The Ultimate Escape Read online

  “From the start, the Western allies had the edge in technology, but were unwilling either to commit sufficient ground troops to control the battlefield or to inflict from the air the kind of civilian casualties and collateral damage necessary to end the war completely. That kept things fairly evenly matched. Until near the end …”

  His voice trailed off as a blurry hologram of one of the most remarkable military weapons ever built flashed into three dimensional form before their eyes.

  “In the last months of the war, the Russians introduced their technological marvel, the MiG-44. Faster and much more ma-neuverable than anything the Allies could field, armed with a 30mm GSh-301 cannon and sixteen hardpoints, capable of carrying up to ten thousand kilograms of guided bombs, missiles, and rockets, it was a far better platform than anything the Allies were flying.”

  Every one of the Net Force Explorers suddenly got anxious. None of them wanted to go up against that aircraft. Dr. Lanier turned himself to admire the incredible machine.

  “Hand-built by a team of technicians at the A. I. Mikoyan Aviation Scientific-Industrial Complex, led by the brilliant aircraft designer Igor Nikolayev, the MiG-44 could have changed the tide of the war if it had come soon enough, and in large enough numbers.”

  Dr. Lanier turned back to the class.

  “Fortunately, it did not. Only eleven were built. Flown remotely by pilots connected to the control panel with full virtual technology, the 44’s were freed from the physical constraints placed on most aircraft by the presence of fragile humans on board. They could dive and turn more sharply, and execute higher-speed maneuvers—maneuvers that were within the physical capabilities of most contemporary jets, but that generated G-forces that would kill an on-board pilot. They could perform up to the full potential of the machinery, not merely up to the limits imposed by the presence of the pilots.”

  Dr. Lanier’s voice rose to dramatically punctuate his next sentence. “Those eleven MiGs accounted for almost twenty-five percent of the air-to-air casualties of the Bosnian Crisis,” he said.

  Dr. Lanier smiled, a gesture that was meant to reassure them.

  “Of course,” he continued, “in the interest of fairness, the Russian team you will be facing won’t be equipped with MiG-44’s.”

  Yeah, Matt thought ominously. And there weren ‘t supposed to be Messerschmitt 262 ‘s either!

  “Aerial combat in 2007 was very different from the missions you’ve flown previously in this competition, for several reasons. The kind of close-contact dogfighting that was the hallmark of previous wars was no longer practical in the Bosnian conflict. The weapons were computer-controlled, and long-range. In most cases they were aimed and launched without the pilot ever making visual contact with the target,” Lanier said. ‘ ‘The Wild Weasel missions were notable exceptions to that, however. You’ll get to find out in person.

  “In this simulation some of you will be flying F-15’s outfitted for Wild Weasel missions. The rest of you will fly the F-22’s they’re protecting.

  “I’ll see you later, in the battle simulators.”

  The Net Force Explorers gathered around the roster on the illuminated board.

  “You’ll be happy to note that Dieter is on our side this time,” David Gray said.

  Relieved, is more like it y Matt thought.

  Matt scanned the names of the Russians. “Oh, no,” he gasped.

  “What?” Mark asked.

  “The guy who came in third last year, Sergei Shonin, the Russian hotshot—he’s on the other side.”

  “Don’t worry,” Andy Moore said grandly, jabbing his thumb into his chest. ‘77/ take care of him.”

  Matt, David, Mark, and Megan all exchanged glances.

  “I’m so happy that the old Andy has returned,” Megan said with dripping sarcasm.

  Everyone burst into laughter, including Andy. Then, their tensions released, the team headed off to the simulators.

  The colonel wondered if anything was amiss in the political prison.

  Five minutes later, a second, subtly different whistle echoed down to their positions. Stegar turned around.

  “Go!” he whispered to two SEALs wrapped in black blankets who were crouched beside him. He could hear leaves rustling behind him as Knappert climbed down from her observation post.

  The men unwrapped themselves from their blankets and hurried out onto the dirt road, dragging behind them a large fallen tree limb they’d scavenged from the jungle. They left it in the road, completely blocking the way, then hid in the surrounding jungle vegetation.

  When the truck came around the bend, the driver saw the obstruction on the roadway and slammed on the brakes. They could hear the squeals of the tires as the vehicle skidded, and the angry cries of the young driver too. Those who spoke Spanish could understand him as he cursed fluently, then instructed the men in the back to get out and “move the bleeping branch away from this stinking excuse for a road.” As the truck shrieked to a halt, Knappert slipped out from behind a tree and ran toward the driver’s side of the cab. The rest of the SEALs went on alert in their hiding places, their guns ready.

  Matt flew his F-15G Wild Weasel in the point position of the flight pattern, with Mark Gridley on his wing. Behind and above them flew David, Megan, and Andy Moore in F-22’s.

  Matt and Mark’s job was to scout out the enemy, draw Bosnian ground fire to see where the surface-to-air missile launchers were located, and destroy them so that their fellow Net Force Explorers could fly safely on to make tactical bombing strikes. Along the way, they could perhaps even hit a few more targets of their own.

  Wild Weasels were generally older jets that flew in a nice straight line to draw enemy fire for what the enemy thought would be an easy kill. Once Matt and Mark had a fix on the enemy’s SAM launch sites, they were responsible for taking them out. Matt wasn’t sure where the military came up with the name “Weasel” for this job.

  He’d have figured “Sitting Duck” would be more appropriate.

  Before they left, the Net Force Explorers were briefed on what to expect, and what to engage in virtual combat. Anything on the ground was fair game, but they had to be careful not to engage friendly fighters in the skies. Dieter and the Germans would be flying patrol out here. And so would Sergei and his Russians. The Russians were fair game.

  “Ground fire! Ground fire!” Mark said. Mart’s own computer console started screaming, indicating the presence of enemy radar targeted on his plane. Just ahead of them, Matt saw surface-to-air missiles launch. Matt took a deep breath, then dipped and jinked his fighter, dodging the SAMS while he shot a HARM anti-radar air-to-surface missile at the offending ground installation. Behind him, Mark did the same. The missiles followed the targeting radars right to their sources.

  A satisfying explosion, followed by a few secondaries, indicated that one Bosnian SAM site was gone. But, of course, there were many, many more.

  Some of which began shooting at them now.

  The air was filled with surface-to-air missiles. Matt jinked his plane again, narrowly avoiding a hit on his wing. Mark Gridley had to eject chaff—strips of Mylar coated with aluminum—into the air to fool a missile target sensor into thinking the mass of metal was an airplane.

  Fortunately, the ruse worked, and the missile exploded harmlessly in the middle of the metal-flake cloud. All the while, even as they were dodging for their lives, they continued firing missiles at the SAM sites. More explosions on the ground reflected their success.

  As quickly as it began, the missile assault ended. Matt, to his surprise, realized his heart was pumping and his hands were sweaty and shaking. And this was only the beginning.

  / have to calm down, he thought. / have to concentrate on the mission. Frantically, Matt reviewed the pre-flight briefing in his mind. What did Dr. Lanier say about the missiles?

  If they stopped, it didn’t necessarily mean all the SAM launchers were out of commission. Sometimes it meant trouble was coming from the skies.

&
nbsp; “Stay alert!” Matt said. “I think the Russians are close.”

  “I got a bandit on my scope!” Mark Gridley said frantically.

  “Incoming!” David Gray shouted. Their heads-up displays came alive with symbols as the Russian fighters closed within targeting distance of them, more than fifty miles away….

  Lieutenant Knappert’s hands were shaking as Stegar gathered the SEALs around the truck. The fight had been short and decisive. All the Cubans, the young driver, the fat Corteguan sergeant, and the three technicians were secured—unconscious, stripped of their clothing, tied up, and about to be hidden in the jungle.

  Once the truck was stopped, Knappert was responsible for taking out the driver, while the rest of the SEALs coldly selected their targets, all but one of whom were out in the middle of the road trying to move the branch.

  When Stegar gave the silent signal, they fired their stun weapons. The guns made a quiet coughing sound as they spat the non-lethal taser rounds. One of the SEALs walked to the open back of the truck, dragged the startled Corteguan sergeant out of it, and knocked him out with his zipknife.

  They’d chosen their weapons with care. Bullet-riddled windshields would be hard to explain to the guards at the compound. Unfortunately, the young driver had apparently seen something to make him suspicious. He ducked, and Knappert was unable to drag him out of the cab fast enough. To her surprise, the frightened private produced a pistol and shot her at point-blank range.

  Knappert took the shot on the front of her smartsuit, and the energy of the round as it struck her felt like a fist to the gut, but she kept her grip on the young driver and took him down with her as she fell. Breathing hard, Knappert rolled over on top of the boy, holding her knife to his neck.

  The young man simply froze there, terrified by the soldier his bullet had not killed, until another SEAL helped her up and took charge of the prisoner.

  Lieutenant Knappert looked down at the youth, now lying trussed up at her feet. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen, and his collar and shirt were covered with motor oil. He might have taken her out, if he’d thought to raise his weapon just a little higher and go for the weakest link in the smartsuit, the joint between the headpiece and the body of the suit.

  “You okay, Lieutenant?” one of the men asked.

  “No harm done,” Knappert assured him. But after the SEALs had dealt with the Corteguayans, her hands were still shaking.

  Lieutenant Knappert, for all her training and all her bravado, had never had anything like that happen before today. She’d never been shot at from point-blank range. She didn’t like it, and she wasn’t going to let it happen again. The next time, her target wouldn’t see her coming. She willed her hands to steady, and sheathed her knife.

  Air-to-air combat in the year 2007 was a strange thing. Matt and Mark were much too far from their enemies to see them— the sky was apparently empty of anything but Net Force Explorers and their planes. And he fervently hoped the Russians didn’t know where he was yet. But that was unlikely. Matt’s computer gave him the real story, beeping steadily when his flight path put him at a favorable angle to fire his missiles at the Russians, shrieking a warning when the Russians were in a position to target him. And all the while his F-15 was whistling through the sky at twice the speed of sound, maneuvering in high-G-force turns that pushed his body to the limit of his endurance.

  Every time he spun his plane into a tight turn, the forces of inertia pushed Matt deeply into his seat, sometimes with as much as eight times the force of gravity. Though he wore a special flight suit to help counteract the effects of the G-forces, he still had to tense the muscles in his lower body to keep blood from pooling in his legs. He’d black out if he couldn’t maintain sufficient blood circulation to supply his brain through the turn.

  At the speeds he was flying, the slightest mistake could be fatal. If Matt lost consciousness, or even had a partial blackout—“a gray-out”—and his plane went out of control, he’d be just as dead as if he’d been hit by a Russian missile.

  He had a small arsenal of air-to-air missiles in addition to his HARM missiles—AMRAAM AIM-120’s, Sparrow AIM-7’s, and Sidewinder AJM-9’s—some of which could home in on the radar or infrared signature of an enemy plane, and were what were called fire-and-forget missiles. When Matt fired them, their long-burn-time solid-fuel rockets propelled them to the target at four or five times the speed of sound. Other missiles he carried had to be guided to a specific target manually by video, by satellite, or by laser beacon. With the missiles he carried, he could splash a plane more than fifty miles away.

  But to get tone and fire a missile, he first had to get a Russian plane, too far away to see, lined up properly to target it, all without attracting return fire. In the aerial battles of the twenty-first century, the pilot who found his enemy first had a tremendous advantage. Matt had been successful at it so far today, but the day was young yet. Gritting his teeth, Matt yanked the stick and guided his jet into yet another tight turn.

  Andy Moore, his wingman David Gray lost to SAM fire, jockeyed into position to take out another MiG. The image of the enemy plane filled his HUD—heads-up display—as he got closer. Andy followed the Russian in the display until he got tone, a steady sound that indicated that his computer targeting system was locked on the enemy.

  Then he fired.

  A Sidewinder air-to-air missile left its hardpoint attachment and streaked toward the MiG. He watched its flight in his display. The missile ran up the Russian’s tailpipe a minute or so later.

  Andy immediately began searching for other targets.

  Megan, meanwhile, had her hands full. She’d targeted a two-plane formation and launched a pair of air-to-air missiles at them. After she pulled up and changed headings, she saw one MiG explode. The other jinked away, spitting chaff. Megan streaked onward, and lost the image of that one on her display. She hoped it was destroyed, but didn’t have time to be sure of it.

  There were other MiGs closing in on her.

  Mateo noticed there were five Cubans guarding the gate today. When he looked up, he spotted another, sitting in a camouflaged nest in the trees above and behind the square concrete structure. That one had a machine gun pointed at the road leading up to the facility.

  After he drove through the steel gates and parked his Hummer, Mateo had a single question for the guards.

  “What is wrong?” Mateo said.

  The Cuban shrugged his narrow shoulders. “We have been placed on alert,” the man said.

  After the retinal scan Mateo rode the elevator down to the underground chamber. When he got out he noticed that the two assassins were hooked up to American-built virtual-reality rigs, probably bought through shell companies in Guatemala and Nicaragua. The men inside were already in the chairs in a veeyar trance. The Cuban was hooked up to some kind of intravenous drip, probably providing a supply of Drex-Dream.

  The master approached.

  “Mateo, my friend,” he said smoothly. “Your nephew is attempting another escape. He amuses me too much for me to simply kill him and put an end to it. Besides, I may yet need his cooperation or his family’s before the election is over. There will be U.N. observers everywhere as the balloting approaches.

  “So now my assassins are ready to find him, wherever he is on the Net, and once they’ve found him we’ll put an end to his little mental voyages. We’ll follow his path back here, and close down the door he’s using to force his way out.”

  “Is that what all the guards are about?” Mateo asked. “Surely it is unnecessary to have men with weapons at the ready when all you have to do is take my nephew out of that rig and put him in a cage somewhere until the election is over.”

  “Oh, no,” the man said. “Your nephew is merely a small distraction to help me pass the time. I also have intelligence that suggests that the Norteamericanos will hit the prison tonight or tomorrow.”

  “Fine then,” Mateo said, pushing past him.

  “Where are you goi
ng?” die man asked, a hint of anger in his voice.

  Almost against his will, Mateo turned back. Years of conditioning took control of his actions.

  “With your permission,” Mateo Cortez said, “I would like to check on my niece.”

  Megan fell next, her jet targeted by the MiG she’d nearly taken out. She twisted and dodged to escape a heat-seeking missile locked on to her aircraft. All her countermeasures failed her and she couldn’t shake the thing. Her F-22 fighter exploded, the front end of the aircraft spinning to earth in a spectacular fireball.

  Matt scanned the skies for his wingman, or any of the other Net Force Explorers. As he looked, an insistent warning shriek came from his targeting computer.

  Matt cursed, twisting his head from side to side and scanning his displays to find the source of the problem. A missile had locked onto his plane, but he couldn’t see where it was coming from.

  I’m gonna die, he thought. Then his mind recoiled—this was no time for pessimism. He twisted the stick wildly, pushing his plane to its limits to evade the attack, all the while spewing chaff into the air and blasting the area around him with electronic countermeasures, or ECMs, to fool the missile.

  Something worked.

  The sky on his right seemed to explode, bathing him in hot, white light. Chunks of shrapnel followed, one of them punching into his fuselage, but no red lights appeared on his control panel. He’d gotten lucky, really lucky. If he’d taken any real damage to his plane or his systems, it would have shown up on the console.

  “Matt, check your six!” Mark Gridley said. Matt’s HUD indicated the presence of another MiG on his tail. At that moment, his targeting computer warned Matt that the Russian was locked onto his fighter.