Twenty-Six
Cushioned by his CID’s haptic interface and feeling blessedly cool, Brad McLanahan let his mind roam free. He grinned to himself, remembering the expression of surprise and eagerness on Nadia’s face when he’d pulled her onto his lap yesterday afternoon. Idly, he wondered if they would ever be able to look at the Ranger’s cockpit in quite the same way again. In the background of his pleasant daydream, routine reports from the robot’s array of passive sensors scrolled through his drifting consciousness — but there was nothing among them that he needed to handle.
And then, suddenly, there was.
Sky Masters ARGUS-Five signal characteristics have changed, the CID’s computer told him. The radar has switched to tracking mode.
He jolted back to full awareness. Switching from general air-search mode to tracking mode meant the advanced radar sited at McLanahan Industrial Airport had detected one or more airborne contacts that its human operators wanted more data on and fast. Whatever had spooked them must still be too far away to register on his thermal or visual sensors.
Without waiting any longer, Brad readied his rail gun. It whined shrilly, powering up. If there were Russian cruise missiles heading this way, he would do his best to engage and destroy as many of them as he could. He opened a secure channel to their base camp. “Wolf One to Two and Three. Believe unidentified airborne contacts inbound. I am preparing to engage if necessary.”
It sure would be nice to be able to open a data link to that Sky Masters radar, he thought pensively. Seeing what the ARGUS-Five was “seeing” would probably answer a lot of his questions. But doing that risked giving away his position to the FBI or the Russians if either of them had hacked their way inside the Battle Mountain facility’s electronic systems. As it was, he was operating half blind — forced to rely entirely on whatever he could pick up with his passive sensors.
With the CID’s camouflage systems running, Brad was effectively invisible to visual or IR detection. And his current position hidden in among a jumble of solid boulders and brush offered good protection against radar. Unfortunately, activating his own radar would light him up just as surely as if he sent his robot dancing downslope and into town.
“Wolf One, this is Two. Whack and I are suiting up,” Nadia radioed back. “We should be operational in less than two minutes. We will move toward your position at top speed.”
“Copy that, Wolf Two,” he replied.
Dozens of icons suddenly blinked into existence across his tactical display. Forty-plus IR contacts inbound from the east at low altitude, the computer reported. Range twenty-plus miles, but closing. Four contacts at six-hundred-plus knots. Remainder at one hundred fifty knots. Negative identification at this range.
Brad frowned. What the hell was this? One thing was sure. Whatever was happening wasn’t a Kh-35 cruise-missile attack. Those four fast movers out there were flying faster than the Russian-designed missile’s maximum speed. And no missile ever made stayed in the air at just a hundred and fifty knots. Were Gryzlov’s mercenaries using a mix of high-speed and slower drones?
Through his neural link, he ordered the CID computer to lock on to the four fast targets. He swung the rail gun up, following the aiming cues on his display. There, off to the east, low above a wide stretch of flat, almost featureless valley, red boxes silhouetted four green, brightly glowing shapes streaking toward Battle Mountain at more than six hundred knots. At that altitude, with all the heat haze, his thermal sensors still couldn’t get a firm fix on their identity and type. His finger settled gently on the trigger.
And then two separate wavelengths of microwaves washed across his robot. The neural link translated the sensations into something like the gentle flick of a dog’s tail across his face coupled with fingernails scratching across his head. Warning, warning, his computer reported. New active airborne radars detected. One evaluated as AN/APY-2 Pulse Doppler E-3 Sentry AWACS. The other is a Ku-band agile active frequency signal. Probable identification is an E-8 JSTARS AN/APY-7. No detection threat from the AWACS. JSTARS detection probability currently very low. New icons appeared on his display, showing the two radar planes orbiting sixty miles east—behind the wave of oncoming bogeys.
Swallowing hard, Brad took his finger off the rail-gun trigger. There was no way the Russians had a Sentry-type airborne warning and control aircraft aloft over the United States. Nor could they have a JSTARS, a Joint Surveillance and Attack Radar System plane of their own. The powerful phased-array radar aboard a JSTARS aircraft, a modified 707–300 designated as an E-8C by the Air Force, could scan up to nineteen thousand square miles of terrain — hunting for hostile ground vehicles and low-flying helicopters.
He keyed his com link to the other CIDs. “Wolf Two and Three. Hold your position! Repeat, hold your position! Do not move out from under the camouflage. These aren’t Gryzlov’s guys. They’re ours.”
Christ, Brad thought, I almost fired on friendly aircraft. The realization of how close he’d come to killing fellow Americans was chilling. He fought to control a sudden tremor in his hands.
Quickly, he ducked lower, further reducing his CID’s radar signature. That JSTARS plane high overhead was designed to pinpoint enemy tanks, artillery pieces, and armored personnel carriers. It should have a hard time spotting something as relatively small as his robot, especially if he stayed still. But there was no percentage in taking any unnecessary risks. After the massacre at Barksdale Air Force Base and then the attack on that F-35 assembly plant at Fort Worth, his fellow countrymen were probably just about as trigger-happy as he obviously was.
The four fast movers he’d locked on to earlier, now clearly identifiable as F-16C Falcon fighters, screamed low past his mountaintop position, spreading out across the airport and the neighboring Sky Masters complex. A cloud of white-hot magnesium flares trailed behind them, mixed with thousands of tiny Mylar strips of antiradar chaff. He frowned. Why in God’s name were those pilots taking precautions against a missile launch? Did they think the Russian combat robots were already here?
The F-16s peeled away in fighting pairs, going vertical. Sunlight glinted off their clear bubble canopies as they climbed higher — soaring fifteen thousand feet in twenty seconds. Once at high altitude, all four fighters leveled off and started orbiting in slower, lazy circles.
Behind them came an aerial armada. Flanked by shark-nosed AH-64D Apache helicopter gunships, a cloud of dozens of UH-60 Black Hawk troop carriers and large CH-47 Chinook heavy-lift helicopters clattered low across the desert floor… heading straight toward the airport and Sky Masters. From his hiding place high on the slopes above them, Brad watched, transfixed by what he was seeing. This had to be the better part of a whole U.S. Army combat aviation brigade, he realized. It was an enormous show of force, especially at a time when the army, like all the other U.S. armed services, was already stretched thin.
Accelerating suddenly, the Apache gunships broke away from the main formation. They fanned out, swinging wide to take up station at various points several hundred feet above the Sky Masters complex. Bristling with Hellfire antitank missiles, Hydra 70 2.75-inch, fin-stabilized rockets, and 30mm M230 chain guns, they hovered threateningly in midair.