Cyclops One af-1

by Jim DeFelice

  Corny, but Blitz had known him since he was a governor, and knew he meant it.

  The dark window showed there were deep lines in the President’s face; the mirrored view showed none of its usual confidence and self-assurance. Earlier, D’Amici had spoken to the leaders of both India and Pakistan, strongly hinting that he knew they were at the brink of war. Neither had done more than mouth a few platitudes, and intelligence reports since indicated his calls had accomplished nothing.

  The Cyclops Two battle group was in Afghanistan, awaiting the President’s final, personal call to proceed.

  Or not.

  “So, do we go through with it?” asked D’Amici, bringing his cup of tea back to the small table.

  “I think we should, yes.”

  Blitz could smell the strong mint of the tea as D’Amici held the steaming cup to his face. He put the cup down; it was too hot to drink.

  “If it goes sour, we’ll lose people,” said D’Amici.

  “The weapon and the F/A-22Vs,” said Blitz.

  “I don’t really care about the machinery,” said D’Amici. “I care about the lives.”

  Blitz understood, even though the equation was lopsided: A dozen or two dozen Americans against the possibility of a million, many millions, of Pakistanis and Indians.

  “I think we should do it,” he told the President. “I think we have the potential — it could change a number of things.”

  “The end of war,” said D’Amici. His tone was somewhere between tired and gently mocking. “You’re starting to sound like a brochure for the augmented ABM system.”

  “I don’t think it’s the end of war,” said Blitz. “I’m not naïve. And I’m not pushing a weapons system. But I do think it’s a chance. It’ll show people we’re determined. It could have an enormous impact.”

  D’Amici got up and began pacing through the room. “I think about Lincoln sometimes, walking upstairs the night his son was dying. He had all those men in uniform on the battlefield. Roosevelt, pushing himself along in a wheel-chair, or being pushed. And Ike, ordering the overflights of Russia, even as they kept taking shots at his planes. They all faced difficult decisions.”

  “Thank God they made the right ones,” said Blitz.

  “Sometimes they didn’t. That’s the point.” The President picked up his cup, blowing into it to cool it. “You remember during the campaign, the first time you briefed me on India? You predicted this.”

  “I predicted difficulties,” said Blitz. “Not this specifically.”

  D’Amici sipped his tea, then put the cup down. “Come on,” said the President, starting back upstairs. “I have to get the order out now if it’s to do any good.”

  Chapter 5

  Captain Atta Habib completed a fresh round of checks with his copilot, then undid his restraints. His neck had stiffened under the weight of his helmet. He took it off as he rose, stowing it in his seat before stretching his legs on the flight deck. While the 767 could — and usually was — flown in shirtsleeves, the accident that had claimed Cyclops One had reinforced the importance of survival gear. Unlike “normal” 767s, the Cyclops aircraft were fitted with special ejection seats, specifically designed adaptations of the ACES II model standard in fighters like the F-15. The seats ejected upward through large hatchlike cutouts in the roof of the plane. The metal pins, along with tags to manually blow the hatches if the automated system didn’t work, were visible above each seat.

  Atta wondered if York and her crew had thought about the ejection mechanism too. He remained convinced that they had been lost in an accident: He didn’t buy the hijacked plane theory at all; no one who knew Megan could.

  Atta felt his vertebrae crack as he leaned backward, all of the muscles stretching. The flight decks on the Cyclops warplanes were more spacious than their civilian counterparts, thanks to the modifications necessary to carry the weapon. Originally designed for a three-person crew, the two-man cockpit in production 767s was a comfortable executive office; in Cyclops it was a veritable suite. Behind the pilot’s and copilot’s chairs were four crew stations for the laser, two apiece facing consoles along the wall. The configuration allowed for decent walking space to the back galley. The walking space covered the access points and one of the wire tunnels for the laser gear, but these were covered by a carpet, and the crew joked that there was enough room for a regulation bowling alley, an exaggeration that nonetheless hinted at its spaciousness. The galley included a rest room and a small kitchen area complete with a microwave and a thermos coffeemaker supposedly rated to stay inside its fitting at negative 10 g’s. Future versions of the aircraft would probably include a second crew compartment, where a reserve team could catch a snooze on a long mission.

  The Boeing people hadn’t planned on making a revolutionary warplane when they drew up the 767; they were looking for an economical way of moving people around the globe. But just as they had done with the venerable 707, their fundamental engineering values had created a versatile airframe capable of going far beyond even the visionary’s dreams. The engineers and contractors working for NADT had a good basis to work on, and credited the original designers for most of their success. Habib had taken this airframe through a stress test — ostensibly for the laser nose — that included a barrel roll and an air-show loop. Granted, it wasn’t a sleek F/A-22V or a teen-series fighter, but the big jet was surprisingly nimble and extremely well behaved, even at the far edge of its advertised design limitations. Habib felt confident it would perform today.

  He thought the same of his crew. The four of them together had over fifty years in the service and had spent the last year on the Cyclops project.

  The same things could have been said of everyone on Cyclops One.

  Atta paused behind the designating station. While the pilot actually made the shot, the designating specialist — Technical Sergeant May Peters, in this case — guided the computer as it worked with the various inputs and prioritized potential hits.

  Had she been male, Atta would have given her a good-natured slap on the side or back. But he worried about doing that with a woman — worried it might be misinterpreted or, worse, that he might actually hurt her. Even though he knew Peters rather well — had met her husband and even had dinner with them once or twice — he remained formal.

  “Good work, Sergeant,” he told her.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, her tone not quite as rigid as his but still well shaded toward formality.

  Atta went over to the other station, which was manned by another tech sergeant, Joe Fernandez. Feeling he had to treat Fernandez the same as Peters, he repeated the same words and received precisely the same response. Satisfied, he looked over his domain one more time, pausing before returning. He had thought of making a little speech as a morale booster. Colonel Howe had given one on the tarmac earlier and he’d been impressed. But Atta wasn’t that good a speaker in front of crowds, even tiny ones; he felt something growing in his throat and decided not to chance it.

  He thought of saying a prayer but worried that might be taken the wrong way: He was a Muslim, and maybe Christians would think he was imposing his beliefs on them. So instead he stretched one more time and went back to his seat.

  “We’re looking good,” he told them over the interphone after he slipped his helmet back on. “Looking real good.”

  Chapter 6

  Airborne and on course, Howe worked his eyes across the dimming purple sky, scanning for enemies. The integrated sensors in his aircraft would surely alert him to another plane well before he could see it, but there was no way in the world he would feel secure, no way he could fly, without using his eyes. Part of him believed, truly believed, that they’d see something the radar and infrared would miss; part of him was convinced that even the powerful radars in the AWACS and Cyclops Two were no replacement for his own Mark One eyeballs. Howe was not so superstitious — or foolish — about this that he wouldn’t trust the display on his gee-whiz tactical screen, much less forgo the v
ery real benefits of technology. Both of his kills had come from beyond visual distance; he hadn’t seen either target before launching. But still, his eyes hunted the darkening space around him, a miner’s pan sifting for danger.

  The overall plan was laid out almost exactly as the exercise dubbed Bosnia 2 had been over a year ago, allowing for differences in geography. As the Velociraptors worked over the Pakistani border near Indian Kashmir, they would feed data back to Cyclops Two, which would remain in Afghan airspace. Their low-probability-of-intercept radars could not be detected by the gear believed to be aboard the helicopters or the front-line Indian aircraft that the planners thought would be nearby; at the same time, the F/A-22Vs would be able to slide through the rough terrain, overcoming the clutter that shadowed part of the likely approach. The laser aboard Cyclops Two would make the hit, but the two Velociraptors would be close enough to strike the helicopters if it missed.

  The radar in the F/A-22Vs had been developed from the original APG-77 perfected by Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, the first active-array antenna radar fitted into a fighter aircraft, but the Velociraptor version was nearly as far from its ancestor as the APG-77 had been from its own predecessors. Unlike old-fashioned radar “dishes,” the radar signals were sent and received through nearly two thousand short antennas carefully arranged around the aircraft’s hull. The embedded array allowed the radar to operate in a variety of modes at once, essentially giving complete and instantaneous coverage while still employing low-probability-of-intercept tactics. In an older radar the sweep of the beam and spikes in the energy levels provided easy detection points for a careful enemy. The F/A-22V — and even the “stock” F/A-22—could use its active radar and still not be detected by most interceptors until it had already fired air-to-air missiles — in other words, until it was far, far too late. The aircraft’s eighteen different modes were capable of working together so that a long-range target might be found, identified, and targeted seemingly instantaneously. The targets were passed along immediately through the intraflight data link (IFDL) to Cyclops, which would then use the information to nail them.

  The tough thing, the almost impossible thing, was the length of the mission. The planners were convinced the attack would go off as soon as it was completely dark, which would be roughly an hour from now. But there were no guarantees, and even the long-legged F/A-22Vs would eventually get thirsty. Howe and Timmy had worked out a plan to swap off on refuels several hours into the flight; the complicated fuel matrixes were stored in the Velociraptors’ computers, and the flight computer had a preset panel that would show their fuel profiles throughout the mission.

  Maybe it wouldn’t come off at all. The diplomats were supposedly burning their own dinosaurs on the ground, trying to cool things down.

  “Bird Two to One,” snapped Timmy. “Hey, boss man, how’s it looking?”

  “We’re clean,” Howe told his wingman. “Eight minutes to border.”

  “Roger that.”

  Timmy was flying at a five thousand feet offset a mile off his right wing at 38,000 feet. Once over the border, they were going to run one circuit through the mountainous area together to get their bearings, then split up to cover more territory, in case the analysts’ guesses were off the mark. The automatic ground modes on their radars would hunt for any hidden bases, allowing the Cyclops Two operators to rule out — or in — possible surprises.

  The AWACS checked in, relaying a report from one of the Navy surveillance craft helping to monitor the peninsula that the Indians were launching one of their Russian Beriev A-50 “Mainstay” radar aircraft from a base to the southeast, near the coast. The Mainstay was more than five hundred miles from their patrol area, and its radar range was less than two hundred miles. Unless it got considerably closer, it was unlikely to pinpoint the stealthy F/A-22Vs, and still less likely to be able to vector anything toward them.

  Even so, Howe felt himself leaning forward on the seat. He edged his thumb along the top of the sidestick, watching the computer count down the time to the border in the course module above his left multiuse display. Howe checked the aircraft data, took a slow breath, and flexed fingers on the throttle. It was getting fairly dark now, and so he push-buttoned the HUD into synthetic view, the hologram rendering the outside world at a one-on-one scale/first person. The fishbowl before him duplicated what he would have seen if it were a perfectly clear day. He stared at it a second, mentally orienting his eyes and brain to accept the synthetic data, then flicked into one-on-ten, which felt a little like watching an O-scale train layout instantly downsize to HO. He enabled verbal commands, then had the Velociraptor’s computer pencil in some geography and flight plan data. He could see the border etched out on the virtual ground ahead.

  Megan wasn’t gone from his memory, but she’d been pushed back, his anger and other feelings corralled.

  Corralled, not eliminated.

  “Bird Two, we have thirty seconds. You ready, partner?”

  “Piece of cake,” said Timmy.

  Howe counted down the last few seconds, then goosed the engine. The two F/A-22Vs rocketed over the Indian coast, knifing through the darkness.

  Two minutes later the radar detector in Howe’s plane began to bleat. The system identified and located the radar, an early-warning ground station southeast of Charsadda, rendered as a purple dish icon in the far reaches of the hologram’s dusty 3-D hills. The radar was attached to a Crotale 2000 surface-to-air missile system, a relatively short-range mobile SAM intended primarily for point defense of airfields and other strategic targets. The radar could not see the Velociraptors, nor would the missiles it guided present much of a challenge to the aircraft’s ECM suite if it came to that. Nonetheless, the avionics system made note of them, opening a file and storing the data for the pilot’s reference. If Howe wished, he could direct the computer to present him with a list of options for eliminating the radar and its missiles; one button and one verbal command later, a small-diameter GPS-guided bomb would spit from the Velociraptor’s belly and the radar would be history.

  If Howe wished.

  “Bird One, this is Big Eyes,” said the AWACS controller. “Be advised, Indra is airborne.”

  Indra was the code name they’d settled on for India’s northern-based Phalcon AEW aircraft, arguably the only serious threat to the mission. The 767’s multisensor radars could provide early-warning and tracking data, serving in a somewhat similar capacity as an AWACS. While not the equal of American systems, it was still impressive — and in theory capable of finding the F/A-22Vs, or at least their radar transmissions. Indra flew regularly, and its launch was not unexpected — in fact, just the opposite. Howe took it as confirmation that the mission was a go. The AWACS would keep tabs on the aircraft, which presently was several hundred miles to the south of Howe’s flight path.

  “Bird One,” acknowledged Howe.

  Chapter 7

  McIntyre unfolded himself from the helicopter seat and walked unsteadily across the cabin. The damn thing shook like a washing machine, and the metal was so thin he worried he’d put his hand through the side as he steadied himself before stepping out onto the tarmac with his bag. If it wasn’t the oldest helicopter in the Indian inventory, it had to be in the running. As he stepped out, grit flit into his eye; he walked forward blindly, half expecting to be decapitated by the rotors even though he was bent forward.

  The helicopter fanned the air behind him, rushing away in the dusk. The mountains cast an odd green-purple glow over everything as night fell; the dim light made him feel even more tired, and McIntyre was glad this was his last stop for the night. He’d been to several bases over the course of the day, each one duller than the rest. Hopefully the CIA guys were gathering better information.

  A figure in brown stood to the right, blurring into the dusk. McIntyre worked his thumb against the corner of his eye, trying to clear it.

  “Damn dirt has glue in it,” he said, trying to make a joke.

  The blur didn’t spea
k. McIntyre finally pushed his eyelids apart, trying to bring the blur into focus. All he could see was the man’s frown.

  “Name’s McIntyre,” he said, letting go of his eye and holding out his right hand to shake. The man, a captain, didn’t take it.

  “I’m to show you around,” said the officer.

  “Let’s start with the john, then,” said McIntyre. He grabbed his bag and waited for the blur to move. By now his eye was tearing uncontrollably; McIntyre realized that he ought to just let the tears clear out the grit, but it was difficult to avoid the urge to rub. Finally the Indian captain began to move toward a gray cloud on the right. McIntyre followed, gradually gaining his sight as he went.

  He’d been kept from the bases where the Su-27s and Su-30s were, and hadn’t seen a MiG. When he’d come as an assistant to a congressional party a year before, the Indians had eagerly shown off the aircraft. Admittedly, they’d emphasized their defensive abilities, and talked quite a bit about how much easier life would be if they could only purchase F-15s, but still, the difference now was obvious. He’d asked to see one of their Israeli-built Phalcon radar planes but had been told that the aircraft were out of service for maintenance, a fact that he knew was a lie.

  This place — a landing strip with no helicopters and no access roads. They were obviously parking him here for the duration.

  McIntyre followed his laconic captain toward the low cloud, which soon came into focus as a building. He was not unsympathetic to the Indians; they had their own priorities and concerns, he knew, and in some ways their fierce attitude toward their northern neighbors were justified by history, both recent and ancient. But sympathy wasn’t why he was here.