Read Online Armageddon by Jim DeFelice, Dale Brown - Free Book Online

will you? I can handle them.”
    One’s loonier than the other, Breanna thought.
     
    MACK CONTINUED HIS LACKADAISICAL CLIMB, TRYING TO conserve his fuel while making sure the pointing-nose cowboys running for him knew he was here. They were now about eight minutes away, flying at roughly twenty thousand feet, separated by about a quarter-mile. Their radars were not yet in range to see the Dragonfly.
    But given their speed and direction, it seemed highly coincidental that they were flying in his direction on a whim. “Mack, you’re in radar range of the Su-27s.”
    “About time,” he said.
    “You want us to jam them?”
    “Hell no! I want to see who these guys are.”
     
    “THEY KNOW HE’S THERE,” DECI TOLD BREANNA OVER THE interphone. “Altering course slightly. They should be in visual range of Mack in, uh, thirty seconds,” said Deci.
    “I’ll pass it along,” said Breanna.
    “Radar—uh, they just turned on their air-to-air weapons,” said Deci. “They may really want to shoot him down.”
     
    MACK CAME OUT OF HIS TURN ABOUT THREE SECONDS TOO soon, and had to push into his dive before he saw the first Sukhoi. He got a glimpse of it in his left windscreen, then heard the RWR complain that one of the fighters had switched on its targeting radar.
    “I was afraid of that,” he groused out loud, as if the device could do anything but whine. A second later it gave another pitched warning, indicating that the enemy’s radar had locked on him and was ready to fire.
    Then the unit freaked out, obviously a result of Breanna’s ordering the Megafortress crew to jam the airwaves so he couldn’t be shot down.
    Mack sighed. A completely unnecessary order, even if her heart was in the right place. Mack pulled his plane into a tight turn and put himself right below the Su-27s as they turned. Separated by ten thousand feet and a good bit of momentum, all he caught on the gun’s video camera—rigged for the training exercises—was a gray blur. He pounded the throttle but there was no hope of keeping up with the Su-27s. Within two minutes, they were beyond his radar.
    And he was short on fuel.
    “Jersey, this is Dragon One. I’m bingo on fuel, headed for home”
    “We’re close to our reserves, as well,” replied Breanna. “Did you get any sort of IDs on those Sukhois?”
    “Negative,” said Breanna. “They had old-style N001 radars. Seem to be Su-27S models.”
    The NOO1 was a competent but older radar type, and no match for the Megafortress’s ECMs or electronic countermeasures. It meant the planes themselves were relatively old and had been purchased second- or even third-hand. But it didn’t say who they might belong to. For the moment, at least, their identity would have to remain a mystery.
    “Your seaplane didn’t show up?” he asked.
    “I don’t think it was a seaplane.”
    Probably not, thought Mack to himself. More than likely, his neophyte radar operators had bungled a routine contact with a speedboat, then sent him out on a wild goose chase.
    He listened as Breanna updated the rescue situation—there were now two vessels conducting a search, with no survivors located as of yet.
    “Time to pack it in,” he told the Jersey crew. “Head for the barn.”
    He snapped off the mike, then did something that would not have occurred to him a few weeks ago.
    “Hey, crew of the Jersey—I mean, crew of Brunei Mega-fortress One,” said Mack, touching his speak button. “Kick-ass job. Very, very good job. Attaboys all around.”
    Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
0853
    Sahurah Niu’s feet trembled as he got off the motorcycle in front of the gate. The bike roared away and Sahurah was left alone. He tried to take a deep breath but the air caught in his throat and instead he began to cough.
    As he recovered, a soldier walked up to him, gun drawn. “Who are you?” demanded the soldier, pointing the pistol at him.
    “I was sent,” said Sahurah. The gun comforted him for a reason he couldn’t have