"I'm just a pilot."
"What are you doing here?"
"My job."
"Harris must be running short of staff if he's sending pilots to do a diplomat's job," Tiffanie said, apparently pleased with herself for getting a verbal dagger through a chink in Arnold's suave armor.
"Touche." Arnold laughed. He liked her spunk.
"Do you really believe that the American people are going to tolerate Harris and Kynelty running the government?"
"Like I said… Congress already does."
"What happens to you if this thing unravels?"
"I'll get another job." Arnold shrugged. "What happens to you if it doesn't?"
"It will, sir," she said, her tone uncertain. "It has to. This has never happened before."
"That means that it can't happen now?" Arnold asked.
As they reached the commissary, they heard the sound of a low-flying jet aircraft. Both Aron Arnold and the young petty officer craned their necks, searching the sky for a sight of the plane, but the sound died away.
Chapter 52
"Falcon Three, the bogie is changing direction," Jenna said, the trace of relief in her voice reacting to the fact that Harris was heading away from Camp David.
"Roger that, Falcon Two," Troy confirmed. "But he's coming at you."
As a HAWX Program bird, the Raven was very capable of extreme-high-altitude ops, but Raymond Harris had been flying extremely low to evade his two pursuers. The Raven may have been capable of speeds in excess of Mach 3, but to use that capability would have hampered Harris's ability to put his B61 nuclear weapon on target, so he was also flying well under Mach 1.
"He's trying to gain altitude," Troy shouted as Harris suddenly began climbing. "Let's keep him low!"
"Roger that," Jenna replied.
Had Harris been carrying a conventional weapon, a low-level pass would have been just what the doctor ordered for a perfect strike on the target, but with a nuke, a low-level pass meant that the Raven would have been incinerated along with the victim. The fact that Harris seemed to want to climb indicated that the weapon had not been fused with a delay mechanism.
For Troy and Jenna, their job was to keep Harris low and away from the Catoctin Mountain retreat until they could line up a kill shot.
Getting that kill shot was easier said than done. Only Troy had the use of his gun, and the heat-seeking infrared targeting capability of their AIM-9 Sidewinders worked only so long as there was heat to detect. The Raven, like most recent jet fighters, such as the F-22 Raptor, had suppression systems that physically masked the heat signature of the engines.
Initially, Harris had flown out of Andrews Air Force Base on a north-by-northwest heading that would have taken him more or less straight to Camp David. Had it not been for the two F-16s, he would have come in at about nine thousand feet, released the guided B61, and used the Raven's extreme vertical-acceleration capability to exit the target area without getting cooked.
His plans upset, Harris banked right, heading eastward over the Baltimore metro area, trying to gain altitude while shaking off the two F-16s.
"He's climbing," Jenna said angrily.
"Take a shot," Troy said. "Get on his ass and take a shot."
"Okay… but if I miss, the Sidewinder comes crashing into Baltimore. If I don't, the Raven burns a hole in the city. He knows that… that's why he's flying this way… buying time… buying altitude… figuring I won't shoot."
She accelerated, trying to overtake the Raven, get close and minimize the possibility of a bad shot.
As Harris raced over downtown Baltimore and the broad mouth of the Patapsco River, Jenna closed to within half a mile.
"Closer… dammit… closer."
In the split second that she pondered just thumbing off a Sidewinder anyhow, Harris jinked hard to the right.
If his plan had been to turn south and continue over populated areas, he missed that by a split second. Suddenly, he and Jenna were over Chesapeake Bay, and Troy was there as well. Coming in at a different angle, he had nearly managed to cut Harris off in his turn.
In that turn, the Raven slowed slightly, and Troy could see the boiling yellow back end of the Raven's two engines.
This is as good a shot as I'm going to get, Troy thought to himself, and a Sidewinder ripped off his wingtip.
It seemed like slow motion as the contrail corkscrewed toward the Raven.
Far below, boaters and fishermen on Chesapeake Bay watched the scene above with great amazement. The three jet fighters had been climbing, but were still relatively low, so the noise was earsplitting — just like at an air show.
They watched as the fast jets raced across the sky and as the faster missile snaked its way from one jet toward another.
In that twinkling of an eye that their eyes had to witness the scene, they were aware that this was not an air show — this was life-or-death.
The dart-shaped jet turned just as the contrail reached it, and the trajectories of the two objects diverged.
As quickly as the whole scene in the sky had materialized, the jets were all gone, into the distance and over the horizon.
The contrail remained. With its forward momentum slowed considerably, it arced downward toward the waves of Chesapeake Bay.
For observers who had expected a bang when the thing hit the water, there was only a disappointing splash, a column of white water, and then nothing.
Chapter 53
"Who are you?" Raymond Harris growled.
Nobody answered. Nobody was listening.
He was flying radio silent, answering to no one, because he was Raymond Harris, who answered to no one.
He had climbed into the Raven for a twenty-minute strike mission, planning to be back at the White House by midafternoon, reporting the results. He would tell a world waiting with baited breath that Albert Bacon Fachearon was no more. The weapon chosen to dispense with Fachearon, deliberately chosen by Raymond Harris, would get the attention of everyone and underscore the fact that he and Kynelty meant business.
Soon the Fachearon era would be in ashes — literally. The Transition would have occurred.
In the grand plan of The Transition, the United States would move forward as it was meant to move forward — smoothly, expeditiously, and under the steady, guiding hand of Raymond Harris.
But the plans changed.
The last thing that Harris could have imagined as he began his takeoff roll was tracers racing past his cockpit. "Who are you?" Raymond Harris howled.
Out of nowhere, someone was shooting at him.
Harris, who had flown combat missions going back to the second Gulf War, considered himself a fighter pilot of the first order — even if he was a bit rusty.
Was he really all that rusty?
He had certainly proven himself when he neatly sidestepped that bastard in the F-16 who was shooting at him when he took off.
"Who are you?" Raymond Harris barked.
Where had this F-16 come from?
Wait, there were two.
"Who are you?" Raymond Harris snarled.
Where had they come from?
Somebody was trying to interfere. Had Fachearon somehow called in the U. S. Air Force to aid him? Even so, how had they managed to catch up to the Raven so fast? Just a few seconds sooner and this fabulous product of the HAWX Program would have been smoldering crud on the Andrews Air Force Base runway. It was a miss, Harris breathed thankfully, but it was a near miss.
Harris had intended to continue the mission as planned, but with F-16s diving all around him like crows attacking a hawk, he couldn't fly his mission profile, the "low-high-higher" profile that would keep him from winding up as a radioactive ember.