“Just as Mantis expected,” she said.
A notification suddenly appeared like a floating box in the lower left corner of her VR goggles’ field of view. She turned her attention from the infrared video she was monitoring and focused on it briefly, noting that the target aircraft was nearing the next waypoint. She rotated her right hand as if manipulating the jet’s side stick and grinned when the fighter turned in response. After rolling out, she pulled up the display and studied the pre-planned route.
“One hundred miles to the target,” she said, reminding herself to remain on the route until the last possible moment. Eventually, she would break off and turn south for the real target, but she didn’t want to risk tipping her hand too early. Even if it was a stealth aircraft, she wanted every advantage, and surprise was still the greatest one of all.
The box disappeared when she dismissed the notification, then she noted the distance until the next turn while continuing to swipe at the air in front of her. She drilled deeper into the Joint Strike Fighter’s menus, becoming more familiar with the virtual reality interface’s capabilities. As long as Wu Tian eliminated the threat and gave her the space to operate, she knew nothing would keep her from reaching her destiny.
Then she heard what sounded like a chainsaw, tearing the night’s tranquility asunder.
Slowly lifting the goggles from her head, she turned toward the sound and waited for her eyes to adjust to the island’s surrounding darkness. But in the distance, only a few miles away, machine gun fire streaked down at the ground from an orbiting helicopter and shredded the black veil of night.
“No…”
When the machine gun fell silent and the helicopter dipped low, she felt her hopes drop with it.
“No,” she said again through gritted teeth, then pulled the goggles back down over her eyes.
Forty miles to the southwest, Jug was still trying to regain control of his aircraft while reining in the fear that threatened to overwhelm him. It wasn’t the first time he’d experienced a system failure in an aircraft, or even the first time he’d thought there was nothing he could do to bring a jet back safely. In each prior instance, he’d suppressed his fear and approached the problem with methodical calmness. And each time, he’d returned home.
“Come on, Jug,” he said to himself. “Think!”
He had stopped trying to use brute force to reclaim control of his jet and was mentally dissecting each system to figure out what was happening. Though his heart pounded in his chest, he leaned his helmet back against the headrest and observed the jet’s behavior. Instead of feeling like a prisoner in the cockpit, he approached the situation like the test pilot he was.
Unlike what had happened to Colt the night before, his jet wasn’t in a dive, and he had time to slow down and assess the situation. Watching the displays shifting and changing pages was disorienting, but he quickly recognized they weren’t as random as he first thought but followed a logical pathway. At first, he noticed his moving map display pan out to show his entire route of flight, then saw the addition of a waypoint over the Pacific Ocean south of San Clemente Island. The map scaled back in to show his immediate route of flight, but his thoughts were already several hundred miles ahead of him.
What’s south of San Clemente?
Over his nose, he saw a thin line where the broad tapestry of stars met with the vast nothingness of the dark ocean. He was slightly right of his planned route, but the EW suite was still actively repelling multiple surveillance radars searching for the darkened stealth fighter. Looking down at the moving map, he watched the icon representing his jet fly past the pre-programmed waypoint, then begin a turn north to parallel the planned route on what was to be the air-to-air engagement segment of the test.
“Command, Devil One is over checkpoint Bravo.”
The reply was immediate. “Have you regained control, Devil One?”
“Negative,” Jug replied, furrowing his brow in thought. “But I appear to be following the pre-planned route. It’s definitely not flying as smooth as if it were on autopilot, but I’m paralleling the programmed track.”
“Roger, Devil One. We still see you in the datalink. Palmdale, anything?”
The FAA representative responded, “Negative. Still clean.”
Though the test plan called for a representative to monitor the radar picture and ensure separation of the test aircraft from civilian air traffic, the squadron was able to monitor his positioning through the same datalink that provided their communications. It was more granular than the Los Angeles ARTCC radar scope and allowed the test pilots and engineers in the command center to monitor the jet’s systems.
“Command, what is….” Jug paused, questioning what he had seen on the moving map and wondering if he was allowing his imagination to run away from him.
“Say again.”
The logical, analytical side of his brain knew there was no way the jet had spontaneously added a waypoint to his route of flight, but the fearful, human side of his brain knew what he saw. But was it enough to voice his concerns to the rest of the team back in China Lake? Or should he just keep his mouth shut and continue gathering information to figure out how to get out of this mess?
“Disregard,” he said at last. He still had some time, and he needed to keep his focus on finding the target drones.
Not that he could do anything about it.
Colt fidgeted in his seat, second-guessing his decision to steal the second fighter. He knew there wasn’t much he could do to help Punky from the air, but it was where he belonged. Now, after learning Jug’s jet had been hijacked, he was torn between helping Punky and saving his friend. There was only so much he could do. From the moment the afterburner lit off and pushed him back into the Martin-Baker ejection seat, he knew he was on his own. No wingman. No airborne controller. No squadron rep. It was just Colt versus the world.
“Raptor Two Four, Devil Two,” Colt said on Cobalt.
“Go ahead, Devil Two.”
“What’s the status on the emergency aircraft?”
There was a pause, and Colt held his breath. “We have the pilot on board now,” the helicopter pilot said.
Colt exhaled and watched the airspeed ticking upward on his visor as the Joint Strike Fighter gained speed rolling down the darkened runway. When he felt the nose start to lift, he eased back on the stick and coaxed the stealth fighter into the air. Free from the Earth, he raised the landing gear and pointed his nose out to sea.
Punky’s in good hands, he thought. He kept the afterburner lit to chase down the rogue fighter.
He had a hard time believing it had been only twenty-four hours since he had flown the same jet over the same waters. So much had taken place since then, he almost felt like a different person. He turned his head to look at the dark shape of Santa Cruz Island, and he felt his stomach knot up thinking about Punky down there fighting for her life. But nothing mattered more than catching up to the hijacked stealth fighter before something tragic happened. Not his fatigue, not his fear. Colt was a man on a mission, and he knew it was the most important mission of his life.
He looked at the moving map display on the large touchscreen in front of him, noticing the test aircraft’s route of flight overlaid atop a sectional chart. He zoomed out and saw an icon representing Devil One barely fifty miles away, flying northwest along the planned route. Colt angled his jet right, setting a cutoff vector that would hopefully allow him to intercept the other F-35 at the western edge of the missile test complex.