Strike Zone Read Free Page B

pilots, two planes — is all but dead. Life and death takes placein split-second battles that happen across dozens of miles, usually without either adversary ever seeing the other. Pilots are more systems operators than fliers nowadays. Sooner than most folks think, our fighters won’t even have pilots in them!
    This interview was first published, in a slightly different form, at www.fireandwater.com, the website of HarperCollins UK.

I
    Ghost Clone
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    Bright Memorial Hospital, Honolulu
3 September 1997
0302 (all times local)
    I T LOOKED LIKE an arrow as she turned to get away from it. Breanna pushed hard on her control stick, but the plane barely responded. Caught with little forward momentum, the Megafortress waddled in the air, finally managing to jerk its nose back to the right just in time to avoid the missile.
    A second and third homed in. Breanna Stockard put her hand on the throttle slide, desperate to get more speed from the power plants.
    It was too late. She could see one of the missiles coming at her right wing, riding the air like a hawk. Bree had ECMs, flares, tinsel—every defensive measure the experienced Megafortress pilot could muster was in play, and still the hawk came on, talons out.
    And then, just as it was about to strike the fuselage in front of the starboard wing root, it changed. The slim body of the Russian-designed Alamo missile thickened. Wings grew from the middle, and the steering fins at the rear changed shape. Breanna was beingtracked by an American Flighthawk, not a missile. For a moment, she felt relief.
    Then the robot plane slammed into the wing.
    B REANNA SHOOK HERSELF awake. the pale green light of the hospital room threw ghost shadows across her face; she could hear the machine monitoring her heartbeat stuttering.
    â€œDamn drugs,” she said.
    They’d given her a sedative to help her sleep, fearful that her injuries would keep her from resting for yet another night. Breanna had bruised ribs, a concussion, a sprained knee, and a twisted neck; she was also suffering from dehydration and the effects of more than twelve hours exposure to a bitter Pacific storm. But the physical injuries paled beside what really ached inside her—the loss of four members of her crew, including her longtime copilot Chris Ferris and Dreamland’s number two Flighthawk pilot, Kevin Fentress.
    Breanna rolled onto her back and shoved her elbows under her to sit up in the bed. She was angry with herself for not flying better, for not avoiding the Chinese missile that had taken her down. The fact that she had sacrificed her plane to rescue others was besides the point. The fact that the Piranha mission had been a stunning success, averting war between China and India, mattered nothing to her, at least not now, not in the room lit only by hospital monitors.
    She should’ve saved her people.
    Her father would have. Her husband would have.
    She ached to have them both here with her. But her father, Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian, and her husband, Major Jeff “Zen” Stockard, had been called backto Dreamland, to deal with problems brewing there. She was sentenced to sit in this bed until her injuries healed.
    â€œDamn drugs,” she muttered again, reaching for the control at the side of the bed to raise it.
    What the hell had that stupid dream been about? She’d been taken down by a missile, not a Flighthawk. The Flighthawks were U.S. weapons, not Chinese.
    But as they were going down, before she gave the order to abandon ship, Torbin Dolk had said something about a Flighthawk. What the hell had he said?
    â€œI have a U/MF at long range.”
    Those were his words, but they had to be wrong. Their own Flighthawks had been lost, and there were no other Megafortresses with their robot scout fighters nearby.
    What the hell did he say? Had she got it wrong?
    The confusion and static and storm of the shootdown returned. She closed her eyes, wishing she