The Mercenary Read Free Page B

airliner’s tail to prevent
inadvertent activation. He was also close enough to blend in with the bigger
jet’s radar return. Not difficult flying—not for him—but tedious.
    Walking the throttles back an inch, the mercenary
let the fighter’s nose drop and slipped a bit to the right to avoid the
uncomfortable position directly above the airliner. Now he could fly formation
using the corners of his eyes and devote his attention to the next phase of his
flight. And the reason for being here.
    He turned up the rheostat lighting on the consoles
and focused on the ordnance selection panel. Unlike a western fighter with glass
displays, most of the FLANKER’s weapons had to be manually configured. But that
was all right. Though more cumbersome, it was simpler and there were fewer
chances for a mistake.
    He carefully rechecked the sequence of signals,
called release pulses, which would free the cluster bombs from their racks under
his wings. This was vital because it dictated the pattern in which they would
impact the target, and this, in turn, determined how destructive they were.
Since there would be only one chance at this, it had to be right.
    The Triple Seven’s big right wing suddenly dropped
as the airliner turned toward Taiwan. Pulling the throttles back to idle, he
fanned open the speed brake. The fighter slowed and he dropped back still
farther and more aft of the airliner. No sense being seen by some curious
passenger.
    Ignoring the growing weight of the goggles and the
burning in his eyes, the mercenary concentrated again on the weapons. Each
cluster-bomb canister weighed 1,000 pounds and contained 350 softball-sized
bomblets that exploded on impact. This created a shotgun-blast effect on the
target. The density, or bomblets per thousand square feet, was determined by how
far above the earth the canister opened. His were all set to open at 1,500 feet
above the ground level. This would put about eight exploding bomblets in each
thousand square feet. Enough to kill armored targets like tanks.
    Certainly enough to kill his target.
    T he
lieutenant in the ECS watched the green-coded square drift slowly down the
display.
    DL 275.
    Delta Flight 275. If it had been identified as
HOSTILE it would have been red. UNKNOWNs were yellow. The green square was just
below the reporting fix of PABSCO, about seventy miles northeast of Taipei. He
moved the mouse-controlled cursor over the airliner’s square and a block of
English information popped up.
    Delta Flight 275/ Boeing 777-ER/EL 103
    PW4098
    ALT-19000/350 KIAS
    FRIEND
    The lieutenant was fluent in English but he pulled
out his laminated quick-reference checklist to be certain. So it was at 19,000
feet and descending. Its airspeed was 350 knots and it was identified as a
positive friendly. It had also been loaded in the electronic global database as
Number 103. This would also assign all known electronic characteristics of this
particular Triple Seven into the common database so it could be recalled in
situations such as this.
    But . . .
    He frowned. Something wasn’t quite right. There was
a slight shadow of another square behind the DL 275 mnemonic.
    Another square, and this one was yellow. That meant
something was unresolved electronically. An ambiguity. The lieutenant
right-clicked the mouse to expand the display.
    AI
    PWXXXX
    APG 68/AR600/ZHUK
    UNKNOWN
    He frowned and rummaged through the top desk drawer
of his console for the ambiguity tables. Many radars operated in the same
frequency range and were ambiguous, or overlapping, with the same basic
characteristics. This made identification based on electronic means somewhat
perilous. Still, if you knew what each similar signal could be electronically
and then discounted what it could not be, based on geography or the situation,
you could arrive at a reasonable solution.
    He flipped open the plastic-coated checklist and
ran down the signals that were ambiguous in the AI, or airborne