Troy rolled into a hard left, and prepared to turn right.
That was when he saw it.
Just a quarter of a mile away, and on the same heading as Troy, was a US Airways Airbus A321-200, on approach to Baltimore-Washington Airport with about 170 passengers aboard.
Crowded skies.
Dangerous skies.
As Troy turned, the AMRAAM lost its lock-on for a split second — a desired effect.
As it is programmed to do, the AMRAAM sought to reacquire the broken lock-on.
It did.
However, the lock-on was not now to the F-16's F110 turbofan, but to the larger, hotter CFM56-5 turbofan engine hanging beneath the starboard wing of the US Airways jetliner — very much not an effect that Troy had desired.
Jenna watched her own Sidewinder chase the Raven, knowing that she had denied Raymond Harris the luxury of watching his AMRAAM chase Troy's F-16.
She did not notice the Airbus A321-200 until she glanced away from Harris for a second to watch the AMRAAM's contrail coiling across the sky toward Troy.
She saw Troy's F-16 slip out of the trajectory of the AMRAAM and the trajectories of the two separate. It was not until that moment that she saw the red and blue tail of the jetliner.
The crew on the flight deck may have seen the AMRAAM, although it was approaching from behind. They certainly had seen it on their radarscopes, and they were probably calling a mayday to the Baltimore tower.
They banked the aircraft slightly but were unable to muster serious evasive action.
Jenna saw the white contrail streak into the engine and watched helplessly as the right wing dissolved in a dirty orange fireball.
The force of the blast tossed the one-winged jetliner into a roll, and soon it was tumbling uncontrollably across the sky. Pity the passengers who had not been knocked unconscious by their being thrown into a five-G spin.
Chapter 56
Raymond Harris was startled, even saddened, by the sight of the jetliner — slammed by his own Slammer — cartwheeling across the sky. For the man who was prepared to drop a nuclear weapon on the president of the United States, it was a rather paradoxical reaction.
Was it that the sight of 170 innocent people dying a frightening death was more real than the abstract notion of a thermonuclear blast?
It didn't take long for him to snap out of it and to place his mind back in the moment.
How many missiles had been fired?
He had dodged three. That left just one missile left between the two F-16s.
He had fired two. As the Raven carried no gun, he was depleted of defensive armament — but the F-16s need not know that.
Where were they now?
He saw one — and then the other F-16.
The nearest one, flying about two thousand feet beneath him, had bare wingtips. It was unarmed.
Jenna had little time to process the sight of the aluminum coffin with its 170 screaming souls before it disappeared into a cloud.
Meanwhile, her own Sidewinder had missed hitting anything. The unstoppable Raven was still in the air. Damn those people at HAWX who had invented this machine.
She had no way of knowing that the pinging she heard, that of the Raven locking on to her F-16, was a lock-on with missiles that did not exist.
"Falcon Two, this is Falcon Three. I got your back." Maybe Falcon Three could distract Harris long enough for Jenna to escape.
As Jenna dove toward the clouds, preparing to evade the imaginary AMRAAM, Troy was diving from above to try to save her.
Troy expected to see the contrail of an AMRAAM at any moment as he accelerated toward the Raven.
Suddenly, he saw nothing. First Jenna, then Harris, fell into the boiling cumulus.
On his radarscope, they were just tumbling green specks, like a pair of fireflies on methedrine.
Harris pushed his charade as he pushed the fleeing F-16—down, down, down.
One moment, they were falling through the clouds, the next they were beneath them. At last, having reached nine thousand feet, he broke off his pursuit and checked his GPS coordinates. Somewhere out there, and he could now see exactly where, was Camp David.
Aron Arnold should have arrived by now. He had gone to Camp David, briefed with orders to stall. Harris had instructed him to linger as long as necessary to give Albert Bacon Fachearon two — not just one — opportunities to consider Harris's demand for capitulation. Arnold would also have arrived bearing a GK356a4 high-power, miniaturized homing transmitter — although the presence of this gadget had not been part of his briefing.
Raymond Harris had no idea where Fachearon was within the Camp David complex, but he did not care. The blast radius of the B61's active ingredients was considerable — but best of all, the weapon would be directed to its target by the GK356a4 transmitter that was ideally standing within a few feet or a few yards of Albert Bacon Fachearon.
"Falcon Three, he's broken off his attack on me," Jenna said. "He's broken off and is heading toward the target."
"Got him," Troy promised hopefully, willing it to be true.
He lit his afterburner and felt the F-16 lurch as it went supersonic.
At nine thousand feet, the two planes raced toward the crest of the Catoctin Mountains. Had they crossed the path of any other jetliner in the crowded northern Maryland skies, it would have been catastrophic — but quick.
Troy could not afford to think about such a thing. Closing to within missile range was the only thing on his mind — it had to be.
Troy knew that the Raven was fast — probably capable of something north of Mach 3—but he knew that Harris couldn't deliver a payload from an internal weapons bay at that speed. He would probably have to slow to below Mach 1. Troy still had one Sidewinder and one chance to catch the Raven before Harris got to Camp David.
Harris was running hard and fast. He had picked up the GK356a4 arid was homing in on it.
It was a matter of minutes.
He glanced at his radarscope as he throttled back for his bomb run.
Damn. There was an F-16 still on his tail. It was many miles back, but still coming. It had to be the one that still had a live Sidewinder. Harris made a fast, educated guess that whoever the pilot was, he would wait to fire until he was at a no-miss distance.
Harris figured that he had time to reach his release point.
Once the B61 was away, he could ratchet up the Raven's throttle and outrun any F-16. He could even wring enough speed out of the Raven to outdistance the Mach 2.5 Sidewinder.
But that was then; Harris was still in a now that meant covering fifty miles of Maryland countryside at subsonic speeds with his weapons bay door open.
As he urged the Raven forward, he heard the pinging of a lock-on.
In his F-16, Troy saw the Raven slow and knew that this was it — the bomb run.
Could he catch Harris and take a no-miss shot? Never mind. Lock on now!
The Sidewinder had an effective range of around ten miles. He was almost there. He could ride the lock-on all the way.
Raymond Harris, meanwhile, still had an advantage. His maneuverability options increased proportionally to his slower speed. Because he had only one vulnerable spot — straight back — any evasive action, no matter how slight, was potentially effective. He could remain on course, weaving slightly, and still interrupt the F-16's lock-on.
Troy watched his lock-on stop and start, flicker and hiccup, like a bad connection on his iPod jack.
There was nothing he could do but put the pedal to the metal and get closer to the Raven.