The Tin Man (48 page)

… and before he knew it, Paul’s own knife lashed up and deep into his belly.

Townsend dropped to his knees, clutching his midriff. He watched dumbfounded as Paul McLanahan jiggled the big knife in his shoulder and freed it. There was no blood. Not a drop.

“Ironic, isn’t it, Townsend?” Paul McLanahan asked. He removed his gauntlets, opened the suit front, and shrugged off the left sleeve. Underneath was a dull aluminum prosthesis. It moved like a real arm, but it was definitely not human. It was one of the prototype Sky Masters, Inc. prosthetic arms, attached and activated without any cosmetic enhancements. “I owe you thanks for this,” he said. “Your bloodthirsty attacks gave it to me. I felt sorry
for myself and I told them I didn’t want it, but I’m glad they helped me change my mind. What do you think of this, Colonel?”

But Gregory Townsend was a long, long way from being able to answer.

T
he city does look like it’s getting back to normal,” Wendy McLanahan said to her brother-in-law. Bradley was in the car seat between Patrick and her, and Paul was accompanying them to Sacramento-Mather Jetport to see them off to San Diego. They were all glad to have the last few months behind them.

“Yes and no,” Paul answered, his electronically synthesized voice sounding more natural all the time. “It looks that way on the surface. But the old problems haven’t gone away. I think the wars are just starting up. The biker gangs are still at it, only now they’re vying to fill the void left by the Satan’s Brotherhood. The meth production hasn’t even started to gear up again, and I know the Mexicans are going to come in hard. This whole county’s been hit pretty hard. It’ll take a long time to recover.”

Wendy shook her head. “I still find it almost impossible to believe anyone could cause so much death and devastation simply to create a diversion to cover a robbery—even a huge one.”

“It’s useless to look for rational explanations for his actions—though I admit I keep trying to also,” Patrick said. “Townsend was far crazier than Henri Cazaux was ever rumored to be—he outdid his
ex-boss. And he would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for you, bro.”

“Well, the county owes you big-time for what you and Hal did on the dam, Patrick,” said Paul. “If any more of those gates had’ blown, the loss of life would’ve been much worse. Sacramento was lucky.”

“It’s a good thing they’ll never know exactly what happened up there,” Patrick said. “My name’s been in the Sacramento papers too much as it is. It’s a relief to have it cleared and the charges dropped. I’m ready to go home and leave the town to you.”

“It does feel great to be back,” Paul agreed. “I didn’t think I’d ever be saying this, but I really owe Chief Barona.”

“You’re right. We both do. He sure came through for us in the end. The city’s lucky to have you back as a cop. It really needs you.” But Patrick could see a touch of sadness in his brother’s face. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “No, light duty won’t be the same as being on the street—but you’re back on the payroll, you’re still wearing Dad’s badge, and you’re still out there helping your community. This place really needs that help.”

Paul took the badge out of his pocket and fingered it. “Yeah. That’s true. And who knows? It’ll take time, but maybe down the road I can prove that the arm and the voice synthesizer aren’t problems and I can get switched back to regular duty. I know they’re not.” He sounded more cheerful.

“What’s going to happen to Tom Chandler?” Wendy asked. “That’s not resolved yet, is it?”

“Well, they’re giving him a little consideration because of what he did trying to help Helen,” Paul said. “But he’s still looking at time. We’ll see what kind of man
he
really is when he’s faced with being not a cop but an ex-convict. Actually, I have a feeling
hell rebound. He’s lucky to have survived. A lot of good people died at Townsend’s hands.”

As if on cue, there was a commotion on Placerville Road as they approached the turnoff to Mather Field Road. Amid the sound of sirens, a man ran from a bank with a bag in his hands just as Sacramento County Sheriff’s deputies roared up to the scene. They watched in a kind of slow motion as the robber pulled a gun from his pants and the deputies ducked for cover. Wendy looked at her husband and her brother-in-law. She could read their faces and their minds: The suit is in the trunk; the backpack is charged; I can have it on in minutes …

Then the robber tossed his arms straight up in the air, turned around, and was instantly in custody. No casualties on either side. The brothers sat back and relaxed.

As if by telepathy, Patrick answered Paul’s unspoken question. “Yeah, Hal Briggs and his team are still interested in the BERP technology. But we want to work the kinks out of it before we offer it to anyone. And Jon still wants the airlines to have it to protect cargo compartments.”

“I have a feeling Jon will get whatever he wants,” Paul said with a grin. Then he asked, “And you? Anything different from what you’ve been telling me, Patrick?”

“No. Go home, help raise my son, and think about the future,” Patrick replied. “General Samson at Dreamland still wants me as his vice commander at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, but he’s given me until October to decide whether or not to take the? assignment. Jon and Helen’ll need a lot of help trying to rebuild the company.”

The thought of them made Wendy smile. “It’s so great that they’re a team now,” she said. “I love seeing them so happy together.”

Patrick nodded, but he had something else on his mind. “Bro, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time …”

“You don’t have to tell me, Patrick,” Paul said. “I think I know what kind of things you’ve been doing the past several years—though I’ve got a feeling I’ve only sensed the very tip of the iceberg. But there’s something I want to tell you too. I know how much you like Jon and the company and all, but I think you’re much happier in the Air Force, doing all the cosmic stuff you were doing. You’re a general. Go be a general again. Get out there to your base, wherever the hell it is; march in front of your troops, call them to attention, and lead them. You’re certainly not too old to strap on a jet once in a while and fly a few more bomb runs, but I’ll bet there are some pretty shit-hot kids out there ready to do their part. You’ve just got to teach ’em how it’s done.”

Patrick looked at his brother quizzically. “And how the hell did you get to be so smart, kid?”

“Just trying to be like you, bro,” Paul said. “Just trying to be like you.”

T
he Sky Masters, Inc. Gulfstream had departed from Mather Jetport several minutes earlier, bound for San Diego. Paul McLanahan was back on Highway 50, heading to his first afternoon on the job, when his cellular phone rang. When he picked it up, he heard a warbling sound, so he pushed the function and 1 keys to engage the auto-descrambling function on the special Sky Masters cellphone and Waited for the warbling to go away. Then he said, “Hi, Jon.”

“Hi, Paul,” Jon Masters responded. “They’re on their way?”

“Yes.”

“What did Patrick say?”

“Nothing definite,” Paul replied. “I think he wants to take the Air Force job, but he also wants to give being a dad a try. My feeling is he’ll come back to work for you for a few months, but he’s not going to let October come and go without some hard soul-searching.”

“I thought so,” Jon said. “Listen, I have some mods I want to try on your arm-and-shoulder prosthesis. I’ll be back out your way next week. Should only take a couple of hours over two or three nights. You won’t miss any work.”

“What kind of mods?”

“Oh, I think you’ll like them,” Jon replied. “A bit better interface with the suit, some weapon-control functions I want to try.”

“What about the suit itself?” Paul asked.

“I’ll bring the latest version along with me,” Jon said. “A bit better slow-penetration protection, better power-management functions and readouts, some different features to try to bring the weapon systems on board.”

“Good,” Paul said. “My office has been receiving a lot of new information on a resurgence of meth producers moving into the state, and especially in the north. I have a feeling the Tin Man needs to get out on the street and countryside a bit more.”

“The National Interagency Counterdrug Strike Force out of San Luis Obispo has an operation that I think might be perfect for you,” Jon said. “Are you familiar with NICI?”

“Of course,” Paul said. NICI, located on the central coast of California, was a combined federal, state, and local law-enforcement training-and-education center where members of the military, federal agencies, police units, and district attorneys came together to learn the latest about the illegal
drug trade and how all the different antinarcotics agencies could work together more effectively. What was not widely known was that every year NICI took the best and the brightest one percent of its thousands of graduates and formed a strike team that ran actual counterdrug operations throughout the United States. “I can’t wait to get started.”

“You give the word and your support team will be rolling and ready to go,” Jon Masters said.

“You’ve got the word, Jon,” said the new Tin Man. “You’ve got the word.”

DALE BROWN
is a former captain in the U.S. Air Force. He lives in Nevada, where
he
can often be found high in the sky, piloting his own plane. He is the author of over a dozen novels.

LOOK FOR DALE BROWN’S
TECHNOTHRILLER

BATTLE BORN

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I
n recent months, Ch’unchon Air Base had been placed on alert at least once a day. So when the Klaxon sounded that night, the crews acted as if the alert was planned—they ran to their planes and prepared to launch their fighters with surprising calm.

As South Korea’s northernmost air defense installation, less than thirty miles from the Demilitarized Zone and about one hundred miles from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, Ch’unchon would always be one of the first to react to any incursion by North Korean attackers. Ch’unchon had a mixed fleet of aircraft. The primary air defense weapon was the F-16K, license-built in South Korea by a conglomerate of Korean heavy equipment manufacturers. The fighters were designed to respond to a massive invasion force, and so carried only one centerline external fuel tank, but it carried two radar-guided AIM-120 AMRAAMs (Advanced Medium-Range Air to Air Missiles) and eight AIM-9M Sidewinder short-range heat-seeking missiles, plus two hundred rounds for the 20-millimeter cannon. No less than twelve F-16Ks pulled around-the-clock alert at Ch’unchon.

The base’s fleet also included a number of French-built Mirage F1 fighters, American-built F-5 fighters for daylight intercepts—the North Korean Air Force was ill-equipped to fight at night—and American-built F-4E Phantom jets for both bombing and air defense work. The alert fleet of twelve F-4s were loaded with high-explosive and incendiary “firestorm” bombs specifically targeted for low-level, high-speed bombing raids of key selected North Korean targets should the expected—many said inevitable—invasion from the north take place.

All alert crews, fighters and bombers, responded to their planes, started engines, and monitored the air defense network. Even though they were in a heightened state of alert, no planes launched. A “launch on alert” could set off an uncontrollable military escalation between North and South in minutes. With engines running, the entire alert force could be in the air in less than two minutes. With planes taking off every fifteen seconds from the main runway and the two taxiways two by two, that meant twenty-four warplanes in the sky from one base in less time than it took a high-speed attacker to fly ten miles.

The crews waited and listened. Was it the invasion they all expected? Was this finally the big showdown between the Communists and the South?

“Unidentified aircraft heading south at three-four-zero degrees bearing from Ch’unchon, fifteen miles, you are in danger of crossing the Demilitarized Zone at your present heading and airspeed,” the South Korean air defense controller warned. “This is your final warning. If you cross restricted airspace, you will be fired upon. Unidentified aircraft, turn north immediately or you will be fired upon.” At that same moment, two green lights
flashed on the flight-line ready board—the first two South Korean F-16s had launch clearance.

As soon as the F-l6s were airborne, the lead pilot switched his wingman to the air defense controller’s call-up frequency. “Sapphire Command, Tiger Flight of two, passing three thousand, check.”

“Two,” his wingman replied.

“Tiger Flight, Sapphire Command reads you loud and clear,” the controller responded. “Switch to blue seven.”

“Tiger Flight going to blue seven, now.” After receiving a curt “Two” from his wingman—good wingmen will answer all calls with little more than their position in the formation—the two pilots changed over to a secure HAVE QUICK radio frequency. The channel “hopped” to different frequencies at irregular intervals, which made it difficult for outsiders to eavesdrop. “Sapphire, Tiger Flight with you passing four thousand, check.”

“Two.”

“Tiger Flight, this is Sapphire Control, read you loud and clear,” the air defense controller responded, his voice now twisted and slightly garbled by the computer-controlled frequency-hopping algorithm. “Say position from Solar.”

The lead pilot flipped his navigation system to the Solar waypoint, an imaginary point from which they could give position reports without revealing their position to outsiders. “Tiger Flight is zero-six-three degrees bearing and one-niner miles from Solar.”

“Roger, Tiger Flight. Fly heading two-niner five and take base plus one-four.” Base altitude today was ten thousand feet, so the F-16s started a climb to twenty-four thousand feet. A few minutes later, when the F-16s were less than twenty miles from the DMZ, the controller called, “Linear.”

The lead F-16 pilot activated his APG-66 attack radar, and seconds later the radar locked onto a target directly off the nose. “Tiger Flight is tied on, bogey bearing two-niner-seven, range thirty-two, low, speed three-zero-zero.”

“Tiger Flight, that’s your bogey,” the controller replied.

The F-16’s APG-66 pulse-Doppler radar could track several targets simultaneously, but just for good measure the lead ROK pilot broke lock on the target and let the radar scan the sky again. No more targets. A lone invader from the north? The North rarely flew single-ship. A tight formation of many invaders? The Communist flyers were not known for their formation flying skills in daytime, and they rarely flew at all at night, especially in formation.

But the ROK pilot had learned never to make safe assumptions. It was always better to assume there were numerous attackers out there. “Tiger Flight, tactical spread, now.”

“Two.” The second F-16 left his leader’s right wingtip and spread out several hundred feet laterally and two hundred feet above, close enough to keep his leader in sight in the darkness but still be able to move and react quickly if the tactical situation changed. The North pilot might be able to see two targets on his radar screen—if he bothered to turn his radar on. So far, there was not one squeak from the threat-warning receiver, meaning the Communist pilot was not using his attack radar. Some of the North’s advanced J-7 and MiG-29 fighters purchased from China had infrared-tracking devices and infrared-homing missiles, so a radar wasn’t necessary close in, but it was still very strange for an attacker to charge blindly into enemy territory without using radar.

The target continued across the DMZ without the slightest change in airspeed, altitude, or heading. The Communists had just committed an overt act of war, breaking the fragile truce.

The second Korean War was under way.

To the ROK pilot, this was not just an act of war—this was an act of barbarism. The two nations had been struggling for years to make peace and eventually reunite their two countries. Covert probes by North Korean special forces and provocative but nonaggressive border incidents, meant to trip the South into reacting with force for propaganda purposes, were bad enough. But this was a deliberate air attack profile.

There was plenty of mutual distrust to go around. The South was accused of building up an invasion force by buying or license-building American fighters, warships, antiaircraft systems, radars, and high-tech precision-guided weapons. The North was accused of continuing spy missions and deploying improved surface-to-surface missile systems, capable of bombarding Seoul with chemical, biological, or even nuclear warheads. Everyone knew the arms race between the two countries had to stop, but neither side wanted to make the first substantial move.

Both nations tried baby steps toward peace. The North agreed to dismantle its breeder nuclear reactors in favor of light-water reactors, less capable of producing weapons-grade nuclear material. The West promised huge grants of cooking and heating oil so the North would not be tempted to trade weapons for oil from unfriendly Middle East nations such as Iran. The South canceled joint U.S. and Japanese military maneuvers, removed Patriot and Rapier air defense systems from the DMZ, and reduced U.S. military presence to less than ten thousand troops. But the distrust continued.

The ROK pilot wanted nothing more than to have the entire Korean Peninsula reunited once again—under a Korean, not a foreign, flag. That had been the dream of all Koreans since the Chinese and Japanese occupations. But what he wanted didn’t matter right now. Right now, his homeland was under attack, and it was his sacred responsibility to stop it.

The F-16 pilot scanned an authentication encoder-decoder card strapped to his left thigh. Even though they were on a secure frequency and had already verified each other’s identities, they were entering a critical phase of this mission. Careful coordination and verification was an absolute must. The authenticator card was changed every twelve hours and would provide positive command authentication for all upcoming orders: “Sapphire Command, this is Tiger Flight, authenticate tango-alpha. Over.”

“Sapphire authenticates alpha.”

“Authentication received and verified. Tiger Flight requests final intercept instructions.”

“Stand by, Tiger Flight,” the controller responded. The wait was not that long. “Tiger Flight, you are ordered to attempt to make visual contact to verify the target’s identity. If it is a hostile aircraft, or if identification is not possible, you are instructed to attempt to force the aircraft to land at a Category Charlie, Delta, Echo, or Foxtrot airfield, military or civilian. If the hostile will not respond, or if you are approaching any Category Bravo airspace, you are authorized to destroy the hostile aircraft.” The controller read the current date-time group and authentication code, and it matched.

The F-16 lead pilot called up the coordinates of the closest Category Bravo airspace—which happened to be Seoul itself. They were only fifty miles
north of the edge of the thirty-mile buffer zone around the South Korean capital. At their current airspeed, the F-16 pilot had only about seven minutes to convince this Communist invader to turn around or land before he had to shoot him out of the sky.

The ROK flight leader tried the radio first. In Korean, then broken Chinese, he radioed, “Unidentified aircraft seventy-eight miles northeast of Seoul, this is the Republic of Korea air defense flight leader. You have violated restricted airspace. I have you in sight and am prepared to destroy you if you do not reverse course immediately. I warn you to reverse course
now.”
No response. He tried the universal emergency frequencies on UHF, VHF, and HF channels as well as several known North Korean fighter common frequencies, but got no response.

It took two minutes for the F-16 pilot, with his wingman flying high cover position, to maneuver alongside the hostile. Thankfully, it was only a single plane, not an entire attack formation. It was easy to visually intercept the intruder because he had all of his outside navigation and anticollision lights on—and, the ROK pilot soon realized with surprise, he had his landing gear and takeoff flaps still down too! This pilot had launched and flown hundreds of miles with his gear and flaps down—he was surely sucking, fuel at an enormous rate, and at over three hundred knots had probably overstressed them both to the breaking point. The ROK F-16s were equipped with a three-thousand-candlepower spotlight on the left side of the plane, and when he was close enough to see the plane’s shadowy outline in the darkness, he flicked it on.

“Sapphire, this is Tiger Flight Lead, I have visual contact on the hostile,” the F-16 pilot reported on the secure HAVE QUICK channel. “It appears to be
an A-5 Qian attack plane.” The A-5 was a Chinese-made attack plane, a thirty-year-old copy of the ancient Soviet Su-7 attack fighter. It was a mainstay of the North Korean People’s Air Army. “Configuration as follows: single engine, single pilot, small cylindrical fuselage, with short delta wings, a large nose intake, and a small radome in the center of the intake. I see a red and blue flag of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on the side, along with a tail code ‘WS’ and number one-one-four.” The “CH” stood for Ch’ongjin, a North Korean air attack base.

Ch’ongjin was known to have large stores of chemical and possibly nuclear weapons.

“The A-5 is carrying three external stores: one one-hundred-deciliter centerline fuel tank, and another one-hundred-deciliter fuel tank under each wing.” He steered the searchlight across the weapons, gulped in shock, then added with a barely controlled voice, “Correction, Sapphire, correction. The stores under the wings are not fuel tanks, repeat,
not
fuel tanks. They appear to be gravity weapons, repeat, gravity weapons. I see four purple stripes around the center of the starboard gravity weapon.”

That was the worst possible news. The purple stripes around the bomb, a standard marking in both the Communist Chinese and old Soviet military from which all of North Korea’s weapons came, meant that they were thermonuclear bombs. They were the old-style Yi-241 weapons, disguised to look like fuel tanks—the Chinese and Soviets even once stored them outside secure areas to try to convince Western intelligence analysts that they were not nuclear bombs. But each of these “fuel tanks” had the explosive power of six hundred thousand
tons
of TNT—more than enough to level Seoul or any other city in the world. Because they were considered
unreliable weapons, both were dropped on a single target—if the first one detonated, the second would “fratricide” in the fireball.

“Tiger leader, this is Sapphire, you are instructed to attempt to divert the hostile away from Category Bravo airspace in any way possible,” the controller ordered after a moment’s tense pause. The F-16 pilot could hear the fear quivering in the controller’s voice. “You must not allow the hostile aircraft to close within fifty miles of Category Bravo airspace, but you are instructed to shoot down the hostile only as a last resort.” The reasoning was clear: if he put a missile into the A-5, at best the explosion would scatter nuclear material; at worst, the devices could detonate, causing widespread destruction. The ex-Chinese, ex-Soviet weapons did not have the numerous safety features of Western nuclear devices—they were designed to explode,
not
designed to save themselves.

“Tiger Flight copies,” the leader acknowledged. “Check.”

“Two copies,” his wingman responded immediately. With the safety radius now increased to fifty miles, they had less than three minutes to get this intruder turned around.