Argun River Valley, China
Moving fast across the cloudy sky, a pair of Chinese J-6 Farmer jetfighters streaked over the sylvan battleground, the reconnaissance cameras in their bellies clicking away madly.
Old, but highly functional, these sleek, single-engine fighter-bombers were brand-new from the sprawling war complex in Shenyang. The People’s Liberation Army of China had many models of jetfighters, some stolen from America, others purchased from Russia, or even wholly designed by their own scientists, but the J-6 was considered the most versatile military jet in existence. The nickname Farmer came from the fact that the nimble jets were deadly dogfighters, and always made their enemy “buy the farm.” Aviation slang for a fiery crash.
On their control boards the video cameras zoomed on a nightmare. Thick, acrid smoke covered the landscape, and dead bodies lay strewed about everywhere in the horrible tapestry of unbridled warfare. Blast craters dotted the churned soil, and a dozen Russian Hind-class helicopters were burning wrecks along the river and on the sloping hillside. In a field of flowers were several Chinese APCs and MRL trucks. Banking sharply for another look, the three pilots said nothing as the delicate microphones picked up the sporadic crackle of small-arms combat in the thick woods. Somewhere out of sight, a man screamed, another cursed and an assault rifle chattered. But whether it was a Chinese QBZ or a Russian AK-101, it was impossible to tell.
“So it’s true,” Lieutenant Tzu said into his helmet microphone, banking the J-6 Farmer in a circle. The ground flashed by underneath in a near blur. “The Great Bear has awakened and come calling at last.”
“So it would appear, wing leader,” Captain Dee commented dryly, his heart hammering. “Activate your digital cameras, comrades! I want video of everything! And double check for any radio messages on the encoded wavelengths. Some of our men may be trying to contact us.”
“Radio is clear…look, sir!” Lieutenant Chiu cried. “Twelve o’clock low! Russian tanks!”
Squinting into the distance, the lead pilot saw a dozen Russian T-90 battle tanks moving into the Argun Valley from around a hillock. Almost at once, the audio pickups detected a sizzling hiss and something lanced out of the trees toward the invaders. The RPG bounced off the prow armor of the lumbering T-90 and detonated in the air, the halo of shrapnel harmlessly peppering the other squat tanks.
Instantly in motion, all of the Russians swung their massive 125 mm cannons toward the forest and cut loose with a strident volley.
A score of majestic pine trees was reduced violently to splinters, and a roiling sea of orange flames surged through the dense woods. Briefly, there came some screams, and then there was only the crackle of the burning thermite.
“They used antitank shells on our men,” Tzu said softly, his voice tight with emotion. “Burned them down like mangy dogs.”
“Dirty bastards,” Chiu snarled, one hand on the joystick, the other resting on the touch-screen weapons control panel.
“Stay tight, comrades!” Dee snapped, banking the J-6 around a soaring mountain peak. The snowy crest was shiny with ice, fleecy white clouds surrounding the rocky tor like the nimbus of a candle flame. “We have strict orders to not, repeat not, engage the Russians unless attacked! This is a recon flight only.”
“But, sir…”
“I said no, Tzu!”
“Incoming!” Chiu cried, his F-6 Farmer doing a quick evasive barrel roll, then streaking upward, the aft turbofan ablaze with raw power.
Spreading out fast, the other two pilots briefly checked the status of their comrades and actually saw a blurry shape rise from below and punch through the belly armor of the J-6 and detonate inside the jetfighter. The craft exploded into a writhing fireball, and a moment later the thundering concussion buffeted the other two Farmers, rattling the war planes hard as they raced across the clear blue sky.
“Arm all weapons,” Dee said in a deceptively calm tone, his hand dancing across the control board. “Follow my lead, and fire upon my command only!”
“Yes, sir,” Tzu growled, putting a wealth of emotions in the simple words. With the flip of a switch, he activated the HUDWAL system. A targeting grid appeared on the windshield of the cowling, along with missile status, fuel pressure, distances and GPS bomb guidance. This was a recent upgrade and seemed to be working perfectly.
Streaking high into the sky, the Chinese fighters moved into an attack vector, activated their radar jamming, dropped defensive flares and chaff, then dived back into the valley at full speed, rapidly building velocity until the G-forces crushed the chests of the men, making it almost impossible to breathe.
The battleground swelled with nightmarish speed on the forward video screens and the Chinese pilots saw the tanks start to move quickly away from each other, thick fumes pouring from the aft smoke generator, the 87 mm mortar throwing out smoke grenades in every direction in an effort to mask the vehicles, but it was far too late for such simplistic tactics. The two Chinese J-6 Farmers released a full salvo of PL-12 AA missiles from under their wings, and a few seconds later three of the Russians disappeared in fiery detonations, the riddled chassis lifting off the ground from the sheer force of the titanic blasts. The smoke screen was dissipated, but soon replaced by the smoke generators and banging mortars.
Swinging their cannons skyward, the foggy T-90 tanks retaliated again and again, the antiaircraft rounds hitting nothing. Then on the IR screen, the Chinese pilots saw a squad of soldiers poured from underneath one the armored vehicles. Taking a defensive position among the boulders, Chinese dead lying at their boots, the Russian soldiers lifted long, slim tubes that puffed smoke from the front and flames out of the aft end.
Supremely confident, the Chinese pilots replied with long bursts from the twin 30 mm cannons, the wall of high-velocity lead tearing apart the missiles in midair. Trying to track after the fighters, the Russian tanks boomed once more. But the F-6 Farmers rolled over to slip apart, then twisted to nimbly return. Stuttering fire extended from the 57 mm rocket-pods under their wings.
The armor-piercing rockets stitched across the tanks like the revenge of an angry God, the thermite warheads filling the entire valley with a blinding glare. On the microphones inside their helmets, the grim pilots heard the Russian invaders shriek in unimaginable agony. Then, unexpectedly, one of the T-90 tanks exploded, the blast shoving another tank across the grassy field to tumble down the river embankment and crash into the rushing water. The armored vehicle lay in plain sight for a split second, and then it was gone beneath the churning waves.
“Again!” Captain Dee said, trying to keep a smile out of his words. He hated the filthy Russians, and was secretly delighted for a legitimate excuse to slay the murdering cowards. He glanced again at the video monitor, relishing the sight of the enemy sheathed in Chinese fire.
Then something flashed between the two Farmers.
Both pilots cursed at the sight of a full wing of Russian MiG-31 jetfighters appearing from around the Argun Mountains, the angular warplanes spreading out in a search formation.
“The fools haven’t seen us yet,” Dee shouted, quickly tapping the VR buttons on the glowing touch screen. “Fire the heat-seekers!”
“Yes, comrade!”
With their hands tight on the joysticks, the Chinese pilots pressed the safety with their thumbs, then pulled the triggers. From the wings of the J-6 jetfighters there dropped four gleaming white needles of advanced technology. The AA missiles fell for a dozen yards, then ignited their engines and streaked away, spiraling madly in a hunting pattern before aiming at the oncoming MiG-31 fighters. Locked on target, the heat-seekers surged in speed.
Caught by surprise, the Russians began to spin rapidly along their axis in an evasive maneuver, their PANDA system trying to blind the incoming missiles to no avail. In desperation, the MiGs spread out and fired a full salvo of GRAVIS antimissiles. Three of the Chinese warbirds were aced. But the fourth found a target and the tail of a MiG blossomed into radiant hell.
Sp
inning crazily, the burning fuselage slammed into another MiG, the combined explosions seeming to fill the sky. The burning wreckage tumbled down to smack into the side of a mountain and disappear in the raging forest fire.
Banking sharply, the Chinese J-6 Farmers dropped their wingtip fuel tanks and drastically cut power, coming dangerously close to stalling their turbofan engines in an effort to turn around and directly engage the enemy. From every direction, dotting lines of green fire moved between the J-6 Farmers as the Russian MiGs cut loose with their own 30 mm cannons, the tracers clearly visible even in the bright daylight.
Circling each other in complex patterns, the Russian and Chinese warplanes launched more missiles and antimissiles, their cannons firing in prolonged bursts. Metallic chaff and sizzling magnesium flares pumped from the fighters, the visible combat counterpointed by the on-board computers automatically engaging in silent electronic warfare. The Russian tanks boomed from below, the shells missing the Chinese to detonate on the sloping hillside starting more fires and a small avalanche of loose boulders.
Suddenly, the cowling of the Russian planes turned dark and the MiGs broke formation to leave the river valley at top speed.
“Cowardly dogs!” Tzu sneered, starting to peruse the retreating planes. He was out of missiles and low on ammunition, the fuel pressure gauges hovering near the danger level, but the man was grimly determined to repel the invaders from his beloved homeland at any cost.
“Cover your eyes!” Dee barked, scrambling to don a pair of mirrored glasses. The face shield on the helmet was designed to protect his eyes from shrapnel and flying glass, but not this sort of attack.
On the misty battleground, a soldier clambered into view from a tank, his arms full of a stubby weapon that resembled a WWII flamethrower, except that the flared end was made of glass and crystal. Switching on the gasoline-powered generator inside his backpack, the Russian grinned fiendishly as he swept the sky with the UV laser.
A thousand feet high, Tzu screamed as everything turned a solid black. “I can’t see!” he wailed, clawing at his face. “I’m stone blind!”
“Yes, comrade, I know,” Captain Dee said gently, squinting against the invisible light stinging his eyes in spite of the protective glasses and tinted shield of the helmet. He felt furious over the other man’s failure, and wanted to chastise the fool, but what was the point? A blind combat pilot couldn’t land a jetfighter. Nobody could. When the fuel ran out, the other man was dead.
As the violet glare receded from the cockpits of the F-6 Farmers, the Russian MiG fighters returned in combat formation, every weapon firing.
“I wish we had a nuke,” Dee whispered harshly, firing the last rounds from the nose cannon. When the dwindling ammunition was gone, he would boost to supersonic and depart the valley, leaving his friend to the cold mercy of the Russians. There was nothing else he could do.
“What was that?” Tzu gasped, his jet starting to loll slightly. “The Russians have a nuke?” He touched his throat mike. “Firebird Two to Cold Dragon base! Alert! Alert! We are under nuclear attack!”
Incompetent fool! Furiously, Dee grabbed for his throat mike to override the transmission when a salvo of Russian missiles appeared from above, arching downward fast. The Chinese pilot shoved the joystick to the maximum, insanely accelerating to try to escape. For a split second, he saw the red tips of the missiles stab through the resilient plastic cowling, then his world was filled with fire and flame for an even shorter period of time. Then there was only peaceful blackness.
A few minutes later, the Citadel in Beijing sent out a coded message to all of its Western air force bases. In short order, hundreds of Super Seven interceptors, J-6 and Foxhound fighters, along with a dozen Xian nuclear-strike bombers, streaked into the sky heading for a nameless valley in the Argun Mountains.
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
SITUATED DEEP UNDERGROUND, the subterranean Computer Room was cool and quiet, the four Stony Man hackers hunched low over their consoles, hard at work. From a small coffee station off to the side came the powerful smell of fresh coffee. The only discernible sounds were the steady tapping of fingers on keyboards and a low hum from the wall vents.
Sipping strong black coffee from a ceramic mug the size of a beer stein, Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman watched his staff and rubbed a hand along the rubber-edged wheel of his chair. His calloused palms caressed the worn material with hated intimacy. The man knew every inch of the wheelchair the way an ordinary man knew the contours of his face.
“Anything yet?” Kurtzman asked, draining the coffee and placing the mug aside on his console.
“Nothing on the shell casings,” Akira Tokaido replied, popping a piece of gum in his mouth. “According to the files at Interpol headquarters, the ammunition was sold to the Chilean army, but then stolen by some Communist guerrillas in the Alps, and has never surfaced again until now.”
The young Japanese-American youth was a natural-born hacker. Tokaido was wearing loose clothing, the items mismatched as if the social concept of fashion didn’t exist. The heavy beat of thumping rock music seeped from the earbuds pressed into his ears.
“How about our pinup girl?” Kurtzman asked, frowning.
The JPEG of the raven-haired woman was taped to the side of his computer monitor. Her black eyes sparkled like diamonds inside the motorcycle helmet, her pretty face a snarl of bestial rage as she raised the FN-2000 assault rifle into a firing position. She was gorgeous, and had gunned down a dozen civilians. Beauty and the beast combined.
“Still working on it,” Carmen Delahunt answered. “If she’s a professional mercenary, then she must have a police record somewhere.”
Her long red hair tied off in a ponytail, the beautiful woman was neatly dressed in a green cotton blouse and loose black skirt, shapely nylon-clad legs tucked under her chair. On her workstation desk were numerous pictures of her children.
“Also check with NATO. She could be part of a terrorist group.”
“Already doing so,” she said with a cold smile. “Nothing so far. I’ll try the Mossad and then British Intelligence.”
“Don’t forget the S2 in Brazil,” Kurtzman suggested. “They could be hiring out their people as muscle. Lord knows the bastards have a finger in every other dirty enterprise in South America. Why not this?”
Delahunt only grunted in acknowledgment as she returned to her task.
Kurtzman watched her for a moment, then turned as he noticed the colored lights change on the main monitor. Things were getting nasty along the Russia-China border. Hundreds of ships were jammed at the Panama Canal, and several fights had started and been stopped, but nothing serious yet. However, Uganda had activated its entire army, and downtown Japan was still on fire, the rioting getting worse all the time.
“Akira, any chance of tracing that cell phone call?” Kurtzman demanded, lifting his mug and scowling at finding it empty.
Thoughtfully, Tokaido paused to blow a pink bubble. “No way,” he decided, chewing back in the sticky confection. “Whoever these folks have as their computer support is very good. Almost too damn good.”
“Anything from the Dirty Dozen?” Kurtzman asked hopefully, rolling to the kitchenette and pouring himself a fresh cup of coffee. The Dirty Dozen were his invention, instituted long ago. They were a collection of artificial personalities the cybernetic team maintained as sources of information. They posted fake arrest reports in newspapers, and then denied them on the Internet, which made everybody believe the reports had to be real. The Dirty Dozen covered the full spectrum of criminal activity from racketeering to assassinations, with a little arms smuggling on the side.
“Yes and no,” Tokaido said, sounding annoyed. “Nobody is offering to sell, rent or lease control of the GPS network, or even claiming that they could do it, either. However, somebody is trying to hire mercenaries from Larry Dixon in Omaha for an unspecified job.”
Dixon was one of the Dozen. “Omaha is on the escape route of the Texas bikers,”
Kurtzman said slowly, chewing over the possibilities. “Okay, hire out some muscle, then have Jack fly Able Team to Omaha for the meeting. With any luck, it’ll be our mystery woman and they’ll capture her alive to squeeze out some hard information.”
“And if it isn’t the terrorists,” Tokaido asked pointedly, “just some crime lord making to take over more territory?”
Kurtzman dismissed the matter with a shrug. “Then Able Team leaves, and they’re still on the escape route. Those people left Texas with their asses on fire. They must pop up somewhere for supplies before reaching North Dakota—rob a bank, loot a gun store, raid a police station, whatever. And when they do, Able Team will drop on them like a ton of bricks.”
“Unless they were killed when that cave exploded in the foothills,” Tokaido said, starting to type away.
Having no reply to that possibility, the chief computer expert wheeled himself back to his console and slid underneath smooth as a docking space shuttle. A soldier did what he could, nothing more. “Hunt, talk to me,” Kurtzman commanded gruffly.
“Almost done,” Huntington Wethers announced, turning from his console. “And…there. Okay, good news, bad news.” The slim, dapper man had silver highlights at his temples and was chewing on a briarwood pipe. “There seems to have been a great deal of research into the possible modification of the GPS network by the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, China, all of the superpowers, including America, but so far, nobody even has an idea how it could be accomplished.” Placing the pipe on a rosewood rack, Wethers took another and tucked it into his mouth. Smoking was forbidden near the delicate computers, but the former university professor still liked to chew his old pipe as an aid to concentration.
“Who was the first, and who’s the most recent?” Kurtzman demanded, a laser printer built into his console scrolling a top-secret report, the sheet of paper traveling under a sheet of glass and going directly into a shredder that reduced the paper into tiny flakes. An experimental long-range antimissile fired at Port Woomera in Australia had just crashed outside of Santiago, the capital city of Chile, which sure as heck, he knew, was not the intended target. Thankfully, there were no civilian deaths. However, their luck couldn’t hold forever, and the next time…
Capital Offensive (Stony Man) Page 14