“We’re spiked,” said Delaney, meaning that the ground radar had found and locked on the aircraft. It could launch a missile at any time.

“Break it,” said Dog.

“Broke it,” said Delaney. The copilot’s voice had become hoarse.

“Good,” said Dog. “You have the UAV?”

“Not on the scope. Negative.”

“Wes?”

“No transmissions,” said the specialist, who was monitoring the airwaves. “Chinese know we’re here, though. About a million people gunning for us. Battery of FT-2000s antirad missiles trying to find us. Uh, some command problems there.”

The FT-2000 homed in on ECMs and other electromagnetic radiation; it was a real threat to Raven since the best and possibly only way to defeat it would be to turn off the countermeasures and other gear.

They had no decoys aboard.

“Is it up?” Dog asked.

“Doesn’t appear to be.”

“UAV?”

“They don’t seem to see it. They think we’re the threat.”

“Do we have it?”

“Negative,” said Wes.

“If it’s going to Beijing, it’s got a good distance to travel,” said Delaney.

Dog remembered what Jennifer had said about the UAV—more than likely it would fly straight to its target, no fancy stuff in between. He plotted a line to Beijing on his multiuse display.

“If that’s the way we’re going, we’ll never make it,” said Delaney looking at the course he’d laid in.

“We better,” said Dog.

Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

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1545

JEDBARCLAY LOOKEDat the table as the debate continued on whether to alert the Chinese government to what exactly was going on. Raven had just crossed over land, so the incursion itself was evident, but the President’s advisors weren’t sure precisely what if anything to tell the Chinese.

The secretary of state argued that admitting the bomb existed would scuttle the summit before it started.

The President asked if the UAV could be shot down without Chinese help.

Probably, thought Jed—but sooner or later the communists would take out Raven. If that happened first, and the UAV got away, they’d be blamed.

And that would undoubtedly lead to a full-scale nuclear exchange.

One of the Air Force experts was describing the radar and missile defenses in the corridor Raven had entered. He told the President that the Chinese ground defenses were not advanced enough to find, let alone track, the UAV or the Flighthawks. Raven’s onboard ECMs, however, should protect it from most of the missile systems.

Balboa wanted to declare Raven a renegade unit. It wasn’t far from the truth, he argued.

Jed tried to speak but the words died in a mumbled stutter on his tongue.

“What do you think, Jed?” asked the President.

“I-I—”

“I think we can give them a few minutes more,” interrupted the secretary of state. “They’ve never failed us before. This is Dreamland we’re talking about.”

“No!” His voice was so loud it echoed against the paneled walls of the sit room. Everyone around him stopped and looked at him.

“I’m sorry, but not even a Megafortress can survive the gauntlet around Beijing. The multilayered defenses, the f-fact they’re flying in a straight line, and they’re also low on fuel. It’s not going to work.

And the Taiwanese UAV—it’s not as fast as the Flighthawk or the Megafortress but it has a good lead.

It may take another twenty minutes to catch. We don’t know what onb-b-board defenses it m-might have.”

“What’s your advice, Jed?” asked the President.

“Um, uh—”

Jed clenched his fist, trying to get the stutter to go away. “We have to tell the Chinese what’s g-going on.”

“That won’t remove the risk to our people,” said Chastain. “They still may be targeted.”

“We have to tell them everything,” said Jed. “They’ll think we set this up otherwise.”

He looked at the screen, trying to see his boss. What did he think?

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Probably that Jed was a stuttering jerk.

“Jed’s right,” said Freeman.

“Make the connection,” said the President.

Aboard Raven

0350

FROM THIRTY THOUSANDfeet, with no clouds and a starlit night sky, the Chinese countryside looked remarkably peaceful. By day, the heavily populated eastern portions of the country bustled with a booming, rapidly changing economy, but at night the country still looked as it had fifty or sixty years before, largely rural though well populated.

But Zen wasn’t relying merely on the optical feed. His screen was littered with purple blobs showing antiair radars, fingers grabbing for the stealthy little plane. The U/MF could zip right by them for the most part, its body too sleek to be picked up. Raven, however, had to fly a line directly through several of the blobs. It was making full use of its countermeasures to boink the radars. As of yet, no one had fired at them, but Zen knew that was only a matter of time.

A four-ship element of Su-27 fighters, purchased from Russia only a few months before, was bearing down on Raven from the north. Indeed, there were so many boogies in the air at the moment that Zen told the computer to show only those in the flight path or with a better than sixty percent chance of intercepting them.

The Taiwanese UAV had completely disappeared. Zen was sure it was still flying—he was convinced he’d have seen the crash. But where exactly it was, he couldn’t say. The only thing they had to go on was Stoner’s guess that it was headed toward Beijing, and Jennifer’s belief that it would have to fly a fairly straight course once it was out of its mother ship’s control.

“Pricks are calling us killers,” said Wes on the interphone.

He was talking to Dog, but Zen couldn’t help asking what he meant.

“Killer Fortress—they blame us for shooting down the SAR plane a few days ago. That’s what the controllers are saying,” said Wes. “They want us.”

We ought to let the UAV blow up Beijing, Zen thought. These were the same bastards who had put his wife in the hospital, nearly killing her. The same bastards who had killed Fentress and the others. Let them all fry.

Zen tightened his grip on the Flighthawk stick. He nudged Hawk Four further east as a JJ-7, a version of the Chinese-developed MiG-21 ordinarily used as a trainer, darted toward Raven. It fired a heat-seeker from seven miles out—obviously the pilot’s training hadn’t gotten very far—then kept coming.

“Turn off,” Zen told the pilot, speaking on his frequency in English. “If you don’t, I’ll nail you.”

Whether the pilot heard or not, he kept coming. Zen’s targeting screen went from yellow to red as the JJ-7 pulled to within three miles of the Megafortress. Zen pumped thirty rounds into the plane’s engine.

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Fifteen seconds later, the canopy blew off and the pilot hit the silk.

Zen gave the computer Hawk Four, telling it to fly back into the escort position. Then he jumped into Three…

… and saw the dim glow of the Taiwanese UAV’s tailpipe fifteen miles ahead.

DOG SHOVED THEMegafortress hard right as the first wave of Chinese surface-to-air missiles climbed in the air ahead of them. The missiles were the Chinese equivalent of SA-6s and would be easily confused by Raven’s ECMs, but there were a half dozen of them, and with a warhead of just over 175

pounds, they couldn’t be completely ignored. Delaney tracked them and pointed out another barrage of antiair a few miles ahead. Dog swung back west, zigging around the missiles.

“We’re pretty visible up here,” said the copilot. “One of their radar planes is on a line to the east. I don’t think he sees us with his radar—I think he’s homing in on ours.”

“Can we get him with AMRAAM?” Dog asked.