“Light them up Lieutenant,” Rodriguez ordered, giving O’Hare permission to engage the two F-35s on an intercept course for what they probably still thought was a civilian light plane.
“Yes ma’am, lighting up active targeting radar. I have a lock on two targets. I have tone. Permission to fire?”
“Kill them dead Bunny,” Rodriguez said grimly.
“Fox one through four… Cudas away! Bugging out,” O’Hare said. “Turning on IFF. IFF squawking.” On the tactical screens they watched the simulated missiles track and then wink out as they reached their silicon designated targets and kill probabilities were calculated. Bunny couldn’t keep the satisfaction out of her voice as numbers flashed on the screen. “Ground target kill confirmed, air target kills confirmed. All yours sir!” Bunny said to Halifax.
Rodriguez watched Bunny’s heads-up display spin again as she rolled her drone on its back and bullied it down to treetop height at a speed sure to rip the crowns off the trees it was blasting over.
Halifax sucked a big breath through his cheeks, then winked at Rodriguez.
“Eielson tower, this is US Navy Commander Justin Halifax of Navy unit NCTAMS-A4. You have just been put through a Pentagon authorized exercise. My F-47 Fantom strike fighter just successfully fired a nuclear-armed hypersonic missile at your control tower. You are dead. Everyone within a twenty-mile radius of your base is dead. The two pilots wandering through the sky toward an intercept with my Fantom, wondering what the hell just happened, are also dead. I’m terribly sorry Eielson. I have a hard time imagining what s-hole they might post you to that’s worse than Eielson Air Force base, so let’s just agree I did you a favor. Please acknowledge.”
“This is Eielson tower. Message received. Screw you Navy.”
“Confirmed Eielson, my respects to your commanding officer. Rest in Peace. Halifax out.” He grinned and patted Bunny on her shoulder. “Nice job officers. I’m going topside. The fun is just starting.”
Airman Racine, like everyone around him, was staring dumbfounded at the grey dawn sky as if it had answers for him.
He was still trying to process what had happened. It had seemed like everything had happened at once, so trying to remember it was like trying to recreate a crime scene.
First, the screaming warning tone coming out of his command console. He had taken a second to realize what it was, before he half stood and turned to Bruning with a frown. “Missile inbound?” He looked back at his screen. “Simulation, Sir!”
“Oh shit,” Bruning said, going pale. His tablet fell from his fingers.
“Attack Radar!” the voice of the flight leader of the F-35 patrol screamed over the tower audio system. “Eielson we are being actively tracked by radar. Missiles inbound! Filial 4, deploy countermeasures! Break low!”
Racine bent to his screen, looking for the missile tracks on his monitor. There! “Simulated Sir!” he yelled. “It’s all a simulation!”
Bruning put his hand to his forehead and reached for the comms button at his throat.
On the screen in front of him, nothing made sense to Airman Racine. He watched as the blip designating the civilian light aircraft suddenly changed color and flashed a US Navy IFF code, accelerated to mach 1.5 and then… disappeared.
“Filial leader, stand down, I repeat stand down, you are seeing simulated launches,” Bruning said. “I repeat, this is Eielson Tower, you have been subjected to a simulated attack.”
“Sir?” Racine asked, looking from Bruning to the other Airman at his console and not seeing any answers. He heard heavy breathing over the tower audio from the fighter pilots as they regained control of their aircraft and their composure. “That civilian flight, it was a Navy…” Racine tried to explain.
“Eielson, you better explain,” came the tight voice of the F-35 flight leader.
Bruning almost spat the words, “Eielson Tower to Filial Leader; an unknown Navy aircraft just fired an air-to-ground missile at us, and then attacked you with air-to-air missiles. Our systems show all launches were executed in simulation mode. That is all I know at this point Captain.”
There was a moment of silence then the voice of the F-35 flight leader came through again, “Give me a vector for an intercept Eielson,” he demanded. “We owe this prick some payback.”
Bruning clicked his fingers at Racine but he just shrugged. “I have nothing sir,” he said. He looked back at his monitor to be sure, but it was gone. “Can’t even confirm an aircraft type, only that it was stealth. It launched, flashed a Navy IFF code, went Mach 1 and then disappeared.”
“Eielson tower to Filial leader, no business for you sir,” Bruning said, sitting down at his keyboard and screen. “The attacking aircraft has gone dark. Got nothing on radar. I’m pulling satellite infrared but that will take time.”
They never heard the fighter pilot’s acerbic response because right then a voice came over the encrypted interservice channel.
“Eielson tower, this is US Navy Commander Justin Halifax…”
In their trailer, Rodriguez watched as Bunny used terrain-following radar to pick her way out of the target area and head for the coast. It would soon be light enough for optical satellites to pick her up and track her using high-speed motion detection algorithms but she no longer cared. The main reason she was trying to stay low and stealthy was to make sure she didn’t get two extremely pissed off Air Force F35s on her tail. She had nothing on her passive sensors, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She had a suspicion those Air Force jet jockeys could be so mad they would even consider putting a missile up the tailpipe of her drone and claim fog of war later.
Once her kite went ‘feet wet’ south of Anchorage she turned it back up the coast toward Little Diomede and gave the AI autonomous control. She leaned back, pulled up her virtual-reality visor and blew air out of her cheeks.
“Are all Australians as crazy as you O’Hare?” Rodriguez asked, letting a little admiration leak into her voice.
“Oh yeah, comes from growing up swimming with sharks, ma’am,” O’Hare grinned.
“If the Russians don’t find this base and wipe it out, then the damn Air Force will, you just made sure of that.”
“They can try ma’am,” Bunny said. “But by then you’ll have twenty Fantoms online for me, right?”
Her adrenaline-fueled smile was infectious and Rodriguez let her enjoy it. “We’ll do our best to keep up, pilot.”
Bunny reached her arms above her head and cracked her fingers, “Thank you ma’am. But that was the easy part. I still have to fly that bugger through a hole in a cliff the size of a carpark entrance and land it in a Pond smaller than the lake in Central Park. There’s no A.I. alive that will fly itself straight at a hole in a wall.”
“My newly won admiration will be sorely tried if you break one of my Fantoms,” Rodriguez warned.
“Define ‘break’ for me Boss,” Bunny quipped.
The recovery was almost as nerve-wracking for Rodriguez as the attack had been for Halifax. Using the low energy radio array buried in the sea floor off Little Diomede, O’Hare could assume manual control of the drone as it made its final approach toward the island. For the last mile the autopilot voice kept intoning, Terrain warning, pull up! Terrain warning, pull up!