Collateral Damage

They had not calculated this possibility.

Why?

“The pilot must be semiconscious,” said Terci. “She’s fighting the controls.”

“Yes.”

“If she can level off at ten thousand feet or so, she’ll be fine.”

“What about the second shot?”

“You won’t get it now. Get her to level off.”

“I doubt that will be easy for her to do. How else can we override that system?”

“That’s the only circuit possible, and even that’s iffy.”

Turk looked at the airplane. He had to strike a glancing blow on a plane that was very close to entering a spin. Even lining up to get to the right parameter for the computer to calculate the shot was going to be tough.

There was no other choice.

“I don’t know that I can make the shot, even with the computer’s help,” said Turk.

They were now at 25,000 feet, moving downward in a large but gradually tightening circle. If Ginella was trying to regain control—a theory Turk was dubious about—she wasn’t having any particular success.

The computer’s solution was for the Tigershark to exactly duplicate the Hog’s flight. It was the sort of solution a computer would propose—it saw nothing out of the ordinary, since the impossibility of doing that hadn’t been programmed.

“I can’t follow this course and keep my plane,” Turk told Rubeo. “She’s going to end up in a spin. It’ll get faster and faster. I have to try to stop it, then take the shot.”

“How exactly do you propose to do that?”

“I come in along the wing and tap it. It’ll knock the plane out of the course she’s on.”

“Will it stabilize it?”

“No way—but if I can just get the flight path to straighten out a little, I can take that shot.”

“How do you propose to do this?” said Rubeo sarcastically. “Are you going to reach your hands out?”

“No. I use my wings. It’ll work if I’m careful. I just have to do enough to disrupt the plane.”

“You’re sure?”

It was as much of a long shot as Rubeo’s original solution, even more so. It was very possible he might throw it into an even worse situation. But it was the only thing he could think of to save her. And he knew he had to try.

“Yes,” he told Rubeo, trying to put steel in his voice. “It will work.”

Turk dropped the Tigershark closer to the Hog, ignoring the proximity warning.

Every novice flier has to demonstrate that he or she can recover from an incipient spin before being allowed to do anything very fancy in an airplane. The first few times, the experience is fairly scary, as the sensation of vertigo—and worse, the feeling that you aren’t moving at all—tends to completely u

Mastering this and other emergency situations isn’t important just because of the danger they represent. Being able to control the aircraft through them instills a critical level of confidence in a novice pilot.

Turk felt like a newbie now. He remembered the leading edge of his first incipient spin. He’d almost panicked—almost, almost, lost it.

The trick had been to let go. Not literally, but mentally—to let go of his fear and self-doubt and trust himself, what he had been taught, what he knew he had to do.

To trust the plane.

It was an important lesson—one you always needed to relearn, especially in the face of mistakes.

But did that lesson really apply here? This was something very different. He trusted himself and his plane—but the A–10E wasn’t his to trust.

Instinct told him to try. There was no other choice.

“Tigershark, we don’t think that’s going to work,” said Rubeo.

“Too late, Doc. I’m already on it.”

He nudged the aircraft closer, trying to merge with the other plane. Turk told the computer to stop its proximity warnings, but his own sense of space held him back. He had to fight against his instincts as he lifted the wing to the left, coming up against the Hog’s.

The Tigershark jerked down as the force of slipstream off the other plane’s wing pushed it away. Turk struggled to control the plane but lost altitude too quickly to stay close. He saw the Hog moving overhead and tried to adjust, shifting to the right for another try.

Do it, he told himself. Do it.

Tap the wing. Throw it off course. Take your shot.

“What?” asked a disembodied voice. “What?”

A woman’s voice . . . Ginella’s, as if coming out of a dream.

“You’re going into a spin,” he said over the radio, trying to push the Tigershark closer.

“What?” asked the other pilot.

“You need to recover,” said Turk. “You’re at twelve thousand feet and dropping.”

“I . . . can’t.”

“You can,” said Turk. He backed the Tigershark off. “Your O-two is screwed up.”

“My . . . oxygen.”

“Recover!”

“I—”

“Do it!”

Turk started to move back, desperate now—he had done so much, to the point of sacrificing his own plane in a desperate attempt to save her.

He had to succeed.

He started to come back.

“Where are you?” Ginella asked.

“I’m nearby. Can you eject?”

“I . . . eject.”

“Eject.”

“I . . . I have it. I have it.”

The Hog’s wing steadied. The plane was still moving in a circle, but the flight was sturdier, more under control. Turk took the Tigershark out wider.

“I’m at—I have control,” said Ginella. “I have . . . control.”

The A–10 recovered, pulling out ahead, then swooping straight and level.

“Do you think you can handle a refuel?” Turk asked. “If we set a course to the tanker?”

“Yes.” Ginella’s voice was still a little shaky.

“You sure?”

“I am not walking home from here, Captain,” she snapped, her voice nasty.

Good, thought Turk. She’s back.

“I need a vector to the tanker,” said Turk, talking to the controller. “I need a vector and a tanker. And get rescue assets.”

The Hog began to climb.

“Stay under eight thousand feet,” he told Ginella. “The lower the better.”

“Copy that. You can rejoin your flight. I have it from here.”

“Just follow me,” Turk told her. “We’re going home.”

THE TINT OF SUCCESS

1

Sicily

Ray Rubeo felt his legs start to give way as he reached the tarmac. He reached out and grabbed Da

“Sorry,” the scientist said.

“It’s all right, Ray. You all right?”

“I will be.”

They walked together to the waiting Hummer, Rubeo steadying himself against Da

“Hell of an adventure,” said Da

“I owe you an apology,” Rubeo said, stopping before the truck. “I shouldn’t have gone to Africa.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

“I had to, though.”

Da

“I had to know why the aircraft had made that attack. Kharon had arranged it. He was working with a Russian spy. They had someone insert a virus to infiltrate the system. I’ve worked it out in my head—they put it into the computer that we used to make sure the GPS system was properly calibrated before takeoff. They must have used one of our memory keys. I suspect the base maintenance crew was infiltrated.”

“We can look into that.”

“It wasn’t a mistake we made. I had to know.”

“We would have found out eventually.”