Collateral (Tier One #6)

Lead F-22 Raptor

Call Sign Shaker One

One Hundred Miles South of Odessa

28,000 Feet Over the Black Sea

Major Meg “Lady Goose” Gregory eased back the twin throttles of the miracle air-superiority stealth fighter her country had entrusted her to fly for the past eleven years. The Raptor responded smoothly, the altimeter marking a rapid descent and her ears popping as she and her wingman, Shaker Two, descended toward the Black Sea. Her maneuver was in response to the order from aerial command transmitted via an EC-8 control aircraft circling over Romania. The entire battle space was a managed operation—with data links from satellites, all friendly aircraft in theater, and a special U2 configured as eyes and an aerial relay station from eighty thousand feet over the Black Sea.

As the two F-22s descended, she applied gentle left pressure to the control stick in her right hand and eased up a touch on the throttle in her left. The jet responded like the Lamborghini of fighter jets that it was, snapping into a hard left bank and pressing her into her seat at four Gs. She felt the familiar squeeze of the G-suit against her torso and legs as it inflated to prevent blood from pooling in her lower extremities. She led the rollout as the directional indicator approached her heading, wings snapping level just as she hit two hundred and ten degrees on the heading tape at the top of the heads-up display. The altimeter read twelve thousand feet, and she made her way down to eight. A moment later the controller spoke again in her helmet, the voice now more urgent.

“Shaker, your bogey is now twelve o’clock, fifteen miles, descending rapidly toward Delta Charlie. Cleared to engage.”

Cleared to engage? Are they fucking serious? We’re supposed to engage a pair of Russian Su-30s in international airspace?

“Shaker flight,” she said, acknowledging. “Shaker Zero-Two, let’s get down there and see what they’re up to.”

Their F-22s would be all but invisible, thanks to the Raptors’ stealth technology being a generation ahead of the Russian aircraft. The Russian Su-30s were more on par with the Navy’s workhorse F/A-18 Super Hornets, the same platform that only six months ago she and her wingman had dispatched in a training exercise without the Navy pilots ever even making contact. But she wanted to see for herself what the hell these Russians were up to before she engaged and started World War III.

She leveled off at fifteen hundred feet, the two enemy aircraft now designated on her heads-up display as red triangles just outside the green ten-mile ring. Inside that ring, at six miles, was a yellow box indicating the position of “Delta Charlie”—the USS Donald Cook. She didn’t paint the Russian jets with her own radar just yet—that would give away her position and ruin her advantage—but Donald Cook’s Aegis system was tracking them perfectly, and that data streamed to her via data links with the EC-8. To her right, she was aware of her wingman, “Paris,” sliding out to the south, increasing their separation at combat spread. At over six hundred knots, the distance to target closed rapidly and she picked up the two Russian fighters visually twenty seconds later.

The lead fighter was low—incredibly low, less than one hundred feet off the deck and offset seventy degrees—crossing right to left and heading directly at the Cook. The Russian’s wingman was only a bit higher, perhaps five hundred feet, and a half-mile north and in trail. Gregory pulled gently back on the stick, gaining altitude to twenty-five hundred feet in a few seconds and leveling off. The Russians, intent, apparently, on harassing the Cook, still seemed oblivious to her presence. She watched as the Russian jet screamed across the destroyer’s bow at danger-close range—the distance between its left wingtip and the conning tower mere feet. She could see the ant-sized sailors diving for the deck as the jet streaked past.

Holy shit!

The Su-30 pulled up and made a hard left, condensation streaming from its wingtips in the tight, high-G turn. Gregory watched the Russian jet accelerate out of the turn, head north, then make a tight, high-G, two-hundred-and-seventy-degree turn to loop around behind the destroyer. She’d lost visual on the maniac’s wingman, but her heads-up display said the other Russian was in a wider circle, also turning counterclockwise and at her three o’clock.

“He’s gonna make another run,” Paris said in her ears.

Gregory passed over the Donald Cook at three thousand feet and started her own right turn, eyes fixed on the target on her display.

“I’m on him,” she said. “High cover—clear my six of his wingman.”

“Shaker Two,” Paris acknowledged.

The Russian fighter lined up again with the destroyer, three miles out and below her. Gregory rolled smartly until her jet was inverted, pulled the stick back sharply, and dove the Raptor through a split-S, then rolled level at five hundred feet, directly on the Russian jet’s tail, one mile in tow. She pushed up the throttle with her left hand and felt the jet accelerate, closing the distance to less than half a mile almost instantly. She lined the velocity vector over the Su-30 on her display, then, using her thumb, activated the weapons radar. Immediately, a red box appeared around the enemy fighter and a steady warble sounded in her headset just as the targeting computer’s soft female voice said, “Shoot . . . shoot . . .”

A tone must have sounded in the Su-30 indicating that the jet had been locked on by an enemy missile, because things instantly went to shit. The surprise apparently distracted the pilot at the worst possible time—just as the Russian was crossing the bow of the Donald Cook.

She watched the twin-engine fighter bobble and the left wingtip droop. Had he been anywhere other than over a Navy ship, the subtle bobble would have been meaningless, but here it was enough that the left wingtip dragged across the ship’s superstructure, sparks flying and the jet’s nose yawing impossibly left. Its altitude dropped, and she watched the pilot struggle for control. For a moment, just as she streaked past overhead in a gentle nose-up climb, she thought the Russian pilot might recover, but then the jet overcorrected right and its other wingtip dipped into the ocean. There was an explosion as the ejection system spit off the canopy, and the jet then began to tumble.

Oh fuck.

She pulled back on the stick and her Raptor snapped up and over, its variable-direction exhaust nozzles shifting automatically to achieve an impossibly tight loop. The hard maneuver activated her G-suit, and she gritted her teeth while it squeezed her legs and abdomen. A heartbeat later, she came out of the turn and pressed the stick forward to level off. Now inverted, she strained her neck to scan the ocean below. She quickly spotted the debris field—what remained of the Su-30 was spread over a quarter mile across the surface of the Black Sea. She didn’t see an orange parachute anywhere but only had limited time to scan.

No way the pilot survived that if he didn’t eject in time.

She rolled her jet back over and pulled up to gain eyes on the second jet. Her heads-up showed the other red box west and circling, rapidly gaining altitude and speed.

“Shaker One, be advised we have lost radar contact with your bogey. The second bogey is now at your ten o’clock and . . . stand by . . .” Then the controller’s voiced tightened. “Shaker, Delta Charlie reports she is being painted by enemy aircraft. Radar lock. Be advised this aircraft is known to carry the Kalibr antiship missile—with a strike range in excess of two hundred miles.”

Her HUD showed Paris maneuvering around behind the second Su-30. “Striker One, Two—I have a shot,” he said.

“Engage, Two. I’m on my way.” She pulled her Raptor left and up toward the approaching threat, trailing her wingman.

“That Russian’s not gonna fire, right?” Paris choked into the radio. “I mean for God’s sake—there are three hundred sailors on that ship.”

Gregory was asking the same question in her mind, but she knew it all depended on whether the second Su-30 pilot had seen the accident or thought Donald Cook had shot down his wingman. She watched on her HUD as Paris’s Raptor maneuvered for a firing solution on the Russian jet, but if he closed range any more, he’d be too close for a safe missile kill with his AIM-9L Sidewinder.

What the hell is he doing? Shoot, Paris. Shoot, damn it.

She locked her own medium-range missile on the target just as she acquired a visual on the Su-30 and spotted Paris directly on the Russian’s tail, ridiculously tight. Then she saw the burst of his Raptor’s M61A2 20 mm cannon. She watched the tracers streak from her wingman’s fighter over the enemy jet cockpit like laser blasts in a sci-fi movie.

A warble in her ear told her that her own AIM-9Lima was locked on the Su-30. The combination of missile-lock tone and 20 mm cannon tracers streaking by seemed more than the Russian pilot could take. He pulled straight up, afterburners glowing, and then broke north. She never saw a missile leave his rails—if he even had an antiship missile aboard. As the Russian pilot streaked away, she wondered if the pilot had any idea that Captain Steve “Paris” Hilton, United States Air Force, had just saved his life.

She’d been set to pull the trigger.

“Second bogey is bugging out,” Paris reported.

“Roger, Two,” she said. “Good thinking, brother,” she added, then let out a long, slow breath. “Sentry Two-Five, be advised, the first bandit crashed after inadvertent contact with Delta Charlie and bandit number two is departing the area. Shaker flight climbing and resuming CAP.”

If anything happened to them on the remainder of this Combat Air Patrol, someone needed to know that the Russian died from his own fuckup, not from American fire.

It might matter—a lot.

“Roger, Shaker One. Good work guys. Delta Charlie reports no other immediate threats. Diverting their helo for recovery of the pilot.”

Her heart slowed a touch. Maybe the Russian pilot had gotten out after all. The Donald Cook must have seen a chute, right? She glanced over to her right shoulder as Paris’s beautiful grey F-22 Raptor pulled in tight beside her. Through the tinted canopy bubble, she watched him shake his head slowly, then make a show of dropping his head and shoulders in relief. She shot him a thumbs-up, which he returned, and then he slid out to the right and dropped below her as they resumed their patrol.

“Sentry Two-Five, this is Shaker flight—we’re gonna need a drink pretty soon.”

“Roger, Shaker. Your relief is inbound and we have Texaco four-one setting up an orbit to top you off.”

Gregory shook her own head now and allowed herself a long sigh. The Black Sea was a pressure cooker—too many ships and aircraft packed into a captive theater.

Someone’s going to fuck up and then the real shooting is going to start.

She tossed the thought off for later and scanned the battle space map on the center screen between her knees, looking for the next target. All the while hoping that there was someone above her pay grade out there working to deescalate this nightmare before it got completely out of control.