Dane wheeled his elbows across his face and tensed his body as he approached the top of the jungle. He hit leaves, then he was in, bouncing off a branch, breaking another, then suddenly he was still, hanging from his harness. Before Dane did anything else, he closed his eyes.
Sin Fen.
The voice in his head came back immediately.
I hear you.
The SR-75 passed through Mach 2.5 over the eastern edge of the Pacific Ocean at an altitude of 60,000 feet. At this altitude, the radical nature of the aircraft’s design came into play as the conventional turbojet engines were now strained to the maximum, gulping for air at the extreme speed and altitude of their design specifications.
In the cockpit, the co-pilot lifted the cover on a series of four red switches. “Ready for PDWE ignition,” he informed the pilot.
“Ignite.”
The co-pilot flicked the switches from left to right. In the rear of the plane, nestled below the turbojet engine, the pulsed-detonation-wave-engine came to life. The PDWE was a rather simple device, consisting of a group of small chambers in which mini-explosions occurred in rhythm. These explosions caused supersonic shock waves to form and rush out into a larger combustion chamber. The shock waves compressed the fuel-air mixture and thus produced another larger shock wave that was channeled to the rear of the plane, providing propulsion at ranges never before produced by man.
Leaving behind a series of white puffs in the high atmosphere, the SR-75 pulsed its way even higher, as its speed raced through Mach-5 on the way to its maximum speed of Mach 7, or 5,000 miles an hour.
The C-123 was banking across the sky, ten kilometers from the drop zone. The ramp was still down. One of the crewmen was slowly unreeling a set of nylon straps that held the pallet the daisy-cutter bomb was attached to. The pallet was on rollers and the crewman let out slack in the nylon until the pallet was perched the very edge of the ramp. He pulled a large hook off the top of the parachute on top of the bomb and hooked it onto the static line cable.
He was listening to the pilot via a headset and when he got the word, and the green light went on, he cut the nylon with a razor sharp knife, allowing the pallet to fall off the ramp.
The bomb and pallet fell, then a large cargo parachute billowed open. The C-123 circled above as the bomb drifted down. It hit the jungle and crashed through the top layers. Just before touching the ground, it exploded in a flash of five thousand pounds of high explosive.
In the C-123 overhead, Paul Michelet saw the instant landing zone they had created. He pressed his intercom. “All right, let’s get back to Thailand.”
Michelet turned to Sin Fen, who had sat quietly with the dog throughout. “I want to know who you are and who you work for,” Michelet demanded, sitting down next to her.
Sin Fen’s eyes were unfocused and slowly she seemed to gain awareness of her immediate surroundings. She shifted slightly so she could look at the old man. “What you want is no longer important.”
She reached into her bag and pulled out a small SATCOM radio. She began to punch into the handset when Michelet reached out and grabbed her wrist.
“Listen here,” Michelet hissed. “This is my plane, this is my-”
He gasped in pain as Sin Fen placed her free hand on his upper arm and applied pressure.
“Do not ever touch me again,” she said. “Do not ever get in my way again.”
She released her grip and finished dialing.
“They’ve jumped,” she reported as soon as she got a reply. She listened for a few seconds then turned off the phone.
“A helicopter has taken off from Angkor Wat,” she told Michelet who was glaring at her, massaging his arm.
“What?”
“Hie-Tech,” Sin Fen simply said.
“Goddamn!” Michelet exploded. “Those sons-a-”
“Enough,” Sin Fen said. “Hie-Tech is not something that you need worry about. There are much larger concerns.”
“My recommendation is that we take out MILSTARS,” Foreman said. His eyes were focused on the computer screen that showed him the display from the SR-75. It was flying at 125,000 feet over the western Pacific now, traveling at Mach-7.
“Are you insane!” Bancroft sputtered. “Do you know how many billions of dollars we have invested in that system?”
Foreman ignored the National Security Adviser. “Mister President, somehow our satellites are being used by this force. We are going to have fatalities in less than twelve hours near some of the Gates. We need to stop this before it’s too late.”
“Can you prove this?” Bancroft demanded. “We’ve got nothing proving that these waves are being propagated through MILSTARS.”
“I have proof from the NSA,” Foreman said.
“No, you have a theory from the NSA,” Bancroft said. “I’ve seen what they’re saying and the only thing they’ve got is coincidence. Hell, some of the MILSTARS satellites don’t seem to be affected at all. That’s not conclusive proof.”
“By the time we get conclusive proof, it’ll be too late,” Foreman said. “Remember what happened to Bright Eye.”
The President finally spoke. “My advisers do not agree with you, Mister Foreman. They neither believe the threat is as great as you claim or that MILSTARS could be used in this manner. They say it’s impossible.”
“Nonetheless, Mister President, it is being done,” Foreman forced himself to keep his voice level. “Do your advisers have an explanation for what is happening?”
“Not yet.”
“Then, sir, we have-” Foreman was cut off by the President.
“You’re asking me to destroy billions of dollars worth of equipment,” the President said.
“The equipment can be replaced,” Foreman said. “People can’t.”
“We don’t even have a way of taking out MILSTARS,” the President said.
Foreman looked once more at the computer display. “Actually, sir, we do.”
“And that is?”
“Thunder Dart,” Foreman said.
“What the devil is that?” the President said.
“No way!” Bancroft exploded before Foreman could even answer. “You already cost us Bright Eye. Now you propose putting Thunder Dart in harm’s way?”
Foreman leaned back in his chair. This was the part of the bureaucracy that he despised. “Its launch platform is already in the air and Thunder Dart is two minutes from deployment.”
“Foreman!” Bancroft yelled.
Foreman leaned forward and spoke earnestly as the speaker. “Mister President, let Thunder Dart take out one of the affected MILSTARS, the one closest to the Angkor Gate. The first one affected. Let’s see what happens. If it affects the propagation, we know for certain that the MILSTARS satellites are being used. If it doesn’t then all we’ve lost is a non-functional satellite.”
There was a long silence. Foreman glanced at the display. Thunder Dart was a minute from launch.
“All right,” the President finally said. “Take it out.”
A door in the belly of the SR-75 slid forward and upward at the same time, specially constructed adapters bearing the intense stress of the thin air buffeting by at over Mach-7. The opened bay was also aerodynamically designed, so the speed of the plane slowed a mere 500 miles an hour.
Inside, securely locked by two hydraulic arms, rested Thunder Dart, the progeny of the SR-71 and the other half of the Penetrator. With a 75 degree swept wing delta configuration, it too had a PDWE propulsion unit built into its body, although on a much smaller scale. The Thunder Dart was less than forty feet long from nose to tail, and thirty feet wide at the full extension of the wings.