Howe pushed back south as his aircraft’s electronic warfare suite played with the missile’s mind. It told the missile it was beautiful and sleek, the most powerful thing spinning through the universe. Then it pointed down the block, claiming that it had set up a date with the fattest, juiciest target it had ever seen, a veritable Daddy Warbucks that would make a perfect match. It slapped the missile in the rear end and told it to go have some fun; by the time the missile realized it had been had, it was at nearly sixty thousand feet and several miles from its intended target. It wailed in frustration, so distraught that it immolated itself, its remains trailing to the ground like the shreds of a funeral shroud.
Howe, meanwhile, struggled to sort the cacophony and chaos around him into a coherent map of the battle. The graphical representations of the battle on the HUD and tactical screen showed that Timmy had not only broken the enemy’s attack but was now launching his own; the cockpit pulsed with the shot warning. And here was the Sukhoi that had managed to hide earlier — five miles south of Howe, headed back east.
With the Indian taking himself out of the fight, Howe started to turn toward his wingman. Before he could tell him he was coming, a transmission from Cyclops interrupted him.
“Bird One, be advised missiles are in the air. We’re taking evasive action.”
Cyclops was under attack.
Chapter 16
The launch indicator flashed. The Pakistanis had obviously mistaken the 767 for a Chinese spy plane and were determined to take it down.
Megan looked at the large tactical screen next to her, waiting for Cyclops Two to target and destroy the four missiles. They were early-model American HAWKS — easily handled.
So why the hell weren’t they firing at them?
They had to see it. They had to.
They had to fire quickly. The missile spread increased the difficulty of aiming, and at this short range they had a relatively short window of opportunity.
She could take it out herself. But she, too, had only a limited opportunity.
The plan was to wait until they couldn’t be intercepted, then to simply fire once. But they hadn’t foreseen this; they hadn’t thought the Indians and Pakistanis would go this far.
She should get into the mix now. This was exactly the situation Cyclops had been invented for, the sort of future she’d foreseen.
And yet, she’d be risking it all if she did.
Risking what? Only herself.
The ABM shield as well. Everything.
Was that more important than saving the lives of her friends?
They weren’t her friends anymore.
If it were Tom, would she hesitate?
Megan put her index finger on the touch screen, designating the rising missile. But just as she opened her mouth to give the verbal confirmation to fire, Cyclops Two obliterated the missile on its own.
“Thank God,” she said to herself.
Chapter 17
Perhaps it was a premonition, or maybe his brain just worked out the logic on its own. But even as Cyclops took out the last of the HAWK missiles that had been aimed at it, Howe found himself putting the throttle out to the firewall and clicking in a warning to Cyclops without stopping to think exactly what he was doing.
“They’re going to launch ballistic missiles,” he said. “Stand by for ballistic missiles. Take out anything that’s flying.”
Howe slapped his radar out of dogfight mode and into the wide-range tactical feed for Cyclops.
“Timmy, we need to be north,” he said tersely.
“Roger that,” acknowledged his wingman.
“Bird One, be advised we have missiles launched, Indian missiles launched,” warned the Cyclops Two pilot.
He didn’t have to say ballistic missiles.
“Take them out,” said Howe.
“Not in range.”
“Come south. This is it. Get everything you can get.” Howe told the F-15s to accompany the plane and pulled two more off the AWACS. Not only did he expect the Pakistanis to take another shot at Cyclops, he expected them to launch their ballistic missiles as well.
Good God, what suicidal idiots.
A flight of MiG-29s headed toward the Pakistani border to his north. They were low and hot, probably in fighter-bomber mode.
He fired two AMRAAMs at them, reserving his last one. The missiles sped toward the first and second aircraft in the formation, which were apparently unaware they’d been chalked up on his screen.
“North, Timmy, north,” he radioed, a basketball coach barking at a forward to get back and guard the basket. “The Indians are launching a nuclear attack, and the Paks are sure to retaliate. Cyclops has the missiles.”
“Two.”
The first AMRAAM hit the lead MiG, but the second missile missed its target. The planes kept coming.
No way in the world could Howe’s team prevent every aircraft from crossing the border. They were playing Russian roulette: If one got through with a nuke, what then?
The intelligence people had said confidently that most of the two countries’ nukes were in missiles. “Only one or at most two,” they felt, were likely to have been made into bombs, which were harder to deliver and easy to defend against.
What if they were wrong? Cyclops Two carried only enough laser fuel for roughly thirty shots, depending on the duration of the blasts.
The Pakistanis were most likely to use a bomb; he’d look for an F-16 flight.
The AWACS warned of one flying south out of Islamabad, a two-ship formation streaking due south. As Howe got it on the wide screen with its shared data, Cyclops started plucking Indian IRBMs out of the sky.
“North Two, get north.”
“I’m on your six.”
Chapter 18
Atta looked down from the heads-up screen to the more detailed target list at the left side of his glass panel. There were six live targets, two of them SAMs and the rest ballistic missiles. The computer — with Sergeant Peters’s approval — ranked the SAMs first. But the ballistic missiles were higher and farther away, which meant they were much more complicated shots.
And more critical. Besides, the SAMs were ID’d as early-model Crotales, which had a maximum effective altitude about twenty thousand feet below where he was flying.
“Override one, override two,” he told the computer, punching the screen quickly to confirm the shots. “Acquire.”
The computer buzzed its acceptance. Atta could feel the laser turret whirling in the nose ahead of him, trying to lock on the new target. A second tone sounded and the triangle in his HUD blinked green, showing he had a lock.
“Fire,” he said, though this was superfluous: His finger had already pushed the button at the top of his grip, and in combat mode the computer accepted either command.
The laser shot was practically instantaneous. The beam tracked with the rising target for an infinitesimally small time, a highly focused blowtorch rubbing the skin of the missile. The beam heated part of the fuel tank in the second stage of the Indian Agni rocket, expanding it so quickly that it exploded in the space of half a second. The computer cycled up the target list, once more putting the SAMs on top; Atta quickly reprioritized them and took his shot at another ballistic missile. This was a harder shot; the laser caught the solid propellant first-stage motor but failed to destroy it immediately, sending the rocket off course but leaving it intact. Atta had to verbally order a fresh shot, since the computer was programmed to accept sending a missile off target as a hit.