“But what happens when you’re in nonstandard flight configurations?” The slender man asked the seated Vietnamese.
“Okay, watch this, Mike. It’s so cool. I’ll just set up a SIM space here.”
There was a fast rattle of keys that Taz couldn’t quite see. She shifted through the shadows as their sensor operator came aboard until she had a better view.
“I’ve simulated us in inverted flight.”
“Put on your seat harness,” this Mike person teased the man at the laser console.
The operator took him literally, and snapped in with an ease that showed a deep familiarity with the complexities of a five-point harness. “Okay, here we are in a sixty-degree, inverted bank. Watch what happens.”
And Taz watched as the man’s fingers flew over the console.
“I don’t actually need to key any corrections. Now the M102 howitzer requires compensation for angle of attack, airspeed, and so on. Especially the trajectory from our theoretical inverted position. The howitzer shell will appear to fall upward due to the Earth’s gravity pulling the shell down to earth. The targeting information must be inverted with the over-ninety-degree bank angle. But watch the laser.”
And Taz studied the simulation as he targeted and fired, nailing the simulated drone.
“See? It’s all line-of-sight operations. No gravitational effects. We need to worry about air density, humidity levels, and particulate content like dust, which will scatter the beam,” he tapped various pieces of information on the screens that meant nothing to her. “But the angle doesn’t matter at all.”
General JJ Martinez walked up the aisle from the gunnery positions.
She eased away to join him.
“Did you find us a laser operator?”
Taz considered as she continued watching the two of them. “Civilian contractors by their dress and speech patterns. But definitely the skill set we need.”
“Close enough. We’re out of time. I’ll be up in the cockpit. Get them to come along nicely, if you can.” Then he turned on his heel and headed for the cockpit ladder. Nicely if you can meant under duress if necessary.
She decided on a combination approach.
“Excuse me,” she stepped from the shadows.
“Well, hello there,” Mike’s tone did one of those, I’m now speaking to a woman things that made her so sick of the old-guard military. At least it didn’t sound demeaning per SOP. No, this Mike’s standard operating procedure was “flirt mode” not “misogynistic-asshole mode.”
She definitely didn’t have time for that and ignored him.
“Are we at your station?” the operator asked. “I hope that’s okay. I just can’t get over the wonderful control suite for the HEL-A. That’s one bad-boy laser but it is configured to be run with…”
He kept going on about the tech at a level she couldn’t follow. Taz never had been a technical gal.
The Number Three engine fired to life and began winding up to speed with a throaty buzz. Number Four fired close behind it; General JJ wasn’t wasting any time.
Her art was cutting through the bureaucracy of red tape; something she did by leveraging people’s weaknesses. His overeager manner gave her the key she needed to turn.
“We’re about to run a test flight over the offshore VACAPES Test Range. We’ll be night-firing at numerous targets. Would you like to come along for the flight?”
“Like to? Like to! That would be fantastic. I mean usually it’s Jon or Holly who get to go along on a flight, because I’m not a pilot. But I’d love a chance to study the actual performance profiles of—”
“Good. You just need to tell your ground team.” She couldn’t do it herself or General Gray might recognize her.
“Ground team? Oh, Jon and General Gray.” He shot to his feet…or tried to. The harness slammed him back into the seat. He looked down at it in surprise, which was pretty amusing. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt that.
“I’ve got it, Jeremy,” Mike patted his shoulder, which also gave Taz the operator’s name. How curious for a young Vietnamese man to be named Jeremy.
She could overhear Mike as he shouted out the door that they were going on the “training” flight—at least as far as he knew. She considered coaxing Mike off the plane, but he might prove to be useful leverage later and decided to let him remain aboard.
“Look at this!” Jeremy called for her attention, apparently unable to restrain himself. “See how they’re compensating for atmospheric blooming—that’s air turbulence caused by the laser superheating the air—by oscillating the beam over the millisecond time frame. That’s just so cool!”
He continued displaying different aspects of the weapon. She could feel the energy and excitement coursing through him.
Mike returned. “If she and Jon head back to her office, they’ll toss our packs in the hangar office.”
“Oh, I need to secure your phones for the flight. Please set them to Airplane Mode and hand them to me. It’s a required security precaution.”
They both handed them over as engines One and Two came up to full revolutions. The plane eased into forward motion smoothly enough that none of them stumbled.
“I’ll just stow these.” Taz circled around the other side of the weapon control stations. As the plane taxied to the head of Runway 01, they passed a grass strip.
She heaved both phones into the grass.
Then she pulled out her own phone and stared down at it.
For nineteen years her life had been about communicating the general’s wishes to whoever opposed him.
For better or worse, that was over now. This mission was their final play.
She heaved it after the other two, and closed the forward passenger door.
Taz leaned her forehead against the sealed door. For the thousandth time she wished her life was different. Too bad she had no idea what she wanted it to be.
Moments later they were aloft and headed south-southwest—the opposite direction from their filed flight plan to the VACAPES Test Range. She checked in with the man at sensors; he’d already shut down all tracking devices. Now they would look no different electronically than any other general aviation plane out for a night flight.
Time to go break the news to their new laser operator.
38
“I don’t understand what’s happening.” Miranda glared at his left ear hard enough to make Pierre scratch at it.
“It is a very rare accident that I must report as ‘Cause Unknown.’ Those are almost exclusively when the plane was completely lost in the ocean or deepest wilderness. There’s only an average of one every year or so, including both commercial and general aviation.”
Pierre didn’t care about any of that. But when he went to speak, Holly gave him an urgent shake of her head.
“In a crash with multiple causes yet with a clear final result, there typically remain some indicators signifying safety recommendations to be made. However, two consecutive crashes of very elite and rare AC-130 gunships, both with known causes unrelated to the aircraft? That just isn’t right.”
Pierre followed her gaze as she looked around the remains. They’d managed to climb about fifteen feet into the remaining fuselage before being completely blocked by the wreckage.