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‘By all means,’ answered the pilot. ‘But the minister may prefer to deal with them himself.’
‘The A-37B is a sitting duck,’ she said.
To her surprise, the pilot chuckled. ‘The minister would not lose an engagement,’ he said.
‘He’s unarmed.’
The pilot chuckled again, his laughter implying that she didn’t understand the laws of physics – or Mack Smith. The minister could not be shot down, and anyone foolish enough to attack him would get their comeuppance – even if they were flying cutting-edge interceptors and he was in an unarmed plane designed as a trainer.
Breanna, no longer able to contain her frustration, hit the talk button. ‘Dragon One, what’s your call on the Sukhois?’
‘I want to see what the hell they’re up to and where they came from,’ replied Mack. ‘Because there are no Sukhois on Borneo. Malaysia’s MiGs are way over in West Malaysia near the capital.’
‘Mack, I can assure you, those are Sukhois, not MiGs and not ghosts. Your people are not screwing this up. Those planes are coming hot. What are you going to do if they turn hostile?’
‘Hey, relax Bree. I’m cool.’
‘You’re a sitting duck. And they haven’t answered our radio calls. If they get nasty – ’
‘Oh, give me a break, will you? I can handle them.’
One’s loonier than the other, Breanna thought.
Mack continued his lackadaisical climb, trying to conserve his fuel while making sure the pointing-nose cowboys running for him knew he was here. They were now about eight minutes away, flying at roughly twenty thousand feet, separated by about a quarter-mile. Their radars were not yet in range to see the Dragonfly.
But given their speed and direction, it seemed highly coincidental that they were flying in his direction on a whim.
‘Mack, you’re in radar range of the Su-27s.’
‘About time,’ he said.
‘You want us to jam them?’
‘Hell no! I want to see who these guys are.’
‘They know he’s there,’ Deci told Breanna over the interphone. ‘Altering course slightly. They should be in visual range of Mack in, uh, thirty seconds,’ said Deci.
‘I’ll pass it along,’ said Breanna.
‘Radar – uh, they just turned on their air-to-air weapons,’ said Deci. ‘They may really want to shoot him down.’
Mack came out of his turn about three seconds too soon, and had to push into his dive before he saw the first Sukhoi. He got a glimpse of it in his left windscreen, then heard the RWR complain that one of the fighters had switched on its targeting radar.
‘I was afraid of that,’ he groused out loud, as if the device could do anything but whine. A second later it gave another pitched warning, indicating that the enemy’s radar had locked on him and was ready to fire.
Then the unit freaked out, obviously a result of Breanna’s ordering the Megafortress crew to jam the airwaves so he couldn’t be shot down.
Mack sighed. A completely unnecessary order, even if her heart was in the right place. Mack pulled his plane into a tight turn and put himself right below the Su-27s as they turned. Separated by ten thousand feet and a good bit of momentum, all he caught on the gun’s video camera – rigged for the training exercises – was a gray blur. He pounded the throttle but there was no hope of keeping up with the Su-27s. Within two minutes, they were beyond his radar.
And he was short on fuel.
‘Jersey, this is Dragon One. I’m bingo on fuel, headed for home.’
‘We’re close to our reserves, as well,’ replied Breanna.
‘Did you get any sort of IDs on those Sukhois?’
‘Negative,’ said Breanna. ‘They had old-style N001 radars. Seem to be Su-27S models.’
The N001 was a competent but older radar type, and no match for the Megafortress’s ECMs or electronic countermeasures. It meant the planes themselves were relatively old and had been purchased second- or even third-hand. But it didn’t say who they might belong to. For the moment, at least, their identity would have to remain a mystery.
‘Your seaplane didn’t show up?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think it was a seaplane.’
Probably not, thought Mack to himself. More than likely, his neophyte radar operators had bungled a routine contact with a speedboat, then sent him out on a wild goose chase.
He listened as Breanna updated the rescue situation – there were now two vessels conducting a search, with no survivors located as of yet.
‘Time to pack it in,’ he told the Jersey crew. ‘Head for the barn.’
He snapped off the mike, then did something that would not have occurred to him a few weeks ago.
‘Hey, crew of the Jersey – I mean, crew of Brunei Megafortress One,’ said Mack, touching his speak button. ‘Kickass job. Very, very good job. Attaboys all around.’
Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia 0853
Sahurah Niu’s feet trembled as he got off the motorcycle in front of the gate. The bike roared away and Sahurah was left alone. He tried to take a deep breath but the air caught in his throat and instead he began to cough.
As he recovered, a soldier walked up to him, gun drawn.
‘Who are you?’ demanded the soldier, pointing the pistol at him.
‘I was sent,’ said Sahurah. The gun comforted him for a reason he couldn’t have explained.
‘What is your name?’
Sahurah gave the name he had been told to use – Mat Salleh, a historical figure who had led an ill-fated uprising against the British on Borneo in the nineteenth century.
The soldier frowned and gestured that he should hold his hands out at his sides to be searched.
If I were carrying a bomb, Sahurah thought to himself, I would detonate it now and be in Paradise.
But he was not carrying a bomb, nor any weapon, and the search went quickly.
‘This way,’ said the guard, pointing to the gate. ‘The captain is waiting. You have a long journey ahead.’
Sahurah nodded, and followed along inside.
Flush with his victory at sea, Dazhou met the Muslim fanatic in his office.
‘Have a drink,’ he said to him, putting down a bottle on his desk. He laughed at the expression of horror on the man’s face. ‘It’s juice,’ he told him, ‘but you needn’t drink it anyway.’
He looked at him more closely. ‘You’re the messenger?’
The fanatic nodded. There was no possibility of mistake – no rebel would show up here on his own. Unlike many of the rebels in the movement, Sahurah appeared to be a native of Borneo, very possibly of Malaysian extraction, though with thirty-one different ethnic groups on the large island there were many who could claim to be native here. Dazhou’s own family had been on Borneo for centuries.
‘You know who I am?’ Dazhou asked.
The young man – he was surely in his late twenties, though his face showed the pain of someone much older – shook his head.
‘That is just as well,’ said Dazhou. ‘There is a bathroom there, if you need it. We will leave in five minutes. Once we start, we will not stop.’
Dreamland 7 October 1997, (local) 1630
After the botched demonstration of the robot warrior system, Danny’s day became an unrelieved series of frowns and down-turned glances. He avoided breakfast with the congressmen, claiming that he had to work with the technical team recovering the devices, and managed to skip lunch by tending to his normal duties as security chief on the base. But couldn’t avoid the afternoon debriefing sessions, which culminated in a show-and-tell session for the VIPs in one of the Dreamland auditoriums. Danny walked down the hallway to the room feeling like the proverbial Dead Man Walking.
The ACR robots had actually worked exactly according to spec. Unfortunately, they had been foxed by Boston, who exploited a weakness in the system to torpedo the mission. The inexpensive, off-the-shelf sensors in the units could not see very well through smoke. While the grenade that Boston’s team member had launched at the unit might not have blinded it for very long, once it started firing off its canisters the entire area was for all intents and purposes shrouded in an impenetrable fog. Boston had timed his intrusion just right, racing as fast as he could eight hundred and fifty meters to the downed airman, who by the exercise rules was unarmed and couldn’t hear him anyway because of the approaching Osprey. Armed with only his pistol – a rifle would have slowed him down – Boston incapacitated the airman, then waited for the rescuers.
It wouldn’t have worked in real life – the grenades would have been shrapnel rather than smoke, and presumably incapacitated or killed the intruders. But that distinction seemed lost on the congressmen who were watching the video feeds in the Dreamland conference center. And the army people present for the demonstration weren’t very happy about it either. The Army had supplied 90 percent of the development funding so far, and its contribution was up for review.
Danny stood gamely with the project officers and the science types as they opened the floor up to questioning. One of the congressmen started things off by asking where the man who had shown the way around the robots was.
‘Sergeant Rockland is probably enjoying a well-earned rest right now,’ said Danny, trying to force a smile. ‘One of my best men. We try to train them to think outside of the box.’
‘Or the robot,’ said the congressman.
Danny did his best to laugh along with them, ignoring the dagger eyes from the army people.
Boston was waiting for him in his office when he finally made it over there two hours later.
‘You were looking for me, Cap?’ asked the sergeant.
Something about his sophomoric smile burned right through Danny.
‘You blew the parameters of the test,’ Danny told him. ‘You screwed the whole stinking thing up.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Those were supposed to be shrapnel grenades. Your team would have been dead.’
‘No, we were far enough away. I made sure of that.’
‘You ran right through the smoke,’ said Danny. ‘That wouldn’t have happened in real life. You would never have made it in time.’
Boston shrugged.
‘I don’t like your attitude, Sergeant,’ said Freah.
‘Captain – don’t you preach that we ought to use our heads?’
‘Go on. Dismissed. Go.’
‘But – ’
‘Out!’
Danny pretended not to see him shake his head.
Brunei 8 October 1997, (local) 0900
As Mack pulled himself out of the A-37B’s cockpit, the fatigue that had been trailing him the whole flight jumped out and wrapped itself around his neck. The sun beat down on the concrete apron, and the humidity hung around him like the thick steam of a shower room. Mack had originally planned to go home and take a nap after debriefing the training session, but the morning’s developments meant there would be no rest for the weary; quite the contrary. The sultan would undoubtedly be wondering what was going on and expect a personal briefing, as would Prince bin Awg. The central defense ministry – a collection of service heads and other military advisors, including Mack – would also be looking for information.
The EB-52 banked overhead, preparing to land. Mack turned back toward the runway, watching the big plane swing in. It wobbled slightly – obviously one of his people was at the stick. Still, the landing was solid. All in all, they were making progress.
Slow progress, but progress.
‘’Scuse me,’ said a woman’s voice behind him. ‘You Mack Smith?’
Mack turned, surprised to hear what sounded like an American accent.
‘You’re the minister of defense?’ said the woman.
‘Deputy minister of defense – air force,’ said Mack, giving his official title. ‘Such as it is.’
He might not have added the last comment if the woman had been anything other than, well, plain, though plain didn’t quite cover it. She was somewhere over twenty-one and under forty, five-four, on the thin side. Her short hair had a slight curl to it, and that was the nicest thing you could say about her looks. She wore a pair of jeans and a touristy blue shirt.
‘I’m McKenna,’ she said, thrusting out her hand.
‘McKenna is who?’ said Mack.
‘Pilot. You were looking for contract pilots? Does it help that I can speak Malaysian?’
She reeled off a few sentences in the native language, which was shared by Brunei and its island neighbors. Mack hadn’t been here long enough to understand more than a few words; he thought he recognized the phrase for ‘have a nice day,’ but that was about it.
‘I think you have the wrong idea,’ said Mack. ‘I’m putting together a combat air force. The civilian airline is still on its own.’
‘Well no shit,’ said the woman. ‘I’ve flown F/A-18s for the Royal Canadian Air Force, and for the last year I’ve been a contract pilot for a horse’s ass of an outfit trying to sell third-hand Russian-made crates of crap that I wouldn’t put my worst enemy in. That light your f-ing fire?’ said McKenna.
Well, she could talk like a pilot at least, thought Mack.
‘I don’t have any F/A-18s,’ he told her.
‘I can fly anything,’ she said. ‘Ask Prince bin Awg. He let me fly his MiG-19 and his Sabre last year. We went at it a bit and I waxed his butt good. I’d love to get behind the wheel of one of those,’ she added, thumbing toward the Megafortress, which was just heading toward its parking spot in front of the hangar on the left.
‘It doesn’t have a wheel. It’s got a stick, like a real airplane,’ said Mack. ‘They put it in when they upgraded it.’
‘Well kick ass then,’ said McKenna.
