Code of Honor

67

Twenty nautical miles from the LHD — a little over two minutes after Skeet’s F-35 left the deck — he turned to look to his left, utilizing his helmet display and the six cameras mounted outside the jet to look “through” the skin of his airplane and get a visual on his wingman. The helmet itself cost the Marine Corps an astonishing four hundred thousand dollars per unit. It was an insane amount, but considering all the tech crammed into one of the things, it seemed to Skeet to be worth every penny.

Three minutes ago he overflew the mocked-up Chinese destroyer, making sure all personnel who’d removed the covers and camouflage from the superstructure were long gone. He’d been given the all-clear but wanted to take the extra few seconds to put eyes on himself before he pulled any triggers.

Schmidt’s voice crackled over the radio. “You’re good to go from my vantage point,” he said. “I’m turning west to—” He cut out. “What the hell was that?”

“Come again?” Skeet said.

“Nothing,” Schmidt said. “My airplane just hiccupped. Thought she was trying to fly herself. Downdraft, I think.”

“Everything check out?”

“We’re good here,” Schmidt said.

Skeet added throttle, making a wide four-minute turn that took him thirty miles northwest of the target vessel. He didn’t want to shoot with the Makin Island in front of him, and it wouldn’t be much of a test if he dropped the missile on top of the ship. Distance didn’t matter much to Skeet or his weapon. With the new tech, this LRASM could make a hole in one from three hundred kilometers. It would utilize GPS, real-time data-links, passive radar homing, and autonomous guidance algorithms to achieve a CEP — circular error probable — of less than twenty meters — the equivalent of flying up the ship’s snout.

Sensors and cameras on board the mocked-up destroyer would record impact data and send it back to the Makin Island. It was going to be a hell of a top-secret show.

Skeet used his index finger on the glass panel to access his weapons stores and highlight the LRASM. He opened the bay doors.

Admiral Peck gave the command to fire.

Missile selected, Skeet said, “Pickle,” and pulled the trigger. “Weapon awa—”

His plane hit the same sort of downdraft Schmidt had experienced earlier, shuddered momentarily, then resumed straight and level flight. “Three minutes—”

The jet shuddered again. The glass panel with all his instruments went dark. The visor display in his helmet clicked off, leaving him virtually blind.

In cases like this, altitude was your friend. He pulled back on the stick, only to have the aircraft pitch violently, nose-down, entering the beginning of a spin. Compensating, he pushed the stick forward. The airplane did exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to do. He pulled back again, applying enough rudder to come out of the spin, going against all his training to push the stick forward and climb. He fought the urge to call for help. Aviate, navigate, communicate. There was nothing Schmidt could do for him, anyway. The ship would have him on radar, so if he went down — which was becoming more and more likely — they’d know where to come looking for him.

The airplane fought him at every turn, like she had a mind of her own. As soon as he thought he had the control glitch figured out, the jet bucked in the other direction. The world around him became a blur of gray sky and blue water, like a spinning globe that wouldn’t stop spinning. With eight thousand feet to play with — and nothing but his instinct to tell him how much altitude he still had — there was little room for error.

The powerful Pratt & Whitney engine suddenly flamed out, leaving the cramped cockpit oddly quiet but for the scream of buffeting wind and the clatter of his helmet against the headrest.

With his stomach in his throat and zero control, Skeet reached for the grab handles on his seat. Severely doubting any part of this airplane would work, he said the words no pilot ever wants to say: “Eject! Eject! Eject!”

Calliope left a copy of her code on Skeet’s onboard computer when she rode the weapons-data-link to the LRASM. This Calliope clone began to send opposing signals to the flight controls the moment the missile was away, causing the airplane to dive, then pitch violently upward. She searched weapons stores, flight controls, and every subdirectory in an attempt to locate the computerized ejection seat. Fortunately for the pilot, the ejection seat was manually activated. Seconds after he ejected, the F-35 Lightning hit the surface of the Pacific in a flat spin like a one-hundred-million-dollar skipping stone. It bounced three times, striking the water with such force that pieces of it had not yet fallen back into the water when Major Skeet Black’s parachute set him none too gently in the waves.