by Dale Brown
“Jennifer said it’s doable,” said Ferris. “And then they barrage launch at the contacts. That’s what they’re doing.”
“We’re jamming like hell. Guidance systems ought to be confused.”
“Maybe they’ve improved them,” said Ferris.
“If that is what’s going on,” said Zen, “then what we should do is nail the coordinating site.”
“How do we find it?” asked Breanna.
“We follow the communications net,” he suggested.
“Listen in. See where the center is. That’s what Quicksilver‘s good at.”
“I still think it’s a laser,” said Mack. “Got to be.”
“Sure,” said Zen. “But we can find that the same way.
Instead of looking for the weapon, we look for the guidance system. That’s how Weasels work, right? They nail the radar van.”
Danny straightened from the map. He felt like the odd man out as they continued to discuss the situation and what to do. He felt like he ought to contribute something, help plan a mission somehow. He and his guys were sitting on the ground playing babysitters—literally, with the Kurd kid Liu had plucked out.
Protecting the planes was an important job. Still, the Marines provided more than enough security, and the Navy Seabee guys they’d brought in with them were going great guns expanding High Top—if they had their way, it would be the size of O’Hare in another forty-eight hours.
So Whiplash was free to do more important things.
Like?
“All right,” said Alou. “Let’s work up some surveillance tracks to coincide with the missions for CentCom.”
“You know it seems to me that if this radar computer gear is that sophisticated, we ought to try to get a look at it,” said Danny. “Get pictures, data, that sort of stuff.”
“Hey, Captain, why don’t we just grab it?” said Mack.
He probably meant it as a put-down—Smith could be a real asshole—but the idea struck Danny as eminently doable.
Or at least more interesting than babysitting.
“If I can get a Chinook or a Pave Low in here, we could take it out, no sweat,” said Danny.
The others seemed to ignore him.
“I still think it’s a laser,” said Mack.
“That would be worth taking,” said Danny. “Big-time.” Finally, everyone realized he was serious. The conversation stopped; they all turned and looked at him.
“We could,” said Danny. “Or at least get intelligence about it.”
“You serious?” asked Zen.
“Shit yeah.”
“Unnecessary risk,” said Alou. “Even if we could find it.”
“Risk is our job,” said Danny. He knew he was pushing further than reasonable, but what the hell—Whiplash was created exactly for missions like this. Besides, except for the target, it was a straightforward armed reconnaissance mission behind enemy lines. Anyone could do it.
Pretty much.
“We’re not even positive where the site is,” said Breanna. “We don’t have a target for you, Danny.”
“So get me one.”
AS THE OTHERS FINISHED WORKING OUT THE DETAILS FOR the missions, Zen wheeled himself through the narrow door and down the ramp. A gray CH-46E Sea Knight or “Frog” was just arriving, bringing in more Marines. The two-rotored helicopter looked like a scaled-down version of the more famous Chinook—though in fact the development had been the other way around, with the Frog coming first.
Darkening the sky behind the Marine helo was an Osprey, just tipping its wings and rotors to land. The MV-22 was Whiplash’s chariot of choice, twice as fast as most helicopters, with considerably longer range.
Zen wheeled toward Quicksilver‘s parking area. He’d rejected numerous suggestions that he get a battery-powered chair—definitely a macho thing—but at times like this, skidding through potholes and ducking rocks, even he would have admitted it’d be useful.
He hadn’t apologized to Bree. He knew he’d have to, and the sooner the better—stale apologies were even more difficult to make.
Send flowers or something. Blow her away if he could get them up here.
Jennifer Gleason and Louis Garcia were standing beneath Quicksilver‘s tail, pointing at the large black semi-sphere and wire guts of the coverless IR sensor above.
“Hey, how’s it going?” he shouted, rolling toward them.
“Lousy,” Jennifer told him. “I tried to recalibrate the programming and now there’s a bad circuit on the sensor.
It’s going to take at least an hour to get it working.”
“An hour? We’re supposed to take off then. Forty-five minutes, actually.”
“Oh,” said Jennifer.
“I can get this back together quicker than a rolling stone,” said Garcia. “But then I have to help prep the plane.”
“Okay.” Jennifer took a strand of her hair and pulled it back behind her ear. “We’ll toss flares off the Flighthawk.”
“What for?”
“I want to see what the data sequence should be.
There’s an error I’m trying to make sense of.”
“I can launch the flares, no sweat.” Zen glanced toward the U/MF already loaded onto the Megafortress’s wing.
“Good. I’ll grab something to eat and my flight gear.”
“Hold on, cowboy.” Zen whirled his chair across her path as she started to duck away. “Who says you’re coming with us? It’s a war zone.”
“And Somalia wasn’t?” Jennifer put her hands on her hips defiantly. “If there is a laser out there, you need me in the air. Don’t worry, Jeff, I can take care of myself.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”
“Hmmmph,” she said, stomping away.
“I’m having a bad day with women,” Zen said softly.
“Honey, give me just one more chance,” sang Garcia.
“Huh?”
“Just a song, Major.”
“Garcia—is everything in life a Dylan song?”
“Pretty much.”
Dreamland
0523
“TEST CODE CHECKS, SIR,” SAID THE LIEUTENANT AT THE communications desk in the secure situation room triumphantly. “You’re good to go.”
“Make the connection,” said Dog. He stood in the middle of the floor in front of the screen, waiting for the transmission from Turkey. The test pattern on the screen blipped blue. The words CONNECTION PENDING appeared in the middle of the screen.
He wanted to talk to Jennifer in the worst way. But of course that wasn’t what this was about.
“Hey, Colonel, good to see you finally,” said Danny.
The screen was still blank.
“Well, you can see me but—wait, there we go,” said Dog as the video finally snapped in. Danny Freah sat at the table in the Whiplash trailer. His eyes drooped a bit at the corners, but his face and hands were full of energy.
Before Dog could say anything, Danny launched into an argument for undertaking a ground recon of the Iraqi Razor clone.
“And hello to you too, Captain,” said Dog when he finally paused for a breath.
“It’d be a real intelligence coup,” said Danny. “We could use the helmets to beam back video. Then we can take key parts back.”
“Do we know where it is?”
“No, sir. But the missions they’re on now—they’ll find them.”
“Assuming, of course, it exists.”
“Hell, if we can get some help, we could grab the whole thing.”
“Let me get Rubeo and our Razor people down here to talk about this,” said Dog. “It may be useful.”
“It’ll be damn useful.”
“Relax, Captain. From what I’ve heard out of CentCom, they’re not even one hundred percent sure it’s a laser. No one can explain how Saddam would have built it.”
“If it’s not—let’s say it’s a radar and missile setup we don’t know about—we should take a look at that too,” said Danny. “See wha
t they’re up to. Jennifer Gleason suggested that they may have some way of taking a lot of different inputs and cobbling them together. Software for that would be worth grabbing too, don’t you think?”
“Captain, while I don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm,” said Dog, “why don’t we take this one step at a time. How about an update on your status?”
“Sure,” said Danny. He gave him a complete rundown, working backward from the last mission. Then he told him about the baby who’d been born the previous night. It sounded like just the thing the Pentagon PR people would eat up—except, of course, that the mission was code-word classified, and would undoubtedly remain so.
“Kinda makes you a grandpa, huh, Colonel?” said Danny.
“I don’t think so,” said Dog. “What kind of shape are our people in?”
“Top notch, sir.”
Danny’s mention of Jennifer gave him the perfect excuse to talk to her—he ought to hear about her theory from her, he thought. Certainly if it were Rubeo or one of the other scientists, he’d ask to talk to him directly.
But Dog hesitated. He didn’t want to cross over the line.
Of course he should talk to her.
“Is Dr. Gleason there?” he asked, finally giving in. “I’d like to hear her theory on the radars.”
“She’s up with the Megafortresses, sir,” said Danny.
“She’s going on a mission.”
“Mission?”
“Yes, sir. They’re modifying the IR detection gear to search for lasers.”
Dog pursed his lips but said nothing.
High Top
1510
MISSION PREPPED, BREANNA GAVE IN TO AN IMPULSE BEFORE heading back up to the Megafortress and jogged over to the baby’s tent after relieving herself in the Marines’
new latrine. She wanted to see the cute little guy before she took off.
For good luck. Just for good luck.
She expected mother and child would be sleeping, but as she neared the tent she heard laughter. The tent was crowded with Whiplash members and Marines, who were taking turns holding and cooing the infant.
“Guarding against a sneak attack?” said Bree, trying to squeeze inside.
“Can’t be too careful about colic,” said one of the men, deadly serious.
“Well, let me hold him for good luck,” she said, sliding near Sergeant “Powder” Talcom, who was holding him.
The sergeant gave the baby up very reluctantly.
“You’re a cute one,” she said, gently cradling the baby.
Little Muhammad Liu looked at her with very big brown eyes. Then he furled his nose and began to cry.
“Aw, Captain, you made him cry,” said Powder, immediately reaching for the infant. The other men closed in; Bree suddenly felt very outnumbered.
“There there,” she told the infant, rocking him gently.
“Aunt Breanna isn’t going to hurt you.” The baby sniffed, burped, then stopped crying.
“You got the touch, Captain,” said one of the men.
“Well, I’m quitting while I’m ahead,” she said, handing the baby off.
Iraq Intercept Missile Station Two,
northern Iraq
1510
MUSAH TAHIR ROSE FROM HIS PRAYER MAT AND BOWED once more in the direction of Mecca before starting back to his post in the radar van. For the past three days Allah had been remarkably beneficent, rewarding his poor efforts at improving the Russian radar equipment with fantastic victories over the Americans. Volleys of missiles—a combination of SA-2s, Threes, and Sixes—had brought down several aircraft.
Or at least his commanders told them they had. Tahir was aware only of his own small role in the war as both technician and operator. He had studied engineering at MIT as well as the Emirates, and in some ways this job was a million times below his capability. But fate and Allah had brought him here, and he could not argue with either.
Tahir settled on his narrow metal bench before the two screens he commanded and began his routine. First, he made sure that each line of the Swiss-made system in the console on the left was working, punching the buttons methodically and greeting the man on the other line with a word of peace and a prayer. When he reached the third line, there was nothing—Shahar, the idiot Shiite, no doubt a traitor, once again sleeping at his post. Tahir waited patiently, speaking the man’s name at sixty second intervals, until after nearly ten minutes the observer came on the line.
“Planes?” Tahir asked, cutting off Shahar’s apology.
He knew the answer would be no—he had not received the warning yet from the spies at Incirlik that the infidels’
planes had taken off. But the question would serve as a remonstrance.
“No,” said the man.
“Remain alert,” snapped Tahir, hanging up. He sat back at his console, frowning as one of the guards walked past his doorway. There was only a small security contingent here, a half-dozen men; anything larger might have attracted the Americans’ attention. Besides, so far behind the lines, there was no need for troops. Tahir several times had considered the fact that the men had probably been posted here to keep an eye on him.
That was hardly necessary. He went through the other lines quickly. When he had determined that all were operating, he proceeded to the next set of checks. These were more difficult, involving the buried cables that ran from the various collection sites. More than two dozen radars and six microwave stations were connected to Tahir’s post via fiber-optic cable that had been buried at great expense, in most cases before the infidel war. If it were laid out end to end it would no doubt reach Satan’s capital in Washington.
Only two of his sites had been hit in the morning’s bombardments. That was well within acceptable parameters. At this pace, it would take the Americans a full week to eliminate his radars. By then the army would be out of missiles anyway.
Tahir glanced at the television monitor in the corner, then picked up his cell phone and adjusted the headset. When that was on, he carefully placed the second headset—a Soviet-made unit older than he—over it. He had to position it slightly to the side so he could hear from both sets, but the trouble and the pressure against the edge of his ear and temple were worth it; he could talk and monitor his radar at the same time. Prepared, he let his glance sweep across the console before him one last time, then drew his body upward with a great breath, exhaling slowly as he delivered his trust to Allah, waiting for the alert.
Aboard Quicksilver,
over Iraq
1602
ZEN HELD HAWK ONE EXACTLY SEVENTY-FIVE METERS BEHIND Quicksilver‘s tail, waiting for the signal to hit the flares. The Megafortress’s airfoil shed air in violent vortices, and holding the position here was actually more difficult than closing in for a refuel.
“I need another few seconds,” said Jennifer, fingers violently pounding one of the auxiliary keyboards at the station next to him. “Hang tight, Zen.”
“Yup.”
“You ready upstairs, O’Brien?” she asked. “I need you to initiate sequence two right now.”
“Sequence two initiated,” said the electronic warfare officer.
“Zen, on my signal …”
“Okay, Professor.” Zen nudged his power ever so slightly as the Megafortress tucked forward, riding an eddy in the wind.
“Now.”
“Bingo,” he said, punching the flares, which were ordinarily used to decoy IR missiles.
He couldn’t tell whether the test had worked or not, and neither O’Brien nor Jennifer said anything. Zen held his position, wanting to get on with things. But such was the life of a test pilot—weeks, months, years of routine, spiced by a few seconds worth of terror.
“All right. That worked well. I think we’re okay,” said Jennifer. “Let’s do it at one mile.”
“Two minutes to border,” said Breanna.
“Acknowledged, Quicksilver,” said Zen. He tucked his wing, hurling Hawk One toward the ground as he started to
loop out to the launch point for the flare. Jennifer wanted him to pickle it as close to the ground as possible and had calculated a precise angle, twenty-two degrees from the sensor. Zen tucked down toward a wide rift, his altimeter marking his altitude above the valley at a thousand feet.
“I’m going to put it at fifty feet,” he told Jennifer. A large cliff loomed on his right; he nudged the Flighthawk onto its left wing, clearing the rocks by twenty feet. A wide valley opened up in front of him. A river sat near the center of it. His speed had dropped below 200 knots.
Sliding his nose forward, he ducked below seven hundred feet, six hundred, burrowing into the valley.
“Almost there,” he said as he passed through five hundred feet.
“Transmission!” yelled Habib, breaking in over the interphone circuit.
“You’re at the right angle,” Jennifer told Zen.
“Five seconds,” said Zen, concentrating as the Flighthawk slid down below a hundred feet.
“Transmission—I have an American voice—Guard band!”
“Hawk leader, hold off on the test,” said Breanna calmly. “Habib, give us a location.”
“Trying!”
“What?” asked Jennifer.
“We have one of the downed pilots,” Zen told her. He pulled level, did a quick check of his instruments, then started the preflight checklist on Hawk Two, still sitting on Quicksilver‘s wing.
“He’s behind us. I don’t have the location—I can’t—he said he saw us fly overhead,” said Habib, his stutter no doubt matching his heartbeat.
“He saw Hawk One,” said Breanna, her voice almost quiet. “Zen, tuck back up the valley. We’re going to slide back around. Habib, get us a good location. Chris, talk to the AWACS and tell them what we’re up to.”
“I’d like to launch Hawk Two,” Zen told Breanna.
“Let’s hold that until we have a good location on the flier,” she said. “I don’t want anyone getting distracted up here.”
“Hawk leader.” Zen banked Hawk One back in the direction it had just come from. He had the radio at full blast but could hear nothing; reception in the Flighthawks was extremely limited. Then again, Quicksilver‘s standard radio wasn’t picking up the signal either. Only the sophisticated gear Habib controlled was capable of finding and magnifying the faint signal, which was undoubtedly being distorted and weakened by the rocky terrain and towering mountains.