Tom Clancy, Grant Blackwood, David Michaels
Tom Clancy's HAWX
PROLOGUE:
"Falcon three… Loensch… Do you have a shot?" Jenna Munrough shouted as she banked her F-16 away from the target. With jammed guns and both of her air-to-air missiles expended, she was out of action. Everything now depended on her wingman.
"Gotta get a lock-on," Troy Loensch said, gritting his teeth. Hitting the Raven was like trying to hit a mouse with a hammer in a dark room. Like most recent jet fighters, the Raven had suppression systems that physically masked the heat signature of the engines. The only way to achieve the radar lock-on necessary to launch heat-seeking missiles against the stealthy aircraft was to get in directly behind it.
As a HAWX Program bird, the Raven was fast-probably capable of something north of Mach 3—but he knew that his quarry had to slow down to below Mach 1 to deliver his deadly payload against his highest of high-value targets.
Troy could not let this happen.
There was no way in hell he could let this happen.
How had it all come to this? After flying, fighting, and proving himself in four brush-fire wars, Troy had joined the HAWX Program to fly the fastest and highest-flying combat aircraft in the world. Now it had come down to his chasing and trying to kill the single fastest and highest-flying aircraft in the HAWX arsenal.
It was the mother of all ironies, but Troy had no time to ponder the sick paradox in which he found himself. He had to kill the damned Raven.
Troy could not let the Raven get to its target.
There was no way in hell he could let this happen.
As the two aircraft scissored across the Maryland landscape, Troy knew that if he could coax the other guy into maintaining his defensive turn, rather than reversing and turning the other way, he would have the opening that he sought. But this wasn't working. The other pilot could not be coaxed.
Again and again, Troy turned and watched the other aircraft slip away.
Gotta try something, Troy thought.
As he got behind the other aircraft, and just before the guy reversed his turn, Troy throttled back, allowing him to stem their lateral separation and turn with the Raven.
The two aircraft rocked and rolled, the Raven staying just a split second and a couple of degrees out of the bull's-eye in Troy's heads-up sight. He had to find that opening, that opening to a no-miss shot!
"Lock on now!" Jenna urged. She was barely two miles away, also on afterburner and following Troy into battle.
"Fuck it," Troy shouted. "This is it. Missiles hot!"
"Roger, Falcon Three," Jenna confirmed, angrily wishing that her two Sidewinders had not been eluded by the Raven. "You are a go with missiles hot."
The Sidewinder air-to-air missile had an effective range of around ten miles, but to take a no-miss shot, Troy would have to be a lot closer.
The bad guy still had the advantage. His maneuverability options increased proportionally to his slower speed. Because he had only one vulnerable spot — straight back — any evasive action, no matter how slight, was potentially effective. He could remain on course to his target, weaving slightly, and still interrupt the F-16's lock-on.
Troy watched his lock-on stop and start, flicker and hiccup, like a bad connection on his iPod jack.
There was nothing he could do but put the pedal to the metal and get closer to the Raven.
Seven miles separated the two aircraft.
Rocking and rolling, the Raven raced onward as Troy screamed forward on full afterburner, gaining on him. Five miles.
When? Troy sweated the decision to shoot. He was almost there. He could ride the lock-on all the way. Three miles.
Okay, dammit, this is it.
"Fox Two!" Troy shouted.
He felt a slight wobble as the Sidewinder left the rail. He watched as the Raven banked hard to the left and saw the fast-moving contrail of the Sidewinder arc left.
Chapter 1
"I'll give you three good reasons why this is a bad idea!" Carl Loensch growled angrily, holding up his left hand. "Count 'em."
Of course, Troy could not count them.
They weren't there.
His father had left those three fingers in the sands of Kuwait a quarter century ago on the same day that Troy was born.
Through the years that Troy was growing up, his father had almost never mentioned that day when he was with the 3rd Battalion of the 3rd Marines during the liberation of Kuwait, or the split second of cartwheeling shrapnel that maimed Carl's hand and killed his best friend.
During those years, he knew that his father was different, but he was no less a man, no less a father for having just a single finger and thumb on that hand. It was something that was never mentioned, because there was nothing to be said. It just was what it was.
For all those years, his father had never let his disability interfere with his life, nor with his successful career in sales with a major Southern California office supply chain — nor with the time that he spent tossing the football with Troy.
"Count 'em!" Carl demanded.
Troy had rarely heard his father make even a passing reference to his disability. He had never heard his father speak so angrily about it. Carl's stoicism through those years was in such stark contrast to this moment that Troy now felt his body trembling. The star wide receiver for the UCLA Bruins had never felt so caught off guard.
"I've lived the better part of my life knowing that I went through hell on earth in that goddamn desert so my son wouldn't have to… ever have to… put on a uniform and go into a war."
Troy could see tears streaming down his mother's face.
For Barbara Loensch, this was one of the most awful moments of her life. It was certainly one of the worst since those terrible months just after Carl came home. She had been with Carl as he worked through his anger and pain, and she had watched him bottle it up and contain it as their baby grew into a boy. She had watched Carl reinvent himself as a good father and a better-thanaverage husband. Now, it was as though it were all coming apart.
"Dad, I really have run out of options here," Troy tried to explain. "My life is kinda coming apart, y'know."
"What the hell do you know about your life coming apart?" Carl shouted. "It's only a friggin' game!"
Barbara knew that football was more than just a game to Troy. Ever since he was a little kid, tossing the ball around with his dad, you could tell there was something special. From the moment that he lettered as a freshman in high school, it seemed that everyone realized something special was about to happen when Troy Loensch stepped onto the field.
"Well, Dad, that friggin' game was my whole life," Troy shouted. "For the past eight years, my whole life was built around that friggin' game."
After he had gone to UCLA on a scholarship, there had been plenty of talk about Troy's NFL prospects. Last fall, there had been the visits from the scouts. The people from the Atlanta Falcons had taken the whole family to dinner at the Biltmore. The Eagles flew in to woo Barbara's only son. The Broncos came and talked about the wonders of playing in Denver, and the San Diego Chargers visited the modest Loensch home in Northridge twice.
It seemed as though a pro career for Troy was just a matter of waiting for the formalities of the NFL draft in April.
Then, in the blink of an eye, things changed.
"Everything I did for those past eight friggin' years, built around that friggin' game. Now I don't have that friggin' game. The whole course of my life has changed."
"Whose fault is that?" Carl asked angrily.
They both knew.
The way the course of Carl Loensch's life was irrevocably altered in Kuwait was out of his control, but Troy had done this to himself.