Strike Eagle (15 page)

Bruce climbed in the instructor pilot position, behind and slightly above the general, where Charlie would normally sit. Tower treated them as just like any other flight, replying to their transmissions with curt answers. But Bruce bet that the “Blackman 1” call sign sure gained some attention.

General Simone and Bruce waited at the end of the runway. Radio calls mixed in with Simone’s chatter. Bruce tried to pay polite attention to the general’s patter, but he also tried to keep alert to everything happening around him. A loud whistling overhead caught his attention—a pair of F-22’s landed, one after the other.

The radio cackled. “Blackman 1, you are cleared for takeoff.”

Simone answered immediately. “Tower, Blackman. Request clearance to twenty thousand.”

“Affirmative, Blackman. There is no traffic to twenty thousand.”

“Thank you, sir.” Bruce heard the click of Simone’s mike, switching to intercom. “IP?”

“Ready, General,” answered Bruce.

It felt like Bruce had been kicked in the butt.

Simone must have jammed the throttles to full afterburners. The fighter leaped forward, continuously accelerating as it rolled down the runway. Bruce kept his eye on the airspeed indicator. In no time they were passing a hundred knots.…As their velocity increased Bruce waited for Simone to announce “rotate,” but nothing came over the intercom. They passed the rotate mark—Simone must be forcing the craft to the ground.

Bruce started to say something, but just as he opened his mouth Simone pulled back on the stick.

Once airborne, the fighter’s attitude kept going up.

“Oh, crap,” muttered Bruce. The fighter continued to accelerate, and soon they were pointed straight up—the F-15 was still accelerating, moving completely vertical. Now Bruce realized why the general had requested clearance to twenty thousand feet. At this rate, they’d be there in seconds.

“Still there, Bruce?”

“Rog, sir.” Bruce gritted his teeth. He wasn’t going to say anything until Simone was about to kill them.

One mile south of Clark AB

Cervante surveyed the site. The one road to the clearing was well guarded, and from all indications it had not had much use. He hopped down from the truck and went around to the back of the vehicle. Seconds later Pompano followed him, walking slowly.

Cervante lifted the tarp covering the rear of the truck. Inside, a potpourri of boxes, cables, and equipment was stuffed into every corner, like a rat’s nest of high-tech gear.

Pompano limped up. Cervante threw him a look.

“What is the matter? Did you hurt yourself?”

“Getting old. These dirt roads are starting to get the best of me.”

“You have been traveling on dirt roads all your life, old man.”

“Not in a heavy truck, loaded down and hitting every bump.”

Cervante pulled the trap from the truck. A crowd of Huks congregated where the road opened up to the clearing. Cervante shouted to them. “Barguyo, run down to the start of the road and help stand guard. The rest of you, set up this equipment.”

Pompano moved around the clearing, poking his nose into where the jungle started, overturning old cans and bottles that were strewn over the area. He called to Cervante. “This place is used by kids—probably to come drink, or use drugs.”

“Americans,” confirmed Cervante. He wiped his hands and joined the older man. “This is the best location I could find this close to the runway. We should not have any problem with children—keeping a guard back down the road will deter anyone from coming here. They do not want any attention brought to them for their drugs … or sex.”

Pompano appeared to chew on his lip, then asked, “How far from the runway are we?”

“A little over two kilometers. At this range, the high-power microwave weapon should be able to disrupt their flight equipment. Not enough to pinpoint where we are, or even determine what we are doing, but enough to aggravate them greatly.”

Pompano craned his neck and looked up; there was a tiny hole in the foliage that allowed him to view the cloudy sky. “Two kilometers?” He waved an arm around. “It can do that much damage?”

Cervante strode to the truck and pulled a thick booklet from the back. He slapped it down on Pompano’s hand. “Here. The cartoons show how far this weapon can be from the target, how to set it up, and how to use it.”

Pompano leafed through the multicolored manual. He glanced at the illustrations of helmeted men setting up the device and operating it. He pointed with the booklet up at the hole in the foliage. The clouds seemed like a kaleidoscope of black-and-white swirls. “What happens if a plane flies overhead, directly above us?”

Cervante stopped. He took the operating manual from the older man and flipped through the pages. A picture of an aircraft spinning out of control, just bare meters above the ground, adorned a page.

“If the plane is low enough, it goes down.…”

Cervante stopped speaking. At that moment, a Pan Am 747 jumbo jet, probably carrying hundreds of servicemen and their children to Clark Air Base, roared not a thousand feet overhead.

Cervante jerked his head up and got a fleeting glance of the jumbo jet before it disappeared. He looked back at Pompano.

The older man had his mouth drawn tight, and remained silent.

Ten miles off the western coast, P.I.

For the first time in his life, Bruce started to feel airsick.

In the forty-five minutes since General Simone had shot straight up from the runway at Clark, the fighter had not flown straight for more than twenty seconds. The general continuously slammed the craft through a gagging sequence of high-speed maneuvers, rolls, accelerations, and loops.

Bruce eyed the fuel-indicator through the bouncing gyrations. Simone suddenly spun the craft to the right, then straightened as they soared up through fifteen thousand feet. Bruce keyed the mike.

“Starting to get a little short on fuel, General.”

The craft turned nose-down and Bruce suddenly felt weightless; they followed a neat parabolic path. “We used to run our jets through the wringer like this when they were first delivered to the squadron. Except you can’t fly a Smokin’ Rhino like this.”

Bruce clicked twice on the mike. General Simone was referring to the ancient F-4 fighter, which had been the mainstay of Air Force fighters during the sixties and seventies. Its trail of black smoke could be seen from miles away.

Suddenly the fighter turned up, as Simone brought her out of the parabolic path. Simone’s voice came over the intercom.

“Let’s get our feet wet before heading back, Assassin.”

“Rog.”

Simone pulled the fighter into a backward loop. Blue sky melted into black as they rotated around. Bruce felt as though he should be able to see the stars. As they continued to rotate the black sky turned into blue, until Bruce saw the boundary of water with land miles in the distance. They accelerated straight down, screaming through the Mach numbers. When they swept past ten thousand feet, Bruce started calling out the altitude. Simone gave no indication that he knew how high they were.

Seconds passed. Bruce wet his lips.

“Four thousand … three thousand … minimum altitude, General.”

With no response, Bruce called out, “IP has the aircraft.” He pulled back
on the stick and the throttles, trying not to bring them out in too steep of an angle. Simone didn’t say anything—Bruce expected to be blasted by the general for taking away control of the fighter.

The g-indicator rose, moving past six, then seven gs. Bruce grunted, anticipating brownout, but felt no indication even of tunnel vision. The gs dwindled off as he brought the aircraft up. At two hundred feet the jet leveled off. Bruce clicked his mike.

“All right, General?”

Two clicks answered him. “Your aircraft, Assassin.”

Bruce clicked back. “I’ll have to bring it up for ‘feet dry,’ General. Take a last gander before we bring her up to altitude.”

Bruce glanced at the heads-up display, which indicated air speed was right on five hundred knots.

A speck through the cockpit caught his attention—it looked like an old rickety fishing boat, directly ahead of them on the horizon. Bruce immediately broke right and accelerated up. He wasn’t about to capsize the boat.

Overturning a group in a rice paddy was one thing, but sinking a fishing boat miles from shore was an order of magnitude worse.

As they gained altitude, Simone came over the intercom. “That happened to me once years back, Assassin. Never quite forgave myself for strafing an unarmed boat.”

Bruce kept quiet for a moment. Breaking through ten thousand feet, they passed over the beaches on the west side of the island. White sand quickly changed to jungle as they flew toward Clark. Bruce received the necessary clearances as they proceeded on to a landing.

Once down, Bruce removed his helmet and drew in deep breaths of humid air. Clouds covered most of the sky, and a light drizzle had just started to cover the ground.

Simone reached the bottom of the stairs before him. When Bruce climbed down, the general held out a slender ebony hand; his flight suit was soaked with perspiration. He showed evenly spaced teeth when he smiled.

“Thanks, Son.”

Bruce shook his hand. “Thank you, sir—you’re the one who put me through the paces. That was some nice flying.”

Simone picked up his helmet and started for the staff car that waited for him at the edge of the flight line. Sounds of auxiliary power units cranked up in the distance; laughter drifted from a group of airmen playing volleyball on the opposite side of squadron headquarters. Simone nodded for Bruce to follow. Bruce stepped up and kept pace with the general. Simone spoke straight ahead, as if Bruce weren’t even there.

“Flying these jets is a cathartic experience for me; purging my soul of all the humdrum activity that comes with command.” He paused. “Sometimes I think I might even take it too far, Bruce—try to push the limits of what I can do. Some people can’t handle it when I take them up, refuse to fly with me anymore. That’s how I weed out the true pilots.” He stopped and lifted up his sunglasses. He looked Bruce over. “That took balls to take the plane away from me, Bruce. For all your bravado, I think there’s a damn good fighter pilot in you. Stay with it, Son. Don’t let the bullshit get you down and you’ll go far. I’ll see to it.”

“Thank you, sir. Ah, are you all right…? I mean when I took the airplane away? Were you okay then?”

Simone dropped his sunglasses back to his face and growled. “I said it was a test, didn’t I?”

Bruce watched the staff car drive away, the flag with two stars on it waving from the front.

“Well, I’ll be dipped,” he said to no one.

One mile south of Clark AB

Cervante took a final drag on his cigarette before walking over to the HPM weapon. One man was struggling to unfold a dish antenna. The camouflaged parabola unfurled, until it was nearly ten feet across. A collector in the center of the dish stuck out a good three feet. The HPM weapon looked to be nothing more than a delicate dish, a gigantic flower that sat in the middle of the clearing.

As Cervante approached, he could tell that the antenna was only a small part of the weapon. A long pipe protruded from an array of capacitor banks. The pipe was connected to the antenna through a convoluted series of fittings—“mode converters,” the operating manual had called them. From what Cervante understood, the weapon produced microwaves that were a million times more powerful than those found in microwave ovens; although the microwaves literally “fried” electronic components, the beam quickly spread out and was ineffective over long distances.

Cervante paused before the device. “Is it complete?”

“Except for turning it on.” Pompano emerged from beneath the dish. A motorized pointing and tracking unit held the giant antenna in place. He wiped his hands on already grimy pants.

“The manual does say that the setup time should take no longer than two hours. And knowing the average intelligence of the American troops, I had no fear that you should find the tasking easy.”

Pompano ran a hand over the long metal piping that connected the dish to the capacitor banks. He spoke in a low voice. “Do not underestimate those people, my friend. That cartoon operating manual does not reflect their true capabilities—ask any Iraqi.”

Cervante fished a cigarette out of a pack in his sock. “Whatever. But that does not concern me now. What is important to me is using the weapon. When can we start?”

Pompano was silent for a moment. He answered slowly, “We are ready now. It is not difficult to operate—Barguyo already knows how. Basically, all that is needed is to charge up the capacitors, aim the weapon, and set it off. Once the weapon fires, the capacitors recharge so we can use it again.”

Cervante puffed away quickly. “So we can use it now?”

Pompano shrugged. “Of course.”

Cervante threw down his newly lit cigarette. The prospect of finally having this tool so close to the American base excited him. He felt like cranking the dish straight up, pointing toward the hole in the jungle above.

The distant sound of a jet only intensified the feeling.

It seemed as though the dream he had had over the past years was coming to a head, culminating, frothing to a finish. And all it required was “charging and pointing.” It almost seemed too easy.…

And it was.

Cervante realized that if he were to rush, hurry and set off the weapon, he might be tracked. The device would have to be used selectively—only against those targets that would produce the maximum effect.

Gaining access to a list of incoming aircraft should not prove difficult. Cervante smiled amicably at the old man in front of him.

“Perhaps we should not rush with this device. Can your
sources
obtain a list of incoming flights to the American base? Flights that, if irradiated, would give us maximum political leverage?”

Pompano looked surprised. “I do not see why not.”

“Good. Tomorrow afternoon will be a good time to return here.”

Pompano held up a hand. “I do not know if I can obtain anything for you by then.”