Strike Force

“Check switches,” came the reply on the channel, a warning that she was broadcasting in the clear on an open frequency.

“You need to give them the code-word for…”

“Screw that, Boomer,” Ann said. On the radio again she said, “Mailman, just put the pedal to the metal and get the hell down here now ’cuz we’re skosh on gas. You copy?”

There was a slight pause; then: “We copy, Sunshine. Pushing it up.” Within five minutes, the fuel warning went away as the tanker accelerated and the rendezvous point moved farther south. Once the two aircraft were twenty-five miles apart, the KC-77 tanker started a left turn heading north along the center of the Caspian Sea, rolling out precisely in front and a thousand feet above the Black Stallion in a picture-perfect point-parallel rendezvous.

“Genesis to Sunshine,” Boomer heard on his encrypted satellite transceiver.

“It’s God on GUARD,” he quipped. “Go ahead, Genesis.”

“Just a reminder: don’t zoom past the tanker on this one,” Patrick McLanahan said. “You’ll have one chance to plug him.”

“Do I have to have someone back home looking over my shoulder from now on?” he asked.

“That’s affirmative, Boomer,” Patrick responded. “Get used to it.”

“Roger that.”

The faster rejoin and precision maneuver was sorely needed, because as the refueling nozzle made contact with the XR-A9’s receptacle, the “FUEL CRITICAL” indication sounded again — they had less than ten minutes’ worth of fuel remaining. “Mailman has contact,” Boomer and Ann heard through the boom intercom.

“Sunshine has contact and shows fuel flow,” Ann acknowledged. “You’re a very welcome sight, boys. Drinks are on me back home.”

“We’re a Cabernet crew, ma’am,” the tanker pilot said.

“The copilot doesn’t like being called ‘ma’am,’” Boomer said. “Now you owe her a shot.”

“The tanker crew’s money’s no good in any bar I’m sitting in,” Ann said. “Just keep the gas coming.”

Hunter Noble rejoined with the tanker once more to top off, turned east over the Caspian Sea, and blasted the Black Stallion over Kazakhstan.

“Boomer, I’m altering your flight plan for your return,” Patrick radioed. “Instead of heading southeast and doing two orbits to line up for landing back at Dreamland, I’m going to have you go north direct for home. I want the Black Stallion turned and ready for another mission ASAP.”

“Fine with me, sir,” the aircraft commander replied. He called up the flight plan being datalinked to his flight control computers and made sure it was being properly received and processed.

“You sure you want to do this, General?” Ann Page asked. “This takes us directly over Russia. We’re only at forty thousand feet now. According to the flight plan we’ll still be below one hundred K and Mach five when we cross the border.”

“I know — that’s well within the lethal envelope of Russian SAMS,” Patrick said. “There’s only one known SA-12B brigade in our flight path, near Omsk. You’ll be at one hundred sixty K altitude and Mach five point one and accelerating when you get close to the known missile batteries. Missile flight time is at least ninety seconds. With that much time you should be out of the missile’s envelope by the time it reaches you.”

Boomer looked at the rear-view monitor in the cockpit and saw Ann Page looking at him through the camera, the doubt evident in both their eyes. “Cutting it awfully close, aren’t you, General?” she asked.

“The problem is initiating the return over Kazakhstan and the lack of secure recovery bases in the north,” Patrick responded. Many of the military air bases in Alaska, Washington State, Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota were destroyed by the Russian Air Force four years earlier — it would be many years, possibly even decades, before they were inhabitable again. “Flying south over safer territory means an extra orbit, which reduces your reserves, which means bringing you down early at a civilian airfield near Seattle, Vancouver, or Calgary. I’ll do it if necessary, but I’d like to have you land at a military base if possible.

“My calculations show you’ll be out of the SA-12 envelope by the time the missile reaches you — it’ll be close, but you’ll be out,” Patrick went on. “If they fire the less-capable A-model missile or don’t react very quickly you’ll be even safer, but you’ll be OK even going against the B-model SA-12 fired within seconds of coming in range. As always, the final decision is up to you guys. I’ve already put you through a lot on this mission.”

“I’ll say,” Boomer muttered on intercom.

“Unfortunately, you only have a few more seconds to decide,” Patrick said.

“Figures.” He clicked on the radio: “Stand by, General.” He looked at the rear cockpit monitor again into his mission commander’s eyes. “What do you say, Ann?” he asked on intercom.

“I know McLanahan by reputation only — he hired me to help with the program just a few days ago, and I’ve only met with him twice,” she said. “I know he has a reputation of doing what he thinks best, which is not necessarily what his superior officers want.”

“Checks.”