When she came to a stop, she looked up and saw the helicopter pivoting away from the ridgeline as it dropped closer to the ground and raced for the safety of a narrow valley. She scrabbled to her feet and swept her hand back for her pistol, drawing and presenting it up the hill in one smooth motion.
The sound of an object streaking through the air overhead distracted her, and she looked up in time to see a blur arcing away from the helicopter and across the stars in her night vision goggles’ narrow field of view.
It missed, she thought.
Turning to look up the hill again, she spotted the flashing red lights of the antenna she had seen from the air, and she oriented herself on her mental map. Taking a hesitant step, she began slowly moving up the finger toward the ridgeline where she suspected TANDY would have positioned herself to hack into Jug’s jet. And if the missile she had just seen was any indication, the hack had been successful. There was no time to waste.
With each step, Punky felt an increasing dread as she raced against an unseen clock. She didn’t know what the woman’s ultimate objective was, and she didn’t really care. All that mattered was finding her and making her pay for what she had done to Uncle Rick. Her hesitant gait became a determined jog, and her legs screamed at the exertion of propelling herself up the hillside. But her eyes never strayed far from her pistol’s glowing front sight post as she pivoted left and right, searching the darkness for the woman she had come to kill.
Early thirties. Five foot two or five foot three. One hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty pounds. Shoulder-length black hair. Narrow face with almond-shaped eyes.
46
Colt watched in horror as the missile streaked north from Jug’s jet and arced through the sky for the Navy helicopter hovering over the island. His heart pounded as he thought about Punky. She had just survived being shot down in his Carbon Cub and was in danger of being shot down a second time. The helicopter just didn’t stand a chance at evading the supersonic missile, and he looked away to avoid watching her die.
“It missed!” Jug shouted, sounding breathless with relief. “It missed.”
Colt looked back toward the island and saw the missile’s rocket motor burning bright as it flew harmlessly past the island and crashed into the ocean. He banked to the right, slowing his closure with Devil One as he drew within five miles of the hijacked jet. At that range, his datalink and IRST had provided cuing to the radar and allowed him to establish a radar lock, despite the other jet’s electronic countermeasures attempting to jam him.
“Devil One, Base.”
“Go ahead,” he said, his voice shaking with tension.
“I think I’ve isolated the waveform,” the China Lake engineer said. “I have a new profile that should allow you to jam the signal.”
Colt felt optimistic for the first time since getting airborne. “Transmit it to Devil Two,” he said.
“Copy that.” There was a pause, then, “I’m uploading the new profile to your two thirty-nine now.”
Colt tapped on the button to accept the linked profile. He remembered his days flying the Hornet when pilots had to use a cumbersome computer known as TAMPS, or Tactical Automated Mission Planning System, of which nothing was automated, to load profiles for their jet’s electronic countermeasures. Even then, electronic warfare was in its infancy, and their jammers had limited capability against pulse-mode radar-guided threats. The ability to update the F-35’s electronic countermeasures on the fly was a giant leap forward for the warfighter.
Of course, the enemy had used that capability to hijack the jet, so maybe it wasn’t such a great idea after all.
“It’s downloading now,” Colt said. “Jug, do you still have a lock on the helicopter?”
“Negative,” he replied. “Looks like it’s using the terrain to mask its position.”
Colt felt a surge of hope as he maneuvered his jet to rendezvous with Jug. The hijacked jet only had one air-to-air missile left, but more importantly, it was pointed in the wrong direction to employ its Joint Strike Missiles against the Lincoln. As long as the Seahawk continued to be a threat, TANDY would have no choice but to focus her efforts there, giving him the time he needed to figure out how to stop her.
“Copy. What’s happening now?”
“Looks like they’re using my IRST to try and regain a lock on the helicopter.”
He had used his own Infrared Search and Track function of the jet’s EOTS to cue his radar onto Jug’s jet, so it made sense that the Chinese operative would manipulate the same system to target the Navy helicopter. But he didn’t like it. He glanced down at his Panoramic Cockpit Display and saw Jug’s jet banking into him. He pushed on the stick, dropping his altitude below the other jet, then banked left as he crossed under to the other side. “Where you going, Jug?”
There was a pause. “I’m turning through east.”
Colt craned his neck to look up at the hijacked jet as it passed over his head and rolled out heading south.
“Hey, Colt?” Jug said.
“Yeah, buddy?”
“Where are you?”
Colt manipulated the side stick to adjust his angle of bank and stabilize his jet less than two miles from Devil One, on a forty-five-degree bearing line on his right side. The fact that Jug didn’t know where he was meant that whoever was controlling his jet probably didn’t know where he was either.
“Four o’clock for two miles,” Colt replied.
Jug looked over his right shoulder and saw the faint outline of another F-35 rendezvousing on him. Colt was flying midnight and had every external light turned off, including the covert infrared lighting that should have been visible through his helmet’s night vision. Even without that, the moon’s illumination was enough that Jug could discern target aspect as the Joint Strike Fighter drew closer.
The helmet he wore was the one sensor he retained control over. By turning his head and seeing Colt approaching, it alerted every other sensor within the AN/AAQ-37 Distributed Aperture System and cued the six high-definition infrared cameras to the jet’s presence. DAS had been designed to detect and track inbound missiles to aid in launch point detection and countermeasures, but it also provided aircraft detection and tracking and fed that information through the jet’s core processor to provide situational awareness and air-to-air weapons cuing.
The moment DAS recognized another jet was on his wing, no matter how its presence was detected, it would track the contact using every available means and provide continuous guidance to the pilot. That was useful when the other aircraft was an enemy, but Jug thought nothing of it since he knew it was being flown by his friend.
“Visual,” Jug said, letting Colt know he saw him.
Suddenly, his jet banked left, and he bounced his helmet off the canopy before being thrust down into his seat with the sudden onset of G-forces. His vision narrowed as he scrambled to perform the anti-G straining maneuver and keep blood in his head to prevent from blacking out.
“Holy shit!” Chen shouted, panning her head left and right while twitching both hands to manipulate the virtual reality controllers. The hijacked jet responded by breaking away from a second aircraft that her jet’s Distributed Aperture System had detected less than two miles away. She didn’t have any experience in aerial combat and reacted on instinct alone, hoping that would be enough.