End Game by Dale Brown Page A

curve cut into the blue paper of the sea.
    Starting with his copilot, Dog checked with the crew members to make sure the computer’s impressions of the aircraft jibed with their experience. Immediately behind the two pilots on the flight deck, two radar operators manned a series of panels against each side of the fuselage. The specialist on the right, Sergeant Peter “Dish” Mallack, handled surface contacts; the operator on the left, Technical Sergeant Thomas “T-Bone” Boone, watched aircraft.
    The Megafortress’s array of radars allowed it to “see” aircraft hundreds of miles away. The actual distance depended on several factors, most of all the radar cross section of the targeted aircraft. Under the right conditions, an airliner might be seen four hundred nautical miles away; a stealthy F-22, shaped specifically to avoid radar, could generally get well inside one hundred before being spotted. MiG-29s and Su-27s, the Russian-made fighters common in the area, could reliably be detected at two hundred nautical miles.
    The surface search was handled by a radar set developed from the Nordon APY-3 used in the JSTARS battlefield surveillance and control aircraft. Again, its range depended on conditions. An older destroyer could be spotted at roughly two hundred miles; very small boats and stealthyships like the Abner Read were nearly invisible even at fifty miles under most circumstances. A radar designed for finding periscopes in rough seas had been added to the mission set; an extended periscope from a Kilo-class submarine could be seen at about twenty miles under the best conditions.
    Downstairs from the flight deck, in the compartment where the navigator and bombardier would have sat in a traditional B-52, Cantor was preparing to launch the aircraft’s two Flighthawk U/MF-3 robot aircraft. The unmanned aerial vehicles could stray roughly twenty miles from their mother ship, providing air cover as well as the ability to closely inspect and attack surface targets if necessary.
    The Flighthawks were flown with the help of a sophisticated computer system known as C 3 . The aircraft contained their own onboard units, which could execute a number of maneuvers on their own. In theory, a Flighthawk pilot could handle two aircraft at a time, though newer pilots generally had to prove themselves in combat with one first.
    The Megafortress carried four Harpoon antiship missiles and four antiaircraft AMRAAM-plus Scorpion missiles on a rotating dispenser in the bomb bay. A four-pack of sonar buoys was installed on special racks at each wingtip.
    â€œHow are you doing, Cantor?” Dog asked.
    â€œJust fine, Colonel.”
    â€œHow’s your pupil?”
    â€œUm, Major Smith is, um, learning, sir.”
    â€œI’ll bet,” said Dog.
    â€œI’m good to go here, Colonel,” said Smith. “Everything is rock solid.”
    â€œThat’s good to hear, Mack. Don’t give Cantor any problems.”
    â€œProblems? Why would I do that?”
    Dog was too busy laughing to answer.
    Indian Ocean
2000
    T HE TORPEDO WAS NOT A GOOD FIT . A T 4.7 METERS LONG—ROUGHLY fourteen feet—it just barely fit beneath the smooth round belly of the Sparrow. More importantly, at roughly seven hundred kilograms—a touch over fifteen hundred pounds—it represented nearly twice the aircraft’s rated payload, making the plane too heavy to take off with full fuel tanks.
    But the limitations of the small, Russian-made seaplane were almost assets. For the Sparrow could “fly” across the waves at a hundred knots on a calm night like this, approaching its target at two or three times the speed of a conventional torpedo boat or small patrol boat, while being quite a bit harder to detect than a conventional aircraft. When in range, about ten kilometers, it could fire the weapon, and then, considerably lighter, take to the sky and get away.
    Which was the plan.
    â€œTarget