They spent the next ten minutes discussing the unthinkable, planning how they would react if they ran into what they were beginning to call delicately “any problems.” Finally, when they both were certain they’d exhausted the short list of possibilities, they fell silent.
“Keep an eye on the radar,” Mitchell said, knowing that every moment he’d been talking to Nevins the man had had his eyes glued to it anyway.
“Roger, sir.”
Mitchell kept his hands poised lightly over the throttle quadrant, his gaze roving over the compartment and the airspace around him in a continuous scan. Old habits were coming back quickly, and he could feel the familiar thrill of adrenaline surging through his body. This might not be a fighter aircraft, but he was still a combat pilot. If there was anything that could be done to keep their passengers safe, it was up to him.
Chan leveled off at 31,000 feet. The MiG-33 felt superbly responsive under his hands, as though she had no need of the powerful engines to remain airborne. This was her natural element, where she belonged. Not sweltering on a hot deck of a merchant ship deck outfitted as a combat, nor baking on the tarmac under the sun. The MiG belonged airborne, far from the surface of the earth.
He would have thought of her as a butterfly, had she not been so deadly. Antiair missiles bristled under her wings, each one with a range of almost sixty miles. They were fire-and-forget weapons, each with miniaturized computers on board as well as a radar seeker that kept them “on target on track” even if the firing platform lost radar contact. Once launched, the missile would proceed to the designated contact, or, if contact lost, the last known position. It would then execute a search pattern, looking for its quarry, until it found an appropriate target or ran out of fuel.
Chan’s mission orders had been relatively simple — prevent any aircraft from entering the airspace around Oahu. Exactly what comprised the interdiction airspace, or how Chan should handle intruding aircraft had not been explicitly defined, but Chan was capable of determining his superior’s orders. When his boss said no incoming aircraft, that’s exactly what he meant.
His fingertips caressed the throttles, feeling the sheer raw power surge through the fuselage and linkages and up to his fingertips. It was by far the sweetest aircraft he’d ever flown, and this airframe in particular was the best of all onboard the ship. He made certain of that, watching carefully the technicians who maintained her, ensuring that no speck of corrosion or grease was allowed to mar her aerodynamically perfect form. Sure, there had been some resentment, criticism from the other pilots, but he made sure his bird got attention first, even if at the expense of others.
A small blip crept onto the edge of his heads-up display. Simultaneously, a soft chime warned him that his radar was holding a new contact. A blip appeared on his HUD. Next to the tactical symbol was the transmission from the contact’s IFF. Passenger liner, according to its modes and codes.
Or was it? The United States had made no secret of its ability to commandeer civilian aircraft to transport troops into troubled areas. An aircraft that size could hold nearly a brigade.
But that was unlikely, wasn’t it? He did the mental calculation quickly. Just barely enough time — if the United States had had any advance warning, had known what was coming, then they could have gotten the troops on the aircraft in San Diego and sent them enroute the Hawaiian Islands.
It wasn’t likely. Every aspect of operational security had been closely monitored. There had been no warning, none. The contact was really what it seemed, a passenger liner plying the airways between mainland and the most distant state.
But what about the position? The contact was well north of the established international airways transiting at speeds and altitudes lower than that allowed for westbound aircraft, according to the briefing that he received before launching.
No, no, part of his mind argued. You know what is happening here.
For most of his life, Chan had been a civilian aircraft pilot himself, and he knew well the dilemma the captain of the IWA flight would be facing. All those passengers, fuel constraints — perhaps he had no choice but to continue on to the Hawaiian Islands, diverting from his original destination tour more distant — and perhaps more secure — location. Yes, that is exactly what Chan himself would have done, had their positions been reversed.
But the obvious wasn’t always the correct answer, was it? Yes, with a bit of warning, the aircraft could very well have been converted to military use. Not that that mattered, in the end. Chan had his orders, and they were explicit. The United States had been warned, and it chose to ignore that warning.
Just then the modes and coats radiating from the contact’s transponder changed to 7777 — the international IFF signal for air distress. At the same time, his ESM gear picked up the weak pulse of the civilian airborne radar. So the airliner had detected him, and was now radiating the distress frequency.
Or trying to deceive me. Pretending to be on an innocent, peaceful mission, even as the pilot ferried troops into Hilo for a short hop over as part of an assault force.
Though Chan understood his superior’s orders, one part of him quailed at what he knew he must do. He knew too well what the missiles under his wing would do to the airliner, no matter how solidly built. It would sheer through metal and the delicate contents like chopsticks through rice. The missile would find a heat source, one of the engines. It would spiral part of the way up the intake, destroy the turbine before it exploded. Shrapnel from both the missile and the engine turbine blades would spin outward, penetrating and shredding the fuselage. Most likely the aircraft would break into two pieces along the line of the initial explosion, probably fracture along its upper surface before the lower edge gave way. It would spill its human contents into the air, and at least a portion of them would still be alive. Many of them would be unconscious within seconds, those who were already seriously injured or dying from the explosion. The oxygen was simply too thin to support life. They would tumble helplessly down toward the surface of the ocean, completely oblivious to what lay below them, accelerating at thirty-two feet per second squared.
The aircraft might remain nominally intact for a few seconds later, but soon the fracture in its sides would meet on the underbelly of the aircraft. Then it would most probably break in half, dumping the contents of the passenger compartment into the air. By then, if not earlier, a spark from metal scraping across metal would ignite the now free-floating cloud of aviation fuel into an all-encompassing fireball.
By then, the true horror would be taking place 10,000 feet below. As it plummeted through the atmosphere down into thicker air, any passengers or flight crew still alive would begin to regain consciousness. They would have seconds, maybe even a full minute, to watch the earth speeding up gracefully toward them, growing ever closer and closer. Swaths of color would become mountains, trees and structures. Their view of the islands would grow smaller and smaller as they descended, until eventually the horizon shrunk down to a few square miles of land. By then, they would be able to see the details clearly. But they would have only seconds to appreciate the view before they smashed into the hard, unyielding earth.
No, better to die as a fighter pilot would, merging with his aircraft and in an instant of eternity, obliterated before he ever knew what was happening.