The older man had his mouth drawn tight, and remained silent.
For the first time in his life, Bruce started to feel airsick.
In the forty-five minutes since General Simone had shot straight up from the runway at Clark, the fighter had not flown straight for more than twenty seconds. The general continuously slammed the craft through a gagging sequence of high-speed maneuvers, rolls, accelerations, and loops.
Bruce eyed the fuel-indicator through the bouncing gyrations. Simone suddenly spun the craft to the right, then straightened as they soared up through fifteen thousand feet. Bruce keyed the mike.
“Starting to get a little short on fuel, General.”
The craft turned nose-down and Bruce suddenly felt weightless; they followed a neat parabolic path. “We used to run our jets through the wringer like this when they were first delivered to the squadron. Except you can’t fly a Smokin’ Rhino like this.”
Bruce clicked twice on the mike. General Simone was referring to the ancient F-4 fighter, which had been the mainstay of Air Force fighters during the sixties and seventies. Its trail of black smoke could be seen from miles away.
Suddenly the fighter turned up, as Simone brought her out of the parabolic path. Simone’s voice came over the intercom.
“Let’s get our feet wet before heading back, Assassin.”
“Rog.”
Simone pulled the fighter into a backward loop. Blue sky melted into black as they rotated around. Bruce felt as though he should be able to see the stars. As they continued to rotate the black sky turned into blue, until Bruce saw the boundary of water with land miles in the distance. They accelerated straight down, screaming through the Mach numbers. When they swept past ten thousand feet, Bruce started calling out the altitude. Simone gave no indication that he knew how high they were.
Seconds passed. Bruce wet his lips.
“Four thousand … three thousand … minimum altitude, General.”
With no response, Bruce called out, “IP has the aircraft.” He pulled back on the stick and the throttles, trying not to bring them out in too steep of an angle. Simone didn’t say anything — Bruce expected to be blasted by the general for taking away control of the fighter.
The g-indicator rose, moving past six, then seven gs. Bruce grunted, anticipating brownout, but felt no indication even of tunnel vision. The gs dwindled off as he brought the aircraft up. At two hundred feet the jet leveled off. Bruce clicked his mike.
“All right, General?”
Two clicks answered him. “Your aircraft, Assassin.”
Bruce clicked back. “I’ll have to bring it up for ‘feet dry,’ General. Take a last gander before we bring her up to altitude.”
Bruce glanced at the heads-up display, which indicated air speed was right on five hundred knots.
A speck through the cockpit caught his attention — it looked like an old rickety fishing boat, directly ahead of them on the horizon. Bruce immediately broke right and accelerated up. He wasn’t about to capsize the boat.
Overturning a group in a rice paddy was one thing, but sinking a fishing boat miles from shore was an order of magnitude worse.
As they gained altitude, Simone came over the intercom. “That happened to me once years back, Assassin. Never quite forgave myself for strafing an unarmed boat.”
Bruce kept quiet for a moment. Breaking through ten thousand feet, they passed over the beaches on the west side of the island. White sand quickly changed to jungle as they flew toward Clark. Bruce received the necessary clearances as they proceeded on to a landing.
Once down, Bruce removed his helmet and drew in deep breaths of humid air. Clouds covered most of the sky, and a light drizzle had just started to cover the ground.
Simone reached the bottom of the stairs before him. When Bruce climbed down, the general held out a slender ebony hand; his flight suit was soaked with perspiration. He showed evenly spaced teeth when he smiled.
“Thanks, Son.”
Bruce shook his hand. “Thank you, sir — you’re the one who put me through the paces. That was some nice flying.”
Simone picked up his helmet and started for the staff car that waited for him at the edge of the flight line. Sounds of auxiliary power units cranked up in the distance; laughter drifted from a group of airmen playing volleyball on the opposite side of squadron headquarters. Simone nodded for Bruce to follow. Bruce stepped up and kept pace with the general. Simone spoke straight ahead, as if Bruce weren’t even there.
“Flying these jets is a cathartic experience for me; purging my soul of all the humdrum activity that comes with command.” He paused. “Sometimes I think I might even take it too far, Bruce — try to push the limits of what I can do. Some people can’t handle it when I take them up, refuse to fly with me anymore. That’s how I weed out the true pilots.” He stopped and lifted up his sunglasses. He looked Bruce over. “That took balls to take the plane away from me, Bruce. For all your bravado, I think there’s a damn good fighter pilot in you. Stay with it, Son. Don’t let the bullshit get you down and you’ll go far. I’ll see to it.”
“Thank you, sir. Ah, are you all right…? I mean when I took the airplane away? Were you okay then?”
Simone dropped his sunglasses back to his face and growled. “I said it was a test, didn’t I?”
Bruce watched the staff car drive away, the flag with two stars on it waving from the front.
“Well, I’ll be dipped,” he said to no one.
Cervante took a final drag on his cigarette before walking over to the HPM weapon. One man was struggling to unfold a dish antenna. The camouflaged parabola unfurled, until it was nearly ten feet across. A collector in the center of the dish stuck out a good three feet. The HPM weapon looked to be nothing more than a delicate dish, a gigantic flower that sat in the middle of the clearing.
As Cervante approached, he could tell that the antenna was only a small part of the weapon. A long pipe protruded from an array of capacitor banks. The pipe was connected to the antenna through a convoluted series of fittings—“mode converters,” the operating manual had called them. From what Cervante understood, the weapon produced microwaves that were a million times more powerful than those found in microwave ovens; although the microwaves literally “fried” electronic components, the beam quickly spread out and was ineffective over long distances.
Cervante paused before the device. “Is it complete?”
“Except for turning it on.” Pompano emerged from beneath the dish. A motorized pointing and tracking unit held the giant antenna in place. He wiped his hands on already grimy pants.
“The manual does say that the setup time should take no longer than two hours. And knowing the average intelligence of the American troops, I had no fear that you should find the tasking easy.”
Pompano ran a hand over the long metal piping that connected the dish to the capacitor banks. He spoke in a low voice. “Do not underestimate those people, my friend. That cartoon operating manual does not reflect their true capabilities — ask any Iraqi.”
Cervante fished a cigarette out of a pack in his sock. “Whatever. But that does not concern me now. What is important to me is using the weapon. When can we start?”
Pompano was silent for a moment. He answered slowly, “We are ready now. It is not difficult to operate — Barguyo already knows how. Basically, all that is needed is to charge up the capacitors, aim the weapon, and set it off. Once the weapon fires, the capacitors recharge so we can use it again.”
Cervante puffed away quickly. “So we can use it now?”