“It won’t as long as your gun is out. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Do it.”
Braxton took a deep breath. “Open door,” he told the computer.
It stayed shut. Wen-lo pushed the pistol against his temple.
“Don’t you think there’d be precautions?” asked Braxton, trying to keep his voice calm. “You’ve seen the technology we have. You know that we are enemies of the Americans. You think that we are fools?”
Wen-lo pushed the muzzle back and forth.
“The computer is reading my heart rate right now,” said Braxton. “If it doesn’t get back down below sixty-eight beats a minute, we’re not getting in at any point, whether you have a gun or not.”
That was a bluff, but one Braxton felt he could get away with — as was the caution about the weapons. He had actually thought of instituting such a precaution when he built the system, but decided it might prevent him from bringing a gun into the room when he needed one.
Wen-lo lowered his pistol, then told the others to step back.
“Give your gun to someone before you come inside,” said Braxton.
“No.”
“Then walk to the end of the hall, out of range of the camera, and put it under your shirt. There can only be two of us in the control room at a time. The computer will count the heartbeats.”
“We’ll all go in.”
“You don’t really think we’re going to fit, do you? It’s a little closet.” Braxton pointed to the wall. “That panel will open and reveal a glass window. Your men can watch everything. There’s a room with a monitor farther down the hall; I’ll send a feed there. But you’ll see — the room is too small for more than two people. Even two can be a squeeze. It wasn’t planned as a conference room,” he added. “It’s just for a pilot. And the aircraft only needs one pilot.”
“To fly two airplanes?”
“To fly a dozen. Two dozen,” Braxton added with a veiled contempt. “What do you think this is all about? That’s why you want it, right? You don’t give a crap about the UAVs. Drones are nothing. It’s the AI, and the distributed intelligence. What these things can do. That’s the value. The brains.”
He’d touched a nerve. Wen-lo told his men curtly that he was going in by himself, and they were to watch from the doorway and through the window. After they had moved back and Wen-lo holstered his pistol and pulled his shirt over it, Braxton nodded and pretended to be calming himself.
“OK,” he said, giving the key word as he looked at the floor. “Open door. Please.”
The lock buzzed. Wen-lo pushed ahead of him, entering the control room. Braxton followed.
He hadn’t been lying when he said it was small; the main console was exactly six feet long and ran the entire length of the room. Six video screens were arrayed at its head in two rows, with keyboards and two joystick-style controllers. Computing units were stacked around the rest of the room. There was just barely enough room to pull the chair out.
He sat down, then started to reach for the switch that would open the panel on the window. Wen-lo grabbed his arm.
“You want your men to see us or not?” Braxton asked.
Wen-lo let him hit the switch. The panel moved up, revealing the thick window separating the room from the hall.
“It will take a few minutes for the computers to boot up and everything,” he told Wen-lo. “It will get hot in here, too. Listen, we need to get the Sabre UAVs off the boat and onto the launchers. Can you have some of your men do that?”
“Where are the launchers?”
“The south side of the island — the path to the left of the bunker will take you there.”
“How are they launched?”
“I’ll show you,” said Braxton, pulling over the keyboard. “First, we need to launch the aircraft that are mounted, so we have room. What are you worried about? You have my man Talbot as hostage. I’m not going to trick you.”
Wen-lo went to the door and spoke to his men, sending four of them away. Braxton moved his hand to the switch that would close and lock the door, hoping Wen-lo would go outside into the hall. But his Chinese antagonist kept it open, his body against the jamb.
All right, Braxton thought to himself as he called up the launching panel on the computer, on to Plan D.
16
Turk continued to climb. As the Tigershark passed through 25,000 feet, he noted that the Chinese fighters had separated into two groups, both with four planes apiece. The first, flying on a direct course for the tug and the cargo ship, had just reached 30,000 feet. They were two hundred miles away but moving well over Mach 1; they would reach the area in roughly twelve minutes. The other group, flying to the west, were lower and slower. If they kept on their present course, they would reach a point about fifty miles west of the ships a few minutes after the first group.
Turk could engage the first group, but without the Sabres it would have to be at close range. That would make it difficult to shoot them all down before the other planes were in a position to threaten his guys below.
Of course, he wasn’t authorized to shoot anyone. Just the opposite. He radioed Danny for instructions.
“You can intercept the Chinese aircraft,” Danny told him. “But don’t fire on them.”
“With respect, Colonel—”
“Those are your orders. If they change, I’ll let you know.”
Bullshit, thought Turk.
“Computer, prepare intercept for Bandit Group One,” he said. “Plot an engagement for all four aircraft.”
“Computing.”
Aboard the tug, the team had disarmed two explosives and was working on the last, which would allow them to enter the lowest deck level of the ship. Achmoody estimated it would take ten minutes to get the device disarmed; they would need another five to check the passage for other booby traps by sending a small robot equipped with an explosives “sniffer” down the corridor.
“Don’t rush it,” Danny told Achmoody. Then he went back up on the deck to talk to Breanna on the Whiplash circuit.
“The Chinese are coming,” he said as soon as she acknowledged.
“Yes, we see.”
“Can we shoot them down?”
“Only if they are an active threat,” she said. “We’re informing the White House now.”
“If we wait until they come, they may be difficult to deal with.”
“I realize that, Danny. If you feel you have to protect yourself,” she added, “do what you have to do. I’ll back you up. It’ll be on my orders.”
“Thanks,” he said.
As soon as Cowboy heard Danny hailing Greenstreet, he knew what was up, and exactly what Greenstreet would say as soon as the brief transmission ended.
“Basher flight, we’re going back,” said Greenstreet a few seconds later. “Three and Four — dump your bombs. We’re dealing with Chinese fighters.”
Turk liked the fighting ballet the computer had projected, but he also knew it would never work out that pretty.
It had him going head-on against the lead aircraft, nailing it and then taking down the jet on its right wing. From there he was to flip around and take the farthest plane in the group before accelerating to nail the last. Maybe he could get the first three if they didn’t react quickly, but there was no way he was going to catch the last plane. Once he saw what was going on, the Chinese pilot would dive and accelerate. Granted that would take him out of the immediate fight — an achievement the computer would find acceptable when diagramming an engagement — but it would leave the American units vulnerable to a later attack.