If it weren’t for the fact that there were other people with Knife, Zen wouldn’t mind missing him completely.
The idea snuck up from behind, curling around his spine as if it had risen through the sweat beneath his flight suit.
He hated Smith.
Because of the accident? Or because of Bree?
He wanted her back. And not to be friends. He was wrong about the divorce. He had to fight for her.
How the hell did you do that in a wheelchair? He couldn’t even do his goddamn job without sweating buckets.
A herd of cattle materialized on the right side of the viewer, crowding out his thoughts about his wife, bringing him back to the Hawks. The warm bodies milled back and forth in the rapidly cooling desert air. There were some tents, a vehicle.
“Nomads,” said Jen.
“Yeah,” he acknowledged.
Something moved in the far corner of the left end. Zen pushed his attention toward it, realized he was seeing a gun emplacement.
“Ground intercept radar active,” warned the computer. information spat at him – ID’ing a pair of twin 35mm GDF antiaircraft weapons controlled by a Contraves Skyguard system. The Swiss-built system was relatively sophisticated, though its maximum range was well under twenty thousand feet. According to the threat screen, the Flighthawks had not been locked, though the radar was active.
“I’m going to get close and personal,” he told Cheshire after filling her in.
“Copy. We’ll hold to our flight plan.”
Zen looped Hawk Two into a turn about three miles from the radar source. He changed the main viewer from optics to FLIR. It was a military installation. The guns were mounted at the northern edge of a complex that included several dug-in shelters and four tanks. Several vehicles were parked at the southern end; the Flighthawk camera caught a soldier on guard duty smoking a cigarette. The U/MF passed within two miles of the radar unit without being detected.
“No aircraft,” said Jennifer.
“Yeah,” said Zen, concentrating on returning the Flighthawk to its briefed flight path. The fact that the antiaircraft weapons used a Western-made radar could mean that it was a rebel unit opposed to the pro-Libyan government – or not. In any event, their Anotonov didn’t seem to be there.
Exhausted, Zen returned to the programmed course. he had to have a break; reluctantly he turned the controls over to the computer and reached down for his Gatorade. He was so thirsty he drained it and had to reach for his backup, sitting in a case on the floor by his feet.
“Hard work, huh?” asked Jennifer.
“Yeah.”
“You’re doing good.”
“Yeah.”
“You want some advice?”
“Advice?”
“You’re doing a lot of the routine stuff the computer can handle,” said Gleason.
Anger welled inside, but before he could say anything, Gleason reached over and touched him on the shoulder. It felt electric, almost unworldly – his mind was still out with the Flighthawks. As if he were actually in their cockpits.
“You’re doing fine, Major,” she said. “Let the computer do the routine stuff. That’s what it was designed for. You do what’s important. You’re trying to control both planes at the same time.”
Zen glanced at the instrument screens, making sure the U/MFs were operating fine, then pushed up the helmet to see her.
“It’s almost like you’re afraid the computer’s going to take your job.” Jennifer said. “I know we haven’t had a chance to run many flights with two planes since you’ve been back, but you’re getting twitchy. You’re not letting the computer fly like you used to.”
“It’s my job to fly them,” he told her.
“Absolutely,” said the scientist. “But you can’t split yourself in half. You can trust the computer.”
“I do trust it,” he said.
Jennifer smiles. Jeff wasn’t sure what to say. In the old days, before the accident, had he let the computer do more/
Maybe.
Maybe he didn’t trust it because of the accident. And maybe she was right – maybe he was worried it would take his job, leave him with nothing to do but sit in a corner and gather dust all day.
Wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t a fucking cripple, legs be damned.
“Zero-ten to Delta,” said Cheshire, announcing the upcoming turn.
“Flighthawks acknowledge,” he told her, pulling the visor back on. “Zero-ten to Delta.”
“Scopes are clean, everything is looking very good,” said Cheshire. “Flighthawks are doing a slam-dunk job, Zen.”
“Yeah.”
“I know it’s a needle-in-a-haystack country down here,” she added. “But the Navy planes have the most likely territory. Nothing lives down here except sand.”
Zen got ready for the new turn. Cheshire was right – the ground they were covering hadn’t seen rain in eons. Devoid of water, there were only a few sparse settlements, and no nomads to speak of.
Except for the ones they’d seen a short while before, who’d been parked in the middle of sand.
Grazing animals over sand?
“Bobby, do me a favor, would you?” he asked the navigator. “Look at where our nomads were. They over a water hole?”
The navigator took a few minutes to get back to him. “Not on the map, but maybe those guys know where the water is.”
“Yeah. We got a satellite map that detects underground water sources?”
“What do you think this it, the library?” said the navigator with a laugh.
“Just checking.”
“There’s got to be water there,” said Bobby. “The cattle have been there for at lest two days.”
“Two days?”
“More. They’re on the U-2 photo and the satellite image Madcap Magician gave us, which is at least three or four.”
Stationary nomads over a dry patch of land.
“Computer, hold Hawk One on the preset course,” said Zen. “Hawk Two, power to ninety percent.”
“What’s up, Zen?” asked Major Cheshire, who’d heard his conversation with Bobby.
“Stationary nomads – sound odd to me,” Jeff told her. “I think I can just skirt close enough to them on your programmed course.”
“I’ll shift two degrees and it’ll be easy.”
“Make it one and I can keep Hawk One where it is.”
“I told the computer to plot a new one,” said Jennifer. “Just in case.”
“Input it,” Zen told her.
“I-band interceptor-type airborne radar detected, active, source beyond range,” yelped Bobby over the aircraft’s interphone. The Megafortress’s passive detectors had picked up two MiG-25’s at nearly fifty thousand feet. “These babies are running, not walking,” he warned. “Mack 2. We’ll be within their theoretical detection envelope in thirty seconds. We can jam at will.”
The Soviet-era active radars on the MiGs had a detection range of roughly fifty miles. But with its stealthy profile, it was likely – though not certain – that the MiGs wouldn’t pick up the Megafortress until they were less than ten miles away.
Which would happen in two minutes at present course and speed. The Flighthawks, on the other hand, were too low and too small to be detected. Their own threat screens, powered by less capable sensors, were blank; they hadn’t picked up the MiGs.
The I-band radars used by early models of the Soviet-era MiG-25 had been compromised years before; Raven’s ECM gear would have no problem defeating them. But that would alert not only the MiG, but potentially the people they were looking for, that they were in the air. It was better to try to pass undetected.
“Prepare for evasive maneuvers,” ordered Cheshire. “We’ll hold on to our ECMs and missiles until they’re necessary. Bobby, watch their detection envelope for us.”
“Bandits are positively ID’d as MiG-25’s, probably with Acrid AA-6’s,” he reported. “They’ll be in range to see us – let’s call it ninety seconds. Ducking them’s a crapshoot, Major.”