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  “Probably looking for subs,” said Ferris.

  “Torbin, do you have a plane near eight-four-zero, mark, three-two? Over that atoll” asked Ferris.

  “Uh, something way down south there, beyond our range—probably just a bleep or an echo,” said the radar-intercept specialist. Zen could hear him punching the keys at his station. “Nothing. I’ll keep an eye on it.”

  “No ships there,” said Collins.

  “Probably just a weird flake out,” said Ferris.

  They continued south, tracking over the mostly empty ocean. Zen tried to stay sharp by having the Flighthawks change positions, but this was a long and boring patrol, especially after the long flight to get out here.

  “Okay, we have two ships traveling together, cargo containers. Tankers beyond that,” said Collins finally, feeding Zen the coordinates. He put Hawk Two in trail behind Quicksilver, then took One into a shallow dive toward the two freighters. Traveling roughly a mile apart, the ships were stacked with cargo containers, trailers that could be ferried by truck of train once ashore. The containers could carry just about anything, and it was impossible to tell from the air what they held.

  Hawk One nosed through some thin clouds, continuing downward through three thousand feet. He could see an Australian flag flapping at the rear of the tanker about three fourths of a mile away. He slid his right wing up slightly, gliding over the starboard side of the vessel, the belly video cam freezing on the ship. Collins, meanwhile, checked all of the ships against their listing, keeping track of what was down there.

  “Not a known bad guy in the bunch,” he said.

  “Lots of little boats ahead,” said Zen, nudging back on the throttle so he was making just under three hundred knots. “Let’s take a look.”

  The small boats were clustered around several atolls at the western side of their patrol run. Two or three were fishing boats, flat-bottomed boats similar to Chinese junks. The others looked like open whaleboats with large motors, odd vessels to be this far from land, Zen thought.

  “Brief says there’s pirates and smugglers all through there,” said Collins. “Sometimes they off-load at sea.”

  Contraband cargo often found its way to any of the various shores via boats; though the dangers were

  Many, the rewards were high. Drugs, arms, and ammunition were perennial favorites, but the real moneymakers here were mundane items, like cigarettes, booze, and, of all things, women’s tampons. There was also the occasional cargo of humans and, for the big operators, automobiles.

  “I’ll run over low and slow again,” said Zen. “See if we see any weapons.”

  Most of the boats had two or three people in them; in a few cases they seemed to be tending nets. No weapons were visible.

  The Chinese aircraft carrier had made good progress in the hour or so since they’d last seen him. Zen pushed the two Flighthawks into a one-mile separation, running seven miles in front of the EB-52 at 28,000 and 31,000 feet as they approached the group. The Sukhois were noodling along at about four hundred knots a good five thousand feet below the lowest U/MF.

  “Turn at two miles,” said Bree. “Let’s get a full read on their radars, their electronics, everything.”

  “Still not tracking us,” said Torbin.

  The Su-33’s passed over the carriers as Zen started to make his turn. All of a sudden they hit their afterburners.

  “Got their attention,” said Chris. “We’re on their radar. “Two bandits, bearing—”

  “Yeah, I got ’em,” said Zen, who simply held his flight pattern as the Megafortress continued in its southern bank. The Chinese fighters apparently didn’t picked up the smaller planes with their passive gear or their eyeballs, because as they passed, Zen tucked down over their wings. Had he lit his cannons, the carrier would have had to scramble all available SAR assets posthaste.

  The Sukhoi pilots jinked downward sharply, kicking out flares and tinsel, undoubtedly mistaking the small fighters for missiles.

  “More aircraft coming off the carrier,” warned Torbin.

  “They think the Flighthawks are missiles,” said Zen “Better ID ourselves as three planes.”

  “Roger that, Hawk Leader,” said Breanna. “Chris—”

  Before the copilot could respond, the RWR lit up.

  “We’re spiked,” said Chris.

  “Break it,” said Breanna coldly. “Evasive maneuvers. Tell them we’re not hostile.”

  “Yup.”

  The plane shifted left and right as Zen brought the Flighthawks around. The Sukhois had fired their missiles, then broken off—good, safe tactics, and in any events, Zen wasn’t in a position to pursue, since he had to stay close to the mother ship and wasn’t authorized to fire anyway.

  “Broke it. We’re clean,” reported Chris. “Second set of fighters.”

  “No radar missiles,” reported Torbin. “At least not active.”

  “Tell ’em we’re peaceful,” said Bree.

  “I am,” said Chris. “They’re not answering.”

  Zen felt the big plane jerk hard to the right. The forward viewscreen from Hawk Two showed the pair of radar missiles ducking downward, decked by either ECMs or chaff or both.

  “Bandits Three and Four are coming at us,” said Chris. “Twenty miles, accelerating. Looks like they want heater shots.”

  “I’ll duck them off,” said Zen, flicking his wrist as he jumped back into Hawk One. One of the Sukhois was closing on the rear of the Megafortress and climbing at the same time, pushing the Saturn AL-31RM turbofans to the redline. Zen had a good angle to cut him off; he flicked the nose of Hawk One downward, running a direct intercept on the Sukhoi’s canopy. C³ gasped—to the computer it looked as if the pilot was going to put the plane’s left wing directly through the persipex. Once more, the relatively limited radar in the Chinese plane had trouble finding the slippery, Miata-sized interceptor until it was almost in its face; the pilot threw his plane over so sharply that the Sukhois began to spin. Zen whipped past, then circled back. The other Sukhois broke off. As Zen turned Hawk One back toward the Megafortress, he expected to see the Su-33 recovering and climbing out at the left side of his screen, but it wasn’t there. He selected the wider angle to find it spinning furiously toward the water.

  “Bandit Three is in trouble,” said Chris.

  “He’s going in,” said Zen. “He’s wet.” He jumped into Two momentarily, making sure that none of the other Sukhois were close enough to threaten the Megafortress. Then he took over One from the computer, riding down toward the sea as the plane augured in.

  “No chute,” said Chris. “Shit. Shit.”

  The Sukhois pilot’s own stupidity had led to his apparent death. Still, Zen felt a hole opening in his stomach.

  “Two more planes coming off the carrier,” said Torbin.

  “Chris, tell them we’re not hostile,” said Breanna.

  “They’re either deaf or refusing to respond,” said Ferris.

  “Did you try the preprogrammed Chinese message?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. SAM indications—they’re trying to lock us,” he added.

  “Break them. I want to stay in this area and help them locate the pilots.”

  “Going to be rough, Quicksilver,” said Zen, who saw on his screens the two fresh Sukhois were trying to get their radar missiles on the Megafortress as well.

  “Roger that,” replied Bree. “Keep broadcasting. Evasive maneuvers. Tinsel. ECMs. Keep the assholes off us, Torbin.”

  “Roger that,” said Torbin.

  Zen spun Hawk One back north, directly over the area where the Chinese interceptor had hit the water. There was no sign of the plane. The churning waves looked a bit darker than the surrounding ocean, though that might have been Zen’s imagination.

  “Homers in the air. Jamming-geez, they’re persistent buggers,” complained Torbin.

  “AA-8 Aphids—way out of range,” said Chris.

  The Russian-made antiaircraft missiles were IR homer
s whose design dated back to the late 1960s and early 1970s. Designed for extremely close-range work, they were generally ineffective at anything over a mile. They were, however, highly maneuverable, and when one managed to stick on Hawk One’s tail, Zen found he had to twist to less than fifty feet over the waves before the missiles gave up on him. It skipped into the water like a rock flung by a schoolboy across a lake; the warhead separated and bounced several times before disappearing into a swell nearly a mile from the original point of impact.

  By then, Zen had climbed back toward the spot where the Sukhois had gone in. A thin ooze had appeared on the surface; the camera caught twists of metal, plastic, and fabric as he flashed by.

  The poor son of a bitch.

  The poor stupid son of a bitch.

  “Gun battery on the lead destroyer is firing!” warned Collins, his voice cracking. “I don’t know what the hell at; we’re about five miles out of range.”

  The Chinese destroyer, a member of the Jianghu III class, began peppering the air with rounds from its 37mm antiair gun. Quickly, two other escorts joined in. their shells arced far away from the American planes, undoubtedly more an expression of frustration than a serious attempt to shoot down anything. Either because of the gunfire, or perhaps because they were running low on fuel, the first two Sukhois headed back toward the carrier. The plane that lost its wingmate also circled back toward the surface ships.

  The two freshly launched Sukhois pushed menacingly toward the rear of the Megafortress. Zen’s long-range video scan showed the planes had launched with only thin heat-seekers on their wings.

  “Stinger radar is tracking,” said Chris. “They’re just out of range.”

  “Still not responding?” Bree asked.

  “Negative.”

  “Jeff, what do you think?”

  “Sooner or later they’re going to hit something,” he told her. “But I think we can hold these two off, then hope they get a helo over the wreckage,” he added. Zen had worked with Bree long enough to know he was just reinforcing her own thinking. “Then we resume our patrol.”

  “I concur. Collins—you getting all the transmissions?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. They’re going to love his back at the Puzzle Palace,” he added, referring to the NSA’s analysis section. Dreamland’s mission orders included provisions for forwarding intercept data to the spy agency, which would use them to update estimates of the Chinese military and its hardware.

  Hawk Two was flying two miles north of the orbiting Megafortress, sitting between Quicksilver and the two Chinese planes. Zen told the computer to keep Hawk One in an orbit over the wreckage bobbing to the surface, then jumped back into Hawk Two. He nudged back on his speed, tilting his wing slightly to let the bandit on the left catch up. The Chinese pilot pulled up cautiously—a hopeful sign, since he could have angled for a shot.

  Zen tried broadcasting himself, “spinning” the radio so that it scanned through the frequencies the Chinese were known to use. When he got no response, he went onto the Guard band, the international distress frequency that, at least in theory, all aircraft monitored.

  “Hawk Leader to Chinese Su-33. If you can hear me, please acknowledge in some form. I understand you may not speak English. One of your aircraft ditched and I have the location marked for you.”

  Nothing, not even a click on the mike. At the same time, the Chinese seemed to understand that the American planes were not being aggressive; the Sukhois pilot made no move to close on the Megafortress, or the Flighthawk for that matter, which would have been vulnerable to a close-quarters gun attack.

  For about a third of a second.

  “I have the coordinates for your aircraft,” Zen said. He read out the exact longitude and latitude where the aircraft went in. “He went into a high-speed spin at low altitude and hit the water,” said Zen.

  “Liar! You shot him down.”

  The voice was sharp in Zen’s ears. It had come from one of the Chinese pilots, but when Zen asked them to repeat as if he hadn’t heard, there wasn’t even static in response. He repeated the information from before, then began turning with Quicksilver, watching the Sukhois carefully.

  Neither made a move. Quicksilver’s sophisticated eavesdropping gear picked up transmission between the planes and the carrier. The code was in the clear, making it relatively easy for Collins to process. Locked on the frequency, he fed the voice stream into the automated translator, which produced readable text that could be tagged, corrected, and augmented at his station. He then piped it on the fly to the copilot, who was also getting a feed of the radar data Torbin processed. It was almost like sitting in the enemy’s control room.

  “Pair of helos coming our from the ship,” reported Chris. “One off the carrier, one I think from the cruiser. Uh, our library says these are Panthers, Aerospatiale AS 565’s, performance similar to the Dauphin, Dolphin—looks like basically the same aircraft here. French. Vectoring for the coordinates of the crash. Sukhois are supposed to, uh, wait—no, excuse me, they’re supposed to watch us, that’s all. Not engage.”

  The Panthers were, in fact, Chinese version of the sturdy French utility chopper. They rode slowly toward the wreckage, skimming around the area three times before settling into hovers above some of the flotsam. Two figures jumped from one of the aircraft, undoubtedly divers recovering some of the wreckage.

  “I have a radar at two hundred miles south,” reported Torbin. “Uh, belongs to a missile—SS-N-127 That’s wrong, but it’s definitely targeting.”

  “Give me a heading,” said Breanna. “Hawk Leader—”

  “I’m with you,” said Zen, pulling Hawk Two around and tucking tight to the EB-52 as it began to accelerate south.

  “Lost it,” said Torbin.

  “The container ships,” reported Collins a few minutes later. “I have an SOS. Fire. People in the water. Doesn’t look good.

  Philippines Forward Operating Area

  1350

  A lifetime ago, American Aircobra P-39s had flown off the hard-packed dirt beneath Danny’s feet. An unusual design for an American aircraft, the original models were hopelessly outclassed and outnumbered by the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero-Sen, otherwise known as the “Zero,” one of the best early design of the war. The Aircobra was nonetheless a decent performer and a tough aircraft. Those that had flown from his base had played an important role helping to mop up Japanese resistance and provide air cover over a wide swath of the nearby Pacific.

  Other aircraft had used the base as well—P-38’s, some P-40’s, B-25’s, B-26’s, and on several occasions B-29’s. but if the ghosts of old machines could be said to haunt a place, it was the spirit of the P-39 that remained: tough, somewhat misunderstood jungle fighters who spit 37mm bullets from their nose and drummed through the air with a guttural hum.

  Danny Freah didn’t believe in ghosts—and yet he sensed something watched him now as he trudged up the hillside. He slid his helmet visor down and clicked into IR scan. The Computer’s shape-recognition program flashed a bright blue pinhole in a brighter blue circle at the top right-hand corner, showing that it was operating, but aside from a few rodentlike creatures about fifty or sixty feet away, the jungle was empty. Danny held his new MP-5 in his right hand as he climbed up slowly, stepping gingerly. The wrap on his knees held them tight, their thick band doing some of the muscles’ and ligaments’ work holding the two halves of his legs together. The injury didn’t bother him as he sidestepped down the hill; in fact, he thought it was easier than working on the stair machine, which was part of his regular rehab assignment.

  Jemma would be heading back home by now. He could see her jaw set, her slight nod to the man asking if he could take her bags at the hotel.

  A flicker of blue print at the right side of his viewscreen sharply brought back his attention. A yellow shape materialized from the foggy green and black shadows.

  “CAT” said the legend below the small shape at the base of the tree.

  Danny switched f
rom IR to magnified optical, popping the scene magnification to five times. The computer was close—the Philippines leopard cat was roughly the size of a house tabby, though it wasn’t likely to run up to Danny and ask for a bowl of milk. It stared in his direction, peering curiously from between the rattan and tree trunks. It curled its lip, hissing, then darted away.

  Something else moved, fifty yards farther down the slope. Danny flicked back to IR mode, scanning slowly. A figure floated across his screen, ghostlike.

  It took a moment before he realized the figure was actually in the trees. The computer, meanwhile, realized the figure was human. It didn’t note any weapons.

  The ghost began moving downward. The program now had measurements to work with; just under five feet, one hundred pounds.

  More a kid than a man, and unarmed, Danny thought. He watched as the Filipino began to move through the woods, pushing through the underbrush. He followed slowly, as quietly as he could. There weren’t supposed to be people here.

  Danny hunkered down as he came to a narrow stream. It coursed down a run of odd rocks; the far bank was exposed. He waited until the figure was no longer visible, then picked his way across and continued downward in the direction the figure had gone.

  He debated whether to try talking to the Filipino or not. He’d memorized a few words on the way out; while it was likely the person would know English—a large number of Filipinos used it as their second or even first language—Danny reasoned that using the national language would at least show he was trying to be friendly. The words for good morning—magandang umaga po—stuck in his head; he couldn’t quite remember the combination for good afternoon, which was very similar—magandang hapon po or something like that.

  Hapon, like harpon, only without the R.

  Magandang hapon po.

  He could link to Dreamland Command and get a native speaker whispering in his ear if he had to. He’d take the first shot on his own, make the effort.

  Danny pushed toward a thick clump of vegetation clustered around a row of gnarled tree trunks. He struggled through about ten or twelve feet of thick bamboo before he could see beyond. Finally, he saw a swamp and pond about twenty yards across, beyond the edge of the thickest brush. Two small patches of dull brown appeared about twenty-five yards to the left just above the shoreline, partly obscured by rocks or old tree trunks. High magnification showed they were sheets.