Collateral by Brian Andrews

Collateral by Brian Andrews

Author:Brian Andrews [Andrews, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Action, Suspense, Thriller
Publisher: Bonefrog Press
Published: 2020-09-01T07:00:00+00:00


Chapter 26

Lead F-22 Raptor

Call Sign Shaker One

One Hundred Miles South of Odessa

28,000 Feet Over the Black Sea

Major Meg “Lady Goose” Gregory eased back the twin throttles of the miracle air-superiority stealth fighter her country had entrusted her to fly for the past eleven years. The Raptor responded smoothly, the altimeter marking a rapid descent and her ears popping as she and her wingman, Shaker Two, descended toward the Black Sea. Her maneuver was in response to the order from aerial command transmitted via an EC-8 control aircraft circling over Romania. The entire battle space was a managed operation—with data links from satellites, all friendly aircraft in theater, and a special U2 configured as eyes and an aerial relay station from eighty thousand feet over the Black Sea.

As the two F-22s descended, she applied gentle left pressure to the control stick in her right hand and eased up a touch on the throttle in her left. The jet responded like the Lamborghini of fighter jets that it was, snapping into a hard left bank and pressing her into her seat at four Gs. She felt the familiar squeeze of the G-suit against her torso and legs as it inflated to prevent blood from pooling in her lower extremities. She led the rollout as the directional indicator approached her heading, wings snapping level just as she hit two hundred and ten degrees on the heading tape at the top of the heads-up display. The altimeter read twelve thousand feet, and she made her way down to eight. A moment later the controller spoke again in her helmet, the voice now more urgent.

“Shaker, your bogey is now twelve o’clock, fifteen miles, descending rapidly toward Delta Charlie. Cleared to engage.”

Cleared to engage? Are they fucking serious? We’re supposed to engage a pair of Russian Su-30s in international airspace?

“Shaker flight,” she said, acknowledging. “Shaker Zero-Two, let’s get down there and see what they’re up to.”

Their F-22s would be all but invisible, thanks to the Raptors’ stealth technology being a generation ahead of the Russian aircraft. The Russian Su-30s were more on par with the Navy’s workhorse F/A-18 Super Hornets, the same platform that only six months ago she and her wingman had dispatched in a training exercise without the Navy pilots ever even making contact. But she wanted to see for herself what the hell these Russians were up to before she engaged and started World War III.

She leveled off at fifteen hundred feet, the two enemy aircraft now designated on her heads-up display as red triangles just outside the green ten-mile ring. Inside that ring, at six miles, was a yellow box indicating the position of “Delta Charlie”—the USS Donald Cook. She didn’t paint the Russian jets with her own radar just yet—that would give away her position and ruin her advantage—but Donald Cook’s Aegis system was tracking them perfectly, and that data streamed to her via data links with the EC-8. To her right, she was aware of her wingman, “Paris,” sliding out to the south, increasing their separation at combat spread.



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