Retribution (35 page)

All right
, he told himself.
Let’s get the hell out of here
.

“Flighthawk leader, what’s your status?”

“Zero-two minutes from an intercept on those Mirages,”
said Starship. “I’m going to be cutting it close on
Hawk One
fuelwise.”

“We’re going to fly to the coast. Should be plenty of chance for you to tank.”

“Yeah, roger that.”

Englehardt ground his teeth together. They had more than a thousand miles to go before they cleared the Indian defenses; he had only six Anacondas left, and his own fuel supply was beginning to dwindle.

Time to get home. No more dancing, just go.

T
HE LEAD
M
IRAGE PICKED UP
H
AWK
T
WO ON ITS RADAR
when the two aircraft were about five miles apart. The pilot’s reaction was to pull back on his stick, attempting to outclimb
Hawk Two
.

That might have worked had Starship been flying the earlier model U/MF. The Mirage had an extremely powerful engine—it could outclimb an F-15—and would have been able to get over the robot plane before Starship was in a position to fire. But the improved Flighthawk could best the Mirage’s 285 meter per second climb by about fifteen meters; he had no trouble staying with his enemy. Instead, his main concern was to fly himself out of a firing solution as the Mirage began twisting left in the climb. He couldn’t get his nose down quickly enough as the Mirage slid left, swooping eastward. Starship tucked his right wing and managed a quick shot as the Mirage turned sharply across his flight path. While the Indian’s maneuver seemed counterintuitive, it put him so close to
Hawk Two
that Starship couldn’t turn quickly enough to stay on his tail. It was the first time he had ever been outturned while flying a U/MF.

Not counting the simulated battles he’d flown against Zen.

So what did Zen say the solution was?

Don’t follow. That’s what I want—I’ve cut my speed and all I have to do is wait for your engine outlets to show up in my screen. It’s a sucker move, totally a psychout, to throw you in front of me.

Starship pushed the Flighthawk the other way, figuring that once the Mirage caught on, it would think it had an easy shot from behind. But that was his own sucker move—he slammed into a dive and then looped over, throwing the enemy plane in front of him as it started to pursue.

Sure enough, a thick delta wing materialized in front of him. Now the Mirage’s maneuvers cost it dearly—the hard turns had robbed it of flight energy, and even its powerful engine couldn’t get it out of the gun sight quickly enough.

Starship got a long burst in, more than five seconds, long enough to see the bullets tear a jagged line in the wing. As he broke off, the Indian pilot pulled the ejection handles and was shot skyward. His plane spun furiously, a dart aimed at the ground.

Hawk One
, meanwhile, was pursuing the other Mirage as it climbed through 40,000 feet, twisting and turning as it went. Starship took over from the computer, knowing that the Indian was close to his top altitude. The Indian rolled out and then managed to put his nose practically straight downward. The maneuver was executed so quickly and perfectly that after a few seconds Starship realized he wouldn’t be able to keep up. Instead, he broke off, banking northward, trying to get his bearings.

And to check his fuel. He was at bingo; he had to go back to the Megafortress.

Until now the Indian had outflown both the computer and Starship; he should have called it a day. But instead he pushed his Mirage around and fired a pair of heat-seeking missiles at the Flighthawk.

As soon as he got the launch warning, Starship hit his flares and pulled hard on the stick to tuck away.

“Computer, return
Hawk One
for refuel,” he said, switching planes.

The Mirage continued to move in
Hawk One
’s direction, trying to close for another shot. Either his radar had completely lost
Hawk Two
in the scrum or the pilot just didn’t pay attention to his scope, because the Flighthawk was driving
hard toward the Mirage’s tail. Within twenty seconds Starship had it lined up for a cannon shot on the Indian plane’s wing. He pressed the trigger.

The bullets tore a jagged line up the middle of the Mirage’s right wing. The canopy of the French-made jet burst upward, its pilot ejecting almost before Starship could let go of the trigger.

“Flighthawk leader to
Bennett
. Mirages are down.
Hawk One
is coming in to tank. What’s our game plan?”

“Looks like every SAM from here to the coast is going to take potshots at us,” said Englehardt. “We’re heading west and not stopping.”

“Roger that.”

Near the Chinese-Pakistani border
0025

“C
LAIMS THEY DIDN’T GET ANYTHING
, C
APTAIN.
H
E SAYS WE
got here just a few minutes after they did.”

Danny Freah looked from the Marine to the prisoner. He was a kid, maybe seventeen, probably younger. He didn’t look very threatening, or determined to die for his cause. But bitter experience had proved that looks could be deceiving.

“You’re lying,” Danny told the guerrilla. “Why are you lying?”

The Marine translated the words into Arabic. The guerrilla got a pained look on his face. He shook his head violently, then began to speak.

“He comes from Egypt,” said the Marine. “He joined what he calls the Brotherhood. He was going to fight against the infidels in Kashmir. He says he’s not a terrorist. He only fights soldiers.”

“That’s nice,” said Danny. “Get some plastic cuffs on him.”

J
ENNIFER PICKED UP THE LAST PIECE OF METAL AND HANDED
it to the Marine helping her.

“We’re good to go,” she told him, and started walking back toward the landing area. As she did, an AK-47 barked up on the ridge.

Jennifer dropped to one knee and pushed the helmet she’d been given down against her head as the Marines began to answer. She saw someone moving on the ridge, then a white flash, followed by an explosion and more gunfire. The weapons sounded furious, rattling the air with a beat that crescendoed with another explosion.

Then, silence.

The Marine she’d been walking with rose slowly. Two other Marines trotted over, making sure she was all right.

“I’m OK, it’s OK,” she said, getting up. “Let’s go.”

She watched them for a few minutes, then began walking toward a small ravine at the side of the plain, planning to get out of the way of the Osprey. As she did, she felt a bee sting her in the ribs. The next thing she knew, she was falling on the ground, lying on her back, her knee, head, and chest howling with pain.

What hit me? she wondered, then blacked out.

T
HE
O
SPREY’S ROAR DROWNED OUT THE GUNFIRE.
T
HE
sniper had taken at least two shots before Danny saw the muzzle flash.

He threw himself to the ground and peppered the rocks with his assault rifle. Dust and dirt sprayed around him as the Osprey passed overhead. He pushed himself up and began running toward the sniper’s position.

A gun barrel appeared between the rocks; Danny flew forward, barely diving out of the line of fire. He tried to roll to his right to get into a ditch, but found his way blocked by a fresh hail of bullets.

Crawling on his belly, the Whiplash captain managed to get behind a pair of boulders about knee high. He burned the rest of his magazine, then reloaded. Two Marines had started
to fire at the sniper from the north, pinning the gunman down. Danny jumped up and ran toward a line of rocks that jutted from the enemy position, making it just before the sniper turned his attention and rifle back in his direction.

Hunkering down beneath the stones, splinters and dirt flying around him, Danny waited for the man to shoot through his ammunition. The firing stopped; Danny raised his gun then brought it back down as the bullets began to fly again.

“Grenade!” one of the Marines shouted over the din.

Danny curled as low to the ground as he could. The explosion was a low thud, a soft sound that seemed to come from very far away. It was followed by the loud buzzing of several M16s as the Marines poured bullets into the sniper’s position.

Finally the gunfire stopped. Danny raised his head, then his body. Raising his left hand, he ran toward the rocks.

A slight figure lay hunched over in the bottom of the shallow depression, head and back drenched black with blood. An AK-47 and two magazine boxes lay nearby. The moon coaxed a gleam from the weapon’s polished wooden furniture.

“Make sure we don’t have any more of these bastards around,” Danny told the Marines running up to him. “And good work.”

“Corpsman!” yelled a Marine back by the missile wreckage. “We need a corpsman!”

“Oh, Jesus,” muttered Danny, running for him. Somehow he knew that Jennifer had been hit, even before he saw her prone figure splayed on the ground.

Aboard Dreamland
Bennett,
over India
0028

T
HEY MANAGED TO DUCK TWO MORE SETS OF
SAM
MISSILES
, then had an uneventful thirty minutes flying an almost straight line southwest. But as they passed south of
Ahmadabad, Englehardt found himself targeted by a trio of SA-2 missile sites; he decided he had no choice but to take out their ground guidance units. No sooner had the three Anaconda missiles left the bomb bay than Rager reported a pair of Su-27s taking off from Jamnagar, to the northwest.

The Sukhois chased them for only ten minutes before giving up. By then Englehardt had altered his course to avoid yet another set of missile batteries.

They were almost to the coast when Rager sounded another warning—four Su-30s, advanced versions of the Su-27 and the most capable aircraft in the Indian air force, had just taken off from Daman.

“Target them,” Englehardt told Sullivan.

“We only have three missiles.”

Which is exactly why he didn’t want to use them earlier, Englehardt thought.

“Use what we have.”

“I’
LL TAKE THE LEAD
S
UKHOI,”
S
TARSHIP TOLD
E
NGLEHARDT
and Sullivan. “You guys get everything else.”

A two-seater, the Su-30 bore roughly the same relationship to the Su-27 as the Super Hornet bore to the original F/A-18 Hornet. Starship knew that if he didn’t fly just right, the Su-30 could easily get past him. And even if he did, it still might.

His first move was to push
Hawk One
ahead of
Hawk Two,
increasing his separation to roughly five miles. Expecting the Sukhoi radar to pick up the Flighthawk, he put
Hawk One
on an intercept that would take it directly into the Sukhoi’s windscreen. The two aircraft were closing at a rate of almost 1,400 miles an hour, or roughly 23 miles a minute. That would give the Sukhoi pilot only a few seconds to react before his aircraft was in range of the Flighthawk’s cannon.

A head-on attack at high speed had a limited chance of success, even with the computer aiming the gun. But Starship wasn’t counting on
Hawk One
to shoot the plane down. He wanted to attract the Indian’s attention and break its
charge. Once it began to maneuver, it would necessarily lose speed, taking away some of its advantage over the Flighthawks.

Hawk One
was still thirty miles from the Sukhoi when the Indian pilot showed he wasn’t a pushover either—he fired two AMRAAMskis, not at the EB-52, but at the Flighthawks.

“Missiles in-bound for Flighthawks,” Rager warned from his station upstairs. His voice was so loud in Starship’s headset that he could have heard him without the interphone circuit.

“Yeah, roger that,” said Starship.

He guessed that the missiles had been launched in the equivalent of a boresight mode, with the hope that their onboard radars would pick up the Flighthawks as they drew close. But it was also possible that the Su-30 was hoping to simply clear the path in front of him: Once the Flighthawks began maneuvering to avoid the missiles, his path to the
Bennett
would be clear.

Starship pulled
Hawk One
up, discharged some chaff, then rode the robot straight upward increasing the ship’s radar signature to make it easier for the missiles to find him. At the same time, he continued
Hawk Two
on its course. The missiles saw
Hawk One
and began to follow—only to lose the slippery aircraft as Starship pumped more metal tinsel in the air and pushed down hard on his wing, spinning away as he reduced his radar signature to that of a pygmy grasshopper. The missiles exploded several miles behind
Hawk One
; the Flighthawk had gone a little farther south than he wanted, but it was still close enough to recover if
Hawk Two
slowed the Sukhoi down.

Hawk Two
was seven miles from the Sukhoi. Starship’s gun sight began blinking black, the other plane lower than he expected; as the sight blinked red, the Sukhoi veered north.

“Lock and fire,” Starship told the computer, letting C
³
shoot while he flew the plane.

Always optimistic, the computer wound the Vulcan cannon
up and began spitting its bullets in the Sukhoi’s direction a few seconds before it was actually in range. Starship nudged his stick to follow the Sukhoi, trying to give the computer as much time on the target as possible without trading too much altitude or speed.

The Sukhoi rolled out and disappeared below him, heading almost straight down. Starship didn’t follow, knowing the Indian would only pull up abruptly and try to outmuscle him. Instead, he slid
Hawk Two
back in the direction of the
Bennett
.

Hawk One
was now about eight miles to the east and two miles south of the Sukhoi, and at 30,000 feet, roughly 10,000 over the plunging Su-30. Starship pushed the aircraft toward an intercept, trading altitude for speed, but still staying east in case the Indian pilot decided to hit the gas in that direction.