Dale Brown - Strike Zone

‘You didn’t think ?’ barked Freah.

Boston winced; he had given the classic – classic! – bad answer.

‘I thought incorrectly, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘I was focused on the objective, to the exclusion of other factors.’

He could practically feel the heat coming off Freah’s face. From the corner of his eye, he saw another member of the Whiplash team joining them in the building – Sergeant Liu. Behind him came the other Whiplash veterans.

Great, thought Boston, they’re all here for the hanging.

‘You only thought of the objective?’ said the captain.

‘Yes, sir, I’m afraid I did. I’m sorry.’

One of the Whiplash troopers – Bison – started to laugh.

‘Hang him by his toes,’ said Egg Reagan.

Boston felt the blood rushing to his face.

‘Are you blushing, Sergeant?’ asked the captain.

‘I, uh …’

‘Jeez, if I’d known he was a blusher, I woulda never voted for him,’ said Bison.

‘Me neither,’ said Egg.

‘We need a blusher,’ said Liu.

It was only then that Boston realized he was in.

Zen knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, and so didn’t even bother going home. He and Breanna had a small apartment – more like a dorm room with a kitchenette – on the base where he could crash when he ran out of energy. But that figured to be a long way off.

He sat in one of the simulation blocks, playing a loop the programmers had designed to mimic the engagement in which his wife and her plane had been shot down. The simulation was a subset of their normal tactical simulations, used not only to train pilots but to help refine the combat library that was an integral part of the Flighthawks’ control computer, C 3. By jiggling the parameters a bit, the techies had given Zen a Flighthawk clone that could fly to within seventy-five miles of the Megafortress before being detected.

Actually, depending on the altitude, atmospheric conditions, and the orientation of the planes, it could make it to within fifty miles.

But that was as close as it could get. That meant that the ghost clone couldn’t target the Megafortress. That also meant it couldn’t possibly get much more information about the Megafortress than a standard aircraft would; in fact, almost certainly less.

Which meant that Quicksilver hadn’t been the target. Nor, from the configurations of the battle forces, were the Indians.

That left the Chinese.

So maybe the Indians were using it to spy on the Chinese.

Or attack them?

Zen played the simulation again. This time, he took control of the ghost clone and flew directly over the Chinese fleet. Antiair missiles flashed on, but he was able to drive his attack home. He rolled his wing at twenty thousand feet, slapping his nose down on a direct line for the flight deck on one of the two pocket Chinese carriers.

The mach indicator clicked upward; he nudged the stick and got the bridge in his pipper, fat in the gun sights.

Blam. No more bridge, no more radar, no more flight operations. The clone skipped away unharmed, tucking right as a simulated Chinese MiG launched a pair of heat-seekers in a belated and desperate attempt to extract revenge.

Zen stopped the program. If the clone was an Indian aircraft, then surely it wasn’t outfitted with a weapon. Even simply crashing it into the bridge would have dramatically altered the battle.

So the clone couldn’t have been an Indian plane.

Maybe it was Russian.

‘Or maybe the Chinese spying on themselves,’ he said aloud in derision, frustrated that he couldn’t figure out what was going on.

‘Possible, actually, though unlikely.’

Zen jerked away from the controls. Stoner walked down the long ramp at the far end toward him.

Zen wheeled his chair around. ‘What’s up?’

‘Want to get a beer or something?’

‘No.’

The CIA officer pulled out the chair from the main programmer’s station and sat on it, rolling it forward as Zen approached.

‘You don’t like me, Major,’ said Stoner.

‘Is that relevant?’

‘Probably not.’

Stoner and Breanna had lashed themselves together after bailing out, and it was probably because of that that they survived the fierce storm that had swallowed most of the rest of the crew. Zen didn’t begrudge Stoner that.

If anything, he should be grateful.

And yet.

And yet.

He just didn’t like him.

‘I don’t think it’s Chinese,’ said Stoner. ‘Is that the flight where we got shot down?’

‘More or less.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘You’re not in the picture,’ said Zen, but he rolled back anyway.

The simulation area duplicated a Flighthawk control deck aboard an EB-52, with a double set of configurable displays and dedicated systems readouts. It wasn’t a perfect match – some of the equipment on the side racks was omitted, the floor was cement rather than metal mesh, and most importantly, the station never reacted to turbulence. The simulator that did, located down the hall, required at least one techie to run.

‘We didn’t go in like that,’ said Stoner, watching the screen that showed Quicksilver . ‘Breanna – your wife – held us up and got us away from danger before telling us to bail. There was some other stuff, self-destruct routines.’

‘We skip that. We’re not really interested in the accident, just the ghost clone.’

‘Where is it?’

Zen slapped at the keyboard. The sitrep showed it at seventy-five miles, to the northeast of the Chinese fleet.

‘It’s got to be spying on the Chinese,’ said Stoner. ‘But it doesn’t really make sense that the Indians would send it that far around, does it?’

‘No,’ said Zen.

‘It could be another Chinese unit,’ Stoner said. ‘The admiral in charge of this fleet, Xiam, is not well-liked. But I still don’t think they have the technology.’

‘They spy on themselves?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘I know how we can settle it,’ said Zen. ‘We go back, buzz their coast, see if it comes out.’

Stoner shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

Zen had thought of the idea earlier and been ready to reject it because it didn’t seem as if the clone could be Chinese. But if what Stoner was saying was true – that one unit might spy on another – then the clone’s location made perfect sense.

‘We fly over their coast, try to get them to come out. If it’s Chinese, eventually they’ll come and take a look. In the meantime, we can adjust our Elint gear to look for their transmissions,’ added Zen. ‘Now that we know what we’re looking for, our range will be wider. They won’t know it.’

‘I guess.’

‘You have a better idea?’ Zen asked.

‘Actually, I came down to suggest it myself.’

Jennifer Gleason took the last turn and broke into a sprint as she headed up the hill back toward the low-slung building that housed her small apartment. As she ran, she glanced in the direction of Dog’s small bungalow, hoping he might appear. The fact that he didn’t probably meant he was already over at his office. She channeled her disappointment into her legs, pushing out long strides as she finished her daily run.

One brief warm-down and shower later, she grabbed breakfast from her tiny refrigerator – strawberry-banana yogurt – then headed over to the computer labs located below the main Megafortress hangars. Jennifer liked the feel of the empty lab around her early in the morning; she generally had the large underground complex to herself for at least a few hours and could walk around talking to herself as she figured out problems. That would be especially important today; she had an idea on how they might be able to break into the ghost clone’s coding and take it over, assuming they could get close to it again.