Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) (4 page)

 
          
“Fifty
seconds,” said Delaford.

 
          
“Missile
impact in twenty,” warned Ferris.

 
          
“Hang
on, everybody,” said Dog. He pulled the Megafortress hard right, then back
left, accelerating north briefly but then pulling back west, trying to stay
within range of the Piranha buoy.

 
          
“Must’ve
graduated from Annapolis,” said Ferris. “That missile isn’t quitting.”

 
          
Dog
decided to do something he’d never be able to manage in a stock B-52—he twisted
the massive plane through an invert and accelerated directly toward the AIM-54.
Against a “live” missile, the strategy would have been dubious, since the
proximity fuse would have lit the warhead as he approached. But the gear in the
nose used to record a hit was a few beats slower than the real McCoy, and Dog
just managed to clear the AIM-54 before it “exploded.”

 
          
“Shit,
I lost the connection,” said Delaford as Dog recovered.

 
          
“Can
you get it back?”

 
          
“Trying.”
Dog could hear Delaford and English tapping furiously on the keyboards that
helped them control the remote devices.

 
          
“We
can drop another buoy,” suggested English.

 
          
“We
should,” said Delaford. “But this one is closer. You know Colonel, I think
they’re trying to jam us.”

 
          
“They
have two jammers aloft,” said Ferris.

 
          
“Give
me a course,” said Dog. “Delaford, is there any way to make Piranha spit in the
admiral’s eye when it comes to the surface?”

 
          
“Working
on it, sir.”

 
          
Galatica

 
          
August
16, 1507

 
          
Unlike
the earlier attacker, these Tomcats not only knew
Fentress’s
Flighthawk were there, but considered them enough of a threat to target them
with their Phoenix missiles. Ducking the long-distance homers wasn’t that
difficult—Fentress had done so in about a dozen simulations over the past two
weeks—but it did take time. It also cost him position—he lost control of Hawk
Four as his Megafortress
jinked
out of the
ECM-shortened communications range to avoid another volley of missiles. The
onboard computer took over the robot, turning it toward the EB-52 in default
return mode.

 
          
Fentress
pulled Hawk Three higher, hoping to get into position to break the next wave of
attack, which he expected to be close-in dash to fire heat-seekers. But the
Tomcats had something else in mind; AMRAAM-pulses, fired from just over forty
miles away.

 
          
A
red-hot wire snaked around his chest. Not one but two of the Scorpions locked
on his plane. These were considerably more difficult to avoid. Even in
simulations, he’d never gotten away from a pair. Galatica, with its performance
significantly hampered by the revolving radar dome in its upper body, would
have an even more difficult time, regardless of the countermeasures it spewed.

 
          
Fentress
recoiled himself to his job; he’d do his best and
jinked
in the direction of the lead Tomcat, which was already homing in on Galatica.
To catch the Navy pilot’s attention, he winked his cannon. Though several miles
out of range, the F-14 diverted just long enough to launch a pair of Scorpions
at him.

 
          
Two
more missiles that can’t target Gal, Fentress thought to himself. He threw the
Flighthawk downward, then cut diagonally, hoping against hope to beam the
missiles.

 
          
He
did. As he started to recover from the dive, he realized he had also gotten
away from the missiles launched earlier. But all his
jinking
and jiving had left himself open to another F-14, which screamed toward him,
gun blazing. Fentress started to turn, confident he could get out of the
Tomcat’s
gunsight
. His screen showed a simulated run
of bullets trotting past the canopy—and then everything buzzed red and a large
“2” filled the control screen. He’d been nailed by a Sidewinder he’d never
seen.

 
          
Hawk
Four, flown by the computer, had already suffered the same fate. Shorn of its
defenders, the over-matched EB-52 found itself sandwiched between a pair of
Navy Top Guns, whose M61;s made confetti of the wings.

 
          
“We’re
hit,” said the Megafortress pilot, Captain
Teijen
.
“Performance degrading. Prepare for ejection.”

 
          
“Aw,
shit,” grumbled the copilot.

 
          
Still,
the EB-52 was a tough airframe.
Teijen
held her up,
swooping left and right, and managed to take out one of the Navy fighters who
apparently didn’t believe the brief on the potency of the Stinger tail weapon.
There was no shaking the Tomcat flight leader, however, who came in close and
winked his cannon, then rubbed their noses in it a bit by putting his plane
directly over Gal’s tail.

 
          
“You
be sunk,” said the pilot with a laugh.

 
          
The
computer and the event moderator concurred.

 
          
“Yeah?”
said
Teijen
. We’ll see how loud you laugh when your
carrier goes down.”

 
          
Raven

 
          
August
16, 1507

 
          
Zen’s
finger strained against the slider on the back of his combined stick-throttle.
He had the engine nailed on the redline, trying to hustle the Flighthawks back
to help Fentress fend off the rear-end attack. The Navy attackers had done an
excellent job against the Dreamland planes, overcoming their technological
disadvantage with shrewd tactics and kick-butt flying. They didn’t call these
guys Top Guns for nothing.

 
          
Not,
of course, than Zen would admit that in mixed company—mixed company meaning
anyone who showed an affinity for bell bottoms and pea coats. Naval aviators
might have proven in combat they were every bit as good as Air Force jocks, but
no red-blooded USAF
zippersuit
would say so—except
under extreme duress.

 
          
And
maybe not even then.

 
          
Zen
calculated a good merge on two planes coming in on his left figuring to turn
and then let the Tomcats’ superior speed bring them to his
gunsights
.
That worked fine for one of the planes, but the other wingman simply
accelerated out of range as Zen brought Hawk Two to bear. He twisted off and
gave the robot to the computer, telling it to target a new knot of Tomcats
aiming for Iowa from the west, the computer handled if fairly well, but with
four Scorpion AMRAAMs in the air, and its need to engage the enemy at close
range, it was soon over-matched, taken down by a simulated explosion about fifty
feet of its wingtip.

 
          
In
the meantime, two Tomcats closed on Iowa for Sidewinder shots. As Zen tried to
dive on them, his seat spun wildly, moving in the opposite direction—Raven’s
pilot, Major Alou, was jerking madly to avoid a fresh missile attack. The
movement disoriented Zen, who had an image in his screen more than four miles
away. He had to break off his attack after pumping dozen shells at the F-14,
doing some damage but not enough to splash it.

 
          
The
air was thick with flares, electronic fuzz, and dummy weapons. Zen rolled
around and found himself approaching Raven. Making the best of the situation,
he slid Hawk One into a gradual turn, figuring to try and catch the planes that
were closing on his mother ship. At the same time, he got a warning tone from
the computer that his fuel were getting low.

 
          
The
Navy fliers stayed just out of reach of Raven’s Stinger as they kicked off
their missiles. All but one of the Sidewinders missed their mark; the one that
did explode caused “fifty-percent damage” to the right wing control surfaces
and some minor damage to the power plants. Enough, claimed the moderator, to
rule the Megafortress down.

 
          
“Down?”
said Alou. “Down? No way.”

 
          
The
other crew members’ reactions were considerably less polite. Zen had one of the
Tomcats fat in his
pipper
—he laid on the trigger,
then whipped across the air like a stone slipped on a pond to nail the second.

 
          
Except
that, under the engagement rules, he was dead once the Megafortress was.

 
          
The
Tomcat jocks were laughing. Zen had considerable trouble restraining himself
from riding Hawk One over their canopies.

 
          
“Navy
referees,” muttered Alou.

 
          
Iowa

 
          
August
16, 1507

 
          
Dog
could feel a curtain of sweat descending down the front of his undershirt, as
if he were coming toward the kick lap of a great workout. And in a way, he was—
jinking
and jiving as a pair of Tomcats, now out of
missiles, tried to get close enough to use their guns. He fended them left and
right, riding up and down, all the while waiting for Delaford to tell him when
they could launch the buoy. They’d temporarily lost contact with Piranha,
though its operator was confident it was close to the aircraft carrier.

 
          
“We’re
going to lose speed as soon as we open the bay door,” said Chris Ferris. The
copilot had a habit of worrying out loud. In Dog’s opinion, not a particularly
endearing trait.

 
          
“I’m
counting on it,” replied the colonel, flashing left as one of the Tomcats began
firing again. The Navy planes couldn’t position themselves effectively because
of the air mines spitting out from the back of the plane, but that advantage
would soon be lost—the computer warned they were below a hundred rounds.

 
          
Worse,
another quarter of fighters were coming from the north.

 
          
“Okay,”
said Delaford.

 
          
“Chris,
turn off the Stinger as if we’ve run out of shells,” Dog told his copilot.
“Then open the bay doors and launch. Everybody hang tough,” added Dog. “This
will feel like we’ve hit a brick wall.”

 
          
The
Tomcats, seeing the Stinger had stopped firing
midburst
,
closed in tentatively, expecting a trick. Meanwhile, Ferris gave Dog a five
count. When he reached one, the colonel did everything but throw the plane into
reverse—and he might have tried that had he thought of it. The Megafortress
dropped literally straight down in the sky, an elevator whose control cables
had suddenly snapped.

 
          
The
Tomcats shot overhead.

 
          
“Piranha
Buoy Two launched,” reported Ferris, immediately closing up the doors to clear
the Megafortress’s sleek belly. Dog banked so close to the water, its right wingtip
might have grazed a dolphin.

 
          
“They’re
coming back, and they’re mad,” said Ferris. “Whipping around—rear-quarter
shot.” He started laughing. “Suckers—Stinger on and firing.”

 
          
Their
anger and fatigue took its toll. One of the Navy fliers was mauled; the other
backed off—then declared a fuel-emergency and broke off.

 
          
“Four
bandits still coming at us. In AMRAAM range,” warned Ferris.

 
          
“How
we doing down there, Delaford?” asked Dog, cutting back north to stay near the
buoy, though this meant closing the gap on the approaching F-14’s.

 
          
“Got
it! Ten seconds to surface!”