Collateral Damage

Turk pulled the Tigershark back parallel to the A–10, this time on its left side. Three swoops and Ginella had not woken.

The plane, however, had moved into a circular pattern, apparently responding to a slight shift of pressure on the controls.

“She’s going to be bingo fuel soon,” said Li, begging the question of how her own fuel was.

“I’m not sure what else we can do,” Turk said. “Maybe as she starts to run out of fuel the plane will descend. Once she’s below twelve thousand feet, she’ll regain consciousness and she can bail.”

Li didn’t answer. The odds of that scenario coming true, let alone having a good outcome, were incalculable.

“Tigershark, this is Ray Rubeo.” The transmission came from Da

“Affirmative, Dr. Rubeo.”

“You are following an A–10E. Am I correct?”

“Yes, sir. The plane is flying in a circular pattern. I’m guessing she has a very slight input on the stick because—”

“No response from the pilot?”

“Copy that. No response.”

“The A–10E is equipped with a remote suite that can be controlled from your aircraft by tuning to the proper frequency and using the coded command sequence, just as if it was Flighthawk or Sabre.”

“Yeah, roger,” said Turk. “I did some of the testing. But the pilots told me the circuitry is inactive in these planes.”

“Inactive but not nonexistent, Captain. Stand by, please. I need to consult one of my people.”

The dilemma invigorated Rubeo, giving him something to focus on other than Neil Kharon and his horrendously wasted talent and life.

The A–10E system had been adopted from one of the control setups developed for the early Flighthawks. It wasn’t quite cutting edge, but that was by design, since the Air Force specs called for a system that was both “compact and robust”—service-ese for a small but well-proven unit.

One of the primary requirements—and one of the things that had caused the main contractor on the project serious headaches—was the need to make the remote flight system entirely secondary to the “ordinary” pilot system. Unlike the Tigershark, which had been built from the ground up as a remote aircraft, the A–10E had to include legacy systems, most significantly in this case the autopilot, which had only been added to the plane in the A–10C conversions. Because of that, one of Rubeo’s companies had worked closely with the main contractor, developing a system that allowed both to coexist in the aircraft.

The head of that project was Rick Terci, an engineer based in Seattle. Rubeo’s call woke him up.

“The system won’t dead start in the air if it’s been under human control,” said Terci when Rubeo explained what was happening. “Not without her permission. The only way I can think of to get the remote on would be to turn the autopilot on first. Then you could cut in with the command. That would work. But you have to get the autopilot on.”

“Yes.” Rubeo saw the unit in his head, a black box located at the right side of the fuselage just in front of the canopy. For a normal aircraft, the shot would be almost impossible. But the Tigershark’s rail gun could hit the spot with precision.

How, then, would they get the remote control to engage?

“I’m thinking if we could jolt the plane electronically,” Rubeo told Terci. “If we could surge the power, and the computer would reset. At that point we can contact it and take over.”

“You mean reboot the entire electrical system? In the air? Sure, but how do we do that? And still have something left?”

“Well how would you do it?” Rubeo asked. He let his mind wander, trying to visualize the system.

“Can’t think of a way,” said Terci. “Not while it’s flying. Not and still have the plane able to fly.”

“If we shoot out the generators?”

“Then you have no power at all. Not going to work.” Terci made a strange sound with his mouth. Rubeo realized the engineer was biting his thumbnail.

A good sign; he only did that when he was on the verge of an idea.

“No, it’s simpler,” said Terci. “Just have a flight condition where the autopilot takes over. Then sign in from there. But you have to get the autopilot on . . . Say there’s a sudden dip so the airplane loses altitude.”

“The safety protocol won’t allow the system to take over if it went into autopilot while under pilot control,” said Rubeo. “We still need to have the system reboot somehow.”

“Yes,” said Terci, repeating Rubeo’s point. “You need an electric shock to delete what was originally programmed, or it will just return to the pilot. It just has to reboot—no, wait—you could just delete that part of the memory. No, just make the computer think there’s an anomaly. You don’t need a massive event, just a reset.”

“How?”

“Hmmph.”

“What if we overload a data collector circuit so the computer reads it as a fault and has to reset? If the circuit no longer exists, it will reset into test mode.”

“Yes. You take over in retest. Sure, because it’s resetting the program registers.”

“Will that work?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. But what circuit would be the right one to blow out?”

“There must be a dozen. Can you access the schematics?”

“I don’t know if my computer is on. Then I have to get into the company mainframes.”

“You have less than ten minutes to discover the proper circuit,” said Rubeo. “Please do not waste them by saying how difficult the task is.”

Turk heard Li contact the tanker. He could tell from the tone in her voice that she thought Ginella was gone.

And maybe he did, too.

There was no reason for him to want to save her. On the contrary, he was sure his life would be easier if she were dead.

But it was his duty to try.

“Captain Mako, this is Ray Rubeo.”

“Go ahead, Doc.”

“I have a sequence of events that I believe if followed very minutely will result in the aircraft’s remote control apparatus starting up. At that point, you will be able to issue the proper commands and fly the plane from the Tigershark.”

“Really?”

“There is an element of doubt,” added Rubeo. “But I am of the mind that it is better than nothing. I think it does have a chance of working.”

“I’m game.”

“I am going to add one of my specialists to the line. Your first shot must be very precise. The second even more so.”

Turk listened as the engineer described the locations on the Hog that had to be struck. Fortunately, the engineer was able to upload the targeting data to him through the Whiplash system, and within a few seconds the Tigershark’s computer marked the location.

Making the first shot was simply a matter of climbing 5,000 feet, then ramming straight down to an intercept course at exactly 632 knots and firing.

That was tough, but the second shot involved an even more difficult problem. It had to be made at a box housed near the plane’s right wing root within thirty seconds of the first.

“Thirty seconds?” Turk asked.

“Has to do with the monitors that control the emergency system check-in,” replied Terci. “The battery will—”

“All right, all right,” said Turk. “Getting into position for the first shot.”

Turk hit his mark 5,000 feet over the Hog and pushed down so he would be on the intercept point. As he reached the target speed, the computer gave him the shooting cue and he fired.

Perfect shot.

But as he swung into position for the second shot, the A–10E turned on its wing and began to dive straight down.

“There’s a problem,” he told Rubeo. He pushed his plane to follow. “I think we’re going to lose her.”

Since the helmet was tied into the Whiplash system, Rubeo could command the screen to show him what the Tigershark saw. He did so, then immediately began to regret it—the A–10A was in what looked like a slow motion downward spiral, heading for the ground.