Scarecrow ss-3

by Matthew Reilly

  And so the two X-15s rocketed to the south-east, toward the Suez Canal and the Red Sea and a small decrepit base in Yemen from which a Chameleon missile would soon be launched, a missile that would shatter the existing world order.

  In their way: the greatest aerial armada ever assembled by man.

  After only twenty minutes of flying, Rufus caught sight of it.

  'Oh my Lord . . .' he breathed.

  They hung in the orange evening sky like a swarm of insects: the squadron of African fighters.

  It was an incredible sight—a veritable wall of moving pinpoints spread out across the Egyptian coastline, guarding the airspace over the Suez Canal.

  One hundred and fifty warplanes.

  All manner of fighter planes made up the aerial armada.

  Old planes, new planes, red planes, blue planes—anything that could carry a missile—a motley collection of once-great fighters purchased from First World nations after their First World use-by dates had expired.

  The Sukhoi Su-17—built in 1966 and long since discarded by the Russians.

  The MiG-25 Foxbat—superseded in the 1980s by more modern variants, but which could still hold its own against all but the best American planes.

  The French-made Mirage V/50—one of France's biggest military exports, which they sell to anyone: Libya, Zaire, Iraq.

  There were even a few feisty Czech L-59 Albatrosses, a favourite among African nations.

  Performance-wise, all these fighters lost ground to more modern planes like the F-22 Raptor and the F-15E. But when they came equipped with top-of-the-line air-to-air missiles—Sidewinders, Phoenixes, Russian R-60Ts and R-27s, missiles that were easily obtainable at the arms bazaars of Romania and the Ukraine—this older force of fighters could match it with the best of them. Fighters may be expensive and hard to get, but good-quality

  missiles can be bought by the dozen.

  And if nothing else, Schofield thought, these guys have the advantage of sheer numbers.

  The best-equipped F-22 in the world could not hold off a force of this size forever. Ultimately, sheer force of numbers would overwhelm even the best technology.

  'What do you think, Rufus?'

  'This baby wasn't built to fight, Captain,' Rufus said. 'She was built for speed. So that's what we're gonna do with her—we're gonna fly her low and fast and we're gonna do what no pilot has ever done before: we're gonna outrun any missiles those bastards throw at us.'

  'Missiles chasing us,' Schofield said. 'Nice.'

  Rufus said, 'For what it's worth, Captain, we've got exactly one piddly little single-barrel gun pointing out from our nose. I think it's there for decoration.'

  Just then, a new voice came over their headsets: 'American X-15s, this is Captain Harold Marshall of the USS Nimitz. We have you on our scopes. The Jolly Rogers are en route. They will intercept you as you reach the enemy force. Five Prowlers have been sent ahead at hundred-mile intervals to provide electronic jamming for you. It's going to get hot in there, gentlemen, but hopefully we can punch a hole big enough for you guys to shoot through.'' There was a pause. 'Oh, and Captain Schofield, I've been informed of the situation. Good luck. We're all right behind you.'

  'Thank you, Captain,' Schofield said softly. 'Okay, Rufus. Let's rock.'

  Speed.

  Pure, unadulterated speed. 7,000 km/h is about 2,000 metres per second. Seven times supersonic is super super fast.

  The two X-15s ripped through the sky toward the swarm of enemy aircraft.

  As they came within twenty miles of the African planes, a phalanx

  of missiles issued out from the armada—forty tail-like smoketrails streaming toward them.

  But no sooner had the first missile been loosed, than its firer—a Russian MiG-25 Foxbat—erupted in a burst of orange flames.

  Six other African planes exploded, hit by AIM-120 AMR A AM air-to-air missiles, while twenty of the missiles loosed by the African armada exploded harmlessly in mid-air, hitting chaff-deploying dummy missiles that had been fired from—

  —an incoming force of American F-14 fighters bearing ominous skull-and-crossbones symbols on their tailfins.

  The famous 'Jolly Rogers' from the Nimitz. About a dozen F-14 Tomcats, flanked by nimble F/A-18 Hornets.

  And suddenly a gigantic aerial battle, unheard of in modern warfare, was underway.

  The two X-15s banked and swerved as they shot through the ranks of the African armada, avoiding mid-air explosions, dive-bombing fighters, waves of tracer bullets and superfast missile

  smoketrails.

  All manner of fighter planes whipped through the twilight sky— MiGs, Mirages, Tomcats and Hornets, rolling, diving, engaging,

  exploding.

  At one point, Schofield's X-15 swooped upside-down to avoid one African fighter, only to come on a head-on collision course with another African bogey—a Mirage—but just as the two planes were about to slam nose-to-nose into each other, the African plane exploded—hit from underneath by a brilliant AMRAAM shot— and Schofield's X-15 just blasted right through its flaming remains, sheets of burning metal scraping against the X-15's flanks, the severed hand of the enemy plane's dead pilot smearing a streak of blood across the X-15's canopy right next to Rufus's eyes.

  And yet the African missiles never hit the NASA rocket planes.

  They would get close, and then the missiles would just swerve wildly around the X-15s as if the two NASA planes were protected by some kind of invisible bubble.

  In actual fact, they were.

  Care of the five US Navy EA-6B Prowlers—with their directional AN/ALQ-99F electronic jamming pods—that were flying parallel to the X-15s, ten miles away.

  Nuggetty and tough, the Prowlers knew that they could never keep up with the superfast X-15s, so they had cleverly placed themselves parallel to Schofield's flight path but spaced out, each Prowler protecting the rocket planes with its jamming signal before passing the X-15s onto the next Prowler, like relay runners passing a baton.

  'American X-15s, this is Prowler Leader,' a voice said in Schofield's headset. ' We can cover you up to the Canal, but we just ain't fast enough to keep up. You'll be on your own from there.'

  'You've done more than enough already,' Schofield said.

  'Christ! Look out!' Rufus yelled.

  For right then, in the face of the Prowlers' long-range electronic protection, the African planes embarked on a new strategy.

  They started doing kamikaze dives at the X-15s.

  Suicide runs.

 

  Electronic countermeasures may be able to disrupt the homing systems of a missile, but no matter how good they are, they cannot stop a man wilfully flying his plane into another.

  A half-dozen fighter jets rained down on the two X-15s, screaming through the sky, loosing withering waves of tracer bullets as they did so.

  The two X-15s split up.

  Rufus rolled his plane right and down, while the other X-15 banked left, avoiding its dive-bomber by a bare foot, but not before a lone tracer bullet from one of the kamikazes entered its canopy from the side and exited out the other side: a flight path that also entailed a short trip through the head of Knight's pilot.

  Blood and brains splattered the interior of the X-15.

  The plane peeled away into the sky, out of control, heading eastward, away from the battle.

  Knight scrambled into the front seat—where he quickly unbuckled the dead pilot and hurled his body into the back. Then Knight himself took the controls, trying desperately to bring the plane up before she ploughed into the Mediterranean Sea.

  The sea rushed up before him—faster, faster, faster . . .

  Boom.

  For their part, Schofield and Rufus had swung their plane low over the sea—so low in fact that they were now rushing barely twenty feet above the waves, kicking up a continuous whitewater geyser

  behind them at the same time as criss-crossing missiles blasted into the water all around them.

  'I se
e the Canal!' Rufus yelled above the din.

  It lay about twenty miles ahead of them, the mouth of the Suez Canal—a modern-day marvel of engineering; two colossal concrete pillars flanking the entry to the mighty sealane that gave access to the Red Sea.

  And above it, more planes from the African armada.

  'Rufus! Bank left!' Schofield yelled, peering up through their canopy.

  Rufus did so—rolling them on their side just as two Czech L-59s went screaming past them on either side and buried themselves in the sea.

  And then all of a sudden they hit the confines of the Canal—

  —and lost the electronic protection of the Prowlers.

  Schofield's X-15 blasted down the length of the Suez Canal, flying low, banking around anchored ships, turning the mighty concrete-walled canal into little more than an obstacle-filled trench—but effectively flying under the main body of the aerial armada.

  They had run the blockade.

  But then into the Canal behind them shot two American-made Phoenix missiles that had somehow found their way onto the wing-mounts of an African fighter jet.

  The X-15 rushed down the water-filled trench.

  The two Phoenix missiles gained on it.

  Two suicide fighters rained down—coming at the X-15 from either side in a scissor formation—but Rufus rolled the rocket plane and the two fighters missed it by inches—blasting instead into the sandy banks of the Canal, exploding in twin geysers of sand and fire.

  And then the two Phoenix missiles came alongside the X-15's tail and Schofield saw an amazing thing: he could read the stencilled lettering on their sides: 'XAIM-54A—HUGHES MISSILE SYSTEMS.'

  'Rufus . . . !' he yelled.

  'I know!' Rufus called back.

  'Please do something!'

  'Was just about to!'

  And suddenly Rufus swung them to the right, up over the bank of the Canal, swinging them around in a wide wide circle, heading back towards the Mediterranean.

  The two missiles followed, swooping around in identical semicircles, unaffected by the incredible G-forces.

  Since the bulk of the African armada had been protecting the Egyptian coastline, only about six African fighter planes remained back here.

  These planes saw the X-15 swoop around in its wide circle, coming back toward them, and thought that this was their lucky day.

  Wrong.

  The X-15—circling, circling—shot through their midst like a bullet through a stand of trees, blasting between two African MiGs with barely 10 feet to spare on either side . . .

  . . . but leaving the MiGs in the path of the two Phoenix missiles.

  Boom-boom!

  The MiGs exploded and the X-15 continued its wide circle until it was back in the trench of the Canal, back on its south-easterly course.

  However, its wide circle—easily two hundred kilometres wide— had allowed one of the African planes to loose a last-ditch missile, its finest: a single stolen American AIM-120 AMRAAM, the best air-to-air missile in the world.

  The AMRAAM shot through the air behind the speeding X-15, closing in on it like a hungry hawk.

  'I can't shake it!' Rufus yelled.

  'How long will it stay on our tail?' Schofield asked. 'Doesn't it have a cut-out switch if the chase goes too long?'

  'No! That's the thing about AMRAAMs! They just chase you all day and all night! Wear you down and then kill you.'

  'Well, no AMRAAM has ever chased one of these planes before! Keep going! Full throttle! Maybe we can outrun it—'

  A voice in his earpiece cut him off.

  It was Scott Moseley, and his voice sounded dead, shocked.

  'Uh, Captain Schofield. I have some really bad news'

  'What?'

  'Our early warning satellites just picked up an ICBM launch signature from south-central Yemen. Flight characteristics indicate that it is a Jericho-2B intercontinental ballistic missile, heading north toward Mecca. Captain, Killian knows you're coming. He's fired the missile early.'

  'Oh, no way!' Schofield yelled, staring off into the sky. 'You have got to be kidding. That is not fair. That is not fucking fair!'

  He looked at the weapons strapped to his chest, guns that he had planned to use to storm the missile base in Yemen. All useless now.

  He held up the CincLock-VII disarm unit and just shook his head . . .

  Then he froze.

  Staring at the CincLock unit.

  'Mr Moseley. Do you have telemetry on that missile signal?'

  'Sure:

  'Send it through.'

  "You got it:

  A moment later, Schofield's trip computer beeped and a map similar to the one he had seen earlier appeared on its screen. An arrow-like icon representing the Chameleon missile approaching Mecca tracked northwards up the screen.

  Schofield punched in his own transponder signal into the computer and a second icon appeared on the screen, tracking southward:

  Schofield saw the flight data on the screen: signal IDs, airspeeds, altitudes.

  He almost didn't need to do the math.

  The picture said it all.

  Two aircraft were converging on Mecca: his X-15 and the Chameleon missile, labelled by the satellite's automated recognition system as a Jericho-2B intercontinental ballistic missile.

  Both aircraft were travelling at practically the same speed and were roughly equidistant from Mecca.

  'Rufus,' Schofield said flatly.

  'Yeah?'

  'We're not going to Yemen anymore.'

  'I kinda figured that,' Rufus said, defeat in his voice. 'What are we going to do now?'

  But Schofield was hitting buttons on his computer, doing rapid calculations. It would be absolutely incredible if this worked.

  He and Rufus were still about 1,000 kilometres from Mecca. Time to target: 8:30.

  He did the calculations for the Chameleon missile.

  It was slightly further away. Its countdown read:

  TIME TO TARGET: 9:01 . . . 9:00 . . . 8:59 . . .

  That's good, Schofield thought. We'll need the extra thirty seconds to overshoot Mecca and swing around . J.

  Schofield's eyes gleamed at the very idea of it. He looked down at the CincLock unit strapped to his chest, gripped it in his hands.

  'Sixty feet,' he whispered aloud.

  Then he said, 'Hey Rufus. Have you ever chased a missile?'

  TIME TO TARGET: 6:00 . . . 5:59 . . . 5:58 . . .

  Schofield's X-15 shot through the darkening sky at bullet speed—still pursued by the AMRAAM missile.

  'You want me to fly alongside it?' Rufus said, dumbstruck.

  'That's exactly what I want you to do. We can still disarm that ICBM, we just have to be within sixty feet of it,' Schofield said.

  'Yeah, but in flight} Nobody can keep a plane side-by-side with a missile at Mach 6.'

  'I think you can,' Schofield said.

  From where he was sitting, Schofield didn't see the grin cross Rufus's broad bearded face.

  'What do you need me to do?' the big pilot said.

  Schofield said, 'ICBMs fly high and then come down vertically on their targets. This Chameleon is currently at 27,000 feet. She should stay at that altitude until she's practically over Mecca, and then she'll start her dive. At Mach 6, it'll take her about five seconds to make that vertical run. But I need at least twenty-five seconds to disarm her. Which means we have to get alongside her while she's flying level at 27,000 feet. Once she goes vertical, it's all over. We're screwed. Think you can bring us around so that we're travelling beside her?'

  'You know, Captain,' Rufus said softly, 'you're a lot like Aloysius. When you talk to me, you make me feel like I could do anything. Consider it done.'

  TIME TO TARGET: 2:01 . . . 2:00 . . . 1:59 . . .

  The X-15 blasted into the sky, chased by the AMRAAM, shooting

  down the length of the Red Sea while at the same time rising—rising, rising—to an altitude of 27,000 feet.

  'We just passed Mecca
!' Rufus yelled. 'I'm going to start our turn now. Keep an eye out, we should be able to see that Chameleon any minute now . . .'

  Rufus banked the speeding rocket plane, bringing it round in a wiiiide 180-degree arc that would hopefully end with the X-15 coming alongside the nuclear missile, joining it on its flight path toward Mecca.

  The X-15 rolled onto its side, shot through the air, banking left in its gigantic turn.

  The sudden course-change allowed the AMRAAM missile behind it—ever-closing, ever-ravenous—to reel them in even more. It was only a hundred yards behind the X-15 now, and still closing.

  TIME TO TARGET: 1:20 . . . 1:19 . . . 1:18 . . .

  'There it is!' Rufus yelled. 'Dead ahead!'

  Schofield strained against the G-forces to peer out over Rufus's shoulder, out at the twilight Arabian sky.

  And he saw it.

  The mere sight of the intercontinental ballistic missile took his breath away.

  It was incredible.

  The Jericho-2B clone ICBM looked like a spaceship from a science fiction movie—something that was far too big, far too sleek, and moving far too fast to exist on Earth.

  The 70-foot-long cylinder shot like a spear through the sky, a white-hot tailflame blazing from its base like a magnesium flare, leaving an impossibly long smoketrail in its wake. The smoketrail extended, snakelike, a God-sized python, over the distant horizon, streaking away toward the missile's source, Yemen.

  And the sound it made.

  A single, continuous BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

  If Schofield's X-15 was ripping the fabric of the sky, then this baby was shredding it to pieces.

  The banking X-15 roared round in a giant semi-circle, careering

  in toward the moving ICBM, while itself trailed by the dogged AMRAAM.

  TIME TO TARGET: 1:00 . . . 0:59 . . . 0:58 . . .

  One minute.

  And then, like the arms of a flattened Y converging to meet at the stem, the X-15 rocket plane and the Chameleon missile came alongside each other.

  But they weren't level yet.

  The X-15 was just behind and to the left of the ICBM—parallelling the horizontal column of smoke shooting out of the ICBM's base.

  TIME TO TARGET: 0:50 . . . 0:49 . . . 0:48 . . .

  But the rocket plane was moving slightly faster than the missile, so it was gradually hauling the ICBM in.