‘What boat goes that fast? Cigarette speed boat?’
‘Never heard of one even half that fast. Has to be a plane, but according to the radar it’s at three feet.’
‘Three feet?’
‘I know it’s weird,’ added Deci, ‘but it’s a live contact. The computer has never seen it before.’
‘I’ll bet.’ Breanna flipped into Mack’s circuit. ‘Brunei Dragon One, we have an odd contact you might want to know about,’ she said. ‘Indications are it’s a plane flying very low, but it may be a weird radar bounce off a boat of some sort. Moving to the east, northeast at a very good clip. You might want to check it out.’
‘Give me a vector,’ he snapped.
Clean, throttle lashed to the last stop, and a good wind at its back, the manual said the A-37B Dragonfly could do 440 knots.
Mack had it nudging 470 as he tracked in the direction Breanna had fed him, running up the coastline. He was about thirty seconds from the spot where she’d gotten the first contact – just a hair under four miles – but he had nothing on his radar and couldn’t see anything, either.
He leaned his head far forward, as if the few inches of extra distance would help his eyes filter away the shadows and mist.
‘Dragon One to Jersey – yo, Breanna, where is this thing?’
‘Stand by.’
She came back again with a GPS location.
‘Hey, I’m in the Stone Age, remember? I don’t have a GPS locator on board.’
‘Sorry – you look like you’re almost on top of it. Two miles.’
Mack reached for the throttle, easing off on his speed. The shoreline was an irregular black haze to his right.
Sixty seconds later, Breanna announced that they had lost it. ‘Stand by,’ she added.
Stand by yourself, he thought. He had let his altitude slip to two thousand feet. He was passing just over a marina, but moving too fast to sort out what he saw.
‘Pleasure boat,’ he said with disgust, snapping the speak button as he tucked into a bank to check it out. ‘Hey, Jersey girl – did you have me chase a pleasure boat? There’s a marina down here.’
‘You know a pleasure boat that goes three hundred knots? Stand by. We’re looking for it.’
Mack circled around. There were at least two dozen boats in the marina, but no airplanes.
‘Not a seaplane?’ he asked, though he didn’t see one.
‘Seaplane? If so the computer couldn’t find it on its index. Hold on.’
Mack pulled out the large area map from his kneeboard and unfolded it, checking to see where he was.
‘Dragon One, we have it twenty-five miles to your northeast, along the coast,’ said Breanna over the radio.
‘Your sure about that, Jersey?’
‘We’re as sure as – stand by,’ she added, a note of disgust creeping into her voice.
Mack started a turn in the direction she had advised, but as he came to the new course Breanna told him they had lost the contact completely.
‘Right,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘We’re trying.’
‘I’m looking at empty ocean.’
‘You’re right on the vector.’
She added that the Brunei authorities had just reported a ship underway to rescue survivors at the stricken ship, which had now been identified as a freighter due to dock at 6 A.M. in Brunei. Mack flew about ten miles to the east-northeast, then banked into an orbit fifteen hundred feet over the waves, riding a curlicue as he looked for Breanna’s contact. He began heading toward the masts of a group of fishing vessels further northward on the shore.
‘Flight Jersey to Dragon One,’ said the airborne radar operator aboard the EB-52. ‘Report: Two Su-27s coming in your direction from the south. Report: bearing one-six-five. Report …’
Mack listened incredulously to the contact information. The two planes were over Malaysian territory, on a course that would take them out over Mack’s position. But Malaysia didn’t have any Su-27s, and all eighteen of their MiG-29s were over at Subang, a good thousand miles away. As the MiGs were the most capable planes in the region, two spies at the airport there were paid good money by the prince to keep them informed.
Two others were paid so-so money. All of the air bases operated by Indonesia and Malaysia, including the two Malaysian and one Indonesian fields on Borneo, were covered around the clock by spies. Mack surely would have known by now if these planes were operating there.
Whoever they belonged to, they were moving at a good clip – the radar operator warned that they were topping six hundred knots.
‘We’re sure they’re not MiGs?’ asked Mack.
‘Yes, Minister. We’re sure.’
‘Yeah, those are definitely Su-27s, and they’re hot,’ confirmed Deci.
‘Roger that,’ said Mack, pulling back on his stick and climbing off the deck.
Breanna did a quick run through the screens that showed how the Megafortress was performing, and then brought up the fuel matrix, which gave the pilots a set of calculations showing how long they could stay up with the fuel remaining in their tanks. The Megafortress computer system could make the predictions seem terribly precise – 42.35 minutes if they spent it doing these orbits and then headed straight home – but in reality fuel management remained more art than science. The screen gave the pilots several sets of reasonable guesses based on stock mission profiles as well as the programmed mission. It could also make calculations based on data inputted. Breanna brought a ‘profile map’ up at the side of the touchscreen and quickly built a scenario from it by tapping a few options. They could climb to twenty-five thousand feet, engage the two Sukhois, and then slide back home.
Just.
Not that they could actually engage the Sukhois. They weren’t carrying any anti-air missiles. They didn’t have any shells for the Stinger air-mine tail weapon; the shrapnel discs were in relatively short supply and weren’t needed for training.
‘Captain, what are your intentions regarding the Sukhois?’ she asked the Megafortress pilot.
He replied that he would remain on station until Mack gave him other orders. It wasn’t the wrong response, exactly, but it wasn’t exactly the sort of answer that was going to set the world on fire.
‘Should we take the initiative and ask the minister what he wants us to do?’ she said, her patience starting to slip a little. ‘Maybe suggest we try and establish contact with the bogeys and get them to declare their intent? Maybe prepare an offensive or defensive posture?’
‘By all means,’ answered the pilot. ‘But the minister may prefer to deal with them himself.’
‘The A-37B is a sitting duck,’ she said.
To her surprise, the pilot chuckled. ‘The minister would not lose an engagement,’ he said.
‘He’s unarmed.’
The pilot chuckled again, his laughter implying that she didn’t understand the laws of physics – or Mack Smith. The minister could not be shot down, and anyone foolish enough to attack him would get their comeuppance – even if they were flying cutting-edge interceptors and he was in an unarmed plane designed as a trainer.
Breanna,