Strike Zone

‘Are you blushing, Sergeant?’ asked the captain.

‘I, uh …’

‘Jeez, if I’d known he was a blusher, I woulda never voted for him,’ said Bison.

‘Me neither,’ said Egg.

‘We need a blusher,’ said Liu.

It was only then that Boston realized he was in.

Dreamland Flighthawk Simulation Hangar 6 September 1997, 0245

Zen knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, and so didn’t even bother going home. He and Breanna had a small apartment – more like a dorm room with a kitchenette – on the base where he could crash when he ran out of energy. But that figured to be a long way off.

He sat in one of the simulation blocks, playing a loop the programmers had designed to mimic the engagement in which his wife and her plane had been shot down. The simulation was a subset of their normal tactical simulations, used not only to train pilots but to help refine the combat library that was an integral part of the Flighthawks’ control computer, C

. By jiggling the parameters a bit, the techies had given Zen a Flighthawk clone that could fly to within seventy-five miles of the Megafortress before being detected.

Actually, depending on the altitude, atmospheric conditions, and the orientation of the planes, it could make it to within fifty miles.

But that was as close as it could get. That meant that the ghost clone couldn’t target the Megafortress. That also meant it couldn’t possibly get much more information about the Megafortress than a standard aircraft would; in fact, almost certainly less.

Which meant that Quicksilver hadn’t been the target. Nor, from the configurations of the battle forces, were the Indians.

That left the Chinese.

So maybe the Indians were using it to spy on the Chinese.

Or attack them?

Zen played the simulation again. This time, he took control of the ghost clone and flew directly over the Chinese fleet. Antiair missiles flashed on, but he was able to drive his attack home. He rolled his wing at twenty thousand feet, slapping his nose down on a direct line for the flight deck on one of the two pocket Chinese carriers.

The mach indicator clicked upward; he nudged the stick and got the bridge in his pipper, fat in the gun sights.

Blam. No more bridge, no more radar, no more flight operations. The clone skipped away unharmed, tucking right as a simulated Chinese MiG launched a pair of heat-seekers in a belated and desperate attempt to extract revenge.

Zen stopped the program. If the clone was an Indian aircraft, then surely it wasn’t outfitted with a weapon. Even simply crashing it into the bridge would have dramatically altered the battle.

So the clone couldn’t have been an Indian plane.

Maybe it was Russian.

‘Or maybe the Chinese spying on themselves,’ he said aloud in derision, frustrated that he couldn’t figure out what was going on.

‘Possible, actually, though unlikely.’

Zen jerked away from the controls. Stoner walked down the long ramp at the far end toward him.

Zen wheeled his chair around. ‘What’s up?’

‘Want to get a beer or something?’

‘No.’

The CIA officer pulled out the chair from the main programmer’s station and sat on it, rolling it forward as Zen approached.

‘You don’t like me, Major,’ said Stoner.

‘Is that relevant?’

‘Probably not.’

Stoner and Breanna had lashed themselves together after bailing out, and it was probably because of that that they survived the fierce storm that had swallowed most of the rest of the crew. Zen didn’t begrudge Stoner that.

If anything, he should be grateful.

And yet.

And yet.

He just didn’t like him.

‘I don’t think it’s Chinese,’ said Stoner. ‘Is that the flight where we got shot down?’

‘More or less.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘You’re not in the picture,’ said Zen, but he rolled back anyway.

The simulation area duplicated a Flighthawk control deck aboard an EB-52, with a double set of configurable displays and dedicated systems readouts. It wasn’t a perfect match – some of the equipment on the side racks was omitted, the floor was cement rather than metal mesh, and most importantly, the station never reacted to turbulence. The simulator that did, located down the hall, required at least one techie to run.

‘We didn’t go in like that,’ said Stoner, watching the screen that showed Quicksilver. ‘Breanna – your wife – held us up and got us away from danger before telling us to bail. There was some other stuff, self-destruct routines.’

‘We skip that. We’re not really interested in the accident, just the ghost clone.’

‘Where is it?’

Zen slapped at the keyboard. The sitrep showed it at seventy-five miles, to the northeast of the Chinese fleet.

‘It’s got to be spying on the Chinese,’ said Stoner. ‘But it doesn’t really make sense that the Indians would send it that far around, does it?’

‘No,’ said Zen.

‘It could be another Chinese unit,’ Stoner said. ‘The admiral in charge of this fleet, Xiam, is not well-liked. But I still don’t think they have the technology.’

‘They spy on themselves?’