Libya
24 October, 0929
It took nearly four hours to cover the roughly two thousand miles from their base in Ethiopia to southern Libya, not counting the aerial refuel shortly after takeoff. Jennifer Gleason and Jeff spent the entire time running through a set of changes for the Flighthawk programming that would keep the U/MFs separated from their mother ship during fail-safe mode. Jennifer’s fingers dashed over the small keyboard at her station, stopping only so she could wade deeper into the notes she’d made on her yellow pads. Jeff helped read back some of the commands and numbers. Most of it was in machine-code assembler level; he didn’t have a clue what he was reading.
Jennifer also had an idea about adding to the compression routines in the command system, in essence widening the communications bandwidth and lengthening the distance they could operate from the mother ship. At one point she started to explain it, but Jeff just waved her off.
“Tell me what to do,” he said. “I don’t have to understand it. There’s not time.”
She gave him a tap on the shoulder and went back to work. They completed the work with fifteen minutes to spare before the drop point.
Jeff climbed aboard the Hawks, running through the preflight checks. He was so tired now that fatigue felt like a piece of clothing around his upper body, heavy and warm.
“Drop point at zero-two,” said Breanna over the Megafortress’s interphone circuit.
“We’re here already?” answered Jeff, honestly surprised.
“Looks like it.”
They ran through the flight and weather data, following their launch protocol precisely. With everything dash-one, Cheshire put the plane into a zero-alpha maneuver, nosing it as she accelerated. The Flighthawks dropped off the wings on cue and Zen began working them onto their flight paths, roaring downward across the still-peaceful Libyan countryside. The sun glinted in his view screen as the planes picked up speed. They were at eighteen and twenty-two thousand feet respectively, well separated in the cloudless sky.
“SEAL commander on the circuit,” advised Cheshire. “Along with Cascade.”
“Hawks are green,” said Zen.
“So’s Big Bear,” said the SEAL commander, using the SEAL team’s call sign.
“Acknowledged.” Jeff thought the voice sounded vaguely familiar, but it belonged to Cascade, a crewman aboard the JSTARS electronic command plane in the southern Mediterranean. Cascade was communicating with Raven and the SEALs through a secure satellite system, linking the feeds from the Flighthawks to the Navy commandos. “Silent com until zero-two.”
The line snapped clear. The gear seemed to have a way of scrubbing sound right out of the wires, as if the airwaves were erased.
Jeff clicked the button to get back to his intercom circuit.
“Twenty minutes,” he told the crew. “Smoke ’em if ya got ’em.”
“As long as they’re not your sneakers,” answered Breanna.
Jeff laughed. She used to say that all the time.
The Osprey’s tilt wings began pitching upward as the craft banked toward the mountain pass. Danny could feel the heat of the desert through the skin of the plane as he waited for it to land. The plan had called for them to land on a small plateau on the other side of the hill, but the pilot had seen someone there as they approached.
Talcom gripped his SAW so tightly Danny thought he was going to snap his fingers through it. He reached over to the sergeant and gently put his hand on the machine gun.
“Nice and easy,” he told Powder.
Sand and pebbles began whipping against the body of the Osprey. Talcom and some of the others winced, obviously thinking it was rifle fire.
“Nice and easy,” Danny repeated to his men as the rear door began to open.
Breanna kept one eye on her instrument panel and the other on her commander. Cheshire was definitely tired, but she was on top of her game. She’d held Raven steady through the Flighthawk release, performing the launch maneuvers flawlessly and without help from either Rap or the Megafortress’s autopilot. She continued to work carefully, reviewing nav data and making a minute adjustment to her course.
The radar-warning receivers in Raven had several times the range and about ten times the selectivity of Fort Two’s. They were now within a hundred miles of two large ground-intercept radars just south of Tripoli; the threat screen showed that Raven could get within twenty miles and still look like a misplaced seagull to the ground radar; after that, the computer painted a ‘path of least observance’ that would take the EB-52 to within about five miles before it was likely to be detected.
The real value of the fancy gear would come when the assault started. Raven would put its custom-made gallium arsenic chips to work jamming the sensors, adding its fuzz to the electronic noise from a pair of Navy EA-6 Prowlers. Every radar and most of the TVs in North Africa would be toast.
“Hawks are zero-five from commitment. We’re green all around,” said Jeff.
Breanna, who always had a hard time thinking of herself as a copilot, began to click her mike button to respond, then let go as Cheshire acknowledged. The major gave her a smile, then turned back ahead, studying the clear sky.
Jennifer Gleason said something to Jeff about one of the computer readings. Breanna felt the muscles in her back tense at the girlish lilt in the scientist’s voice. If she ever washed out as a scientist, Gleason would have no trouble finding a job doing telephone sex.
“We’re picking up some interesting transmission,” said the weapons officer. “Have something in grid B-2 just beyond the mountains.”
“Radar?” asked Cheshire.
“No. Some sort of microwave, but I can’t quite pin down the source from this distance. It’s encrypted. Lot of data, like it’s a video feed. It’s coming from the middle of nowhere. You want me to record it?”
“Negative,” said the pilot. “Don’t waste your time.”
“I’m also getting audio for a video feed that’s being beamed out of Tripoli,” he added. “I think it’s our trial.”
God, thought Bree. Poor Mack. His parents would hear him, probably see him, on CNN. The tape would be shown over and over and over.
“Yeah, shit. I have a sound track. Getting a location. I can pinpoint it. Hang on.”
The sophisticated tracking in Raven allowed him to plot a radar source within .0003 meters – roughly a tenth of an inch – once he locked and tracked it. The process took anywhere from forty-five seconds to five minutes.
“You want to hear this? Damn, it is the trial. It’s in English.”
“No,” snapped Breanna.
“Neither do I,” said Cheshire. “Run through the emergency tanker locations and frequencies for me.”
It took Bree a second to realize Cheshire was talking to her. She turned her eyes to the right instrument panel, where the fuel burn as well as the reserves were projected. Personally serviced by Greasy Hands before takeoff, the ancient TF33-P-3’s were humming better than the day they left the shop in 1962.
“We’re running a few hundred pounds ahead,” she told Cheshire. “So I don’t think we need to –”
The major turned her head toward her without saying anything.
“I’m sorry,” said Breanna, reaching for the data on the tankers.
Danny hit the ground a few feet behind Talcom, not sure whether is sergeant had seen something or was just being cautious. They were still a good twenty feet from the plateau, approaching from the blind side.
“Team, hold,” he said, speaking softly but distinctly so the communicator pinned to his collar could pick up his command. Bison was about five yards behind him. Liu and Pretty Boy were working their way around the other side.
“Thought I saw something,” whispered Talcom.
Danny had contemplated sending the Osprey around from the front to draw the attention of any Libyans while they came around from the flanks. He’d rejected the idea, however – if the aircraft was shot down they were in serious trouble.