Dale Brown - End Game

The Yemen aircraft came at the Megafortress at 550 knots, clearly not interested in riding alongside the American plane. This suited Mack perfectly, and he began climbing out ahead of the EB-52, ready to trade the height for speed when he wanted.

‘Hawk Two, what the hell are you doing?’ demanded Colonel Bastian.

‘Just getting ready to say hello.’

‘Stay out of my flight path. I have a job to do here.’

Grouch, thought Mack.

‘This looks a lot like those contacts we had the other night,’ Starship told Eyes as he scrambled to follow the aircraft he’d just spotted. The slow-moving plane, about five miles north of Starship’s Werewolf, was so low the sensors showed it on the surface of the water.

‘Good, copy, we concur here. Track him.’

‘Yeah, I’m on that.’ Starship swung the Werewolf westward as the bandit continued to pick up speed. The image in the forward-looking infrared showed that the airplane had two engines set high behind the wing; it was small, almost surely a civilian aircraft. The threat file in the Werewolf’s combat computer couldn’t identify it.

Starship followed at about two miles, ratcheting his speed up as the strange aircraft continued to accelerate. Starship tucked his Werewolf downward, trying to get a better look at the underside of the craft. But the other plane was so low to the waves that he had a hard time; he kept jerking his hand involuntarily as the shadows changed on the screen. Finally he backed off his speed, dipping so close to the water that he nearly ditched.

‘Definitely no weapons,’ he told Tac. ‘Looks like a civilian craft. Are you going to contact them?’

‘Stand by,’ said Eyes, his voice tense.

The distance between the two aircraft had widened to four miles. Starship began to climb and accelerate. As he did, the bandit veered to the east.

‘He’s climbing,’ Starship told Tac.

‘Werewolf, Indian destroyer Calcutta is reporting it’s under fire. They’ve been torpedoed. Stand by to render assistance.’

‘What do you want me to do with this aircraft?’

‘He has no weapons?’

‘Negative. Look, maybe he launched the torpedo.’

‘Way too small for that. We’ll hand him off to Dreamland Wisconsin. Get back over to the Calcutta. They need assistance.’

‘Roger that,’ said Starship, changing course.

Dog stayed on his course as the MiG-29 closed in behind him. If the plane showed any hostility – if it simply turned on the radar used to guide its missiles – he would shoot it down with the Stinger antiair mines in the Wisconsin’ s tail. He’d do the same if the aircraft flew as if it would crash into him. But the pilot gave him a half-mile buffer, flying below and off his right wing, close enough to win some sort of bragging rights back home but not quite enough to justify an aggressive reaction.

Dog saw Mack adjusting course to make a pass at the MiG just as it cleared from the Megafortress. Mack cut things considerably closer than the MiG driver did, not only twisting the Flighthawk to within a hundred feet of the Yemen plane, but shooting flares as he did. His timing was a little off, but the other pilot, either confused or panicked, jerked hard to the north and dove a few seconds after the encounter.

Part of Dog thought the Yemen idiot had gotten what he deserved: most likely, a pair of speed pants that needed some serious laundering.

Another part of him was angry as hell at Mack for acting like a two-year-old.

‘Hawk Two, get your nose back into formation.’

‘Oh, roger that, Colonel,’ said Mack, just about chortling. ‘Did you see him?’

Luckily for Mack, the commo panel buzzed with an incoming transmission from the Abner Read on the encrypted Dreamland communications channel. As soon as Dog keyed in the communication, the face of Lt Commander Jack ‘Eyes’ Eisenberg appeared on the screen.

‘Bastian, we have a possible submarine approximately two hundred miles south of us. It just launched an attack on an Indian destroyer. We’d like you to help locate it with your Piranha unit.’

‘We’re not carrying Piranha,’ Dog told him. The undersea robot had not been ready when they took off, and it hadn’t made sense to delay the patrol – facts that Dog had already explained. ‘Piranha will be aboard the next plane out. We have sonar buoys – we can drop those.’

‘Affirmative, good. Also, Werewolf has been following an aircraft just north of there. Airplane appears to be civilian but hasn’t answered any hails. May be a smuggler. We’d like to find out what it’s up to. Send one of your Flighthawks to pursue the aircraft.’

‘Bit of a problem there, Abner Read’ responded Dog, doing his best to ignore the sailor’s haughty tone. ‘The Flighthawk has to stay within twenty miles of us. We can’t be in both places at the same time.’

‘I don’t understand. How come the Werewolf can be so far from us?’

‘The control and communications systems are different,’ said Dog. ‘Basically, the Flighthawks are considerably more difficult to fly and require a greater bandwidth than the Werewolf.’

They also represented an older generation of technology – much had changed in the three years since they began flying.

‘All right. Stand by.’ The line snapped clear.

‘Dish, how close do we have to get to detect a periscope?’ Dog asked the radar operator.

‘Going to depend on too many factors to give you a guarantee,’ Captain Peter Mallack answered. ‘Specs say we should be able to nail him at fifteen miles, though. Of course, if he’s on the surface –’

‘What if he isn’t using his periscope?’

‘We won’t find him without sonar buoys, or until Piranha’s operating.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Bastian, what’s your problem?’ snarled Storm, appearing in the communications panel.

‘Physics. I can’t be in two places at one time,’ said Dog. ‘I can look for the sub or inspect your unknown aircraft, but not both.’

‘That’s ridiculous – send one of your aircraft after this flight, and then get your butt down south and find this submarine. Drop your buoys. Jee-zus, Bastian. Since when do I have to tell you your job?’

Same old Storm, thought Dog, looking at the captain’s red face.

‘The Flighthawks were designed to stay close to the Megafortress,’ said Dog, keeping his voice neutral. ‘I don’t like those limits myself, but we’re stuck with them at the moment. Do you want me to follow the plane or to look for the submarine?’

Storm, apparently interrupted, glanced at someone else on the bridge.

‘We can continue to track him with our radar,’ added Dog. ‘Out to about three hundred miles or so, maybe more depending on his altitude.’

Storm turned back to the screen and raised his hand. ‘Hold on Bastian, hold on.’

‘Hey, Colonel, I have the aircraft on the viewscreen,’ said T-Bone over Wisconsin’ s interphone. ‘Computer can’t ID it, but it’s about the size of a Cessna. Two engines.’

‘You think there’s a possibility that plane launched a torpedo?’

‘Doesn’t look big enough. Hard to tell from here, but guessing from the size of the engines and given his speed, I doubt he could have taken off with it. You might have a better idea.’

‘Doesn’t look likely,’ said Jazz, who’d brought up some of the data on his screen. ‘If it’s a smuggler, he might have been working with that tanker. Might be a seaplane.’