But for who? The hikers? Me?
She glanced down the slope, as if Wu Tian might appear like a phantom in the night and offer his unsolicited counsel. But instead, all she saw was the weak beam of a flashlight searching the area where he had hidden one of the bodies. The sound of the helicopter grew louder, reverberating through the hard ground beneath her, and she set her jaw.
“Enough!” She pulled the VR goggles back down over her head and returned to the professor’s digital world. In the framework he had developed, she had unfettered access to every sensor the Joint Strike Fighter possessed. From its AN/APG-81 active electronically scanned array radar to the AN/AAQ-37 Distributed Aperture System, comprising six electro-optical sensors that gave her three hundred and sixty degrees of spherical situational awareness, Chen had everything she needed at her fingertips.
“It’s time for the hunter to become the hunted,” she said.
She swiped at the air in front of her, manipulating the now familiar menus to pull up the two pages she needed most. The first was the air-to-air radar page, presenting her with information taken from the F-35C’s AESA radar. She found the contact she was searching for and quickly designated it as a target. The second was the stores page, and she selected the AIM-120D air-to-air missile, linking it to the target she had just designated.
With a flick of her wrist, she armed the weapon, then paused. She took a deep breath and turned her head to take in the views surrounding the stealth jet. “Goodbye,” she said.
Then she squeezed the trigger.
45
Colt watched the number in his helmet inch closer to Mach 1.0, but he kept the throttle back to prevent highlighting his location to whoever was on the island beneath him. Even though he was flying an advanced stealth fighter, a sonic boom would erase any of those benefits and jeopardize his mission.
He had “hooked” the icon representing Devil One, which meant that his jet’s fusion cell was collating every available source of data on the other Joint Strike Fighter. Although his active electronically scanned array radar wasn’t painting the target, the Infrared Search and Track function of his EOTS had locked onto the jet’s exhaust and was providing him constant steering updates and guidance cues to ensure he completed his intercept.
“Hey, Colt,” Jug said over the datalink communications network.
“Yeah, buddy?”
“Who do you think is flying this?”
As a TOPGUN instructor, Colt had access to the most sensitive intelligence reports as they related to threat nations. Only two had the technical know-how to make something as complex as this work, especially in the skies over the United States. But he knew Punky had narrowed that list to one.
“Has to be China,” he said.
“Yeah, but who?”
“I have no idea.”
“You have any idea why?”
That was the one thing that had stumped him. There was no question China benefitted from a weakened American military. And with over a dozen other countries having purchased the F-35, an exploitation of this magnitude would have far-reaching consequences. But why expose their capability to hack into the stealth fighter now? Why not keep that trick up their sleeve until it was needed? Unless it was to accomplish something that had an even greater impact.
“Good question,” Colt said. “But I have a bad feeling I know what they plan on doing.”
“What?”
“You said the Pentagon acquisitions people think the Joint Strike Missile could be a carrier killer, right?”
“Yeah.”
Colt didn’t respond, knowing Jug was already piecing it together.
“You don’t think…”
“Yeah, Jug. I do think.” Colt glanced down at his datalink display and saw the icon representing Jug’s jet connected to another by a solid line, indicating that he had taken a radar lock on something. “Are you locking up an airborne target drone?”
“What?” His voice sounded confused, but he recovered quickly. “That can’t be a drone.”
“Why not?”
“It’s all wrong,” Jug replied with genuine surprise. “The BQM-177A is a subsonic target drone, but whatever I’m locked onto is way too slow. And it’s the wrong altitude, too. This thing is barely above the ground, almost like it’s a…”
Colt felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He placed his cursors over the icon representing whatever Jug’s jet had locked onto and felt his blood run cold. “That’s a helicopter, Jug!”
With a sick feeling in his stomach, Jug watched the solid line on his datalink page begin flashing as his radar sent command signals to the AIM-120D Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile tucked away in his weapon bay. But as long as the doors remained closed, the missile didn’t pose a threat to the helicopter his jet had just locked up.
Then, the doors opened.
“Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“My weapon bay doors just opened,” Jug said, scrambling to think of any way he could keep the jet from doing what he thought it was about to do. But unlike the Hornet or Super Hornet, he couldn’t simply jettison the weapons stored internally.
“You need to stop it,” Colt said.
“Yeah, no shit!”
Jug reached down for the master arm switch and flipped it back and forth, hoping to disrupt the electrical signals being sent to his weapon system and prevent the missile from firing. Then he slammed against the side stick, trying in vain to move the jet’s nose in any direction other than pointed at the targeted helicopter. He pulled the throttle to idle, then, in a fit of panic, pulled it beyond the idle stop and cut off fuel to the engine.
But the engine continued producing thrust, propelling him north toward Santa Cruz Island. His nose remained fixed on the helicopter’s dim red and green position lights as it flew low along a ridgeline. And the X through the air-to-air missile on his stores page disappeared, letting him know the weapon was armed and ready to fire.
“Colt…”
Suddenly, he felt a subtle vibration in his seat as the missile fell free from his jet, and his breath caught in his mask. Less than a second later, the sky lit up with a bright flash underneath him as the missile’s solid-fuel rocket motor ignited and sent the weapon accelerating forward to its top speed of three thousand miles per hour.
“Missile launch!” Colt screamed.
Jug stabbed at the EMCON button, trying to silence all electronic emissions from his jet, but his radar continued providing updated guidance to the missile. Not that it would have mattered, because within two seconds of leaving his weapon bay, the missile had transitioned to an active state and was using its own onboard radar to guide itself to the target. There was nothing else he could do but warn the helicopter crew and pray the missile failed to complete its intercept and shower the Seahawk with blast fragmentation.
“Raptor Two Four,” Jug shouted over Cobalt. “Smoke in the air!”
Punky leaned forward at the edge of her seat as she felt the Seahawk nose up into a flare. The powerful rotor wash pushed dirt and lightweight debris away from the helicopter, then sent it skyward in a swirling vortex that temporarily blinded her. She rose off her seat and gripped the door’s frame, perching her body at the edge in preparation to leap to the ground the moment the helicopter’s wheels touched down.
“Raptor Two Four, smoke in the air!”
The panicked shout over the radio was met instantly by a surge in engine noise as the pilot reacted to the unseen threat. Punky acted on instinct alone and leaped through the door when she felt the helicopter’s downward movement reverse direction. The rotor wash hit her like a tornado and tossed her about like a rag doll as she plummeted through the darkness for the barren earth beneath her. They had been higher than she guessed, and the fall took longer than expected, but when she hit, her momentum carried her onto her side in an awkward roll.