Dreamland: Piranha

by Dale Brown

  “What in hell are you doing out there?” Allen demanded.

  “Excuse me?” said Dog.

  “Bullshit on that.”

  “With all due respect—”

  “Stow it, Bastian. What is happening out there? Why are you picking a fight with the Chinese?”

  “I’m not, sir.”

  “Are you trying to be the second coming of Brad Elliott?”

  “Colonel Bastian hadn’t expected Admiral Allen to be happy about the incident. But he didn’t anticipate the personal attack. Nor did he appreciate the comment about General Elliot. “Sir, I’m operating under strict orders,” he told the screen, controlling his own rising anger.

  “What yahoo gave the order to start a war with China?” demanded Allen. “I want an explanation, Bastian.”

  Allen made an obvious attempt to control his temper, his hands pulling down the sides of is shirt.

  “As you can read on the Web net,” Dog said, pausing between nearly every word, “two Sukhois Su-33’s took off from a Chinese carrier and approached our aircraft while on routine patrol. They seemed to think the U/MFs were missiles, they took evasive action, and one of the Chinese pilots put is plane into an unrecoverable spin. His loss was regrettable.”

  “I don’t believe it happened that way,” said Allen. “You’re telling me the Chinese pilots are that bad?”

  “I’m not critiquing the flying abilities of the Chinese, sir.”

  “Why wasn’t I notified immediately?”

  “By?”

  “Damn straight. You didn’t even clear the mission with my people.”

  “It’s not my role to inform you.” Dog wasn’t exactly sure what had happened—generally, the theater commander would be notified of an important operation by Washington, and the Navy certainly had had input prior to the Whiplash Order being issued. It was possible Allen had been bushwhacked by Washington—but it was also possible he was trying to exert control over Colonel Bastian and the operation.

  Which wasn’t going to fly.

  “This isn’t over, Colonel,” said Allen. The feed died with a pop that sounded very much like an explosion.

  “I wouldn’t think we’d be that lucky,” Dog told the blank screen.

  Aboard Quicksilver, above the South China Sea

  1500 local

  Breanna steadied the plane at nine thousand feet as they sorted out the attack. The Chinese planes had launched eight missiles and then immediately begun to turn back north.

  “I’ve got a lock on one Sukhois,” reported Chris. “We can shoot him down.”

  “Negative,” said Breanna. “Let’s focus on the missiles.”

  “Eight in the air, skimming down in a pattern similar to Exocets,” he told her. One of the standard Megafortress simulation routines used the Scorpion AMRAAM-pluses to shoot down French-made Exocet antiship missiles. Though slightly outside of the Scorpion’s design parameters, properly handled, the execution was not difficult. Except they only had four Scorpions, and ordinarily would use two apiece on the target to assure a hit.

  “What’s their target?” Breanna asked.

  “I’d guess the sub,” said Chris.

  Torbin concurred. “There’s no way they’re going to come close to the sub, though,” he added. “It’s going to take them another four minutes to get into the area. If they’re Exocets, or something like them, they’ll run on inertia guidance, pop up, and then hit whatever they can in the area.

  “They’re moving at just over five hundred knots,” said Chris. “We can get two.”

  “Let’s target them singly,” Breanna told him.

  “Not a high-percentage shot.”

  “Target them,” she told her copilot.

  “Tracking. They’re low.”

  “Bay.”

  “Bay open. We’re locked.”

  “Go.”

  “Fire Fox One,” he said, indicating that a radar missile was being launched. The Scorpions rolled off the launcher as soon as it rotated into position.

  “ECMs,” said Breanna after the last air-to-air missile had left.

  “Working,” said Torbin. “Not going to have much of an impact until they pop up and look for a target. May not work even then, I’m not sure what we’re looking at.”

  “Do your best,” said Breanna. “Chris, see if you can plot out a course to have us sweep in front of them and dish out Stinger air mines. Maybe we can out enough shrapnel in the air to knock them down.”

  “I was just playing with that. I think we can get a shot at two, but there are two on outside patterns sweeping around in an arc,” he told her.

  “Missiles are tentatively ID’d as VJ-2’s, back-engineered Exocets,” said Torbin. “But I don’t know. They were launched from sixty miles, which ought to be beyond their range.”

  “Let’s not get too hung up on their exact specifications,” said Breanna. “Are they communicating with the Sukhois for guidance?”

  “Negative,” said Collins.

  “Alert civilians,” she added. “Though I’m not sure what good that’s going to do.”

  Chris hit a button that popped a flight path onto Bree’s navigation screen. “Here’s the course, Captain. Kind of a stutter step with a V in it. I don’t know.”

  “Doable,” said Breanna as the three-dimension overlay swirled around on the lower-right screen area. Her mind and body translated the sweeping arcs into a succession of forces; her muscles rehearsed the pulls.

  “Two minutes to pop-up,” said Torbin.

  “Hawk Leader, this is Quicksilver,” said Bree. She could feel her tongue and cheeks tightening, a clipped precision taking over her brain. “We’re going to try and take out two of those remaining missiles. It doesn’t look like we can reach numbers three and eight on that targeting screen Chris downloaded to you.”

  “They’re mine,” said Zen.

  “Missile one is a home run!” interrupted Chris as their first AMRAAM hit its target.

  “Thanks, Jeff,” Bree told her husband. “Hang on. This is going to be a bit of a ride.”

  She took a breath, then put her hand on the throttle slide, goosing the engines as she tucked her wings, pirouetting the big plane in the sky. The massive Megafortress responded as nimbly as an F/A-18, turning with the grace of a veteran ballerina. Bree felt the impact all across her body, the cells in her speed suit inflating as they pulled over seven Gs.

  She’d never feel that flying the B-5. She’d be sitting in a bunker at Dreamland, commanding the plane through a series of dedicated satellites. Gravity would be just another formula on the screen.

  “Chinese sub is diving,” said Collins.

  “Smart man,” said Torbin.

  “Missile Two missed. Suck,” said Ferris.

  “All right. Full suite of ECMs.” She told Torbin.

  “We’re singing every songs we know, backwards and forwards,” he answered, working his gear.

  “Chris, give us chaff as we start the sweep. Anything we can do to confuse them.”

  “Okay. We can get that number-two missile in the sweep.”

  “Hang on.”

  The Megafortress’s flight computer projected the intercept course on her HUD display as an orange dash along a crosshair at the center of the screen. Breanna moved her hand on the stick gently, holding the plane precisely onto the line. The approaching missiles were not yet visible to the naked eye, but the radar handed their positions to the computer, which obligingly painted them as red arrow-heads on the screen. Truth be told, this was almost as fly-by-numbers as anything she did in the UMB. Breanna didn’t have to be in the plane at all—and, in fact, didn’t really have to do anything more than tell the computer to follow the dotted line.

  She loved the pull of this plane around here, the feel and idea of it as it swayed in the air, the long, swept wings and their variable leading and trailing edges tilting Quicksilver at a thirty-degree angel as the chaff canisters popped out in the air, spreading a metallic curtain above the oc
ean. She loved the hard hit of gravity as she cranked the plane 180 degrees, holding her turn so tight the computer complained, dishing up a stall warning. She snickered—she knew this aircraft better than any computer program, and it was nowhere near its performance envelope and was miles away—miles—from stalling or even losing more momentum than she wanted.

  “Thirty seconds to intercept!” said Chris, his voice rising like the high soprano of a boy in a children’’ choir, the excitement overwhelming him.

  What computer could do that?

  “Here comes the zags,” Bree told her crew. She slammed the plane hard south, dipping her wing momentarily and then gliding into a banking climb. The plane’s tailbone jutted down, tracking the targets.

  “Firing,” said Chris.

  Breanna held the plane against the staccato rumble, rising and sliding across the air, standing the massive, heavy plane up at nearly fifty degrees as the engines groaned, walking Quicksilver across the sky as if she were a dolphin skipping across the waves. Gravity and adrenaline punched against each other barely balancing the contrary forces.

  Sex might be better than this, but some nights it could be damn close.

  Zen pushed the Flighthawks away from the Megafortress. He had to turn the U/MFs, then trade altitude for acceleration as the missiles came on, as if they were pursuing fighters. The VJ-2’s were flying low, relatively straight courses. Shooting down the small, fast-moving missiles was not an easy task: C³’s tactics section estimated the odds at under fifty percent apiece.

  Forty-three and thirty-eight, to be exact.

  The two missiles were separated so far apart that Zen had to stick one U/MF on each. He’d have to let the computer take one of them—thousands and thousands of hours and experience showed it was nearly impossible to control both robots successfully in a high-speed furball.

  Quicksilver’s tracking gear guessed at the missiles’ targets from their courses. The missile arcing in from the west was flying for the tanker; the other had the cruise ship in its sites.

  No-brainer. Give the computer the one on the tanker. It had the easier shot besides.

  “Computer, take Hawk Two. Complete intercept. Destroy target.”

  “Computer acknowledges.”

  Zen jumped into Hawk One as the plane whipped through a turn to get on the Chinese VJ-2’s tail as it came on. There was so much electronic tinsel and ECM fuzz in the air, the computer warned the command signal had degraded; Zen pushed away the warning, pushed away everything but the streaking gray blur that whipped into the bottom corner of his viewscreen. He had his throttle slide at max, his stick pressed forward slightly, the Flighthawk at a shallow-angle dive over the rear of its target. His pipper glowed yellow, then pulsed, then went back to yellow. He pushed his nose down harder, trying to get his gun on the missile. The white blur of the cruise ship illuminated the other end of his screen, the ocean swirled into blue.

  He had yellow. He had red. He pressed the trigger as the missile tucked hard right. Zen shoved his stick to follow, his tail flying up, the Flighthawk wallowing in the air.

  A red triangle. Zen nailed down the trigger, pushing a stream of 20mm bullets into the rolling silver-gray blur sliding diagonally toward the right corner of his screen.

  Firing 20mm bullets at an aircraft while flying between four and five hundred miles an hour is an iffy thing. The laws of motion get complicated; not only are you dealing with the momentum of both aircraft, but the actions of the bullets and gun greatly complicate the equation. A relatively small aircraft like the Flighthawk could be greatly affected by the spin and recoil action of the revolving Gat, even though these were reduced in the modified M61 it carried in its nose. The bullets, meanwhile, reacted in several dimensions at once, torn between their own momentum and that of the plane. With a target as relatively thick as the tail section of a Sukhois fighter-bomber, the complicated physics made a direct hit hard enough; reduce the target size by a factor of thirty or so, and hitting the bull’s-eye became exceedingly difficult.

  None of which consoled Zen for missing.

  Though the waves were now less than a thousand feet away, Zen hung on, still holding his nose down. The cruise ship grew rapidly into the size of a brick. He sprayed shells at the sea, and saw the swells grabbing them. At a hundred feet, Zen got a proximity warning, pulled up slightly, and kept firing. The splutter of bullets sailed all around the spinning gray cylinder. Suddenly, the stream connected. The missile shot into a somersault and then exploded. Zen yanked back on the stick, said, “Computer, take One,” and jumped into the cockpit of Hawk Two.

  The computer had already started to fire. Its target jerked left, then nosed up. Zen overrode the computer, pressing the trigger though his pipper was yellow. The ocean suddenly was all he could see—the missile was riding straight into the water.

  He jerked upward, thinking the ship had been saved. But even as he did, he caught a large splotch of black in his face, and realized he was a lot closer than he’d thought to the tanker. Even before climbing back and spinning around to get a good view of the battle area, Zen realized the missile had survived just long enough to find its target, slamming into the side of the vessel at five hundred knots.

  Philippines

  1730

  Mark Stoner stepped off the helicopter swiftly, ducking reflexively as the whirling rotors whipped grit against his face and clothes. He moved quickly toward the edge of the concrete, lugging his two Alice packs with him. The concrete ran surprisingly smooth, though there were a few spots where men were working on burning up roots and vines, and at the northern end a bulldozer and a buzz saw or two were hacking down a thick row of overhanging trees. Overall, the strip looked long, wide, and amazingly well-prepared.

  The Whiplash people had established a sensor perimeter, using audio sensors, land radar, and optical and IR mini-cams tied by land lines to a sandbagged area about ten yards off the southern end of the airstrip. Stoner spotted it and began walking in that direction, ignoring the wind whipping from the wash of the Chinook that had deposited him on the island. Captain Danny Freah, the young Air Force officer who headed the deployment team, stood with his hands on his hips looking over the shoulder of a Whiplash trooper as they surveyed the array of video tubes.

  Stoner recognized the captain’s frown; he’d seen it on the face of every one of is superiors when he was in the Navy. Bastards must be issued it the day they graduate officer’s school.

  “Captain,” said Stoner.

  “Hey,” responded Danny. “Be with you in a second.” He leaned over his man and began tapping one of the two keyboards. About twice the size of a computer keyboard, it had two rows of oversized buttons at the top and several fat sections of others on either side of the QWERTY layout. There were tiny legends on several, but most merely had letters and numbers, like “A4” and “DD-2.”

  “Impressive,” said Stoner when Danny straightened. “Shows you the whole perimeter?”

  “Yeah,” said Danny.

  “What’s that?” One of the video screens was focused on two pieces of cloth stretched in a clearing beyond a small pond.

  “Looks like a little village,” said Danny. “Its beyond the ridge, down the rift, maybe a mile, little less.”

  “I can get them moved,” said Stoner. He reached into his pack for his satellite phone.

  “That’s not necessary. Not yet,” said Danny.

  “No, it is.”

  “My call here,” said the captain.

  “No, it’s not.”

  Danny’s eyes narrowed and his jaw set—another officer expression Stoner was very familiar with.

  “With all due respect, Mr. Stoner, I’m responsible for security here. My call.”

  “This is my mission,” said Stoner flatly. He pushed the cover of the phone up, and dialed his Agency liaison in Manila, the deputy station chief.

  He’d hit the last digit when the captain’s thick black hand folded around the phone.

  “No,” said D
anny.

  Stoner took a deep breath and straightened his body, fully relaxed except for his grip on the phone. If he jerked his knee up and pushed his left elbow, the Air Force officer would fall to the ground with a collapsed windpipe.

  “Let me spell it out,” said Danny, still holding the phone. “There are no more than a dozen people there. At the moment, they’ve made no move to come up over the ridge, and they have no way of communicating with the outside world. The other side of their camp is covered by another swamp. I have the only path out under video surveillance, and I have the beach opposite them under watch as well. If we move them, we’ll make a lot of noise and potentially a lot of fuss. It’s definitely an option, but I’d like to hold if off until necessary. I can take them prisoner in a half hour if need be. They’re unarmed, and they’re not getting away.