Revolution (20 page)

Sophie smiled. ‘So you like to disappear too, sometimes.’

Megan felt Sophie’s penetrating gaze on her, but went on talking quietly.

‘He was a great person, my father. You’d have liked him. He loved life. Always full of energy, always quick with a joke. One of those kind of people that you can’t help but like.’

Megan voice started to become strained as though her vocal chords were being twisted.

‘You can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to lose your own father like that, to see that he was beaten to a pulp even before they severed his hands and head. He was blind in both eyes long before he died, and most of his teeth were missing.’

Megan glanced around the cold room, not seeing Sophie any longer through her blurred and glistening eyes as she spoke.

‘I’ve still got his wrist watch in my bag, can’t travel without it, it’s all I’ve got left of him…’

Megan’s still–full glass dropped from her hand and shattered on the floor as she slid off the chair. Sophie launched herself off the edge of the bed and knelt down beside her, wrapping her arms around Megan as tightly as she could and holding her shaking body, not really sure what she should do next, sure only that she should not leave.

Megan calmed after a few minutes and rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes.

‘Sorry,’ she uttered, not looking at her.

‘So am I.’

Without another word, Sophie helped Megan to her feet and walked her across to the bed, pulled back the sheets and directed her to lay down. Megan complied silently, and Sophie tucked Megan in before picking up the bottle and glasses and silently leaving the room.

Megan fell asleep within moments.

***

44th Parallel ‘No Fly Zone’

Black Sea, 250km West of the Georgian coast

‘Voodoo flight this is strike; contact, single target track bearing zero–eight–five at sixty five miles, heading two–four–zero degrees, inbound.’

Lieutenant Heather
‘Miller’
Millard heard the call over the RT earpiece in her helmet and glanced at her Horizontal Situation Display. Her voice sounded distorted in her own ears over the intercom as she spoke.

‘Copy strike, zero–eight–five, IFF transponder activated. Let’s see who’s coming out to play.’

The sky at thirty thousand feet was a perfect powder blue, the sun a flaring white orb. Heather adjusted the course of her F–18E Super Hornet with a deft flick of the control column, the agile jet responding instantly. She glanced out of her cockpit canopy to where a tiny sliver of grey metal seemed to hover against the pale blue void a mile away.

‘You copy that, voodoo two?’

The answer from Lieutenant Mike
‘Boomer’
Mitchell came back instantly.

‘Roger that, maintaining battle flight, waiting for tactical. How d’you wanna play this?’

‘Let’s keep our cool and see who they are. It’s probably just another wayward airliner.’

The two Super Hornets streaked through the ethereal high–altitude dawn, Heather maintaining her course and waiting for the tactical display to pick up the incoming target. Her own radar remained on stand–by to prevent the signal from betraying her location. Instead, one of the three Multi–Function–Display screens in the Hornet’s cockpit displayed a radar image transmitted by a Grumman E2–C Hawkeye surveillance aircraft almost a hundred miles to the west of her position. With the Hawkeye doing the scanning, Heather could see the enemy and close on them without being detected until the last moment.

‘Voodoo flight this is strike; take angels right, one–one–zero.’

*

USS Theodore Roosevelt ( CVN–71)

US Navy Carrier Battle Group, Black Sea

‘What’s the trade?’

Admiral James Fry stood behind a teenage operative whose gaze was affixed to a complex radar screen. The operations room looked like a scene from
Star Wars
with its multiple displays and low lighting. An observer might never have deduced that they were standing on the bridge of the largest nuclear–powered aircraft carrier on earth.

‘Single target,’ the operative replied, ‘coming in from the east, zero–eight–zero, flight level three–zero–zero. Identification Friend or Foe recorded as a negative response sir. No radio contact.’

Admiral Fry nodded, thinking for a moment as he turned to his Executive Officer.

‘Flight path would have taken then clear over Georgia, assuming they’ve maintained the same trajectory.’

‘Georgian air–space remains clear,’ the XO replied. ‘Nothing from them reporting any over–flights that shouldn’t be there, but their radar coverage isn’t the best.’

‘Tactical approach?’ Admiral Fry pressed.

‘It’s possible an aircraft could slip through the Georgian mountains undetected and then climb for height over the sea without anyone successfully tracking it.’

Admiral Fry nodded and made his decision.

‘General Alert. Order Miller and Boomer onto a direct intercept course. Have the alert aircraft on deck to back them up.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’

Without another word from the captain the huge aircraft carrier turned into the wind as half a squadron of F–18E’s scrambled to flight readiness upon its flight deck. The radar operator spoke into his mic’, watching the closing blips on his radar screen.

‘Voodoo flight, you are a go for intercept.’

*

‘Roger that, strike.’

Heather and Boomer’s aircraft manoeuvered into position, one mile apart and with Boomer’s F–18 two thousand feet higher than Heather’s. The tactical separation enabled them to commit to aggressive turns against incoming aircraft without getting in each other’s way and giving them options in the vertical to win the onrushing confrontation.

Heather keyed her microphone transmit button.

‘Voodoo two, IFF negative, repeat IFF negative. Broadcast on all channels.’

Heather listened as Boomer’s voice sounded on an all–frequency channel.

‘Unidentified aircraft flight level three–zero–zero, heading two–five–zero, you are entering the controlled airspace of a United States Carrier Battle Group. Please identify.’

A hiss of empty static filled Heather’s helmet earphones, an ominous silence that unnerved her. She listened as Boomer tried three more times on an open channel before finally calling the carrier and reporting no–joy.

Heather looked at her tactical display. The incoming aircraft was now within twenty nautical miles.

‘Eight hundred knots closure, heading steady,’
Boomer observed.
‘It’s coming right at us.’

Heather was about to reply when she heard the crew of the Hawkeye over the RT.

‘Voodoo flight, Lincoln One, be advised that the bogey is a pair, repeat one–pair, two aircraft in close formation.’

Heather felt a lance of anxiety bolt down her spine as she responded.

‘Roger that Lincoln One. Boomer, fangs out!’

Instantly both pilots activated their Hornet’s fire–control radar and set their weapons to ‘active’. In a split second they had converted their aircraft from neutral interceptors to active aggressors.

‘Ten miles,’
Boomer called.

Heather could hear the slight tension in his voice.

‘Easy, Boomer, here we go. No traumas.’

Heather’s cockpit suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree and a warbling siren sounded in her ears. Boomer’s voice was sharp over the sudden noise.

‘Holy shit, we’re being painted! Fire–control radar, they’ve got lock!!’

For several fractions of a second Heather’s mind registered the flashing warning lights and the signals on her Heads–Up–Display, and then the words that she had thought she would never, ever hear slammed through the field of her awareness like a bullet through glass.

‘Fox Two! Missile in the air!!’

The Hawkeye pilot’s voice followed a second later.
‘Missiles fired, Voodoo flight evasive now!!’

Heather snapped out of her trance a split–second later.

‘Defensive break!’

Heather slammed her control column over to the right and then hauled back on it, the Hornet rolling onto its side and loading up into an six–G hard–right break. Terrific centrifugal force slammed her into her ejection seat, her flight suit constricting her stomach and legs to prevent her blood from draining from her head and upper torso.

‘Missile tracking voodoo one!’

Heather rolled her wings level and glimpsed the two enemy fighters in the distance and the fine trail of missile exhaust rocketing toward her aircraft. Heather’s gloved hand changed position slightly on her throttle. She had put the incoming missile on her ‘three–nine–line’, travelling perpendicular to its line of flight. As it zoomed in at immense speed, all at once Heather dumped chaff and flare to distract the missile’s sensors and hauled the Hornet into a parabolic dive, spiralling on all three axis at once in order to spoil the missile’s chances of hitting her.

Heather saw nearly eight–G on her instruments as the Hornet gyrated violently through the sky, and suddenly the sirens in her cockpit went silent.

‘Missile overshoot!’
Boomer called.
‘I’m engaging!’

In the passing of a heartbeat, Heather Millard went from pure terror to cold fury, reversing her fighter’s roll and breaking into a turn back in the direction the enemy aircraft had passed.

‘Strike this is Voodoo One, do we have permission to fire?’

The response came through immediately.

‘Voodoo one, Foxtrot Alpha Whisky; repeat, Fire At Will!’

Heather hauled her Hornet around its turn, her throttles in full–afterburner and she fought against the G–forces and searched the skies.

‘Boomer, snap–visual!’

Boomer’s voice came back, bursting with restrained tension.

‘Bandits heading two–seven–zero, breaking left through twenty–eight thousand.’

Heather reacted without thought, pulling through her turn to head almost directly west and looking up a couple of thousand feet above her. Instantly she saw the two fighters, arcing left in a moderately hard turn, Boomer’s F–18 curving into an attacking position behind them.

‘They’re Mig–23’s,’ Heather identified them. ‘NATO call–sign Flogger.’

Closer to the aggressor aircraft, Boomer’s call identified the enemy planes.

‘They’re Mordanian fighters. I can see the markings!’

Heather was closing in fast, watching as the two enemy aircraft continued their left turn. A strange sense of caution crept into her thoughts as she watched the enemy aircraft turning.

‘They’re not evading,’ she said over the RT.

‘Who cares?!’
Boomer replied.
‘I’ve got tone. Missile lock!’

Instantly, the two Mordanian fighters split, one pulling hard right, the other rocketing upward into a vertical climb.

Boomer’s F–18 went vertical in pursuit of the climbing Mig–23, and Heather followed him up, watching as Boomer fired.

‘Fox Two!’

The short–range Sidewinder missile rocketed away off the Hornet’s wing, and Heather watched as it tracked the Mig–23 pulling over the top of a loop. The hot jet exhaust silhouetted against the freezing blue sky made it an easy target. Seconds later, the heat–seeking missile slammed into the Mordanian fighter in a bright orange fireball, blowing half of the tail clean off and sending the forward section of the jet spiralling lazily down toward the distant clouds below, trailing a plume of oily black smoke.

‘Splash one!’
Boomer called jubilantly.
‘Snap–visual on second bandit?’

‘I’ve got him,’ Heather replied, ‘eight o’clock low.’

As soon as Boomer’s missile had struck home, Heather had pulled hard over the top of her own loop, diving back down toward the second Mig, which appeared to be trying to make a run for it toward the cloud layer fifteen thousand feet below.

‘No way buddy,’ Heather murmured to herself with cold determination.

The Sidewinder missile she had selected began to growl in her ear–phones as it signalled a firm lock on the fleeing fighter. Heather eased her fighter to point directly at the enemy Mig, and then fired.

‘Voodoo One, Fox Two!’

The Sidewinder leapt off the wing–rail and shot away into the distance ahead of her Hornet, leaving behind it a distinctive weaving trail of smoke. She watched the weapon track for several seconds and then saw a bright plume of flame and smoke.

‘Splash two!’

The Mordanian jet ahead of her spiralled down toward the clouds in a shallow flat–spin. Heather slowed her jet, watching the stricken Mig falling from the sky.

‘Come on,’ she urged the nameless pilot within the stricken aircraft, ‘your game’s up. Eject.’

She watched, her eyes fixed to the Mordanian fighter as it spiralled down. No parachutes emerged from the aircraft and it finally vanished from sight into the clouds far below.

‘Voodoo Two, Boomer? You see any ‘chutes?’

‘Negative, no parachutes from bandit one.’

Heather felt a deep melancholia envelope her as she spoke into her RT.

‘Strike, this is Voodoo Flight, all bandits down, skies are clear. No parachutes, but scramble Search and Rescue just in case, over.’

As she listened to the reply, Heather found herself thinking furiously about the dogfight that had just occurred.

*

Admiral James Fry turned to his Executive Officer with a serious expression.

‘Order Miller and Boomer to land immediately. Pull the fleet an extra hundred miles off the Georgian coast and get all available fighters into the air. I want a tight defensive screen at two hundred miles – if so much as an angy wasp gets through I’ll crack some heads!’

‘Yes sir!’

The Admiral rubbed his temples with one hand as he spoke.

‘Then put a Priority–One call through to the Admiralty and the Secretary of Defence. Inform them that we have been attacked, that the Republic of Mordania has committed an act of war against the United States of America.’