Chapter 66
“Our guys are trying to take him out before he gets to China,” Joe said.
“Falling into his trap,” Kurt replied. “How close are we to Saber One?”
The autopilot had followed a prearranged flight plan and brought them up to thirty-five thousand feet. The sky was brightening with each passing second.
“There,” Joe said, pointing to a gray outline ahead of them.
“Go for him,” Kurt said. “With everything we’ve got.”
Joe took over from the autopilot and pushed the throttles to the fire wall. The engines went from cruise power to takeoff power. The big plane picked up speed and Joe eased the control stick to the left. “Here goes nothing.”
Joe turned the plane to the left, putting a foot on the rudder to coax the nose around. The big plane rolled with surprising agility and nosed down a bit. It picked up speed in a shallow dive, toward Saber One’s tail.
“Saber Two, continue your turn,” a voice on the radio demanded. “Saber Two, do you copy?
Joe kept the nose down and kept his eye on the looming target as it grew larger with every passing second, and then with a suddenness that defied the size of the aircraft, the old KC-135 turned hard to the right and pulled up.
Joe pulled back on the yoke, but the Starlifter was carrying too much momentum to match its target. It thundered past, missing Saber One’s tail by a hundred feet.
Joe grunted as the g-forces hit. “Damn,” he said. “Sorry.”
They’d missed what might have been their only chance.
Aboard Saber One, the sudden turn had almost thrown Ahab out of his seat. He cursed at Captain Chen. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Saber Two tried to ram us,” Chen said. “It almost took our tail off.”
“What?”
Chen pointed at the targeting radar. A bright orange line revealed Saber Two’s sudden change in course and its near fatal pass just behind their tail.
“Why would they do that?”
“I have no idea.”
“Where is it now?”
“Trying to get in behind us.”
Ahab fumed at the disruption to his plan. He looked through the small windows in the cockpit’s ceiling. From the angle they were flying he could see the Starlifter trailing them. It turned as they turned. Pushing hard as they pushed. These acts could not be a malfunction.
“The Chinese must have an agent embedded in your group,” Ahab snapped. “Traitors in your midst.”
“I don’t think so,” Chen replied. “I’ve known these men for years.”
“Then what explains this madness?”
As Chen brought the aircraft around, Saber Two followed. It was stalking them. Ahab turned to the laser technician. “Shoot it down.”
The technician didn’t hesitate. He locked onto the Starlifter and engaged the laser. The generators squealed. The green lights lit up. But when he pressed the fire button nothing happened.
“What’s wrong?” Ahab demanded.
“They’ve dropped below our tail. The computer won’t allow us to fire.”
Ahab looked out the skylight windows again, but the Starlifter was no longer in sight. It had widened its turn and gone below them. If they fired at it now, they’d slice off their own tail.
“Prove to me your worth,” Ahab said to Chen. “Shake them loose.”
Chen whipped the big plane around in the other direction, but just as the Starlifter came into view, it vanished again. It would be no easy task.
The two planes wheeled and turned, switching positions twice, then three times.
Joe was sweating as he attempted to stay out of the firing line.
His path wasn’t as simple as it sounded.
When Saber One turned to the right, he had to take the Starlifter to the left for a moment and then back to the right.
It was the only way to stay behind and below, and out of the laser’s deadly field of fire.
With each turn he lost some speed. With each loss of speed, it became more difficult to stay in the right spot.
“We’re drifting back,” he said. “Another couple of turns and he’ll have us.”
“We need to stay in the fight,” Kurt said. “As long as he’s tangling with us, he can’t focus on our fighters or the premier’s plane.”
“I’m on it,” Joe said.
He brought the Starlifter around for another pass, but Saber One had other ideas. It straightened up and turned due west. Heading toward China.
Joe had to dive to stay out of trouble, but the added speed helped him turn the corner and line up once more behind Ahab’s deadly gunship.
A blur in the sky signaled more laser fire. It flashed repeatedly, but the beam wasn’t aimed at Kurt and Joe this time. It fired diagonally across the Strait, pulse after pulse burning the air in the general direction of Taiwan.
A new line of explosions lit up the morning sky.
The first batch were smaller flares. Like matches lit and thrown in the air, they burned out quickly.
Kurt lost count of how many as Saber One eliminated a volley of air-to-air missiles.
When the missiles were dealt with, it turned its wrath on the aircraft that had launched them.
Several larger explosions bloomed, each one marking the destruction of an F-16 or F-35 that had pressed close enough to get off a shot.
Just as promised, Saber One was clearing the sky of any threat. Based on Kurt’s rough estimate it would have a chance at the premier’s aircraft over Shanghai any moment.
“It’s now or never,” Kurt said. “Dive hard and come up from underneath him.”
Joe pointed the nose down and dove as Kurt suggested. The old Starlifter picked up speed rapidly and was soon shaking as it approached its maximum safe airspeed.
“Come on, you bucket of bolts,” Joe said. “Go.”
Aboard Saber One the danger became patently clear. “They’re going to hit us from below,” the laser tech said.
“Shoot them down!”
“They’re still underneath our firing plane.”
Ahab’s mind spun. There was only one answer. “Take us down,” he shouted. “If they want to stay low, we will go lower.”
Chen shoved the controls forward. Saber One pitched down, racing to stay ahead of the old Starlifter.
As the plane picked up speed, the weapons tech looked at his screen. The Starlifter was so close, it couldn’t be seen on radar, but through an optical tracker it appeared near enough to block out most of the sky.
He held his breath. After all the sudden maneuvers, he was just trying hard not to throw up. Slowly, incrementally, the cargo plane drifted back. Saber One was winning, but only by trading altitude for speed.
A flashing icon and a beeping sound in his headset told him a new target had appeared on the screen. Not directly behind them or across the gap where the last American fighters were, but out in front of them at the very edge of radar range, nearly two hundred and forty miles away.
The computer soon marked the target based on the radar return. It was identified as a 747-800. Its designation was denoted as Air China 3701: the Chinese premier’s plane.
The specialist tapped the screen to lock on. The targeting system focused. The data was confirmed. He pressed the fire button, but nothing happened. To his surprise the target had vanished from the screen.
“What?”
The technician cycled the screen, but it didn’t help. The premier’s plane was gone.
Saber One had dropped too far from its perch to see over the curvature of the earth.
With each thousand feet of altitude it lost, the maximum range of the laser shrank by miles.
Air China 3701 was still out there, somewhere over Shanghai, but Saber One could no longer see it.
And it couldn’t hit what it couldn’t see.
The weapons officer was gutted. Their chance had come and gone. And with the steep dive continuing at full speed, it wouldn’t come around again.