Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) Read Online Free PDF

canopies.
                 “Navy
referees,” muttered Alou.
                 Iowa
                 August
16, 1507
                 Dog
could feel a curtain of sweat descending down the front of his undershirt, as
if he were coming toward the kick lap of a great workout. And in a way, he was— jinking and jiving as a pair of Tomcats, now out of
missiles, tried to get close enough to use their guns. He fended them left and
right, riding up and down, all the while waiting for Delaford to tell him when
they could launch the buoy. They’d temporarily lost contact with Piranha,
though its operator was confident it was close to the aircraft carrier.
                 “We’re
going to lose speed as soon as we open the bay door,” said Chris Ferris. The
copilot had a habit of worrying out loud. In Dog’s opinion, not a particularly
endearing trait.
                 “I’m
counting on it,” replied the colonel, flashing left as one of the Tomcats began
firing again. The Navy planes couldn’t position themselves effectively because
of the air mines spitting out from the back of the plane, but that advantage
would soon be lost—the computer warned they were below a hundred rounds.
                 Worse,
another quarter of fighters were coming from the north.
                 “Okay,”
said Delaford.
                 “Chris,
turn off the Stinger as if we’ve run out of shells,” Dog told his copilot.
“Then open the bay doors and launch. Everybody hang tough,” added Dog. “This
will feel like we’ve hit a brick wall.”
                 The
Tomcats, seeing the Stinger had stopped firing midburst ,
closed in tentatively, expecting a trick. Meanwhile, Ferris gave Dog a five
count. When he reached one, the colonel did everything but throw the plane into
reverse—and he might have tried that had he thought of it. The Megafortress
dropped literally straight down in the sky, an elevator whose control cables
had suddenly snapped.
                 The
Tomcats shot overhead.
                 “Piranha
Buoy Two launched,” reported Ferris, immediately closing up the doors to clear
the Megafortress’s sleek belly. Dog banked so close to the water, its right wingtip
might have grazed a dolphin.
                 “They’re
coming back, and they’re mad,” said Ferris. “Whipping around—rear-quarter
shot.” He started laughing. “Suckers—Stinger on and firing.”
                 Their
anger and fatigue took its toll. One of the Navy fliers was mauled; the other
backed off—then declared a fuel-emergency and broke off.
                 “Four
bandits still coming at us. In AMRAAM range,” warned Ferris.
                 “How
we doing down there, Delaford?” asked Dog, cutting back north to stay near the
buoy, though this meant closing the gap on the approaching F-14’s.
                 “Got
it! Ten seconds to surface!”
                 Dog jinked back, hit chaff as one of the Tomcats launched
from long range.
                 “Were
did they get the Scorpion missiles codes?” asked Ferris. “They’re only supposed
to use operational missiles.”
                 “Take
them over,” said Dog.
                 “Huh?”
                 “ Overrise their guidance. Use our circuits.”
                 “I
don’t know if I can, Colonel. And even if I could, that would be cheating.”
                 “Weren’t
you just complaining about them using missiles that aren’t in their armament
lockers?” inquired Dog. “Issue the universal self-destruct. See what happens.”
                 The
Scorpions—still some months from production—had been designed at Dreamland. The
test missiles contained what the programmers called off-line
paragraphs—telemetry code useful for testing but not