It was academic, though. Turk had orders not to fire.
What to do? It was highly unlikely that they would fall for his flare trick a second time, and besides, they were moving too fast for him to try it.
The only thing to do, he concluded, was climb and wait.
He thought of putting out his landing gear and tossing tinsel out to increase his radar signature so they could pick him up. It might scare them off, or it might provoke them into turning on their targeting radars. But there was no guarantee they would do either. And it would cost him the element of tactical surprise, which might be of use if he was ever allowed to attack.
The idea of disobeying his orders kept occurring to him. He was trying to get out of Whiplash, wasn’t he?
But some part of him just wouldn’t let go. Even though he thought he knew better, his training insisted that he follow the command of his superior, assuming he still had faith in his judgment.
And bottom line, he did trust Danny.
“Recompute intercept at this point,” Turk told the computer, pointing near the ships.
17
President Todd was welcoming a group of schoolchildren to the Oval Office when David Greenwich, her chief of staff, appeared at the door.
It never seemed to fail — just when she was doing something she truly enjoyed, there was an important interruption.
“Now children, I have a question for you,” she told the dozen fourth-graders, all of whom had come to Washington following a national history competition. “How many would like to be President someday?”
One hand went up, albeit very slowly. Then another, still tentative, and finally the rest.
Thank goodness, thought Todd. Many days no one wanted her job.
“Well, I can’t make you President,” she told the class. “But you can see what it is like to sit in my chair. Would you like that?”
The chorus of “Yes!” nearly rattled the walls.
“Teachers, please arrange that. Mr. Devons will help you.” She smiled at the assistant education secretary, who was escorting the group. “Make sure everyone gets their picture taken.”
As the children lined up, the President discreetly walked to the door.
“The Chinese have sent aircraft against Whiplash,” whispered her chief of staff.
Todd led him out into the hall, out of the others’ earshot.
“Have the Chinese been warned off?” she asked.
“They’re in the process of trying that. They wanted you to know that they may ultimately shoot them down.”
“If that’s what it takes,” said Todd.
“You want to call in Senator Peterson and the Speaker,” suggested Greenwich.
“Round up the usual suspects, eh?” Todd smirked.
“The Chinese ambassador has called you twice this morning. I’m sure he won’t be silent.”
“Congress will complain one way or another,” said Todd. “We need our technology back. Prepare the situation room. I’ll go down for an update as soon as I finish with the children. We don’t have to worry about the Chinese — they won’t go to war over this.”
“It’s Congress I’m worried about. They’ll use anything to say you’re going beyond your powers. They’ll accuse you of trying to start a war.”
“I’ll deal with Congress. I know there’ll be fallout, David. But better to deal with it over the incident than to lose the technology as well.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the chief of staff.
“If I dealt with China the way the leaders of Congress wanted,” added Todd, “I’d be letting them take control of the world and kill my people in the process. And that will never happen on my watch.”
18
Ray Rubeo saw the alert from the Navy’s stealth UAV and immediately went to the information screen. Four aircraft had just launched from an islet about fifty miles east of the two ships.
They had to be Braxton’s.
Rubeo called up a map of the area, zooming in on the little ellipse of sand and overgrown jungle. It looked very much like the tiny island close to Malaysia where the bunker had been blown up. It hadn’t shown up on the geographical match search because it was thought to be outside the range of the UAVs.
Assumptions.
Rubeo picked up the phone that connected him to his New Mexico lab.
“Have we cracked the command coding yet?” he asked.
“Sorry, Ray. We’re working on it. It’s pretty damn complicated.”
“They’re launching more combat UAVs,” said Rubeo. “Can we observe their transmissions and back-engineer the encryption?”
“We’re on that but it looks hopeless. We need either the back door or just brute force, which is already what we’re doing.”
“Keep at it.”
Rubeo put the phone back down. Breanna was standing next to him.
“They’ve launched more aircraft,” she said.
“Yes,” said Rubeo.
“Do you think they’ll do anything with the Sabres?”
“It’s a possibility,” admitted Rubeo. “But if their main intention was stealing, more likely they’re using this to cover their retreat.”
“If they were interested in retreating, why launch the aircraft at all?” said Breanna. “We didn’t know about this base — they could have hidden there.”
“Yes.” Rubeo nodded. They were missing something.
“Can you take over the planes?” Breanna asked.
“We know how we can transmit, but we can’t get around the encryptions they’re using. Not yet.”
Pena Gavin, the head of Cube security, entered the room and walked down to the station where they were standing.
“Breanna? Do you have a moment?” she asked. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“It’s not a great time—”
“I know, but… there’s — someone at the gate needs to see you.”
“Not now,” said Breanna, annoyed at what seemed a trivial interruption. The security officer shifted uncomfortably, seemingly struggling to find the right words. “Tell him to go to the Pentagon office,” added Breanna. “I don’t have time—”
“It’s your father.”
19
The limited instruction set in the combat UAVs meant that Braxton had to continue guiding them for two minutes after the booster separation; only then could he direct them to the two ships and let them go.
Monitoring the aircraft as they climbed out from the launch area, he saw from the passive radar sensors that the Chinese had sent fighters in the direction of the ships — and another set toward him.
There were American aircraft over the ships as welclass="underline" three Ospreys. While he couldn’t see it, Braxton guessed that the Tigershark would be there too, with or without its Sabres.
Which gave him a better opportunity than he had hoped for.
He set his four UAVs on course for the area over the ships, and instructed them to defend the ships against all unfriendly aircraft — a default preset that allowed the planes to use all of their programmed maneuvers to fight until there were no more contacts in the air.
“Your planes are in the air,” said Wen-lo. “Now, take us to the launcher.”
“I have to program them all first,” said Braxton. “Or they’ll just fly around over the island and bring the Americans here. We don’t want that, right?”
The wide-area plot showed Braxton that the UAVs would reach the area of the ships at roughly the same time as the Chinese did. That was perfect. He started to get up, then sat back down as Wen-lo walked to the door.