Piranha

by Dale Brown

  Thirty minutes later, they were bored stiff, butts dragging lower than the troughs in the waves. Even Breanna had to fight to keep her attention focused on the mission and the plane she was flying.

  All of the Dreamland Megafortresses were hand-built from older B-52’s. All had their own personalities as well as configurations, but they could be broken down into three main categories.

  The general-purpose Megafortresses were essentially highly efficient bombers with the capability of acting as mother ships for up to four Flighthawks. IOwa was the leader of this class, intended to be configured for roles such as attack and long-range patrol.

  The second category of Megafortress added a powerful onboard radar to the EB-52 skeleton, giving it nearly the ability of an advanced AWACS, but able to operate in an extremely hazardous environment. To accommodate the radar dome, these craft, around the forward wing area, had a prominent bulge. Though it was nowhere near as immense as the massive saucers that say atop a standard E-3 Sentry, Galatica or “Gal” belonged to this category. Her powerful radar altered the flight characteristics of the aircraft as it revolved, necessitating changes in the control computer to compensate.

  The third category of Megafortress added electronic interception and eavesdropping equipment, along with a suite of ECMs that could turn a Spark Vark green with envy. These planes included Raven and Quicksilver. Their automated telemetry gathering skills were on call here.

  They would record all electronic transmission from and to the Indian weapon, augmenting the data gathered by the EB-52’s powerful radar suite and the visual data from the Flighthawks. They weren’t just spy planes, however; armed with Tacit-Plus anti-radiation missiles, they could do the job of two or three different planes, protecting an attack package as effectively as a coordinated group of Wild Weasels, Spark Varks, and Compass Call aircraft.

  There were other possibilities for the type. The Army was very interested in adapting the plane for the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System or JSTARS role, another mission currently filled by aircraft of the 707 type.

  JSTARS E-8As, which had made their debut during the Gulf War, used Army and Air Force technology to track ground warfare units and targets; they could do for ground-attack forces what AWACS did for fighters. In theory, a Megafortress could accomplish the same thing while getting even closer to the action and delivering weapons itself. In fact, a good portion of the JSTARS technology had originally come from the Air Force’s Pave Mover and related programs, which were already incorporated in the development base of the “standard” EB-52.

  Various other improvements for the Megafortress were in the works, including new engine configurations, but the program itself was now fairly “mature.” With production models ready to go, it had a certain set character to it—and, of course, it already had its own project manager, Major Alou.

  The B-5 Unmanned Bomber Platform was wide-open, a vast cloud of potential waiting to be shaped, like the Megafortress had been when Bree joined the program. It was also the sort of program a captain could ride to a colonelcy and beyond.

  Was that important? Was that what she was worried about?

  No way. She wanted to be promoted.

  Even though it would strain her marriage.

  Zen was due for promotion soon, and with his record no one was going to stand in his way. That would almost certainly mean going to Washington. He hadn’t served in the Pentagon, and for someone like Zen the Pentagon was a necessary and expected ticket to be punched. He’d be there already if it hadn’t been for his accident.

  What did that have to do with anything? She’d be at Dreamland and he’d in D.C., one way or the other.

  Give up the B-5? Why? Because it wasn’t a “real” plane?

  Maybe she was worried about something else. Maybe there wasn’t room to have a two-career family.

  So she’d do what? Quit? Play Suzy Homemaker?

  Bullshit. She was to Suzy Homemaker as Zen was to …

  A Pentagon paper-pusher. He’d never last a week there, even in a wheelchair.

  “Coming up to Cathay,” said Chris Ferris. His voice had a cackle to it, accented by the interphone circuit shared throughout the airplane. He’d spent considerable time coming up with an elaborate list of code words for the various coordinates on their mission chart and, for some reason, thought they were amusing as hell. “Cathay” was the release area for the Flighthawks. “Byzantium” was the southernmost point of their patrol orbit; “Confucius” was the northern point.

  It could have been worse. Bree had put her foot down on a list of kung-fu heroes.

  “Ten minutes to launch area,” she told Zen, who was below on the Flighthawk deck.

  “Ready to begin fueling, Quicksilver,” he told her.

  “All right. Chris?”

  “As Li Po would say, ‘The sun rises with anticipation.’ ”

  “Li Po would be a Chinese philosopher?” Bree asked innocently.

  “My barber,” he answered, guffawing.

  Zen watched the countdown impatiently, waiting for the Megafortress to being the alpha maneuver that would increase the separation forces and helped propel the Flighthawk off the wing of the big plane. The vortices thrown off by the Megafortress were a complicated series of mini-tornadoes, but the computer and untold practice sessions made the launch almost routine. As the Megafortress dipped and then lifted away, Zen dropped downward with the Flighthawk, hurtling toward the sparkling ocean; the plane’s engine rippled with acceleration. He pulled back on the stick, rocketing ahead of the Megafortress. No amount of practice, no amount of routine, could change the thrill he felt, the electricity that sparked from his fingers and up through his skull as gravity grappled for the plane, losing—temporarily at least—the age-old battle of primitive forces.

  And yet, he was sitting in an aircraft more than three, now four miles away, flying level and true at 350 knots.

  “Launch procedure on Hawk Two at your convenience, Hawk Leader,” said Bree.

  “Ready when you are, Quicksilver.”

  They launched the second Flighthawk, then worked into their search pattern, a 250-mile narrow oval or “race-track” over the ocean. The earlier spin around the surveillance area had shown there were a half-dozen merchant vessels in the sea lanes but no military vessels. Likewise, the sky was clear.

  “We have a PS-5 at seventy-five miles,” said Chris, reading off the coordinates for a Chinese patrol plane coming south from the area above Vietnam. Known to the West as the PS-5, the flying boat was designated a Harbin “Shuishang Hongzhaji,” or “marine bomber,” SH-5 by the Chinese; the SH-5 had limited antiship and antisubmarine capabilities. With a boat-shaped hull and floats beyond the turboprops at the ends of its wings, the PS-5 belonged to an early generation of waterborne aircraft.

  Anything but fast, the PS-5 was lumbering about three thousand feet above the waves at 140 knots. Zen noted the location, which was fed from Quicksilver’s radar systems into C³. the long-range sitrep map showed the patrol aircraft as a red diamond in the left-hand corner of his screen, moving at a thirty-degree angle to his course.

  Just beyond it were two circles, civilian ships on the water, one a Japanese tanker, the other a Burmese freighter, according to a registry check performed by Lieutenant Freddy Collins. Collins handled the radio intercept gear, and had been tasked with keeping tabs on ship traffic as well. The other specialist, Torbin Dolk, handled the radar intercepts and advanced ECMs, backing up and feeding Chris Ferris, the copilot.

  “Getting some hits just beyond our turnaround point,” warned Torbin. “Radar just out of range.”

  “Unidentified ship at grid coordinate one-one-seven-point-three-two at two-zero-zero-one,” said Collins. “Could be a warship.”

  “Roger that,” said Zen. He pushed the Flighthawks further ahead of the Megafortress, running close to the edge of their control range at ten miles.

  “Looks like a destroyer,” said Collins.

  “On its own?
” asked Bree.

  “There may be something beyond it but I can’t pick it out.”

  “Definitely something out there—I have two Su-33’s at two hundred thirteen nautical miles right on our nose,” said Chris. “They don’t see us—turning—looks like they’re high cap for somebody.”

  “Have another destroyer—looks like we have a location on the entire Chinese Navy,” said Collins.

  “Radar contact is Slotback; we’re out of range. Computer thinks Su-33’s or Su-27Ks, same thing,” said Torbin.

  “That would fit with the Shangi-Ti, the Chinese pocket carrier,” said Collins. “Should be right about the edge of their patrol area.”

  The Su-33—originally designated Su-27K by the Russians—was a Naval version of the potent Su-27, most of its modifications were minor, helping adapt the fighter to carrier landings and midair refueling. It could be configured for either fighter or attack roles, and despite its alterations remained as maneuverable as any piloted aircraft in the U.S. inventory. The Chinese air-to-air missile systems were not particularly advanced, but nonetheless got the job done, and the 30mm cannons in their noses tossed serious hunks of metal in the air.

  “Okay, that puts the carrier one hundred nautical miles beyond Confucius,” said Chris Ferris, collating all the data.

  “Typical CAP?”

  “Usually two Sukhois in the air; they should have two others ready to launch. They have to go one at a time so it takes them a bit to cycle up. Endurance is limited. We don’t have a lot of data on what sort of refueling procedures they use. Carriers are brand-new.”

  “What do you say we change our patrol area to get a better look at them,” said Bree. “Roll tape from four or five miles away. What do you think, Hawk Leader?”

  “Hawk Leader copies,” Zen told his wife. “I’ll wave to them.”

  “Roger that.”

  Northern Philippines

  1200

  Danny Freah curled his fingers around one of the handholds at the side of the helicopter as it took a sharp turn to the left, riding the nap of the jungle valley toward their destination. It was his first ride in the Dreamland Quick Bird, a veritable sports car compared to the Pave Lows and the MV-22 Ospreys he was used to.

  Starting with a Mcdonald-Douglas MD530N NOTAR (for no tail rotor) Little Bird, the engineers had made several modifications to the small scouts. The most noticeable was the reworking of the fuselage, trading its thin skin for faceted carbon-boron panels similar to the material used in the body armor Whiplash troopers dressed in. even though comparatively light, the panels were too heavy to cover the entire aircraft. However, the protection offered by strategically placed panels meant the aircraft could take a direct hit from a ZSU-23 at a hundred feet without serious damage.

  Uprated engines compensated for the weight penalty; the single Alison turboshaft that motivated a “normal” Little Bird was replaced with a pair of smaller but more powerful turbo based on an Italian design. The techies joked the motors had been taken from supercharged spaghetti makers; they were in fact intended for lightweight hydrofoils and had a tendency to overheat when pushed to the max. However, the little turbos delivered over seven hundred horsepower (actually, 713.2) apiece, compared to the 650 generated by a standard Alison, itself no slouch. The fuselage now had a triple wedge at the bottom, the blisters helping accommodate additional fuel as well as adding hard-points for Hellfire missiles and other munitions. A pair of 7.62mm chain-guns were embedded in the oversized landing skids, so that even when on a transport mission, as it was now, the aircraft was never unarmed.

  I was impossible to effectively reduce the helicopter’s radar signature; flying more than a few feet off the ground would make it visible to any powerful active radar. The NOTAR helped funnel its heat signature, however, making if difficult to detect with infrared gear. It was relatively quiet as well, and could cruise at just over 170 knots; its top speed was beyond 220, though no one was entirely sure, due to the performance limits placed on the engines until the overheating problems were solved.

  The Quick Bird couldn’t quite keep up with the Osprey, which cruised around four hundred knots, nor did it have the range of the Pave Low or even the ubiquitous Blackhawk, but the little scout was clearly an improvement over the AH-6 Special Forces-optimized Little Bird, and that was high praise indeed. Easily transportable by cargo plane, two had been packed inside “Quickmover,” the MC-17 that brought Danny and his team to the Philippines. Without breaking a sweat, off-loading them at the Philippines Air Force base had taken the crew less than ten minutes.

  Danny glanced at the paper map in his lap, trying to correlate it and the satellite snaps he had on his clipboard with what he was seeing out of the bubble of the helo cockpit. The southeastern islands of the Philippines were pristine jewels of unfettered nature, wild amalgams of jungle, volcano, and desert island. The Quick Birds’ destination sat on the side of one of these gems, now less than five minutes away. Somewhat overgrown, the base had served as first a Japanese, and then an Allied, airport during World War II. Afterwards, it had seen use as a reserve and emergency airstrip and then a remote training area, its concrete ran nearly 2,500 yards, more than enough for the Megafortresses to land and take off—once the jungle was cleared away and steel mesh put down to even out the rough spots.

  “There it is,” said the help pilot, pointing ahead. “We got that spot at the north end we’ll try for, Cap,” said the pilot.

  “Good,” said Danny. The satellite photo seemed to show about seventy-five yards of clear area at the northern end, but even without pulling up his binoculars, Danny could see there were thick vines covering a good portion of it.

  “Couple of clear spots I think,” added the pilot, dropping his airspeed to hover.

  “Let’s survey the area before we land,” said Danny. “I know you don’t have too much fuel, but I’d like to get a feel for the terrain first.”

  “Not a problem,” said the pilot, radioing the second helo.

  The airstrip edged out over the sea, paralleling a cliff that hung over a rock-strewn, sandy beach. The light-blue water revealed it was partly protected by coral reefs. Just to the south was a jutting stone, an oddly shaped piece of yellow rock that would provide a good point for one of their radar surveillance units. A road had once wound into the jungle near the southwestern end of the strip; from the air it seemed almost entirely overgrown.

  Though it wasn’t visible, a village lay about seven miles to the south, at the extreme tip of the island. According to their briefing papers, there were less than a hundred people there. The rest of the island was uninhabited.

  “All right, let’s get down and get to work,” Danny told the pilot.

  The Quick Bird managed to find a clear spot on the gray-brown concrete big enough to land nearly side by side. Gear off-loaded, the two choppers tipped forward and rose, leaving Danny and his six men alone with a collection of flamethrowers, buzz saws, and other jungle-removing gear.

  “All right, we have forty-five minutes before the helos get back with the rest of our gear,” Danny told his men. “Half hour after that, the mesh for the runway should start arriving, powder and Bison, I want a landing area hacked out so the helos can get down without breaking our stuff. Nurse, you and Jonesy do a perimeter sweep south and west. Pretty boy, Blow—you guys do the same north and east. No chances, okay? I’ll set up the com gear.”

  Powder picked up one of the four flamethrowers they’d brought to burn off the undergrowth, and hoisted the pack onto his backk.

  “Hold off on that, Powder,” Danny told him. “Don’t go starting fires until we have firebreaks and everything else in place.”

  “Just making sure it works, Cap,” said Powder, flicking the trigger. The device didn’t light at first, and Danny half-worried that the sergeant would set himself on fire before he got it going. “Woo—what I’m talking about,” said Powder as a long red flame jetted from the nozzle.

  “Sometimes I swear to God I’m
a goddamn kindergarten teacher,” said Danny, shaking his head.

  “Powder never made it to Kindergarten, Captain,” said Bison, taking out the chain saws. “Got left back in preschool.”

  Powder put the flamethrowers back down. He took one of the large chain saws Bison had laid out and fueled. “Wait till I get this little humdinger goin’, Cap. Gonna call me Mr. Jungle.”

  “Mr. Jungle Rot, more like it,” said Bison.

  “Just get going,” Danny told them. “I want enough space for the MH-17 to land before nightfall so we can get the trailer in.”

  The trailer was an RV adapted for use as Whiplash’s mobile command post.

  “This is what I’m talkin’ about,” said Powder, revving his saw.

  Aboard Quicksilver, above the South China Sea

  1230

  Zen could see the two Sukhois on his long-range scan as he approached. They were flying a figure-eight pattern over the aircraft carrier task force, their patrol circle never more than twenty miles from the surface ships. Unlike an American battle group, there was no radar plane aloft, and the carrier would be vulnerable to an attack by any aircraft equipped with American Harpoon missiles or even Exocets, which, at least in theory, could strike from about twenty-five miles away. Of course, the Chinese were probably counting on the radars in the Su-33’s to pick up approaching aircraft before they were in range to attack, a not unreasonable expectation—unless the aircraft attacking were American.

  The Flighthawks were not equipped for surface attack, and the Megafortress was not carrying AGMs; nor were they authorized to attack the Chinese, or any ship for that matter. If they were, the Chinese would be out one pocket carrier. The stealthy Flighthawks began turning at five miles from the carrier, still undetected by any of the screening radars. Zen split the Flighthawks, riding Two ahead of Quicksilver and trailing with One, just in case the Sukhois finally got curious. But they didn’t.

  “Two helicopters operating with the carrier,” reported Collins, who as analyzing some of the signal intelligence and magnified visual information they’d gathered.