Armageddon d-6

by Dale Brown

“We’re spiked,” said Jalan, meaning that the targeting radar in the lead Su-27 had locked onto them.

  That was the signal Mack had been waiting for.

  “Break it,” he said calmly. Then he put Jersey into a wide turn to the north.

  The lead Su-27 started to turn as well, planning to parallel his course while his partner came around and cut him off. As the Sukhoi tried to get close enough for heat-seekers or maybe a cannon shot, Mack pushed his stick harder and tucked the plane due south. The plane seemed to skid in midair as if she were a massive motorcycle pulling a one-eighty. It took a few seconds to get the wings back level; by that time the Su-27 pilot had tightened his own turn as well. Mack now twisted south and then back, snaking through the sky in a series of feints until the Sukhoi finally bit on one of his fakes. The enemy pilot shot off to Mack’s right, realized it had been fooled, and tried to dive away.

  “Locked,” said the computer. “Range five miles.”

  “Fire Sparrow One,” said Mack.

  “Missile is launched”

  “Fire Sparrow Two,” said Mack, seeing the diamond in the targeting screen close around the target.

  “Target is locked Launching.”

  With the missile away, Mack immediately turned back to the east, looking for the second Sukhoi. He expected the first to take a head-on approach, but found him flying parallel five miles ahead, and actually moving more than fifty knots slower than the Megafortress.

  “Computer, lock target two.”

  “Locked. Range five miles.”

  “Fire Sparrow Three.”

  “Missile is launched.”

  Mack was about to launch another Sparrow when Jalan warned that a radar had locked on them. Mack, surprised, fired off chaff and took two quick cuts in the air. He had no idea which radar could be tracking them.

  “Score one Sparrow!” said Jalan excitedly.

  “What about that radar?”

  “Still tracking us.”

  Paranoia surged through Mack as he continued to have trouble picking up the opposing fighter. Just as he felt convinced — absolutely convinced — that the Su-27 was locked on his butt, he finally spotted the red dagger at the right corner of his screen. He started to pull the Megafortress around but Jalan yelled a warning over the interphone.

  “Missiles! Missiles!”

  Mack flailed back east, unable to sort the situation out in his head. He had one Sukhoi down, but must have missed the second one somehow. He blew a hard breath into his oxygen mask, trying to concentrate on what he needed to do, not on what he’d missed. Jalan and the computer ID’d the missile as a radar-guided R-27R. Mack flailed desperately in the air, zigging and zagging and dispensing the last of his chaff. The missile avoided the tinsel and hung with the Megafortress until it was about three hundred yards away; finally, the ECMs managed to shake it off. Desperate, a little angry at being jilted, the missile immolated itself as soon as it realized its date wasn’t showing up. Part of the warhead flew through the Megafortress’s number four engine, outboard on the right wing. The engine instantly lost power; Mack felt the wing tug downward before the computer helped him trim the plane to compensate.

  “Jalan, we’ve lost engine four,” said Mack calmly.

  “Yes. Mr. Minister,” said the copilot, already double-checking the computer’s automated safety programs.

  Meanwhile, Mack spotted the remaining Sukhoi beginning a turn toward him from ten miles away; the computer announced that it had once more locked on the target.

  “Fire Sparrow Four,” said Mack.

  The missile clunked off the rotating launcher in the rear. Mack once more changed direction, but this time the Sukhoi pilot didn’t have a chance to target him.

  “Score Sukhoi number two!” said Jalan.

  They could see this explosion, a black puff in the distance at just about their altitude. Mack felt his shoulders sag; he’d been flying for hours without much sleep, and however good it felt to nail two enemy planes there was no way to put off fatigue forever.

  “All right,” he told the crew. “Let’s take a deep breath.”

  He and the copilot ran through the computer’s screens, double-checking the damage. Besides the engine, there had been some light damage to the control surfaces on the right wing. But it wasn’t too severe; the plane remained eminently controllable and they were climbing at a decent pace.

  “Time to head back for the barn,” Mack told his tired crew. But as he brought up the screen to plot a course home, they reported an odd contact on the surface of the water, heading at high speed toward the Brunei oil derricks.

  “Range, twenty miles, almost directly ahead,” said Jalan. “Computer can’t identify it, but it’s doing at least fifty knots” It was almost directly ahead.

  “Let’s have a look,” said Mack.

  Chapter 44

  Off the coast of Brunei

  0844

  Dazhou Ti folded his arms as they approached the oil platforms. He planned on drawing to within a mile before firing. The target was unarmed, and destroying it would be child’s play. The fact that the shells from the Barracuda’s gun were only twenty-five millimeters meant that they would have slightly more time to practice their marksmanship.

  “Sixty seconds to firing point,” announced the weapons officer. “Steady,” said Dazhou Ti.

  “Captain, the aircraft we noted earlier is tracking us,” said the radar operator.

  “How can that be?” Dazhou moved over to the radar station, where the indicator showed that they were indeed visible on the airplane’s radar. It was the American Megafortress that had been given to the enemy.

  General Udara had promised that their spies and radar would keep track of the aircraft, and that if necessary the Malaysian air force’s two Sukhoi Su-27s would distract it — or. if the opportunity presented itself, shoot it down. But obviously the Megafortress had managed to slip by them.

  Imbeciles.

  “Prepare the anti-aircraft missiles,” said Dazhou Ti. “Stay on the course but lower our speed. If they come close enough, we will make them very sorry.”

  Aboard Jersey, off the coast of Brunei

  0848

  The ship — if that’s what it was — looked like a black triangle with wings on the surface of the ocean ahead, a metal loon that was aimed like an arrow at the Brunei oil field. And it moved incredibly fast — around a hundred knots.

  “I’ll bet that’s what sunk the merchant ship the other day,” Mack told Jalan. “Probably hit the oil tank as well.”

  “I can alert the navy,” said Jala.

  “Yeah,” said Mack, looking at the image in the enhanced video. He wasn’t much of an expert on naval architecture, but the craft looked as if it used something similar to wing-inground effect, skimming over the surface of the water like an airplane at very high speed. The sharp, odd angles would also make it hard to spot for most radars, even the EB-52s. except at close range. The black paint made it hard to see.

  During the nighttime, that is. They must be feeling their oats to operate during the day.

  The nearest oil platform was only a few miles away. It’d be easy pickings for a missile or even a gun attack.

  “Not getting an acknowledgment from the navy,” said Jalan.

  “Get our ground control and give them the coordinates,” said Mack. “See who’s on alert — Dragonflies could probably take out that piece of tin with a couple of 250-pound bombs.”

  “Minister — the vessel is targeting us with its radar,” said Jalan. “Its roof is opening”

  Mack cursed as he realized what the strange craft was up to. By the time he leaned on the throttle the ship had launched two missiles at them. Mack fired off the last of his flares and poured on the dinosaurs, his heart pounding as the flat-footed Mega-fortress tried to pick up momentum against the SA-14s, small Russian heat-seekers similar to the American Stinger shoulder-launched anti-air missile. The weapons had a very limited range and small warheads; even so, the Megafor
tress’s tail caught some shrapnel as one of the warheads exploded.

  Which really pissed Mack off.

  As he banked back, he told Jalan to open up the bomb bay. “Minister?”

  “Do it, Jalan.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Give me the air-to-ground attack mode, standard bomb program one.”

  The Megafortress’s computer hadn’t complained about firing the Sparrow missiles; while it had been designed to operate with the more advanced weapons, the system’s designers had realized there might be an emergency in the field and made sure the system was backward-compatible with earlier weapons. But now the computer refused to recognize that the missile was on its sling, even as Jalan and Brown tried the different air-to-ground attack modes.

  “What about as a JDAM?” Mack asked, suggesting that the copilot tell the computer the missile was actually a guided bomb known as a JDAM or Joint Direct Attack Munition. The weapon was a modern version of an iron bomb, with a guidance system that could use either GPS coordinates or an internal guidance system to hit a precise point from relatively close range, usually no more than ten kilometers.

  “Negative.”

  And then Mack realized he was being far too clever.

  “Reset the program back to the Sparrow parameters.”

  Once the computer was ready, he brought up the targeting panel and told the weapons system that he had a bogey at low altitude.

  Very, very low altitude.

  The computer didn’t even hesitate.

  “Target locked.”

  “Fire at the motherfucker?’

  “Unknown command”

  “Fire Sparrow.”

  “Launching.”

  Off the coast of Brunei

  0851

  Too late, Dazhou realized he had misjudged his enemy. The big aircraft quickly ducked his missiles and locked its radar on him.

  “Evasive maneuvers,” the captain said calmly, moving to the helm. “Active and passive countermeasures. Everything we have.” He gave the order to increase speed to maximum power.

  The Barracuda slammed hard to the left and then the right. They thundered over the waves, tucking back to the south and picking up speed.

  They were just touching two hundred when the missile struck the rear quarter of the craft.

  Aboard Jersey, off the coast of Brunei

  0854

  “Missile struck the target,” said Jalan. “Starboard side at the rear.”

  Mack put the Megafortress into a shallow dive, still wary. The ship was so strange that it could easily have some other trick up its sleeve — a laser anti-aircraft weapon, perhaps.

  “He’s dead in the water,” reported Jalan as Mack banked a mile and a half from it. “Stern is settling. I think he’s taking on water.”

  If he had had another missile loaded, Mack would have finished the stinker off. He debated getting in close and firing the airmines at it, but the weapon was designed to shred jet engines moving at high speed; it wasn’t particularly good at punching holes in anything thicker than an airplane fuselage.

  And besides, he was down to three engines, had wing damage, and his fuel tanks contained a heck of lot more fumes than liquid.

  “Tell the navy where that thing is,” Mack told Jalan. “We’re going home.”

  “Yes, Minister.”

  “And one other thing, Jalan.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You can call me Mack from now on. You’ve earned it.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Minister.”

  Off the coast of Brunei

  0856

  The disadvantage of a small crew became clear as Dazhou struggled to deal with the damage to the vessel. Automated pumps began bailing the compartments in the damaged section, and there seemed no question of sinking, but some of the control lines had been severed and even with its redundancies the Barracuda could no longer be steered. Two men crawled out through the access tunnel and began replacing burned out circuits and breakers. Dazhou and another of his men went topside to survey the physical damage, walking gingerly along the recessed decking at the top. The winglets were intact but one of the engines had been destroyed; the top of the exhaust outlet seemed charred, as if it had been on fire. The ship sat with its stem in the waves, and some of the large panels were buckled from the explosion. Fortunately, the Barracuda had been moving away from the missile when its proximity fuse exploded the warhead; the blow had been more of an angled, glancing shot than a piercing direct hit.

  That was small consolation at the moment. Dazhou had no option now except to call for help.

  At least the Megafortress was gone.

  Fools, thought Dazhou. They would meet again — and this time, he would be much better prepared.

  Aboard Jersey, approaching Brunei IAP

  0902

  “This is Mack Smith aboard Brunei EB-52 One, Jersey. We are declaring a fuel emergency,” Mack repeated for the fifth or sixth time as he approached the airfield. “Repeat. I have a fuel emergency. I’m landing.”

  “Still no answer from the tower,” said Jalan. “Maybe our radio was damaged in one of the attacks, because I’m not getting anything — no response at all.”

  “All right,” said Mack. He had enough fuel to take one pass if he saw someone in the way, but that was it. The radar showed the air was clear, at least. He steadied into the approach, the airfield coming into view.

  “Looks clear,” said Jalan.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Mack kept expecting something to appear at the last second, even as the wheels hit the concrete. He didn’t relax until they were just about at the end of the long runway.

  As they approached their hangar, he realized he didn’t see any of his security teams nearby, or even the maintenance people. In fact, the area looked deserted — none of the Dragonflies was on the ground.

  As soon as they stopped, Mack left Jalan and the others to secure the aircraft. He hopped down the ladder, pausing on the Flighthawk deck, where his security team had spent a rather restless flight.

  “All right, guys, let’s get the stuff unloaded and see what the situation is,” Mack shouted. One of the men looked a little green around the gills — and had a paper bag in his hand.

  Poor guy, Mack thought to himself, lowering the ladder to the runway. He felt a surge of adrenaline, anxious to tell McKenna about his mission.

  Too bad she wasn’t much of a looker, he thought as his feet touched the concrete. Hell, she was perfect in every other respect: maybe he should just close his eyes.

  “That’s far enough,” said a voice behind him.

  Mack, startled, started to turn.

  The barrel of an AK47 caught him in the side of the face. A moment later, something hit him hard in the back of the legs. He cursed and reached for his gun.

  Then something smacked him on the top of the head. His arms and legs fell limp. He tried to breathe, and found he couldn’t; in the next moment he felt himself falling, the black sky descending over him.

  V

  RESISTANCE

  Chapter 45

  Washington, D.C.

  11 October 1997, 2345

  Jed Barclay put the phone down and stared at the desk. He felt a little like a diver who’d come up from a great depth a touch too quickly; the events unfolding in Brunei had left him slightly disoriented. Islamic rebels were in control of the capital and at least two other cities; the sultan was missing, the military was in disarray. The Brunei navy’s two new patrol ships, purchased from Russia within the last six months, had been sunk overnight. There was no word on the whereabouts of the Brunei’s Megafortress. Officially, Malaysia claimed that it had not helped the guerilla forces, but that seemed highly unlikely.

  The CIA was preparing a brief on the Islamic terrorists, citing evidence of a new organization involved behind the scenes known as al Qaeda. Funded by a Saudi millionaire, the group was closely connected with the government of Afghanistan, where it had established training ca
mps for terrorists. The head of the group was a man named Osama bin Laden, a fanatic millionaire dedicated to wiping out the Great Satan — America, of course.

  Jed had heard of al Qaeda before, of course, and even knew that it had connections with Islamic extremists in Indonesia and Malaysia, but the collapse of Brunei had been nothing short of remarkable. It seemed impossible that a relatively small band of outsiders, no more than ten thousand according to the CIA estimate, had taken over the country. And yet they appeared to have done just that, perhaps succeeding largely because the idea was so outlandish that it didn’t appear possible.

  “Jed? Are you ready?”

  Jed looked up and saw his boss, Philip Freeman, standing in the doorway.

  “Yeah,” said Jed, standing. “I have the latest from Brunei. It’s pretty ugly.”

  “How ugly?”

  “Capital has definitely fallen. Sultan is missing,” said Jed.

  “Sultan is dead?”

  “Unsure. Just missing, at this point.”

  “Where’s the Megafortress?”

  “Not clear. We’ll have a satellite over the country in about thirty-five minutes. The NSA is working on some intercepts as well.”

  Freeman nodded grimly. “Come along.”

  Jed followed the national security advisor as they walked over to the White House situation room, where the president had asked his military and national security advisors to meet. President Martindale had not yet arrived, and Jed started talking to some of the Pentagon staffers who were standing along the back wall. He quickly realized that he had much more up-to-date information than they did, and one or two had only a vague notion of where the tiny nation was located. Brunei had been far down on nearly everyone’s priority list until today.

  “Gentlemen, ladies, thank you for coming at such an ungodly hour,” said the president as he strode abruptly into the room. “I realize I’ve destroyed the weekend for most of you and I apologize. Let’s get started.”

  Brenda Kelly, a State Department aide who had just flown back from Brunei, gave a brief overview of the situation there. Several times she emphasized the kingdom’s importance as an oil producer. Jed took over with details about the government’s collapse, finishing with the fact that an ASEAN emergency meeting scheduled for the next morning Brunei time had been postponed an hour ago because of the rapidly changing situation.