Armageddon (23 page)

“Fire Sparrow.”

“
Launching.”

Off the coast of Brunei
0851

Too late, Dazhou realized he had misjudged his enemy. The big aircraft quickly ducked his missiles and locked its radar on him.

“Evasive maneuvers,” the captain said calmly, moving to the helm. “Active and passive countermeasures. Everything we have.” He gave the order to increase speed to maximum power.

The
Barracuda
slammed hard to the left and then the right. They thundered over the waves, tucking back to the south and picking up speed.

They were just touching two hundred when the missile struck the rear quarter of the craft.

Aboard
Jersey,
off the coast of Brunei
0854

“Missile struck the target,” said Jalan. “Starboard side at the rear.”

Mack put the Megafortress into a shallow dive, still wary. The ship was so strange that it could easily have some other trick up its sleeve—a laser anti-aircraft weapon, perhaps.

“He’s dead in the water,” reported Jalan as Mack banked a mile and a half from it. “Stern is settling. I think he’s taking on water.”

If he had had another missile loaded, Mack would have finished the stinker off. He debated getting in close and firing the airmines at it, but the weapon was designed to shred jet engines moving at high speed; it wasn’t particularly good at punching holes in anything thicker than an airplane fuselage.

And besides, he was down to three engines, had wing damage, and his fuel tanks contained a heck of lot more fumes than liquid.

“Tell the navy where that thing is,” Mack told Jalan. “We’re going home.”

“Yes, Minister.”

“And one other thing, Jalan.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You can call me Mack from now on. You’ve earned it.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Minister.”

Off the coast of Brunei
0856

The disadvantage of a small crew became clear as Dazhou struggled to deal with the damage to the vessel. Automated pumps began bailing the compartments in the damaged section, and there seemed no question of sinking, but some of the control lines had been severed and even with its redundancies the
Barracuda
could no longer be steered. Two men crawled out through the access tunnel and began replacing burned out circuits and breakers. Dazhou and another of his men went topside to survey the physical damage, walking gingerly along the recessed decking at the top. The winglets were intact but one of the engines had been destroyed; the top of the exhaust outlet seemed charred, as if it had been on fire. The ship sat with its stem in the waves, and some of the large panels were buckled from the explosion. Fortunately, the
Barracuda
had been moving away from the missile when its proximity fuse exploded the warhead; the blow had been more of an angled, glancing shot than a piercing direct hit.

That was small consolation at the moment. Dazhou had no option now except to call for help.

At least the Megafortress was gone.

Fools, thought Dazhou. They would meet again—and this time, he would be much better prepared.

Aboard
Jersey,
approaching Brunei IAP
0902

“This is Mack Smith aboard Brunei EB-52 One,
Jersey.
We are declaring a fuel emergency,” Mack repeated for the fifth or sixth time as he approached the airfield. “Repeat. I have a fuel emergency. I’m landing.”

“Still no answer from the tower,” said Jalan. “Maybe our radio was damaged in one of the attacks, because I’m not getting anything—no response at all.”

“All right,” said Mack. He had enough fuel to take one pass if he saw someone in the way, but that was it. The radar showed the air was clear, at least. He steadied into the approach, the airfield coming into view.

“Looks clear,” said Jalan.

“Yeah, okay.”

Mack kept expecting something to appear at the last second, even as the wheels hit the concrete. He didn’t relax until they were just about at the end of the long runway.

As they approached their hangar, he realized he didn’t see any of his security teams nearby, or even the maintenance people. In fact, the area looked deserted—none of the Dragonflies was on the ground.

As soon as they stopped, Mack left Jalan and the others to secure the aircraft. He hopped down the ladder, pausing on the Flighthawk deck, where his security team had spent a rather restless flight.

“All right, guys, let’s get the stuff unloaded and see what the situation is,” Mack shouted. One of the men looked a little green around the gills—and had a paper bag in his hand.

Poor guy, Mack thought to himself, lowering the ladder to the runway. He felt a surge of adrenaline, anxious to tell McKenna about his mission.

Too bad she wasn’t much of a looker, he thought as his feet touched the concrete. Hell, she was perfect in every other respect: maybe he should just close his eyes.

“That’s far enough,” said a voice behind him.

Mack, startled, started to turn.

The barrel of an AK47 caught him in the side of the face. A moment later, something hit him hard in the back of the legs. He cursed and reached for his gun.

Then something smacked him on the top of the head. His arms and legs fell limp. He tried to breathe, and found he couldn’t; in the next moment he felt himself falling, the black sky descending over him.

V
R
ESISTANCE

Washington, D.C.
11 October 1997, 2345

JED BARCLAY PUT THE PHONE DOWN AND STARED AT THE desk. He felt a little like a diver who’d come up from a great depth a touch too quickly; the events unfolding in Brunei had left him slightly disoriented. Islamic rebels were in control of the capital and at least two other cities; the sultan was missing, the military was in disarray. The Brunei navy’s two new patrol ships, purchased from Russia within the last six months, had been sunk overnight. There was no word on the whereabouts of the Brunei’s Megafortress. Officially, Malaysia claimed that it had not helped the guerilla forces, but that seemed highly unlikely.

The CIA was preparing a brief on the Islamic terrorists, citing evidence of a new organization involved behind the scenes known as al Qaeda. Funded by a Saudi millionaire, the group was closely connected with the government of Afghanistan, where it had established training camps for terrorists. The head of the group was a man named Osama bin Laden, a fanatic millionaire dedicated to wiping out the Great Satan—America, of course.

Jed had heard of al Qaeda before, of course, and even knew that it had connections with Islamic extremists in Indonesia and Malaysia, but the collapse of Brunei had been nothing short of remarkable. It seemed impossible that a relatively small band of outsiders, no more than ten thousand according to the CIA estimate, had taken over the country. And yet they appeared to have done just that, perhaps succeeding largely because the idea was so outlandish that it didn’t appear possible.

“Jed? Are you ready?”

Jed looked up and saw his boss, Philip Freeman, standing in the doorway.

“Yeah,” said Jed, standing. “I have the latest from Brunei. It’s pretty ugly.”

“How ugly?”

“Capital has definitely fallen. Sultan is missing,” said Jed.

“Sultan is dead?”

“Unsure. Just missing, at this point.”

“Where’s the Megafortress?”

“Not clear. We’ll have a satellite over the country in about thirty-five minutes. The NSA is working on some intercepts as well.”

Freeman nodded grimly. “Come along.”

Jed followed the national security advisor as they walked over to the White House situation room, where the president had asked his military and national security advisors to meet. President Martindale had not yet arrived, and Jed started talking to some of the Pentagon staffers who were standing along the back wall. He quickly realized that he had much more up-to-date information than they did, and one or two had only a vague notion of where the tiny nation was located. Brunei had been far down on nearly everyone’s priority list until today.

“Gentlemen, ladies, thank you for coming at such an ungodly hour,” said the president as he strode abruptly into the room. “I realize I’ve destroyed the weekend for most of you and I apologize. Let’s get started.”

Brenda Kelly, a State Department aide who had just flown back from Brunei, gave a brief overview of the situation there. Several times she emphasized the kingdom’s importance as an oil producer. Jed took over with details about the government’s collapse, finishing with the fact that an ASEAN emergency meeting scheduled for the next morning Brunei time had been postponed an hour ago because of the rapidly changing situation.

“The question is, do we care about Brunei?” said Arthur Chastain, the secretary of defense. Chastain could be blunt, but the comment was brutal even for him. “Brunei is a minor country in a small corner of the world, certainly not worth the expenditure of our blood.”

“You’re wrong,” blurted Jed. “Aside from its importance as an oil producer, it’s important b-both strategically and as a sy-symbol,” said Jed. His stutter had a habit of appearing at the worst possible times; he sped on, knowing the best strategy for dealing with it was to ignore it. “Brunei helps balance Malaysia and Indonesia in the region. It provided a base during the operations against China. It’s been a more stable ally than the Ph-Ph-Philippines, all things considered. And also, these terrorists have to be taken seriously. This is just the start for them. We have to beat them here.”

“They’re just poor rabble-rousers,” said Chastain. “Poverty’s the problem with all of these people.”

“No one is poor in Brunei,” said Kelly.

“And they have the Megafortress,” added Jed. “It is not a weapon we’d want in terrorists’ hands.”

“Absolutely not,” said the president. “At the minimum, we want to take it back or destroy it.”

“And the maximum?” asked Chastain.

“The maximum is what we’re here to discuss,” the president told him.

Dreamland
11 October 1997, 2203

The new orders came just as they were boarding the planes. Dog pulled Danny aside on the apron near the hangar a few feet from the MC-17. Danny’s men—along with two small scout helicopters and Dreamland’s mobile command trailer—were already aboard Dreamland’s version of the versatile McDonnell Douglas cargo plane.

“Brunei’s going all to hell,” Dog told him. ‘The Megafortress is at the International Airport in the capital. Mack Smith can’t be located at the moment. The president wants to make sure the terrorists don’t operate the aircraft.”

“We going to blow it up?” asked Danny.

“It may come to that, depending on the situation,” said Dog. “There’s been some contact with Prince bin Awg, who’s asked for the aircraft to be preserved if not recovered. The president wants us to scope out the situation and destroy the plane only if necessary. I’d like to see exactly what’s going on.”

“What about Deci Gordon?”

“He’s hiding with some people outside the capital. He called into our center a while ago. He seems okay for now. I’ve spoken to Breanna by phone,” Dog added. “She’s in Tokyo. She’ll be joining us in the Philippines.”

Dog explained that, rather than going to Brunei International Airport as they had planned, the Megafortresses and MC-17 would land at a Philippines airfield, using it as a temporary base.

“I’ll take
Pennsylvania
and do a survey of Brunei as soon as we arrive,” continued Dog. “We’ll check the oil platform we were going to use as the LADS base, double-checking that it’s okay. If possible, we’ll operate the helicopters out of there.”

“I don’t know if that’s going to work,” said Danny. “The platform doesn’t have a dedicated helipad.”

“Then we may have to improvise. You told me the structure of the building had been designed for a landing deck, it just wasn’t installed.”

“The plans say that. We’ll have to get in and check it before we can land.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

“If we’re going to get people off the island, we should land directly at the airfield,” said Danny.

“Not until we know what the situation is,” Dog told him. “And I doubt we could hold it with just the Whiplash team”

“Where’s the navy?” asked Danny.

“There’s a carrier group several days away. They won’t be offshore and in a position to conduct operations until the end of next week. This has caught everyone by surprise, including us.

“We’ll get some satellite intelligence over to the MC-17 via the Dreamland network,” added Dog. “It’s daytime over there right now. By the time we get over there with the travel time and time change, it’ll be late at night.”

“Understood,” said Danny. “We’ll try to sleep on the flight over”

Dog was piloting
Pennsylvania,
an AWACS-equipped radar version of the EB-52, which was also carrying two Flighthawk U/MF-3s strapped to her wings. The robot planes would be piloted by Zen, who was already in his specially adapted seat on the Flighthawk control deck on the Megafortress’s lower level. The area had once been used by the B-52’s offensive team; Zen sat roughly where the navigator would have had his post before the aircraft was overhauled.

Kevin McNamara, Dog’s copilot, was going through the preflight checklists with the help of the computer when Dog slipped into the driver’s seat next to him.

“Welcome aboard, Colonel,” said McNamara. “We’re just about ready to give these turbines a twist and see what they can do.”

Across from the
Pennsylvania
sat the
Indianapolis,
getting a last minute check from the ground crew. The
“Indy
“—like
the
“Penn,”
named after a famous battleship—was an almost mirror image of the
Pennsylvania,
with a long snout and a slight bulge for her radar gear about midship.
Indy
had not yet seen action, but the man at the helm, Major Merce Alou, was a veteran of several Dreamland deployments. The two Flighthawk pilots—Starship and Kick, who would each control one U/MF-3—had done themselves proud over the South China Sea and Taiwan barely a month before.