Aboard Quicksilver
1835
In order to get the air mines where Chris wanted them, Breanna had to practically stand the Megafortress on its tail, fighting all of Newton’s laws—not to mention those of common sense. Breanna barely managed to control the big plane, sliding sideways across the waves at a mere thousand feet. She finally had to let her left wing sail downward; the front windscreen filled with blue before she could recover.
“Got a couple of shots on their bow,” said Chris. His helmet was touching the display where the Stinger target box was displayed. “I don’t think we hurt anybody. They all ran aft. Ship’s dead in the water, eight, ten feet from the buoy.”
“Get ready to launch,” said Bree calmly.
“Okay, right.”
“Fentress?” she asked.
“Not as much static. Geez, those bullets make a hell of a racket hitting the water. You should see them on the display screen—look like volcanoes erupting on top of you, then there’s this wild crisscross pattern in different shades of red and blue. Very 1960s. I had to hit the manual filter and—”
Fentress stopped abruptly.
“We’re at launch point,” said Chris.
“Wait,” she told him. “Fentress? Kevin? You okay down there?”
“Torpedoes in the water.”
“What?”
“Back by the carrier,” said Fentress. “Have two, three warning blocks.”
“Launch the buoy,” she told Chris. “Kevin. We’re launching. You sure about the torpedoes?”
“Yes ma’am. Have another sub.”
“Give the coordinates to Chris as soon as you can. Buoys first.”
Aboard the Dragon ship in the South China Sea
1838
Realizing his presence made the men nervous, Chen Lo Fann had refrained from coming into the operator’s suite until the robot planes were approaching the fleet. Now, his place was in this room.
They rose as one as he entered, bowing stiffly. After he returned their salute, they went back to what they were doing.
The long LCD screen at the center of the room was gray. He started at it, wondering why he had not been told of the malfunction, before realizing he was seeing clouds.
“We will descend from the clouds in thirty seconds,” said Professor Ai. Overcoming the mishap with the crane seemed somehow to have calmed him, or at least drained some of his energy. He spoke slowly now, more himself. “The carriers will be in the far corner to your left. There is one Sukhoi approaching, but its radar has not detected us.”
“At what point will it do so?” asked Chen.
“We are not sure. We will be ready in any event.”
“Yes,” said Chen.
One of the radio operators at the far corner of the room held up his hand. “There is a report the Megafortress is firing on our ship near its probe,” said the man.
Chen considered this. “Have them back away. Tell them to leave the area.”
The robot supplying the video feed finally broke through the cloud bank. The operator adjusted the picture, compensating for the fading light. The Chinese aircraft carrier sat like a large, gray cow at the top of the screen.
His robot was equipped with two small missiles, adapted from antitank weapons. They would do almost no damage on a target so vast. The thought occurred to him that he could crash his plane into the carrier, it would not sink, but the fire would kill many men.
Relatives of his perhaps; much of his family had not escaped the Communists, and he knew that a few were now in their Navy. Fortune’s irony.
“The Indian planes?” he asked Professor Ai.
“They are still in their patrol pattern to the south.”
“Look!” said one of the men at the console. He jumped to his feet and pointed at the LCD screen.
Something blossomed beyond the Chinese aircraft carrier, the dull bud of an early spring flower.
There were two other wakes approaching it.
Torpedoes. Either they had come from the Indian submarine that had failed earlier, or from the American.
It must have been an American. For surely, the Indian was gone by now.
“Halt the attack,” said Chen Lo Fann, his satisfaction so deep that he could not possibly hide it. “Stay only close enough to observe the destruction, but remain undetected if possible.”
Aboard the Quicksilver
1838
“Can we stop the torpedoes?” Bree asked.
“No way,” said Chris.
“They see them,” said Collins. “They’re trying to get out of the way. Too late.”
There was an explosion in the water, a geyser back near the carrier force. But Breanna was too busy to watch it.