After all these years of her living up to his standards, he realized that it was time he lived up to hers.
“Time to next target?”
She looked at the console and then back to him. “Six minutes.” She said it too softly to hear, but he could read it on her lips.
And he could see in the expressionlessness of her face that she understood his intent.
The other aircraft was going to do whatever it did.
Unhindered.
Unattacked.
Their own operation would end as it had begun, only attacking the scum along the Mexican border who thrived on America’s weakness.
He nodded and turned away.
Starting at the rear of the aircraft, he made a point of stopping and checking in with each man. Three he’d flown with. Two others he’d personally recommended to the Academy back in the day. And two more had worked with him on advanced designs of this very aircraft.
That’s where he’d gotten the idea.
Somehow, the military had found out what he was doing before his work was done. Before it was barely begun. Now he could only hope that someone would learn from his example. Though he knew that they wouldn’t. Instead, he’d be excoriated on the altar of what was ethically and politically permissible—and he’d gone way over that line.
He finished his brief tour at the cockpit and thumped each pilot on the shoulder. Then he gripped their seat backs as they turned steeply left above what would be their final target in Nogales—their final target ever.
The pilots banked over until the port wing centered and remained aimed at a major Sinaloa cartel mansion as they circled high above it. The leaders were meeting there tonight.
In aiming the weapons downward, the plane behind and above him would know that his Ghostrider wasn’t positioned to fire at them.
Opening up the intercom, he announced plane-wide, “Weapons free.”
64
Pierre stared at the display in disbelief.
“I don’t get it. He has to know you’re there,” Holly’s voice sounded over the open intercom. Holly and Miranda were in a secure room at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State.
General Gray and Rosa stood close beside his chair. Major Jon Swift remained with the pilots.
The stolen Ghostrider was shredding a mansion on the outskirts of Nogales as if they were alone in the sky without a worry in the world.
“Think, Holly,” Miranda’s voice sounded over their headsets. “You already know. General Martinez is so like you.”
“A man of honor,” General Elizabeth Gray whispered.
For once, Holly had no snappy reply.
Pierre had feared that he wouldn’t be good enough, no matter how well Rosa said he was doing. That somehow he’d screw up. Then JJ’s stolen plane would kill them, and it would all be his fault.
But they weren’t going to fight back.
That meant they were going to live. The only challenge now was to cripple but not kill the other plane.
“Damn,” Rosa said softly. “Their laser operator is awfully good. Look at the precision of those hits. All against physical rather than human targets.”
“That would be our Jeremy,” Holly announced happily.
“Where did he train?” Pierre asked as he prepared his weapons for the attack.
General Gray answered. “The first time he ever sat at a console was at Andrews Air Force Base. By the time we exited the plane, perhaps twenty minutes later, he was demonstrating the challenges of inverted firing tactics.”
Pierre glanced up at Rosa. She hadn’t shown him any of those. By her look, she’d never thought to try one.
He supposed it was always good to know when to be a little humbled. Her look of chagrin said the same. It had been a very humbling day in many ways—Rosa the greatest among those.
“How long until you’re in firing range, Master Sergeant?”
He turned to General Gray. “We’re just there now, ma’am.”
She took a deep breath, stared hard at her bright blue ring for a moment.
The future. There was going to be a future.
In that case, he’d have to get Rosa a nice ring. But not Air Force blue. Nor would any stone match her dark eyes; so he’d make it a diamond to shine light in them. And then they’d find a way to serve way below the radar.
“Master Sergeant,” the general’s voice was steady when she looked up from her ring. “Fire at will.”
With the stolen Ghostrider’s port wing pointed steeply down at the targeted mansion, the sensor ball on the left side of their fuselage was aimed nearly straight down. He instructed the pilots to make a high-speed dive and zoom-climb pass, dipping only momentarily low enough to target only the highly sensitive sensor array.
He narrowed the beam as tightly as possible.
At the bottom of the dive, he fired.
65
Their screens fuzzed for one long second, then blanked all at once. Only the sight camera on the howitzer’s barrel remained operative. A far less effective system.
“Continue firing,” JJ called over the intercom.
Taz did the best she could with the crippled system.
“Release bombs.”
Jeremy had trained her how to pre-align those so that she wouldn’t have to think about them during an attack, just release them.
She checked that the pilot was still maintaining his pylon turn so that the port wing was aimed at the center of the target.
He was.
Taz knew it was their last drop, so she didn’t attempt to conserve anything. She released everything that remained. Sixteen bombs—four thousand pounds of explosives—launched off the tail. The mansion had covered more than an acre.
More by luck than design, all of the bombs landed inside the compound walls. Everything was obliterated.
She continued firing the big howitzer into the devastation as fast as the crew could load it. It was their last target—ever.
“One last round,” the gun crew called.
“Thank you, everyone. Due north, please.” JJ announced over the intercom.
“Why north?” Jeremy asked quickly as the deck leveled.
“He’s taking you back home to the US. And removing this plane from potential capture by any foreign agency. Even an ally like Mexico. The border isn’t far.”
When the light went green, she aimed at the trailing fire. Just before she punched the Fire button to send the final round down into the conflagration where it could make no possible difference, the screen flared and blanked.
“What the—” Taz tried to stop the motion of her finger, but didn’t quite manage it.
66
“Massive explosion on the port side,” Pierre announced. “We have a massive explosion on the port side of the target Ghostrider.”
“What the hell did you do?” Someone shouted at him. Holly?
“I fired the laser at the barrel of the M102 howitzer as we agreed. My goal was to take out the sight camera along the barrel.”
“How hot would the barrel have become?” Miranda asked in the strangely analytical way that told him what had happened.
“They were already firing at the gun’s maximum rate. If they fired a round into a hot barrel at the same moment I was heating it with the laser… The round must have exploded as it was leaving the breech.”