Cowboy could see the aircraft shooting upward from the cargo vessel like arrows suddenly appearing from small puffs of black-fringed white smoke. The three aircraft attacked the sky at seventy-degree angles, propelled by rocket motors that quickly lifted them several thousand feet.
“Request permission to engage enemy aircraft,” he asked Greenstreet.
“Do it!” said Greenstreet. “I have One and Three. You’re on Two.”
Cowboy designated the second target. But before either he or Greenstreet could fire, the first UAV exploded in the air — Turk had taken it out with his rail gun.
“The UAVs are mine,” radioed the Dreamland pilot. “You guys wipe out those containers on the foredeck.”
“Acknowledged,” said Greenstreet.
For all their sophistication, the enemy UAVs were using a simple and relatively primitive launching system. Fitted with a booster section, they were lifted on a vertical gantry about forty-five degrees, then fired into the air. The rocket at their rear propelled them for a little more than sixty seconds before their own engines took over. Only then could they maneuver.
Taking the first two aircraft down was like hitting ducks on a carnival firing range. Turk brought the Tigershark onto a line just above the first UAV, put two shots into the body of the aircraft and a third into its booster, then turned hard to his right to get on the tail of the second UAV.
The enemy aircraft slipped out of his targeting cone before he could line up. He held on, following as it continued to climb. The Tigershark couldn’t match its speed, and after a few seconds Turk realized he’d have a better chance at getting it after the booster separated. Leaving it for last, he slid down on his wing toward the fourth and final aircraft to launch, just now climbing below him to the south. The computer had already dotted out an intercept; all Turk had to do was follow it.
Danny Freah was asking him something over the radio, but Turk couldn’t spare the attention. Greenstreet radioed something else about staying clear, but Turk lost it in the background noise.
Now, he told himself as the aircraft came up into the middle of his targeting cue.
The Tigershark rumbled with the shock of three slugs firing in quick succession. Only the first one hit: the other two passed through the debris field where the aircraft had been.
As Turk turned his head to look for the UAV he’d given up on earlier, the Tigershark shrieked at him — the enemy was diving from above, training its laser weapon on his fuselage.
Danny Freah froze the image of the cargo ship and the tug. A machine gun had been brought up to the forward deck of the tug. More ominously, there was a man running along the starboard side with what looked like a grenade launcher in his hands.
“Basher One, we have individuals running along the starboard side of the cargo ship,” he said, radioing the Marine aircraft. “They appear armed. We’d like to take them out before the Ospreys come in.”
“Affirmative, Whiplash,” replied Greenstreet. “We’re going to unzip some of those cargo containers and then we’ll clear the rest of the vermin off the decks.”
Danny thought of ordering them not to bomb the containers; he would have greatly preferred getting whatever was in them intact. But they weren’t worth risking the lives of the Marines.
“Understood, Basher. We’re holding position until all clear.”
“Won’t be long, Colonel. Hang tight.”
Cowboy tilted his nose toward the cargo aircraft and pickled his bombs, dropping a dozen of the backpack-sized weapons in quick succession. Each pair of the bombs had been programmed to hit a different cargo container. He was so close and the ship moving so slowly that he probably didn’t even have to use any guidance at all. But why take chances? The weapons system in the Lightning II had locked on to each container via its radar and optical guidance system, and subtly steered each bomb directly to the programmed sweet spot. In quick succession six large containers blew up on the forward deck of the ship. One began to burn, sending a large plume of smoke into the air.
Greenstreet had already made his run and was circling back.
“Freah said there’s a guy on the starboard side with an RPG,” said Greenstreet. “You see him?”
“No.”
“Let’s take a closer look. Follow me in.”
With only a fraction of a second to react, Turk started to dive away from the pursuing aircraft, pushing the Tigershark’s nose down steeply and ramming the throttle. But the UAV had anticipated this, and while it lost its aim point for a moment, it was quickly back on Turk’s tail.
It’s flying a pattern and I can beat it, Turk reminded himself.
I’m flying against a Flighthawk. What do I do?
Up and roll back.
He jerked his stick back, abruptly putting the Tigershark into a climb. At the same time, he hit his chaff, blowing out a cloud of tiny strips and pieces of metal foil intended to confuse radar missiles homing in on the fighter. It also confused the Dreamland-designed UAVs at close range because of a peculiarity in how they flew in close pursuit: since the target’s maneuvers were bound to be extremely rapid, the original C3 computer programming took over the flight at close range, following the locked target and enabling the remote pilot to concentrate on firing.
Dishing out chaff when pursued at close range by a normal fighter wouldn’t do much; the pilot would simply use his eyes to guide the plane. But here the computer had to switch from its radar guidance to infrared or video mode. Either way, there was a delay — only a few seconds in this case but long enough for Turk to put his Sabre on its back and roll behind the enemy UAV. As he did, he noticed an entirely unexpected result — the UAV was now trailing smoke from its right wing.
How had that happened?
The only explanation — or at least the only thing he could think of — was that its laser weapon had heated the chaff, which damaged the aircraft as it flew into the cloud.
There was only one way to test his theory — try it again.
That meant not only giving up his position now, which with a flick of the wrist would put him in the perfect spot to shoot down the enemy drone, but letting the UAV get back on his tail and zero in on him.
That was exactly the sort of trade-off Turk had been taught not to make as a combat pilot. Take the sure kill, leave the experimenting to someone else. But if he didn’t do it, he wouldn’t be sure it worked.
He held tight to the UAV’s tail. The UAV started a tight turn left. Turk suspected this was a deke — generally, when surprised by the up and rollback sequence, the Flighthawks would fake left and then break right, trying to accelerate away to reprocess the threat’s abilities. He waited a moment before reacting; sure enough, the UAV tucked back toward him. But instead of rolling to keep it in his gunsights, Turk stayed straight.
It took the UAV a second to realize it was not being followed. It took another half moment to evaluate what that meant — was it a trick, or was it flying against someone who was dumb? Because all it had to do was come back left and it would find itself in a perfect position to eviscerate its foe.
Turk waited. He was no more than a mile ahead of the aircraft, a fat target for the laser.
It began to fire. Turk hit the chaff. This time he held his course but accelerated, wanting to make sure the UAV flew directly into the chaff, or at least had reason to.
There was an explosion behind him strong enough to send a shock wave against his wings.