67
Twenty nautical miles from the LHD — a little over two minutes after Skeet’s F-35 left the deck — he turned to look to his left, utilizing his helmet display and the six cameras mounted outside the jet to look “through” the skin of his airplane and get a visual on his wingman. The helmet itself cost the Marine Corps an astonishing four hundred thousand dollars per unit. It was an insane amount, but considering all the tech crammed into one of the things, it seemed to Skeet to be worth every penny.
Three minutes ago he overflew the mocked-up Chinese destroyer, making sure all personnel who’d removed the covers and camouflage from the superstructure were long gone. He’d been given the all-clear but wanted to take the extra few seconds to put eyes on himself before he pulled any triggers.
Schmidt’s voice crackled over the radio. “You’re good to go from my vantage point,” he said. “I’m turning west to—” He cut out. “What the hell was that?”
“Come again?” Skeet said.
“Nothing,” Schmidt said. “My airplane just hiccupped. Thought she was trying to fly herself. Downdraft, I think.”
“Everything check out?”
“We’re good here,” Schmidt said.
Skeet added throttle, making a wide four-minute turn that took him thirty miles northwest of the target vessel. He didn’t want to shoot with the Makin Island in front of him, and it wouldn’t be much of a test if he dropped the missile on top of the ship. Distance didn’t matter much to Skeet or his weapon. With the new tech, this LRASM could make a hole in one from three hundred kilometers. It would utilize GPS, real-time data-links, passive radar homing, and autonomous guidance algorithms to achieve a CEP — circular error probable — of less than twenty meters — the equivalent of flying up the ship’s snout.
Sensors and cameras on board the mocked-up destroyer would record impact data and send it back to the Makin Island. It was going to be a hell of a top-secret show.
Skeet used his index finger on the glass panel to access his weapons stores and highlight the LRASM. He opened the bay doors.
Admiral Peck gave the command to fire.
Missile selected, Skeet said, “Pickle,” and pulled the trigger. “Weapon awa—”
His plane hit the same sort of downdraft Schmidt had experienced earlier, shuddered momentarily, then resumed straight and level flight. “Three minutes—”
The jet shuddered again. The glass panel with all his instruments went dark. The visor display in his helmet clicked off, leaving him virtually blind.
In cases like this, altitude was your friend. He pulled back on the stick, only to have the aircraft pitch violently, nose-down, entering the beginning of a spin. Compensating, he pushed the stick forward. The airplane did exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to do. He pulled back again, applying enough rudder to come out of the spin, going against all his training to push the stick forward and climb. He fought the urge to call for help. Aviate, navigate, communicate. There was nothing Schmidt could do for him, anyway. The ship would have him on radar, so if he went down — which was becoming more and more likely — they’d know where to come looking for him.
The airplane fought him at every turn, like she had a mind of her own. As soon as he thought he had the control glitch figured out, the jet bucked in the other direction. The world around him became a blur of gray sky and blue water, like a spinning globe that wouldn’t stop spinning. With eight thousand feet to play with — and nothing but his instinct to tell him how much altitude he still had — there was little room for error.
The powerful Pratt & Whitney engine suddenly flamed out, leaving the cramped cockpit oddly quiet but for the scream of buffeting wind and the clatter of his helmet against the headrest.
With his stomach in his throat and zero control, Skeet reached for the grab handles on his seat. Severely doubting any part of this airplane would work, he said the words no pilot ever wants to say: “Eject! Eject! Eject!”
Calliope left a copy of her code on Skeet’s onboard computer when she rode the weapons-data-link to the LRASM. This Calliope clone began to send opposing signals to the flight controls the moment the missile was away, causing the airplane to dive, then pitch violently upward. She searched weapons stores, flight controls, and every subdirectory in an attempt to locate the computerized ejection seat. Fortunately for the pilot, the ejection seat was manually activated. Seconds after he ejected, the F-35 Lightning hit the surface of the Pacific in a flat spin like a one-hundred-million-dollar skipping stone. It bounced three times, striking the water with such force that pieces of it had not yet fallen back into the water when Major Skeet Black’s parachute set him none too gently in the waves.
68
The executive officer stood across the bridge from Admiral Peck, handset to his ear. “PRIFLY advises no contact with either jet.”
PRIFLY was primary flight control — the ship’s equivalent of the air traffic control tower.
“No contact?”
“No radio contact, sir. No radar contact.”
“I recommend we get the Cobras over the last known locations,” the captain said.
“Preble and Halsey?” Peck asked, checking the status of the two destroyer escorts.
“Unable to reach them via radio, sir,” the XO said. “We’re trying the satellite phone now.”
Peck nodded, his stomach in knots. “Launch the MH-60s in case the pilots went into the drink. I want recovery in the air yesterday.”
The radar tech tracking the LRASM from the console on the bridge raised his hand. “The weapon is slowing, deviating east from target by… twenty… no, forty degrees.”
“Well, shit!” Peck said. “How slow?”
“Two hundred knots… one fifty… one hundred…” The radar P2 turned and looked at his captain, wide-eyed. “It’s heading toward that trawler… still slowing.” He turned back to his screen. “Sir! Contact fifty nautical miles southeast of the trawler.”
“And we are just now seeing it?” the admiral said. This was just getting better.
“There’s a small atoll there. We knew about it, but the vessel blended in when it was sitting there.”
The XO was still on the phone with PRIFLY. “One of the Cobras just spotted what looks like a Chinese vessel, moving toward the trawler. Looks to be a Shanghai-class gunboat.”
“Have the Cobra keep it in sight,” the admiral said.
The Shanghai-class vessels were small, about thirty-six meters, but they were relatively fast at twenty-five knots and decked out with weapons including depth charges for chasing subs.
“Status report on the missile,” Peck said.
“Still tracking directly for the trawler. One hundred knots. At present speed she’ll have contact in four and a half minutes.”
“Abort,” Peck said. “Destroy the missile.”
The captain, then the XO, repeated the order.
The XO put the line with PRIFLY on speaker while he listened to fire control on his headset. He looked up. “No go, sir. We have no control of the LRASM…”
PRIFLY spoke next over the speaker, patching through the Cobra pilot. “The trawler is deploying its arms with… looks like a net.”
“Sound general quarters,” the admiral said. “Someone has taken control of that missile and both our F-35s.”
“General quarters,” the captain repeated.
The XO looked up from the handset and shook his head. “Onboard communications, alarms, and intercoms are inoperable, sir.”