Through the cockpit canopy it looked like some kind of video-game thrill ride. The tunnel swept past Schofield at phenomenal speed, and occasionally the world nipped upside-down as he rolled the big plane to avoid falling chunks of ice.
Schofield watched as the barrage of tracer bullets decimated the walls of the tunnel in front of him, widening it, smoothing it, and then suddenly?voom!?the walls of the ice tunnel vanished and in a single, glorious instant he saw the sky open up in front of him.
The Silhouette burst out of the iceberg and flew up into the clear open sky.
The Silhouette shot up into the air, almost vertical, and Schofield looked back over his shoulder and saw that the ice shelf that had held Wilkes Ice Station within it was indeed no longer an ice shelf. It was now an iceberg.
An absolutely massive iceberg.
It had flipped over and Schofield saw the eroded underbelly of what had once been the ice shelf?the thin, icy stalactites, the glistening-wet mountain peaks?rising like spires above the new berg. He also saw the jagged black hole through which the Silhouette had blasted out of the berg.
And then suddenly movement caught his eye: a thin white object racing over the ocean, heading toward the newly formed iceberg.
The missile.
And as the Silhouette roared into the sky, Schofield watched in silent awe as the nuclear-tipped missile slammed into the iceberg and burrowed into it. There was about a three-second delay ...
And then the nuclear device detonated.
Armageddon.
The white-hot flash of the nuclear explosion?directly beneath the Silhouette as it shot up into the sky?was absolutely blinding.
Solid cliffs of ice were turned instantly to powder as every side of the iceberg containing Wilkes Ice Station and the underground cavern blew out with the blast wave.
The blast wave shot underwater, vaporizing everything in its path, creating huge waves of water that expanded out from the coast, rocking the massive icebergs that lined the cliffs as if they were a child's bath toys. Truth be told, it wasn't a large nuclear blast?three kilotons, with a blast radius of half a kilometer. But then again, there really was no such thing as a small nuclear explosion.
But it wasn't over yet.
Suddenly a monstrous black mushroom cloud began to form, shooting up into the air at incredible speed, chasing the Silhouette as it shot skyward.
Schofield went vertical, tried to outrun the burgeoning mushroom cloud. The mushroom cloud rushed upward. The Silhouette screamed into the sky, its engines roaring, and just as the mushroom cloud began to engulf it the cloud peaked and the Silhouette shot up and away to safety.
Schofield banked the plane sharply and headed out to sea.
The Silhouette shot across the ocean, heading north. It was dark, eternal twilight. The gargantuan mushroom cloud had just dipped below the horizon to the south of the big black plane.
Schofield found the autopilot, engaged it, then went back into the missile bay to check on Gant.
"How is she?" he asked Renshaw. Gant was lying on the floor of the missile bay, looking seriously pale. Her skin was clammy, her eyes were closed.
"She's lost a lot of blood," Renshaw said. "We have to get her to a hospital fast."
At that moment, Gant's eyes popped open. "Did we win?" she asked.
Schofield and Renshaw both looked down at her. Schofield smiled. "Yes, Libby, we won. How are you feeling?"
"Terrible." She lay back, shut her eyes again.
Schofield sighed. Where could he take her? A ship would be the best option, but which?
The Wasp. Romeo had said that the USS Wasp was out here somewhere. It was Jack Walsh's ship. A Marine ship. It would be safe.
Schofield was about to hurry back to the cockpit when suddenly he saw the diary sticking out of Gant's breast pocket.
He grabbed it and headed forward into the cockpit.
Once he was seated in the pilot's chair, he keyed the Silhouette's radio. "USS Wasp. USS Wasp. This is Scarecrow. I repeat, this is Scarecrow. Do you copy?"
There was no reply.
He tried again. No reply. He looked down at the diary in his hands. It had some looseleaf sheets of paper folded inside it. Gant must have found some documents and put them in the diary.
Schofield grabbed one of the loose sheets. It read:
Design Parameters for the B-7A Silhouette
The Principal desires an attack aircraft with total electronic and conventional invisibility, STOVL capabilities through a retrograde thruster system, and multiple-launch BVR medium-to-long-range (200 nm) air-to-air/ air-to-ground missile launch capabilities as expressed in the tender lodged by General Aeronautics, Inc., and Entertech Ltd. in response to the Principal's Invitation to Tender No, 456-771-7A, dated 2 January 1977.
Schofield translated the jargon: STOVL was Short-Take-Off/Vertical-Landing; BVR stood for Beyond Visual Range, which meant missiles that could be fired at targets?and be expected to hit those targets?at extremely long range. "Electronic invisibility" meant invisibility to radar, or stealth. But what the hell was "conventional invisibility?"
Schofield flicked to the next sheet. It looked like a page out of Entertech Ltd.'s tender. It read:
The Entertech Edge
The B-7A Silhouette benefits from Entertech Ltd.'s experience in the field of electronic countermeasures. Invisibility to radar?or "stealth"?is accomplished in many ways: with radar absorbent paint, minimal radar cross-sections, or with a sharply angled fuselage design as was done with the F-117A stealth fighter. But conventional invisibility is more difficult to accomplish, and so far, it has remained unattainable. Until now.
Entertech Ltd. has developed a system whereby an electromagnetic field is created around a given aircraft creating conventional invisibility. The electromagnetic field distorts the molecular structure of the air around the aircraft, creating an artificial refraction of light that renders that aircraft totally invisible to radar and even?
Schofield's jaw dropped. His eyes scanned the lines ahead and he found the word he was looking for:
We call it a cloaking device ...
Jesus, he thought.
A cloaking device.
A system that rendered an aircraft invisible not only to radar but to the naked eye as well. Every aviator knew that even if you were invisible to your enemy's radar, you could never escape someone seeing you directly. A billion-dollar stealth bomber can be seen by a spotter out the window of an AWACS plane forty miles away.
Schofield's mind buzzed. This was revolutionary. A cloaking device that distorted the air around an airplane, thus creating an artificial refraction of the light around the plane, making it invisible to the naked eye. The crazy thing was, it just might work.
Schofield knew about refraction. It was most commonly observed when one looked into a fishbowl. Light outside the fishbowl strikes the water?which has a greater density than the air above it. The greater density of the water causes the light to refract at an angle, distorting the size and position of the fish inside the bowl.
But this was refraction of air, Schofield thought. This is artificially altering the density of air with electricity.
There had to be a catch. And there was.
The plutonium.
This revolutionary new system?this system that could alter the refractive density of air?was nuclear.
Schofield searched for the relevant paragraph, found it. As one would expect from someone trying to win a government tender, it was carefully worded:
It must be appreciated that to effect the Silhouette's cloaking system requires an enormous amount of self-generated power. According to tests run by Entertech Ltd. and General Aeronautics, Inc., to disrupt the molecular and electromagnetic structure of the ambient air around a moving aircraft requires a total of 2.71 gigawatts of electromagnetic energy. The only known source of such a quantity of energy is a controlled nuclear reaction?
Schofield whistled softly to himself. General Aeronautics and Entertech
had offered the U.S. Air Force a plane with a nuclear reactor on board. No wonder they built it in Antarctica.
He put the documentation down, tried the radio again.
"USS Wasp. USS Wasp. This is Scarecrow. I repeat, USS Wasp, this is Scarecrow. Please re?"
"Unidentified aircraft using the name Scarecrow, this is U.S. Air Force fighter Blue Leader. Identify yourself," a voice said suddenly over Schofield's cockpit radio.
Schofield looked at his radar screen. He was now almost two hundred nautical miles from the coast of Antarctica, safely out over the sea. On his radar screen he saw nothing.
Damn it, Schofield thought. Whoever this is, he's operating under stealth.
"Blue Leader, this is Lieutenant Shane Schofield, United States Marines Corps. I am flying an unmarked US Air Force prototype fighter-bomber. I mean you no harm."
Schofield looked out the canopy to his left.
He saw six tiny dots on the horizon.
"Unidentified aircraft. You are to follow us under escort back to the U.S. Navy carrier Enterprise, where you will he debriefed."
Schofield said, "Blue Leader, I do not wish to be taken under escort?"
"Then you will be fired upon, unidentified aircraft."
Schofield bit his tongue. "Blue Leader, identify yourself."
"What?"
"What is your name, Blue Leader?"
"My name is Captain John F. Yates, United States Air Force, and I want you to surrender to escort formation now!"
Yates, Schofield thought, grabbing another sheet of paper from his own pocket. There it was.
YATES, JOHN F. USAF CPTN
"What is this, an ICG convention?" Schofield said to himself.
At that moment, six F-22s swooped into place around Schofield's plane. Two in front. Two on the sides. Two behind. They all kept their distance, approximately two hundred yards. Their presence never registered on Schofield's radar even though he could see them.
Suddenly a shrill buzzing sound droned out from Schofield's cockpit speakers.
The F-22s had missile lock on him.
Schofield said, "What are your intentions, Captain Yates?"
"Our intention is to get you back to the United States carrier Enterprise and debrief you."
"Do you intend to fire on me?"
"Let's not make this harder than it's already going to be."
"Do you intend to fire on me!"
"Good-bye, Scarecrow."
Oh, fuck!
They were going to fire. Schofield looked frantically around the cockpit for something to?
His eyes fell on a button on his display.
CLOAK MODE.
What the hell, you've got nothing to lose.... Schofield hit the cloak button just as, two hundred yards behind him, the lead F-22 launched one of its missiles.
What happened next was nothing short of incredible.
Captain John Yates?Blue Leader?looked out through the canopy of his F-22. In the dull orange twilight over the ocean Yates saw the black aircraft hovering in the air in front of him, saw the luminescent red glow of its tail thrusters.
Then he saw the white vapor trail of his own missile as it streaked away from his wing and headed in toward the black fighter's thrusters.
As the missile raced toward its target, a shimmering haze suddenly descended upon the black fighter. The sight was absolutely amazing. It looked like a shimmering, rippling heat haze?like the kind that hangs over a highway on a hot summer's day?and it just descended over the black fighter as if someone were lowering a curtain over it.
Suddenly the black plane was gone.
Yates's missile went berserk.
With its initial target lost, the missile immediately began searching for another target.
It found it in one of the F-22s flying in front of Schofield's Silhouette. The missile shot into the tailpipe of the forward F-22 and the stealth fighter exploded bright orange in the dark twilight sky.
Yates was stunned. Voices shouted over his headset.
"?just disappeared?"
"?fucking thing just vanished!?"
Yates checked his scopes. The black fighter didn't appear on his radar. He searched the sky for the black plane with his eyes. He couldn't see it, couldn't see it anywhe?
And then he saw it.
Or at least he thought he saw it.
Overlaid on the orange horizon Yates saw a shimmering body of air. It looked like a warped glass lens, a lens that had been superimposed on the flat horizon, causing one short section of that horizon to ripple continuously.
He couldn't believe his eyes.
Inside the Silhouette, Schofield was already flicking switches.
The missile had missed him and he could hear the comments of the F-22 pilots over his own radio. The F-22s couldn't see him. It was time to fight back.
"Renshaw! Bring Gant up here! Wendy, too!"
Renshaw brought Gant forward, into the back section of the cockpit. Wendy loped into the cockpit behind him.
"Shut the cockpit door," Schofield said.
Renshaw shut the door. They were now cut off from the missile bay in the belly of the Silhouette.
Schofield flicked a final switch and saw a red warning light appear on his computer screen.
MISSILES ARMED. TARGETING...
The screen began to flash.
5 TARGETS ACQUIRED. READY TO FIRE.
Schofield jammed down on his thumb trigger.
At that moment, the missile bay door of the Silhouette opened and the two racks in the missile bay began to rotate.
One after the other, five missiles dropped through the missile bay doors and out into the sky. Schofield watched as the missiles streaked away from him and began searching for their targets like bloodhounds.
The first F-22 exploded in a giant fireball. When it went up in flames, the other F-22 pilots shouted as one.
"?missile just came out of the fucking sky!?"
"?can't see him anywhere?"
"?bastard's using some sort of cloaking device?"
A couple of the F-22 pilots hit their afterburners, but it was no use.
More missiles shot out from the shimmering body of air that was the Silhouette. Three hit their targets right away, blasted them to smithereens.
The sixth and final F-22 tried to make a run for it. It managed to get a mile away before the missile that had acquired it?the last missile to drop from the rotating missile racks inside the Silhouette?slammed into its tailpipe and blew it to hell.
Inside the Silhouette, Schofield breathed a sigh of relief. As he turned north, he keyed his radio again. "USS Wasp. Come in. USS Wasp. Please. Come in."
After several tries, there finally came a reply. "Unidentified aircraft, this is Wasp. Identify yourself." Schofield gave his name and service number. The person at the other end checked it and then said,
"Lieutenant Schofield, it's good to hear from you. The flight deck has been cleared. You have clearance to land. I am sending you our coordinates now."
The Silhouette flew into the night
The USS Wasp, the Marine Corps' aircraft carrier-like vessel, was about eighty nautical miles from Schofield. It would take about fifteen minutes to cruise there.
In the luminescent green glow of his indicator dials Schofield stared out at the orange horizon. He had lifted the cloaking device and was allowing the plane to go on autopilot for a while.
The previous twenty-four hours flitted through his mind.
The French. The British. The ICG. His own men who had died on a mission that was never meant to succeed. Faces flashed across his mind. Hollywood. Samurai. Book. Mother. Soldiers who had died so that their country could lay its greedy hands on some extraterrestrial technology that never was.
A deep sadness fell over Schofield.
He leaned forward and began flicking some switches. The screen in front of him flashed:
MISSILE ARMED. TARGETING ...
Schofield quickly hit another switch.
MANUAL
TARGETING SELECTED.
He maneuvered the target selector on the screen until he found the target he was looking for. He pressed the select button on his stick.
Several other option screens appeared and Schofield calmly chose the options he wanted.
SET DELAY PERIOD: 23:00 MINS. SAFETY MEASURES: DEACTIVATED.
Then, when he was done, he hit his thumb trigger.
At that moment, the sixth and final missile inside his missile bay rotated on its rack and dropped down into the sky. Its thrusters kicked in and the missile shot off into the distance, climbing high into the deep black sky.
The USS Wasp lay at rest in the middle of the Southern Ocean.
It was a big ship. With a length of 844 feet, it was as long as two and a half football fields. The enormous five-story superstructure in the middle of the ship?the operations center of the ship known as "the island"?looked down on the flight deck. On a normal day, the flight deck would have been dotted with choppers, Harriers, gunships, and people, but not today.
Today the flight deck was deserted. There was no movement on it at all, no aircraft, no people.
It looked like a ghost town.
The Silhouette slowed perfectly in the air above the non-skid deck of the Wasp, its retros firing thin streams of gas down onto the deck beneath it. The ominous black fighter plane landed softly on the flight deck, near the stern of the ship.
Schofield peered out through the canopy of the Silhouette.
The flight deck in front of him was eerily empty. Schofield sighed. He had expected that.
"All right, everyone, let's get out of here," he said.
Renshaw and Kirsty left the cockpit. Wendy went with them. Schofield said he would take care of Gant.
Before he left the cockpit, however, Schofield pulled a long, thin silver canister from the satchel that he had stretched over his shoulder.
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