistan, and of her mother, who’d worked tirelessly at the bank to help support their family. She even remembered Dr. Helena Ragland, director of the Wraith program at Skunk Works, beaming at her after her first test flight. Halverson’s gut felt hollow over letting all of them down.
In the next breath, she released the stick and yanked hard on the black-and-yellow striped handle between her legs, aka the “loud handle.”
Here it comes . . .
She screamed against the violent explosion of the canopy shearing off the aircraft—even as she fought against those ugly, chilling feelings of defeat.
She wasn’t a quitter, wasn’t dead yet. And hell, this wasn’t the first time she’d punched out of a jet. She was already a proud member of the Martin-Baker Fan Club, having earned her broken wings in the great white north of Canada at the beginning of the war, when the Russian Federation had attempted to seize the oil sands.
So here it was, déjà vu. The Martin-Baker MK16 ejection seat carried her away from the spinning jet, the straps and padded cuffs locking her to the seat, even as the wind kicked the shit out of her and made her feel like a flaming hardball hurtling out of Fenway Park.
Bang, the drogue chute snapped open, tugged her down, and she began rocking to and fro as the main chute behind the headrest deployed and the seat automatically dropped away from her, drawn off by another chute.
Her helmet’s transmitter was active now, her ejection broadcast across the network, with Neptune Command hopefully monitoring her every move despite the silence.
That offered only small relief as she glanced down at the bridge, the maglev train hanging precariously over the destroyed section of track, the first two cars swinging in midair, the others still hanging on, the fires still burning around the wreckage.
She couldn’t see the automatic thirty-millimeter cannon fire at first, only hear it, only feel the rounds ripping through her chute. Those Interceptors were equipped with GSh-30 internal cannons with at least 150 rounds each, meaning those four pilots had 600 chances to kill her.
Another salvo came in, and she jerked forward, one of her steering lines severed, a few more lines cut, the chute partially collapsing, lines getting tangled, and she began a corkscrewing descent—
Directly toward the train, the troops now pouring out of the rear cars and fleeing up the tracks, with girders, towers, and decking groaning under the weight and threatening to collapse. A few suspension cables snapped like rubber bands pulled to their extremes, whipping away to crash across the cars and knock several fleeing troops over the side. They screamed as they plunged into the gorge.
She was about to detach her main chute and deploy the reserve when another wave of gunfire came in, the chute jerking once more . . . and then she was coming up on the train, seconds away from impact.
She gritted her teeth and reached out with gloved hands.
TWO
Palmdale, California
Near Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
Joint Strike Force Plant 42
Dr. Helena Ragland was lying in the backseat of an SUV, writhing in pain, her wrists bound by zipper cuffs.
Thirty minutes earlier, she’d been monitoring the test mission over the Caucasus Mountains from her computer station inside the Skunk Works facility, and the moment she’d learned that Halverson had ejected, she’d been called out of the office for a meeting up at Edwards Air Force Base with Lieutenant General Terence Walsh, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance.
Walsh had been a huge proponent of the Wraith program, and he’d flown in from Washington not only to inspect the prototype but to watch a test flight. Halverson’s mission failure could not have come at a worse time.
The lieutenant general had been informed of Halverson’s ejection and wanted to hear Ragland’s explanations. She could rely on the old excuse of her team having to analyze the flight recordings, telemetry, satellite images, and so on to fully understand where the malfunction had occurred, but Walsh deserved better than that. She would be honest with him. Painfully honest. There was nothing obvious that indicated or suggested a malfunction, and she was certain that prior to launch the unit’s software was operating flawlessly, as it had during more than a dozen tests here in Palmdale. Halverson should have flown right across the mountains and into North Ossetia without being detected, and again, if she was detected, those SAMs should have been locking on to locations where she’d already been. Something had happened after Halverson had lifted off, something that caused the RWSA’s software to indicate systems normal when in fact the unit was not functioning. For a few seconds she’d entertained the preposterous idea of sabotage, but she’d sworn off the notion because of the tremendous security precautions they’d taken at the Skunk Works facility, with all computers being air-gapped and lacking any connection to the outside world. They’d also been exceedingly careful during the F-35B’s transfer overseas.
After delivering that frustrating report to the lieutenant general, Ragland would steer Walsh’s concerns away from the malfunction and point him squarely toward his downed pilot, their mutual friend, a woman well known by the president of the United States for her bravery under fire. They needed to verify whether Halverson was still alive and send in the Quick Reaction Force (QRF). In point of fact, even as she needed Walsh to think more about Halverson, she needed to forget—otherwise she might break down. She and Halverson had worked closely together for the past year, engineer and pilot, and Ragland had begun to
think of the woman as her younger sister, sharing meals and drinks, sharing in the setbacks and triumphs of the program.
And now this.
Yes, it was already a terrible morning. Even the coffee tasted bitter. She reached over to the center console and replaced the steaming cup, then glanced ahead at the highway.
A frantic phone call from her sixteen-year-old daughter had her swearing under her breath. She’d forgotten to give Lacey the pictures she needed for her school project—due today. The pictures were in Ragland’s purse.
“Honey, I’m on my way to an important meeting.”
“Can’t you stop on the way?”
Ragland hesitated. She’d just bowed out of her monthly update briefing with Boeing’s Argus project team to focus on the Halverson emergency and could certainly not be late for her meeting with Walsh.
“I want them to know about my father,” Lacey snapped.
Ragland tensed. “All right, all right, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Her daughter, her only daughter, the gem of her life, was still struggling with her father’s death. Ragland had divorced Steven nearly two years ago. He blamed the Wraith program; she blamed his inability to balance his own medical research with raising a daughter. They used to jokingly refer to their marriage as an episode of When Scientists Collide.
Just before the war had broken out, Steven had gone to Paris for a conference and had been killed during the Russian ground invasion. The news was devastating, and the pain in Lacey’s eyes only fueled Ragland’s desire to complete the Wraith project and put an end to this global conflict.
She reached into her purse and withdrew the old pictures of Steven when he was just a boy. Ironically, Ragland had removed the photos from some old albums and had slipped them into her purse so she wouldn’t forget to give them to Lacey. The photos were going to be scanned and become part of Lacey’s online portfolio.
Following a quick glance in the rearview mirror, she accelerated, the BMW leaping forward, her anxiety working its way into her foot. She hadn’t spent her entire life engineering things that go fast without enjoying a little acceleration herself. Her secret dream was to pilot the X-2A Wraith, bring the jet up to Mach 6, and reach any destination on the planet in less than three hours.
Hypersonic flight powered by scramjet—essentially a single-cycle, four-barrel rocket engine—worked best in a one-to-two-micron atmosphere near space. Once Pratt & Whitney had developed the engine, Ragland had incorporated her modifications to an airframe looking every inch like a matte black manta ray slicing through the air at unbelievable speeds. Oh, how she longed to be a test pilot.
However, that wasn’t the path she’d chosen. She had attended UCLA, earning her undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering. Afterward, she’d opted for a radical change of scenery, traveling all the way to MIT for her doctorate in aircraft systems engineering. She’d taught there as an adjunct for a few years but had been lured out of academia by administrators from Skunk Works, the official alias for Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs (ADP). Skunk Works was where all the sexiest pieces of aviation hardware were developed, aircraft like the U-2, SR-71 Blackbird, F-117 Nighthawk, F-22 Raptor, and the F-35 Lightning II that Halverson had flown. Promises of unobstructed research and far less bureaucratic interference since the four branches of the service had come together under the auspices of the Joint Strike Force were too tempting to ignore.
Over the years she’d secured many patents for her employer, most recently the one for the Radar Warping System. While she was readily acknowledged and financially rewarded for the fruits of her engineering prowess, by law, the patents became the intellectual property of the company, and that was fine. The work was immensely rewarding, with the Wraith program now a professional and personal quest. They would get past this setback. They had to. The president himself was a huge proponent of the program. Today he was out in the Mojave Desert, watching some kind of hush-hush drone demo, and the news of Halverson being shot down had no doubt already ruined his day.
She turned off the highway and headed down West Lancaster Boulevard, reaching her three-bedroom home two minutes earlier than promised. Lacey was standing in the driveway, wearing a deep scowl she’d perfected during the last year.
“You always forget,” she said as Ragland handed over the photos.
“I’m sorry, honey, I really am. I always have a lot on my mind. Hurry now. Don’t miss the bus.”
Lacey nodded. “You owe me big-time for this.”
Ragland forced a smile, then backed out of the driveway and hurried off.
Within a few minutes, she was on Aerospace Highway, just north of West Avenue F, when, out of nowhere, her Beemer’s engine died.
“What now?” she groaned, coasting to the side of the road. She checked the mirror. No cars. The rolling desert hills stretched off for miles.
Cursing, she tried to start the engine again. Nothing. Not even the click, click of a dead battery.
She grabbed her smartphone, thumbed it on. No power.
A chill woke at the base of her spine. She got out of the car, shut the door behind her. She spun on her heels, looking for anything, another car on the highway, any sign of power. What was this? An EMP wave? Had the Russians finally gone insane? The nuclear exchange back in 2016 between Iran and Saudi Arabia had crippled the world’s oil supply. Did the Russians really believe a nuclear attack on the United States was in their economic best interests?
No, no, no, this wasn’t an attack. This was some kind of localized anomaly. Something coming from the base, another test gone awry—but wouldn’t she have been notified?
Her breath grew ragged, and then she heard it, a car engine from somewhere to the south. She turned again.
An SUV came barreling toward her. She waved frantically to the driver, who slowed and parked behind her car.
Actually, there were two men, both in their thirties and dressed business casual. Very handsome. She found herself smoothing out her short blond hair and adjusting her glasses.
“Hello there, ma’am. Looks like you’ve got a bit of a problem,” the taller one said, his accent British or Australian, maybe South African.
“Thanks for stopping. Are your phones working?”
The shorter one reached for his, glanced at the screen, and shrugged. “No problem.”
“Mind if I borrow it? My battery’s dead or something.”
“Sure, but we can give you a lift,” said the taller one, wriggling his brows.
“Oh, I’m sure you can, but if I could just borrow your phone, I’ll have someone from the base pick me up.”
“Edwards Air Force Base?” asked the shorter one.
“Yeah.”
The taller one took a step toward her. “I’m sorry, Dr. Ragland, but I think you know what this is about. We’ll make it as painless as possible.” He tipped his head toward the SUV. “Please get in.”
“Are you kidding me? Who are you?” she demanded, walking backward toward her car, nearly tripping.
As she turned to grab the door handle, something struck her back and shoulder, the pain excruciating as she turned to them, the Taser dart wires looping back from her shoulder to the pistol clutched in the taller one’s hand.
Before she hit the ground they were on her, carrying her back to their vehicle, laying her across the rear seat and binding her wrists behind her back. She could barely talk, her vision blurred by tears.
Oh, yes, she knew what this was about.
The Wraith.
THREE
American Missionary Camp
Amazon Rain Forest
Northeastern Ecuador
“He’s on the move,” Lex shouted, bolting from beneath the underbrush.
Twenty meters ahead, their target was fleeing through a dense avenue of tagua palms toward the river below.
Captain Mikhail “Lex” Alexandrov and his three-man JSF Marine Corps Raider Team had been tracking this son of a bitch for the past six months, across three different continents, and this was the closest they’d ever come to capturing him.
The baritone and familiar voice of Staff Sergeant Borya, one of Lex’s teammates, rattled through his earpiece: “Drone’s in the air. Just stay with him, sir.”
Their unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with infrared sensor was a medium-sized quadcopter that could track their target through the jungle—
But it couldn’t look the man in the eye and tell him this was the end of the line. It couldn’t let him know that he and his “Forgotten Army” of terrorists were going to pay for the thousands they’d killed.
Yes, the moment the cuffs went on, Lex would tell this guy in both Russian and Spanish that he was unimpressed and that Nestes was lucky he was worth more alive than dead. JSF interrogators would pry out of him everything he knew about his entire network: names, relationships, front companies, communications hubs, weapons transfer points, and current and future operations.
Carlos Nestes might be the leader of the Forgotten Army, but he sure as hell would remember who had captured him.
Soulless terroristicheskiys like Nestes came from “failed” states in the Balkans, Africa, and South America. Once a part of the Green Brigade Transnational, a much larger terrorist organization, they had splintered off, recruited drug lords and paramilitary organizations, and even claimed to have the support of factions like Hezbollah and the Taliban.
Lex didn’t give a shit about that. They could have connections with a powerful alien race. Point was, if you crossed America, if you crossed the JSF, if you crossed the Marine Corps, you, sir, were going down.
The hard way.
Lex’s boots sank three inches into mud that felt like black glue, forcing him off the path and sidestepping down a steeper embankment as the rushing river grew louder. He was bare-handing his M4 carbine, the weapon warm and sticky as he used it now like a tightrope walker’s pole for balance. He carefully shifted across the trunk of a fallen palm to bridge a gully formed by runoff. This allowed him to flank Nestes, who was now sliding down the hill, trying to slow his descent, the mud washing up over his jeans and sleeveless T-shirt. He glanced back, long black hair whipping over his eyes, and then he spotted Lex.