Muslim, Colonel. They don’t drink alcohol.’
‘That was a joke. Ease up.’
‘I’m trying.’
Having blown the intercept, Mack tried desperately to think of some way to save face as he swung back toward the Wisconsin. He was pretty far out of the picture now, five miles behind the MiG, which was still picking up speed as it came at the Megafortress. If this had been more serious, the bogey would have launched its missiles by now.
Of course, if it had been more serious, the Megafortress would have launched its own antiaircraft missiles.
Game or not, he knew he’d had his fanny waxed, and he needed to get revenge. He watched as the MiG changed course, turning to the west away from the EB-52. The computer, drawing its probable course in the sitrep screen, momentarily showed it breaking off, but it quickly caught on – like its companion, the plane was angling for a highspeed run from behind, a good position to launch heat-seekers.
Mack was too far behind the MiG to follow and too far ahead of the Megafortress to follow Cantor’s strategy and cut the MiG off behind the plane. So instead he began his own turn to the west – he’d make his intercept after the MiG passed the EB-52.
And, just to make the experience special, he’d toss a few flares in the MiG’s face as he went by.
The Yemen aircraft came at the Megafortress at 550 knots, clearly not interested in riding alongside the American plane. This suited Mack perfectly, and he began climbing out ahead of the EB-52, ready to trade the height for speed when he wanted.
‘Hawk Two, what the hell are you doing?’ demanded Colonel Bastian.
‘Just getting ready to say hello.’
‘Stay out of my flight path. I have a job to do here.’
Grouch, thought Mack.
Aboard the Abner Read, off the coast of Somalia 2015
‘This looks a lot like those contacts we had the other night,’ Starship told Eyes as he scrambled to follow the aircraft he’d just spotted. The slow-moving plane, about five miles north of Starship’s Werewolf, was so low the sensors showed it on the surface of the water.
‘Good, copy, we concur here. Track him.’
‘Yeah, I’m on that.’ Starship swung the Werewolf westward as the bandit continued to pick up speed. The image in the forward-looking infrared showed that the airplane had two engines set high behind the wing; it was small, almost surely a civilian aircraft. The threat file in the Werewolf’s combat computer couldn’t identify it.
Starship followed at about two miles, ratcheting his speed up as the strange aircraft continued to accelerate. Starship tucked his Werewolf downward, trying to get a better look at the underside of the craft. But the other plane was so low to the waves that he had a hard time; he kept jerking his hand involuntarily as the shadows changed on the screen. Finally he backed off his speed, dipping so close to the water that he nearly ditched.
‘Definitely no weapons,’ he told Tac. ‘Looks like a civilian craft. Are you going to contact them?’
‘Stand by,’ said Eyes, his voice tense.
The distance between the two aircraft had widened to four miles. Starship began to climb and accelerate. As he did, the bandit veered to the east.
‘He’s climbing,’ Starship told Tac.
‘Werewolf, Indian destroyer Calcutta is reporting it’s under fire. They’ve been torpedoed. Stand by to render assistance.’
‘What do you want me to do with this aircraft?’
‘He has no weapons?’
‘Negative. Look, maybe he launched the torpedo.’
‘Way too small for that. We’ll hand him off to Dreamland Wisconsin. Get back over to the Calcutta. They need assistance.’
‘Roger that,’ said Starship, changing course.
Aboard the Wisconsin, over the Gulf of Aden 2015
Dog stayed on his course as the MiG-29 closed in behind him. If the plane showed any hostility – if it simply turned on the radar used to guide its missiles – he would shoot it down with the Stinger antiair mines in the Wisconsin’s tail. He’d do the same if the aircraft flew as if it would crash into him. But the pilot gave him a half-mile buffer, flying below and off his right wing, close enough to win some sort of bragging rights back home but not quite enough to justify an aggressive reaction.
Dog saw Mack adjusting course to make a pass at the MiG just as it cleared from the Megafortress. Mack cut things considerably closer than the MiG driver did, not only twisting the Flighthawk to within a hundred feet of the Yemen plane, but shooting flares as he did. His timing was a little off, but the other pilot, either confused or panicked, jerked hard to the north and dove a few seconds after the encounter.
Part of Dog thought the Yemen idiot had gotten what he deserved: most likely, a pair of speed pants that needed some serious laundering.
Another part of him was angry as hell at Mack for acting like a two-year-old.
‘Hawk Two, get your nose back into formation.’
‘Oh, roger that, Colonel,’ said Mack, just about chortling. ‘Did you see him?’
Luckily for Mack, the commo panel buzzed with an incoming transmission from the Abner Read on the encrypted Dreamland communications channel. As soon as Dog keyed in the communication, the face of Lt Commander Jack ‘Eyes’ Eisenberg appeared on the screen.
‘Bastian, we have a possible submarine approximately two hundred miles south of us. It just launched an attack on an Indian destroyer. We’d like you to help locate it with your Piranha unit.’
‘We’re not carrying Piranha,’ Dog told him. The undersea robot had not been ready when they took off, and it hadn’t made sense to delay the patrol – facts that Dog had already explained. ‘Piranha will be aboard the next plane out. We have sonar buoys – we can drop those.’
‘Affirmative, good. Also, Werewolf has been following an aircraft just north of there. Airplane appears to be civilian but hasn’t answered any hails. May be a smuggler. We’d like to find out what it’s up to. Send one of your Flighthawks to pursue the aircraft.’
‘Bit of a problem there, Abner Read’ responded Dog, doing his best to ignore the sailor’s haughty tone. ‘The Flighthawk has to stay within twenty miles of us. We can’t be in both places at the same time.’
‘I don’t understand. How come the Werewolf can be so far from us?’
‘The control and communications systems are different,’ said Dog. ‘Basically, the Flighthawks are considerably more difficult to fly and require a greater bandwidth than the Werewolf.’
They also represented an older generation of technology – much had changed in the three years since they began flying.
‘All right. Stand by.’ The line snapped clear.
‘Dish, how close do we have to get to detect a periscope?’ Dog asked the radar operator.
‘Going to depend on too many factors to give you a guarantee,’ Captain Peter Mallack answered. ‘Specs say we should be able to nail him at fifteen miles, though. Of course, if he’s on the surface –’
‘What if he isn’t using his periscope?’
‘We won’t find him without sonar buoys, or until Piranha’s operating.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Bastian,